Beth studies her nails, which she painted a glossy gold only two days ago but are already chipped, thanks to her hours of hauling wood. “Yes. Of course. How’s she doing?”
“Not good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Beth searches for what to say next. “I wish we could warn Rin that Tariq’s coming. I don’t want her taking potshots at him. You have her number?”
“No, but don’t worry. I’m sure not even Rin Drummond would shoot a kid.”
“Are they gone, Mommy?” Juney says when Rin returns from chasing off the boys. Juney is standing in the kitchen with a tiny red trowel in her hand, the toy one Rin gave her when she was three. It touches Rin that Juney would choose her babyhood spade to dig a grave.
“Yeah. It was just a couple of kids. You okay?”
“’Course I’m okay. Can we bury Hiccup now?”
“Sure, if you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
“That’s my girl.”
Juney picks up her cane and follows Rin to the empty bird feeder pole, where they settle onto the damp ground and dig in silence, scooping out a tidy, if muddy, grave the shape and size of a shoe box. Rin is just wondering whether to raise the subject of the storm again, see if Juney needs to talk any more about it, when Juney breaks into another of her songs, giving it a lullaby tune while she rocks the rhythm over the mouse-gray corpse in her lap.
“Rest, little kitty, rest your sorry eyes.
Sleep, little kitty, sleep under the skies.
You’ll be gone soon, kitty, so here are lots of hugs.
You’ll be gone soon, kitty, eaten up by bugs.”
Shush, Rin wants to say, please shush, Juney. The song is making her think of when she and Jay buried his family dog behind the barn. An old sheepdog, comforting as a slipper. And of Jay himself, reaching for her in his grief.
Juney falls silent then and lifts her head, her entire body alert and still. Rin is about to ask what’s wrong when a voice pipes up directly behind her, “Excuse me?”
She leaps up and spins around. That boy is standing here, the one she just chased away with his carroty friend, right in her own private, protected, sodden sanctuary of a garden. How did he get back here without her hearing—without even the wolves hearing? Or the dogs, for that matter? They aren’t even chained up. But they stayed quiet—they’re still quiet.
“What do you want?” she snaps.
He steps back, rocking a little. Dropping her eyes over him, she sees why. Something is wrong with his legs.
“Sorry to bother you again, ma’am,” he says, his voice a child’s but with a man’s rasp around the edges. “It’s just that I’m lost.”
He doesn’t look lost. He doesn’t look as scared as he should be, either, given she just poked her shotgun into his chest.
“I know you,” he says, turning to Juney. “You’re in Ms. Peterson’s class, right?”
Juney lifts her petal-pale face in his direction. “Yup. I’m Juney. Who are you?”
Rin looks from one child to the other. Juney cross-legged and calm on the ground, her toothpick arms bare in a red T-shirt, trowel in her hand, dead kitten in her lap. The boy, mud-spattered and burr-stuck; black curls, earnest eyes. Rin a speechless lump between them.
“I’m Tariq. What happened to your cat?”
“She drowned in the storm.”
“That’s sad. You burying her here in this hole?”
“Uh-huh. Want to help?”
“Sure.” And as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, the boy pulls up the left side of his jeans, presses something Rin can’t see on his thigh and drops half his leg off. Settling himself down, he crosses his good leg beneath him and rests his stump along the grass, the empty pant leg below it crumpling like a discarded sock. Kids usually gape when they first meet Juney, pull faces to test if she truly can’t see. It slices into Rin every time. But this kid only picks up Rin’s trowel and starts digging. “Are you going to put your kitten in a box?” he asks.
“No. I want her to melt into the earth quick, you know? So it doesn’t hurt? A box would make it take longer.”
“Good idea. A box might make her feel lonely, too.”
She and the boy dig for a few minutes in companionable silence.
“Mommy,” Juney says eventually, “stop hovering. I can hear you hovering.”
She’s right. Rin has been glued to the spot, staring at them like a fool. She and Juney have never had a kid visit before, let alone a kid like this. Juney has learned not to ask for one, knowing that even if Rin could handle a child, she couldn’t handle the parents.
“Mommy, maybe you could make us some lemonade?” Juney’s tone has a bossiness to it that is entirely new. “It’s hot out here. You want some, Tariq?”
“Yes, please, if it’s not too much trouble. Thank you, Mrs. . . .” He looks up, waiting for Rin to tear her eyes off the molded leg lying beside him, its lifelike skin the exact color of his real one, complete with its own blue cotton sock and mucky sneaker. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t know your name.”
What is this kid, thirty? “Drummond,” she just manages to say.
“Thank you, Mrs. Drummond,” he says calmly.
“Okay, Mommy?” Juney urges, and in her voice Rin can hear her saying, Don’t worry, I’m safe and so are you. Now leave me alone.
So she does.
“Why’s your mom keep pointing guns at people?” Tariq asks once she is out of earshot. “And why does she keep wolves? I mean, it’s chill to keep wolves. I want wolves. But I just wondered.”
Juney pats the little grave to make it smooth and even around the insides. “It’s to protect us.”
“Protect you from what, robbers?”
“I don’t know.” She stops what she is doing to sway back and forth a moment. “My mom was in a war.” She leans forward to feel the bottom of the grave. “You think it’s deep enough yet?”
“No. We should keep going if you don’t want animals digging it up.” He scoops out another handful of earth and adds it to the tidy pile beside him. “I was in a war, too.”
They dig a while longer, deepening the grave and patting it smooth again. “I think it’s ready now,” he says. “It looks nice.”
“Are there lots of earthworms in there?”
He peers in. At least five liver-colored worms are writhing greasily from the shock of being uncovered. “Yup.”
“Good. They can keep her company.” Juney brushes the earth off her hands, lifts the kitten from her lap and places her carefully inside the grave, feeling around to make sure she is centered. “Was it scary being in a war?”
Tariq scoops up a handful of damp earth and molds it into a patty. “Yes. A lot of bad stuff happened. You ready to put the dirt on top of the kitty now?”
“Her name’s Hiccup. Does she look comfy?”
“She looks like she’s sleeping. Why’s she called Hiccup?”
“’Cause she does. Did. I think we should put a flower in there with her, don’t you?”
Tariq hunts around in the rubble until he finds a half-drowned marigold. He shakes off the mud and puts it in Juney’s earth-stained hands. “Here. It’s orange.”
She sniffs it. “No, blue.” Bending forward, she runs her fingers over Hiccup until she finds her ears, then nestles the flower between them. “What kind of bad stuff?”
“Well, my leg and . . . other things. You want to shovel the dirt back in now?”
“In a minute.” She strokes the dead kitten one more time. “Bye, little Hiccup. I loved you a lot. I hope the maggots come quick.” Picking up her trowel, she reluctantly trickles some earth back into the grave. “What do you mean about your leg?”
“Half my left leg got blown off by a bomb. Can I put some dirt in, too?”
“Yup, but it isn’t dirt; it’s earth.” She trickles in a little more. “Can I feel where your leg was?”
Tariq hesitates. He can’t stand anyone touching his amputated limb,
even doctors or his mother. It has had seven years to heal, to harden into a shiny round knob just above his knee, knotted and folded like the end of a sausage. But when it’s touched, the sensation is both unbearably intense and sickeningly numb, as if someone is tickling an inner organ.
“You can touch the fake one if you want.” He lifts his prosthesis off the ground and puts it in Juney’s lap in place of the kitten.
“Wow, it’s heavy.” She runs her hands over its vinyl surface. “It’s got skin. I thought it’d be hard, like a plastic bucket.”
“No. But I have a metal one for when I do sports. That one’s hard.”
Leaving the prosthesis on her lap, she shovels the earth back into the grave in earnest now, Tariq following suit. “Are kids mean about your leg?” She raises her pale oval of a face, her long whiteblond hair curving around it. The way she moves is peculiar, swaying her head around on her neck like a sunflower in a breeze, but this is more intriguing to him than strange.
“They used to be. Not so much anymore.” He takes her hand and brings it to his own face, wanting her to see him as he can see her. “What about you? Do kids tease you?”
She runs her palm up his cheek to his forehead, down over his bump of a nose to his lips, his pointed chin, and over to the other side, sensing a narrow face with deep eye sockets. When she tucks her fingers into his thick hair, the curls wrap around them like little hugs. She withdraws her hand. “Sometimes kids are mean, yeah. But soldiers don’t care about that kind of thing.” She returns to filling the grave.
“You’re a soldier?”
“Yup. Me and my mom both.”
“My dad was a soldier, too. And my mom’s a doctor for soldiers’ kids.” A claw twists in his chest. “Or she was.”
Rin leans against her kitchen sink, watching Juney and the visitor through the window while she stirs lemon juice and honey into a jug of cold water. She knows she shouldn’t spy like this—she should leave her daughter some privacy. Jay would certainly tell her so. But this boy’s brazen invasion has rattled her badly.
She hears the dogs burst into a frenzy of barking, so stops stirring to listen. These aren’t the excited barks triggered by a bitch in heat or a rival dog in the distance; nor are they the cousinly barks they send out to the wolves and local coyotes, barks as full of longing as they are territorial warnings. No, these are the vicious, hysterical barks they reserve for human strangers, which means that somebody else has invaded her property now, somebody who has ignored the PRIVATE KEEP OUT I MEAN IT sign at the head of her driveway and driven on in anyhow.
Seizing the M16 she keeps racked over the kitchen window (she stores a loaded weapon in every room, although well out of reach of Juney), she runs out to the porch. A car is insinuating itself up the driveway; a slinky, silver, untrustworthy car that makes her think of military recruiters and Bible salesmen. She sees a man inside, tall and dark and wearing sunglasses. Cropped black hair, shoulders bulked. And she sees on the faded remains of his bumper sticker the words HOOAH. IT’S AN ARMY THING.
Hooah, my ass.
She raises her rifle, aims it at him and makes no move to call back the dogs, who are clumped behind the gate now in a moil of snarling and leaping, urging one another on in brotherly delirium. She is no more interested in some war-crazed hooah veteran coming to bother her than she is in some slob of an overweight civilian doing the same thing.
“Get off my property!” she yells. But he can’t seem to hear her because he keeps on coming. Up her purposely ill-kept driveway. Past all the NO ENTRY, GO AWAY signs she has planted along its edges. And all the way to her gate, which she has secured along the top with a coil of army-strength razor wire and a string of electric wire, too, in case anyone fails to get the point.
Locking and loading, she steps forward.
For a long moment, Rin and Louis are at an impasse: she on the porch, rifle aimed with sniper precision at the center of his forehead, dogs yowling; he in his car, heels dug into the floor, back pressed against the seat, hands wrapped tight and sweating around the steering wheel.
He stares at her weapon, adrenaline burning along his veins. Nobody has aimed a rifle at him for years, let alone from this close. A familiar screaming starts up in his head, a screaming he had hoped never to hear again.
Wishing he had his own M16 so he could shoot the damn dogs quiet, he breathes long and slowly, in and out, his eyes fixed on the rifle. He forces a count of twenty.
One . . . Two . . . Her aim pushes between his eyebrows; a hot, bullet-shaped circle.
Three . . . Four . . . He will not hit the ground. Will not crack.
Five . . . Six . . . The barks slam into his eardrums.
Seven . . . Eight . . .
He reaches twenty. Adds another ten for good measure. Checks himself, eyes still riveted to Rin’s rifle as if they alone could stop a bullet. Only when he has successfully wrestled the screaming back into its lockbox and slid the iron bolt home does he allow himself to roll down his window.
Torso clammy, fingers clammier, he leans out, the M16 aimed like a blowtorch at his head. “Ma’am, lower your weapon, please!”
“Not till you haul your ass out of here!”
“I don’t mean any harm. Just came looking for a boy.”
“Don’t know any boy,” she yells back, not sure why she’s lying. “Leave or I shoot!”
Tariq steps through the front door just then, holding the hand of a wispy towheaded little girl. Louis’s spine springs loose with relief. He cannot imagine how he would follow one breath with another if anything happened to Tariq. He eases his arm out of the car window and waves, taking a gamble Rin won’t blow his hand off.
She watches this audacity with no idea the children are on the porch behind her.
“Mrs. Drummond?” Tariq ventures. “That’s my uncle Louis. You don’t need to shoot him.”
“Mommy, please?” Juney sidles over and slips an arm around her mother’s thick waist.
Rin is shaking now. She does, however, manage to ease her finger off the trigger and lower her rifle. “Betty, Ricky, Pop, Rufus!” she calls. “Get over here!”
She shouts it three times before the dogs stop barking, but finally, with a long growl each they slink back, hackles up, and gather around her, panting. The invisible wolves are there, too, Gray pressed up against her, his sizzling eyes fixed on the stranger.
“I like dogs,” Tariq says, stretching out a hand to stroke Betty.
“They don’t like you,” Rin snaps.
“They’re guard dogs and Betty’s a service dog,” Juney explains. “They’re not pets.”
Tariq has no idea what a service dog is, but he understands to let them alone. “Hi, Louis!” He looks up at Rin. “Can he get out of the car now, Mrs. Drummond?”
“No. But you can go over there and get into it.”
“Mommy!”
“Enough, Juney. That’s enough for one day.”
“Ma’am.” Louis has opened the car door and climbed out anyway. His nerves are still shooting sparks, but he lifts off his sunglasses so as to seem less of a threat. The dogs bristle and growl. He stays behind the gate, an eye on both them and Rin, who may be no more than five foot five but looks every bit the former soldier she is: boxy and muscular, dark hair short and scrubby as a nailbrush, rifle dangling by her knee. He wills Tariq to come to him and come quickly. “Ma’am, if you need any help clearing this up, I’d be glad to oblige.” He gestures at the storm wreckage, half to make peace, half to call her bluff.
“Like hell you will,” she mutters. “Bye, Tariq. Now scat.”
Tariq descends the porch steps, looking little and spindle-shouldered compared to Rin’s menacing bulk. “Bye, Mrs. Drummond. Bye, Juney.” He turns back to them. “See you soon.”
Rin glares at him as he unlatches the gate, carefully shuts it behind him, and climbs into the soldier’s car. She watches it back up to turn around and keeps watching while it bumps slowly down her driveway, rounds the corner, a
nd lurches out of sight.
“Good riddance.” She looks down at her daughter, whose arm is still around her waist. “Right, Juney?”
But Juney isn’t listening. She is only smiling to herself. And then she lets go of her mother, raises her pale arm and waves into the empty air. Waves and waves, as if Tariq can still see her.
“You okay?” Louis asks Tariq while he maneuvers around the potholes and ruts of Rin’s driveway, not entirely certain he is okay himself. “That woman didn’t scare you, did she?”
“Of course not.”
“You sure? Waving her rifle around like that?”
Tariq looks out of the side window, gazing at the row of neon orange KEEP OUT signs posted along both sides of the road. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh no? Well, she shouldn’t threaten people like that. Somebody could get hurt.” Louis inhales, still needing to breathe in short, sharp intakes.
Tariq says nothing. He doesn’t feel like talking. He only wants to absorb all he has just seen. The wolves undulating through the woods, their throats rumbling like earthquakes. The girl with her antennae fingers and mirror eyes. The dead kitten, a marigold between its ears. The soldier mom and her dilapidated farmhouse listing like a boat in the wind.
“You want to come home with me or go back to Flanner’s?” Louis asks after a spell of quiet. The car is out on the road now, no longer lurching.
“You. Flanner’s a jerk.”
“Oh? Since when was your best friend a jerk?”
“Since always.” Tariq considers telling Louis about Flanner’s insults, but the words are too ugly to repeat.
“You look like you’ve been dunked in a mud bath. Flanner’s mom said you were in the woods. Were you?”
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t so smart, bud. The trees are too unstable. What were you doing?”
“Exploring.” And then, because Tariq has known Louis since he was six, and because he knows Louis would never make fun of him, he adds, “I saw Mrs. Drummond’s wolves. I crept up to her fence and I saw them!”
Wolf Season Page 4