She looks down at her hands covered with black ink, holding a half twisted newspaper, and she shakes herself like her old dog used to after a good stand off with some wild danger.

She lays the wood, kindling, small split logs, large old pieces.

She’s been waiting her whole life for the absence to emerge into presence. She waits for it in the woods, in dreams, in her thoughts. She waits for the coyotes to emerge from the night through their song, or the scream of the fox, the call of the barred owl. It proves something to her. It proves emergence, it proves revelation, it proves that the world is enfolded in on itself and if one is blessed by fate, one is there at these moments of revelation, disappearance, and emergence. I was here, now I am gone. But I was here, yes.  I am here, you simply cannot see me, keep watching and waiting. I am here, yes. I am. They are. He is.

She strikes the match and lights the newspaper, leaving the wood stove door ajar just a bit to feed the fire. She stands to wait for the flames to catch full and strong, leans against the window where her breath makes fog on the pane as she stares into the woods at no particular thing.  She calls it the gateway, a natural opening between the end of an old rock wall and a stand of arching birches several feet away. She thinks of the many animals she has seen use this passageway, either entering or leaving the woods surrounding the house. 

Putting her forehead against the cold glass, she closes her eyes. The icy window is bracing and, she hopes, clarifying. She stands there for several minutes. 

“Who is that old woman and what is she telling me?” she said to the empty room. She can see her clearly, feels relieved looking into the round and craggy face. The words ‘unacknowledged grief’ float through her mind like a mantra, their meaning no more clear.

She raises her head to look out the window just in time to see something swaying, stumbling into the gateway. 

She watches the slow crumble of joints, as if disassembled by an unseen hand pulling the connecting thread from the long and graceful legs, first front, then back, then spine, then head, and finally from the heart. 

She stands holding her breath, frozen in a ripping imperative to run toward and to run from. “Poison.” The voice reaches into her numb witnessing. “Poison,” says the old woman. “Again.”

Anna runs now, shoving her feet into her boots before bolting out into the frigid air.  She nearly flies over the snow into the clearing, stopping suddenly to kneel some distance from the body. Her breath explodes in white clouds. She looks hard at the body. No breath joins hers. She can feel the life so newly lifted as she crawls a bit closer, her fear and her love wrestling inside her. She stops and sits and waits. She slows her breathing, knowing there is only time now. Her inclination is to pray, but for what?

She wants to say she’s sorry, sorry for what someone has done, but doesn’t trust herself not to be asking this coyote for absolution for what her species has done. 

She moves closer and lays her hand on the coyote’s winter ruff. She recognizes her, they’ve met before not far from here on many of Anna’s walks in the nearby woods. She thanks the coyote for her beauty and presence. She weeps, remembering how she has watched the coyote for years, herself gaining courage from her ability to survive. Until now. She must have been particularly hungry to let down her guard in this way. To eat poison.

Anna wants to lay her body down on the body of the dead coyote but she doesn’t want to burden this leaving spirit as if the coyote is Christ on the cross dying for our sins, again.  Is she seeking the old redemption even at this hour? She’s disgusted with herself. Coyote is not her Christ or scapegoat. She is Coyote. 

Gathering the coyote into her arms, she stumbles to her feet and carries her back to the cabin.  Warm and soft, the lifeless body drapes across her open arms, the yellow foamy spittle on her muzzle the only indication of the poison that killed her.  She lays her under a thick bramble of mountain laurel where she is somewhat sheltered, kneels there for a while to numbly sprinkle tobacco on her body with a prayer, and goes into the house to tend the fire.  She’s not sure what else to do.

She selects a large piece of split oak and when it proves too big for the stove, she uses a poker to jam it into the box, jabbing the log with increasing violence until anger and futility overtake her.  Swearing, she grabs the log with tongs, flings open the front door and throws the smoldering wood out into the snow, slamming the door on its hissing.

She paces the room from window to window, yelling into the emptiness, “Where is the fucking redemption now?  Huh?  Beauty my ass.  If I could even make beauty out of this ugliness, what the hell would be redeemed?  Who?  Poison is poison and dead is fucking dead.  And suffering is suffering.”

She stops and looks out the window, staring at the coyote’s corpse under the laurel.  Acid rises in her throat, images of the coyote choking and writhing bring Anna to her knees, as though her strings, too, were cut.  She is crazed with grief and rage.  Remembering the aftermath eep that the coyote can’t go back to earth, or so shallow that hungry predators will try to dig her up for a meal.  She had considered bringing her to the woods for just that reason, but the coyote was poisoned and a danger to the hungry. 

At nine o’clock, Anna lights the fire she built earlier in the day and sits down to wait.  The black dome of sky arcs down and cups the earth within its dark radiance as the fire casts Anna in a coppery sheen.  The coyote lies on the boulder not far from the fire.  A breeze fingers her ruff while the firelight flickers off her coat enlivening her even though she is completely frozen, her eyes foggy with absence.  She is surrounded by evergreens and a large candle sits on the ground below her.  A bowl of tobacco and a bowl of corn meal from Anna’s garden sit on the boulder as well.  Anna’s breath catches when she notices that something has chewed away at the coyote’s muzzle, nature’s mercy in such a hard winter.

Headlights strobe through the woods from the road winding up to the cabin.  The sound of car doors shutting carries in the clear air, as does the squeaking snow of mourners wordlessly following the path to sit by the fire.  Anna nods to each as they arrive within the light, three young women, one she recognizes from the local coffee shop with her purple hair, nose rings, and tribal tattoos.  She has brought a couple of friends, Anna supposes, and four women Anna’s age she has seen at community events.  And then there is an old woman who is a stranger to her.  “Emma,” she introduces herself, thrusting her hand out in greeting, a short and round woman whose silver hair sticks up in spikes around a face that could only be described as puckish.  Anna can’t decide whether her hairdo is intentional, the result of neglect, or electrical.  Leaning in closer, she can see just how wrinkled the woman is, but as it is with puckish people, Anna finds, it’s hard to get a bead on just how old they are.  They kind of oscillate.

The women sit, their eyes coming to rest on the coyote, then the fire, then Anna, then back to the coyote.  What had been lines in the paper, what had been an idea, whatever motivations had brought them here, all fall away in the fact of the coyote’s body, the truth of her torturous death that at least one woman had wanted to acknowledge, even in the face of ridicule.  They sit for several minutes as in them rises the knowledge that they, too, are now one of those women. 

Anna throws more logs on the fire. 

Unable to tolerate any more silence, the young woman from the coffee shop speaks first and urgently, the firelight glinting off her purple hair and the dance of her hands as she punctuates her demand that we must learn to live differently with the wild. 

Another speaks with fondness, remembering this coyote hunting at the perimeter of her large yard and how she looked for her each morning and dusk.  Some loved her up close, others from a distance. They stare at the fire, the pine logs snap and pop flinging sparks into the night.   

 And then, from another woman, a confession.

“I killed her.”

Stunned, they turn to the woman and wait.

“It was from my farm, I’m sure. I deliberately put the poison out after finding one of the sheep dead.” She speaks through a scrim of tears, “I put the flock out to get some sun on a warmish day, then found my dear old ewe dead with a typical kill pattern of the coyote. They attack from behind you know, right into the guts. I mean, can you imagine the pain?”

“No, they don’t,” snaps Anna. “That’s probably dogs. Coyotes usually puncture the neck, it’s a quick kill.” She is really pissed now.

The woman falters, sees Anna’s outrage. “I didn’t know that.”

They wait.

“So I put poison into her and left it there. I was so angry and so broken hearted. The coyote came back to feed some more, then haul away and cache the rest as I knew it would.” She went on to tell them that she’d got the stuff, called 1080, from her brother in Wyoming the last time she visited. It was big out there. When she’d checked the next day, more of the sheep was gone, but not much and she guessed what happened. There was some relief in the vengeance, she admitted.

“But now I’m heartsick. When I saw the paper, at first I felt angry about your placing that outrageous obituary. After all, obituaries are for people, not animals, and this coyote was threatening my livelihood. I called other friends who farm and they sympathized with me.”

She knows Anna only peripherally from their work around violence against women. And that was years ago. Anna’s quiet intensity has always made her uncomfortable.  She thinks her too dramatic, too soft hearted. Anna sits, waiting, her anger a force field demanding to be reckoned with. 

“But then when I went to bed last night, I had a dream.” She paused for several breaths.  “And then something turned over inside me.”

And it is now that Anna remembers her. She heard a story about this woman years ago.  That a black bear, spring hungry, had entered her sheep pen in the night and was attacking one of her sheep. Her husband had recently died, Anna remembers, and she had called a neighbor woman to come and help. They entered the sheep pen armed and dangerous with a rolled up newspaper and a broom. They beat that bear off the sheep.  The bear had the good sense to leave and the sheep made it through with some scratches. 

“I dreamed that a pack of coyotes was sniffing around me and a couple of friends. It was dusk and we were standing on the edge of the field and they began to howl. I was frightened. I said to my friend, “They sound close by,” and she said, “They are close by,” and then they were among us, milling around, friendly. My husband leaned down to greet one of them and I warned him to be careful, they are wild after all. Then this amazing thing happened. I stood frozen, with my hands behind my back, and felt the soft muzzle of a coyote sniffing my hands and then it turned into a young boy who slipped his hand into mine. He was about ten years old and dark skinned. He was a gypsy boy. He was clearly my boy in the dream, not my son, but deeply related to me. I loved him. I knew somehow he’d been captured and I asked if they were educating him. He said no.

“And now I don’t know . . . but I’m here because I couldn’t stay away and because I did it.  I killed her.  Because I could and I was aggrieved about my sheep.  And scared.  And guilty.  I guess it was a kind of revenge or way to make the grief and even guilt bearable, that I hadn’t protected my ewe.  And now I can’t undo it.  Two dead, for what?

“But then between the obituary and the dream, I had to admit that the coyote had a family and that we were sharing the land.  Even though I wasn’t even born when my great grandparents farmed this land, I realize that continuing to take the space away from the coyote is a way of killing it as surely as it killed my sheep.”

Coyote is not her Christ or scapegoat. She is Coyote. 

They sit in silence for a long time. To have such a familiar face on the coyote’s killer is sobering. It’s so much easier to be furious with an anonymous murderer, Anna thinks. But this killer sits at their funeral fire, the coyote’s body gleaming on the boulder, stiff with the cold but still somehow sentient and alive. And the dream. And her remorse.

“I see now, though, that when coyote kills, it’s bloody and obvious and necessary and immediate.  But our killing of coyote is a slow death by exhaustion, starvation, displacement and cars.”        

“And poison,” says Anna.

“Yes, and poison.”

Emma speaks now.

 “I have been told, or maybe I read it somewhere, doesn’t matter, that there was a time when coyotes changed into people and people into coyotes, and deer and frog and fish and hawk.  It was the responsibility of these shape shifters, that’s what they called them, to keep good relations based on deep empathy with all of creation.  And it wasn’t just people, no, it went all round.  There were those who were rabbit-coyote, coyote-rabbit so the rabbit would know how hard the coyote worked and the coyote might know the terror and generosity of the rabbit.  So nothing could become too removed from creation and all beings could keep the good ways and the heart clear.”  She pauses to gather her breath.

Tolerant, as so often people are with old ladies, not fully trusting their authority, they all sit politely fixed on Emma, who looks back at them with a wry innocence.  “I see you’re looking a bit doubtful.  Shall I continue?”

The women murmur encouragement and Emma continues, “So if I might venture an opinion here, I think the boy in your dream is a shape shifter.  It’s not the people who captured him who will educate him.  They will surely kill him.  He, having been coyote, has been educated by coyote, and now he, as a human boy, has come to educate you in their ways.  He could only have come to you because of what you’ve done—your killing, your remorse, and your acknowledgment of it that is breaking you open.  You’re to let him educate you in the ways of his people.  You are related.”

Then Emma slowly turns to face Anna. 

“And you, Anna.  Coyote came to you to die.”

Anna locks eyes with her.  Jesus, who are you? she thinks.

The women look around the circle, then back at Emma.  Something has sprung up between them all now, the women, the dead coyote, her killer, the night, Emma’s words.

She breaks down now, the woman who killed the coyote in order to protect her sheep.  No one touches her or offers comfort, but let her feel what she has done to coyote and to herself. 

Her sobs subside and they know then they are complete.  The women stand and gather round the body of the coyote.  Lifting her gently, they lower her into the grave.  Earlier, Anna lined the hole with boughs of evergreens and now the bowls of corn meal and tobacco are passed hand to hand, each woman sprinkling some into the grave, some with tears, some dry eyed, some mumbling prayers, some singing. And just then, the coyotes over the hill, her pack, begin to howl.