Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys (3 page)

Cherokee turned to see a short, fat man in a tuxedo staring at her. His chubby fingers with their longish nails were wrapped around a tall glass of steaming blue liquid.

“Aren’t you a little young to be in my club?”

“I’m in the band,” Cherokee said.

“You sure don’t look like a Goat Guy.” He eyed her up and down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Cherokee glared at him.

“Sorry to stare. I always stare at how girls do their makeup. It’s a business thing. I like that blue line around your eyes.”

She started to edge away.

“I used to be an undertaker before I
opened this place. Still got family in the business. Maybe you could come with me sometime and make up a few faces. You did your eyes real nice.”

Cherokee could smell Zombo’s breath. Her stomach churned and tumbled. “I better go get ready,” she said, feeling him watching as she walked backstage.

When the band came on, Cherokee saw Zombo leering up at her with his hands in his pants pockets. She saw the rest of the hollow-eyed audience lurched forward on their elbows and guzzling their drinks. Standing there in the spotlight, she felt an icy wave crash in her chest and she knew that she was not going to be able to play or sing or dance. She could tell that the rest of The Coat Guys were frozen too. Witch Baby lost a drumstick right away and started to jump up and down, gnashing her teeth. When Angel Juan played the wrong chords, he frowned and rolled his eyes. But it was Raphael who suffered more than anyone that night. He stood trembling on the stage with his dreadlocks hanging in his face. His voice strained from his throat so
that Cherokee could hardly recognize it.

The Coffin crowd began to hiss and spit. Some threw cigarette butts and maraschino cherries at the stage. When a cherry hit Raphael in the temple, he looked helplessly around him, then turned and disappeared behind the black curtain. Witch Baby thrust her middle finger into the air and waved it around.

“Clutch pigs!” she shouted.

Then, she, Cherokee and Angel Juan followed Raphael backstage, ducking to miss the objects flying through the air at them.

   Raphael hardly spoke to anyone after Zombo’s Coffin. He didn’t want to rehearse or play basketball, surf or talk or eat. He lay in his room under the hieroglyphics he and Cherokee had once painted on his wall, listened to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and The Doors and smoked more and more cigarettes. Cherokee came over with chocolates and oranges and strands of beads she had strung, but he only glared at her and turned up the volume on his stereo. She didn’t know what to say.

When Christmas came, Cherokee, Witch Baby and Angel Juan planned a parly to cheer Raphael up and keep them all from missing their families. Angel Juan drove his red pickup truck downtown at dawn to a place by the railroad tracks and came back with a pink snow-sugared tree that Witch Baby and Cherokee decorated with feathers, beads and miniature globes; Kachina, Barbie and Japanese baby dolls; and Mexican skeletons. They filled the rooms with pine branches, red berries, pink poinsettias, tiny white lights, strands of colored stars and salsa and gospel music. They baked cookies in the shapes of hieroglyphics and Indian symbols and breads in the shapes of angels and mermaids.

On Christmas Eve they made hot cinnamon cider, corn bread, yams, salad and cranberry salmon and invited Raphael over. The table was an island of candles and flowers and cascading mountains of food floating in the dark sea of the room.

And we are the stars in the sky, Cherokee thought, seeing all their faces circling the table.

Raphael was hunched in his chair playing with his food. She had never seen him look so far away from her.

After dinner they opened presents in front of the fire. Big packages had arrived from their families—leather backpacks, woven blankets, painted saints and angels, mysterious stones, beaded scarves and candelabra in the shapes of pink mermaids and blue doves. Coyote, who had been invited but did not want to leave his hilltop, had painted Indian birth charts for everyone—Cherokee the deer. Witch Baby the raven, Raphael and Angel Juan the elks. Everyone loved their presents except for Raphael. He didn’t seem to care about anything.

“Raphael,” Cherokee whispered, “what do you want me to give you for Christmas?”

The fire crackled and embers showered down. The air smelled of pine and cinnamon.

Raphael just stared at her body without saying anything, his eyes reflecting the flames, and Cherokee was glad she was wrapped in one of the woven blankets her family had sent.

The next day Cherokee went to see Coyote. He was watering the vegetables he grew among his cactus plants.

“Our first show was terrible,” she told him.

“Yes?”

“Raphael is very upset, I don’t know what to do.”

“You must practice.”

“He won’t even pick up his guitar.”

“What did you come to me for, Cherokee?”

“I was wondering,” she said, “if maybe you would help me make something for Raphael, The wings helped Witch Baby so much.”

Coyote squinted at the sun. “And what do you think would help Raphael?”

“Not wings. Maybe some goat pants would help. Then he’d feel like a Goat Guy and not be so scared on stage. He’s really good. Coyote. He just gets stage fright.”

Coyote sighed and shook his head.

“Please, Coyote. Just one more gift. I am really worried that Raphael will hurt himself. It’s kind of hard for him with his parents away and everything.”

Coyote sighed again. “I did promise all your parents I would help you,” he said. “But I must think about this. Co now, I must think alone.”

So Cherokee went to Raphael’s house, where she found him lying on his bed in the dark listening to Jimi Hendrix and smoking a cigarette. She sat cross-legged beside him. The moonlight fell across the blankets in tiger stripes.

“What?” he growled.

“Nothing, I just came to be with you.”

Raphael turned his back, and when she tried to stroke his shoulder through the thin T-shirt, he jerked away.

“Come on, Raphael, let’s play some music.”

“I am playing music,” he said, turning up the volume on the stereo.

“We can’t just give up.”

“I can.”

Cherokee wanted to touch him. She felt the tingling sliding from her scalp down her spine and back again, “We need practice, that’s all. We’re just not used to playing live, and that club wasn’t the right place anyway.” As she
spoke, she loosened her braids, tossing her gold hair near his face like a cloud of flowers.

He stirred a little, awakened by her, then smashed his cigarette into an Elvis ashtray. She noticed how thick the veins were in his arms, the strain in his throat, the width of his knees in his jeans. He seemed older, suddenly. The small brown body she had grown up with, sprawled beside on warm rocks, painted pictures on, slept beside in her tepee, was no longer so familiar. He reached out and barely stroked the blonde bouquet of her hair with the back of his hand. Then, suddenly, he grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward him. Cherokee didn’t recognize the flat, dark look in Raphael’s eyes. She pulled away, twisting her wrists so they slipped from his hands.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Cherokee!” His voice sounded hoarse.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Cherokee backed out of the room. When she got outside she heard howling and the trees looked like shadow cats ready to spring. She thought there were men hiding in the dark, watching
her run down the street in her thin, white moccasins.

The next day, after school, Cherokee went to see Coyote again. He was standing in his cactus garden as if waiting for her, but when she went to greet him he didn’t say anything. He turned away, shut his eyes and began to hum and chant. The sounds hissed like fire, became deep water, then blended together, as hushed as smoke. Cherokee felt the sounds in her own chest—imagined flames and rivers and clouds filling her so that she wanted to dance them. But she stayed very still and listened.

Cherokee and Coyote stood on the hillside for a long time. Cherokee tried not to be impatient, but an hour passed, then another, and even Coyote’s chants were not mesmerizing enough to make her forget that she had to find a way to make goat pants or something for Raphael. It was getting dark.

Coyote turned his broad face up to the sky and kept chanting. It seemed as if the darkening sky were touching him, Cherokee thought, pressing lightly against his eyelids
and palms, as if the leaves in the trees were shivering to be near him, even the pebbles on the hillside shifting, and then she saw that pebbles were moving, sliding down, the leaves were shaking and singing in harsh, throaty voices. Or something was singing. Something was coming.

The goats clambered down sideways toward Cherokee and Coyote. A whirlwind of dust and fur. Their jaws and beards swung from side to side; their eyes blinked.

“I guess these are the real goat guys,” Cherokee said.

Coyote opened his eyes and the goats gathered around his legs. He laid his palms on each of their skulls, one at a time, in the bony hollow between the horns. They were all suddenly very quiet.

Coyote turned and the goats followed him into his shack, butting each other as they went. Cherokee stood in the doorway and watched as Coyote lit candles and sheared the thick, shaggy fur off the goat haunches. They did not complain. When he was done with one, the next would come, not even flinching
at the buzz of the electric shears. The dusty fur piled up on the floor of the shack, and when the last and smallest goat had been shorn, they all scrambled away out the door, up the hillside and into the night.

Cherokee watched their naked backsides disappearing into the brush. She wanted to thank them but she didn’t know what to say. How do you thank a bare-bottomed goat who is rushing up a mountain after he has just given you his fur? she wondered.

Coyote stood in the dim shack, Cherokee noticed that his hair was even shinier with perspiration. She had never seen him sweat before. He frowned at the pile of fur.

“Well, Cherokee Bat,” Coyote said, “here is your fur. Use it well. The fur and the feathers were gifts that the animals gave you without death, untainted. But think of the animals that have died for their hides, and for their beauty and power. Think of them, too, when you sew for your friends.”

Cherokee gathered the fur in bags and thanked Coyote. She wanted to leave right away without even asking him how to go
about making the haunches. There was a mute, remote look on his face as if he were trying to remember something.

When Cherokee got home, she thought of Coyote’s expression and blinked to send the image away. It frightened her. She washed the fur, pulling out nettles and leaves, watching the dark water swirl down the drain. The next day she dried the fur in the sun. But she did not know what to do next.

For nights she lay awake, trying to decide how to make haunches. She dreamed of goats dancing in misty forest glades, rising on their hind legs as they danced, wreathed with flowers, baring their teeth, drunk on flower pollen, staggering, leaping. She dreamed of girls too—pale and naked, being chased by the goats. The girls tried to cover their nakedness but the heavy, hairy goat heads swung toward them, teeth chewing flowers, eyes menacing, the forest closing in around, leaves chiming like bells.

Cherokee woke up clutching the sheets around her body. The room smelled of goat, and she got up to open the windows. As she
leaned out into the night, filling herself with the fragrance of the canyon, she thought of Raphael’s heavy dreadlocks, the cords of hair like fur. She had spent hours winding beads and feathers into his hair and her own. Now she loosened her braids.

She knew, suddenly, how she would make the pants.

Cherokee braided and braided strands of fur together. Then she attached the braids to a pair of Raphael’s old jeans. She put extra fur along the hips so the pants really looked like shaggy goat legs. She made a tail with the rest of the fur. When she was finished, Cherokee brought the haunches to Raphael’s house and left them at the door in a box covered with leaves and flowers.

That night he called her: “I’m coming over,” and hung up.

She went to the mirror, took off her T-shirt and looked at her naked body. Too thin, she thought, too pale. She wished she were dark like the skins of certain cherries and had bigger breasts. Quickly she dressed again, brushed her hair and touched some of
Weetzie’s gardenia perfume to the place at her throat where she could feel her heart.

When Raphael came to the door, Cherokee saw him through the peephole at first—silhouetted against the night with his long, ropy hair, his chest bare under his denim jacket, his fur legs.

Cherokee opened the door and he walked in heavily, strutting, not floating. The tail swung behind him as he went straight to Cherokee’s room and turned off the light. She hesitated at the door.

“They look good,” she said.

Raphael stared at her. “Things are different now.” His voice was hoarse. “Come here.”

His teeth and eyes flashed, reflecting the light from the hallway. He was like a forest creature who didn’t belong inside.

Cherokee tried to breathe. She wanted to go to him and stroke his head. She wanted to paint red and silver flowers on his chest and then curl up beside him in her tepee the way she used to do. But he was right. Things were different now.

Then, without even realizing it, she was
standing next to him. They were still almost the same height. She could smell him—cocoa, a light basketball sweat. She could see his lips.

All their lives, Cherokee and Raphael had given each other little kisses, but this kiss was like a wind from the desert, a wind that knocks over candles so that flowers catch fire, a wind, or like a sunset in the desert casting sphinx shadows on the sand, a sunset, or like a shivering in the spine of the earth. They collapsed, their hands sliding down each other’s arms. Then they were reeling over and over among the feathers and dried flowers that covered Cherokee’s floor. She remembered how they had rolled down hills together, tangling and untangling, the smell of crushed grass and coconut sun lotion and barbecue smoke all mixed up in their heads. Then, when she had rolled against him, she hardly felt it—they were like one body. Now each touch stung and sparkled. He grasped her hair in his hand and kissed her neck, then pressed his face between her breasts as if he were trying to get inside to her heart.