The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise: Chapters 19–32

It’s one of those weird memories that feels magic and unreal, like a song you wake up singing. It feels sweet and gritty like brown sugar in my mind.

The desert was waking up around us, the sunrise just starting to warm up over a red-rock mesa in the distance.

A coyote. Slender like a deer. Mottled brown and gray fur that looked coarse and soft at the same time, somehow.

I slid Ivan off me, ignoring his surly side-eye, and stood up next to Salvador.

“Okay,” I narrated while I worked. “So, we’re almost to Chattanooga, Tennessee, right now. From here to Poplin Springs—that’s home—is...thirty-seven hours...."

“You promise not to tell Rodeo?” I asked, and without a pause Lester shook his head and said, “Nope,” but when he saw my look of dismayed betrayal, he lightened up a bit.

During my spiel Lester’s face had gone from an amused what-is-this-weirdo-girl-up-to expression to something more serious.

Lester stepped in closer so I could see the little brown flecks in his green eyes.
“Coyote, I will not lie to your daddy. If he asks me, I’m telling him the truth.”

“Fine,” Salvador conceded. “BLT it is.”

“Favorite place,” I mused, looking off into the night. Funny, as many times as we’d asked other folks that question over the years, I’d never really thought about my own answer to it.

I couldn’t make my very favorite place be a place I hadn’t been to in five years, a place that was about to get bulldozed into oblivion.

“Keep it below thirty-five, Lester,” I heard Rodeo saying from the front as I clambered up the swinging rungs.

A few clicks of the latches and then I swung the hatch open and pulled myself up onto Yager’s roof.

“Well, she was a fierce horse. Always swore that no person would ever ride her. She galloped across the prairie alone, mane and tail whipping in the wind. She was free.” I swallowed, looking hard for some sparkle to put into my voice.

“All right,” Rodeo coaxed, “and then...?”

“Some entertainment,” Rodeo added, spreading his hands wide, “to revive your morale and inspire harmony.”

Living on a bus for five years with a solitary hippie, I hadn’t gotten much practice at public speaking.

It’d be easy to go all poetical and gush about how beautiful he played and how mesmerizing the music was and how we all sat there in awe of the amazingness of it all.

He was young. All pale and smooth-cheeked, maybe twenty or twenty-one. We were not dealing with some hard-as-nails, grizzled police detective.

“Of course,” she said after a second. “We’re from the...the Montana Music Conservatory. It’s a private school. Very, uh, prestigious.”

“Of course,” she said after a second. “We’re from the...the Montana Music Conservatory. It’s a private school. Very, uh, prestigious.”

Me and Val walked in just as Salvador played out the last, ringing note. The front-row audience jumped to their feet in a standing ovation.

He looked into my face with those serious eyes of his and said, “Thank you,” all quiet and solemn, and I said, “It was no big deal,” and he shook his head and said, “Yeah, it was,” and I said, “Salvador, you are really good,” and he shrugged all modest but then smirked and said, “Well, yeah, of course,” and we both smiled and then he added, “We are definitely getting you home in time, Coyote Sunrise,” and then he turned back around and that was that.

The bus sat in silence. In my periphery, I could see Lester, sitting quiet and watching close. Salvador was still as a statue in front of me.

“Say you promise,” I insisted, leery of loopholes even though Rodeo wasn’t really the loophole type.

“Say you promise,” I insisted, leery of loopholes even though Rodeo wasn’t really the loophole type.

I would’ve guessed that Rodeo deciding to break five years’ worth of stubbornness and take me back home would be the only major life-changing decision made on our bus that day, but I would’ve guessed wrong. Because about three hours down the road, Lester Washington had his own momentous, buckle-your-seat-belt change of heart.

“It’s green,” I said, and looked back at my book. But there was no lurch, no rev.
“Lester! Light’s green!” I said, and snapped my fingers.

I was snoozing along quite happily when someone screaming “Help us, Jesus!” kind of half woke me up and then a whole bunch of screams (some religious, some secular) all-the-way woke me up and by the time I could gasp and jerk upright, I could hear all kinds of hollering and blubbering and wailing and the bus was shaking under and around me.

I was snoozing along quite happily when someone screaming “Help us, Jesus!” kind of half woke me up and then a whole bunch of screams (some religious, some secular) all-the-way woke me up and by the time I could gasp and jerk upright, I could hear all kinds of hollering and blubbering and wailing and the bus was shaking under and around me.

The trees were blurry on account of the fact that we were hurtling along at, oh, I don’t know, two hundred miles an hour.

Standing upright seemed like a foolish and short-term proposition, so I started crawling up toward the front of the bus, passing my fellow passengers in a tour of terror along the way.

She was far too busy pleading her case to the lord to notice me slinking past her.

Yager careened violently to the side again so hard it knocked me down to my elbows.

Thanks to our unreasonable and horrifying speed, we didn’t have to spend too much time driving on the shoulder, which I suppose was the silver lining to the whole nightmare.

Once we cleared the semi, Concepción veered us back onto the asphalt.

“There!” Rodeo cried, pointing out the front windshield. And we all saw it: in the distance, the highway flattening out, leveling out to a nice, long straightaway.
Salvation.

The car with the cell phone driver was not receding safely into the distance behind us.

Yager’s engine revved high in protest, but it answered the call. We surged forward.

I glanced back at Salvador, but he was looking very conspicuously away from me and out the window, which I thought was very gentlemanly and honorable.