Spirit Talkings -----
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Jimi Greydog
(aka Jim Carroll)
Travel back in time with me to the end of another era of life... as I try to explain an incident that affected me deeply and permanently ...
Dig on THIS ... !!!
So it is like, 1970,(somewhere in there) and I have been working reinforcing steel on a little dam at Robert Lee, Texas, at minimum wage (no unions in Texas back then), and got tired of not making enough to pay the rent on my motel room ... (This was often the case back then, in Texas ... tough place to live, at times...)
So, I went in and told the rednecked old Georgia-boy boss (also named Carroll, darn him!) to give me my pay, I was dragging up, and after a brief and somewhat heated discussion, he did so.
So I went to the motel, tossed my gear in the car; and I tossed me into my old beatup Ford and took off, headed north to Lubbock, and eventually to Denver in search of better diggings...
Now this is total truth and no B.S., here ... (even writers have to have jobs when you can't con an editor into hiring your work for a price... capitalism makes whores of all of us And since I was a prairie brat to start with, my jobs tended to be low-paid and rough.)
It was about 2:30 of a late-night early summer morning ... Do you know that syrupy sweet-type southern desert night that happens nowhere else in the country? Do you remember those times when the road seems to stretch out in front of you and rise into the heavens and you have the feeling it just turns into a great loop and comes down around behind you like you are riding on some huge treadmill and getting no-where? It was one of THOSE kinds of nights.
The prairie roads seem endless, a fellow gets drowsy, and I was getting ready to pull over and pour myself a cuppa coffee from my worn out old thermos, when something alive shines eyes into the glare of my headlights, and slamming on the brakes instinctively, I came to a rapid stop in the middle of the road, shaking and wondering if I stopped in time to avoid the eyes in the headlights ... I had. It was silent except for the quiet idling of the car ...
Peering out into the desert dark, in my headlights, my vision picked out the form of a female coyote, with her head down, her shoulders hunched, looking right past the lights and into my eyes...
Near her on the road was a dead and down male.... I instantly knew it was her mate ... (See, coyotes, or prairie wolves, like certain other wolves, mate for life and seldom abandon their charges ... unlike human beings.) They are very noble slinky ol' guys and bitches, really ... and THIS one was certain she knew me and I was NOT her friend...
I put the car back in gear and tried to inch around her ... she would not allow it... she moved in front of me every way I turned... I could see that if I kept it up I would have to run over her... at least I would if I wanted to continue on my way... She was not going to leave the body of her spouse ... No way.
I thought she had determined to commit suicide to stay with her mate ... Saddened, I removed my pistol from the glove box and stepped out of the car onto the roadway ... "Okay, ol' gal." I thought to myself, "Let's make this as quick and painless as possible .. damn!" (I have had to put animals down before as a youth, and I have never liked it, and I was not liking that night, either.) "Heck" I was thinking, "This pair was probably killing cattle anyway ..." I was trying to justify, in my own mind, that which I was about to do...
There was not a growl nor a protest as I approached the pair of grey fur swatches on the asphalt ... her eyes held as much intelligence as any human mother I have ever seen, and she seemed to talk right to me as I walked ... she spoke right into my soul, without a word or a syllable, but clear as a bell, none-the-less.
"What have you humans done to my Jack?" she said. "Why did you strike him with one of your speeding metal weapons?"
I could not answer. I drew down on the old girl... tears filled my eyes, as I looked over the barrel trying to see clearly enough to pick out the proper sight picture ... I did not want to cause more pain by missing.
"Sorry, ol' lady ..." I started to say ... "It ain't YOUR fault we took over your country .." I was not lying... I WAS sorry ... I STILL am sorry ...
I squeezed back the trigger.... slowly ... and then I uncocked the pistol and put it back into its holster... I could not fire on this creature whose sole crime was to find herself on a way traveled by MY species... I could no more pull that trigger than I could fire on another human ... I am not ashamed of that ... (my relatives would have laughed at me for it... yeah, really.)
Since that night I have never fired on another living thing, although I do advocate the right to keep and bear arms in self defense ... It was a major sea change in my entire way of living ... and since then I have not HAD to use the weapons that were a part of my life as I grew up ... tools that kept the beast at bay, both human and other ... The God of Forces has given me that .. and I thank him. But I digress ...
Giving no further thought to the pistol, I walked over the road to the furry male body, picked the messy carcass up in my arms getting his blood all over me, and carried him back by the spot where my car sat, idling quietly... The female never stopped staring at me, just out of reach, totally without fear and totally involved and concerned...
I opened the trunk, took out a camping shovel, dug a deep hole in the embankment off of the roadway, laid the old fellow down, gently as I could, and buried him. I placed as big a stone as I could find over the grave, so the other animals would not dig him up again...
The female watched every movement as I did this, and when the stone finally was placed on the grave, she looked right into my eyes, and she barked the odd high-pitched yip coyotes have (as if she was saying, "Thank you, brother") and she ran off toward the north to a rendezvous with who knows what ... her own death, probably ... coyotes seldom die of old age ...
I looked after her like she was a departing family friend... in fact, now, I am certain that she WAS!
After that my Cherokee name (my maternal grandmother was full-blood, and I am a quarter breed) became "Coyote's Brother", which I modified to Jimi Greydog ... and for those of you who know I use that screen name at times and wonder why, this is the true story ... I would never lie about a thing like this, it is a part of my very soul.
I wrote this to explain it, and also because it is an interesting story... and totally true...
I thought you all might enjoy it.
FOR ALL OF YOU WHO WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT ME, SEE MY SEMI-BIO AT THE ASYLUM 7 SITE LINKED FROM LADYSLITHER'S HOME PAGE:(link on home page)
Bye for now...
Old Jimi in Oregon
(aka: Jim Carroll--541-689-3380)
"If you are short of everything but poverty and problems, you just may be an unregistered native american!"
--copyright--1998--Jimi Greydog--
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