By Persephone Bolero-Trenton
Many years ago, I returned to California for a time. After so many years in the backwaters of this bug-infested swamp, I found the noise and chaos of Los Angeles difficult to assimilate back into. Long-story-short, I ended up shacking up with a guy in the Mojave Desert in rural Southern California.
There was a Mexican food truck that stopped at the park most days, and I’d sit with other residents of the mobile home park on some picnic tables, which I've written about before, enjoying what was surprisingly some of the best burritos I’ve ever tasted.
Among the residents that would sometimes sit down for lunch there was a Native American man, Nathan Honanie. He said he was a member of the Hopi Tribe. He was an older man, his hair graying, and there were wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He had calloused hands of someone who did hard manual labor his whole life. I think he said he had a son who lived in Arizona.
He worked as a roustabout, which are crews that maintain oil wells. He would be out in the field for sometimes weeks, driving his work truck down dusty roads of Kern County, out to job sites in the middle of nowhere. But when he was home, he’d stop at the food truck for lunch and we’d have lunch together.
He had little to say about himself when I asked, so I don’t know much more about him. While his responses to my questions were brief, he listened quietly as I spoke. I’d always ask if he’d mind if I sat with him, and he’d always gesture to the seat across the picnic table. As he ate his lunch, he would occasionally glance and nod at me thoughtfully while I talked on and on about everything.
I told him all about the life I had in the Amazon, living in a cave, raising Kiki, and digging around in a crashed spaceship. He didn’t seem to even be skeptical of that, which I always found a bit surprising.
I talked a lot about growing up in Beverley Hills and the excessive expectations my high-achieving parents placed on me. I told him about how, after years of living in the Amazon, my father thought I was dead. And when I returned to L.A., he offered me half my trust fund if I’d continue to play dead. Turns out, my being alive was a tax liability for him. Something to do with life insurance.
Anyway, I’d talk and talk and talk, and Nathan would listen and listen and listen. One day I tried to press him for more details about his own life.
“Every time we have lunch together, I’m always telling you all about myself, but I hardly know anything about you,” I said. “I don’t mean to pry, but I don’t want to talk your ear off if you want to tell me something about yourself.”
He chewed his food slowly and swallowed, staring out into the scrub brush desert surrounding the dilapidated mobile homes, like he was thinking about what he wanted to say. Then, he looked at me and said, “You’re the coyote."
I blinked and tilted my head. “I’m the what now?”
“You’re the coyote,” he repeated.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked defensively.
“Millions of years ago, the Great Spirits created the world,” he began, speaking each syllable carefully in his Hopi accent. “They believed that if the animals they placed in this world were to grow and thrive, they needed order. The bears wandered forests where the trees were in neat rows like crops in the field.
"The branches were placed at exact heights so the birds could easily find a place to build their nests. The flowers grew in one place, and they were all the same. So the bees knew exactly where to find them and could easily fly to each one all day long.
“The sun rose at the same time every day, and it set at the same place along mountains that were all the same height along the horizon. Even the stars at night were arranged like the honeycomb in the bees’ hives. They spread out evenly across the heavens, each one the same as any other.
“One of the Great Spirits was the Coyote, and he created a dog that would scurry along the forest floor, among the rows of trees that were all of equal height.” Nathan’s rough hand scuttled across the table on fingertips to illustrate the coyotes’ running.
“The coyotes didn’t like the forest,” he said. “It was perfect for all the other animals, but for the coyote, there were no rolling hills to run over. All the rivers ran in predictable straight lines, and they never bent. The coyotes became very bored, and they could not thrive in the perfect forest the Spirits created.
“When the Great Coyote complained to the other Spirits that the world was too perfect, they got very angry with him. They called him crazy. ‘Shoo, you worthless dog,’ they said. ‘Our world is perfect, and nothing will ever change it. Go now!’ They ran the Great Coyote off and told him never to come back.”
Nathan took a bite of his lunch and chewed slowly. The warm desert breeze blew across the table as he sipped his Coke.
After a long, quiet moment, he continued: “The Great Coyote hid for a long time, and the other Spirits thought he would never return to complain about their perfect world. While he hid, he watched as the coyotes he created in the perfect forest grew so sad. They stopped running along the banks of the straight rivers, or along the straight rows of the trees. They just laid down and waited to die.
“One night, when the sun set behind the perfect rows of mountains and the moon rose in its place among the perfect rows of stars, the Great Coyote emerged from hiding. He ran through the forest, scattering the trees like dust. He scurried through the stars, and they swirled in the wind behind him.
"The Coyote picked up the rivers and twisted them in all different directions. He made them wide and narrow and all widths in between. Some ran fast and cut into the ground, creating canyons. And the Coyote stomped on the mountains, making their peaks jagged and uneven all across the horizon. Hills formed at their feet. The dust he stirred up formed clouds in the blue sky.
“When the other Great Spirits saw what the Coyote did, they were so angry. ‘What have you done, you worthless dog! You have ruined our perfect world!’ they said. They tried to chase him off again, and he yapped and snarled at them. But then the Great Owl told the other Spirits to stop chasing the Coyote and look at the sky.
“They looked up into the heavens and saw the Milky Way. It was bright and beautiful and full of stars of different sizes and colors, and now they twinkled. The clouds the Coyote created plumed like blooming flowers. When the sun rose and shone through the clouds, it created an orange glow the Spirits had never imagined.
"The flowers were all different colors and shapes, the bees were amazed at their allure. The birds now had canyon walls to build their nests upon, as well as trees. And as each tree and flower, bee and bird, bear and coyote found its place in the chaos the Coyote created, it became unique and beautiful in its own way, like no other in the world. When the Spirits saw what the world was becoming, they welcomed the Coyote back and let him run free through the world."
Nathan paused for a long moment, sucking Coke through a straw until it gurgled.
“The coyotes are pests,” he continued, “and wherever they run, they cause nothing but problems. But nothing can grow or discover what it truly is without change. That is their purpose, and some people are born to be the coyote.”
He paused and I smiled, realizing he was saying I make things beautiful.
He then turned to me and added, “However, sometimes the coyote causes too many problems, and he must be run off.” He then got up and left without another word, my smile fading.
A couple weeks later, he showed up at the food truck again. He was sitting by himself, eating his lunch in silence as he always did. I waved at him as I stood in line, and he nodded back.
When I got my burrito, I asked if I could sit with him, and he gestured to the seat across the table.
“How are things?” I asked and shooed away some insects. “Damn flies. This ain’t nothing like the mosquitos in the Amazon. I used to try everything to keep them off of me. One time, I had this idea. What if I could build a giant mosquito net to cover the whole jungle?”
He nodded and listened quietly to my story.
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