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Halloran got his punch in before he had to hear any more about what Justin Oster had never done and the two of the sounds and pretty soon they were down on the ground in the spilled-Coke and week-old-rainaround and after awhile it didn’t look thatanymore I watched for awhile Coyote looked up at ed on his smoke
Just look at theo, little sister, I heard Coyote whisper, but his ’s
LaGrange ale Cowboys, and wasn’t their QB a picture, all wholesome white-blonde square-ja-shucks ht soht on it 9 Bobby Zhao, of the 300 bench and the Miss Butter Festival 19whateverKing of the Southland!) and the surprising talent for soulful bluegrass guitar All the colleges lined up for that boy with carnations and chocolates We hated hi we’d invented in lab that week and had been saving up for so special Bobby Zhao and his bullshit hipster-crooner straw hat Coyote didn’t pay hionna do to hi lot asphalt and say: I got a history with Cowboys Where he’d spat the offensive line watched as weird crystals fornized from his uncle’s trailer out off of Route 40, but you knowInstead they scratched their cheeks and perfor down by the lake tonight? Yeah Yeah
“Let’s invite Bobby Zhao,” Coyote said suddenly His eyes got big and loose and happy His coreat look
“Um, why?” Jimmy frowned “Not to put too fine a point on it, but fuck that guy He’s the enemy”
Coyote flipped up the collar of his leather jacket and picked a stray er out of Jimmy’s hair He did it tenderly You’re my boy and I’ll pick you clean, I’ll lick you clean, I’ll keep everything red off of your perfect head, his fingers said But what his mouth said was:
“Son, what you don’t know about ene day” And when Coyote called you Son you knew to be asha Can’t beat ‘em, not ever Not the ones that come out of nowhere in the 4th quarter to take what’s yours and hold your face in the mud til you drown, not the ones you always knew you’d have to face because that’s what you werethe Sun, not the man on’t let you teach hi by the ears and fucking them til they’re so sticky-knotted bound to you they call their wives by your na you can do to an enemy is pull up a chair to his fire, eat his dinner, rut in his bed and go to his job in the ives it up to you—but fuck him, you never wanted it anyway You just wanted to mess around in his house for a little while Scare his kids Leave a little souy know you’re never far away That’s how you do him Or else—” Coyote pulled Cindy Gerard (bottom of the pyramid and arms like birch trunks) close and took the raspberry pop out of her hand, sipping on it long and sweet, all that pink slipping into him “Or else you just make him love you til he cries Either way”
Jieted He looked at Oster and Halloran, who still had bruises, fading on their cheekbones like blue flowers After awhile he laughed horsily and said: “Whaddaya think the point spread’ll be?”
Coyote just punched him in the arm, convivial like, and kissed Cindy Gerard and I could smell the raspberry of their kiss froht their kiss to all of us like a bag of promises And just like that, Bobby Zhao showed up at the lake that night, driving his freshly waxed Cowboy silver-and-black double-cab truck with the lights on top like a couple of frog’s eyes He took off that stupid straw hat and started hauling a keg out of the crea silverPrince of the Southland, Henry Dillard (linebacker 33) and Josh Vick (linebacker 34) hurried over to help hi accepted Just lay it up here on the altar and we’ll cut open that shiny belly and drink what she’s got for us And what she had was golden and sweet and just as foamy as the sea
Coyote laid back with me in the bed of my much shittier pick-up, some wool blanket with a horse-and-cactus print on it under us and another one with a wolf-and-n over us, so he could slip his hands under ets born under sos when no one else can see you Everyone was hollering over the beer and I could hear Sarah Jane laughing in that way that says: just keep pouring and
“Co we haven’t done before” And it was a du, but when Coyote said it I felt it hu we’d done before, over and over, and I couldn’t even remember a world before Coyote, only the one he made of us, down by the lake, under the wolf and theof him I knew him like nobody else—and they’ll all say that now, Sarah Jane and Jessica and Ashley and Cindy Gerard and Justin Oster and Jimmy Moser, but I knew hi we hadn’t done before
“It’s different every tiotta ask otta put on your ears and your tail and make the rain come for me or I’ll run off with so my dust”
“I’irl with the fastest feet, just slow you down and let me do what I want”
“And what do you want?”
“I want to dance on this town til it breaks I want to burrow in it until it belongs to h school to last forever I want to eat everything, and fuck everything, and snort everything, and win everything I want my Bunny Rabbit on hts off”