Well Fed

     Billy sat in his tiny fluorescently lit field office, playing minesweeper on a dusty desktop computer that had taken over 25 minutes to boot up that morning. His lone companion, a 10 year old beagle named Lucy, was curled on a pile of blankets underneath the desk. Billy hit a mine, lost the game, and leaned back in his creaky office chair that was clearly older than the word ‘ergonomic.’

He gazed at the two decorations on the otherwise barren paneled wall he faced. A framed engineering degree from UCLA, and a bright, sunny photo of a bunch of smiling students. They all looked determined to change the world, especially after a summer spent designing a sustainable solar energy grid that could be effectively deployed in rural villages.

     He closed his eyes and rubbed his rough forefinger and thumb against his eyelids, hard enough that his vision was out of focus when he opened them again. Wyoming made everything dry. Eyes, skin, mouth. The wind just cut through everything.

     The oil company paid him well, but Billy never felt as though the work he was doing was meaningful or valuable. He knew was being paid to be alone, cold, and bored.

     The heating in the office barely worked. He took his gloves off and split the cellophane on a new pack of hand warmers. He tugged his boots off, shaking out the last batch. The problem with the warmers was that after you shook them, they got really hot. Almost painfully so, but the pain was a welcome respite from the numbness it replaced. After a few minutes, the warmers cooled to a proper temperature that they maintained. But because of the initial blast of heat, a more moderate temperature barely registered. Even warm felt cold.

 The password to Billy’s work desktop was “SamMcGee,” after the titular character in a Robert Frost poem that froze to death trying to strike it rich in the Alaskan gold rush and, upon being cremated, comes back to life only to beg to be left in the fire a little longer.

     Billy had always prided himself on his natural ability to be alone. He remembered watching a movie as a kid, the main character a loner type, but by the end he had gathered a rag tag team of friends. “No man is an island,” the protagonist had said as the movie came to a close. Billy had always felt that the character had failed himself somehow. Billy thought that he could be an island. He prided himself in that and even thought of it as an inner strength. The ability to not need anybody, to get by just fine on your own.

You always hear stories of people going crazy from being isolated, astronauts and prisoners and shipwreck survivors. Billy liked to imagine a cruel and crooked warden opening up the door of a solitary confinement cell that Billy had been wrongfully imprisoned in, hoping to see a broken man, only to find Billy relaxed and cheerful. “Could I stay a bit longer? I’m enjoying the peace and quiet.”

Like Sam McGee, but instead of being tormented with the unrelenting cold, he suffered from the wear and tear of human interaction.

There was a photo of his parents and sisters in a drawer of the old desk he sat at. Billy had taken it off the wall after the third time he told them all that he would move back, only to get a well-timed raise from the oil company that kept him there for another year. At first, Billy’s plan had been to save enough to pay off college loans. Then, it was to save enough for a down payment on a house. Now he looked at his bank account a couple times a day, and always found himself fantasizing about having more. It gave him a relieving comfort in his chest to see he had worth, and he knew he couldn’t make half the money anywhere else. Still, after every peek at his savings, he would calculate how long he thought he could survive if he quit his job immediately. He was up to 5 years in Wyoming, maybe 8 months if he moved back to Los Angeles.

“The money is nice kid.” That’s what they said when they interviewed him for the job. Two middle aged men in ill-fitting suits with shit eating grins. “We know you’re into that environmental stuff. This job is terrible for the environment, sure, but it pays a shit load. If you don’t do it, someone else will. Do yourself a favor, just work it for a few years, bank some money, and then decide what you want to do.”

     Billy pushed his chair back, startling Lucy whose collar jangled. “C’mon girl, time to make the rounds.” He pulled on a second jacket as the beagle got up and did that cute little slow stretch walk toward the door, her nails clacking against the linoleum. Billy watched her, eyeing the grey around her muzzle. He didn’t really have to walk around the pumping station. It was all automated, and any problems would be immediately noticed by the company and radioed to him. Nothing had gone wrong the entire time he worked there, but it was nice to get out of the claustrophobic office a few times a day. Even if getting out was frigid.

     The whole operation was fenced in by a chain link, and Billy liked walking around the whole thing a few times a day to get some sun on his face. It took about 20 minutes. Lucy used to walk with him, but now she minded her own business. She usually pissed on one specific shrub, or shit near another one. But this time, she stood alert and trotted meaningfully towards a spot facing a large patch of tall grass outside the fence. She growled and her hackles raised up.

     It gave Billy goosebumps when the dog could sense something he couldn’t. He let out a low whistle, but she didn’t budge. He walked over, boots crunching over gravel.

     When he got close, Lucy started to whine. He stared hard out at the grass. Out walked a coyote. It was big, with a heavy coat that was a dark grey color like he hadn’t seen before. The coyote didn’t show any signs of fear. The ears stood straight up, not back, and its eyes were curious but relaxed. Billy’s heart beat heavy, and he felt that familiar adrenaline rush of uncertainty you get from being close to anything feral. The coyote’s eyes were a beautiful ice grey color that made it seem ancient, almost something to be revered. He and the coyote stared at each other for what felt like minutes before he noticed a smaller coyote, with a coat more auburn and patchy, behind the first. “Hey you git!” He finally yelled. The smaller coyote started, but the first didn’t even flinch. “Get out of here I said!” Lucy picked up on the cue and started barking frantically. The larger coyote finally broke eye contact with Billy to look at Lucy, and the thing seemed to grin?

     Billy shivered, picked Lucy up, and carried her back in the office, turning his back on the coyotes. They’d had wildlife get close before, usually deer, once a big bear got right up to the fence. Even the bear had fled after a gruff “You git!”

 Billy decided that he didn’t like coyotes.

     On the way home, Billy stopped at the only bar around. You wouldn’t know it was a bar if you hadn’t been in before, there was no signage. The part of the building facing the road was a rundown house, but behind that was a living room that had been haphazardly remodeled into the kind of bar where everything is made of wood, or particle board, and nothing is painted. The bartender, Ben, was grey haired with a massive torso and tiny legs. He had a goatee with a wispy mustache, yellow with nicotine. His mouth looked tiny compared to his massive cheeks and neck. His eyes disappeared when he smiled, which was always, and dimples dominated his crinkled mischievous face as he placed a fresh cigarette between his lips. “How much of my oil did you pump today, Bill?”

Billy grinned, playing along, “Almost all of it now Benny. I’ll be out of here before you know it.”

     Ben gave him a mock stern look, “Don’t leave too soon, you’re my best customer.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m your only customer.”

Ben chuckled. “Better keep an eye on your dog, man, heard there been coyote sightings around recently. Well fed coyotes too. When they’re well fed is when they’re worst. That’s when they’re killing for fun. Damn things will eat the guts out but leave the rest. Fuck.”

     Billy nodded, “I actually saw two of them today.

     Ben came and sat next to Billy, handing him a beer, and blowing smoke across the bar top. Ben never drank, which made the bar feel even more like it existed just for Billy. He’d never seen anyone else in there.  Ben took another drag, “Maybe you met Old Man Coyote, huh?”

      “You’re naming the wildlife now Benny? You’re losing it out here.”

     Ben scoffed, “No fool, Old Man Coyote. Native myth, Crow I think. Created the Earth with some ducks.”

“Ducks?”

     “Yeah, see there was all ocean, and Old Man Coyote saw two ducks. He told them to swim down and they pulled up mud. Old Man Coyote used the mud to make islands that turned into the continents. The ducks pulled up a root, and he used that to make all the plants and trees and stuff. Then he made people out of clay.”

      “Is seeing him like, good luck or something?”

     “Nah. Real bad luck. Fuck. You better watch yourself, don’t go buying any lottery tickets.” Ben turned the TV over to jeopardy, and Billy stared quietly at his beer.

     He must have drank too much, because the next thing he knew he was waking up at home. He didn’t feel Lucy curled anywhere on the bed, so he whistled and listened for her collar’s jangle. Nothing.

Lucy had gotten out of the house somehow. Billy found her body by the wind breaking tree line near his truck. All of this talk about ‘well fed’ coyotes. Billy really hadn’t thought about the “well fed” qualification until Lucy was the feed.

     He picked up the remains before work, eyes watering but keeping it together. He put her in a hefty garbage bag, and something about how light she was made it worse. It didn’t really hit him until he plopped the bag down on the passenger side floor of his truck. He felt guilty for not treating the body with more ceremony, but shit, what was he supposed to do? It wasn’t even Lucy anymore, it was a pile of viscera in a trash bag. The organs had been eaten out, but the body left just like Ben said. He left the bag in the truck while he went into his office, not wanting to look at it all day. He figured the cold would keep it from stinking too badly.

     He somehow managed to hold everything in, not taking any breaks to go outside and walk laps around the facility. He almost thought he was going to get through the whole day without crying, but as soon as the truck was parked in the driveway of his rental he lost it. A sad country song played on the radio while he broke. He pulled out a poorly rolled joint that Ben had given him the night previous and lit up, inhaling between sobs.

     After he had pulled himself together, Billy went inside, and found a box to bury her in. He had bought a new coffeemaker online and never thrown the box out. It was the perfect size, but he had to put duct tape over the upbeat faces smiling down at their cups of coffee. He fixated on the false advertising for a moment, not remembering a morning when he ever smiled at a mug.

     He quickly dug a hole as the dark set in and the wind picked up. He didn’t say anything, just leaned against the shovel and stared at the hole for a while. Then, with a heavy sigh, he picked up the Lucy bag and gently lowered it into the box and down the hole.

     Billy got 8 drinks deep at the bar, and breathed heavy. “I had that dog for 10 years man. 10 years. A person changes in 10 years. There are versions of me that I don’t even remember, but I bet that dog did. She looked like she did. Shit. I feel like years of my life were just me and that dog, and now she’s gone and I just… I feel like I’ve got nothing you know? I told myself I was fine without anyone but I never thought that Lucy was someone to me. She saw everything good about me. She knew the best parts of me. She was the proof that those parts ever existed. And now she’s gone.”

Ben stayed silent and Billy burped. Ben looked like he was being held hostage. He was rolling joints quietly. Ben never drank but he smoked weed religiously, and recently had started sharing. Billy started to feel self-conscious. “You know what Ben, it’s getting late. I’m gonna get out of here.”

     “You good to drive buddy? You’ve had a few.”

     “Yeah, I mean I’ll be the only one on the road. So I’m the only one in danger anyways right?”

     “You might want to just sleep it off in your truck. If you wreck, nobody will find you until morning.”

     “I’m fuckin’ fine Ben, thanks for the drinks I’ll see you later.”

     Ben held out a joint and Billy paused, feeling guilty for his mood. He grabbed it and put the tip in his mouth as he walked out the door.

     Billy didn’t even see the coyote before he hit it. He was fumbling with the radio, eyes stinging from the smoke, trying to find a sad song. He passed a rock formation and a furry blur sped out from his right. There was a “thunk” and he slammed on the brakes, momentum whipping him forward so fast he left his seat and slammed his face into the windshield. He pulled the truck over, cursing and shaking.

He took a deep breath and could feel his heartbeat in the lump forming on his forehead. It was pitch black. He dug a flashlight out from under his seat, flicked the rest of the joint out into the night and pulled himself out to survey the scene. He saw a furry body, back about 50 feet, laying still. The truck had no damage, but there was a pretty sizeable blood splatter that made it halfway up the hood.

     “Too many dead animals for one day,” Billy thought to himself. He wandered towards the roadkill, and as he got closer he saw that it looked like the smaller red coyote that he’d seen the day before. Now it was nearly broken in two. “Serves you right,” he sulked, “An easier death than Lucy.”

     He felt obligated to get the body out of the road. He walked around the carcass, steaming at the split, and decided to grab it by a front and back foot. Billy hoping that would keep the remains from splitting further. As soon as he began dragging, the coyote split from the other side and left a greasy, steaming trail. The steam rose to his face and he cursed and spit. It smelled primal. He imagined his ancestors celebrating over a kill, and then he imagined the coyote standing over a steaming Lucy and was sick.

     He had nearly dragged the carcass to the shoulder of the road when he realized the hairs on his neck were standing up. Billy’s back was to the trees, and he was dragging a fresh kill. He dropped the limp paws of the coyote and spun around to see another coyote. This one was much bigger than the one he had hit, with those same grey eyes, and it was standing about 15 feet away. He was sure it was the coyote from before, with its ears up and at attention. “HEY!” He yelled at it.

The coyote didn’t even flinch.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET OUT OF HERE!” He pulled his hat off and whipped it against his jeans with a flourish. “GIT!”

     The coyote took a purposeful step forward and sat down on its haunches, never blinking or breaking eye contact with Billy, whose heart beat through his chest and forehead. A cold line of sweat rolled down his cheek. “Are you waiting for me to leave? You wanna eat your friend, asshole?”

     A thin line of red formed around the corners of the coyote’s mouth, faint at first but it oozed out from the jowls. Blood dripped down the lower lip of the coyote and somehow, defying gravity, a stain of blood seeped up its face as well. The coyote still stared as the blood soaked past its eyes and matted behind its ears. It’s mouth seemed to widen in the same smile as before, but impossibly wider.

Billy heard a buzzing sound. The coyote’s jaw opened in what seemed like a casual yawn and the buzzing intensified. A rush of dark steaming blood slopped out onto the ground in front of the coyote. The blood was full of meat chunks, living flies and maggots. They buzzed and squirmed and struggled as they fought to free themselves of the sticky coagulated coating. The coyote’s jaws didn’t stop at a yawn, they opened further and further. Blood continued to gush out, and the pool it formed slowly crept onto the asphalt toward Billy.

     Billy’s hands shook uncontrollably, but couldn’t help but stare into the red fleshy maw. He had the thought that something was about to burst out of the coyote’s face, and couldn’t help but wince in anticipation. Just as the mouth started to fold back upon the coyote’s head, Billy heard a familiar whimper. A whine and then a yelp, and then a cry. It sounded like… Lucy.

     Billy whispered in disbelief, “It was… it was you. You ate Lucy. You motherfucker!”

     The coyote’s jaws snapped shut with a clap like a gunshot. Billy jumped, almost slipping in the blood, he reached back and put his hand on the hood of the truck to ground himself. The coyote still stared, eyes ice grey and surrounded by thick bloody fur. Billy felt something move in front of him and when he looked down, the split red coyote’s head had turned up towards him. It was alive somehow, and grinning through bloody teeth. He jumped back and looked up to see the grey coyote take a step toward him and Billy turned, sprinting back to the open door of his truck.

     Billy didn’t drive home. He just drove, radio turned off, eyes wide open. He pulled on his hair with a free hand. “What the hell, what the fuck.”

     He drove past Ben’s bar, slammed on the brakes, flipped a U-turn and pulled up. The lights were still on. Ben was the only person he really knew in the area, and he couldn’t imagine explaining what he had just seen to anybody else.

Billy tried not to seem panicked as he quickly walked from his truck to the bar, pulling the screen door open and throwing his shoulder into the heavy oak door with “Bar” carved into it. His momentum carried him into the room, but as soon as the door opened he could tell something had changed. The bar was silent.

     He looked around and Ben was nowhere to be seen, but a pack of cigarettes sat opened on the bar top. “Ben? You here?” There wasn’t an answer, so Billy sat on a stool and pulled out his phone.

     “Can I help you?” A gravelly voice rasped.

     Billy dropped his phone and jumped up, nearly falling over. “Shit, man…”

     A tall, thin old man stood in the doorway between the bar and Ben’s house. He was wearing an old dark grey duster that clung tightly to his frame, and a shadow obscured most of his face but a long braided light grey ponytail hung over his left shoulder. He took two measured and quiet steps towards Billy, bending over to pick up the phone that Billy had dropped. The silence was suffocating, and Billy desperately needed to say something to someone. “Where’s Ben? I’m Billy, by the way. Sorry for swearing, you started me.” He waited for a response, but the old man stood silently, turning the phone over in his hands.

     The old man finally set the phone down on the bar top without looking at Billy. “Synthetic. Pathetic. Don’t you think? Did you know that people used to make things from what the Earth gave them? Wood, bone, fur, fiber, mud and water. We were hungry then. But now,” the old man scoffed, “Now people want for little, and take everything. They bore into Mother Earth and they harvest her organs while she still breathes. Her oil, her minerals. There is no life in plastics and synthetics. Synthetic. Pathetic. There is no dignity. Do you know what oil is made of?”

     Billy nodded, unable to make eye contact.

     “It’s ancient. It’s ancestors. Of life lived, and given back. It was never meant to be taken and used up.”

     Billy gulped hard on a lump that rose in this throat and rubbed a hand down his arm, trying to quell the hairs that stood on end. “I, uh, you know I work at the oil facility here but before that I wanted to…”

     The old man shook his head, silencing Billy. “It doesn’t matter what you want, only what you do. Dignity is lost in discrepancy of intention and action. Pathetic.” He was grinning. “If you say you want one thing, and you perpetually do another, what good is your word? Why waste breath? You do what you will, why burden yourself further with denial of intention?” The old man’s voice rose sharply, “Life used to be measured in cycles, now it is measured in time, so why waste it for the both of us?”

     Billy was frozen to the stool he sat on, he hunched over and looked at the floor. He couldn’t breathe and he felt deeply and suddenly ashamed.

     The old man walked toward Billy and gently put his hand underneath Billy’s chin, slowly, almost ceremonial. He lifted Billy’s face to meet his eyes, and upon doing so, Billy breathed in a heavy sob. The man’s eyes were ice grey. “I’m sorry,” Billy whimpered.

     The old man’s face cracked with a smirk. “Do not apologize to me. I think this discrepancy eats away at your insides. I think you tell yourself that you are strong enough to live a lonely life, but in truth, you are too weak to love someone fully, and look them in the eyes. Life got away from you.”

     Billy felt a sudden anger rising in him as the terror subsided somewhat. “Why are you saying this to me?”

     The old man laughed. “I’ve done nothing to you. You walked into a place that was not your own and started a conversation that you did not want to have, and you still haven’t asked the only question on your mind. Do you want to ask it?”

     “Do I have to?”

     “You’ve chosen to do everything you’ve ever done. The only thing that you have to do is decide whether or not to live with those choices.”

     Billy grabbed his phone off of the bar and shakily stood up, wiping his face. “Fuck this, I’m out of here.” He walked to the door and as he put his hand against it he stopped, and looked back at the old man leaning on the bar. “Ok. What’s your name?”

     A flash of teeth as the grin widened. “I’m a friend of Ben’s. Here to watch the place for him.”

Billy shoved the door of the bar open and trudged quickly toward his truck. The floodlight outside the bar caught his movement and came on with a buzz, illuminating the truck. On the hood lay the broken body of the reddish coyote, its blood dripping down to mingle with the splatter-stained grill. It’s head popped up and it howled. Billy froze and spun around to see the larger, dark grey coyote sitting behind him on the porch of the bar. It stared patiently, unblinking.

“Fuck! Fuck you! I said I was sorry!”

     The coyote slowly pulled itself up on all fours, stretching as it did, never taking its eyes off of Billy. Billy started stumbling backwards as the coyote opened its mouth, blood pouring out onto the dirt as it started to stalk towards him. Its ears were down and its lip drew back over blood soaked fangs, ice grey eyes turning black.

     Billy turned and started to run for the road, knowing that he couldn’t outrun the coyote. He saw headlights and shouted desperately waving his hands as he sprinted. He stopped in the middle of the lane, but the car did not slow down or stop. He watched headlights speed toward him, and then sickeningly through him. The combination of collision, car horn, cold wind, and dizzying force that all hit him in an instant. Time froze for a moment and he felt himself being lifted away from it all. Free from gravity. Then it went dark.

     He woke up in a blur of pain. His whole body was dulled by the heavy pull of sedative. He couldn’t make out definite shapes, but it was obvious that he was in a hospital room. His throat ached and he couldn’t shut his mouth. His tongue was dry. He felt a strange barren loneliness as he realized nobody was in the room with him. No warden was coming to open the door of his solitary cell. His eyes closed again, the white noise of beeping and whirring medical equipment pulling him down into the bed.

     He opened his eyes again, as someone brushed their hand against his hair. As his vision cleared he saw a nurse, her face very close to his. She had auburn hair, and smiled a little too wide. Her lips seemed strange, he realized. And the lipstick she was wearing…

     “I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. Warren. It’s Billy right?”

     He could only stare back. A doctor stood back a ways, holding a clipboard.

     “I’m not sure if you can hear me. You’ve been through a terrible car accident, and unfortunately there has been severe nerve damage and blood loss. We’ve got you on life support and have notified your next of kin. I just wanted to come and thank you personally for being an organ donor…”

     He heard the doctor saying something to the nurse, maybe to him. Something about organic organs still outperforming synthetics.

     Billy stared at the nurse’s cherry red lips as the sedative pushed him down into the hospital bed. The nurse’s lipstick seemed to pull together at the lowest point of her lower lip and it sank down, seemingly pulled by the same gravity as his body, until a single red drop separated and fell from her lip. It landed on his cheek, felt hot. The drop rolled down his face as shadows rose around him.