The Last “Just So” Story

by Evan McWilliams

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Once upon a time, the day went by as usual for Coyote. Lizards fled him. He crept and leapt the dunes, and where he touched the earth, he left claw-flecks like stars. He fancied himself just like the Creator, but more handsome—what was anyone without fur? He snuffled affectionately over his lands, and when he found a scorpion curled up like a rosary under the red rocks, he swallowed it. When the day was done, he met his children, the other coyotes who had not such a beautiful coat as his, and they complained they were cold at night and caused a great fuss, and he caught some of them gossiping about him—Crow’s lies about his exploits, no doubt—but what did it matter? Coyote loved the desert.

That was Once Upon A Time.

Now I shall relate to you the greatest and worst of the Coyote stories. You will remember his great duels with Crow and the other monsters of the desert, and how he called the spirits down from the sky, and how they pulled his tail and laughed at him, and how he taught the Hopi irrigation quite on accident when, digging for owls, he hit on a natural spring—and how he then had a cold in his nose for a week and couldn’t hunt. You will even remember how, in a fit of rage, he took Duck’s wife and children and treated them badly. You will remember how Coyote taught us great lessons about the world—how the stars were made and why the cactus is full of water. And above all, you will remember the wonderful riddles in all of those stories, Coyote’s riddles to torment, to trick, to save the day. From those riddles we have grown educated and wise. We know the secret guises of time and the wind and the earth, and how the javelina got his stubby nose. This is the last of those stories, the last of those riddles. After this, you will know everything. This is the greatest and worst of the Coyote stories.

~

“Coyote! Earth-born, royal one, speak to me, you dog!”

Crow was perched on one of the logs of the bridge across the chasm over the darkness. Coyote growled. He couldn’t leap at him here without risking a fall.

“Coyote! I have a riddle for you!”

When Coyote heard this, he shrugged. Being a trickster, he knew all riddles. He rightfully dismissed Crow as being a seedy pigeon with no brains and no shiny coat. He told him so in his politest manner, but Crow, oddly enough, sat unruffled.

“I bet you the moon, the sky, the bridges, the canyons that you don’t know the answer to my riddle!” Crow cawed. “I’ll even give you three guesses!”

“Is Coyote afraid of a bet? Is Coyote afraid of the greatest bet in the world?”

Coyote frowned (an odd thing to see a Coyote do, let me tell you) and said, “Crow, you crow-brained, snake-bit, slow-as-a-toad, beady-eyed fool who couldn’t find a dead eaglet in broad daylight and downwind, fleer of squirrels and scorpions …” (Coyote continued in this manner for some time) “… I know all riddles! Go back to your dead tree and stop talking foolishly to me.”

“Is Coyote afraid of a bet? Is Coyote afraid of the greatest bet in the world?” Crow hopped forward. Coyote growled and snapped as Crow’s long shadow advanced across the bridge. “Your children will laugh at you! The rivers will laugh at you! The sun will shake its mane, laughing at you! I offer you everything I have—the moon, the sky, the bridges, the canyons! And all you have to do is offer up your beautiful hide, there.” Crow twitched with glee, and preened one wing with his black beak. “Should the rivers laugh at you? Should the children laugh at you? I laugh at you!”

Crows can laugh better than any other animal in the desert, and Crow called a whole flock of crows to laugh at Coyote. They flew in from the wings.

“Fine! Fine! Give me your moon and sky, you rat-on-wings, you worm-eating …” (again, he continued for some time). “What’s your riddle?”

The crows quieted. A boomerang of silence arced out and back. Crow puffed up and, his feathers flashing and fluttering in a nascent breeze, asked:

“What ends everything always?”

The words echoed down into the canyon, convincing the jackrabbits that somewhere, though it sounded like everywhere, Crow had found something dead to scavenge.

“Time,” Coyote said promptly, obviously.

“Wrong! Time begins everything! You hold your future, your sure decay, within yourself, Coyote, like a match its flame, and Time will only unleash such boundless potential.”

Flustered, Coyote retorted, “Death, then.”

“Wrong again! Twice wrong! For a rotted eaglet I ingest becomes part of myself. It is my energy, and see”—here Crow folded himself tightly in his black wings, only to reveal himself again like a flowering black hole—”I wake from sleep the way it woke from its shell. And we Gods may die many times! Of course you know that!” Crow winked.

Coyote paused. The crows clucked and flocked into a closer huddle, watching. When a coyote both flushes from embarrassment and feels like vomiting from fear, his ears turn distinctly luminous and he prods the sand with his nose—so. He does not know the answer, he who knows everything, our teacher, the teacher of riddles.

Crow was dancing a jig on the log. “Only one more chance!”

How could Coyote say anything? Ashamed, afraid, he did what all wise coyotes do when not sure what to do: turned tail and sauntered away, looking as dignified as possible. But no one was fooled.

“Run off then, half-wolf!” Crow cawed. “Return when you have mused over that beautiful coat of yours, and all the cold nights you’ll have without it. Talk to your children, Coyote! They know! Soon you’ll be colder than they are!”

And Coyote began to run. He was running to the Waters of Life.

~

Have I ever seen the Waters of Life? Oh, children, you have seen the waters! Fall back to the back of your mind and you will see the farthest of farthest lands. Pass by all those kingdoms and those prisons, all the lives you might live, forsake it all, all identity, and all the worry over what chores you’ll have tomorrow—there are the Waters. Source. Solace.

Coyote feels for a split second vindicated— Coyote is surely still Master of Riddles!

The Waters of Life, before they were dammed, were our arena. Yes, our people and the people of myth had council there, settled disputes there, spoke with the air—but the stories of the Waters you know. You have lived them yourself, in all your imaginings. It is a great treasure you have in your keeping. Just watch Coyote. He goes there—to the back of your mind—to save himself.

Imagine for yourself the great concrete edifice of the dam, across the harnessed Waters that cannot brighten the turbines more than they brighten the air; imagine how the Waters underlight the light mist to the half-translucency of spider webs, how they cling stickily to rocks. Decide for yourself if the lady drowned here, if the car that demolishing day truly fell from the cliff-road arcing away around the red mountain; decide whether the weeds in the shore soil are cannibal or are all the tenacity you have known. Finish. Add yourself as onlooker, and add no more. This is not your story, though you alter it.

Afraid and pondering, pacing, for it is many years since his first two answers, Coyote is at the shoreline, paws wet. He has spent his time well. He is educated and wise. He feels it miserable and misty-magical at the lake, the way it used to be on those starry nights when you would dream of—but that is not the story. Tonight is the night he will give Crow his final answer to the riddle. He sits now, and he ponders. He must be sure. Now, Coyote is not naturally a deep thinker, but he is desperate. He hopes the scenery will help, as it should, for the jagged weeds for him remain the persistent pelt of the world-a paw, wet and clumpy, pushing back, though it is bristled with cacti needles. Some wound is forever being lapped-at, is forever being rinsed by the sticky tongue of water.

What ends everything always?

Crow perches on a boulder in the middle of the Waters, like a void at the center of a galaxy, a solstice of darkness. And faced with the image of such loss, such lightlessness, Coyote releases the arrow-answer he has fletched for himself out of his history and soul. Philosophy and knowledge and experience are his answer. All will agree it is a very good answer.

“The letter G?” he squeaks, in a cracked, bow-string voice.

Crow flutters back, as if surprised, as if a veil of darkness were lifted.

Coyote feels for a split second vindicated—Coyote is surely still Master of Riddles!

“The letter G?” Crow gags on the words, disbelieving.

Coyote howls, triumphant. “The letter G! Best of letters! My favorite letter! I’ll make it a throne, and sing it praises forever, oh letter that ends everything! And yet the more perfect of your gerunds, your continuing-of-action: surviving!” He dances, he leaps, he shimmies in the mud by the Waters of Life.

Then Crow says, very quietly, “No. I’m sorry, but it’s—it’s the riddle. It’s the riddle ends everything. Your riddles that you’re so good at.”

And it seems to Coyote, as he grows slowly still, that Crow has named his very soul. They come back to him, all his adventures in the desert, all the memories of monsters he has faced, Lightning and Wolf, Wolf again and Drought, and times he has been shamed (though this is worst, worst of all!). How many times has he saved the day, saved his hide (and he must lose it now, lose it all to the last hair!) with a riddle? How many dragons has he outwitted? How many times has he restored balance to the desert with a—yes, of course, a riddle, a riddle and a trick? Coyote weeps for shame. He has not known himself. And Crow weeps that he has won. It seems to go against an order, against the idea of any fate or destiny that he should win, and his old enemy lose his beautiful coat. They weep. Coyote howls, anguished. His coat flares in the sun like a banner in valediction.

Beauty falls from him. Golden, it sinks into the canyons, where you’ll see it flash against the limestone walls, some days, when the sun shines, reflecting and shivering through the whole canyon-length. Will you catch it? Will you catch it and bring Coyote back to us? For he flees, hot, burning, over the sand, pink-skinned and sobbing, and his younger brothers and his children howl across the desert, sing “Come home! Come home now!” Their cries echo through the land, but he will not return. We hear the sound in the canyons and we don’t know where to turn. Surely the Crow feasts on tears.

Each alone, sentinels of mountains and all we know, the coyotes sing for Coyote. This is the story of how the coyotes got their cry. This is the last of the “Just So” stories. You are educated and wise. It is the end of your childhood. Mark yourself uselessly within yourself, waterlit, you who have done nothing—and strike the scene. Weep: it is the end of everything.