The Coyote Way by B. B. Griffith

Author:B. B. Griffith [Griffith, B. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Griffith Publishing
Published: 2016-06-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Caroline Adams

Owen is actually making Grant open up his mouth. He’s got a penlight and everything, and he’s telling him to move his tongue around. I’m torn between laughing and crying. This is what it’s come to around here. The boat is getting weird.

“OK, no beads. You’re looking good. Now you check me,” he says. He holds the penlight out to Grant, but Grant just crosses his arms and shakes his head pityingly.

“You’re not a skinwalker, Owen. I don’t need to look in your mouth to know that,” he says.

Owen shrugs. “Fine. Caroline, you can check me.”

“How about we all just stop looking in each other’s mouths, OK? None of us is the coyote. I would know,” I say.

“Oh yeah, how?”

It’s best not to get into how I have a detailed skinwalker checklist for both of them, wherein I would determine that Owen doing this type of fretting is actually normal for him. And Grant looking bored out of his mind is normal for him too. Instead I say, “I’d see it in your smoke.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve never seen it.”

“I’d know.” Although he’s right, I haven’t seen it. Still, I think there’d be some indication from the smoke that a body is possessed, being molded, being shifted by this thing into a vessel it can ride until it dies. Owen just got finished telling us his uplifting theory that the coyote needs a kid. A young person, at least. The bodies he saw were trending younger, and Owen thinks it’s because it’s harder for the coyote to take control of an old person, with set routines and embedded prejudices and experiences. Young people are malleable. Easier to warp because there’s less to change.

“The point is that we all need to see that we’re who we say we are, right now, right here, before we go to the Arroyo. It’s a baseline panel. Do you know what a baseline panel is, Grant?”

Good old Owen, always finding a teachable moment. He’s such a dad, which is remarkable considering Grant doesn’t consider himself Owen’s son. Predictably, Grant says nothing, just resigns himself to listening as Owen plods on.

“It’s an establishment of control levels. For instance, a baseline lipid panel is something I recommend you get at twenty years old to establish cholesterol levels and enzyme activity for that moment in your life. Then we’ll know in subsequent panels if there’s cause for alarm.”

“All right, can we go?” Grant asks. He looks at me with pleading eyes.

“What he’s trying to say is that we need to know that at this moment we’re bone-bead free,” I say, snatching the penlight and doing a cursory check in Owen’s mouth, more to get this show on the road than anything. “Because we’re going into a dangerous area, and if something does happen and one of us starts acting weird from here out, we’ll know at least we were all good here. And it’s a good idea.”

Owen gives me a proud smile that is surprisingly catching, considering we’re on the edge of what you might call the rez war zone.

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