The Hand of Buddha
Excerpt

Coyote Comes Calling

Sam, a.k.a. Samantha Iphigenia Darwin, d.b.a. Sam’s Wampum Wigwam, Main Street, Sedona, Arizona, was having a coyote week. She hadn’t realized this yet, but what she did know was this: certain things were going wrong.

It started when she dumped a bottle of the wrong color hair dye on her head. Her amber locks turned brassy blonde. Then she had a flat tire on the way back from Scottsdale where she’d gone to her doctor. Her visit, precipitated by the sudden hyperextension of her abdomen, ended in her gynecologist’s assessment that Sam either had a large fibroid tumor or she was pregnant. They’d know for sure in a couple of days. At the time of this pronouncement, Sam’s legs were spread, her feet up in the pink potholder-protected stirrups.

"I don’t know, Sam," her doctor, Sally, observed, "I fear it’s a fibroid tumor."

"What’s that? Is it cancer?"

"Well, no. But, if it is a fibroid tumor, we’ll have to remove it."

"Shit," Sam said, letting out a low whistle.

"On the other hand, you could be pregnant."

"What?" Sam asked, incredulous, fearing a pregnancy almost as much as a tumor. "What will I do with a baby? I’m not even married."

"You can still have a baby, Sam."

"That’s not what I mean, Sally. It’s just not in my reality. Besides, that would mean the baby is Daryl’s."

"What’s wrong with that?"

"Sally, we’re talking ‘Daryl.’ You know, Mr. Noncommitment. Fly Boy. Permanent Puer. It’s like saying Peter Pan is the dad. It’s that serious."

"It’s not that bad, Sam. Anyway, we’ll know in two days."

"We’ll know in two days." That’s what Sam was thinking about when a piece of shrapnel jumped up off the road and speared her sidewall. She heard the hissing first, like a snake. She rolled down the window and listened. The snake was following her. Naturally, she didn’t have a jack, at least not one that worked. It was that kind of week. She had a spare tire, but she’d broken the jack months ago when she helped Cynthia, her best friend in the world, fix a flat in the Coffee Pot parking lot. She kept telling herself to replace it. She hadn’t, and now she was "paying the price of procrastination," as her mother would have said.

Fortunately, she was close to Sedona and home when the tire started to hiss. It shouldn’t have been hard to flag down some help. However, as luck would have it, her realization of the equipment shortfall corresponded with a certain unpleasant coincidence. At the exact moment that she realized that the jack was not going to work, a certain primer-brown pickup appeared on the shaky horizon. It quivered toward her like a mirage. It was the worst thing that could have possibly happened. It was Daryl’s truck.

"Your savior again," Daryl said with a wide grin as he swung his long legs out of the truck. Beau, his obedient hound, jumped out, too.

Just what she did "not" want to hear. But being in something of a bind, Sam let him change her tire. Sam hated herself for letting him do it, and she was sullen when she arrived at her store, Sam’s Wampum Wigwam, Main Street, Sedona.

Erly, her helper, had already been in that morning and stacked the packages neatly on the counter. Sam was grateful for Erly. Erly was her only support. She was a tough little woman, originally from New York, and she was generous, dependable, and a darn hard worker.

You’ve got to see beyond the surface, Sam reminded herself, standing in the middle of the roomful of trading beads, prayer feathers, and amulets.

"Erly is a perfect example of squirrel energy," Sam thought, stringing totems.

Sam needed a little time with her thoughts. It had been a terrible morning. This baby. What in heaven’s name was she going to do? An abortion, probably. Sam couldn’t have a baby. She couldn’t let an infant into her life. It was hard enough washing her own hair, feeding herself every day. Getting from one place to another was a perpetual challenge. She had trouble staying balanced and managing her own needs. How could she do it for two?

The shop door opened. This was a great surprise. It was March, and Sam’s Wampum Wigwam survived mainly on mail order at this time of year. Noting that it was David, her pal, and the man she’d recently decided she’d most like to go to bed with, Sam immediately broke into a glossy cover-model smile. The thought of her swollen belly ragged at her.

"Hey, David," she said cheerfully, "I thought you were in Phoenix this week. What’s going on?"

"Oh, I came back early," David said in his soft purr of a voice. David had the kind of voice that could coax eggs out of a rooster.

"Sam," David said, "I have a favor to ask."

"Sure," said Sam. "Anything. What’ll it be?"

"Well," he said, suddenly shy (Sam found this endearing), "I wonder if I could get Cynthia’s number from you. I’m thinking of asking her out."

Sam felt as though she’d been kicked by a mule in the solar plexus, right over that little tumor.

"Yeah, sure," she heard herself say quickly, hiding her surprise. "I’ll give you her number."

She wrote down the number and handed it to him. She was amazed that her hands weren’t shaking. She felt reasonable, even calm. She suspected she was in some kind of shock.

Sam saw herself standing on top of Apache Leap. Below her, Cynthia and David were putting around on the green of the world’s most obnoxiously situated golf course. It was built over an Indian burial ground. Sam hated that golf course. She, Sam, alias Wile E. Coyote, was rolling a boulder to the edge of the precipice. She was going to drop it on the spoony-eyed couple below. She imagined it squashing them both. Then a breeze came out of nowhere, ruffling her hair. It was the "Wind of Karma."

"That boulder," it said, "is going to bounce like a superball. It is going to hit the golf course lighter than angel food cake and bounce back on you with the force of a Peterbilt truck. Don’t do it, Sam."

"Thanks, Sam," David was saying. He’d completed his morning mission, and already had one leg out the door. "By the way, I don’t know what you’ve done with your hair, but it looks great."

"Tasteless goon," Sam thought, as he left. But she knew that if he asked her to go out, she’d say yes. Sam felt like she’d taken a ride in the spin cycle.

"What a rotten day," she thought miserably. "What else can go wrong?"

That’s when she noticed the squashed package on the counter. It was from Bella, the Italian bead manufacturer. Her Venetian trading beads—she’d been waiting for them for months. She needed them to fill one of her store’s largest orders. She had a very bad feeling about this. She opened the package. It was filled with glittering powder—sea blue, gold, bottle green—beads ground to dust. On the package wrapper was a note: "This package was damaged in transit. Please file a claim."

There are times when it all gets to be too much for you and you just have to close up shop. This was one of those times. Sam could feel a couple of big fat cow tears running down the sides of her nose.

"That does it," she said.

She turned out the lights and flipped over the sign on the door to read "closed."

Sam didn’t want to see anyone. Not Cynthia, Daryl, Erly, or David. She wanted to be alone. She jumped into her car and headed for home. That’s when she saw him, standing at the side of the road. The mangy, yellow-eyed dog; the trickster; the hound of the desert; her new pal—Wile E. Coyote. The coyote was standing there, mouth pulled back in a panting grin. Its big yellow eyes connected with hers—full of promise, full of mischief, full of sorrow—and suddenly it let out a quick little yelp. Actually, it was more like a greeting. That is when Sam realized that she was having a coyote week.

"Okay, little brother," she said to the animal. "I get it. Things are out of my control. Nothing I can do."

Sam understood totems. She knew that an armadillo at the side of the road meant that she wasn’t watching her boundaries, that when mountain lions appeared it was time to take a leadership role. She knew that a lynx meant secrets, a fox camouflage, and she knew that the best posture to take during a coyote week was what she called "baby in a car crash." You had to go limp and unresisting. You had to relax or you’d really get hurt.

So Sam took the cosmic advice. She drove to the bakery and picked up a bag of warm chocolate chip cookies. Then she stopped by her house and picked up some thai stick to roll more than a couple of joints and headed for Cathedral Rock, a powerful feminine vortex on the high red rocks of Sedona, a place where the energy collects and swirls. She climbed until she felt as though she were sitting on top of the world. She could see the Coffee Pot restaurant, HO-scaled in the canyon. The long line of hoodoos, spires, and minarettes of sandstone that crawled along the horizon made her think of the skyline of an Eastern empire.

"Dr. Seuss," she thought. "It looks like a Dr. Seuss landscape."

Sam sat cross-legged on the ground. She could feel the earth humming up under her skirt. She meditated, smoked a joint, meditated some more, and ate all of the chocolate chip cookies. She was thinking of Daryl, of babies, of abortion.

"Everything is a risk," she thought. "None of us is ever really in control. Our authority is all an illusion."

She imagined a cute little cherub that looked just like her—the same amber hair, Daryl’s blue eyes. "How could I possibly prefer a tumor to that?" she wondered. "I must be out of my mind." It was true that a baby might send her over the edge, but she was a capable woman. She ran her own business. Daryl or not, she could make it work.

The day slipped out from under her. Evening bore down. It grew dark and cold. Sam made an anthill of cornmeal in front of her. She threw a pinch of it over her shoulder: cornmeal offering. With a pocketknife, she ripped open one corner of her down vest: prayer feather offering. She lit the end of a smudge stick—a bundle of herbs tied together with string—and waved it around, letting the sage perfume the air. With the same match, she lit another one of the joints and took a long slow drag. The night snuggled in around her. The stars moved in a little bit closer.

"Daryl," she thought, "is not such a terrible guy." Too bad he was constantly taking her out where the water was high or the road too narrow. Careless Daryl generally found some way to expose the people around him to danger. But he did always seem to come through. "Your savior," he’d said. That was a laugh. He was more like her nemesis.

Sam took another drag from her joint, counting coup—the gains and the losses. The problems came tumbling in. The whispy vest down was lifting and drifting around her in a whirlpool of wind. It looked like snow flurries. She leaned back on her elbows and watched it. She watched the stars come sliding closer, between the down, like little souls settling on earth—like babies.

The hard red Sedona rock was digging into the small of her back. The night air was kissing her cheeks. She was happy and sad at the same time. How weird the world was. How beautiful. How full of problems. At some point, you just had to relax. You had to trust someone, even if it was only yourself. That’s exactly what she was thinking when the tumor kicked her. She swore that it did. She was shocked. It was a swift kick in her gut, that was certain. She even let out a moan. Somewhere in the cool desert night the coyotes heard her moan, and they answered. First one, then another, in a great chain of song until the night was filled with coyote music. Sam was almost moved to tears by the magic of it. Then the tumor kicked her again, and she let out a war whoop, a laugh, and a big coyote howl.

"Praise the Lord. Hell’s bells," Sam shouted in a spontaneous evangelistic frenzy, embracing the possibilities. This coyote week could turn into a coyote life.

Meantime, all around her, the dogs were singing.