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  I pretend to be sound asleep. He asks, "Can I sit here?" in a deep, dopey voice. I groan, pull my legs, jacket, and sketchbook out of the way so he can sit down.

  Close up of the cover of my sketchbook: a cartoon portrait of an anthropomorphic coyote wearing sunglasses with the stub of a cigarette and his tongue hanging out of his mouth, above it there's COYOTE COMIX in big, clunky letters, all in blazing magic marker.

  "What's that?" he asks, his voice sounds like it could have been created by Mel Blanc, his finger points at the sketchbook.

  "My sketchbook," I say, going into a nodding-off-into-sleep act. I'm not in the mood to hear anybody's life story and/or philosophy even though I'm trapped, helpless here, light-years from Phoenix and Hollywood.

  He squinted. "Coyote Comix? What's a white kid like you know about Coyote?"

  Something new there. I'm Irish-Mexican with black, kinky hair. I've been called "nigger" often enough, but this is the first time I've been called "white."

  "To my girlfriend I'm brown; to you I'm white. Pretty confusing."

  "So's Coyote. What do you know about him?"

  "He's the Great Native American Trickster Spirit. A distant ancestor of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, and other smartass talking animals. I've been wandering around the Southwest, getting inspired and fooling around with a cute, little blonde from Phoenix, but now I'm running short on cash and have to go back to civilization to try to make money and art – not necessarily in that order."

  "Oh, you're an artist."

  "Smile when you say that, pardner. And let me get some sleep."

  He points to my sketchbook. "Lemme see it. I'm not sleepy."

  "Okay," I hand it over, a bit nervous because I've never shown any of my Wild West stuff to any real, live redskins before. Sleep becomes impossible. I lean into the window, see the Indian flipping through my sketchbook reflected against the desert night blacker than intergalactic space. Maybe he'll get bored. I start to doze. He chuckles; a ridiculous horselaugh.

  Lap-dissolve to: The Indian handing the sketchbook back to me. "Kind of interesting. You don't draw like a rich phony and you seem to know something about the spirit of Coyote. And it's kind of funny, too. Ya going to L.A. to work in the cartoon biz?"

  "Yeah." I'm starting to give up on the idea of sleeping. "I'm going all the way to Hollywood."

  "How'd ya get interested in Coyote?"

  "Ran across him in some books. Seemed like great cartoon material."

  He laughed again, sounding more cartoonlike.

  "I wanted to bring Coyote into the modern times."

  More wacky laughter. Then: "What makes you think that Coyote ain't alive and well and living in these here modern times of yours?"

  I gasp. Now
I'm
getting cartoony.

  "Spirits," he says, "or myths, to use your whiteman word, live, even in the twenty-first century, the twenty-second, the twentythird . . ."

  "Uh, I don't get it." I shudder even though the bus driver has the heater blasting us with tropical air. "Could you give me an example?"

  "Heh-heh," he says, leans back, gets comfortable, and tells a tale.

  We lap-dissolve (my TV-shaped imagination kicking into action again) to a 1940s-style cartoon bar. Swingy jazz plays squeaky and squawky, droning merrily along in the background. The camera pans across the bar showing lazy cowboys, Indians, horses, rattlesnakes, and scorpions drinking mugs of foamy beer and brushing the flies away; it stops on Coyote, who's surrounded by empty, long-necked beer bottles, slumping in his chair.

  He burps.

  The Indian narrates in voice-over: "Y'see, after the war things weren't going good for Coyote. I don't know, maybe it had something to do with the atomic bomb, but it seems that people, even his own, were forgetting him. Drinking helped him forget, but little did he know somebody he never expected was thinking of him, and coming for him . . ."

  Cut to the desert, humanoid cacti dance to the beat of the music that's in tune with the wiggling rays of the smiling sun. A long, black car slides down the winding road from the horizon like a big, black snake; comes to the bar, coils around it a few times, the door opens, and out hops the Mouse with a busty, pink French poodle on each arm.

  The Mouse is jet-black, without the white face makeup that the studio makes him wear in his cartoons. He's wearing a black tuxedo, and his usual white gloves and bulbous, red shoes.

  The poodles have tall, elaborate hairdos, heavy makeup, and wear tight halters and stretch-pants.

  The three grope and lean on each other like a delirious sixlegged creature and enter the bar, causing the doors to swing and flap.

  "Hey!" the Mouse yells, his voice deeper than the one he uses in the cartoons. "We got plenty of gas, but we're fresh outta fuel for
us!
" His left eyeball gets real big and scans the bar with a dotted line, seeing cowboy-looking Indians and Indian-looking cowboys. "Say, this looks like the Wild West! What kind of high-powered firewater you got in these parts?" The dotted line brushes across Coyote, past him, and then back on him, then disappears.

  The Mouse lets go of his poodles, who embrace each other as soon as he slips out of reach, and they start fondling each other's breasts and kissing, their tongues twining like pink snakes.

  "Well, I'll be dipped," the Mouse says. "Aren't you Coyote,
the
Coyote?"

  Coyote looks at the poodles, who are passionately rolling in the sawdust on the floor, and says, "Yup. Coyote, that's me. You know me?"

  The Mouse thrusts his three-fingered, white-gloved hand into Coyote's face. Coyote looks at him with blood-shot eyes.

  "Of course I know you," says the Mouse as he reaches for and grabs Coyote's paw. "The humans in the cartoon biz may not be aware – at least not on the conscious level – but we characters know about our roots. Let the humans think they've invented something new – we know it's all just genetic memories bubbling to the surface."

  "Why," Coyote says, "you're that Mouse I've seen at the pictures, but you look different."

  The Mouse rubs his black face. "They make me paint my face white for the cartoons. Afraid people'll think I'm a nigger or something.

  "Anyway, Coyote, ol' boy, all of us funny animals from Hollywood have had a deep respect for you, this continent being your home turf and all. A lot of us have dreamed about working with you." A light bulb appears over the Mouse's head. "Hey! That's brilliant!" The Mouse leans over to Coyote. "How would you like to come to Hollywood with us? Now that the war is over, there's all kinds of money to be made. And you're sure to be a hit. Who could be more American than you? After all, you did help make this continent!"

  "I don't know," says Coyote.

  The Mouse walks over through the crowd of cowboy-looking Indians and Indian-looking cowboys that are watching the poodles roll around in the sawdust. The Mouse picks the poodles up, pulls them apart, and tosses one of them at Coyote. With a fallout of sawdust, she lands on Coyote's head, her breasts wrap around his neck, her arms and legs around his torso, and she sucks his ear.

  "Think about it, Coyote," says the Mouse. "There's a lot more like her in Hollywood. And a lot of other things, too. And you can have it all."

  Dissolve to me and the Indian back on the Greyhound.

  "What is this?" I ask. "Did you make this up, or is it a new myth they tell on the reservations?"

  "Heh, heh, heh," says the Indian. "It's a story, what you call myth, and a smart guy like you should know how these things are. They just sort of happen. They grow. They live!"

  "Uh, yeah," I say. "So what happened when Coyote got to Hollywood?"

  "Problems . . ."

  Dissolve to an office of one of the biggest cartoon studios in Hollywood. Out of the window, palm trees dance to the music, now a slicker, more polished kind of jazz; the sun wears shades and smokes a cigarette.

  Behind his aircraft-carrier-sized desk sits the Producer: a short, fat, bald man who smokes a big cigar and wears a pin-striped suit and a wide tie with gold dollar signs all over it. He smiles, his teeth becoming as big as the chrome grill of a car, his cigar hovering in place. Stepping onto the desk, he walks across it, aiming a big hand at Coyote.

  "Ah yes, Mr. Coyote!" he says. "The Mouse told me all about you. I'm glad to meet you."

  Coyote doesn't extend his paw, so the Producer grabs it, squeezing it, sending off little stars of pain.

  The Producer looks Coyote over, picking him up and turning him around. "Yes, yes, you're perfect for the cartoon business! But let's check a few things before you sign our standard five-year contract." He puts Coyote down, darts over to the desk, presses a button on the intercom, and says, "Bubbles, bring in the suit!"

  The door springs open, and Bubbles, the Producer's secretary, slinks in on her long, shapely legs, her ample breasts and bleachblonde hair bouncing. She smiles so brightly that Coyote and the Producer have to cover their eyes as she holds out a suit that looks like Coyote's body, only without any genitals.

  "What is that?" asks Coyote. "It's disgusting!"

  "It's the suit we want you to wear in the cartoons," says the Producer. "You know, to cover up your wahzoo."

  "My what?"

  "You know," the Producer points between Coyote's legs.

  "You mean my member and my manhood. You want me to look like I don't have them!"

  "Look, don't get upset. All the big cartoon stars wear similar suits: the Rabbit, the Pig, the Woodpecker, all the Ducks . . ."

  "Like the way you make the Mouse paint his face white?"

  "Yeah. You gotta realize, this is civilization. We got standards to uphold. Appearances to maintain."

  "I'll wear anything else – but not that!"

  "Okay, okay! So we put clothes on ya. Bubbles, the loincloth."

  She reaches deep into her cleavage, pulls out a brightly colored loincloth, and hands it to Coyote with a flirtatious wink.

  As Coyote puts the loincloth on, his genitals grow so that they stick out from under it.

  "What is that?" screams the Producer.

  "It's magnificent," says Bubbles, her eyes bugging out like miniature versions of her breasts.

"Sometimes my member has a mind of its own," says Coyote.

  "You and a lot of other guys," says the Producer. "You're supposed to have the power to change things. Make it change back the way it was!"

  Coyote closes his eyes and concentrates. Beads of sweat fly off his brow. His genitals only grow larger until they are bigger than his body.

  "Cut that shit out, smartass!" says the Producer.

  Bubbles starts drooling.

  "Uh, sorry," says Coyote, "but this always happens when I try to change things; they change, but then go out of control!"

  The Producer's head turns bright red, steam spews out of his ears. He grabs the contract, tears it into confetti that flies all over the office.

  "Get out of here!" he screams. "We can't use you!
Kids
, like to watch our cartoons, for God's sake!"

  "But this," Coyote says, pointing to his member, "is where children come from."

  "Bubbles, get him out of here!" the Producer shouts, his entire body quivering out of shape.

  "Come," says Bubbles, putting an arm around Coyote. "This way." And once she's out of the door she leans over and whispers into Coyote's ear, "Let's go to my place. Maybe I can help you with this" – she caresses his member – "problem."

  Dissolve back to the bus.

  "So Coyote didn't break into the cartoon business," I say.

  "Naw," says the Indian, "and what was worse than the humiliation of being dragged out to Hollywood and rejected was that a few years later they created a pale imitation of him that played the fool for a bird that was so stupid it couldn't even talk!"

  "Hey! Could that other coyote be Coyote's son, you know, his and Bubbles's kid?"

  "Who knows. It's hard to check these things out."

  "Too bad Coyote couldn't have gotten even with them."

  "Oh, he did."

  "Really, how?"

  "He disguised himself as a technician, went around to various electronics labs and helped invent television – and you know what that did to the major cartoon studios!"

  "Coyote invented television?"

  "Yeah. Why not? The technology was around before that. He just put the right things together."

  "But the studio cartoons were shown on television; they influenced a whole generation."

  "Yeah, as usual, when Coyote tried to change things, the unexpected happened. All the kids saw these new talking animal myths every day during their formative years. It affected their brains. Made them into weird things . . . like hippies."

  "Hippies?"

  "Yeah. They must have sensed Coyote's connection to the cartoons that made them what they were. They were attracted to him. Sought him out. It bothered him, nearly drove him crazy."

  Dissolve to a Cinemascope panorama of a psychedelic version of the Southwestern American desert. The sky strobes back and forth between purple and yellow. Rocks and mountains change into humanoid figures that dance to the acid-rock-with-lots-offuzz-tones soundtrack. Rainbows leap from pink-orange clouds that flow and merge and separate like oil-on-water patterns in a lightshow. The Sun's rays are long hair and a beard that flow out in all directions; from his eyes you can tell he's stoned.

  All over the desert are hippies, ranging from Day-Glo Pop Art images to figures from all the great underground cartoonists. They mill around, having all kinds of sex, smoking dope, playing electric guitars plugged into glowing rocks.