Coyote blue

entered. The cheap Formica table was set with five plastic bowls around a big pot of venison-and-cabbage stew and a basket of fry bread. Harlan poured them all coffee from a big black urn on the counter while Pokey dished up the stew. Samson attacked a piece of fry bread and was tearing away at its stretchy, donutlike crust when Harlan sat down next to him and said, "So, Squats Behind the Bush, what are you gonna do tomorrow if you see Old Man Coyote in your vision like your Uncle Pokey did?"
    Festus and Harry giggled. Samson answered the sarcasm in earnest. "Pokey's the only one with Coyote medicine. Pretty Eagle said so."
    "Good thing, too," Harlan said. "Some of us have to live in the real world."
    "Harlan!" Pokey shouted. "Let it go."
    "It's gone," Harlan said. "It's as gone as can be, Pokey."
    They finished their meal in silence, Samson wondering what Harlan meant by "It's gone." Later, as he fell asleep listening to the soft breathing of his cousins, he imagined himself living on the Ponderosa; sleeping in his own room, herding cattle on his own black horse, carrying two shiny six-guns, practicing his fast-draw, and always staying on the lookout for Indians.

Chapter 8 – Meet the Muse, Mr.
    Lizard King Santa Barbara
    Calliope Kincaid waited on the steps of the Tangerine Tree Cafe thinking about the past lives of lizards. A small, brown alligator lizard was sunning himself on the planter box by the steps and his lidless eyes, glazed but seeing, reminded Calliope of a picture of Jimi Hendrix that her mother had kept next to the bed when she was growing up. She wondered if this lizard really could be an incarnation of Jimi, and what he must feel like living in the planter box in front of a cafe, eating bugs and hiding, after being a rock star.
    Between the ages of seven and nine Calliope had been raised a Hindu, and during that time she had developed an acute empathy for other creatures, never sure what bird or beast might just be Daddy or Grandma working off some karma. She had taken the concept almost to the point of agoraphobia – she was afraid to go out of the house for fear that she might crush some relative doing time as a stinkbug – when her mother moved into NSA Buddhism and Calliope's spiritual focus was changed to sitting before a gong with her mother, the two of them chanting for prosperity until the apartment's heater ducts began to vibrate. Evicted for disturbing other tenants, Calliope's mother turned to goddess worship, which Calliope liked because she didn't have to wear clothes to the rituals and there were always lots of flowers. When Calliope blossomed at thirteen and began to attract too much attention from neopagan males, her mother turned to Islam, changed her daughter's name to Akeema Mohammed Kincaid, and equipped her with a veil. Calliope, who had easily grasped the concepts of karma and reincarnation, of transcendentalism and oneness, of harmony with nature and the goddess within, was completely thrown by the concepts of guilt, self-flagellation, and modesty set down in Islam. She promptly shaved one side of her head, dyed the remainder of her waist-length blond hair hot pink, and began taking hallucinogenic drugs and sleeping with awkward, pimpled tough-boys with mohawks. Men replaced religion, and Calliope accepted their seductive lies with the same open wonder she had given the gods.
    In an attempt to pull her daughter out of a spiritual tail-spin, Mom turned Unitarian, but Calliope had already slashed the ecumenical apron strings and Mom was left to hopscotching religions on her own. Currently she lived in an ashram in Oregon where she acted as the spirit channel for a four-thousand-year-old, superenlightened entity named Babar (no relation to the elephant).
    As a child exposed to so many religions, Calliope had developed a malleability of faith that stayed with her into adulthood. Through the assimilation of many spiritual beliefs, without science or cynicism to balance them, Calliope was able to define everything in her world, accept the highs and lows of life with resolve, and never be burdened by the need to understand. Why understand when you can believe? For Calliope, every event was mystical and every moment magical; a flat tire could be a manifestation of karma, or a lizard might be Jimi Hendrix. If she fell in love too easily and got hurt too often it wasn't bad judgment, it was just faith.
    She was humming "Castles Made of Sand" to the lizard when Sam's Mercedes