The Loop

by Nicholas Evans

For a long moment he looked at her. And she saw in his sad eyes what she already knew he felt for her. She took off her glove and reached out and touched his cold face and smiled. She felt him tremble a little at her touch. And as she lowered her hand, he put his head back and opened his mouth and howled, long and plaintively, into the night.

  And before the note had time to die, from across the snow-tipped trees of the canyon, the wolves replied.

  WINTER

  24

  Nobody witnessed the wolfer’s return to Hope. His silver trailer slid into town like a ghost ship in the dead of the night before Thanksgiving, when the plowed snow lay like unmarked graves along the roadside and the blacktop glistened with salt.

  J.J. Lovelace sat alone in the old gray Chevy pickup he always used for hauling the trailer and as he came toward the junction by the old school, he turned off the headlights and slowed to a halt.

  Behind the trees on the other side of the street was the graveyard where the mother he’d never known was buried. But Lovelace didn’t look that way or even think of it. Instead, he squinted sideways through the darkness along Main Street and was pleased to see it was deserted. He pulled away from the junction and, driving on his sidelights, cruised slowly through the town.

  It was much as he remembered. Except for the modern cars parked there, with their windshields masked against the frost. Some of the names on the storefronts had changed, the gas station had new pumps and there was a new red traffic light swinging in the wind on a wire across the street, flashing pointlessly at no one.

  Lovelace had no special feelings for Hope, one way or the other. And no memories, good or bad, were stirred by this witching passage through a place he’d once called home. To him, it was just another faceless town.

  Buck Calder had mailed him a map of how to get to the Hicks house, where he was going to be based, but Lovelace didn’t need it. He remembered the route well enough. It would take him past his father’s old house on the river. And he wondered, as he headed out that way, whether he would feel anything when he saw it.

  He had told Calder he would be arriving late and there was no need for anyone to wait up for him. With jobs like this, it was best to come unseen and stay unseen. That was why he had waited for the hunting season to end and the mountains to clear of prying amateurs.

  Once he was out of town, he turned his headlights back on, but kept them dimmed. For five miles, following the snow-rutted gravel, the only sign of life he saw was an owl, sitting on a fence post, watching him with saucered yellow eyes.

  The gateway to his father’s old house was overgrown with scrub and drifted deeply with snow. Lovelace stopped the truck so that the headlights angled toward the house. If he’d turned the engine off and wound down the window, he would have been able to hear the sound of the river. But he didn’t. It was a clear night and freezing hard and his bones were too brittle.

  He could see the house plainly enough through the bare branches of the cottonwoods and he could tell right away it had long been derelict. A shredded screen hung askew from the window of what was once the kitchen and a wrecked mobile home stood in the yard with its roof agape. Snow had filled the inside so that the windows looked as though they were hung with shrouds.

  Lovelace knew such moments called for nostalgia. But try as he might, he couldn’t summon any. The best he could do was a mild surprise that some city-type hadn’t knocked the place down and built a fancy summer vacation house instead. He turned the steering wheel and headed on up the valley.

  At last he saw the epic gateway of the Calder ranch with the steer’s skull looming above it, capped with snow and watching all who approached. A mile farther and he saw the ranch house. There were lights on above the yard and he could see cars parked and a pair of dogs running from one of the barns, then stopping when they saw him veer left and on up the road toward the Hicks place.

  When he got there, he parked the trailer, as instructed, under some high trees at the back of the barns, where Calder said it couldn’t be seen, even from the air. Hicks and his wife were the only others who knew he was coming and what his business was, Calder had assured him.

  He felt the blast of the freezing air as soon as he got out of the truck. It had to be fourteen or fifteen below. He pulled the flaps of his fur cap down over his ears and walked back to the trailer, past the snowmobile loaded in the bed of the pickup. The rimed crust of the snow cracked loudly under his boots. An old dog was barking inside the house.

  He stopped by the trailer door and looked up at the sky. It was milky with stars, but Lovelace didn’t pay them any heed. He wanted clouds that might bring some respite from the cold and he knew there were none.

  In the trailer, he lit a lamp and heated some milk on the kerosene stove. He sat on his bunk to wait, shivering and jamming his gloved hands under his arms and hugging himself. When the milk was ready, he filled his mug and warmed his hands on it and felt each hot swallow disperse without effect in the cold cave of his body.

  There was a wood stove but he hadn’t the energy to get it going. The trailer was built for work, not comfort. It was like a smaller version of his trap room at home, about eighteen feet long with a narrow aisle of linoleum running from the bunk and galley at the front to a table and workbench at the rear. Instead of hanging exposed, his gear was concealed in wooden cupboards all around the trailer’s interior.

  Lovelace had made and fitted them himself and he alone knew of the secret panels behind which he stored the things that could betray his true trade: the traps and snares and pots of bait and the collapsible German ‘sniper’ rifle with its screw-on silencer and laser nightscope; the radio scanner that he used for tracking collared wolves and the M44 cyanide gas ‘getters’ that exploded in their faces, which were the only concession he’d ever made to poison and which (knowing how his father would have disapproved) he rarely used. It had taken him most of a month to get everything back into working order.

  He gulped the last of the milk now and felt just as cold as before. He swung his legs up onto the bunk and lay down, still wearing his coat and cap and boots and gloves, and heaped himself with his wolfskin rugs and the old log cabin quilt that Winnie had once sewn for their bed. Then he reached out and turned off the lamp.

  He lay quite still and tried to distract himself from his shivering by thinking about the job that would start in the morning. It was awhile since he’d worked, but he had no doubt he could do it. Even though he was getting old, he was still as handy as some men half his age. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it, like it had been before, but then hearts were treacherous things at the best of times. At least, the work would keep him busy.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw how the trailer’s frosted rear window had been turned by the glow of the starlit snow into a blank screen of silver. And the wolfer lay beneath his wolfskins watching it, as though a movie were about to start, and waited for the dawn.

  ‘Shall we all join hands?’ Buck Calder said.

  Everyone was seated at the long table that had been set up in the living room. Ribbons of steam curled from the giant golden turkey that held pride of place, amid a multitude of other dishes, at its center. Helen turned to Luke, who was sitting beside her, and held out her hand. He smiled and took it in his and they lowered their heads for his father to say grace. For a moment, the only sound was the crackle of the great logs that blazed on the hearth.

  ‘Dear Lord, we thank thee for leading our forefathers in safety across this great land and for helping them overcome the many perils and hardships they faced in making this, our home, a place of safety. May their courage and thy spirit guide us and make us worthy of the fruits of thy love laid before us this day. Amen.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Everyone started talking at once and the Thanksgiving feast began.

  They were fifteen in all, including Kathy Hicks’ baby who sat regally between his parents in a high chair, bolted to one end of the table. Luke’s sister Lane and her husband, Bob, had
come over from Bozeman. Lane was a high school teacher, who not only looked like her mother but had the same gentle dignity too. Bob seemed only to be able to talk about real estate prices. He was doing so now with Doug Millward, who was here with Hettie and their three children. Apart from Helen, the only other ‘outsider’ was Ruth Michaels, who had arrived late, looking even more apprehensive than Helen.

  Helen had only accepted the invitation because Luke insisted. She had been wary of how his father might behave toward her and didn’t know if she had recovered enough confidence to lock horns with him. She needn’t have worried. Buck Calder had been charming. And so had everyone else.

  Before lunch, Helen had helped Kathy lay the table and they’d had their first real chat. Helen was impressed by how bright and funny she was, though quite what she saw in Clyde remained a mystery. As Helen knew from her own experience, there was no accounting for some women’s choice of partner. By the time they sat down to eat, fortified by Luke’s quiet presence beside her, Helen was glad she had come.

  It was warming to be part of a family occasion and in a proper home, even if it wasn’t her own. And it was the best meal she’d had in months. She had three helpings of turkey and Doug Millward, who was sitting on her other side, made a big joke of it and kept passing dishes to her.

  It wasn’t until her plate was finally clear that anyone mentioned wolves.

  ‘So, Buck,’ Hettie Millward said. ‘Did you get yourself an elk this season?’

  ‘No, ma’am. I did not.’

  ‘He never was much of a shot,’ Doug Millward said to Helen in a stage whisper. Everyone laughed. Then Clyde piped up:

  ‘I was talking to that outfitter fella, Pete Neuberg, you know? Says it’s been one of the worst hunting seasons in years. Elk and deer numbers are way down, he says. He blames the wolves.’

  Kathy raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘I hear they’re to blame for the weather too.’

  ‘How can wolves be to blame for the weather?’ little Charlie Millward said.

  His sister Lucy gave him a shove. ‘It was a joke, dumbo.’

  There was a moment of silence. Helen saw Buck Calder was staring at her across the table.

  ‘What do you think, Helen?’ he said.

  ‘About them being to blame for the weather?’

  She regretted the smart remark as soon as she’d said it. The laughter it prompted subtly changed Calder’s smile. Helen was aware of Luke shifting uneasily in his seat. She hurried on.

  ‘Well, they’re certainly killing elk and deer. That’s what they mainly feed on, so their being here is bound to have an impact. But not a huge one.’

  Clyde sneered quietly, earning himself a narrow-eyed look from his wife. Luke leaned forward and cleared his throat.

  ‘W-we’ve seen a l-lot of elk and deer the l-last few weeks.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Helen said. ‘We have.’

  No one spoke for a moment. Eleanor stood up to clear the dishes.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘At least they’re not eating cattle anymore.’

  ‘They never ate any of mine,’ Doug Millward said.

  Luke shrugged. ‘M-maybe yours d-don’t taste so good.’

  Everyone, even Luke’s father, roared and the conversation turned to other matters. When no one was looking, Helen turned to Luke.

  ‘Thanks, partner,’ she said quietly.

  That secret look and, earlier, the touch of her hand while his father said grace, stayed with Luke for a long time.

  He’d been so proud that she should call him her partner. Sitting beside her that day, he’d felt almost as though he was her boyfriend or something. When there were lots of people sitting around the table like that, he normally kept his mouth shut, in case his stutter ambushed him. But having Helen at his side gave him such confidence that, without thinking, he’d spoken up to defend her. Hell, he’d even cracked a joke!

  Over the fortnight that followed, it seemed to Luke that they had grown even closer. And yet, in his dreams, it was the opposite. Whenever he dreamed of her now, which was often, she was always with someone else or didn’t recognize him or was laughing at him.

  Except for the dream he’d had last night.

  He was walking with her at the very edge of the ocean on a curve of white sand, palm-fringed and flawless, the kind you see in travel brochures. She was wearing a yellow dress that showed her shoulders. The gently breaking waves were streaming up over the sand and frothing around their bare feet. The water was warm and clear and in the glassed arc of the waves before they broke he could see great shoals of fish.

  He pointed them out and Helen stopped and stood, with her shoulder touching his, and they both watched. The fish were of many different kinds and shapes and colors but they moved as one, darting and turning in perfect synchrony.

  It was one of those dreams you knew to be a dream even as you dreamt it, the kind that slipped away as the real world seeped in, no matter how hard you tried to cling on. Sometimes though, Luke had found there was a moment, when conscious and unconscious were fleetingly in balance and you could dictate events. And it had been like that this morning. He had willed Helen to turn to him and she had done so. And in the instant before he woke, she had lifted her mouth to his and almost, almost, kissed him.

  He thought about the dream while he shaved and showered and he knew he would go on reliving it all day. It had obviously been prompted by Helen getting a letter yesterday from her father, enclosing a plane ticket and a formal invitation to his wedding in Barbados. She was going in three weeks’ time, for Christmas, and would be away for more than a week.

  Luke got himself dressed and headed down for breakfast.

  It was a quarter to eight. Every other day he would have been up two hours ago and out in the forest tracking with Helen. But today was Wednesday: speech therapy. He had already heard his mother’s car leave. With Christmas coming up, she was helping Ruth in the store pretty well every day.

  His father’s office opened directly onto the living room. He always left the door open, so he could monitor the movements of the household. As Luke came down the stairs he could see him in there, sitting in front of the computer, a cigar stuck between his teeth.

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘M-morning.’

  His father put down his cigar and took off the little half-moon spectacles he used for reading. He leaned back in his big leather chair.

  ‘Not out with Helen today?’

  ‘No sir. It’s m-my c-clinic day.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  His father stood up and came out into the living room. He had that easy, amiable look on his face, the one that made Luke most suspicious.

  ‘Gonna have some breakfast?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ll join you for a coffee.’

  His father led the way into the kitchen and took the pot off the coffee machine. He filled two cups and took them to the table. Luke never drank coffee, but his father always forgot that. Luke poured himself some cereal and sat down opposite him.

  He knew what was coming. These casual, cozy, father-and-son chats about his work with Helen had been happening a lot lately. Only the other day his father had asked a whole load of detailed questions about radio-collar frequencies. It was comical. If the guy had shown any interest in Luke’s life before, he might have stood a better chance.

  ‘So, how’s the therapy going?’

  ‘It’s g-going fine.’

  ‘So poor old Helen has to cope by herself, huh?’

  Luke smiled. ‘Yeah.’

  His father nodded thoughtfully and took a drink from his cup.

  ‘So how’d the tracking go yesterday?’

  ‘G-good.’

  ‘Where are they mainly hanging out now?’

  ‘Oh, they m-m-move around all th-the time.’

  ‘Yeah, but I mean, like yesterday, for example?’

  Luke swallowed. H
e was okay at being evasive, but when it came to straightforward lying, he was hopeless. His stutter nearly always betrayed him. His father was watching him very closely.

  ‘Y-y-esterday, they were way b-back. Right up b-by the divide.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Yeah. Ab-b-bout ten miles s-south of the b-big wwall.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Luke saw his father’s face harden and he cursed himself for making such a mess of it. It wouldn’t have fooled a gullible kid. For salvation, he looked up at the clock.

  ‘I’d b-b-better be going.’

  ‘The roads are clear. Clyde was out blading first thing.’

  Luke got up and put his bowl in the dishwasher. He picked up his car keys and took his hat and coat from the pegs by the door. He knew his father’s eyes were on him the whole while.

  ‘Go carefully, Luke.’

  The voice was cold and flat. Luke zipped up his coat.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  And he opened the door and fled.

  The session with Joan went well.

  She told him of a new therapy technique she’d been reading about, where you videoed the stutterer and then edited out all the stutters to show him how it looked and sounded when he talked fluently. Joan said it apparently got great results, but she wasn’t going to waste the money on him because he’d hardly stuttered once in the whole hour.

  When they said goodbye she touched his arm and said how happy he looked. And as he walked to his car, he wondered how it showed. It was true. He’d never felt happier in his whole life. It was like he was, kind of, singing inside.

  From the clinic, he drove across town to the supermarket to pick up some things Helen had asked him to get. He parked the Jeep among the mounds of freshly plowed snow and, as soon as he got out, saw Cheryl Snyder and Jerry Kruger heading toward him. They had already seen him, so there was no escape. Kruger had his arm around her, making a big show of it, presumably to let the world know he and Cheryl were now an item.