"What is it?" Sam said. "Is someone shooting?"
Nina said, "No, it's the garage sale people. Stay down."
"Good morning," Calliope said. "Did you sleep well?"
"Fine. Who are the garage sale people?"
"They're fucking predators," Yiffer said. "They keep circling like sharks. Look." Yiffer gestured to the window.
Sam duck-walked to the window and peeked over the edge. Dodge Darts and Ford Escorts were cruising slowly by, stopping in front of the house, then moving slowly on.
Nina said, "Yiffer put the ad in the paper for our yard sale with the wrong date. They're all looking for us."
"Five of them have been to the door already," Yiffer said. "Whatever you do, don't answer it. They'll tear us apart."
"Probably ten of them went to Lonnie's door and left when he didn't answer," Calliope said.
"What happened with Lonnie?" Sam said.
Yiffer rose up and peeked out the window. "Christ! There's a whole van full of them outside." He dropped to a sitting position, his back to the door. To Sam he said, "Lonnie didn't answer when I went down there last night. As soon as he heard me come back upstairs he got on his bike and left."
Nina said, "How long are they going to circle? I have to go to work today."
"They're never going to leave," Yiffer wailed hopelessly. "They're going to just wait and pick us off one by one. We're doomed. We're doomed."
Nina slapped Yiffer across the face. "Get a grip."
Sam could think of only one thing, the cigarettes on the seat of his car. He had gone sixteen hours without a smoke and was feeling as if he would snap like Yiffer in a few minutes if he didn't get some nicotine into his system. "I'm going out there," he said. He felt like John Wayne — before the lung cancer.
"No, dude. Don't do it," Yiffer pleaded.
"I'm going." Sam stood up and Yiffer covered his head as if expecting an explosion. Sam picked up Grubb's plastic donut on wheels. "Can I borrow this?"
"Sure," Calliope said. "Are you coming back?"
Sam paused for a minute, then smiled and took her hand. "Definitely," he said. "I just need to take a shower and handle a few things. I'll call you, okay?" Calliope nodded.
"You'll never see him alive again," Yiffer whined.
Nina looked up apologetically. "He had a lot to drink last night. I'm sorry if our fighting disturbed you."
"No problem," Sam said. "Nice meeting you both." He turned and walked through the kitchen and out the door.
As he went down the steps, the van that Yiffer had spotted screeched to a halt in front of the duplex and a dozen gray-haired ladies piled out and rushed him. They met at the bottom of the steps.
"Where's the sale?" one said.
"This is the right address. We checked it twice."
"Where's the bargains? The ad said bargains."
Sam held the plastic donut up before them. "This is it, ladies. I'm sorry, but everything was gone but this when I got here. We were all too late. The quick and the dead, you know."
A collective moan came from the mob, then one shouted, "I'll give you ten bucks for it!"
"Twelve!" another shouted.
"Twelve fifty."
Sam gestured for them to be quiet. "No, I need this," he said solemnly. He hugged the donut to his chest.
Their purpose gone, they milled around for a moment, then gradually wandered back to the van. Sam stood for a moment watching them. The other garage sale people who had been circling the block saw them leaving, and Sam could almost feel the disappointment settling into their collective consciousness as they broke pattern and drove off.
"Great night," Coyote said.
Sam's nerves had been so worn from the night and morning that he didn't even jump at the voice by his ear. He looked over his shoulder to see Coyote in his black buckskins and a huge, white ten-gallon cowboy hat. "Nice hat," Sam said.
"I'm in disguise."
"Swell," Sam said. "I can't get rid of you, can I?"
"Can you wipe off your shadow?"
"That's what I thought,". Sam said. "Let's go."
The shogun of the Big Sky Samurai Golf Course and Hot Springs was worried. His name was Kiro Yashamoto. He was driving his wife and two children in a rented Jeep station wagon up a winding mountain road to look at an ancient Indian medicine wheel. The day before, Kiro had purchased two thousand acres of land (with hot springs and trout stream) near Livingston, Montana, for roughly the price he would have paid for a studio apartment in Tokyo. The deal did not worry him; after the golf course and health club were built he would recoup his investment in a year from the droves of Japanese tourists who would come there. His children worried him.
During this trip Kiro's son, Tommy, who was fourteen, and his daughter, Michiko, who was twelve, had both decided that they wanted to attend American universities and live in the United States. Tommy wanted to run General Motors and Michiko wanted to be a patent attorney. As he drove, Kiro listened to his children discussing their plans in English; they paused only when Kiro pointed out some natural wonder, at which time they would dutifully acknowledge the interruption before returning to their conversation. It had been the same at the Custer Battlefield, the Grand Canyon, and even Disneyland, where the children marveled at the machinations of commerce and missed those of magic.
My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham…
Kiro steered the jeep around a long gradual curve that rounded the peak of the mountain and the medicine wheel came into view: huge stones formed spokes almost two hundred feet long. In the center of the wheel a tattered figure lay prostrate in the dirt.
"Look, father," Michiko said. "They have hired an Indian to take tickets and he has fallen asleep on the job."
Kiro got out of the Jeep and walked cautiously toward the center of the wheel. He'd learned a lesson in caution when Tommy had nearly been trampled in Yellowstone National Park while trying to videotape a herd of buffalo. Tommy and Michiko ran to their father's side while Mrs. Yashamoto stayed in the car and checked off the medicine wheel on the itinerary and maps.
Tommy panned the camcorder as he walked. "It's just rocks, Father."
"So is the Zen garden at Kyoto just rocks."
"But you could make a wheel of rocks at your golf course and people wouldn't have to drive up here to see them. You could hire a Japanese to take tickets so you wouldn't lose revenue."
They reached the Indian and Tommy put the camcorder on the macro setting for a close-up. "Look, he has fallen asleep with his face on the ground."
Kiro bent and felt the Indian's neck for a pulse. "Michiko, bring water from the Jeep. Tommy, put down that camera and help me turn this man over. He is sick."
They turned the Indian over and cradled his head on Kiro's rolled-up jacket. He found a beaded wallet in the Indian's overalls and handed it to Tommy. "Look for medical information."
Michiko returned with a bottle of Evian water and handed it to her father. "Mother says that we should leave him here and go get help. She is worried about a lawsuit for improper care."
Kiro waved his daughter away and held the water to the Indian's lips. "This man will not live if we leave him now."
Tommy pulled a square of paper from the beaded wallet. He unfolded it and his face lit up. "Father, this Indian has a personal letter from Lee Iacocca, the president of Chrysler."