| Owl half opens one eye, peers out to see Coyoté leap left, crash over a bush, then, righting himself, Coyoté positions himself facing the Saguaro, tenses, flings himself backward over a bush off behind his right shoulder. "It’s too early for this," Owl moans, tries to tuck his head deeper into shadow and silence. He hears: crash, silence, crash. Owl turns slitted eyes on Coyoté, watches as over and again Coyoté positions himself before this Saguaro, tenses, flings himself back. Gradually Owl realizes there’s a butterfly on the other side of the Saguaro flitting between a couple of wild poppy plants. Coyoté jumps when he sees it past the Saguaro. "What in the world are you doing!?" Owl exclaims. Coyoté nearly jumps into the Saguaro. He turns to Owl and sits back. "I’m practicing my lightning leap." He says, resting. Panting. Smug. "You’re already fast enough to catch rabbits," Owl says. "What’s to gain?" He shifts his weight and turns to directly face Coyoté. "No, no!" Coyoté says. "This is to escape lightning!" "Escape lightning?" "Yeah." "Why?… You can’t escape lightening! It’s here and gone before you have any idea what’s up. There ain’t no way!" "Yeah, there is! I didn’t know ‘til this morning though!" "What are you talking about?" "It was in the paper!" "What?" "About this dog that burnt a house down playing with matches!" "A dog burnt a house down playing with matches?" "Yeah!" "And this has something to do with lightning?" "Yeah!" "Like, maybe this lightning burnt the house down?" "No! I was curious, you know, how this dog got the match lit. Seemed like a useful thing to know. So’s I went by the pen and talked to the dog. And I found out that there has been a storm a while earlier that night, and lightning. Close. Real close. So the dog’s jumpy. In fact, at the worst part, jumped up and no sooner was up and lightning hit the bedding. Scared that dog no end!" "I bet." "Yeah, so the dog couldn’t settle down after that, needed to chew on something, you know? So there’s nothin’ ‘cept this box of matches. So the dog’s chewing, and chewing, and feeling better when, whoosh! Spark! Flame! Big trouble in River City!" "So this dog chewed on a box of matches because of the lightning and burnt the house down? This is your story? This is why you’re jumping around this morning? This is why you’re flinging yourself into the path of cactus spines? Because a dog played with matches!?" "Well… yeah." Coyoté looked puzzled. He thought he’d been clear. "OK, OK," Owl said, "We’ll deal with that when we get there. Let’s begin at the beginning. Do you really believe this dog chewed on matches and started a fire?" "Yeah," Coyoté replied, "It’s in the police report. ‘Somehow she chewed… just right and didn’t slobber enough.’ See, right here. Here, in the paper, it says so." "She?" Owl said. "She chewed?" "Yeah," Coyoté said, "She didn’t slobber enough. Says so right here." Owl asked, "What’d she look like, this dog that don’t slobber too much?" And he saw the ricochet of that lightning strike light up Coyoté’s eyes. "You’re too late," Owl said, "The lightning… sometimes we never hear the thunder." And he smiled as Coyoté went back to leaping, flinging himself away from a butterfly, flinging himself straight into lightning. Quiet, patient lightning. |
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RD Savage
09/08/96 © 1996 |