Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  And it was in that moment that he’d first seen a shade pass through his mind’s eye, drawing down the wolf’s soul as Long-Tooth’s spirit grew dimmer as if clouded by a morning mist. In less than an hour the wolf had stopped breathing. TJ and his mother had stood and stepped closer, peering over to see.

  “He’s gone,” she’d whispered. The wolf’s eyes were open but not seeing, lips slack with no expression.

  “Yeah, Ma. He is.”

  * * *

  “I’m worried about you, Ma.” TJ set down his keys and travel mug, crossing his arms as he stepped closer, brushing off what he’d seen.

  “Waste of time,” she said, tucked beneath a wool blanket though it was early September. “Worry more about your wolf brothers.”

  He’d squatted to eye-level, not believing her.

  The suit pants cut deeper into his belly. He pulled at the waistband to no avail as it pinched his skin. His mother always said he was built just like his father without the lean torso of her family. Charlotte had suggested the suit would give him an air of authority which only made him laugh.

  “If that was the case,” he’d told her, “I’d have started wearing suits a year ago.” The presence of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) was pro forma. Months before the vote, the Wisconsin legislature and courts had already made up their minds to delist wolves as endangered long before they’d talked to biologists or he’d submitted his executive summary about Wisconsin wolves. It was a political, not a scientific, decision.

  “You don’t look good, Ma,” he said and reached to touch her brow.

  “I’m fine.” She pulled away. “Go or you’ll be late.”

  He was tempted to call Jimmy, tell him to go on to Madison alone. Yet they’d all agreed he gave the most professional and impassioned presentation. He was good at explaining empirical research in laymen’s terms of how reinstating a wolf hunt would increase the number of wolves, not decrease it. Culling would be destructive for the future health and family structure, not to mention the genetics of existing wolf packs. There were so many other ways to prevent depredation of livestock other than slaughter. He’d seen ranchers employ fences and herding dogs, but many were lazy. More country dogs were killed each week by cars than annually by wolves. And there was generous financial compensation from the State of Wisconsin if the death of a calf or a hunting dog could be reported as a wolf depredation. TJ knew that many animals died as the result of negligent or bad animal husbandry, or due to a long, tough winter. Some hunters who trained dogs to attack bears lost their animals in the course of a hunt. But it was easier and more lucrative to blame wolves for everything.

  “Ma.” TJ shook her shoulder. He blinked hard several times, trying to talk himself out of having seen the shade.

  “What?” Gloria brushed his hand away but then sat up and looked to the window as if a bird had collided. “You hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That.” She turned with an odd smile.

  He clicked open the sliding door and stepped out onto the deck, ready to fight off anyone or anything coming for his mother. But his stomach squeezed like driving over the steep ravine on Highway K, knowing he had no such power.

  Scanning around the meadow where they’d seen Long-Tooth six years earlier, he saw nothing. Just the same birch, cedar, and a few maple trees along the forest edge but no intruders, no Windigo spirits—just swallows chasing off a cooper’s hawk—a leftover vendetta from earlier that spring after it had made off with one of their newly hatched chicks.

  Back inside TJ shut and locked the sliding door, which he never did, and tested it several times.

  “I’ll call from the road.”

  “I know.”

  “Better pick up or I’m calling Delbert,” he threatened again, trying to sound menacing, but she didn’t take the bait.

  Bending down again onto one knee, TJ scooted closer.

  “Mom—.” He wanted to say something but didn’t know what, wanted to tell her something but it was feelings more than words.

  “You’ve always been a good boy.” Gloria touched the side of his face, which was smooth and freshly shaven. By the time he’d get back that evening, the outline of a beard would be visible once again like his father’s.

  Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused; he fought the memory of Long-Tooth.

  Feeling shy and awkward, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. He hadn’t kissed her since being small enough to fit in her lap. Her skin was cool to the touch, cooler than the air temperature.

  “I’m calling Charlotte to come home,” he said.

  Then he hugged her. She yielded, just a skeleton in his husky frame. Her bones felt like they’d snap with the slightest pressure. When had she become so thin?

  “I’ll call you later,” he said into her hair.

  Another thing he’d never said when leaving the house.

  Gloria’s eyes were fixed on the window.

  “Mom.” He tried to get her attention. “Ma.”

  She didn’t turn around.

  “I’ll call after the vote,” he assured and then stood, not wanting to leave.

  Then he walked toward the front door and stopped. Holding his keys and travel mug, he turned to see the back of his mother’s head.

  * * *

  Two days later while standing graveside, TJ was dry-eyed, wearing the same wrinkled suit from the drive to Madison, feeling choked up with emotion.

  Charlotte had found Gloria not long after he’d left. He’d phoned her at work after his mother hadn’t answered. Unlike Long-Tooth, his mother had died alone in her chair and it ate at him. No matter how many times he’d confessed it to Charlotte, it brought no relief. He’d seen the shade, should have stayed with her, held her hand, called an ambulance; been with her as they’d sat with Long-Tooth.

  “Maybe she didn’t want it that way, Niinimooshe,” Charlotte said. “Her way of showing how much she loved you.”

  He glanced at her.

  “You know, maybe she knew she couldn’t leave you and wanted to protect you; was afraid she’d ask you to come along,” Charlotte offered. “Knew you’d never say no.”

  And while he didn’t believe in the old ways, it felt true. The spirits of dying people often reached out to those dearest to accompany them on the journey.

  What she said only partly offset the badness of his feelings, grateful that Gloria would never know the outcome of the vote.

  * * *

  Passage of Act 169 had set into motion the first wolf hunt since 1940, which at the time had all but eradicated the wolf population in Wisconsin. He’d spent the afternoon arguing to preserve the integrity of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, but in the end it seemed the legislature had little integrity in which to appeal. The DNR had set an arbitrary number of 201 wolves to be “harvested,” as they so innocuously called it, which meant trapped and killed by permit in the coming hunting season, some to be torn apart while still alive by hunting dogs once the animal was trapped in a snare.

  “Can’t eat ’em,” TJ had gushed with contempt in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison as he hurried toward the exit after Charlotte’s call. “Might as well charbroil your golden retrievers.” His voice boomed against the marble walls in the legislative chamber.

  Two capitol police officers, who’d been leaning against the wall anticipating protesters, moved into position.

  “Shame on all of you.” TJ pointed to the liberal legislators who’d gone along. “Especially you.”

  The one police officer touched his arm but TJ pulled away.

  “Don’t bother, I’m leaving.” He’d shook them off, walking out on his own from the legislative session.

  * * *

  Charlotte had gone against his mother’s insistence on a secular funeral. And while he’d trusted that his wife had her reasons, believing that Gloria’s spirit would finally be at peace, he had to laugh, wondering if his mother might come back to haunt her.

>   TJ and his cousin Marvin had cleaned and dressed his mother’s body the night before the funeral by wrapping her in strips of white birch bark taken from nearby trees. It was believed that birch trees were sacred, protecting the newly passed from harm in the spirit world.

  He and his sons had carefully removed only the outer layer of the bark so as not to harm the tree. And while his mother had not been keen on the old ways, nonetheless he and Marvin had wrapped his mother’s body, saying prayers before placing her in the simple wooden box for burial.

  Marvin had cried but TJ couldn’t. It felt too much like he’d just declared war.

  Later that morning while standing graveside, 201 wolf hearts were beating in his as he watched his mother’s body being lowered. They’d lived, loved, and run through deep snow in the dense woods of northern Wisconsin, unaware that bounties had been placed on their heads. Unbeknownst to them, they’d be trapped, shot, and killed by March of next year within artificial borders created and imposed by humans. All for the bragging rights of those who’d wanted nothing more than to say that they’d “bagged a wolf” and by those misguided conversationalists who’d declared that by “killing the wolves you’d save them.” He’d heard the same battle cry not more than two generations before of “You have to start a war to end a war.”

  Snares would be set in designated off-reservation areas, where wolves would be caught by the leg, sometimes the face, howling in pain for their families to come help, with the pack coming, panicky, clawing at the trap, which drew more pain and suffering to the wolf, and finally sitting with the trapped member, bringing the wolf food and company until the end. Powerless to help them, to free them, their hearts breaking in their powerlessness—as they watch their pack mates linger for days with festering leg wounds, sometimes snared by their faces as their mates would lie alongside and suffering with them until the trapper showed, swollen with pride just to put a bullet in the wolf’s scull and carry it off. TJ knew well how the dirty business of trophy hunting and trapping worked—the mythology of it often silenced critics, but he knew the specifics and true economics of it.

  The 201 hunting permits were snatched up by the time he’d even reached Lake Superior the day of the ruling. And while wolf hunting was prohibited on Indian lands, it was open season in the national forests and on private lands that bordered the reservations on every side—a yearling steps foot over a reservation boundary into the Chequamegon forest, a hunter raises a scope. And TJ even knew of a few on the reservation who’d secretly bragged about wanting nothing more than to bag a wolf, to assume the power of an apex predator, the most sacred of all animals to their people.

  * * *

  The day before the funeral, Charlotte had sent TJ and their two grown sons, Gavin and Skye, into the woods behind their house in search of a downed birch with which to build his mother’s Spirit House. Spirit Houses were placed over the gravesite and left to stand as long as the intended spirit needed them. After many winters they’d collapse and were not rebuilt. It was believed to be a sign that a person had completed the journey and were left as grave markers.

  He and his sons were prepared to hike around for the better part of the morning but not far from the house TJ almost tripped over a downed birch.

  “Huh.” TJ stopped and set his hands on his hips. Leaning over he felt the shaggy bark as if to assure himself that he wasn’t seeing things, surprised he hadn’t noticed the tree before. He peeled part of the bark to feel the wood underneath. “Not sure when this one blew down,” he said, looking up at the surrounding trees, puzzled.

  Both his sons looked too.

  “Well I’ll be a son-of-a-gun, this tree’s been here a while.” He looked up at Gavin then at Skye, who were both dead ringers for his wife’s side of the family. The tree was in plain sight of the breakfast nook where he and Charlotte had had coffee every morning for the past twenty-five years.

  “Maybe you just didn’t notice it,” Gavin said.

  “Maybe I just didn’t notice it,” TJ repeated, knowing that such a large tree within plain sight would have been obvious.

  The three of them stood around for a few moments, looking at fall’s burnished ferns surrounded by an assortment of red, orange, and yellow fallen leaves that glowed from beneath rather than being lit from above.

  “So what do you think, Dad?” Skye said.

  “Let’s get this sucker up.” His voice strained as he bent over to lift it and gauge the heaviness of the trunk. For Spirit Houses you needed a whole tree, not just part of it since it was believed that a person’s spirit would embody a tree with which it had an affinity.

  They bent over and lifted. TJ paused and then let go of the trunk, straightening up to rest his hands on the spot where his back met his hips.

  His sons looked at him.

  “Put it down.”

  They looked at each other.

  “You okay, Dad?” Gavin asked.

  “Yeah,” he said and sat down on the log. “Let’s just sit here a moment.” Memories of Gloria, of his father rushed through him. Their story had haunted every corner of his life, like the incessant eerie hum of spring peeper frogs singing in the low-lying areas of Superior where manoomin, or wild rice, grew. Their otherworldly songs sounded as if laced with human voices, at other times with the sound of ringing bells. Such was the sadness that had enveloped TJ for the past fifty-seven years since his father had left. And just as the frogs would come out of hibernation sometime in March as soon as the coldhearted waters of Superior thawed enough for them to begin their alien and otherworldly songs, March was also the month when darkness would envelop, bundling him in a heaviness that was impossible to shake. Sometimes not until fall’s first snowflakes would it lift.

  March was a month for many things.

  TJ rested his head in his hands as he sat on the log.

  3

  Amelia pulled into her driveway that evening and sat, looking up at the burgundy clapboard siding. Better call a Realtor before the paint starts peeling. It was anyone’s guess as to how long that might be. There was probably enough in her checking account to cover next month’s mortgage but that was probably it. If only she’d been better at saving money.

  Her chest bones cracked back into place as she sighed. The Revolution House, as Alex had named it, could have been paid off by now. But multiple lines of credit and second mortgages to cover her son’s undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell had created a perpetual mortgage that had grown larger than the current value of the home.

  The Jeep door felt heavy as Amelia pushed it open and climbed out. Grabbing her purse and bag from the back, she lugged her gear down the cobblestone path, teetering on the familiar contours as she approached the front door. The house was dark. She hated coming home to a dark house. Usually she left a light on before leaving for the lab, but had forgotten.

  The streetlamp across the way reflected off the tiny square windowpanes, making the house seem darker.

  On the drive home she’d called her son, Alex. His voice mail kicked in.

  “It’s Mom, call me.” She’d always leave the same message and then chuckle to herself, like he wouldn’t remember who she was.

  Alex had a serious girlfriend as well a new job as a marine biologist working at the University of Vancouver. She understood the missed callbacks, lag between phone calls as evidence of his new life.

  Stepping up to the front door, she fumbled the key into the dead bolt, unlocking it just as her phone rang. She looked. The snapshot of Alex sticking out his tongue at her on a dive in Narragansett Bay illuminated the screen.

  Amelia sat down on the front step facing the streetlamp and leaned back against the Revolution House’s two-hundred-year-old door.

  She answered.

  “Hi.”

  “Mom.” His voice dropped. “Your message.”

  What about it?

  “Your voice scared me,” he said. “I didn’t recognize it.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s not go
od, sweetie.” She wasn’t aware of sounding different. “I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t.

  “It’s gotta be a mistake.”

  The NSF didn’t make mistakes, everybody knew that.

  She couldn’t speak.

  “You’re not bullshitting me this time, are you?”

  “I wish.” Her throat gripped in pain. A few times a year they’d play practical jokes on each other, waiting until the memory of the last had worn off. Once in April, early on in the lab’s history, Amelia had begun to pack up equipment, explaining to Jen and Bryce that a different funding source had dried up and they were forced to close up. Both believed her for a few moments until “Ha-ha, April Fools,” Amelia had said with her shit-eating grin. Jen had gotten so furious that she’d chased Amelia around the bench in a fury, swatting at her with lab goggles until Bryce calmed her down. They were ten years younger then and were legendary for joking and betting. Often they’d switch labels on each other’s solutions that were used in routine experiments.

  “I’m telling you, Mom, they made a mistake,” Alex repeated.

  If only. “Doubt it.”

  “I’ll call Anna, my principal investigator,” he said. “She’s sat on the U.S. Appropriations Committee before. Maybe she can make a few calls tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday, sweetie.”

  “I-I’ll fly out,” Alex offered. “Take time off.”

  “No,” she said. “Let’s save it for Christmas.” It was an expensive flight.

  The NSF denial wasn’t personal—political but not personal. The field was trending in a different direction. And while she’d written the new grant differently, trying to catch the current fascination with male pregnancy in sea horses by focusing on the brain chemistry of paternal gestation, she’d missed it. It was as simple as that.

  “Don’t give up, Mom,” he urged.

  What did that even mean?

  “I’m okay, sweetie, really.” Of course she wasn’t.

  Yet somewhere along the line she’d lost heart. She’d felt it. Said nothing to anyone, went through the motions—worked day and night to prepare the grant application while feeling like something was different—different from all the other renewal cycles. Those had left her sleepless and terrified. This was quiet. Even after the excitement from the ship-to-shore call from the Ocean Explorer that vindicated her theory of a deep-water sea horse migration in winter, the news hadn’t been enough to counter that sinking feeling.