After a while, Coyote had lost all his horses, his lodge, his wife, and his clothes. "One more time," he said.
"But you don't have anything left," Beaver said.
"I'll bet you my ass against everything else."
"I don't want your ass," Beaver said.
"I thought you were my friend."
"Okay," Beaver said. He hid the stone behind his back. Coyote picked the wrong hand.
"Can I borrow your knife?" Coyote said.
"I don't want your ass," Beaver said.
"A bet is a bet," Coyote said. He took Beaver's knife and cut off his ass. "Boy, that stings."
"I've got to go," Beaver said. "I'll tell your wife she can come and sleep in my lodge if she wants to." He picked up all of Coyote's things and went home.
When Coyote got home his wife was waiting. "Beaver took the lodge," she said.
"Yep," Coyote said.
"Where's your ass?" she asked.
"Beaver got that too."
"You know," she said, "there's a twelve-step program for gambling. You should look into it."
"Twelve steps." Coyote laughed. "I'll bet I can do it in six."
CHAPTER 24
Coyote in Trickster Town
Las Vegas
Coyote had been a long time in the Spirit World, where everyone knew him, so no one would gamble with him. Now that he was in Trickster Town, he wanted to make up for lost time. He waited for Sam to fall asleep, then he took the salesman's wallet and went down the elevator to the casino.
Coyote saw hundreds of shiny machines blinking, and ringing, and clanking big coins into hollow metal bowls. He saw green tables where people traded money for colorful chips and a woman in a cage who paid money for the chips. He saw a wheel with a ball that went around and around. When the ball stopped a man took everyone's chips. The key to that one, Coyote thought, is to grab your chips when you see the ball slowing down.
At one green table, a shaman with a stick chanted while players threw bones. There was much shouting and moaning after each throw and the shaman took many chips from the players. That is a game of magic, Coyote thought. I will be very good at that one. But first I must use Sam's cheating medicine on this machine.
The trickster stood by a machine that he had seen Sam win from two times. He took one of the gold cards from Sam's wallet and slipped it into the machine, then he pressed the number that he had seen Sam use. The machine beeped and spit the card out.
"Panther piss!" Coyote swore. "I've lost." He pounded on the machine, then stepped back and drew another card from Sam's wallet. He put it in the machine and pressed the number. The machine beeped and spit out the card. "Balls!" Coyote said. "This cheating medicine is no good."
A round woman in pink stretch pants who was standing behind Coyote cleared her throat and made an impatient humphing noise. Coyote turned to her. "Get your own machine. This one is mine."
The woman glared at the trickster and tapped her foot.
"Go, go, go," Coyote said, waving her away. "There are many machines to play on. I was here first. Go away."
He put another card into the machine and hunched over the keyboard so the woman would not steal his cheating medicine. He looked back over his shoulder. She was trying to see what he was doing. "Go away, woman. My cheating medicine will not help you. Even if you win you will still be ugly."
The woman wrapped the strap of her pocketbook around her wrist and wound up to swing it at Coyote. Coyote was going to turn into a flea and disappear into the carpet, but he would have had to drop Sam's wallet to do it, so he hesitated and the woman let fly.
Coyote ducked and covered his head, but the blow didn't come. Instead he heard a solid thud above his head and looked up to see a huge black hand holding the pocketbook in the air, the woman dangling from the strap at the other end. Coyote looked up further, craning his neck, until he saw a dazzling crescent moon of a smile in the face like night sky.
"Is there a problem?" said the crescent moon in a soft, calm, deep voice. The giant lowered the woman, who stood stunned, staring up at what looked like a living late-afternoon shadow in sunglasses. The giant was used to shocking people — white people anyway; a seven-foot black man anywhere off a basketball court nonplussed most. He squeezed the woman's shoulder gently to bring her back to her senses. "Are you all right, ma'am?" Again the smile.
"Fine. I'm fine," the woman said, and she tottered off into the casino to tell her husband that, by God, they would spend their next vacation in Hawaii where natives and giants — if they were there at all — were part of the entertainment.
The giant turned his attention to Coyote. "And you, sir, can I help you with anything?"
"You look like Raven," Coyote said. "Do you always wear sunglasses?"
"Always, sir," the giant said with a slight bow. He pointed to the brass nameplate on his black suit jacket. "I'm M.F., customer service, at your service, sir."
"What's the M.F. stand for?" Coyote asked.
"Just M.F., sir. I am the youngest of nine children. I suppose my mother was too tired to come up with a full name."
This was not entirely true, nor entirely false. The giant's mother had, indeed, been weary by the time he was born, but she had also developed an unnatural obsession with dental hygiene as a child, after she was chosen to be one of the first students ever to participate in a Crest toothpaste test. It had been her single moment of glory, her fifteen minutes of fame (and her best checkup ever). When she grew up she married a navy man named Nathan Fresh, and as she bore her children she christened them in remembrance of her day in the dental sun. The first of the Fresh children, a boy, was named Fluoristat. Then came three more boys: Tartar, Plaque, and Molar. Then two girls: Gingivitis and Flossie (the latter after the famous dental hygiene cow). After normal deliveries of two more sons, Bicuspid and Incisor, she had a long, difficult labor with her largest and last son, Minty. Later, Mother Fresh swore that had the child taken one more minute to come into the world, she would have named him Mr. Tooth Decay out of spite — a fact that gave little solace to the man named Minty Fresh.
Coyote said, "People think that it stands for motherfucker, don't they?"
"No," Minty said. "No one has ever mentioned it."
"Oh," Coyote said. "Can you fix this machine? When I give it the cheating number it just beeps."
Minty Fresh looked at the cash machine, which was still blinking the message INSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH, SPANISH, OR JAPANESE. CHOOSE ONE. "You'll need to choose a language, sir." He reached down and pushed the English button. "It should be fine now."
Coyote inserted a card and punched two numbers on the keyboard, then looked at Minty. "This is my secret number."
"Yes," Minty said. "If you need anything at all, please ask for me personally." He turned and walked away.
Coyote finished punching the PIN number. When the machine prompted him for an amount he punched in $9999.99, the maximum allowed by the six-figure field. The machine whirred and spit five hundred dollars into the tray, then flashed a message saying that this was the card's transaction limit. Coyote tried the card again and got another five hundred. The third time the machine refused the transaction so Coyote tried another card. After running all of Sam's cards to their limit he walked away from the machine with twenty thousand dollars in cash.