Coyote blue

was black? only five foot five? barely 130 pounds? No, but did you see his eyes, like smiles, when he was showing the pictures of his kids – when he was telling tales of lobbing shells the size of refrigerators into the hills of Korea? Did you ever mention retirement to him? That's a frost, that's a chill.
    Minty Fresh, the youngest of nine, the one born with golden eyes, knew the chill. "He's not mine," Papa said – said it only once. Minty stayed out of Papa's way when he could, wore dark glasses when he couldn't. At age ten he stood six feet tall and no amount of slouching would roll Papa's resentment off his back. His place in the family was a single line at the bottom of a letter – "Baby's fine too" – far enough from "Love, Momma" to deny the association. At night, by flashlight, he wrote his own letters: "My team is going to the state championships. I was voted all-conference. The press calls me M. F. Cool, because I wear tinted goggles when I play, and sunglasses during interviews. The colleges are calling already and sending recruiters to the games. You'd be proud. Momma swears you're wrong." In the bathroom he watched the letters go, in tiny pieces, around the bowl, down, and out to sea.
    Minty Fresh left for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas the week after high school graduation, the same week that Nathan Fresh took his mandatory retirement from the navy and came home, to San Diego, for good. The coach at UNLV wanted Minty to lift weights all summer, beef up for the big boys. The coach gave Momma Fresh a new washer and dryer. Nathan Fresh put them out on the porch.
    The day before the first game, when UNLV was going to unleash its secret weapon on the unsuspecting NCAA – a seven-foot center with a three-foot vertical leap who could bench-press four hundred pounds and shoot ninety percent from the free-throw line – M. F. Cool got the call. "I'm on my way, Momma," he said.
    "My father needs me," he said to the coach.
    "When we brought you up from nothing, gave you a full scholarship, put up with the goggles and the shades and the silly name? Gave your mother a washer and dryer? No. You won't miss the season opener. You're mine."
    "How touching," Minty said. "No one has ever said that to me before." Perhaps, he thought later, stuffing the coach in that locker had been a mistake, but at the time a few hours in seclusion, among socks and jocks, seemed just what the coach needed to gain some perspective. He broke the key off in the padlock, tore the M. F. Cool label off the locker, and went home.
    "He's been gone four days now," Momma said. "He drinks and gambles, hangs out at the pool hall 'til all hours. But he always came home before. Since he retired, he's changed. I don't know him."
    "Neither do I."
    "Bring him home, baby."
    Minty took a cab to the waterfront and ducked in and out of a dozen bars and pool halls before he realized that Nathan would go anywhere but the waterfront. There were sailors there, reminders. After two days of searching he found Nathan, barely able to stand, shooting pool with a fat Mexican in a cantina outside of Tijuana.
    "Chief, let's go. Momma's waiting."
    "I ain't no chief. Go away. I got a game going."
    Minty put his hand on his father's shoulder, cringing at the smell of tequila and vomit coming off him. "Papa, she's worried."
    The fat Mexican moved around the table to where Minty stood and pushed him away with a cue stick. "My friend, this one goes nowhere until we get what he owes us." Two other Mexicans moved off their barstools. "Now you go." He poked Minty in the chest with the cue stick and Nathan Fresh wheeled on him and bellowed in finest chief petty officer form.
    "Don't you touch my son, you fucking greaseball."
    The Mexican's cue caught Nathan on the bridge of the nose and Nathan went down, limp. Minty palmed the Mexican's head and slammed his face into the pool table, then turned in time to catch each of the two coming off the bar with a fist in the throat. Another with a knife went airborne into a Corona mirror, which broke louder than his neck. Two more went down, one with a skull fractured by a billiard ball; one, his shoulder wrenched from its socket, went into shock. There were seven in all, broken or unconscious, before the cantina cleared and Minty, dripping blood from a cut on his arm, carried his father out.
    Momma met them at the hospital and stood with Minty as Nathan came around. "What are you doing here, you yellow-eyed freak?" Minty