The Coyote: A Fiction

Hear about Mark yesterday? Man was he messed up. Showed up late last night all mopey, dopey, head-down, staring at his laces like they were some NFL cheerleader. He looked like a car crash: shirt undone, shoes muddy, bags beneath his eyes, back slouched, and a breath of pot and pickled jalapenos. He dragged himself into the living room and dropped on Jimmy’s precious lambskin couch in an act of vandalism through exhaustion. And disregarding the glares, he began a litany of misfortunes.

It all started with Emma. You know Emma, right? Yeah, that’s right, the short blonde in real estate who was, honestly, out of his league. Apparently, she broke up with him the night before; told him she just wasn't feeling "it" no more. Load of bull crap though. I heard she was messing around with some hedge fund manager at Madison-Dearborn with an apartment on the Drive and pockets deeper than her throat. But don’t tell Mark that though.

But truly, a real shame. Mark didn’t deserve that, and she wasn’t worth it; she always treated him like a second-class citizen, flirting with other guys right in front of him. Yet, the man still adored her, saw past all the faults and red flags and saw her for who she really isn’t; his heart leaping every time she looked him in the eye with a gaze more of pity than of love. But I think she genuinely liked him, though more like how someone likes a pet. I don’t even think she registered that he was a human being; probably saw him as a golden retriever whose sole purpose was to amuse her. Despite all that, the breakup hit him hard; blindsided him right in that soft, fleshy spot men tend to cover up with booze and drugs and “I’m fines”.

So anyways, we were all just chilling around, trying to cheer Mark up. Trying to rejuvenate him, like bringing a plant from the brink of death. Except with beer instead of water. But, well, we might’ve overwatered the plant, pushed him a bit too far.

So, after downing two cans of Bud Light in the span of minutes, he kept on going. This time about Old Duke.  You know good ole Duke. That Great Dane that’s been with him since his DePaul days. He always took him to Grant Park for morning walks. Duke was a great conversation starter; Mark always said that having a dog was the key to a girl’s heart. Don’t know if that’s true though, but, hey, it worked for him. But, apparently, Old Duke’s got bone cancer, right in the spine, the doctor gave him a few months at best. Usually, bone cancer meant a year or so, but the tumor in Old Duke had spread. Mark probably wasn’t paying too much attention to the sad puppy-dog eyes and painful waggles of the tail; guess he was too busy wagging his own tail at Emma.

But damn, he’s got some bad juju right now. Maybe that’s karma; what goes up must come down. I mean, he got Emma as a fresh college graduate and had a place on Maxwell not ten minutes from the lake. And he got a job at Northwestern Memorial repairing medical equipment, making over a hundred grand a year. Eventually though, something had to give, and I guess fate chose Mark that day. Five years after they met, Emma left him. Seven years after finding that dog by a South Side dumpster, Duke’s about to leave too. He does still have the job though, but what’s a lot of money if you can’t spend it with anyone? I mean, he loved them so much, and now they’re gone. Emma filled up half his heart, and Duke the other. And now what’s left? A big, fat hole; zero, zip, zilch, nada — nothing. Absolute emptiness, a void to end all voids, gaping and sucking and vacuuming all hope into the deep hole he calls a heart.

And after handful more solo cups and beer cans, Mark sorta broke. Just flat out broke. Broke like a Chevy Impala after half a million miles. He had this wild look in his eyes like a deer on coke stuck in headlights. Then, and I kid you not, the guy neighed. It was some freaky mix of a laugh, a cry, and a wheeze. He stood up and looked each and every one of us in the eye, spent a minute on each guy. I could see tears beading, rolling down his chubby cheeks till they got too heavy at the double chin and dropped to the hardwood. It broke the silence, and with a shriek, he flipped over the card table and sped through the back door and into the inky blackness of the night.

Now mind you, this was in Lincolnwood, so Labagh’s right in the backyard. The forest was probably half a block from Jimmy’s place and well, Mark’s not exactly the most athletically gifted of our peers, so we were able to chase after and almost caught him entering the woods.

But then Chris slipped on some twig, and we heard a crack, so Jimmy had to stay back and take him to the ER. It was just Sam and I now. We turned on those crappy iPhone flashlights and ventured into the forest, step by step. One step and leaves crackled. Two steps and branches broke. Three steps, the chirping of cicadas. Four steps, a coyote’s howl. We stopped after four steps, Sammy was scared witless (as you know, he did not like coyotes). I told him to head on back and that I’d return with Mark.

Now, all alone, I kept going. Five steps, six steps, seven and so forth. Until the sixty third step, when I heard a voice, too low to register as human but was in English and intelligible. I turned to follow that voice. Five steps later, I happened upon a small clearing, unusually round and still tinged with flowers this late in the year. And right there, front and center, was Mark.

He sat on the ground, legs crossed, arms bracing behind him. And the eyes, they were so bright, so pale; gleaming in the moonlight as they gazed into the sky. On his lap was a small coyote, it whimpered as Mark petted its mangy fur. There was a wound on its side, a rotten maw of infection; looked like it was missing an eye too. Yet its other eye remained open, watery and dripping with tears. Mark leaned down and nuzzled his head against the coyote’s, his tears staining its tan coat. And as his pain grew, I could hear his words clearly now. “It’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright . . .”

The wind whistled through the glade, stirring up dead leaves; it picked up the stir of murmurs, transporting ghosts across the woods. The flowers trembled in their wake, their blossoms bowing down in reverence. All was in motion: the birds in the air, the creatures of the trees, the dust swept up in the gale; all was moving save for two figures in the center. Two broken souls, one of broken body, the other of broken mind, yet together, they were whole, they were one, in stillness, forever.