Desperation

“Literal and metaphorical miles.”

“Yep, both kinds,” this amazing cop said. “Travels with Harley. I like it. It’s ballsy. And of course, I’d read any-thing you wrote, Mr. Marinville. Novels, essays, poems hell, your laundry list.”

“Thanks,” Joh

“I know a little about those things myself,” the cop said. “You might not think so, guy like me, but I do. Why, if you knew the day I’ve put in already… Mr. Mar-inville, could I possibly have your autograph.”

“Of course, it would be a pleasure,” Joh

He was interrupted by a long, trembling howl that chilled his blood… not just because it was clearly the sound of a wild animal but because it was close. The notepad dropped from his hand and he turned on his heels so quickly that he staggered. Standing just off the south edge of the road, not fifty yards away, was a mangy canine with thin legs and scanty, starved-looking sides. Its gray pelt was tangled with burdocks and there was an ugly red sore on its foreleg, but Joh

“My God,” he murmured. “What’s that. Is it a—”

“Coyote,” the cop said, pronouncing it ki-yote. “Some people out here call em desert wolves.”

That’s what he said, Joh

The cop took a step toward the coyote, then another. He paused, then took a third. The coyote stood its ground but began to shiver all over. Urine squirted from under its chewed-looking flank. A gust of wind turned the paltry stream into a scatter of droplets.

When the cop took a fourth step toward it, the coyote raised its scuffed muzzle and howled again, a long, ulu-lating sound that made Joh

“Hey, don’t get it going,” he said to the cop. “That’s tres creepy.

The cop ignored him. He was looking at the coyote, which was now looking intently back at him with its yellow gaze. “Tak,” the cop said. “Tak ah lah.”

The wolf went on staring at him, as if it understood this Indian-sounding gibberish, and the goosebumps on Joh

This goes in the hook, he thought. Everything else I’ve seen is still up for grabs, but this goes in. Rock solid. Rock goddam solid.

“Tak,” the cop said again, and clapped his hands together sharply, once. The coyote turned and loped away, ru

“Gosh, aren’t they ugly.” tbe cop said. “And just lately they’re thicker’n ticks on a blanket. You don’t see em in the morning or early afternoon, when it’s hottest, but late afternoon… evening… toward dark…” He shook his head as if to say There you go.

“What did you say to it.” Joh

The big cop laughed. “Don’t know any Indian dialect,” he said. “Hell, don’t know any Indians. That was just baby-talk, like oogie-woogie, snookie-wookums.”

“But it was iistening to you!”

“No, it was looking at me,” the cop said, and gave Joh

Joh

“And you don’t ever, ever want to face them when they’re in a pack. Especially a pack with a strong leader They’re fearless then. They’ll go after an elk and run it until its heart bursts. Sometimes just for the fun of it.” He paused. “Or a man.”

“Really,” Joh

Joh

He’s trying to impress you, that’s all—it’s cocktail chatter without the cocktail party.

You ‘ye seen and heard it all a thousand times before.

Maybe. But he still could have done without it in this context. Somewhere off in the distance another howl rose, trembling the air like an auditory heat-haze. It wasn’t the coyote which had just run off, Joh

“Oh hey, time out!” the cop exclaimed. “You better stow that, Mr. Marinville!”

“Huh.” For one exceedingly strange moment he had the idea the cop was talking about his thoughts, as if he practiced telepathy as well as elliptical pretentiousness, but the big man had turned back to the motorcycle again and was pointing at the lefthand saddlebag.

Joh

How come I didn ‘I see that when I stopped to take a leak. he wondered. How could I have missed it. And there was something else. He’d stopped for gas in Pretty Nice, and after he’d topped the Harley’s tanks, he’d unbuckled that saddlebag to get his Nevada map. He had checked the mileage from there to Austin, then refolded the map and put it back. Then he had rebuckled the saddlebag. He was sure he had, but it was certainly un-buckled now.

He had been an intuitive man all his life; it was intui-tion, not pla

The cop did it.

That was completely senseless, but intuition told him it was true just the same. The cop had unbuckled the saddlebag and pulled his orange poncho partway out of it while Joh

What agenda. Would you mind telling me that. What agenda.

Joh