"Who are you?"
The shade and the wall are gone. Ahead lie prairies. Pokey runs, calls, "Old Man Coyote!"
"What? I'm busy. Twice in a few days is too much. Don't talk to me for another forty years."
"A shadow said to tell you that there is death where you are going."
"A shadow?"
"A man with the head of a dog. I thought it was you playing a trick on me."
"Nope. So he said that there is death where I am going. He ought to know. Anything else?"
"He said to tell you that he is coming back."
"Well, no shit. You have to go, old man. You're dying again."
"I am?"
"Yeah. Didn't you drink that Kool-Aid I left you?"
"There was no water. Who was-"
"Go now."
The green line went flat. The monitor screeched out an alarm.
"We're losing him," the doctor said. He grabbed a syringe, filled it with epinephrine, and drove it into Pokey's chest. The medicine man began to sing a death song.
CHAPTER 26
Hang with a Horse Thief, Wake Up Walking
Las Vegas
Minty Fresh was staring at nothing and thinking «Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah» when the girl behind the desk grabbed his arm, startling him.
"Are you all right?" she said.
"Fine, what is it?"
"God, on the phone, for you."
"Thank you." Minty picked up the phone and tried to drive «Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah» out of his head. "M.F. here," he said.
"Your Indian is back in the building, main entrance. Keep an eye on him."
"Right." Minty hung up. He checked his watch and realized that he must have been staring for ten minutes before the call. Why couldn't he shake that song? He hadn't heard it since his grandmother had taken him to see Song of the South when he was a child. Grandma had heard the Uncle Remus stories of Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit from her own grandmother, who had been a slave. She said that the stories came with the slaves from West Africa. There, Br'er Rabbit was known as Esau, the trickster. Maybe it was the Indian talking about tricking people that had set it off.
Since the Indian had come into the casino, Minty had felt uneasy. It was as if the Indian could look into his soul and see secrets that he himself did not know. He looked up to see the Indian coming through the lobby.
Minty smiled. "Mr. Coyote, you're back."
"How do you know my name?"
Minty was spun by the question. He felt his shell of cool detachment cracking and dropping off like old paint. "I… I don't know…."
"It's okay," Coyote said. "I want everyone to know my name. Not like you. You carry your name like a man with a knife hidden in his boot. You should wear your name like a red bow tie."
"I'll try to remember that," Minty said, trying to sound patronizing. If the casino knew his real name they'd have him greeting people in clown shoes and a purple wig within the hour. A red bow tie indeed.
Coyote fanned a handful of hundreds and waved them under Minty's nose. "Did you save my place at the table?"
"I'm sure we can find you a suitable place. Follow me."
Minty led Coyote to an out-of-the-way crap table where only a few players were gathered. One of them, a lanky middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and jeans, turned and looked Coyote up and down, then scoffed and turned to the stickman, shaking his head in disgust. "Prairie niggers," he said under his breath.
Minty moved up behind the cowboy and bent over until his mouth was even with the cowboy's ear. "I beg your pardon?"
The cowboy spun around and stumbled back against the table, his eyes wide. "Nothin'," he said. Minty remained crouched over, his face almost touching the cowboy's.
"Is there a problem, sir?"
"No. No problem," the cowboy said. He turned and scraped his chips off the table and quickly walked away.
Minty stood slowly and caught the stickman glaring at him. A wave of embarrassment burned over him. That sort of direct intimidation was completely out of line: bad form, bad judgment. He imagined that there would be a call from God waiting for him when he returned to the desk. He turned to Coyote, who was staring down the front of a cocktail waitress's dress.
Minty said, "Can we get you something to drink?"
"Umbrellas and swords, lots of them."
"Very good." Minty nodded to the cocktail waitress. "Mai tai, extra fruit."
Coyote handed his cash to the dealer. "Black ones."
The dealer counted the money and handed it to the supervisor. "Changing five thousand." The other players looked up at Coyote, then Minty, then quickly looked down to avoid eye contact.
A pair of fresh-faced newlyweds stood at the head of the table, exchanging kisses and whispers. The stickman pushed the dice to the woman, who giggled as she picked them up. "That's my lucky girl," her husband said, kissing her ear.
"New shooter coming out," the stickman said.
"Is she lucky?" Coyote asked.
"She's made me the luckiest man in the world," the young husband said. The girl blushed and buried her face in her husband's shoulder.
Minty found that he was irritated by the couple's fawning and wondered why. He saw it ten times a day: newlyweds at the tables acting like they were the first to discover love, glued together for a few days of starry-eyed public foreplay between bouts in a hotel bed. And they'd be back in twenty years, separating when they hit the door, her locking onto a slot machine while he played blackjack and dreamed of sneaking off to a jiggle show. Minty wanted to warn them that time would make hypocrites of them. One day you'll wake up and find that you're married to a husband and a father, a wife and a mother, and you'll wonder whatever happened to the lover that you swapped spit and sweetness with over a crap table. But why did it matter? It never had before. It's this Indian, Minty thought. He's making me lose it.
Coyote placed all his chips on the pass line. "Are you lucky?" he said to the bride.
She smiled and nodded. Her husband placed a two-dollar chip on the pass line. "Go ahead, honey." He held her shoulders, bracing her against the weight of the dice, and the girl let fly.
"Two! Snake eyes! No pass!" The stickman raked in the bets. Coyote dove over the table and caught the woman by the throat, riding her to the floor. The husband stepped aside as the light of his life went down.
"You are not lucky!" Coyote screeched. "You lost all my money! You are not lucky!" The girl clawed at his face with lace-gloved hands.
Minty Fresh caught Coyote by the back of the neck and pulled him off the girl with one hand, waving away the security jesters who had appeared with the other. "I've got this handled." He nodded to the girl on the floor and the jesters helped her to her feet.
Minty dragged Coyote away from the table.
"She lied. She lied."
"Perhaps you'd like to rest for a while," Minty said, as if he was taking Coyote's hat rather than dragging him across the floor. "Can we get you something to eat? The dining room is closed, but our snack bar is open." Minty was acutely aware that he was in the process of losing his job. He should have turned the Indian over to security. After years as the officer of order, he was falling apart.
"I need to get more money," Coyote said, calming down now.
Minty set Coyote on his feet, keeping a restraining hand on the trickster's neck. "You're sharing a room with Mr. Hunter, aren't you? I'll have the bellman take you up to the room."