The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise: Chapters 11–18

He looked decidedly ill at ease, and I could see second thoughts passing like clouds over his face. Some of them looked to be darn near third or even fourth thoughts, so I figured I’d better put him at ease with some stimulating conversation and fresh fruit.

Lester blinked at me and pinched his lips together in one of those smug, know-it-all smirks that grown-ups have that can just about drive you crazy, but I forged onward.

Now, Tammy in Boise apparently had other thoughts. Lester was a little stingy with the details, but I got the impression she wasn’t super interested in the broke-as-a-joke-musician-living-his-dream-and-trying-to-make-it-work scene.

“’Cause it’s good practice, man. You’re trying to woo her back, right? You better get this stuff down. Lay it on me. What do you love about Tammy?”

Up at the front, Rodeo stretched dramatically and let out a flamboyant yawn.

In retrospect, what happened next was at least partly my fault, but I’ll never admit that to Rodeo ’cause I don’t wanna let him off that easy.

Rodeo was smiling serenely, the open atlas in his hands.

The candy-bright screen before my eyes was a revelation. I’d always seen folks playing on their phones, but I’d only ever used phones I’d borrowed to make phone calls.

We still had sixty hours until Wednesday morning came along. Plenty of time, I figured. Not a lot of wiggle room for wandering or lollygagging, but we were on schedule.

The fact of the matter is, as flaky as ol’ Rodeo is, he’d never once come close to doing anything like this before. Up until that moment when he and Lester left me behind in Gainesville, Florida, I hadn’t been more than a couple hundred feet from Rodeo in five years.

There was one old car parked at the far corner of the parking lot, and it looked like someone was sitting in the driver’s seat; other than that, the whole scene was pretty dang desolate.

I made my way to the slushy machine in the back corner. It whirred loudly, churning one garish bright flavor.

I pulled the spigot and filled my cup with the frozen atrocity and turned around and sure enough, there was the lady standing right behind me with a worried look on her face and her phone in her hand.

“Hello, dear,” she said, her brow crinkled in concern and her voice careful, like I was a cornered deer she was trying not to spook.
“Hi,” I said, moving to sidle past her.

There were a couple of ways to play this. I went with bravado. “No,” I answered.

“Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet,” I said. “The coral reefs are dying. Species are going extinct at a terrifying rate. Honeybee colonies are collapsing. And have you heard about the deforestation of the Amazon?”

“Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet,” I said. “The coral reefs are dying. Species are going extinct at a terrifying rate. Honeybee colonies are collapsing. And have you heard about the deforestation of the Amazon?”

“Where are your parents, dear?”
I gritted my teeth. She was more persistent than most.

The lady was up at the counter, standing next to a beefy guy with a shaved head who I assumed was her husband.

I’ll admit Rodeo does kinda look the part of an unhinged criminal at times, but that’s a real judging-a-book-by-its-cover situation.

There was a final screech from under the hood and a more substantial poof of white smoke when Salvador’s mom dropped it into neutral and killed the engine (and, for the record, I don’t think the phrase “killed the engine” has ever been more appropriately applied).

Salvador spoke some words to his mom in Spanish and she said some back, shaking her head emphatically.

Rodeo guffawed at that.

Salvador didn’t seem to like talking about family stuff too much, so it was tough prying details out of him.

Now, here’s the thing with grudges: I don’t have much experience with ’em, so I’m probably not all that good at holding them.

So when I got up the next morning and stumbled out through my bedroom curtain, I was all set for a day of spurning and ignoring stupid Salvador and his quiet eyes and his pine-tree armpits.

“Good morning,” I said, and while those words are technically nice words I said them so cold you coulda stirred ’em into a glass of milk and made ice cream, but then Salvador answered in a husky whisper without a moment’s hesitation, looking all serious right up at me, “I’m sorry.”

I supposed I could maybe forgive Salvador, seeing how contrite he was and how thoughtful he was being toward my one and only Ivan.

It’s like the first time you ride a bike: All at once, out of nowhere, the wobbling world settles down to a thrumming harmony, there’s a balance that goes down to your bones, a kind of balance you never knew was there until it came alive all around and inside you; the falling stops and the flying starts and everything just hums, everything just rings true.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Salvador and his mom looking at us and I could have been self-conscious, I guess, but heck, it was my living room even if it was moving at seventy miles an hour, so why shouldn’t I sing in it?

Lester and Rodeo’d been talking about my fictitious Dead Dream.

There was an old brass bell, a little bigger than a soup can, bolted to the ceiling. Rodeo had picked it up at a secondhand store a couple years back. It was pretty tarnished and dented-up, but it did the job when an announcement needed to be made or a hippie woken up.

“Grab your suits, folks!” I hollered over the din. “Five minutes ’til a Dine ’n’ Dip!”

He was awful quiet and looked a little preoccupied for those first twenty seconds or so.

“Probably better get back,” I said, and Salvador said, “Yeah, probably,” and we stood up and took a couple steps deeper toward the middle, but then Salvador stopped and faced me and looked me in the eye and said, “Hey,” and for one mortifying moment I thought he was gonna give me a hug or something, but then he just held his fist out and smiled a little and said, “You’re cool, Coyote,” and I bumped his fist and returned the smile and said, “You’re cool, too, Salvador Vega.”