"Nagle, Patti - Coyote Ugly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nagle Pati)

on. Then she walked over to the metal shelves where she kept her tools and her
few books. On the top shelf lived Coyote, little eyes shining black up by the
cracked plaster ceiling. Gently Eva lifted him down.

Grandfather had carved him while Eva watched, and given him to her before he
died. She remembered receiving Coyote from trembling, blotched hands. Now she
set him in the pool of light on her table. He stood half crouched, gazing
intently, poised to fight or to flee. Warm memories washed over Eva as she
looked at him.

Every curve, every line, every hair lovingly carved was a lesson. Grandfather
had talked as he worked the wood, telling her stories; how Coyote had tricked,
stolen, cheated, and been tricked and cheated in return. Yet there was always
another layer of meaning, peeled back like bark from satiny wood. Coyote never
lost his innocent wonder at life. Coyote learned his lessons the hard way and in
this he was a teacher. He did what he had to; he survived, on his own.

"Coyote is like you, Eva," Grandfather had said. "He frightens silly humans with
his mischief." And Eva had shrank against the tree-roots.

"Coyote is like me, too," said Grandfather, as little curls of wood fluttered
off his fingers onto his faded dungarees. "He has no friend but himself. He
licks when he can lick, he bites when he must bite. He's free."

"But you have me, Grandfather. I'm your friend."

"You are? Are you sure I won't . . . bite you!" He caught her up, tickling, and
Eva's shrieks filled the summer sky.

The kettle screamed; Eva hurried to turn it off. She made coffee and carried her
cup back to the table. Set Coyote back from the light, where he watched while
she picked up the snake-stick.

Tiny flakes of wood fell from her hands to the table. Every couple of minutes
Eva sent a twist of air across to carry the debris into the wastebasket at one
side. Each puff of air was an act of defiance. At home, her mother would have
punished her for it. "You want people to think you're a witch?"

Eva remembered the beating she'd received one winter during the Turtle dance,
the year her mother had caught her using wind to sweep the house instead of a
broom. She'd been terrified just at the sight of the Tsave Yoh, with their masks
and their Spanish whips, and after they beat her they told her mother to tap on
the chimney if Eva was bad again, and they'd come and take her away to their
labyrinths under the hills.

"And if we find you are a witch, we will eat you," they'd told her. That night,
as she lay shivering in her bed, trying to weep as quietly as she could,
Grandfather had laid a hand over her mouth, and silently placed Coyote under her
arm. She had never slept so well.