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If one were to ask Wile E. Coyote to describe his earliest memories, he might waste several large white signs trying to describe what exactly his childhood was like before offering up one word, and nothing more - hungry.
From the moment he learned to walk he felt it.
From the moment he learned to listen, he heard it.
From the moment he learned to speak, he - well he couldn’t quite find the words to articulate it.
He was always well fed. His parents, like most parents of his species, minded him closely to assure he could feed himself, but didn’t do much more than that. He learned early on to catch a variety of small mammals; mice, voles, squirrels and turkeys. He’d moved on from grasshoppers and beetles far earlier than the average coyote and attributed that to his voracious hunger. But no food filled him.
So he began to feed his brain. He read books of every kind and found a particular interest in engineering and modern invention. Knowledge was a kind of food, and before long he could safely call himself a genius while other coyotes his age were still scuffling around trying to decide if their front paws were their hands or their feet. He moved off into a cave of his own, and he built and he ate.
He ate a lot.
He could outsmart much of his prey easily, and he feasted more often than not. It felt as though he couldn’t control his actions, sometimes. Like each meal he wasted without curing that soul-deep hunger was a bite closer to a kind of poison Wile E. didn’t have the antidote to.
And so, the hunger remained, no matter how much he consumed.
He’d set out a simple snare, once. It had caught an unsuspecting vole, which he’d already had plans to turn into a flavorful stir fry. But, upon reaching for the snare, a great gust of wind blew him back. When the air settled, and he’d wiped the dirt out of his eyes, he’d been greeted with an empty snare.
A curiosity had drowned out the hunger that night. Instead of feasting, he’d read what he could on local wildlife, but couldn’t find anything about a creature running quite that fast.
Only three long, restless nights after that, he’d first laid eyes on the culprit.
The bird was easily spotted with those vibrant blue feathers, and yet he seemed completely unbothered by his extreme visibility.
That damned roadrunner.
The bird stuck his tongue out at him, mocking, and beeped in his face before running away, faster than anything Wile E. had ever seen.
A bird that confident couldn’t be bested only by smarts, Wile E. had decided then. And so he’d turned to ACME. The extravagant machines had always interested him, but he’d had no need for such things when he could build a trap on his own. But clearly, his traps could be outmaneuvered by the sheer speed of this bird. So he put his faith in modern machines.
No matter what he tried, he always came out of it with bumps and bruises.
But he was never hungry, chasing that damned roadrunner.
In fact, he spent so much of his time trying to best the guy that he often neglected to eat at all. He soon grew much thinner, though he hardly noticed it between all the failure and planning and determination.
(Roadrunner noticed, and sometimes deigned to leave behind some birdseed for the hungry coyote. Only sometimes though.)
And this is how he lived. He chased the roadrunner until it blew up in his face and he was forced to return to his cave and remember just how hungry he was, day after day after day.
And then the rocket skates happened.
And that commercial on the TV opened his eyes.
And he had a plan that, for once, seemed foolproof.
Except, like most things, it didn't end the way he'd planned.
Instead of gaining a meal, he'd gained friends. The knowledge that of the billions of people in the world, at least one cared what happened to him.
And he wasn't hungry anymore.
~ ~ ~
His stomach growls loudly, interrupting the relative peace of the car ride. Paige looks back from the passenger seat, her wide eyes sweeping over him. “Oh, are you hungry? We can stop and get something to eat.”
Wile E. begins to shake his head ‘no’ on autopilot, but then he reassesses. Is he hungry? The contractions of muscles in his stomach suggest that he must be, but he doesn't feel hungry at all. That persistent, aching hunger from his childhood hasn't been around since the trial concluded.
He shrugs instead.
Paige furrows her brows, and turns to Kevin. “Should we stop and get something?”
Kevin looks down at the little map on the screen of his brand new car, and nods. “Why not? Y’know, this whole time, we haven’t had a meal together. We should have at least one before we drop you off, huh, bud?”
Coyote grins and nods.
They soon find themselves in a roadside diner run by a family of human toons. Their child comes to serve them, riding a skateboard to their table. She passes out their menus. Wile E. tips an imaginary hat to her as she rides back toward the kitchen.
Paige and Kevin make benign chatter above his head in the booth across from him while Wile E. opens the menu. He squints at the pages-long list of foods in front of him. There are breakfast foods, lunch foods, dinner foods. Greasy hamburgers and fries, salads, sweet french toast and waffles slathered in syrup and dusted with powdered sugar. Suddenly, Wile E. feels quite sure that he doesn’t want any of it. Food had never filled him before, why should it do so now? Despite this sound logic, his stomach growls loud enough to shake the table, in typical toon-ly fashion.
He affects a sheepish grin as his companions cease talking to look at him, and gingerly slides the menu back onto the table.
“You know what you want, then?” Kevin asks conversationally. Without waiting for an answer, he turns to his own menu, leaning his chin on one hand as he speaks. “I can’t decide between the chicken-ranch wrap or the-”
Paige interrupts him. “So, what are you getting?”
Wile E. puts his hands out in front of him and shakes his head.
Paige’s brows furrow, much like they had in the car. “You…don’t know?”
Wile E. shakes his head, pushing the menu further away from himself.
“You’re not getting anything?”
He shoots her a finger gun, nodding.
Kevin laughs. “Don’t worry about money! I’ve got it!”
Wile E. rolls his eyes. He summons a pen from hammer space and a napkin from the holder on the table.
Not hungry, he writes, and then turns it around so they can see.
Kevin looks him up and down, and huffs out an incredulous laugh. “Yyyeah, and I’m not a lawyer.”
Paige bites her lip. “When was the last time you ate?”
Wile E. puts a hand to his chin, thinking. He hasn’t sat down for a meal since he started the chase. Occasionally he’d indulge in a snack, but only if it didn’t take too much time out of his more important endeavors. Often, he’d find himself absent-mindedly snacking while drawing out his blueprints, but he never truly set out to find food. He certainly doesn’t remember eating much since he’d left home.
He shrugs.
Paige and Kevin share a look. Wile E. raises an eyebrow.
Paige bites her lip and forces a smile onto her face. “Why don’t you get a drink, at least. It’ll be a long drive.”
Coyote taps his forehead, pretending to consider it deeply, before nodding. He snatches the menu back up and points exaggeratedly at a root beer float.
Paige giggles as Kevin rolls his eyes.
Later, as he nestles safely back in Kevin’s new car, he cranks the music up high enough to hurt his head, just to hide the grumbling of his traitorous stomach from his cohort.
They drop him off in the desert, and the most dearest Roadrunner meets him there.
And the chase begins again.
This time it ends in his cave. Cleaned out of ACME paraphernalia, it’s spacious and empty and something like hunger twinges in his stomach at the sight of it. Roadrunner beep beeps at him and rushes to the western curve of the cave that can verily be called a kitchen.
He’s made up a truly pitiable meal that looks like it might once have been rice and some kind of meat. It’s a bit blackened, and it looks sticky where it clings to the sides of the chipped bowl Roadrunner had deposited it in.
Wile E. raises a brow at the bird, but he just blinks expectantly. In the blink of an eye, he’s rounded the table, where his own bowl of birdseed, probably pilfered from Wile E.’s cupboard, is awaiting. He begins pecking at it, like he’s decided not to wait for Wile E. to get his brain moving again.
Wile E. throws his arms up in a gesture that says I give up and sits down to eat the blackened meal.
Somehow, it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.
Somehow, it feeds a physiological hunger, the one Wile E. had forgotten to notice.
He eats with the same voracity he does everything with, abandoning all manner of superiority to the bird across from him.
And then Roadrunner speeds away, but not before smiling and winking right at him, and Wile E. begins planning how exactly he’ll catch him now.
And it feels almost like victory. The idea that he can be well-fed, in more ways than one, and still get to indulge in this most auspicious dance.
Victory, indeed.