Coyote Bodhi

Coyote Bodhi (A Short Story)

"Coyote Bodhi is a simple man living a charitable life. Coyote Bodhi does not declare himself to be a healer of men. Coyote Bodhi makes no assertions on religious faith. Coyote Bodhi is not a medical practitioner. Coyote Bodhi is only a man who can be watched. Coyote Bodhi can be touched and felt. Coyote Bodhi can be awakened. And you will be too, like the thousands of others who have upgraded their destinies by experiencing The Coyote Awakening."

Damon Castro knew this all sounded crazy, but it wasn't his job or his place to dictate the sanity or morality of the businesses his clients conducted. His responsibilities as a tax attorney went no further than his client's financial affairs. Damon's specialty was tax negotiation and settlement but he also worked with the Revenue Department to help reduce his client's tax liabilities, resolve their back tax issues, and to defend them on their inevitable federal audits. Today's workload was a hearing on the validity of his client's application to file taxes as a charitable organization which, in most cases, is just as exciting as it sounds. But this was no ordinary case because Coyote Bodhi was no ordinary client.

At first sight, there is nothing that stands out as particularly exceptional about Coyote Bodhi. Coyote is forty-two years of age, a Chumash Indian descended from the Upop village near Point Conception. Coyote has a hangdog stare that looks like he's just been woken from a nap and isn't fully awake yet. His body is trim and he appears to be in reasonably good health. He looks like a good number of the men who do landscaping in Southern California, save for the fact that for someone who has a name associated with danger and independence, Coyote dresses entirely in white like a Native American Tom Wolfe, sans the hat.

The Judge hearing this case, a dour, balding, sixty-year-old man with brown spots on his sun-tanned dome named Paul Stuart, let the young tax attorney make his statement even though it was very out of the ordinary. He immediately regretted the decision. The problem was if you didn't let these attorneys speak they were a pain in the neck the whole rest of the day so it was better to let them say what they needed to say so that they could get down to business. The Judge wasn't expecting a commercial, and now the commercial was extending into Damon's opening statement. This job would be so much better without the lawyers.

"Every prophet starts small," Damon continued. "Jesus Christ. The Prophet Muhammad. Swami Vivekananda. Joseph Smith. Size didn't make them any less of a prophet. We thank you for your time in this hearing, and for providing us the opportunity to present our case under section 50c (1) (3) of the Revenue Code which will prove definitively that The Coyote Awakening is a charitable organization and thereby should be federally tax-exempt."

Arthur Parris was the representative from the Tax Department and showed no emotion to the things he was hearing because in his twenty-seven years in the Tax Department he had seen and heard it all. They were all the same: shysters, swindlers, grifters, charlatans, confidence artists, hustlers, and lawyers. There hadn't been an excuse in the entire history of excuses that he hadn't heard at least once. Arthur was a fiscal conservative and didn't like paying taxes either, but he sure did like those nice paved roads that they all had to drive on and those brave police departments who kept people from stealing everything in their houses and the heroic fire departments who made sure those same houses didn't burn right down to the ground. People always disagree about how tax money should be spent, but everyone agrees about that. Arthur couldn't abide freeloaders, believing everyone who benefits should pay their fair share.

"Your Honor," Arthur began, "this is highly irregular. The taxpayer has the burden of proof to show that the Department made a mistake in interpreting Federal law and the taxpayer's status as a charitable organization. Whatever that was, it was not evidence. That was an infomercial to play on our emotions. I request those comments be stricken from the record."