A Night with Coyote at Square Butte

Night with Coyote
Night at Square Butte

by Paul Manski


Black eyes, black hair
Phyllis in a white button down western shirt
Wrangler jeans, boots with pointed toes
She smells like leather, fry bread and alfalfa hay

Starving wormy res dogs sniff my feet

Pearl white 92' Ford Ranger
Television playing nobody watches
As I enter

Shaking hand

Using a finger touch grip

Sitting watching the Flinstones
He puts a tape in the VCR

His baby girl, and the girl's mother, maybe 16 years old

Open presents and drink Coca Cola
I hand her a box of diapers and a wooden puzzle

"Timothy's feeding the horses. He told me about you. He said you would trim his feet."

Out the door following on the dirt road

Past Kaibeto store
On the paved road toward K-town

Cross cattle guards and deep sand

through the junipers

His grandfather's hogan is below Square Butte

Last light on Naatsis'aan

I get my chaps, nippers, rasp and hoof knife from my pick up.

Everything is red, the rocks, the dirt, the horse, her skin.

Timothy has a halter and lead rope in his hand.
He walks over and says, "This is my sister Phyllis. I'll get my horse."

He shows me the paint's hoof

"must have foundered, probably grow out". I said

I blow in the horses nose, put my hand on his withers, reach down, start to nip and trim.
Nobody says anything and after about 20 minutes I'm done trimming

"Are you going to stay?"

"Sure, that's why I'm here."

I meet grand pa Benett

His hands were stories and songs
Thick fingers chopping wood, hauling water and hay
He told me the story
he hid out here for medicine and songs

He brought good news 

I was Timothy's friend and I was welcome

Inside the hogan he sat me next to the door
Between the kids and the cedar chief

His Dad made the red earth altar with a cement trowel.

Red crescent moon

Every time it came around I ate as much as I could

Washed it down with bitter tea

At midnight I ran outside
puked my guts out in the sage brush
I saw the milky way horizon to horizon

Like a road to follow

It IS the road to follow

He said, "Bila-ashdla", Five fingers

I held the glowing cedar
corn husk filled nat'oh
Spoken words took form, spirit/wind moving
From the heart wishing beauty

Hozho' nahasdlii, Hozho nahasdlii
Exhaling prayer/smoke in four directions
Between my ears a coyote sang, 'Cantad amigo'

I walked toward red earth mesa altar

Walking clockwise with the sun east south west
Placing my cornhusk body with their's
Each pile of ashes a hogan
Man and woman making earth come true



She sat south side
She understood every move

She said, 'Sit down', with her eyes

In a hand gesture, sweet smoke
pulsating my dead mother, my first lover, my wife
You always a Changing-woman, Asdzani.

Mouth filled with Azee'
Chewing chewing, more bitter water
Todachini

Morning song, around and around

Voices of a circle, in a circle singing

Coyote heard us singing
That's why he came by

Coyote loves this singing

If he had five fingers he'd come inside

Ma'ii loves this singing

That's why he came by
Ma'ii heard us singing
But he won't come inside
We're nicely dressed inside
With wrangler jeans and pointed boots
That's why he stopped by
Your fur coat is beautiful
In the moonlight
Coyote passes by