very much," I said. I went into my house to get him a soda, picking my way over the rough bricks of the patio because I was barefoot. I will say this much for Doc Homer's career as a father: my arches are faultless.
When I came back out I sat down and handed over a Coke, letting Loyd fight with the easy-off twist cap himself. I had to use pliers on those things. It didn't give Loyd two seconds of trouble. He palmed it, then tipped his head back and drank about half the bottle. The things that aggravate me most in the world are the things men do without even knowing it.
"So is that your dog?" I asked.
"That's jack. You met? Jack, this lady here is Codi Noline."
"We've met," I said. "I sneaked him some goat spare ribs the other day at the fiesta. I hope he's not on a special diet or anything."
"He's in love, is what he is, if you gave him a piece of that goat. That was one of Angel Pilar's yearling billy goats. Jack's had his eye on those spare ribs ever since last summer."
Jack looked at me, panting seriously. His tongue was purplish, and his eyes were very dark brown and lively. Sometimes when you look into an animal's eyes you see nothing, no sign of connection, just the flat stare of a wild creature. But Jack's eyes spoke worlds. I liked him.
"He looks like a coyote," I said.
"He is. Half. I'll tell you the story of his life sometime."
"I can't wait," I said, really meaning it, though it came out sounding a little sarcastic. Our chairs were close enough together so that I could have reached over and squeezed Loyd's hand, but I didn't do that.
"It was nice of you to come by," I said.
"So this was your first week of school, right? How's life with the juvenile delinquents of Grace?"
I was a little bit flattered that he knew about my job. But then everybody would. "I don't know," I said. "Pretty scary, I think. I'll keep you posted."
The sky had faded from orange to pale pink, and the courtyard was dusky under the fig trees. Every night as it got dark the vegetation around the house seemed to draw itself in closer, hugging the whitewashed walls, growing dense as a jungle.
Loyd touched my forearm lightly and pointed. On the cliff above the courtyard wall, a pair of coyotes trotted along a narrow animal path. Jack's ears stood up and rotated like tracking dishes as we watched them pass.
"You know what the Navajos call coyotes? God's dogs," Loyd said. His fingers were still resting on my forearm.
"Why's that?" I asked.
He took his hand back and cracked his knuckles behind his head. He leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs. "I don't know. I guess because they run around burying bones in God's backyard."
Jack got up and went to the courtyard wall. He stood as still as a rock fence except for one back leg, which trembled, betraying all the contained force of whatever it was he wanted to do just then, but couldn't. After a minute he came back to Loyd's feet, turned his body in a tight circle two or three times, and lay down with a soft moan.
"Why do they do that? Turn in circles like that?" I asked. I'd never lived with a dog and was slightly infatuated with Jack.
"Beating down the tall grass to make a nice little nest," Loyd said. "Even if there's no tall grass."
"Well, I guess that make sense, from a dog's point of view."
"Sure it does." He bent forward to scratch Jack between the ears. "We take these good, smart animals and put them in a house and then wonder why they keep on doing the stuff that made them happy for a million years. A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right."
We were both quiet for a while. "How do you know what the Navajos call coyotes? I thought you were Apache." I felt vaguely that it might be racist to discuss Loyd's breeding, but he didn't seem offended.
"I'm a lot of stuff," he said. "I'm a mongrel, like Jack. I was born up in Santa Rosalia Pueblo. My mama still lives up there. You ever been up there to Pueblo country?"
"No," I said.
"It's pretty country. You ought to go sometime. I lived up there when I was a little kid, me and