Coyote blue

taken care of the body problem. He would have also given Adeline no end of shit about Black Cloud Follows, which he had been doing for fifteen years.
    It had been Wiley, a white man, who had named the car in the first place. It was not the Crow way to name cars or animals, but Wiley missed no chance to get in a dig at the people from whom he made his living. Maybe, Adeline thought, a morning of peace was worth dealing with a body.
    When the coffee was finished, she filled two large Styrofoam cups (one for her and one for the body) and poured a generous amount of sugar in each. The body had long braids, so she assumed he was Crow and would probably take sugar if he was alive. If he was dead Adeline would drink his, and she definitely wanted sugar.
    Back in the buffalo days, the Cheyenne prophet Sweet Medicine had seen a vision of men with hair on their faces who would come bringing a white sand that was poison to Indians. The prophecy had come true, the white sand was sugar, and Adeline blamed the white man for poisoning her right up to two hundred pounds.
    She took the coffee, butt-bumped through the back door, and crunched through the grass to where the body lay. He was facedown and his Levi jacket and jeans were crystalline blue with frost. Adeline nudged him in the ribs with her foot. "You froze?" she asked.
    "Nope," the body said into the ground; a little dust came up with the steam.
    "You hurt?"
    "Nope." More dust.
    "Drunk?"
    "Yep."
    "You want coffee?" Adeline sat one of the cups by his head. The body – she was still thinking of him as the body – rolled over and she recognized him as Pokey Medicine Wing, the liar.
    Creaking, Pokey sat up and tried to pick up the coffee, but couldn't seem to get his frozen hand to work. Adeline picked up the cup and handed it to him.
    "I thought you was dead, Pokey."
    "I might have been. Just had me a medicine dream." As he raised the cup to his lips the shakes set in and he had to bite the edge of the cup to steady it. "I died twice before, you know…"
    Adeline ignored the lie and pointed to one of his braids, which had fallen into his coffee cup.
    Pokey pulled the braid out and wiped the beaded band around it on his jacket. "Good coffee," he said.
    Adeline shook a Salem out of her pack and offered it to him.
    "Thanks," he said. "You gotta offer a prayer after a medicine dream."
    Adeline lit his cigarette with a Bic lighter. "I'm a Christian now," she said. She really hoped he wouldn't use the cigarette to carry a prayer. She'd only been a Christian for a few weeks and the old ways made her a little uncomfortable. Besides, Pokey was probably lying through his tooth – he had only one – about the medicine dream.
    Pokey squinted up at her and grinned, but did not pray. "I saw my brother Frank's boy, the one with the yellow eyes who threw that cop off the dam. You remember?"
    Adeline nodded. She really didn't want to hear this. "Maybe you should tell a medicine man."
    "I am a medicine man," Pokey said. "Just no one believes me. I don't need no one else to tell me about my visions. I saw that boy with Old Man Coyote, and there was a shade with 'em that looked like Death."
    "I got to go to work now," Adeline said.
    "I need to find that boy and warn him," Pokey said.
    "That boy's been gone for twenty years. He's probably dead. You was just dreaming." Pokey was a liar and Adeline knew that there was no reason that she should let his ravings bother her, but they did. "If you're okay, I got to go to work."
    "You don't believe in medicine, then?"
    "Mr. Wiley will be coming in soon. I got to open the store," Adeline said. She turned and started back toward the store.
    "Is that a screech owl?" Pokey shouted after her.
    Adeline dropped her coffee, fell into a crouch, and scanned the sky in a panic. In the old tradition the screech owl was the worst of omens; vengeful ghosts lived in screech owls; seeing or hearing one was like hearing the sound of your own death. Adeline was terrified.
    Pokey grinned at her. "I guess not. It must just be a hawk."
    Adeline recovered and stomped into the store, praying to Jesus to forgive Pokey for his sins, but adding to her prayer a request for Jesus to beat the shit out of Pokey if He had the time.

Chapter 3 – The Machines of Irony
    Bring Memory Santa Barbara
    After Sam's secretary gave him the address of his appointment he hung up the cellular phone and punched the address into the navigation system he'd had installed in the Mercedes so he