Sam had said, "You have a mother, don't you?"

Minty steered the limo off the next exit, across the overpass, and back on the highway, headed back to King's Lake.

It had taken Steve, the Buddhist monk, only a half hour to put the car back together. When Sam tried to figure out a way to pay for the repairs, Steve said, "All misery comes from desire and connection to the material. Go." Sam said thanks.

Now he was driving the Z into Utah. Calliope was asleep on Coyote's lap. Coyote snored. Sam passed the time trying to figure out how long it would take to get to Sturgis, South Dakota, the location of the rally that the Guild was going to. About twenty hours, he thought, if the car held together. From time to time he looked over at Calliope and felt a twinge of jealousy toward Coyote. She looked like a child when she slept. He wanted to protect her, hold her. But it was that childlike quality that frightened him as well. Her ability to dismiss facts, deny the negative, to see things so clearly, but so clearly wrong. It was as if she refused to accept what any reasonable adult knew: the world was a dangerous, hostile place.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her face before looking back to the road. She murmured, and came awake with a yawn. "I was dreaming about sea turtles — that they were really dinosaur angels."

"And?"

"That's all. It was a dream."

Sam had been thinking about it too long, so there was anger in his voice when he asked her, "Why didn't you call me before you went after Lonnie?"

"I don't know."

"I was worried. If it weren't for Coyote, I would have never found you."

"Are you two related?" She seemed to be ignoring his anger. "You look a lot alike. He has the same eyes and skin."

"No, I just know him." Sam didn't want to explain, he wanted an answer. "Why didn't you call me?"

Calliope recoiled at his harshness. "I had to go get Grubb."

"I could have gone with you."

"Would you have? Is that what you wanted?"

"I'm here, aren't I? It would have been a hell of a lot easier if I didn't have to chase you across two states."

"And maybe you wouldn't have done it if it was a hell of a lot easier. Would you?"

The question, and her tone, threw him. He thought for a minute, looking at the road. "I don't know."

"I know," she said softly. "I don't know much, but I know about that. You're not the only man that ever wanted me or wanted to rescue me. They all do, Sam. Men are addicted to the wanting. You like the idea of having me, and the idea of rescuing me. That's what attracted you to me in the first place, remember."

"That's not true."

"It is true. That's why I had sex with you so soon."

"I don't get it." This was not at all how Sam had expected her to react. His brief moment of self-righteousness had degraded into self-doubt.

"I did it to see if you could get past the fantasy of wanting me and rescuing me, to the reality of me. Me, with a baby, and no education, and a lousy job. Me, with no idea what I'm going to do next. I can't stand the wanting coming at me all the time. I have to get past it, like I did with you, or ignore it."

"So you were testing me?" Sam said. "That's why you took off without telling me?"

"No, it wasn't a test. I liked you, but I have Grubb to take care of now. I can't afford to hope." She was starting to tear up. Sam felt as if he'd just been caught stomping a litter of kittens. She took Grubb's blanket from behind the seat and wiped her eyes.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

She nodded. "Sometimes I want to be touched and I pretend that I'm in love — and that someone loves me. I just take my moments and forget about hope. You were going to be a moment, Sam. But I started to have hope. If I'd called you and you had said no, then I would have lost my hope again."

"That's not how I am," Sam said.

"How are you, then?"

Sam drove in silence for a while, trying to think of something to say — the right thing to say. But that wasn't the answer either. He always knew the right thing to say to get what he wanted, or had until Coyote showed up. But now, he didn't know what he wanted. Calliope had declared wanting a mortal sin. Talking to a woman, to anyone, without having an agenda was completely foreign to him. Where was he supposed to speak from? What point of view? Who was he supposed to be?

He was afraid to look at her, felt heat rise in his face when he thought about her looking at him, waiting. Maybe the truth? Where do you go to find the truth? She had found it, let it go at him. She had laid her hope in his hands and she was waiting to see what he would do with it.

Finally he said, "I'm a full-blooded Crow Indian. I was raised on a reservation in Montana. When I was fifteen I killed a man and I ran away and I've spent my life pretending to be someone I'm not. I've never been married and I've never been in love and that's not something I know how to pretend. I'm not even sure why I'm here, except that you woke something up in me and it seemed to make sense to run after something instead of away for a change. If that's the horrible act of wanting, then so be it. And by the way, you are sitting on the lap of an ancient Indian god."

Now he looked at her. He was a little out of breath and his mind was racing, but he felt incredibly relieved. He felt like he needed a cigarette and a towel — and maybe a shower and breakfast.

Calliope looked from Sam to Coyote, and then to Sam again. Her eyes were wider each time she looked back. Coyote stopped his snoring and languidly opened one eye. "Hi," he said. He closed his eye and resumed snoring.

Calliope bent over and kissed Sam's cheek. "I think that went well, don't you?"

Sam laughed and grabbed her knee. "Look, we've still got twenty hours on the road and I'm going to need you to drive. So get some sleep, okay? I don't trust him at the wheel." Sam nodded toward Coyote.

"But he's a god," Calliope said.

"'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;/They kill us for their sport. "

"What an icky thing to say."

"Sorry. Shakespeare wrote it. I can't get it out of my mind this week. It's like an old song that gets stuck."

"That happened to me once with 'Rocky Raccoon. "

"Right," Sam said. "It's exactly like that."

CHAPTER 29

Shifting

Sam drove through the day and into the night and finally stopped at a truck stop outside of Salt Lake City. Calliope and Coyote had been awake for the last few hours, but neither had spoken very much. Calliope seemed embarrassed about talking to the trickster, now that she knew he was a god, and Coyote just stared out the window, either lost in his own thoughts or (Sam thought this more likely) absorbed in some new scheme to throw people's lives into chaos. From time to time someone would break the silence by saying, "Pretty rock" — a statement which covered the complete observational spectrum for Utah's landscape — then they would lapse into silence for a half hour or so.

Sam led them into the truck stop and they all took stools at a carousel counter among truckers and a couple of grungy hitchhikers who were hoping to cadge a ride. A barrel-shaped woman in an orange polyester uniform approached and poured them coffee without asking if they wanted it. Her name tag read, Arlene. "You want something to eat, honey?" she asked Calliope with an accent warm with Southern hospitality. Sam wondered about this: no matter where you go, truck-stop waitresses have a Southern accent.

"Do you have oatmeal?" Calliope asked.

"How 'bout a little brown sugar on that?" Arlene asked. She looked over rhinestone-framed reading glasses.

Calliope smiled. "That would be nice."

"How 'bout you, darlin'?" she said to Coyote.