The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

He opened his eyes. The fruit loomed above him, suspended from a dead branch by a net of shadows. Its pink lips moved around white teeth.

“Raphael… it said. “Raphael Baca…”

Raphael lashed out with his machete, severing the fruit. It dropped and rolled against a tree trunk, and a great shard of bark came loose and fell on it. Raphael ran to the shanty, hands over his ears, but he could not escape the ghostly weeping or the anguished cries that poured from his own lips.

Morning brought the sun, and silence.

Raphael went outside, into the light.

A truck was parked in front of the shanty.

There were words on the door of the truck. Big gold letters. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. But there was no one inside the truck, and no one on the streets of C-Town.

Raphael walked to the edge of the grove. Nothing moved there. No fruit hung from the naked branches. No sounds drifted on the warming breeze. Not the weeping of La Llorona. Not the cries of the dead children.

Raphael knelt down. He prayed that the person from the Department of Agriculture had not entered La Llorona’s grove.

He waited for someone to appear, thinking how best to explain things.

He waited a long time.

When no one came, he got his machete and went into the grove, searching for another orange.

THE BARS ON SATAN’S JAILHOUSE

Don’t marry your daughter to a Gold Mountain Boy,

He will not be in bed one full year out of ten

Spiders spin webs on top of her bed

While dust covers fully one side.

— Anonymous

By the ghost of the fifth moon, five coyotes raced toward a wagon. Huge paws ripped divots in barren soil, sleek pelts shone in the amber glow of the coming morning, feral hearts pumped the blood of the beast while hungry eyes studied an Asian woman who held an iron fan and a black driver who steadied the horses.

The black man felt hunger in the pit of his own empty stomach as he watched the beasts advance. But he made no move after tugging the reins, for he had seen something else.

Another coyote, waiting on a low ridge to the north.

A coyote that held a rifle.

The pack continued its charge. Still, the black man didn’t move. Neither did his young companion, who by now had noticed the predators. Gunshots broke the silence, like nothing more than a sharp series of barks. The lead coyote crashed to the ground midleap, tumbled squealing against a pole planted at the side of the dirt road not ten feet from the wagon, and did not get up.

The horses screamed, and the driver jerked the reins and quieted them. Another bark from the rifle and a second beast was literally slapped muzzle to roadbed as if by the hand of God. With that the remaining coyotes veered away from the wagon, away from the coyote with the rifle, darting toward the south.

But not fast enough. A final bullet found the slowest predator — nipping tailbone and shaving asshole, separating the beast from its tail — and the anguished howl that rattled across the wounded predator’s teeth was enough to goose the sun over the mountains that lay to the east. At least, that was how it seemed to the black man who held the reins. Cause, and effect.

But having no great love of philosophy of rumination, the man’s attention turned to the coyote with the rifle. The creature loped across the rutted road, collected the amputated tail, and advanced on the wagon, rifle held over its head in the universal signal of peace.

The creature’s muzzle did not move as it said, “They’ll spread the word, y’know. They’ll run back to their hellhole and howl and whimper, and they’ll tell every damn pup ’bout how one of their own shot hell out of ’em and kept ‘em from their dinner.”

Her back stiff, her brown eyes unblinking, the woman in the wagon slapped closed her fan, transforming it into an iron cudgel to which she held tight. Likewise, her companion held tight to the reins. He did not reach for the pistol secreted beneath his worn duster. His hands did not become fists.

He smiled.

The coyote chuckled, scratching its chin. Then it pushed its entire muzzle up and back, revealing a face the color of oatmeal and blue eyes that squinted against the dull morning light. Unmasked, the coyoteman trained an ear toward the south, even though the driver and the woman heard nothing. “Hear ’em howl?” the coyoteman asked. “They’re talkin’ about me. Tellin’ stories. I’m their devil. I’m their hell.”

The coyoteman showed a healthy set of teeth — not a smile, but an animal trying to smile. “Most folks think I’m crazy, sayin’ somethin’ like that,” he continued. “But I ain’t crazy. I got the devil in my blood. My own mama told me so. See, my daddy was a coyote. Like I said, like my mama said — it’s in my blood. Mr. Gerlach — that’s my boss — he reads all kinds of books. He knows about such things. He says what I am is what you call a liecanthrowup.”

“That’s a mouthful,” the black man said, and he didn’t so much as grin.

“That’s me, all right.” The coyoteman nodded, brushing his chin with his escaped brother’s amputated tail. “And believe you me, it ain’t easy bein’ part ky-ote. Hard to find work when your blood’s got the fever like mine. Folks think you’re peculiar, just ’cause you want to live in a hole in the ground and take your food raw, which is the way God served it up, ain’t it? But Mr. Gerlach, he saw a use for me right off. Coyotes ain’t thinnin’ the newborn calves from Mr. Gerlach’s herd like they once did, not with yours truly around. Pretty soon I’ll have the whole pack headin’ for greener… uh, I should say redder pastures.”

With the last comment, the coyoteman flipped the bloody tail at his audience as if it were an obscene exclamation point. He howled laughter, and it took a long time for him to stop, because he was waiting for the people in the wagon to join in the joke. But they managed to abstain. The black man was busy staring down the road, and his companion had slapped open her iron fan and was pumping it in the coyoteman’s direction.

The black man asked, “Where is Midas Gerlach’s ranch?”

The coyoteman raised the pelt that covered his thin belly and expertly pinched a flea into eternity. “You’re standin’ on it, pilgrim. You look around, and on a clear day you can see until tomorrow. And it’s Midas Gerlach owns every inch of what you’re seeing.”

“And where exactly does Mr. Gerlach hang his hat?”

“Five miles down this road. Can’t see his place from here, but it’s there. But a man like you don’t want to go down this road.” The coyoteman wrinkled his nose and sniffed the stranger’s boots, which bristled with wiry hairs and sharp white ridges that looked like pure misery — bones or teeth, the coyoteman couldn’t rightly decide which, and he didn’t really want to move close enough to make a thorough investigation. “I can smell you, pilgrim,” he said by way of conclusion. “And whatever scent I’m readin’, it ain’t rabbit.”

The black man didn’t reply. He stared at the road, at the dead coyote wrapped around the base of the nearby pole. Scant minutes ago the creature had been leading the hunt. But now…

The coyoteman said, “You’re lookin’ at the wrong end of that pole, friend.”

The stranger looked up and saw for the first time the thing the night had hidden, the thing that was more than plain in the morning light — a severed head leering down at him from the crown of the pole.