The Wolves of Winter

by Tyrell Johnson

  As I approached our little town-camp-settlement, I tried to get my story straight. I’d considered not telling my uncle Jeryl about what happened with Conrad. But what was I going to say about my puffy cheek, my swollen eye? Admitting that Conrad had gotten the best of me, that he’d held me down in the snow and done what he’d done, made me look weak. But saying that I tripped and fell made me look like an idiot. No, I had to come clean. I honestly didn’t know what Jeryl would do, though. Kill him? Talk to him? Nothing? No, not nothing. Ken would do nothing. Suck it up, he’d say, being the compassionate, caring older brother that he was.

  The snow on the tops of our cabins had piled up. Maybe a foot. Jeryl would have to get the ladder soon and give them a good dusting. Piled snow can break wooden roofs over time. Funny thing about snow. You pick it up in your gloved hand and it feels like a handful of flour, easily blown away in the wind, but pile it on, let it sit for a while, and it’ll bend the strongest wood. Snow can save you and sustain you, crush you and kill you. Snow is a fickle bastard.

  Like always, Jeryl saw me coming. Don’t know if he looked for me, heard me, or had some sort of sixth sense, but whenever I returned from hunting or checking the traps, if he wasn’t with me or out hunting himself, he’d step out of his cabin and watch me come in, help me bring in the kill, or just ask me about the hunt.

  When I slushed my way through the snow toward him, he had a scowl on his face. Even his mustache seemed to frown. Jeryl—unlike the rest of the males in our little settlement, who may, for all we knew, have been the last men on earth—shaved his chin baby smooth. But he left his mustache long and well groomed. Of the limited supplies we were allowed to bring with us from Alaska, Jeryl had deemed his razor a nonnegotiable necessity. He used the fats from our kills—deer, elk, moose, rabbit, fox—to shave with. The habit gave him a ganky smell, but you got used to it. It became part of who he was.

  Jeryl’s black coat stood out against the shining silver snow. He studied my swollen face. “Let’s put some meat on that.”

  I didn’t say anything, just followed him out back. As we passed my mom’s place—which was as much my place, but I still considered it hers—I kept glancing at the door, waiting for it to burst open. I could imagine her look of horror when she saw my face. I was twenty-three, but Mom was still Mom and, in a lot of ways, still treated me like a child. There’s a reason kids are supposed to leave their parents. Maybe it was time I built my own cabin. Or, better yet, ventured out on my own into the frozen white world.

  “Best stay away from her for now,” Jeryl said as if he’d read my thoughts.

  We knocked our boots on his front door to get the snow off. I left the sled outside and set my bow down next to the door. We stepped into his cabin. Jeryl went to his strongbox of frozen meat and returned with a big slab of elk—at least, I think it was the elk he’d gotten a week back—and slapped it against my face.

  “Ow,” I said, more annoyed than hurt.

  “Keep it pressed tight.”

  “Where’s Ramsey?”

  “Fishing.”

  Jeryl reached for his rifle—a Marlin lever action that he was never too far away from—and set it on his table. Then he grabbed his cleaning kit. Whenever he was troubled or needed to have a serious conversation, Jeryl cleaned his gun.

  “So?” he said. Which meant Tell me what happened.

  “Conrad stole my kill. Trapped a buck down in the ravine and he snipped my wire.”

  Jeryl took the small bristled brush and stabbed it into his rifle. The smell of the cleaning fluid—I had no idea how he still had some left; maybe he made his own—blended with the scent of old spruce beams, filling the cabin with a heady, heavy aroma.

  “And?”

  “And? What do you mean and? Isn’t that enough? He’s a thieving bastard.”

  He eyed me. Both he and his mustache disapproving. “And what happened next?”

  “I told him the animal was mine, tried to make him give it back.”

  “And he didn’t.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway.

  “And he didn’t.”

  The meat was freezing my entire face and melding into my cheek. I pulled it off. It was heavy in my hands. Solid protein and fat. If it thawed, we’d have to eat it that night.

  Jeryl looked up. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Talk to him? We gotta kill him! He’s been nothing but trouble since he moved in. First he steals my kill, next he’ll steal our meat right out from under us. Who knows, maybe he’ll kill us in our sleep. He’s gotta go.” I didn’t like raising my voice to Jeryl. Maybe because he always seemed so calm, or maybe because, for better or worse, he tried his best to fill in for my dad. He failed, but at least he tried.

  Jeryl turned his gun over, examining his work. “You know how many people are left in this world?”

  The chamber clicked shut. A sad wind rattled through the cabin.

  “No,” I said.

  He nodded. “Me neither,” he said, as if that proved his point.

  * * *

  Uncle Jeryl was the least superstitious man in the world. Sure, he believed in God, but in the most normal way possible. Went to church on Sunday—back when there was a church to go to—prayed before each meal, and did his best to do things right.

  He never went in for luck, energy, speaking in tongues, or spiritual warfare. He called that “hippie stuff.” He had his gun, his Bible, and his razor, and he was happy. His best friend in the whole world was Ramsey’s dad, John-Henry. They’d both worked construction, had been friends since they were kids, and had done nearly everything together. Hunting, fishing, chess, school.

  When John-Henry died in the flu epidemic, Jeryl took Ramsey in, no questions asked. He was John-Henry’s son, nothing more to say. Jeryl never showed any signs of grief. He just moved on with life. Things needed to be done.

  Somewhere around the fourth spring out in the Yukon, he, Ken, and I spotted a grizzly just west of Conrad’s place. It had this strange silver marking on its back and was the biggest bear I’d ever seen. Were grizzlies supposed to be that freaking huge? Anyway, Jeryl caught us completely off guard when he lowered his gun, a strange look coming over his face. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s John-Henry.”

  Ken and I looked at Jeryl, wondering if he was making a joke. He didn’t tend to make jokes.

  “What do you mean?” Ken asked.

  “I mean exactly what I said. That’s John-Henry right there.” He smiled, which was incredibly rare, and shook his head. “Old rascal.”

  We looked from the bear, who was digging something up in the snow, to Jeryl, who was now eyeing the bear through the scope on his rifle.

  “Jeryl,” Ken said. “You don’t mean that the bear there is John-Henry, do you? John-Henry, your friend? The one who’s been dead for years?”

  “I know he’s dead, son. You think I don’t? I also know John-Henry when I see him, and I tell you what: that bear is John-Henry.”

  Jeryl took aim.

  “Wait,” I said. “If that’s John-Henry, why’re you going to kill him?” I wasn’t really concerned for the bear or John-Henry. I was mostly confused and a little bit scared that our uncle had lost it.

  Jeryl lowered the rifle. “Got to let him go. You think he wants to be a grizzly?” He asked the question like it was the most natural thing in the world. No, of course he didn’t want to be a grizzly, who would?

  Jeryl aimed again, but either we spooked the bear or he found something interesting on the other side of the hill because he bounded out of sight. Jeryl lowered his rifle and stepped in the direction of the bear. “Gotta go after him.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Ken said. “We—”

  “Didn’t say we,” Jeryl said. “I gotta go after him. Head on back. I’ll be home for dinner.”

  Then he started down the hill after that giant John-Henry grizzly. Ken yelled after him, saying that he was being stupid and was going to get himself killed. It’s not like we d
idn’t think Jeryl could hunt and kill the bear, but the whole thing felt weird. And wrong. Either way, Jeryl continued like he was in a trance, not turning or acknowledging Ken in the least.

  We did see Jeryl that evening for dinner. He came back with a distant look on his face. A mixture of joy and grief—I can’t really explain it. But the John-Henry bear had eluded him.

  “He’ll be back,” Jeryl said. “Or I’ll find him. I owe him that much.”

  Since then, Jeryl’s been on the lookout for that bear. And we all pretty much ignore it.

  * * *

  “No, you won’t talk to him; we’re going to run him off our property and that’s that.” Mom threw another log on the fire. Ashes scattered like dust and a coal jumped out, landing on our very burnable floor. Jeryl stomped it out with his boot, his gun relaxed in the crook of his arm. Mom had turned into a cornered animal the moment she saw my face. She was all black stares and narrow eyes. Green eyes, like mine. Red hair, like mine. She was taller than me, but everyone said I looked like her. And although we didn’t always agree, we agreed on this. About Conrad. Talking wasn’t good enough.

  “Nobody’s running anybody anywhere,” Jeryl said, calm as ever.

  “Oh, so you’re fine with this?” She pointed to my face. “We just let him get away with it?”

  “Didn’t say that. Said I’ll talk to him.”

  “The only talking he’ll listen to is at the end of your gun.”

  “Maybe, but I’m gonna try my way first,” Jeryl said.

  She glared. She had a good glare too. It had sharpened over the years. When Dad was around, before the flu, it was a dull pencil. Now, through hardship and a shitload of cold air, it was a fine needle. Not that it did anything to old Jeryl. He stared right back at her. Me in the middle. I felt anger pooling in the pit of my stomach. This was exactly what I didn’t want, them fighting over me like I was a child.

  “Well, when are you going?” Mom asked.

  Jeryl nodded as if that was permission to leave and headed toward the door.

  “I’m coming too,” I said, stepping toward Jeryl.

  “No,” both Jeryl and Mom said at the same time.

  “It’s my problem, I’m going to fix it.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Mom said.

  “I agree,” said Jeryl, lowering his thick gray eyebrows at me. “You’ll only make it worse.”

  “Maybe it needs to be made worse.”

  “Lynn,” he said in his most serious tone. “You trust me?” I hated it when he said that. He’d said it often enough in the past. You trust me? Then we leave Alaska. You trust me? Then we settle here. You trust me? Then we grow potatoes and carrots. He hadn’t steered us wrong yet. We were alive, after all.

  I took a long breath, sucking in smoke and wood and cold, then sat down in a chair next to the dining room table. The chair wobbled with my weight. I looked at Mom. She was chewing the inside of her lip like her teeth were trying to gnaw their way out.

  Jeryl swung the heavy wooden door open, but it caught on the floorboards on the backswing as he left. It never closed right.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to his house. You should have come straight back here and you know it,” Mom said.

  “I should have stabbed Conrad in the face.”

  Mom walked toward the door. Metallic light spilled in through the slit and onto Mom’s skin, making her look like the Tin Man. She watched outside for a second. “If it was me going, I’d come back with his head,” she said.

  “If it was me, I’d come back with his balls.”

  “Gwendolynn.”

  I shrugged.

  She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled as hard as she could. It slammed shut.

  3

  If life in Alaska was a dream, life in Chicago was a dream within a dream. Were there ever really buildings that tall? That many people crammed onto a street? That many cars driving late into the night? Sounds like an ugly fairy tale. We lived there till I was twelve, before we moved to Alaska, before the bomb hit New York, before the fires started, before the TVs went out, the planes stopped flying, and before everything south of the border felt like a war zone. Dad worked as a biologist for the University of Chicago. I think he did some teaching, mostly research. Chicago was where I watched the attack, the beginning of it all.

  Ken and I were getting ready for school. I was eating a bowl of Golden Grahams when Dad, calling from the living room, said, “Mary, get in here.” We could tell from the sound of his voice that something was wrong, so we followed Mom in, my mouth still full of half-chewed cereal. The first thing I remember seeing was fire on the TV. Giant flames pumping black smoke. It was the Pentagon, Dad said. At first everyone thought that a bomb had gone off in the building. Later they learned that somehow a group of hackers had managed to take control of one of our drones. That’s when everything really started.

  We moved shortly after that. But not because of the wars. Mom and Dad would never admit to it, but something bad had gone down at his work. I don’t know what, or whether it was related to the war. But from the way he and Mom avoided talking about it, and the looks they gave each other when I asked, I knew there was more to the story. So we had to move. I didn’t care much about the truth, or maybe I didn’t really want to know. Didn’t want my dad to have done something wrong. So I left it.

  I remember the drive from Chicago. We left in a hurry. Like Dad was anxious to be out of there. I was crying because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my friends. “Don’t be a little crybaby,” Ken said. The trip was a blur of hotels, passing mountains, small towns, and loud semitrucks. It felt like we were on the road for months. And along the way, news of the war followed us. On the radio, on TVs in run-down diners. The US was tightening the noose on terror. Bombs were being dropped. Lots of them. But it was still the early stages, before things got really bad. Before the flu.

  When we crossed the border, the guard asked where we were going.

  “Vancouver,” Dad said.

  “What for?”

  “Visiting family.”

  “How long will you be in Vancouver?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  It was the first time I’d heard Dad lie.

  * * *

  I sat on the stump in front of our cabin and repaired my wire trap, winding the broken ends together over and over again. It wouldn’t hold as well—a deer could probably pull it apart—but still, it was better than throwing the wire away. I’d have to set it lower to the ground, go for smaller game like a fox or a hare or a marten. All because Anthony Conrad was a selfish ass. My face throbbed, the wind stung my cheek, and I could still feel his weight pressing against my body. His hands on me. His fingers. I felt sick. If I’d told Jeryl about it, maybe he would have agreed to kill Conrad. But that would have required actually telling Jeryl—saying the words out loud. I didn’t think I could. My hands started to shake. I stuffed the wire into my coat pocket and looked south. Coming down the path I’d made in the snow was my brother, Ken, carrying what looked like a hare. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and his hood was zipped tight over his neck. When we first moved out here, the sight of him with that rifle made me angry and jealous at once. Jeryl wouldn’t let me shoot one. Our ammo was too precious, and I was too young and too lacking in the penis department. But I had my bow and I was a good shot. Ken would never admit it, but I was the best, better than him, better than Ramsey—though that’s not a surprise—and better than Jeryl. A woman’s weapon, Ken told me once. I didn’t care. I brought in just as much game as he did.

  When he approached, he gave me a hard look. “The hell happened to you?”

  Ken was never one for subtlety.

  “Conrad.” No point in lying; he’d hear the truth soon enough.

  “What’d you say to him?”

  Oh, there was so much wrong with that question, I didn’t know where to begin. I tried to let the anger blow over me like snow on a car windshield—distant me
mories: Dad driving, Mom sitting up straight in the passenger seat, looking worried, Ken playing his DS, me watching the snow flash in the headlights and shoot over our windshield in a silver blur, like magic—but it didn’t work, shrugging my anger off, that is. Ken had a talent for making me pissed as hell.

  “What did I say? He stole my kill. I told him to give it back. It was a buck too, probably a hundred times the size of that little bunny you got there.”

  “A kill is a kill. Least I got mine. A bird in the hand and all that.”

  “I’d have got mine if Conrad hadn’t stolen it.”

  “Guess you should have asked nicely.”

  “I did.”

  “I bet you did.”

  I looked down at my stupid hands. They were still shaking.

  Ken just stood there, assessing me. “Well, Conrad’s an asshole anyway.”

  I nodded.

  “Jeryl know?”

  I nodded again.

  “He going to talk to him?”

  Nodded.

  “He’ll kick his ass. Buck up,” he said, then nudged me on the shoulder and turned around toward his cabin. It was as close to Sorry, Lynn, that sucks. Conrad deserves to be strangled by his own guts as I was ever going to get from Ken. It wasn’t very consoling, but, weirdly enough, I did stop shaking.

  * * *

  Some of the things we brought from Alaska to the Yukon:

  Guns. The two rifles, the shotgun, and two handguns. One of the rifles was Dad’s, the rest of the guns were Jeryl’s.

  Ammo. We brought a shit ton of ammo. Boxes and boxes stacked on the back of the horse. Most of it Jeryl and Dad bought honestly. But I know a good portion Jeryl took from an abandoned store after the looters started breaking windows and taking what they wanted. We were going to run out eventually, but we were careful with our shots.