Page 174 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Unhinged by the senseless brutality of this animal’s death, the broken treaty between

animal and human, Anna puts a funeral notice in the newspaper. “Eastern Grey Coyote

died on February 10th from an acute illness after suffering excruciating convulsions and

suffocation. Cause of death: poison.” Following the template for a human obituary, she

goes on to recall the coyote’s “exemplary mothering,” her “haunting songs and keen

survival skills. . . . How, “having been displaced numerous times from her home habitat,

she developed the capacity to make do without assistance. . . .She displayed strength of

character, curiosity and a playful humor even in the face of intense hatred. She will be

dearly missed by those she leaves behind, her family pack and Anna Holmes of

Mountain Road who is holding calling hours on February 12th from 9p.m. to midnight.”

The funeral draws a bunch of curious neighbors and a mysterious old truth-telling

woman. The story drops into deeper territory where everything becomes simultaneously

complex and simplified; the age-old arguments between livestock keepers and coyote

defenders are put to rest for the moment by a particularly coyote way of reckoning, and

with their tricksterish help, Anna finds the redemption she has been seeking.

Sophie Carson declares herself to be “The Looking Back Woman of Scantic Gap.” She

is an old woman, close to dying, who is writing her story for an unnamed “you.” Scantic

Gap, a place in the river where the water drops sixty feet, is “the place where the old is

done and new is coming.” Sophie ponders a particular stretch of this river, “where the

water swirls and spirals around, where it rests and considers this change in direction. I

like to think it is gathering up memory in that vortex of time, before plunging on.” It’s an