by Alissa York
The truth is, Dorrie has no wish to be comforted. As for grief, she’s having difficulty locating any—a quick internal inventory reveals only space, echoing and cool. Mama has died, she thinks, the words careful, clean. How could a mother be dead some five days and a daughter not feel it? Or not a mother. Not truly.
Maybe that explains it. If Dorrie never mourned the original, how can she spill tears for the one who took her place? It’s a relief to think it, like discovering the source of a nasty draft. She sidles in behind her workbench, drags the stool beneath her and sits. She can cut open the parcel later. For now she sets it aside.
From behind, Hammer and the Tracker could be brothers. Two heads of pitch-coloured hair beneath matching battered hats. The same shoulder-slung rifles, same squat, solid build hinged in downward inquiry at the hips.
There are differences, of course, as there are between brothers. The Tracker is perhaps an inch taller, his hair longer, sitting jagged about his shoulders. Where Hammer’s arms are clothed in shirtsleeves—parsnip-coloured, rolled to the elbow—the Tracker’s hang bare, flanking the silken back of his waistcoat. As Lal approaches, he notes these and other discrepancies, yet every step closer to their twinned, stooping backs is a step less sure of himself. The thumb floats up to worry his lip.
“Brothers?” he asks it.
Mm-hm.
For a moment, Lal considers turning back.
Brothers can fall out.
Of course. He takes heart and strides forward, twigs snapping beneath his heavy steps. Both men glance back at him, say nothing, return their attention to the scene at their feet, the trap lying closed on its side. It will be the last time either one of them pays him so little mind.
“How in the hell—” Hammer says as Lal comes to a halt behind them.
“I’ll tell you how.” Lal hears himself say it, his voice deeper, clearer than he’s ever known it. His father looks round, his expression sour, and in an instant Lal sees another way things could go. The Tracker could deny it. More than deny, he could pin the thing on Lal. And more. He could tell whatever he knows of Lal’s own transgressions. Song for bad child. Warning song. Whose word would Hammer value more?
“Well?” His father glares at him. The Tracker keeps his eyes to the ground. It’s not much to go by, but it’s all Lal’s got.
“He did it.” The sure voice gone now. He lifts a trembling finger. “He tripped it, tripped all of them.” It’s all he can do not to garble the words. “The pit trap too, more than like, hell, probably even the deer.” This last comes out in a squawk.
Hammer’s face is rigid. Lal is done for. All the Indian has to do is speak. But he doesn’t. He turns to face them, holds his tongue.
“You?” And then a sound Lal never could’ve imagined escaping his father’s lips—a whimper, high and helpless, twisting its tail into a word. “Why?”
The Indian stares. Lal takes his chance.
“He doesn’t want you to have it, Daddy.” It’s a child’s term, one that’s lain dormant since the days when Lal needed his meat cut for him by a big pair of hands. A term natural as teeth now, at home in his grown-up mouth.
“That true, Tracker?”
Still no word. Still the dark, unwavering gaze.
“You son of a bitch.” Hammer forms the words slowly, as though trying them out for the first time. Then, like a blast of birdsong in Lal’s ears, “Get off my land.”
The Tracker doesn’t run. Doesn’t walk, either, but spins and sets off at a doggy sort of trot. His repeater bouncing. Nary a backward glance.
Lal knows better than to smile, and anyway, he’s thinking too hard about what to say next. It matters terribly. His father is a wide-open door—the right words in the right order could walk Lal clean inside. The thumb would know, but to consult it would be to risk rousing his father’s contempt. His brain churns. And then, from amid the slippery waste, a milk-white answer takes shape.
The Tracker sits for a time in his shelter. Not because he wishes to stay, but because he cannot, for the life of him, think where to go. He takes cover at the sound of hoofbeats, watches from the scrub until the son has gone. An easy shot let slip away.
It makes little sense to enter the hut again, even less to stand rooted when one is not a tree. In the end the Tracker sets off in the direction he’s facing, thinking only that he must move.
He keeps up a good pace, despite having no notion of where he’s bound. Only south, his feet seeking the tracks they laid when coming north some seven years before. Being feet, they are possessed of limited understanding; by undoing distance, they hope to undo time. They will carry the Tracker back to the old life, back to before the world went bad.
The idea—clearly impossible in the mind’s bleak light—stops him dead. Looking about, he finds he’s reached the southern boundary of Hammer’s land. He stands still for as long as he can bear to. Then, as though spun by a great gust, he jerks a quarter turn.
To the west, the Gosiute scratch in the desert and starve. Turning further, the Tracker faces north—the half-life he’s only just abandoned, Hammer and the son standing together against him, one flesh. Miles beyond them lies the site of the Bear River Massacre, Bear Hunter’s band slaughtered, four winters gone. He turns still further, looking hard now into the east. That way even the mighty Ute are being driven from their lands, herded into wastelands set aside by the Mormonee.
The Tracker looks down on the scarred noses of his boots, watches them shuffle the last quarter, back to where they began. This final story is not one he’s gleaned from Hammer’s talk, or overheard while waiting for the white man in town. This is the story he would utter himself, if there were anyone in the world to tell.
To the south a long green meadow bulges with human skulls. In that sad valley, as in every other, swelling herds trample ancient seed grounds, drain water holes, drive game into the barren hills. The People follow the rabbits and deer or, worse, stay and cling like children to the skirts of towns. Many worship the Mormonee God in the hope that he won’t abandon them as their own spirits have done. Their children steal or go hungry or wash white women’s floors until they sicken and die.
To the south even the rivers, the land’s life-giving veins, bring death.
— 43 —
DORRIE DREAMS:
Hoofbeats waken me, even as they scatter the lolling, meat-drunk wolves. I draw my beak from beneath my wing, watch as the last bloated stragglers push up into the scrub.
The horses have yet to come into view, but the ear determines there are two, weighty with riders. The wolves are right to go—it wouldn’t be the first time those who came in the wake of a kill took the blame for the killing itself.
Despite hours of feeding, the packs have left much behind—many a face still possessed of its features, discoloured though they may be. It is the full of night, the chill having dampened the meadow’s heady scent. The moon, showing horns now, shines a fair, cool light upon the pair of horses that emerge at a good clip from the northern draw.
The first is a grey, its rider female. She holds herself rigid above the bodies on the ground, looking left and right. Again and again she lets out a simple call, one syllable, half cried, half sung. Behind her a male hunches on a horse long-limbed and dark.
At the heart of the meadow, surrounded by the remnants of her own kind, the female ceases calling and turns her mount flank-on to the male’s. Then words, all hers, or if he replies it’s in a rumble too low to carry up the hill to my tree.
Who can say if the child is sensible of their talk. I’ve heard nothing from her, not the smallest of rustlings, in hours. Come dawn, I have it in mind that I’ll drag my claws over her hiding place again. There’s only so long a body can remain still. If she stays curled there much longer, the crease of earth that cradles her may decide to sustain its hold.
Below, the female raises her voice, the male lifting his head in response. His arm floats up slowly, a lone finger tracing over these eastern hills, scratching an invisible trai
l. The female urges her horse forward, its pale nose pointed our way. In moments she gains the slope, leaving the killing grounds behind. The male kicks his mount to catch up, keeping its forelock to the tail of the sure-footed, climbing grey.
She resumes her calling now, bringing the sound up from low in her throat, spreading it like the purr of a grouse. I hold still, give the moon no cause to single me out. They draw closer, near enough that I can hear the horses’ laboured breath, feel the touch of hoof upon hill in shivers through the juniper’s bough.
When they are two trees away, their eyes almost level with mine, the female stills the grey. The male’s horse follows suit. Neither of us makes a sound, child or crow, and I begin to believe it will be all right. Like the wolves, these humans will pass close and pass us by. Come morning I will chase the child from her hole, lead her first to water, then to food. I tell myself it can happen this way.
Again the female looses her call, a plaintive, enduring tone. Impossible to know if it wakens the child, or if she’s been watching through a gauze of sage leaves all along. In either case she issues a cry of her own. It is broken, barely audible, but the head of the male snaps to attention, the female already slipping down from her mount. Even if they hadn’t heard, they’d know she was in there now. The crown of the fat sagebrush parts. Up from its depths comes a trembling sign.
Foolish child. I harden my heart to her, harden my glittering eye. She’s shown them her little white hand.
— 44 —
DORRIE WAKES IN DARKNESS, the hair at her temples wet with tears. She’s slept through the supper bell and no one has come to fetch her. As always, she has only a single hook upon which to hang the dead weight of her dream. This time it is Mama. Lifting her small daughter, clutching her in a saviour’s embrace.
Sitting up, she realizes what it is that’s woken her. On the far side of the barn, a Hammer-sized shadow stands in the open door.
The Tracker hears her first—a fine buzzing, the glassy whirr of a fly. Then the chill he’s come to know. Tonight, the whirlwind wife is not content to settle for his spine’s valley. She drills through clothing, skin and bone. Once inside, she expands, filling him with light and air.
Behind them, far behind, the first wide-open note of the Father’s howl. The whirlwind wife turns the Tracker on the spot. Such bliss to know what is required of him. He has never run so hard, but with her spinning inside him, he knows no lack of wind.
Ruth has dropped off, her feet propped pink and tender on the lip of a shelf, her back numb to the rails of her little chair. She comes to consciousness through a frothing ebb of sound. Opening her eyes, she finds there will be no need of fried onions this year. The worms are taking to the stooks without her encouragement, without so much as her say.
She eases her feet down from the ledge, her toes howling at the sudden influx of blood. The creature inside her stirs. No comfort there—just a reminder of the unavoidable childbed, the suffering still to come. Ruth drops her face into her hands. Her palms are fragrant. She rests there a moment, then rises to stand on her pain.
For more than an hour now, Dorrie’s sat staring at the gap in the circular howl. Hammer offered no explanation, ignored both protests and pleas. Working his thick fingers under the she-wolf’s wooden base, he motioned with his chin for Lal to take up the other end. His eldest obliged with a grin, pressing his cheek to the tail and shuffling out backwards, Hammer huffing after him, kicking the door shut when they were through. That was strange, too—not once in three years had her husband ever entered her workshop in the company of his son. Always with the Paiute, or, when the day’s bag was small, alone.
She’s playing it over in her mind when Bendy eases through the door. He takes in her stricken expression. Then, as though sucked into a narrow vacuum, he steps quickly into the white wolf’s space. After a moment’s pause, he drops to all fours.
In that instant a prickling, the lightest of caresses at the back of Dorrie’s neck. She jerks her head round to find no one—the window faceless. Turning back, she draws a shuddery breath. “He took her.”
Bendy nods. “Where?”
“I don’t know.” The last word devolving into a senseless, spiralling moan.
He makes a lupine, four-footed move her way. The second step finds him rising. He springs over the runt, clearing the black peak of its nose to land before her, fully upright.
No touch she’s ever known has prepared her for the quality of his embrace. Not Mama’s devoted service—a cool cloth on her fevered brow, a hairbrush tugging sweetly at her scalp. Not Papa’s seldom-felt hand, a pat more suited to livestock, creatures with weathered hides. Certainly not Hammer.
With all of them, even Mama, there was a sense of shrinking, of willing herself to disappear. In the circle of Bendy’s arms, Dorrie feels herself expand. His give is endless. Tilting her mouth upward, she draws his down and meets it. His right hand flexes at her ribs, the left rising to take hold of her chin. A second kiss, his tongue a keen pleasure now, her jaw aching, open wide.
The moon is sickle thin, but the mother wolf draws starlight, collecting it in her coat. She stands in the open, Lal and his father on their knees in the nearby brake of scrub.
It was a trial waiting for darkness. Lal rode out to check that the Tracker’s hut was empty, but mostly to keep out of his father’s way. Hammer had agreed to the plan, but only just. Lal wasn’t sure he’d follow through until shortly after nightfall, when there came a knock at his bedchamber door. Get your gun. The sweetest words a son could hope to hear. Not that Lal was much of a shot. He’d never taken out anything bigger than a rabbit—he’d never been given the chance. Until now.
He holds his rifle propped at his side, just as his father does, muzzle to the sky. In spite of himself, he longs for no quarry, this paired waiting the nearest thing he’s known to bliss. A simple prayer floats upward through the seams of his skull—Stay away, stay away, stay away.
It works like a charm against him. In the distance, the rogue wolf parts the night like a curtain, bursting onto the meadow’s stage. His coat is the colour of armour. About his eyes a mask of black fur. He’s upwind of them, upwind of the female’s unnatural scent. Lal’s breath catches. He hears a forced swallow, made audible by the stricture in his father’s throat. The pack horse, hobbled at a good distance, holds its whinny.
The wolf runs to his mate, all caution thrown to the wind, a joyful, springing stride. She makes no move, no sound, to greet him, and still he runs.
Lal feels his father’s rifle rise, and raises his own to match. The male reaches his goal, drives his nose deep into the white ruff and whines—a sound tangible in Lal’s backbone, echoed in the wild shiver that animates the great wolf’s length. Lal shoots his father a glance, shocked to find him sighting a wildly skewed shot. A moment’s confusion bordering on panic, and then comprehension comes. It’s a gift. His father trusting him to make the kill.
Ordinarily he’d buckle under the pressure, but there’s nothing ordinary about this night. The male nuzzles his rigid mate, refusing to believe her gone. Lal takes a breath and feels himself quieten. On the exhale, his gun barrel grows, extending over the grey field until it presses its cold mouth to his target’s breast.
They fire together, father and son. The powder flash is blinding, but Lal need not see to know the male is down, the female still standing, unmoved. If he understands anything, it’s that his ball has hit home.
“Hell of a shot,” his father says, and Lal feels his ribs in danger of cracking from within. Hammer heaves up onto his feet, kicking the kinks out of his knees. “Your daddy’s a deadeye, Lal, always was.” He breaks cover, moving cautiously toward the twitching kill.
Lal blinks like a child shaken awake. He watches as, with a mighty spasm, the wolf gives up the ghost, turning lumpen at his father’s feet.
He’s seen it done a hundred times. Still, meeting the black mare’s gaze as she dips her head into the bridle, braving her long teeth as she accepts t
he bit, the Tracker knows wave upon wave of fear. The whirlwind wife helps him, lending torsion and lift as he hefts the dark saddle into place.
Cinching the girth brings him close to the mare’s barrel—the depth of her breathing, the bulk of her heart. He works two fingers under the strap, the way he’s seen the new man do, and the horse blows a trusting sigh.
He hasn’t much time. He was closing in on the yard when he heard the belated human answer to the Father’s call—the true shot folding the false one into its report. The briefest of detours past the child wife’s window showed him his first glimpse of love in years—that and the space where the Father’s mate had been.
The Tracker slings the carved saddlebags into place, steps back and unbuttons his trousers. The picture book comes free with a peeling sound, its cover damp with the sweat of the flesh to which it has belonged. His leg feels stripped without it. Resisting the urge to take a last look inside, he slips the book into the near saddlebag and lowers the flap. Still the leather thong dangles from his hand, the same cord that bound the drawings to their maker—that blue-white, lifeless thigh. After a moment’s hesitation he shoves its thin length in after the book. The whirlwind wife is quieter now, a gentle churning, barely a hum. Threading tongue through buckle, the Tracker makes fast the flap.
Dorrie and Bendy hear nothing but the beating of their own two hearts. Not a distant, doubled gunshot. Not even a loaded pack horse shuffling to a stop. Nothing until the grey door screeches and they are no longer alone.
As they scramble to their feet, Lal twists to see what it is that’s opened his father’s eyes so wide. Together, the men let their burden fall. It hits the planks with a flesh-heavy thud.
Dorrie takes in the new trophy—a huge, silver-maned male with a raccoon’s robber mask—and knows its features in an instant. It’s the same instant Lal whirls on them, his eyes alight. Three skittering steps and he swings, an arcing roundhouse that catches Bendy at his temple, knocking him clean off his feet. Knuckles graze Dorrie’s cheek, the blow’s aftermath enough to send her reeling. She lands on her tailbone and slides, legs splayed, shoulders colliding with a bank of bales. Moorhens fly in all directions. Marmots leap.