Page 16 of Coyote

Ransom went to the door and paused there. Rafe walked off down the hall.

"Doc." He didn't turn around. "My brother took a lightning strike ten years back. Dead six minutes before they got his heart going. Coma ever since. A machine breathed for him. A tube fed him." He worked his thumbnail into a gouge in the doorframe. "Back in February, he opened his eyes. The hospital people talk in circles. So I'm asking you. How much of him will I get back?"

"Six minutes without oxygen is the number that matters," John said. "Nobody can tell you exactly how much that took. Fixing the body's the easy half. That's just hard work and determination and some luck. The rest..."

Ransom stopped.

"Did you talk to him," John asked, "while he was under?"

"Ten years. Every month I drove up and ran my mouth."

"Then he knows your voice better than his own."

Ransom knocked one knuckle against the frame and went down the hall.

Sierra had a plate waiting before John reached the kitchen. Sierra set sausage, pancakes, eggs, and a mug of coffee on the table in front of him. John looked at the food like he wasn't convinced it belonged to him. Then he looked at me.

"Eat."

He picked up the fork. John ate slowly and cleared the whole plate without admitting he enjoyed any of it. Sierra hovered at the stove pretending he wasn't watching, a second batch already cooking.

Pearl trotted over and laid her head across John's boots.

I sat opposite him and watched his mouth. Every bite. Every swallow. The pulse working under his beard. I could've stayed there watching him eat all morning.

After a while, Cruz and Mateo came in arguing about fence posts and stopped when they saw the pancakes.

"You made him pancakes?" Cruz pointed at the plate. "On a Thursday?"

Sierra didn't turn from the stove. "I make pancakes on Sundays."

"There are pancakes on that plate right now."

"Those aren't for you."

Mateo slapped Cruz on the shoulder. "You've never been Thursday-pancake material. Accept it."

Cruz dropped into the chair beside John. "How tall are you, honestly?"

"Tall enough that my mother used to worry about it."

"How tall is that?"

"Six eight."

Mateo whistled. "Coyote could sleep in one of your boots."

"I could kill you with one of his boots," I said.

I went barefoot until Sierra started counting the spines he pulled out of me. Now I wear boots. I still don't trust what they do to the ground.

John laughed again.

I let the boys stay for another minute because his shoulders had finally come down from around his ears. Nobody in the room was trying to hurt him. Nobody wanted anything except an answer about his shoe size.

It came easily to them, taking him in. A plate, a nickname, a chair at the table, and John was one of theirs inside of an hour.

I'd had to plant myself at Pae Saco and outlast them. Year after year, rule after rule, before they stopped waiting for me to disappear. Meanwhile, Sierra made John pancakes on a Thursday.