Max shook his head. "I hate it when people try to divorce sex from the other aspects of their life. It's too entwined with everything we are for us to be able to do that. It's like when some people find out that I have HIV. They expect me to disavow sex. They tell me that promiscuity got me into this position in the first place, so I should just stop thinking about it, writing about it, doing it. But if I did that, then I'd be giving-up. My sexuality is too much a part of who I am, as a person and as an artist, for me not to acknowledge its importance in my life. I may not be looking for a partner right now. I may not live to be forty. But I'll be damned if I'll live like a eunuch just because of the shitty hand I got dealt with this disease."
"So you think I should sleep with him,"
"I'm not saying that at all," Max replied. "I'm saying that sex is the life energy, and our sexuality is how we connect to it. Whether or not you sleep with Coyote or anyone else isn't going to trap you in this faerie otherworld, or even get you infected with some disease. It's why you have sex with whoever you've chosen as your partner. The desire has to include some spiritual connection. You have to care enough about the other person— and that naturally includes taking all the necessary precautions.
"How often or with how many people you have sex isn't the issue at all. It's not about monogamy versus promiscuity; it's about how much love enters the equation. If there's a positive energy between you and Coyote, if you really care about him and he cares for you, then the experience can only be positive— even if you never see each other again. If that energy and caring isn't there, then you shouldn't even be thinking about having sex with him in the first place."
12
So now I'm feeling cocky. I think I've got the whole thing figured out. Those first spirits told me the truth: This isn't my dreaming place. It's either Peter's or Max's, I don't know which yet. One of them hasn't let go of the other, and whichever one of the two it is, he's trying to hang on to the other one. Maybe the desert belongs to Max and he doesn't know it. Maybe it's his way of keeping Peter alive, and I just tumbled into the place through having met him that night at my opening. Or maybe it belongs to Peter; Peter wearing Kokopelli's guise in this desert, calling me up by mistake instead of Max. He probably got me because I'm such a strong dreamer, and when he saw his mistake, he just took off, leaving me to fend for myself. Or maybe he doesn't even know I'm here. But it's got to be one of the other, and talking to Kokopelli is going to tell me which.
"No more fooling around;" I tell Coyote. "I want to find Kokopelli."
"I'm doing my best," he says. "But that flute-player— he's not an easy fellow to track down."
We're sitting by another mesquite fire in another dry wash or maybe it's the same one where we first met. Every place starts to look the same around here after a while. It's a little past noon, the sun's high. Ground-doves fill the air with their mournful coo-ooh, coo-ooh sound, and a hawk hangs high above the saguaro— a smudge of shadow against the blue Coyote has coffee brewing on the fire and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looks almost human today, exempt for the coyote ears and the long stiff whiskers standing out from around his mouth. I keep expecting one of them to catch fire, but they never do.
"I'm serious, Coyote,"
"There's people put chicory in with their coffee, but it just doesn't taste the same to me," he says. "I'm not looking for a smooth taste when I make coffee. I want my spoon to stand up in the cup."
He looks at me with those mismatched eyes of his, pretending he's as guileless as a newborn babe, but while my father might have made some mistakes in his life, raising me o be stupid wasn't one of them.
"If you'd wanted to;" I say, "we could have found Kokopelli weeks ago."
The medicine flute is still playing, soft as a distant breeze. It's always playing when I'm here— never close by, but never so far away that I can't hear it anymore.
"You could take me to him right now... if you wanted to."
"The thing is," Coyote says, "nothing's as easy as we'd like it to be."
"Don't I know it," I mutter, but he's not even listening to me.
"And the real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place."
"I know what I want— to find Kokopelli, or whoever it is playing that flute."
"Did I ever tell you," Coyote says, "about the time Barking Dog was lying under a mesquite tree, just after a thunderstorm?"
"I don't want to hear another one of your stories."
13
But Coyote says:
Barking Dog looks up and the whole sky is filled with a rainbow. Now how can I get up there? he thinks. Those colors are just the paints I need for my arrows.
Then he sees Buzzard, and he cries: "Hey, Uncle! Can you take me up there so that I can get some arrow paint?"
"Sure, nephew. Climb up on my back."
Barking Dog does and Buzzard flies up and up until they reach the very edge of the sky.
"You wait here," Buzzard says, "while I get those paints for you."
So Barking Dog hangs there from the edge of the sky, and he's hanging there, but Buzzard doesn't come back. Barking Dog yells and he's making an awful racket, but he doesn't see anyone and finally he can't hang on any more and down he falls. It took Buzzard no time at all to get to the edge of the sky, but it takes Barking Dog two weeks to fall all the way back down— bang! Right into an old hollow tree and he lands so hard, he gets stuck and he can't get out.
A young woman's walking by right about then, looking for honey. She spies a hole in that old hollow tree and what does she see but Barking Dog's pubic hairs, sticking out of the hole. Oh my, she's thinking. There's a bear stuck in this tree. So she pulls out one of those hairs and goes running home to her husband with it.
"Oh, this comes from a bear, don't doubt it" her husband says.
He gets his bow and arrows and the two of them go back to the tree. The young woman, she's got an axe and she starts to chop at that tree. Her husband, he's standing by, ready to shoot that bear when the hole's big enough, but then they hear a voice come out of the tree:
"Cousin make that hole bigger."
The young woman has to laugh. "That's no bear," she tells her husband. "That's Barking Dog, got himself stuck in a tree."
So she chops some more and soon Barking Dog crawls out of that tree and he shakes the dust and the dirt from himself.
"We thought you were a bear," the young woman says.
Her husband nods. "We could've used that meat."
Barking Dog turns back to the tree and gives it a kick. "Get out of there, you old lazy bear," he cries and when a bear comes out, he kills it and gives the meat to the young woman and her husband. Then he goes off, and you know what he's thinking? He's thinking, I wonder what ever happened to Buzzard.
14
"Was I supposed to get something out of that story," I ask "or were you just letting out some hot air?"
"Coffee's ready," he says. "You want some?"
He offers me a blue enameled mug filled with a thick, dark brown liquid. The only resemblance it bears to the coffee I'd make for myself is that it has the same smell. I take the mug from him. Gingerly, I lift it up to my lips and give it a sniff. The steam rising from it makes my eyes water.
"You didn't answer me," I say as I set the mug in the dirt down by my knee, its contents untouched.
Coyote takes a long swallow, then shrugs. "I don't know the answer to everything," he says.