The Ivory and the Horn

Sophie nodded. 'I know.'

'He'd play that flute and his drums and rattles. He'd go to sweats and drumming nights when we were down there. I used to tease him about trying to be an Indian, but he said that the Red Road was open to anyone who walked it with respect.'

'The Red Road?'

'Native spiritual beliefs. I went with him sometimes, but I never really felt comfortable.' He touched the nearest statue, an intricate depiction of a prickly pear spirit. 'I love the desert, too, but I've never been much of a joiner.'

'Did that disappoint Peter?'

Max shook his head. 'Peter was one of the most open-minded, easygoing individuals you, could ever have met. He always accepted people for what they were.'

'Sounds like Jilly. No wonder they got along.'

'You mean because of the painting?'

Sophie nodded.

'Peter never met her. I bought it for him at one of her shows. He fell in love with it on the spot— much as I did with the painting you gave me today.' An awkward smile touched his lips. 'I had more money in those days.'

'Please don't feel guilty about it,' Sophie told him, 'or you'll spoil the pleasure of my giving it to you.'

'I'll try.'

'So did Peter have desert dreams?' Sophie asked. 'Like mine?'

'He never told me that he had serial dreams, but he did dream of the desert. What are yours like?'

'This could take a while.'

'I've got the time.'

So while Max sat in the chair at Peter's desk, Sophie walked about the room and told him, not only about the desert dream and Coyote, but about Mabon and Jeck and the whole strange life she had when she stepped into her dreams.

'There's something odd about Coyote referring to Nokomis,' Max said when she was done.

'Why's that.'

'Well, everything else in your desert relates to the South-west except for her. Nokomis and Grandmother Toad— those are terms that relate to our part of the world. They come from the lexicon of our own local tribes like the Kickaha.'

'So what are you saying?'

Max shrugged, 'Maybe Coyote was the woman who sent you looking for him in the first place.'

'But why would he do that?'

'Who knows why Coyote does anything? Maybe he just took a liking to you and decided to meet you in a round-about way.'

'So was he Kokopelli as well?' Sophie asked. 'Because it's the flute-playing that got me there in the first place.'

'I don't know.'

But Sophie thought perhaps she did. She stood before the cabinet that held Peter's medicine flute. It was too much of a coincidence— Max's sculptures, Peter's interest in the desert. The feeling came to her that somehow she'd gotten caught up in unfinished business between the two, neither quite willing to let the other go, so they were haunting each other.

She turned to look at Max, but decided she needed one more night in her desert dream before she was ready to bring up that particular theory with him.

'It feels good being able to talk about this with someone,' she said instead. 'The only other person I've ever told it to is Jilly and frankly, she and Coyote are almost cut from the same cloth. The only difference is that Jilly's not quite as outrageous as he is, and she's not always talking about sex. Everything Coyote wants to talk about eventually relates to sex.'

'And have you slept with him?'

Sophie smiled. 'I guess there's a bit of Coyote in you, too.'

'I think there's a bit of him in every one of us.'

'Probably. But to answer your question: No, I haven't. I'll admit I've come close— he can be awfully persuasive— but I have the feeling that if I slept with him, I'd be in more trouble than I already am. I'd be trapped in those dreams forever and can't see that being worth one night's pleasure.'

Max shook his head. 'I hate it when people try to divorce sex from the other aspects of their life. It's too entwined with everything we are for us to be able to do that. It's like when some people find out that I have HIV. They expect me to disavow sex. They tell me that promiscuity got me into this position in the first place, so I should just stop thinking about it, writing about it, doing it. But if I did that, then I'd be giving-up. My sexuality is too much a part of who I am, as a person and as an artist, for me not to acknowledge its importance in my life. I may not be looking for a partner right now. I may not live to be forty. But I'll be damned if I'll live like a eunuch just because of the shitty hand I got dealt with this disease.'

'So you think I should sleep with him,'

'I'm not saying that at all,' Max replied. 'I'm saying that sex is the life energy, and our sexuality is how we connect to it. Whether or not you sleep with Coyote or anyone else isn't going to trap you in this faerie otherworld, or even get you infected with some disease. It's why you have sex with whoever you've chosen as your partner. The desire has to include some spiritual connection. You have to care enough about the other person— and that naturally includes taking all the necessary precautions.

'How often or with how many people you have sex isn't the issue at all. It's not about monogamy versus promiscuity; it's about how much love enters the equation. If there's a positive energy between you and Coyote, if you really care about him and he cares for you, then the experience can only be positive— even if you never see each other again. If that energy and caring isn't there, then you shouldn't even be thinking about having sex with him in the first place.'

12

So now I'm feeling cocky. I think I've got the whole thing figured out. Those first spirits told me the truth: This isn't my dreaming place. It's either Peter's or Max's, I don't know which yet. One of them hasn't let go of the other, and whichever one of the two it is, he's trying to hang on to the other one. Maybe the desert belongs to Max and he doesn't know it. Maybe it's his way of keeping Peter alive, and I just tumbled into the place through having met him that night at my opening. Or maybe it belongs to Peter; Peter wearing Kokopelli's guise in this desert, calling me up by mistake instead of Max. He probably got me because I'm such a strong dreamer, and when he saw his mistake, he just took off, leaving me to fend for myself. Or maybe he doesn't even know I'm here. But it's got to be one of the other, and talking to Kokopelli is going to tell me which.

'No more fooling around;' I tell Coyote. 'I want to find Kokopelli.'

'I'm doing my best,' he says. 'But that flute-player— he's not an easy fellow to track down.'

We're sitting by another mesquite fire in another dry wash or maybe it's the same one where we first met. Every place starts to look the same around here after a while. It's a little past noon, the sun's high. Ground-doves fill the air with their mournful coo-ooh, coo-ooh sound, and a hawk hangs high above the saguaro— a smudge of shadow against the blue Coyote has coffee brewing on the fire and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looks almost human today, exempt for the coyote ears and the long stiff whiskers standing out from around his mouth. I keep expecting one of them to catch fire, but they never do.

'I'm serious, Coyote,'

'There's people put chicory in with their coffee, but it just doesn't taste the same to me,' he says. 'I'm not looking for a smooth taste when I make coffee. I want my spoon to stand up in the cup.'

He looks at me with those mismatched eyes of his, pretending he's as guileless as a newborn babe, but while my father might have made some mistakes in his life, raising me o be stupid wasn't one of them.

'If you'd wanted to;' I say, 'we could have found Kokopelli weeks ago.'

The medicine flute is still playing, soft as a distant breeze. It's always playing when I'm here— never close by, but never so far away that I can't hear it anymore.

'You could take me to him right now... if you wanted to.'