“Angel, don’t,” Mr. Schultz broke in. “Matt’s gonna turn up any second, probably coming this way now. But until he gets here, Brett and Stubby and I will head out there to find him. Seth can show us the way, can’t you?”
Seth inhaled hard, but his words came out threadbare, unconvincing. “You bet.”
Chapter 10
‘I’ll keep the food warm,” Mrs. Schultz called as they headed outside.
“There isn’t quite enough snow for snowmobiling,” Mr. Schultz said as Brett and Stubby trailed behind him. “Let’s take the four-wheelers.”
Snow puffed around their boots. Seth followed behind, glancing up at a sky void of stars. Flakes continued to fall, lightly, slowly.
“When we find him,” Mr. Schultz continued, “he can ride behind in the trailer.”
They rolled the two four-wheelers from the barn, and Mr. Schultz became strangely silent.
“Remember my first deer,” Brett said, “how I didn’t want to leave it, so I waited until you showed up?”
Mr. Schultz nodded, looking ridiculous in his orange bomber hat, flaps tied down over his ears.
“Matt’s probably out there now—a little cold, no doubt—but he’s fine,” Brett said casually.
Was Brett really that confident that Matt was okay? Or was he acting, trying to make things seem less serious somehow? Seth couldn’t ease the knot that was tightening in his stomach. If something had happened, it would be his fault.
Blue clouds of exhaust rolled like storm clouds behind the machines. Mr. Schultz motioned for Seth to get on first. “You know where to go, Seth.” Then he hopped on behind.
Stubby drove the other four-wheeler. Brett sat behind him and waved Seth on to lead the search party.
Seth gave the four-wheeler gas, lurched forward, and headed down the Schultzes’ driveway, across the road, and toward the trail leading behind his house. If it were light out, he’d ride Quest bareback. Mr. Schultz probably thought he was a real klutz driver, jolting suddenly forward, then throttling back.
Yellow eyes caught in the headlights, then disappeared. Too short for a wolf—must have been a fox. Maybe Matt was thinking about wolves now. And if he were lost, he’d be fighting down big-time panic. Seth had never really been lost, not for more than fifteen or twenty minutes anyway, like the time when he went canoeing with his dad and mom. After they’d set up camp, he hopped in the canoe to explore. Before long, he’d circled one small island, then another, and realized he had no idea which way to head back to camp. The sky was gray, the sun absent, leaving no clue of north, west, east, or south. Panic had started at his toes and lit like a gasoline-fed bonfire. He only lived with the feeling for a few minutes before he heard his parents call his name. Hearing his name had never felt so good before. When he returned, he realized they were just calling him in for dinner. He never let them know he’d been lost. After that, he always carried a compass.
Compass! Matt didn’t even have a compass, Seth realized as a cold, sick feeling enveloped him. At the last minute, Matt hadn’t been able to find his own. “I’ve got mine,” Seth had said, “so it’s okay. We’re hunting together.”
Guilt jabbed him. He could kick himself! He shouldn’t have left Matt, even if Matt had shot a wolf.
The four-wheeler’s headlight illuminated a round boulder, topped with a layer of new snow. At least the snowstorm hadn’t hit with full force yet. Maybe the weatherman was wrong. Just drive, Seth told himself. Find him.
With Mr. Schultz’s bulky body towering behind him, Seth felt as if he were three years old. Was this how Matt felt around his dad? Was that why he was always trying to prove himself?
Rumbling around another curve in the trail, the headlight caught two does, stunned motionless by the light. Seth squeezed the brake handle hard, slamming the four-wheeler to nearly a dead stop. The deer gathered their legs and, in one leap, were absorbed into white-frocked balsam.
Seth wiggled his toes; he could feel them now, warm in layers of thick wool. They were going to be fine. Then he gave the four-wheeler gas and headed farther down the trail. Past the giant pine, Seth drove his four-wheeler to the side of the trail and turned off the motor.
Mr. Schultz lifted his two-hundred-some pounds off first. Seth followed.
Stubby pulled four flashlights from a backpack and handed them out. “Okay, Seth. We’re following you.”
Seth gripped the long-handled flashlight, pushed the button, and swung the light back and forth until he found the narrow path leading to the beaver dam. He took a deep breath. “This way,” he said, then started off, hoping and praying like crazy that the expedition wouldn’t come up empty-handed.
Seth swallowed his fears. True, he’d wished Matt would have to pay a price. But not this big a price.
“Maaattt!!” Mr. Schultz called. No answer. They all shouted his name in unison. Still no answer. Mr. Schultz tried once more, and Seth strained to hear the words “Here I am!” but Matt’s voice wasn’t in the wind that swept through the trees.
“Okay,” Mr. Schultz said, “let’s keep going.”
Seth walked on for maybe five minutes, clumping awkwardly in his father’s boots, stumbling more than once, and stopping every few yards to call and listen. Then he hurried ahead again, pushing past scraggly branches. The woods looked completely different. He aimed his flashlight, identifying a stump here, a snowy boulder there, landmarks that helped reassure him he was still on the right path.
As they approached the beaver dam, snowflakes continued to fall, one by one, swirling in the white beam.
“Hope the storm holds off a little longer,” Brett said from behind.
“We’ve gotta be gettin’ close to your deer stand, right?” Mr. Schultz asked, worry tinting his voice. “If Matt’s smart,” he added almost hopefully, “he’d be waiting right there.”
The deer stand. “Uh … we never got to my deer stand,” Seth said quietly.
“What?!” Mr. Schultz sounded stunned. “Then he may have wandered … may not have a clue …”
“We’ll find him,” Brett said firmly. “Seth, just keep going.”
At the dam, Seth stopped and turned to face Mr. Schultz and his oldest sons, their flashlight beams darting eerily into endless shadows and flecks of white. “Careful,” Seth said, “I fell in here earlier. It’s slippery.”
Then he headed across. On the other side, he turned and directed his light on the dam. Mr. Schultz looked like Frankenstein walking a tightrope. At any other time, it would have been funny.
Chapter 11
Without warning, before Brett and Stubby finished crossing the beaver dam, wind howled down from the ridges near Mackenzie Lake, blasting sheets of white snow. Seth trudged forward, head down, trying to avoid the biting snow flying directly into his eyes. Stinging.
“What’s this?” Mr. Schultz said, ripping a jacket and a down vest from a tree branch.
Seth felt weak. “We were too hot, and, well, we took off a few layers.…”
Mr. Schultz’s face pinched with pain. “We’ve gotta find him. Oh God, help us find him.” Then he cupped his gloves by his face. “Maaattt!” he called, his voice desperate, raw with anxiety. “Maaattt! Can you hear me?”
If Matt could hear, if he tried to answer, there was no way they would hear him now. Pine trees groaned and dead trees cracked.
Brett and Stubby shouted, too, and Seth joined in, but the wind hurled their words into the air.
Seth trudged along the base of the ridge, picked his way carefully up the slope, slippery with new snow, and headed to the bay where he’d deserted Matt. He’d go there, to the place where they’d last been, and then what? If Matt had tried to find his way home and got lost … He couldn’t think that far. If Matt was lost … A deep heaviness filled him. He hadn’t been thinking clearly when he took off. He hadn’t considered the consequences then. Things happen. Tragic things.
His flashlight cast a wedge shape into the woods, and Seth followed it along the faint deer trai
l.
“Matt!” he called, approaching the cedars where they’d stood. Matt’s brothers and father joined in.
A muffled groan.
He’d heard it, a faint human sound.
Seth’s light cut through darkness until it rested on a bulky form at the edge of the bay where the bucks had fought. For a fleeting second, Seth wondered if Matt had somehow been attacked by the injured wolf. But the form wasn’t Matt; it was only a boulder.
“Hey,” came Matt’s groggy voice from another direction.
Where was he? Seth swung his light toward the low sweeping branches of a balsam. He hurried, knelt on the snow, and peered closer. Under the branches, on a patch of brown needles, Matt was on the ground curled up like a baby.
“Here he is!” Seth yelled.
Matt slowly lifted to his hands and knees, crawled toward the circle of light, then flopped on his back at their feet, light shining into his blinking eyes. A dried leaf clung to his hair, which snuck out from under his orange cap, and his skin was bluish gray.
“I thought I could get back,” Matt said, his words slow and thick, “but I made a loop. To here. Stayed put. Knew you’d come, eventually. Got so tired …”
Seth, flooded with relief, exhaled hard.
Mr. Schultz hoisted Matt to his feet, one hand under his arm. “Thank God we found you.”
Matt’s legs wobbled, and he tottered.
“Better carry you,” Mr. Schultz said. “You must have hypothermia.”
“No, I’m …,” Matt protested, but his father swept him off the ground.
“Seth,” he said, “lead us back.”
Seth set off quickly. Hypothermia wasn’t something to take lightly. A person could die from getting too cold. If he had kept his head about him, this would never have happened.
As Mr. Schultz crossed the dam, he said, “Matt, good thing you didn’t beef up too much this year.”
“My coach wishes …,” Matt said, but he didn’t finish his sentence.
His coach wishes he weighed ten to twelve more pounds, Seth could have finished for him. Seth knew Matt inside out. Or he had thought he did, until today.
Snow and wind stung Seth’s cheeks. His toes and fingers were beginning to feel stiff, almost disconnected from the rest of his body. If he was getting chilled, Matt had to be numb after spending hours and hours in the woods. Seth walked faster.
At the four-wheelers, snow layered the seats. Seth hopped on, started one four-wheeler, and waited in a white cloud of exhaust. Instead of using the trailer, Brett and Stubby squeezed Matt between them. Mr. Schultz climbed on behind Seth, and they started off.
Crawling back to the Schultzes’ house, Seth wiped at the snow gathering on his lashes, freezing the corners of his eyelids together. He could barely see! The trail disappeared to a thin, vague opening through speckled white. Snow swirled, whipped his face raw, and he wished he had a windshield.
The second early storm of the season, a whiteout. Every year, somewhere in Minnesota, someone died during a blizzard, trying to outsmart it. Someone would lose control of their car and get stuck in a snowbank, leave their vehicle, and then try to walk for help. They’d lose their way in the blowing snow, lose their way in the endless white. When the snowstorm stopped, and the sun shone again and the snowplows scraped the roads clean, another frozen body would be found, usually only yards from the vehicle.
Seth thought of that now. And he knew, as he drove down the trail, that Brett and Stubby and Mr. Schultz knew it, too—were thinking about what might have happened if they hadn’t found Matt in time.
He hunkered himself down, peering over the handlebars, squinting to see the trail. Slowly, he motored back, out of the woods, down Matt’s driveway through deepening snow, and over to the Schultzes’ barn, whose yellow floodlight glowed like a lighthouse in swirling fog.
Mr. Schultz hopped off the four-wheeler, rolled open the metal door, and waved his sons and Seth inside. Seth throttled forward, out of the wind, then cut the motor.
“Hello there,” came a familiar voice.
Seth jumped, looking around.
“Over here. Ray Kruppa.” Opposite the snowmobiles, he dropped the plastic sheet over the dead calf and strode toward them. His brown eyes were somber, yet warm as a low-burning fire.
“Seth,” he said, nodding. Seth had known Ray Kruppa for years through his father’s work. Kruppa held out his hand to Mr. Schultz. “I know it’s late, but when I heard the weather report, I hustled over to investigate the field site. I had to brush away snow, but your wife told me where to look.”
Mr. Schultz quickly shook the offered hand, then pointed over his shoulder. “Gotta get my son inside. Might have hypothermia.”
Seth’s throat grew hot.
Ray Kruppa glanced beyond Mr. Schultz at Matt, who stood between his brothers. Seth watched from a distance, seated on the four-wheeler. He wanted to shout, “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have left him out there!” He bit down on the fleshy inside of his lip. His eyes burned. He wasn’t going to let himself cry, not here. And it didn’t help that Mr. Schultz was acting nice. Anger might be easier than this. Nobody was saying it out loud but it was more than obvious—he’d screwed up.
“Mind if I use your phone?” Kruppa asked. “I have to call the vet about this calf, get her to come out first thing.”
“No problem,” Mr. Schultz said, heaving wide the door to the swirling white. “There’s one in the barn here, but you might as well come in the house.”
“Let’s get some hot chocolate,” Brett said, his arm under Matt’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” Stubby added, “and to mine, I’m adding a stiff shot of brandy.”
Seth followed the Schultzes and Ray Kruppa across the yard, his head tucked down, shoulders hunched to keep the wind from creeping down his neck.
Chapter 12
Blue-and-orange flames danced around birch logs in the glass-doored woodstove. Stretched out in his sleeping bag, Seth cupped his chin in his hands, elbows propped on his pillow, and watched the fire. Mrs. Schultz insisted that Kruppa spend the night, due to the “terrible weather,” and take Matt’s room. With all the other lights off, the fire cast a glow in the family room, illuminating the glass eyes of the bear and deer. Seth was glad Mr. Schultz hadn’t put up a stuffed wolf from his earlier hunting years.
Bubbles of sap formed on the logs, then dripped, sputtering into red dusty coals.
The house was quiet. Seth couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts clammered in his head.
Matt groaned, wiggled like a caterpillar in its cocoon, then settled into silence again.
“Matt?” Seth asked. “You awake?”
No answer.
Seth watched the flames, the way they curled up at the far wall of the woodstove. Matt was going to be okay. They’d shuffled him inside the house, stripped him down to his red boxers, wrapped him in blankets, and set him by the fire. While he shook uncontrollably, they spooned him noodle soup and hot chocolate, and when he finished that, Brett made up a platter of nachos smothered with meat, black olives, green peppers, and cheese. The hot sauce packed a punch, producing tiny droplets of sweat on Seth’s brow. It had to help Matt warm up, too, because by the time he was done eating, he was kicking off blankets, complaining of burning up. Who wouldn’t, wrapped in five blankets?
But it was finding him in the woods, curled in a ball, that Seth couldn’t shake. Everything was fine, Matt was okay. But inside, Seth felt rotten. What kind of a friend was he? If Matt had died, it would have been his fault. Matt was alive, but everything wasn’t okay. The rip in their friendship felt like a deep flesh wound.
Matt twisted in his bag, flipping himself over to face Seth. His eyes fluttered, opened halfway, then he turned away. Heck, maybe he wasn’t even awake, Seth told himself, or he would have said something.
Fact was, they hadn’t said a word to each other since Matt was found. Not one word.
Seth dropped his head on the pillow, filled his lungs with a deep br
eath, and closed his eyes. So what if they weren’t friends anymore? He had other friends, just no one he knew so well.
Come morning, he was heading home. Plain and simple.
“Why, Seth, of course you’re staying for breakfast!” Mrs. Schultz said, waving him to the dining room table. “Your animals can wait for you to finish my famous blueberry pancakes, can’t they?”
Seth paused in the entry, glanced at the clock above the Schultzes’ yellow stove—7:20—and reluctantly eased his arm out of his jacket. He had to get out of there. “Okay,” he said, his voice flat, “but I have to get going soon.”
Smells of sausage and coffee filled the sunny house.
Kruppa lifted a tall glass of orange juice to his lips. “Hey, Seth, I’d like to see that moose calf after breakfast, before the vet gets here. Last time I saw it, it looked ‘bout dead.”
“Sure,” Seth said, and sat in the only available chair, right next to Matt. He wished Matt had slept late, but despite his ordeal, Matt was up with the birds, as usual.
Squinting, Seth looked out the window. A grumbling snowplow pushed its wide blade along the road. Drifts, in some places five feet high, sculpted the Schultzes’ yard. The barn-style bird feeder wore a foot of snow. Both driveways were already plowed; Mr. Schultz must have gotten up hours earlier. Under the early rays of winter light, snow sparkled, and usually Seth would have felt a tingle of excitement at the mounds of new snow.
Mr. Schultz bowed his head and everyone followed, everyone except Seth. “Bless us, Oh Lord, for these Thy gifts …”
Today, he couldn’t join in. He watched the bowed heads, listened to the words. What about the “gifts” of nature, he wanted to say? What about the wolf Matt shot, isn’t that a gift worth blessing? And what about himself? He wasn’t sure he deserved God’s blessing, not now.
Mrs. Schultz added another stack of steaming pancakes to the plate in the center of the table. “Ray, I want you to know that these berries are from the rocky ridge along the north edge of our property. A bumper crop last summer.”
Wolf Shadows Page 5