Coyote watches the wall.

The wall is two stories high, concrete, and topped with razor wire. Security cameras perch atop it like fat birds. The entire edifice is a canvas for graffiti artists, adorned with weeping Christs, crosses, angry Spanish bubble letters, intricate desert totem guardians against the insanity of a country being walled in—or out.

The sun is straight overhead, burning the day through the still air. Even so, sweat dries before it can form a trickle. Coyote likes the desert—the sand and the heat and the madness. The wide openness: so much room to romp.

Now here come his playmates: two tall Mexican men in jeans and button-down denim shirts. They meet by the wall, tucking into the tiny portion of shade it provides.

Coyote, unseen, slips closer to listen.

“Nueve,” says the first man. Nine.

The second man spits then curls his mouth into a grimace. “¿Solamente nueve?” He expected more.

The first man grins. “Seis mujeres, tres niños.”

They laugh together, the second man cheered by this news. No men on this trip.

Their laughter is a dark and covert creature. Coyote is intrigued, for these men, like him, are Coyote—they have taken his name, call themselves coyotes.

Coyote decides to take this journey across the desert with them.

He spends the next day in the guise of an American, and arranges for Guadelupe to visit her sister in Georgia. Forged paperwork is modern trickery and Coyote is well practiced in the art. Guadelupe wants nothing more than to join her family and takes the mysterious opportunity with only, “¡Gracias a Dios!” She does not question the strange circumstances, and is on a bus to Atlanta by the next afternoon.

Coyote takes Guadelupe's place and wears a threadbare cotton dress. He brushes out his hair until it is long and sleek and black as Crow's wings. He casts his eyes down, shy and alluring. The other, the new coyotes look at him and see a desirable young woman. They are happy to take Coyote across the desert, to America—for a price of course, but they will give him a deal, un rebajado, since he is such a lovely young thing, and traveling all alone.

Coyote does not miss the look that passes between the two men. He smiles to himself.

They leave at night. Coyote and five other women. Two girls, and a little boy who is trying to be a man: Gabriel. Gabriel watches the coyotes with wary eyes. He keeps close to the little girls, protective: bravado edged with fear. The coyotes are aware of this, and laugh at him.

The group drives far out along the border. The wall sinks, dwindling from the massive concrete edifice to a high wooden fence, and then to little more than a few strings of barbed wire. Sand shifts underfoot in the night wind. One of the coyotes, a man who has introduced himself on their ride as Sophus, argues with the driver for a moment. Then he makes an angry cutting gesture with his hands and pays the driver.

He turns and sees Guadelupe-Coyote watching. He smiles and strides over, puts an arm around Coyote. “¿Liste, querida?” He asks if Coyote is ready.

“Lista,” Coyote says in Guadelupe's soft alto voice. He likes Spanish. It is a new language, but after learning the speech of crows and foxes, spiders and gods, Coyote has little trouble understanding a new tongue. Coyote smiles coyly at Sophus.

They begin a trek into the desert, lead by Sophus and his companion, Lorenzo. The women have lived lives of hardship and toil. They are used to heat. Yet this is unlike anything they have felt before.

The sun smothers them throughout the day. It is an enemy, but a wily trickster, too. The first rays of dawn come, bringing a blessed relief from the cutting cold of night—blessing for a moment, and then it is warm, hot, oppressive, and then deadly unto the last drooping glow of sunset. And then the desert crossers are abandoned for another night of harsh biting cold.

After three days of walking they are all thirsty. This thirst is deep and constant. It becomes a part of their bodies; indistinguishable from the beating of a pulse or a cough or a grain of sand in the eye.

The two men-coyotes have their own supply of water. After these three days, their skin still swells with water and life. They watch the women with assessing eyes, flicking from lips to breasts to long black hair.

Young Gabriel watches them watching. His fists clench whenever their attention wanders to his mother or his sister.

After three days, the men each choose. They have their pick of shy young women. They will take what they want, willing or no—additional payment for the desert crossing.

The next night, they each choose another woman. The stars, a brilliant shimmering canopy, bear witness. And what choice do these women have? A bit more discomfort, in their crossing, a bit more fare to pay on their way. It is that, or death in the desert, far from home behind, and family ahead. Guadelupe-Coyote sees this and feels a flash of anger. He has slept with many women, a few men, and some animals, and often by trickery—but never by force. Not by coercion. He feels the women's hopeless acquiescence, and it offends his very nature.

Sophus taps Guadelupe-Coyote's shoulder as the little camp, a pinpoint of life in the endless sandy vista, is set up. The children scavenge for dried brush—it is all dried here—while the women hack at cacti and suck the juice from inside. They all heap the children's findings in a pile in the middle, and soon their bonfire, their beacon against the night, shines out under the starscape.

Guadelupe-Coyote is not helping tonight, though. He is blushing under Sophus's attention, as the man tugs his hair, caresses his cheeks, leans in close with his smirk and his smell.

Guadelupe-Coyote responds with lowered eyes and a smile. Sophus leads his intended away from the others, out to the baked-hard desert floor.

The women circle the fire. The children, even serious, dignified Gabriel, run in and through their outstretched arms. A dance begins: a slow and steady movement as the women talk to one another, then move around the fire, forming a pattern against the chaos of desert and night sky and coyote-mischief.

Sophus gropes at Guadelupe-Coyote, pawing with clumsy eagerness until his reaching hand finds Coyote's genitals. “Sorpresa,” Coyote whispers. His disguise fades from Sophus's eyes, but before the man can cry out to his fellow, Coyote silences him.

The women pick up speed. Without even realizing it, they have fallen into a frenzied shimmy, no longer talking and pacing, but gamboling and cavorting. They laugh, flames and exercise warming their limbs and lighting their faces.

Lorenzo watches them, disbelief writ plain on his features. He turns as Coyote approaches him, the question on his face replaced by surprise, confusion.

“¿Dónde está Sophus?” he asks Guadelupe, but then he sees Coyote, stepping out of the shadow of Guadelupe's shape. “¿Quién es usted?” His voice, though he is In Charge, though he is the Big Bad Man, is shaded with fear and shock.

Coyote howls with laughter. He pulls the protesting Lorenzo into the circle with the dancers, where they are still skipping, strutting, and swirling in ecstatic glee.

“Soy el tonto.” Coyote answers Lorenzo's question: I am the fool.

“Soy el caos.” He calls up the ancient rhythm of his people, a drumbeat to stir the air: I am chaos.

“¡Soy dios!” The women's dancing is frantic and beautiful: I am god.

“¡Soy monstruo!” Lorenzo's face is red, his heart pumping to the wild song Coyote has unleashed: I am monster.

“¡Soy coyote!” Lorenzo falls to the ground, defeated, while the rest of them dance on into the night: I am Coyote!