The Coyote Road by Ellen Datlow

Author:Ellen Datlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

Alone at night, in darkness, Rangy used his jungle night vision to stare along with Philip at the moose under the cooling plastic rain: Why did Rangy feel wrapped in ribbons of harp music? He glanced around and saw, sprinkling down out of Philip’s memory, a replaying of the music, making it alive again. Drifting down, too, were other memories being called back, like translucent snapshots.

Floating past Rangy was Grandma Alice, here in California, long ago . . . Philip—skinny, wild-haired—kept Rangy on his lap as they drove by the artichoke fields, with Philip’s dad at the wheel and Sophie next to him. They were on their way to Carmel and were playing the game of What Does That Cloud Look Like? Grandma Alice, in the backseat, shouted that the clouds looked like lint, and Ray said, “There’s the beard I wore as Santa at that stupid artichoke-farmers’ Christmas party.”

Philip had no idea what to describe as being in the heavens until Rangy sang the “Toreador Song” from Carmen, prompting Philip to think of Spanish dancers . . . “Castanets!” he yelled. Grandma Alice shouted, “That’s where thunder comes from!” and Sophie said laughing, “Cloud castanets!” and Ray said, “Could you please see them as lobsters with huge claws, Phil? I’m hungry.”

Rangy groped at the memory of the cloud castanets, and he seized an armful of the memory of Handel’s harp concerto . . . he was damp, as if he were in a rain forest, with a tide rising over his ankles . . . the level of water was growing until it threatened to cut him in two: Philip was crying. His tear ducts were pouring outward.

Ah! Rangy clutched his armful of freshly remembered harp music. He could swim out through the open tear ducts, sliding to the safety of the room with most of the Handel in his possession.

He glanced at the Monster guarding the throat; it fluttered, drunk with light, and under its wings a small jellied army was amassing.

Rangy glanced at the duct . . . narrowing. Philip was starting to dry his eyes.

Another snapshot hailed down: redheaded Martha singing opera one night in the Wilder living room, “O mio babbino caro.” Rangy had missed it by being trapped behind a box, but thanks to Philip’s memory, Rangy could accompany her now, changing babbino to baboon-o.

And another: Philip at his dad’s funeral, putting his collection of baseball cards in the casket for his father to take to trade with God.

Maybe Rangy had missed his young adulthood by being in a closet, but Philip’s dad hadn’t survived long . . . and Philip might have no prime years at all.

Rangy turned a last time toward the river flowing to freedom in the room, and he stopped Philip’s crying by seizing the duct and spraying the Monster Jellyfish with sorrow and brine, and for half a second—long enough for the creature to be stunned as if with a fire hose and blown aside—Rangy found his chance to dive back toward the heart and the core of the body where the cells were winning the battle.

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