Wolf, No Wolf

by Peter Bowen

  “What good?”

  “You always asking me what you to do, never us,” said Benetsee. “Pretty dumb, you are.”

  “Hey!” said Cousin LeBlanc, “You tune that fiddle, yes, we play them paddle songs, pack carry songs, you know the one about the bet, carry them pack on the portage?”

  I grow up to I’m three I know it, Du Pré thought, how many hundred-pound packs the voyageur carry, huh? Three, sometimes four, but this song they say they carry ten, half a ton, roll home on their balls, I guess.

  The strong portageur.

  Du Pré pulled on the new strings to stretch them, ran the blob of rosin over the finger lengths. He tuned, sending the strings far sharp and letting them down to pitch.

  Cousin Beauharne began to pick bass lines, Cousin LeBlanc let the bellows out, Du Pré fiddled. A young couple, Métis, Du Pré didn’t know them, got out on the floor and began to dance, heel and toe, the old tapping.

  We do that, the buffalo robes pegged on the ground. The decks of the little ships bring us first here, some say we were in that Gulf of St. Lawrence by 1200, maybe. Running from them damn priests and tax gatherers. Lot of cabin foundations all over the north Rockies go so far back the Cheyennes, they was still in Iowa raising pumpkins and corn.

  Pretty old music, pretty old blood.

  I go to Brittany sometime.

  The song ended. LeBlanc and Beauharne looked at Du Pré. Gabriel drew one long note out of his fiddle and then he started a lament, one the voyageurs sang, about the women they had left behind who weren’t pulling on the rope to help them back; they were sparking with the soldiers who never left the fort.

  Maybe even not building them canoe so tight for their voyageurs, so that the canoe come apart, the Big Rapids, the voyageurs they drown. All the voyageur hearts in a big brass kettle, lost at the foot of the rapids, their souls like smoke underwater, forever reaching for and never rising to the light.

  Pretty tough times.

  More people got out on the dance floor. The young couple put arms across the shoulders of others who wanted to learn and taught them the steps quarter-time. Everybody laughed, everybody danced.

  Du Pré looked up to see Jacqueline and Raymond come in. His daughter pregnant again, this would be the last, though, the doctor said. It would be twelve. She had two sets of twins.

  But she laughed and she danced with her Raymond and Du Pré felt very proud, he looked at her and played one song just for her and everyone else stopped dancing but Raymond and Jacqueline.

  Du Pré was running sweat. He stopped and wiped his face and set his fiddle down. LeBlanc and Beauharne went on, moving the tempo up a little every third bar. The choruses rounded and backed together.

  Du Pré made his way to the bar. Madelaine was sitting on a stool, smiling like a June bride.

  “It is my Du Pré,” she said, “my Gabriel, not the old grouch, always mumbling, himself. Ah. You have not forgot to play that fiddle. Give my Du Pré a good red shirt and some whiskey and he will play that fiddle, hah.”

  Du Pré grinned. He looked down the bar and saw Bart behind it, pulling beers and mixing drinks. Harvey Wallace was at the far end, wearing jeans and boots today, smiling.

  Du Pré had some whiskey and a cigarette.

  He went back up to the bandstand and he picked up his fiddle and he fiddled a fisher’s jig. The Métis were great fishermen. Pull them pike up, split them and smoke them, get them salmon and them big trout.

  LeBlanc and Beauharne put down their instruments.

  Old Benetsee shuffled up to the stage and he sat down on the front of it and he pulled a fresh-made willow flute from his jacket and he blew into it softly for a few moments, his gnarled old fingers seeking out the holes.

  He played. It was a tune like no other that Du Pré had ever heard, the scale strange, the rhythm deep and turning round and the notes soft and piercing all at once.

  The old man’s face was shadowed underneath his stained old hat. The red willow stem stuck down. His fingers rose and clamped again and the crowd sat silent, transfixed, breathing softly if at all.

  I have never heard this old man do this, Du Pré thought, how much else is buried deep within him? I don’t even know how old he is.

  I do not know.

  He has sometimes made me very angry.

  I might as well be angry at the Red River.

  Shadows or the ghosts of buffalo.

  Old blood.

  Help me.

  Chapter 32

  “WE JUST FLAT MAY never know at all,” said Bart.

  Harvey Wallace sipped his coffee and he blew out a long stream of blue smoke from his mouth. He set his pipe down in the ashtray.

  “Could be,” he said, “but you put enough glue around, your fly steps in it. Except for one thing. This isn’t a crime done by just one person for just one reason. Those fool kids came out here and stepped right down into the crack between the old time and the new. Angela Green keeps making speeches damning what her family’s done for six generations, and they still send her three grand a month. So go figure. I can’t indict indulgent parents.”

  “Is it really true that that fool Governor had a bear killed over west of Glacier? Flown here and dumped so he could claim the bear that ate the folks killed in the avalanche had been killed?”

  “I don’t even need to check,” said Harvey Wallace. “It’s true. I know in my bones. I know in my dick. I know it better than my own name. I have worked in government service lo these many years and I tell you this is true.”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré, “that Old Black Claws he is gone, sure. I miss him, he used to come round, I am up there, see who I am. A gentleman. Other’n he eat ol’ Jimmy Moore’s big dray horse that one time.”

  “Huh?” said Bart.

  “You were…uh…not here,” said Du Pré. “When them grizzly are all protected, the federal government, one time, Old Black Claws he is much hungry, he come down in the late spring, climb the fence, old Moore’s horse pasture, drive his big Percheron stud into the corner, break his neck, one swipe of his paw.”

  Du Pré took a drag of his smoke.

  “Old Jimmy, he is looking out the window, he see this, he cuss some awful, pull on his boots, go to get his rifle, shoot that bear. Jimmy’s wife, she say, no, you can’t shoot that bear, big trouble, put you in jail. You call them Fish and Game.”

  “Hoo boy,” said Harvey Wallace.

  “So Jimmy he does and they are not there, phone ring, finally he get some kid who say, ‘Are you sure it is a grizzly?’

  “Jimmy, he say yes, he know what a grizzly is. Kid says, ‘You sure it kill your horse? Your horse didn’t just die, that bear eating it, helping clean up?’

  “Jimmy, he say a bunch of things before he tear the phone out of the wall and then he get his gun but by then Old Black Claws, he has dragged the stud horse through the fence and up the canyon and so Jimmy he just shrug and say, ‘Well, I guess that old bastard was hungry.’ ”

  “Jesus,” said Bart.

  “Yeah,” said Harvey Wallace, “kid must have watched that dumb TV show, the one with the bear eats soybeans or something.”

  “But why,” said Bart, “would Black Claws just up and leave? Benetsee said he went north? So, how’d he get the idea?”

  Du Pré shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  Booger Tom stomped through the front door and back through the living room to the kitchen where the three younger men were sitting.

  “Goddamn lawn forcement,” he said. “Ever’ time I turn round there’s another one a ya spoilsports. When do the preachers start stampedin’ in? The company around here gets lower and lower.”

  “We were talking about lynching someone, for the practice,” said Bart. “Watch your damn mouth.”

  “Any a you geniuses figger out who done all of this yet?” said Booger Tom. “Or I got to do that for you, too?”

  The phone rang. Bart picked it up, listened, hung up after saying only “Christ, yeah, right ther
e.”

  “What?” said Harvey.

  “Oh, one of my good upstanding local citizens is holed up in his machine shed, armed to the teeth, while two of your guys, Harvey, are crouched behind their car pointing guns at the guy in the shed while he points a gun at them. Mexican standoff, but I think we had better haul ass.”

  “Who?” said Harvey. “What are my guys doing there, anyway?”

  “Asking questions,” said Bart, moving for the door.

  “That does it,” said Harvey. “I’ll just have them mail out questionnaires from now on, prepared confessions.”

  Du Pré laughed.

  “My guys won’t shoot unless they get shot at,” said Harvey.

  “Not comforting,” said Bart.

  “Where are they?” said Du Pré.

  “Well,” said Bart, “Benny Klein is in his machine shed and the two FBI guys are behind their car. Susan is in the house, watching. She’s so pissed I think when the FBI guys leave Benny will stay barricaded in there anyway.”

  Du Pré drove them rapidly toward Benny’s. It wasn’t that far. He turned in the driveway and saw the light blue government motor-pool car and the two agents crouched behind it.

  Bart and Harvey got out and sauntered up to the agents.

  “Benny!” Bart yelled. “Cut the crap and come on out. Jesus Christ, man, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “I wanna be on Sixty Minutes,” said Benny. He emerged from the shed in a filthy coverall, carrying a steel box wrench. “They hollered, I come out of the shed here with my Magnum wrench in hand, and they go for their guns and I dive back in the shop and here I am. Wanna have me tighten down your fucking gaskets, you morons?” He glared at the agents, who looked at the ground.

  “Magnum what?” said Bart.

  “The box wrench,” said Benny. “Look, I don’t blame them. Everybody here is wound about nine cranks too tight, you know. Susan is in the house there, probably got a bead drawn on their heads.”

  “Yes!” said Susan, from behind the paint shed, fifteen feet from the government car. She stepped out, carrying a pump sawed-off shotgun.

  “I think that I go down the bar, have a drink,” said Du Pré. “You know it is pretty bad when the former Sheriff and his wife, they are about to declare war on the U.S. government.”

  “Former Sheriff,” sighed Harvey Wallace.

  “Damn it,” said one of the agents, “it was all a mistake. I saw the flash of metal and I dove.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Benny. “I wasn’t thinking how scared you are of wrenches. All this is going to lead to is some more folks getting killed, Bart. Nobody’s gonna get nowhere but us who lives here. Nowhere.”

  “OK, guys,” said Harvey Wallace, “go pull in your fellow agents. Pack it in, head for Billings, do it right now. I’ll call you later. Don’t even go back to check and see the door’s latched.”

  “Suits me,” said the other agent. “This is bullshit.”

  They drove off.

  “My job just showed the first signs of creeping death,” said Harvey Wallace. “I now have to tell my superiors that our best course of action is to leave. They will not like it, but it is so.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Bart.

  “I, uh, never learned that the toes you step on today may be connected to the ass you need to kiss tomorrow,” said Harvey. “And I believe that you have a means of getting to the Attorney General of the United States. Bart? It is a matter of life and death.”

  “I’ll call lawyer Charles Foote,” said Bart. “Tell him either get you guys out of here or he has to come here himself.”

  “He hates it that much?” said Harvey.

  “He likes to say so,” said Bart. He walked off with his telephone.

  “Get them all out of here, I hope,” said Du Pré. “I think sometime the whole air gone crazy, all you got to do is breathe it and you are nuts.”

  “That kind of time,” said Harvey.

  “Angela Green,” said Du Pré.

  “Only hope,” said Harvey, “you get that little girl to sing a nice clear song and we are someplace. Not, forget it. It’s the Martins and their allies, whoever, a few rich ranchers to the north. You know how I know that? Poor folks make threats; rich folks do things and smile. That’s all, folks.”

  Poor folks act like people, rich folks act like governments, thought Du Pré. Damn, I thought that my own self.

  “She ain’t in my jurisdiction,” said Bart, “and I think the next Sheriff over is in on all this, anyway.”

  “Probably,” said Harvey.

  “Christ,” said Bart.

  “Yeah,” said Harvey, “this is a dog, sure enough. All kinds of leads but they don’t go anywhere. Funny thing about conspiracies like this, what with our system of civil liberties and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s almost impossible to break one of ’em.”

  “What about the Mafia?” said Du Pré.

  “Idiots,” said Harvey. “They’d make more money driving trucks.”

  “Angela Green,” said Bart.

  “All you got,” said Harvey.

  “What exactly have you got?” said Bart.

  “Come look at it,” said Harvey, “but you just never tell anyone I let you peek at it.”

  Chapter 33

  “I AM NEEDING YOUR help, old man,” yelled Du Pré.

  He sat down and waited for the old man to come.

  Some shit, this, I don’t believe, me, one minute that Harvey Weasel Fat gone away all nice. But Benetsee say that the killing is all through, there will be no more. I don’t understand what he mean, I never have till later. What he say only make sense looking back.

  I want to maybe ride horses with my Madelaine, go up in the Wolf Mountains, see maybe my grandfather’s ghost, find some place there is a tree that shouldn’t grow there. Look at them old mine, where someone hoped till their money it was all gone. That little place high up on Toussaint Peak, where the turquoise lies all around, chunks of it, some dark green, some blue, some almost white.

  I wonder what just shoved them Wolf Mountains right up out of the plains, it is down there, though. Got very big shoulders, it.

  I dream now, I am out in the snow forever on a piss-flat plain, me a little black thing struggling through the deep snow toward the horizon, flat white line, not even any damn wind, just me and nothing at all.

  Maybe this is why them voyageur songs, they are all mostly sad. The ones for dancing with your women, they are not sad, but the others they are, long haul in the canoe for the Here Before Christ, them Hudson’s Bay Company bastards.

  Long time, much blood, we fight a war there, Selkirk Colony, we fight a war here now, and there is sadness. All them people dead and their parents crying for them and they don’t understand.

  Me, my Jacqueline, my Maria, Madelaine, they are dead I will not understand either.

  Some shit, this.

  Them damn dead fools they stay home they be alive and still be fools.

  Piss me off. All of it.

  Got good reasons break the law, it is still a broken law.

  Du Pré wandered back to his Rover, fished around under the seat, pulled out a fifth of whiskey. He had a slug and looked up at the Wolfs, the snow on the peaks. The wind had changed and it was blowing down from them, thick with fresh pine.

  I dream of flowers growing out of the eye pits of skulls, I dream of bears under the ice and snow, I dream of wolf cubs stolen and raised in cages, far from the north where they are free.

  I dream of young fools knowing for a few seconds maybe how little time they had to live.

  They would have been surprised. They would not have believed it.

  Us people we do not believe in death. That is something, it happen to other people.

  He rolled a cigarette. Far off down the road there was the jangling whine of a VW engine. It came closer. It slowed.

  An old VW bus, painted with ordinary house paint, the usual peace symbols and slogans.

  A long-haired young
man got out. He waved limply to Du Pré and he walked up the drive to the Rover, round it, and he walked up to Du Pré and around him and on to the porch and he banged hard on the old door.

  Du Pré looked off at the middle distance.

  “Hey, man,” the longhair said, “you know where the shaman is?”

  “At the dentist’s,” said Du Pré, “get a tooth pulled.”

  “Oh,” said the longhair. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the other shaman,” said Du Pré. “My teeth, they are all right.”

  “Oh, yeah, cool,” said the longhair. “Lissen, I want to go on a vision quest, you dig, and I wanted to see the shaman, you know.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Du Pré.

  “This is Benjamin Medicine Eagle’s place, right?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Du Pré, “but he is not here. I maybe can help you.”

  “Cool,” said the longhair. “I mean, I don’t know where the fucking butte is, man, where I got to go for the vision.”

  “It is up that canyon,” said Du Pré, pointing up toward a cut in the flanks of the Wolfs. “Not very big.”

  Big thunderstorm coming in, just hit the mountains, though, thought Du Pré, big one, hit maybe two hours.

  It was a nice warm day.

  “Listen,” said Du Pré, pulling up a handful of dried fallow grass, “you take this up that canyon, you see a little butte right ahead of you, you get on top and light this sweet grass, very holy grass, lie down, wait there. Maybe all night, next day, next night, too.”

  “Yeah,” said the longhair, “I know it’s tough. I seen Dances with Wolves ten times, you know.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Du Pré. He had laughed so hard at the wrong times that the manager of the theater in Billings threw him out.

  Good thing, too, me, I don’t sometime like them Sioux, but that movie, pretty insulting, you know. Make them look like a bunch of idiots, no blood to them either.

  “You can’t wear no white-man stuff,” said Du Pré, “no blankets. You got any furs, your truck there?”

  “Furs are cruel,” said the longhair.

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “I give you my blessing. You got to hurry now, you know, you aren’t there before the sun is off that peak there, you got to wait till tomorrow.”