Listen! (9780062213358) (17 page)

At the door, before she switches off the light, Charley looks back at the studio, at the framed photographs that are leaning against the leg of the table. She isn't ready to put them up in her room, she thinks. But someday she'll wake up in the morning in her own room, with Coyote asleep on the floor next to her bed, and see the fairy castle across the room. Someday she'll imagine again the little figure with iridescent wings.

I
t is the afternoon of Day Sixty-nine. Sunday. The last day of the summer vacation. School starts tomorrow, and Amy is home.

She called yesterday and Charley talked to her, survived hearing her voice. She found herself laughing at Amy's stories about Becky Sue's crush on Adam. But she couldn't bring herself to invite Amy over, invite her to meet Coyote. “He'll just run into the woods and hide, the way he always does with strangers,” she explained. It is odd to think that Amy is a stranger to Coyote and probably will be for a long time. Odd and somehow satisfying, too. Charley has taken picture after picture of Coyote, a few of them pretty good. Amy will see him for the first time on a computer screen tomorrow, just like all the other kids.

Charley has planned how to handle school and Coyote's taming. She will get up early every day and take Coyote for his walk before school, then come home and take him for a boat walk. She is not so sure how she will handle school herself. She hopes it will all work as easily as talking to Amy on the phone, hopes old patterns will just fall into place all by themselves.

Sarita is at the card table, working on the newest puzzle, a painting of a canal in Venice. Charley watches her leaning over the table, one knee on a chair, the other foot on the floor, one-legged, like a heron. What, she wonders, is so wonderful about jigsaw puzzles? It occurs to her that she has never thought of asking, as she never thought of asking her mother why she took pictures. “How come you're always doing puzzles?”

Sarita shrugs but doesn't look up. “It passes the time.”

“There are lots of ways to pass the time,” Charley says, going to the table. “Why puzzles?”

Sarita picks up a cookie sheet full of water pieces, sorts through them, and chooses a piece before she answers. “There was always a puzzle going at the home.”

“The home?”

Sarita nods. In the puzzle a headless gondolier poles his gondola over a patchwork of tabletop and water. Charley moves pieces at the edge of the table, looking for the piece with the gondolier's head and hat, waits for her to go on. It is so long before Sarita speaks again that Charley is actually surprised when she does. “I had a son liked motorcycles. Riding in the rain one night he skidded. Went under a truck.”

Charley wishes she hadn't asked. She doesn't want to know more.

“He spent four years in a nursing home—in a coma. I worked puzzles, waiting for him to wake up. Got to be a habit.”

“Did he wake up?”

“He died. Long time ago now. Guess I'll go on working puzzles till I see him again.”

Sarita fits a water piece into place and begins to hum. It is, Charley understands, the end of the conversation. She realizes she is glad, now, that she asked. It changes something to know this about Sarita. Maybe, she thinks, she will ask her other questions from time to time. Now she will find the gondolier's hat.

An hour later Charley is making the CD of the Coyote photos when Coyote begins barking outside. She sets the laptop on the coffee table and goes to the dining room. Her father's car is pulling into the driveway, Coyote circling it, barking and wagging his tail at the same time, as if he isn't sure whether he's greeting or defending. It seems too soon for her father to be back from the office, too soon for a contract problem big enough to require working on Sunday to have been solved.

She goes outside. Her father is opening his trunk, pulling out a large, obviously heavy carton. Coyote, spooked by the carton, barks a few times and retreats into the trees across the road.

“What's this?” she asks, as her father sets one end of the carton on the driveway.

“A doghouse,” he says. “Some assembly required. It'll probably take me a week or two to get it together. Let's hope it doesn't storm again in the meantime.”

Charley can't believe her ears. “Doghouse? You bought Coyote a doghouse?”

He nods. “I never saw a more bedraggled-looking mutt than the one who came home from that unrequited love affair. I figured it was about time he had a place of his own to stay when the weather gets bad. Something better than that hole he's dug himself behind the boxwoods. It'll be winter eventually. We can't have him outside all day in a Charlotte ice storm.” He digs into his pocket, pulls out a round gold disk with a ring through it, and hands it to her.
Coyote
, it says, with their phone number underneath.

Charley grins. “Thank you. I don't think anybody could get near enough to him to read it, though.”

“Not yet.” Her father drags the carton to the side of the driveway under the dogwood. “This is his place, isn't it? I thought we could put it here.”

Coyote has come out of the woods, is standing at the end of the driveway watching them. “It's for you!” she calls to him. “Shelter!”

“You think he'll use it?”

“He's no dummy,” Charley says. “He'll figure it out.”

Her father chuckles as he leans the carton against the fence. “Let's hope I can. This do-it-yourself stuff isn't my strong suit.”

“You can do it. I can help, and if we get into trouble we'll call for Sarita. So,” she says, as he strains to open the box, “there wasn't really a contract problem?”

He grins, a grin Charley hasn't seen in a very long time. “There's always a contract problem. Just not one I had to deal with today.”

“Are you planning to start this project right now?”

“In a while. I need to change clothes and find some tools. And have a little something cold to drink.”

“Then I'm going to take Coyote for a boat walk.”

“Suit yourself. Just don't leave me alone with this thing for too long.”

Coyote has come down from the trail and is standing chest deep in the water, drinking, a few feet from where Charley has pulled the canoe in beside Tree. She is holding the boat in place with the paddle, her other hand resting on Tree's rough bark. She is glad to be away from the sun beating down on the open water. Glad for the shade of Tree's heavy canopy. “I go to school tomorrow,” she says. She is used to speaking to Tree now, the way her mother did, used to the feeling of comfort she gets when she is in his presence. “It'll be weird being back with all the kids.” A dragonfly circles her head and flies off, its wings a silvery blur. “There isn't going to be much time to work on The Taming before Coyote has to have his heartworm treatment. You think he'll be okay?”

She doesn't get an answer. But it occurs to her that there is no point thinking about what will happen next. The future is anybody's guess. She never expected to lose her mother, to have an accident, to find a dog. What is important is that Coyote is here with her now.
Stick with this one day
. She can't tell whether it is Tree or herself she is listening to.

“You want some liver?” she asks Coyote.

At the sound of the word, his tail begins to wag. Stepping carefully over submerged branches, he makes his way to the side of the canoe. She gives Tree a farewell pat, takes a piece of liver from her waist pack, and holds it out. “Chew it this time!” she says. “You can't even taste it if you gulp it down.” He snatches it and swallows. She sighs. “I guess that's why they call it wolfing your food.” She pats his head, rubs behind his ears. He stands still as she does this, his eyes meeting hers, then turns and picks his way back to shore.
I love you!
she thinks. Up the hill a squirrel leaps from a tree to the ground, scuffling leaves, and Coyote is off, leaping over branches and downed trees, barking his high-pitched, squirrel bark.

“I'll be back,” she tells Tree and back paddles into deeper water.

I'll be here
.

As she paddles along the shore, Charley watches turtles drop off the logs where they have been sunbathing. A kingfisher smacks headfirst into the water and flies up to a tree branch with a small fish wiggling in its beak. A bullfrog thunders from the cove next to Crazy Sherman's house, and a great blue heron lifts itself heavily into the air when Coyote splashes his way through the shallows of Hawk Pond. It lands improbably on top of a pine tree, the branch beneath it bending and swaying under its weight. She should really take the camera when she goes out, she thinks.

Bethanne and Jeremy are on the swim raft with Sadie. “Charley! Come swim!”

“Not today,” she says. “I'm helping Dad build a doghouse.”

“Coyote's one lucky wild dog,” Mrs. Davis calls from her floating chair.

Charley sees that Coyote has come down to his usual place at the shore, is sitting straight and tall as when she first saw him. The afternoon sun seems to set his golden coat afire. Beautiful, she thinks. She will take the pictures to school tomorrow, but no photograph can show the kids who this dog really is.

She paddles toward her dock. “Come on, Coyote,” she calls over her shoulder. “Come home and watch us build your house!” When she turns around, he is already in the water, swimming doggedly after her, a glittering v of ripples spreading out behind him.
Lucky
, Charley thinks,
but not so very wild
.

Stephanie Tolan's True Adventures with Coyote

Animal Speak

Tips on Communicating with Your Pets

Sending and Receiving

When I'm asked whether the things that happen in my books have happened in my real life, I usually say that only little bits and pieces of my stories are based on my own experiences. But
Listen!
is different. It would never have been written if the real Coyote had not come into my life in pretty much the same way that he came into Charley's.

Shortly after I met him I knew I would write about Coyote one day, but it took nearly four years to get the story written. I didn't know what would really happen between us, so I didn't know how the story would end. But I promised myself that Coyote's part of the story would be just as it was in real life. That meant that if “the taming” didn't work, then it wouldn't work in the book. If he ran away, then that would be in the book as well.

Though the people and the story in the book are made up, Coyote himself and the process of bringing him in from the wild are real. So is Eagle Lake—where I live. The main difference between Charley's experience of taming a wild dog and mine is that it took much, much longer in real life than in the story. It was a full three years before Coyote began coming into the house on a regular basis. On winter mornings I would go out to greet him and find frost on his ears and fur.

He's been coming inside for four years now, but he still likes the cold—and he is in the house much more often in the summer than in the winter. He has learned the joys of air conditioning.