Mrs. Mike

by Benedict Freedman

  "Katherine," Mike said after a tense pause, "there are ways of telling a husky from a wolf."

  "What ways?—I mean, other than ..."

  "Take the kids inside," he said, "and hand me out my rifle."

  I did, and while I was rubbing Ralph rosy, I heard the report of Mike's gun.

  "Dear God," I said, "make him miss." I wondered if I'd said it fast enough, or if the bullet had already struck down that beautiful and wise creature.

  Mike came in, banged the door, and stuck the gun in the corner.

  "Damn poor visibility," he said.

  Later, when the children had been kissed and tucked in for their naps, Mike decided that maybe it would be a good idea after all to instruct me in the difference between wolves and dogs, just so I wouldn't be giving bones to the wrong animal.

  "It's in the tails," he said. "A husky's curls. The ears are different too. A husky's droop, and a wolf's stand erect." He took several preoccupied pulls at his pipe.

  "Do you realize, Kathy, that a ranch loses ten percent of its net income a year because of wolves?"

  "Really?"

  "Ten percent on an average-size ranch; that would mean a thousand a year."

  "But, darling, there are no ranches around here."

  "Larry Carpentier has turkeys. And what about Bessie?"

  "That wolf hasn't bothered Bessie," I said.

  "Kathy," said Mike, patiently, "have you ever seen the pitiless way in which a wolf kills a cow?"

  "No," I admitted.

  "Well, the cattle are in a tightly packed circle. The wolf makes a lunge at one of them, say Bessie, and frightens her away from the others. Then, when he has her separated from the herd, with one bite he disables her legs and pulls her down. Now, you wouldn't want that to happen to Bessie, would you?"

  "No, and I don't see how it could. Bessie is just one cow, not a herd of cows. I don't see how you could separate her from—"

  "My God," Mike said, "you've no imagination."

  "Yes I have."

  "But you don't picture it. The fangs of that wolf closing over Bessie, Bessie's eyes rolling. It's wanton killing. It's not as though the wolf were hungry. One meal a week or twelve meals evenly spaced all winter is enough to keep a wolf going. Why, I've known wolves to kill a cow for the sake of the calf she's carrying."

  "All right," I said, "kill it. If you think you can kill it, kill it!"

  Mike relit his pipe and asked me if we had any unskinned rabbits. He knew perfectly well we had because Bishop Grouard had brought us three.

  "I've just remembered an old Indian method that I've never known to fail. It doesn't involve poison, Newhouse traps, or pits." He looked at me expectantly.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Just this," and he took out his hunting knife, "imbedded in

  the bait. When he satisfies himself that it's free of poison, he'll tear into it, and the knife will cut his mouth and tongue."

  "That won't kill him," I said.

  "No, but it will draw blood, and the smell of blood will draw in other wolves, maybe even a mountain lion. A wounded animal doesn't last long in this country."

  Mike began pulling on his clothes. "You can't tell what will happen when they get infuriated by blood."

  "When who gets infuriated by blood?"

  "The animals."

  "The ones that aren't there yet?" I asked.

  "Never you mind," Mike said, "there's liable to be three or four dead wolves out there by morning."

  He went out with a rabbit, a knife, and the last of Sarah's oil of anise.

  While he was gone, Juno had her puppies. She gave little short high yelps when I took my hand away, so I stroked her and talked to her. And four blind wet puppies were soon nuzzling her. She had a fine time cleaning and licking them, turning them over and knocking them down.

  They were plump active bits of fur, and I could hardly wait for Mary Aroon to wake up and see them. I'd been promising her these puppies for weeks.

  I heard Mike outside stamping the snow off his boots.

  "Mike!" I yelled. "Mike!"

  He opened the door and looked in. "What's the matter?"

  "We've got puppies!"

  He grinned and came over, shedding clothes as he came. He looked at those puppies a long time, and the grin slowly faded from his face.

  "Hmmmmm," he said at last and buttoned up his jacket. He reached for his cap and his gloves.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Out to bring in that bait."

  "But—"

  "Kathy," he said, "it just wouldn't be right for me to be killing the father of Juno's puppies."

  Now it was my turn to stare at the puppies. They were gray, all four of them, silver gray. And their tails, what had Mike said? A husky's tail curls. Well, theirs stood out straight and pointed. And their ears were erect, not flopping over like Juno's.

  "Holy Mother of God," I said and sat slowly. "We've got wolves in the house."

  "They're only half wolf," Mike said.

  I looked dubiously at Juno. "Three-quarters."

  "It doesn't matter. A lot of the Indians purposely mate their dogs with wolves to keep the breed fresh. You remember Louis Carpentier had a full-blooded wolf in his team for a while. It didn't have the stamina, though."

  "But these were to be the children's."

  "We'll call them theirs. They have to be kept outside anyway, the kids won't see much of them this winter, and in the spring there's bound to be more puppies."

  I nodded, watching the little gray wolves nurse. A low sad howl drifted in to us, and Juno pricked up her ears. It came again and she answered.

  "You better get out there, Mike, before he finds the bait."

  I helped him into his coat. The air was almost solid, and in a moment it had dropped a curtain of snow between us. I walked back to Juno and her little wolves, smiling. For two months he had tried to catch that wolf. He'd laid some ingenious traps too. But now I knew he would always think of himself as saving that wolf's life; although why this particular trap should work when for two months none of the others had, I didn't know.

  Twenty-three

  The McTavish brothers returned to Grouard dressed exactly as they had left, with nothing to show the change in their fortunes except a case of books. It was rumored that they had a fat account in a Winnipeg bank—the proceeds of the sale of the earldom. This James McTavish angrily denied.

  "Not a penny did I get out of the whole transaction," he would repeat. "And I'm out a hundred and twenty pounds passage money."

  However, it was noticed that the brothers began to live a little better, and that instead of his semiannual sprees, Allan permitted himself to get drunk once a month now.

  James asked me to come down to their house and pick out any books I might want to read through the winter. There were about fifty volumes spread out on the floor in black, brown, and russet leather bindings, some with titles stamped in gold. I had never seen books like that. I opened a copy of Burns's poems, and stared fascinated at the elaborate end-papers covered with swirls of color and flashes of silver. The paper was as thick as cloth, and the initial letters long and curled.

  "There's Sir Thomas More, and Shakespeare, and Tyndall on Sound, and Bobby Burns, and four or five Bibles, and Knox's Sermons, and Carlyle, and Johnson's Rasselas," James said.

  "It's wonderful just to touch them," I said.

  "You can have any you want, Mrs. Flannigan."

  "Are all these from your castle in Scotland?" I could not repress my curiosity.

  "Aye, and the only thing worth more than a lead two-bits,"

  James said, and started to spit. He looked at me and checked himself. "That damn pile of stones," he added bitterly.

  Allan McTavish put down the fishing line he was unsnarling and squatted down beside the books.

  "And what good these are going to do you is more than I'll ever know," he mocked his brother. "Sir
Thomas More and Shakespeare! You that's been reading paper-backed novels all your life."

  "They're good books," James said, "and tooled leather covers, and after crossing three thousand miles of ocean, I'd be a brainless fool if I didn't get something out of it."

  "Well, you got to be an earl, didn't you?" I said.

  "No, I did not."

  "But you said . . . and I mended your tartan, and everything ..."

  "I turned it down, Mrs. Flannigan. I changed my mind the day before I was to sign the papers. It wasn't for me, Mrs. Flannigan. To sit in a pile of stones on a poverty-stricken hill, and the only company a score of dead McTavishes in the Mausoleum, and the people speaking a murderous Scottish it would take me ten years to figure out. No. My shack in Canada looks better to me than that pile of stones ever did!"

  "For once he's right," his brother said. "There's something in this country that nails you down and keeps you here. But lugging the case of books was a fool stupid thing."

  "Pay no attention to him, Mrs. Flannigan, but take what you please. It'll be good reading these winter nights. Take one with pictures."

  I searched carefully and was tempted by a beautiful brown and gilt edition of Famous Scottish Judges, and by a sturdy Complete Works of ]ohn Milton, but I fell when a book opened to a five-color map of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. I never could resist maps of strange places, and I walked home from the McTavishes carrying The History of China, Vols. I, II, and III.

  Mike was astonished. "Couldn't you find anything lighter?"

  I told him that China interested me very much, and that I was

  going to read the whole thing from Mythical Times to Modern Times.

  "Well," he said helplessly, riffling the pages, "I suppose you know what you're doing. But why China? I should think you'd be more interested in a history of Ireland or Canada."

  "China," I said, "is the seat of the world's oldest civilization."

  Mike burst out laughing. "So you already read the introduction on the way over."

  I had, and I could hardly wait to get into the first chapter. That night I lit a bear-grease candle and opened to the "Age of the Five Rulers."

  For weeks I lived in two worlds. I felt that if I stepped out of my door I would see, not the Alberta prairies, but the plains of Fukien. Jade and lotus and porcelain were words I murmured to myself while I worked. I cannot explain the overpowering fascination that dry, long-winded history had for me. Perhaps it was that so much time had passed since I had read any book. Perhaps it was the pictures of cloudy mountains and twisting rivers that rewakened the desire to wander in far places that always slept in me. Or perhaps the amazing people I could be while smoking meat and making soap.

  One day I was the tyrant Shih Huang Ti, who built the Great Wall and burned the great books and in the end was laid to rest on a bronze map of the empire flowing with rivers of quicksilver. I ruled my brood with a strong hand that day and demanded of Mike an accounting of his actions as sternly as any monarch interviewing his chief general.

  And the next day I might be a Taoist priest or a young beauty from Szechwan waiting to be married to the Crown Prince. But most of all I enjoyed playing the life of Yang Kuei-fei, a "sub-verter of Empires," a charmer of princes, whose feet were washed by the Emperor, whose candy was fetched by an army from the other end of China, whose parrot was buried in a silver casket to the accompaniment of Buddhist hymns.

  I was working fourteen hours a day, and it made it easier to fancy myself a silken favorite lounging in the royal summer pavilion and scattering jewelry on the floor that my courtiers might help adorn me.

  I hummed Mary Aroon to sleep with a patchwork tune which I pretended was Yang Kuei-fei's own song. "The Rainbow Skirt and Feather Jacket," but which in truth sounded much like the "Londonderry Air" with bits of "Killarney."

  It was my delight to imagine that outside my bedroom window spread the gardens of the Emperor's summer palace. The rustling of the wind was to me the noise of the artificial brooks winding through a conventionalized landscape of miniature hills, set with marble benches and carved stone birds. The tall pines were stately pagodas, and Lesser Slave Lake was covered by lotus flowers. I was Yang Kuei-fei, imperial concubine, jeweled and scented, dressed in rich silks, surrounded by musicians and lantern-bearers, supping on jade-tinted fish, and casually listening to my praises sung by the revered poet Li Po. This Li Po gaily defrauded out of his due measure of rare wine granted him by the Emperor. As reward for his verses, Li Po was to have two-score cups of the treasured imperial cordial, unbelievably ancient, and the color of peacock's eyes. I, Kuei-fei, gave the cellarer a jewel-encrusted false-bottomed cup to measure out the wine with. Li Po received only two-thirds of his due, and I appropriated the rest for the delectation of myself and my Mongol lover, An Lushan.

  One night Mike asked me why I was so abstracted. Or to be more exact, he said, "Come out of that daze, Kathy." I didn't dare confess my double life, but I told him the story of Yang Kuei-fei, hoping that it would charm him as it had charmed me. Mike only laughed.

  "Kathy, it's a great career you'd have had on the stage if you'd stayed in Boston. When you talk about China, you almost make me believe those people are your relatives and close friends." He put his arms around me. "Surely it's not so serious that they buried the white parrot, that tears have to come into your eyes."

  "But I—I mean Yang Kuei-fei loved it so much. It's sad, isn't it?"

  Mike shook his head. "Try as I can," he chuckled, "I just can't work up a tear over a fifteen-hundred-years-dead parrot, white, black, blue, or yellow. What really interested me was that trick with the wine cup. Now that explains a lot." He winked at me and lit his pipe.

  "That explains what?" I said after a while, knowing that I would have to ask him.

  "Well," Mike said, "Irish Bill down at the Hudson's Bay store gives four cups of sugar for a beaver skin. Now, all of a sudden, lames McTavish is offering the Indians seven cups. I thought it was kind of generous of him, but now ... I would like to take a look at the bottom of that McTavish cup."

  "There!" I said. "That shows. It's not so different, after all, China and Grouard. People are really the same everywhere. McTavish's cup isn't covered with jewels, but I'll bet it has the same kind of false bottom as Kuei-fei's cup."

  "Which goes to show . . . ?"

  "Which goes to show that people are the same all over the world, and that as far as actions and feelings are concerned, there isn't much difference between here and there, and that I wasn't so silly imagining myself in China."

  "It doesn't show that at all, kitten," Mike said. "It only shows that James McTavish read the book before you did, and"—Mike grinned—"he got more out of it."

  The children were in bed. Mike was laying out his favorite game of solitaire. He never won it. It was the kind where you lay out the deck three cards at a time, suits are built down in the array and up on the aces, and only the bottom card of each triplet is movable. I glanced from the picture on the cards, a lady with a lunch basket standing in front of a bicycle, back to a reproduction in the Chinese history. I'd finished the book a couple of nights before, but I was still acting the people and their lives, repeating the strange beautiful names. This morning, while I brushed my hair in front of the mirror, I pushed my eyelids slightly up and back. I didn't look Chinese, of course, with my red hair and blue eyes, but I did look exotic, maybe Mongol.

  Genghis Khan had red hair and Kubilai, his grandson, who ruled Cathay, had blue eyes.

  I looked down again at the book. It was a painting, white against black. At the bottom, in print it said: "A Reproduction— The Sung Period—Attributed to Li Lung-mien." This picture wasn't new to me. I knew what it was about, a mountain waterfall. Just rock and water and a tenacious tree that grew from the rocks. Up the grade a man climbed. You didn't see him at first. He wasn't important. He blended with the scene, his back humping into the shape of the rocks around him. He was like the tree too. H
is fingers clung to a staff, and the tree's roots clawed into the earth, but the brush strokes were the same, a clinging to life. Yet the man didn't stand out, he was part of things.

  I couldn't have the picture because it was in the McTavish's book. But I looked around the walls, imagining where I'd put it if I did have it. I saw that over the table was a magazine illustration of a fat baby. Sometime or other I must have tacked it up there. I didn't like it any more. I didn't like the pink and blue cover it lay on. I didn't like the yellow curls and the doll-like face. I got up, took down the picture, and threw it in the stove. Mike looked up from his card game.

  "I got tired of it," I said. I stood at his shoulder a minute, watching.

  "If I could only get that jack out. Look at that, the ten of diamonds in the middle, and I can't free the jack."

  "I don't know why you play that game, Mike. You always get mad."

  "If I could only get rid of that five of clubs."

  I saw he couldn't, so I walked back and picked up the book again. Only I didn't look at the picture. Not yet. I was a sage, a philosopher. I looked with satisfaction at the bare wall. I was austere in my tastes. I owned this print in the McTavish's book. No, I owned the original. My good friend Li Lung-mien, the poet-painter, had given it to me. I kept it wrapped in a parchment scroll. I took it out only to contemplate it. I turned the book over, only allowing myself to look at the abstract beauty of individual brush strokes.

  There was a curious sound at the door. Someone was pushing at it, hitting it with bare hands. Mike opened it. Wiya-sha stood there.

  "Sergeant Mike," she said, "my baby sick. My baby choke."

  The history of China fell shut in my lap. The woman stood outside, waiting; little sobbing breaths came from her. I brought Mike's jacket and coat.

  "The gloves are in the pocket."

  He nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Don't wait up."

  He brushed his lips quickly across mine and followed Wiya-sha into the night.

  I hated these nights when pain and death took Mike away: sickness, a woman stolen, or a man shot. The shadows from the fire seemed longer, darker, they moved more violently, I didn't want to sleep until Mike was beside me. I moved around making things tidy and straight. I scrubbed a kettle. I set out the breakfast things. When there was nothing left to do, I undressed, folding my clothes over the chair. I went quietly into the children's room. They slept soundly, Ralph with his mouth slightly open. I was worried about that. I hoped he didn't have adenoids. He was a handsome little fellow. He had Mike's dark hair. But Mary Aroon was the real beauty. I just hoped the freckles on her nose would go away by the time she was grown up. I thought of Wiya-sha, of her sick baby. Thank God my two were healthy; they had never been sick.