From the books. Little Smoke (most likely) takes the form of a coyote (and maybe the beetle was Minx), to help Carlos “Stop the world”.
Little Smoke helped me the first time, as a moth.
***
I experienced a shiver. The beetle and I were not that different after all. Death, like a shadow, was stalking both of us from behind the boulder. I had an extraordinary moment of elation. The beetle and I were on a par. Neither of us was better than the other. Our death made us equal.
My elation and joy were so overwhelming that I began to weep. Don Juan was right. He had always been right. I was living in a most mysterious world, and like everyone else, I was a most mysterious being; and yet I was no more important than a beetle.
I wiped my eyes, and as I rubbed them with the back of my hand, I saw a man; or something which had the shape of a man. It was to my right about fifty yards. I sat up straight, and strained to see. The sun was almost on the horizon, and its yellowish glow prevented me from getting a clear view. I heard a peculiar roar at that moment. It was like the sound of a distant jet plane. As I focused my attention on it, the roar increased to a prolonged sharp metallic whizzing, and then it softened until it was a mesmerizing, melodious sound. The melody was like the vibration of an electrical current.
The image that came to my mind was that two electrified spheres were coming together; or two square blocks of electrified metal were rubbing against each other, and then coming to rest with a thump when they were perfectly levelled with each other.
I again strained to see if I could distinguish the person that seemed to be hiding from me, but I could only detect a dark shape against the bushes. I shielded my eyes by placing my hands above them. The brilliancy of the sunlight changed at that moment, and then I realized that what I was seeing was only an optical illusion; a play of shadows and foliage.
I moved my eyes away, and I saw a coyote calmly trotting across the field. The coyote was around the spot where I thought I had seen the man. It moved about fifty yards in a southerly direction, and then it stopped, turned, and began walking towards me.
I yelled a couple of times to scare it away, but it kept on coming. I had a moment of apprehension. I thought that it might be rabid, and I even considered gathering some rocks to defend myself in case of an attack.
When the animal was ten to fifteen feet away I noticed that it was not agitated in any way; on the contrary, it seemed calm and unafraid. It slowed down its gait, coming to a halt barely four or five feet from me. We looked at each other, and then the coyote came even closer.
Its brown eyes were friendly and clear. I sat down on the rocks and the coyote stood almost touching me. I was dumbfounded. I had never seen a wild coyote that close, and the only thing that occurred to me at that moment was to talk to it.
I began as one would talk to a friendly dog. And then I thought that the coyote ‘talked’ back to me. I had the absolute certainty that it had said something. I felt confused, but I did not have time to ponder upon my feelings, because the coyote talked again.
It was not that the animal was voicing words the way I am accustomed to hearing words being voiced by human beings. It was rather a feeling that it was talking, but it was not like a feeling that one has when a pet seems to communicate with its master either.
The coyote actually said something. It relayed a thought and that communication came out in something quite similar to a sentence. I had said, “How are you, little coyote?”
I thought I had heard the animal respond, “I’m all right, and you?” Then the coyote repeated the sentence and I jumped to my feet.
The animal did not make a single movement. It was not even startled by my sudden jump. Its eyes were still friendly and clear. It lay down on its stomach and tilted its head and asked, “Why are you afraid?”
I sat down facing it, and I carried on the weirdest conversation I had ever had. Finally it asked me what I was doing there, and I said I had come there to stop the world.
The coyote said, “Que bueno!” and then I realized that it was a bilingual coyote. The nouns and verbs of its sentences were in English, but the conjunctions and exclamations were in Spanish. The thought crossed my mind that I was in the presence of a Chicano coyote. I began to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and I laughed so hard that I became almost hysterical.
Then the full weight of the impossibility of what was happening struck me and my mind wobbled. The coyote stood up and our eyes met. I stared fixedly into them. I felt they were pulling me and suddenly the animal became iridescent. It began to glow.
It was as if my mind were replaying the memory of another event that had taken place ten years before when under the influence of peyote I witnessed the metamorphosis of an ordinary dog into an unforgettable iridescent being. It was as though the coyote had triggered the recollection, and the memory of that previous event was summoned and became superimposed on the coyote’s shape. The coyote was a fluid, liquid, luminous being. Its luminosity was dazzling.
I wanted to cover my eyes with my hands to protect them, but I could not move. The luminous being touched me in some undefined part of myself, and my body experienced such an exquisite indescribable warmth and well-being that it was as if the touch had made me explode. I became transfixed. I could not feel my feet, or my legs, or any part of my body; yet something was sustaining me erect.
I have no idea how long I stayed in that position. In the meantime, the luminous coyote and the hilltop where I stood melted away. I had no thoughts or feelings. Everything had been turned off, and I was floating freely.
…
Don Juan was alone in the house when I arrived the next morning. I asked him about don Genaro, and he said that he was somewhere in the vicinity running an errand. I immediately began to narrate to him the extraordinary experiences I had had. He listened with obvious interest.
“You have simply stopped the world,” he commented after I had finished my account.
We remained silent for a moment, and then don Juan said that I had to thank don Genaro for helping me. He seemed to be unusually pleased with me. He patted my back repeatedly and chuckled.
“But it is inconceivable that a coyote could talk,” I said.
“It wasn’t talk,” don Juan replied.
“What was it then?”
“Your body understood for the first time. But you failed to recognize that it was not a coyote to begin with, and that it certainly was not talking the way you and I talk.”
“But the coyote really talked, don Juan!”
“Now look who is talking like an idiot. After all these years of learning, you should know better. Yesterday you stopped the world and you might have even seen. A magical being told you something, and your body was capable of understanding it because the world had collapsed.”