“Why did you bring that stick to my house? Did you come here to attack my son?”
Still writhing in his mother’s arms, Flanner is sobbing himself now, horrified at what he has done and yet still in a maelstrom of confusion and fury. “No,” he chokes out. “It wasn’t for him. It was for Dad.”
But Naema is not interested. “You should be ashamed,” she says, her breath rasping. “To hurt him like this and to be so cruel. How could you do such a thing to a friend?”
18
DAWN
Rin is spending as much time as she can with her wolves now that she’s so afraid of losing them. Today is the deadline for the license application and all week she has been racked up tight, jumping at every clank of a truck in the distance, every shriek of a tire beyond her hill. She keeps stepping out to the porch or walking up to the gate to peer down the rutted driveway, waiting for the blade to fall. So at dawn, while Juney is still asleep and the school bus not due for another hour, she walks down to the woods alone. She likes best to visit her wolves when the day is still clean and full of hope like this, the sky a faint rosy gold, the birds singing their hearts out, the sun dawdling, and the rest of the world far away.
The walk to the fence takes her past the lilac bushes she planted to guide Juney, around the old orchard, and down a broad stretch of grass, right now crying out for a mowing. The trees rustle wetly as she passes, like a whispered welcome, and the sound warms her. She has always loved this place; has done since the very first time Jay brought her here. The disheveled buildings, unkempt fields; the way it looks both domesticated and rebellious. “Let’s bring this farm back to life if we make it home from war,” he said as he showed her around, as if he’d known he was leaving her a legacy.
When she reaches the fence, she stops a moment to gather herself. A person needs to be calm to handle wolves. The dew, spangled over the grass like bejeweled cobwebs, is already evaporating. The sumacs along the edge of the yard are shuddering under a breeze, their branches heavy with the end of summer, their leaves flashing signals of red like flags of warning. A squad of grackles has stormed Juney’s feeder to raucously gobble their breakfast.
Once Rin feels steady enough, she lifts her head and calls the wolf cry Juney invented. Then she unlocks the catch pen, which juts from the fence like a vestibule, walks through the inner door, and waits for Gray to arrive. If he doesn’t want her around, he might growl or snap a warning and she will beat a hasty retreat. But today he only gives her a quick sniff and ambles off to lie some distance away beside Ebony, both yawning great yawns, all fang and tongue and glistening black lips. They rest their snouts on their front paws and watch her lazily. Two heaps of fur and muscle, faces sharp and watchful, bodies seething with vitality even as they blink away sleep. Rin is always careful not to underestimate her wolves.
Silver comes trotting up then, her thick white coat aglow in the early light, her face wearing the mild look she keeps only for Rin. Just as Gray has chosen Tariq and Ebony favors Juney, Silver has marked Rin as her own. Silver is the quickest of her wolves, too, perhaps because, like Rin, she knows what it is to be the only female in a pack. She moves like a streak of mercury. Flash, snap—there goes a rabbit. Whisk, crunch, there goes a fox. She is merciless and savage, exactly the way she should be. But with Rin she is gentle. She will nuzzle her hand through the fence the way Gray nuzzles Tariq. Press her white flank up against it so Rin can scratch her. And on the occasions Rin goes inside the pen and crouches down to play, Silver will rub against her while Rin massages the top of her head, Gray looking on protectively. Rin is not sure he approves.
Now Rin squats beside her, taking the precaution of staying on the balls of her feet, and scratches Silver between the ears, where she most likes it. Silver wriggles with pleasure.
Jay would have loved to see this. It was his dream to make wolves part of their family, which is maybe why Rin can sense him closer to her when she is with them than anywhere else. Jay, her wolves, and Juney. How it should have been.
The sun has drifted higher now, turning the grass and trees dry and bright. It is almost time to rouse Juney and send her away again to be whoever she is when Rin’s not there. But first Rin whispers to Silver as the wolf closes her eyes under the bliss of Rin’s caresses and flaps her long tongue over Rin’s face.
“Silver, I don’t know how, but I’m going to try everything I can to stop those cops taking you. Maybe I’ll hide you. Maybe I’ll pull out one of my rifles and defend the fort. Maybe I’ll find a way to bundle you and Gray and Ebony into the basement till they go away. . . .
“Or maybe I’ll lure the cops into your pen and let you do with them what you will.”
19
VIGILANCE
Todd sits folded up in the passenger seat of Beth’s rented Honda, his head brushing the ceiling, knees pressed against the dashboard, nursing an inky black coffee the size of a bucket. “This Jap car’s made for fucking dwarfs,” he grumbles, shifting irritably in his seat. His voice, Louis notices, is worn-out weary this morning, toneless and hollow. “If this was my Camaro, I could stretch out at least. And you could floor the motherfucker and streak up the other side. You’re driving like an old lady, Martin.”
Louis ignores this, already wishing for better company—namely, of course, Naema. But here he is, stuck with a truly unpleasant man, trying to give him some kind of nature cure for a matter that may be incurable, with no real idea of what he is doing aside from taking him away from his wife.
He and Todd drive for two and half hours, barely exchanging a word, while Todd hunches forward, scanning the radio for heavy metal or hip-hop, and turning the volume brain-crushingly high. Louis clenches the steering wheel, the stubs of his missing fingers paling from the effort. He does not appreciate having his ears commandeered like this, especially with a racket that sears his nerves and catapults him back inside an MRAP, blasting AC/DC and screaming “Highway to Hell” to stoke his killer instinct. But he tells himself to let Todd have his way. For now.
The farther north they drive, the brighter the trees become, until the woods flanking either side of the road are as gaudy as a paint-splashed wall. They stop to use the toilet in a tiny convenience store inaptly named Moose Manor, where Todd buys another tub of coffee and Louis stocks up on survival food and camping supplies. But during the entire journey, Louis can sense Todd on high vigilance, body taut, eyes scanning, veins pulsating in his tendon-tight neck. He grows especially tense each time they drive under a bridge, the flashes of shadow and light momentarily blinding them. Louis recognizes this, still feels it himself at times: that plunge in his guts when he remembers he’s without his weapon, his armor, his team; alone and naked as the fleshy plug of a snail torn from its shell.
“Listen, relax, I got your back,” he calls over the music, instantly feeling a fool. Todd neither answers nor looks at him. Louis is not even sure he heard.
When they reach the park, Louis pulls up to his favorite trailhead and turns off the engine, silencing the radio at last. The two men jump out and stretch, the sudden quiet making Louis’s ears ring.
“Keys.” Todd holds out his palm. Louis tosses them over and Todd opens the trunk. They each pull out a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a one-man tent provided by Louis, who had enough of sleeping beside the snores and secret groans of other men in the army.
“You ever been here before?” he asks, lifting his backpack onto his shoulders.
Todd shakes his head, eyes bruised by sleeplessness. “What’s the goal?” He looks up from where he’s bent over his pack, strapping on his sleeping bag.
“Goal?”
“I mean the fucking point, Martin. Where we going?”
“Oh. Well, I have this circuit in mind. Twelve to fifteen kliks a day. Sound good?”
“Sounds pussy-whipped. But what the hell.” Todd stands and swings his own pack on as easily as if it weighs no more than a pillow. “Let’s go.”
Louis leads the way, Todd so close behind
he is practically treading on his heels.
The trail heads directly into the woods, taking them past moss-furred rocks, pools of feather-duster ferns and birches growing like magic tricks out of boulders. The trees stretch up straight and dense, their canopy filtering the sky like a sieve, bathing the men in dappled green light. Louis inhales the spicy scents of pine and earth, and, even with his disagreeable companion breathing down his neck, feels the habitual gnarl of tension between his shoulder blades slowly begin to unfurl.
They walk for four hours that first day, Todd saying scarcely a word, although occasionally Louis hears him humming, wisps of tunes at times familiar, at times not. Louis says little himself. What can you say to a man who beats up his wife and won’t even try to be companionable?
At three that afternoon, the wind drops and the forest falls into a hush so profound Louis can hear each leaf falling to the ground with a tap. Even their footsteps are silenced by the damp earth and moss of the forest floor, reminding him of walking across the Iraqi desert, the moondust carpeting the sand like powder.
They reach the rim of a cobalt blue lake, glossy as satin and ringed by trees. A breeze picks up, rumpling its surface and sending a series of little waves to lap at the shore. Louis tries to enjoy this the way he does when he comes here alone, breathing and looking and emptying his mind, but the bulky muteness of the man beside him is pressing against the back of his skull. He wonders again why he let himself in for this.
They march on, the woods thinning out in places, thickening in others, some of the trees still green, some like a fountain of golden coins, some a spray of scarlet. Todd has taken the lead, which, after a flash of annoyance, Louis decides is better. He can keep his eye on him this way, watch his wall of a back for whatever move he might make next.
They climb a steep hill, calf muscles flexing, and descend to the edge of a second lake, this one a deep indigo. Louis stops and calls out to Todd to stop, too, glancing a question at him. Todd shakes his head and sits down on the grass, crossing his arms and leaning against his pack. He shuts his eyes.
Louis peels off his clothes and dives into the water, the cold kicking the breath from him. Strong-stroked and fast, he swims out to the middle of the lake and back. No comment from Todd. No laughter. Just Louis’s gasp at the first shock and the panting when he climbs out and dresses. They walk on, Louis damp, flushed, exhilarated; Todd silent.
The hours roll slowly away, the light shading into a brassy blue. Louis glimpses a pair of loons idling on the lake beside him, their bulbous heads, heavy black beaks and white collars distinct in the gilded air. “Look,” he says, pointing, his voice startling after the long quiet. “Oldest bird in America. Go all the way back to dinosaurs, you know that?”
Todd says nothing. Once in a while he does stop to look, but he seems to notice only the big things: a squared-off boulder squatting in the water like a rhinoceros. a bluff as high as a fortress; a particularly thick and magisterial tree trunk, its pythonic roots humping over the ground. He is so incommunicative that Louis feels compelled to guess what is going on his head. He could be scanning every shadow for a sign of the enemy, as he was in the car. Or thinking about Beth and Flanner. Or simply counting the days and hours until he can leave this ill-fitting straitjacket called home. On Louis’s returns, he always used to crave these hikes, the clean air a necessary medicine after the choking dust of the desert, the quiet an essential reprieve from the head-pummeling racket of war. The forest gave him a chance to think about his marriage and soul and faith in God and whether any of them would survive the brutality that had become part of him. But that doesn’t mean it’s the same for Todd.
“You all right?” Louis asks.
Todd glances at him. “Don’t worry your pretty Latin head about me, Martin. It’s just too fucking quiet, that’s all.” Yanking an iPod out of his jeans, he attaches a pair of earbuds and stuffs them into his ears.
And so it goes, not only during their first day but the second, too. When they stand at the edge of a lake, the water pink and crimping under a sunset, earplugged Todd says not a word. When they reach the top of a mountain, a view of nubby forest brushing the horizon, the air clear all the way to the sun, Todd only yawns, the veins in his forehead bulging as he nods to his private music. When they lie cocooned in their sleeping bags, the Milky Way a powdery veil over their heads, a loon wailing like a lost ghost across a nearby lake, Todd remains as silent as mud except for the tinny beat emanating from his ears.
The second night, as they sit in their usual bulging silence around a campfire, eating blackened hot dogs tucked into rolled up slices of Wonder bread, Louis asks him if he wants to go home.
Todd raises his eyebrows. “Why? Ain’t you enjoying yourself?”
“Me? No, I’m fine. Thought maybe you weren’t.”
“Nah. This is just what the doc ordered. Music and nature. No fucking dumb chatter.” He gazes at Louis a moment, his eyes a little less glassy and walled in than usual. He looks both young and as if he’s never been young at all. “Good of you to keep me out of trouble like this. I wish Flan could’ve come. But I appreciate it.”
The next morning, they awake to a fog as white as gauze, the sky and lake below blending together, as if the earth has dropped away. Louis longs to say something, but the silence of his companion has so infected him he can’t.
By the time they have boiled up their campfire coffee, downed their instant oatmeal and broken camp, the sun has burned off the fog, leaving nothing but shreds of mist curling like unravelling bandages through the trees. Louis walks to the edge of a nearby bluff to look down at the lake below. The steam rising from its surface has formed a row of white columns, undulating like a troupe of ballerinas. Naema would love this, he tells himself. And such longing for her courses through him, the strength of it leaves him shaken.
“Hey, McAllister,” he calls, needing to hear a human voice. “Come over here.”
Todd thumps up beside him, yanking his earbuds out at last. The sun, still morning-pale, is sparking over the water now like surfacing diamonds.
“What?”
“Beautiful, huh?”
Without a word, Todd turns away, screwing his earbuds back in.
“Hey,” Louis calls after him, annoyed. “What the hell are you listening to anyway?”
“Nirvana.”
“This whole time?”
Todd swivels around. “Fuck, yeah. Why listen to anything else?” For a second, his face is more animated than Louis has seen it yet. “Cobain was a fucking genius. There’ll never be anyone like him again. Day he died was worst day of my life.”
Louis doubts this but seizes the opening anyway. “You were what, fourteen when that happened?”
“Thirteen. Heard it on my mom’s TV. Sat and played his music all that day and night, and I don’t mind telling you, I bawled like a baby. Built a shrine to him, everything. Fucking Courtney.”
“It wasn’t Courtney’s fault. It was his stomach.”
“Tell that to the Man on Judgment Day. Bitch is a notorious ball-buster.”
“You got a favorite song?” Louis asks, hoping to deflect Todd from this train of thought.
Todd looks at him with scorn. “That’s the question of a true amateur.” Then he shrugs. “I like the raw stuff best. ‘Territorial Pissing.’ If you weren’t such a tree hugger, Martin, I’d have you head-banging to it all over this pussy forest.” And plugging his earbuds back in, he lopes off down the path.
Later that day, they reach the shore of a lake considerably east of where they started. The sun is licking the horizon by now, suffusing the air with a burnished haze, so they stop at the lake’s edge to watch. The water is so still it reflects the trees in a perfect reverse image, filling the lake with umber and vermilion, fire and rust. A glistering path of sunlight stretches all the way across its surface and Louis feels a childlike entrancement at the sight. Again, he longs to show this to Naema. And that is the moment Todd finally speaks.
“Makes you want to walk on water, don’t it? Right along that shiny path all the way to the end of this fucked-up world.”
By the time they return to Louis’s house after four days of wordless hiking, thigh muscles like steel, body odor like bear breath, it is the night before Todd has to report back to base. He springs out of the car, more buoyant than he has been all week, waits for Louis to unlock his front door, and accepts his offer to shower first. Then he washes his laundry, folds his gear, packs his bags, shaves his head and face, and comes downstairs in a crisp olive undershirt and clean camo pants, every inch a marine again.
Louis nods at him. “You look better. Much better. Guess all that free North American air did the trick, huh?” No answer. “It’s your last night, so you choose where to eat. We could head into Albany if you like.” He is not going to ask Todd if he wants to say good-bye to Beth and Flanner. That is not something he is going to push either way.
“Not hungry. You go out if you want. I’m gonna watch TV. Sleep. Get myself psyched.”
“You sure?” Every time Louis was due back at war, whether after a furlough or to redeploy, he and Melody would splurge like newlyweds. A fancy dinner, all the whiskey they could drink, lovemaking long into the night. Melody tried her best to make it good for him. While she could.
But Todd only opens Louis’s refrigerator and pulls out a can of beer. “This is all the dinner I need.” Heading into the living room, he switches on the television. Loud.
With a powerful lift of relief, Louis leaves him and drives to Naema’s, so eager to bask in her presence again he can hardly refrain from pushing the speedometer over ninety. But as soon as she opens the door, she steps outside, pulls it closed behind her, and says, “Shh. I do not want Tariq to hear us.” And she tells him about Flanner.
Louis looks at her, shaken. “Damn, I should’ve told Beth not to go to you! I should’ve made sure—”
Wolf Season Page 16