Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight

Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight

By Ursula K. Le Guin

“You fell out of the sky,” coyote said.

Still curled up tight, lying on her side, her back pressed against the overhanging rock, the child watched the coyote with one eye. Over the other eye she kept her hand cupped, its back on the dirt.

“There was a burned place in the sky, up there alongside the rimrock, and then you fell out of it,” the coyote repeated, patiently, as if the news was getting a bit stale. “Are you hurt?”

She was all right. She was in the plane with Mr. Michaels, and the motor was so loud she couldn’t understand what he said even when he shouted, and the way the wind rocked the wings was making her feel sick, bit it was all right. They were flying to Canyonville. In the plane.

She looked. The coyote was still sitting there. It yawned. It was a big one, in good condition, its coat silvery and thick. The dark tear line back from its long yellow eye was as clearly marked as a tabby cat’s.

She sat up slowly, still holding her right hand pressed to her right eye.

Buffalo Gals. Photo by Elena

“Did you lose an eye? » the coyote asked, interested.

“I don’t know,” the child said. She caught her breath and shivered, « I’m cold ».

“I’ll help you look for it,” the coyote said. « Come on! If you move around, you won’t have to shiver. The sun’s up.”

Cold, lonely brightness lay across the falling land, a hundred miles of sagebrush. The coyote was trotting busily around, nosing under clumps of rabbitbrush and cheatgrass, pawing at a rock. “Aren’t you going to look?” it said, suddenly sitting down on its haunches and abandoning the search. “I knew a trick once where I could throw my eyes way up into a tree and see everything from up there, and the whistle, and they’d come back into my head. But the goddamn bluejay stole them, and when I whistled, nothing came. I had to stick lumps of pine pitch into my head so I could see anything. You could try that. But you’ve got one eye that’s O.K.; what do you need two for? Are you coming, or are you dying there?”

The child crouched, shivering.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martin’s Press, 1988.)