The Loop

by Nicholas Evans

‘Hey, Cooks! How’re you doing?’

  ‘Hi, Luke.’

  They stood chatting for a minute or two, or rather, Luke listened while Kruger rabbited on, cracking jokes that Cheryl didn’t even smile at. What on earth she saw in the guy Luke couldn’t imagine. Eventually he said he’d better get on with his shopping and they all said goodbye. He was walking away when Kruger called after him.

  ‘Hey, Cooks! Congratulations!’

  Luke turned and frowned at him.

  ‘Hear you got yourself laid at last.’

  ‘What?’

  Luke could see Cheryl jabbing him in the ribs, telling him to shut up. But Kruger took no notice.

  ‘Aw, come on, don’t go all coy. The wolf babe! Everybody knows.’

  He howled, just like that day at the fair, and started laughing. Cheryl broke away from him.

  ‘Don’t take any notice, Luke,’ she said.

  ‘I’m just h-h-helping her. That’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Kruger. ‘Oiling her traps, huh?’

  Cheryl gave him an angry push. ‘Jerry, you’re gross. Just shut up, okay?’

  Luke walked the aisles of the supermarket in a state of shock. He knew that Hope, like any small town, thrived on gossip. But it was the first time he’d found himself the subject of it.

  All he prayed was that Helen didn’t get to hear about it.

  Eleanor fixed the star to the top of the Christmas tree in the shop window and stood back.

  ‘Let’s have a look from outside,’ Ruth said.

  Eleanor followed her out onto the sidewalk. An icy wind was blowing directly down Main Street, playing havoc with the strings of colored lights that zigzagged between the facing storefronts. The two women stood outside Paragon, holding their hair from their faces while they admired Eleanor’s handiwork.

  ‘It looks beautiful,’ Ruth said. ‘Whenever I do Christmas trees they always end up looking Jewish.’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘How can a tree look Jewish?’

  Ruth shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They just do. You’re a Catholic, huh?’

  ‘Born, raised and lapsed.’

  ‘It shows. I mean, the born and raised bit. Catholics do good trees.’

  Eleanor laughed again. ‘Ruth, I’m freezing to death out here.

  They went inside and while Ruth served some customers who’d been looking around for ages, Eleanor got on with decorating the rest of the store.

  She had brought some greenery and a stepladder from the ranch that morning. It had been years since she had put up Christmas decorations. They never bothered at home anymore and doing it now gave her a nostalgic, almost childlike pleasure. It was getting dark outside and the lights on the tree in the window glowed warmly.

  When the customers had gone, Ruth came to help her hang a big gold streamer across the front end of the store. Ruth held one end while Eleanor went up the stepladder to tack the other to the picture rail.

  ‘So, is Luke still helping Helen Ross out with the wolves?’

  ‘Yes. We hardly ever see him.’

  ‘I like her.’

  ‘I do too. I think Luke’s got a bit of a crush on her.’

  ‘How old is he now?’

  ‘Eighteen.’ She pushed in the tack.

  ‘He’s so handsome! Makes me wish I was a few years younger, anyhow.’

  Eleanor looked down at her and Ruth seemed suddenly embarrassed.

  Eleanor smiled. ‘Shall we fix the other end now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They moved the ladder to the other side of the shop and up Eleanor went again. For awhile they were silent.

  ‘So how come you “lapsed”? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  Eleanor didn’t answer right away, not because she minded, but because no one had ever asked her. Ruth’s direct manner was one of the things she liked about her. Eleanor took the box of thumbtacks from her pocket and got one out.

  ‘Well, maybe you don’t know, but our oldest child died in a car wreck.’

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘Well. All my life, I’d been a regular churchgoer. Gone to mass and confession - and I tell you, around this time of year, living out where we do, it wasn’t always easy. Buck used to tease me about it. He’d say, what on earth did I have to confess? When did I do all these wicked things? And that I should tell him, so he could be around. But then Buck’s not a Catholic, so he never understood.’

  She glanced down at Ruth and smiled, then tacked the streamer to the rail.

  ‘There.’

  She came down the ladder and the two of them stood staring up at the streamer.

  ‘Looks good,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Mmm. Where shall we put the other one?’

  ‘At the back?’

  They moved the ladder and repeated the process, while Eleanor went on with the story.

  ‘Anyhow. After Henry died, I started going more than ever. Hardly missed a service. Like a lot of people do, I suppose, when something dreadful happens in their lives. You know, you’re looking for a reason, I suppose, or a little sign or something, that the one you’ve lost is somewhere else and happy. And then one day I just realized, well . . . He wasn’t there.’

  Ruth was frowning at her, trying to understand.

  ‘You mean, your son?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’s there okay. He’s fine, I know that. I mean He with a capital H.’

  ‘So you’re saying, you believe in heaven, but you don’t believe in God?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  By now the second streamer was in place. Eleanor came down the ladder to inspect it.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She looked at Ruth and was surprised to find she was staring at her and not the streamer.

  ‘You’re a great woman, Eleanor. Do you know that?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re pretty good too.’

  Ruth gave a little, mock curtsy. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘Can I ask you a personal question now?’ Eleanor said, lightly, as she folded up the ladder. It wasn’t fair, she knew, saying what she was about to and she felt a little mean doing it. But there were some moments in life that you simply couldn’t let go by unused.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How long have you been sleeping with my husband?’

  25

  Baby Buck Hicks guzzled at his mother’s breast as though it were the last meal he’d ever get. Clyde had been going on at Kathy for weeks that she should get the boy onto bottled milk. He’d read some article that said it ruined a woman’s shape to breast-feed too long. But Kathy was in no hurry. She enjoyed it as much as little Buck did. And, for heavensakes, he wasn’t even a year old yet.

  Clyde was just jealous and anyway, what the heck he was doing, reading articles like that, Kathy couldn’t imagine. It was probably something he’d seen in a cow magazine and gotten all mixed up in his head.

  She’d been up awhile but was still in her pink quilt dressing gown, sitting on the couch in the little living room and idly flicking through the pages of People magazine, while the baby had his feed.

  There was a three-page spread about Jordan Townsend and Krissi Maxton, with pictures of them in cowboy clothes, posing in front of some bison on their ‘dream ranch’ in Hope, Montana. Krissi was quoted as saying it was the only place she ever felt ‘centered’. But she still looked as if she didn’t want to get too close to the bison. There were more pictures of them, dressed up to the nines at the premiere of Krissi’s new movie. SpaceKill III. Krissi was wearing a sliver of sparkling dress, that showed pretty well everything she had to offer. Jordan seemed to have had a face-lift. It made him look about a hundred and five.

  Kathy yawned and shifted the baby to her other breast.

  It had snowed again in the night. Clyde was out with the plow, clearing the road down to the ranch. The morning sun was flooding in through the doorway from the kitchen, almost touching the toes of Kathy’s sensib
le sheepskin bootees. The radio was playing that song again about the guy who’d lost his sweetheart and was spending Christmas alone with his horse.

  Suddenly, in the corner of her eye, Kathy saw a shadow pass across the patch of sunlit floor. Then she heard the clump of feet on the steps and two sharp knocks on the kitchen door. She got up and made herself decent and right away the baby began to cry. She put him over her shoulder and patted his back while she walked through into the kitchen.

  The face she saw when she opened the door gave her such a shock she almost dropped the baby. Everything about it was gray, from the fur of the cap to the frosted tips of the beard. Even the skin, tight and translucent over the man’s jutting cheekbones, had a grayish hue. All except the eyes, which were glaring at her like a pair of angry black bugs.

  It was the first time she had met the wolfer, though he’d been there more than two weeks. He hardly ever seemed to be around. She had caught a glimpse of him now and then, heading up toward the forest on his snowmobile across the top meadow. Once she’d waved to him but either he hadn’t seen her or had chosen to ignore her. Clyde and Buck had gone to his trailer to talk with him a couple of times and Clyde had come back saying he was odd and grouchy and she shouldn’t go bothering him.

  Little Buck was bawling in her ear and the wolfer was staring at him as if he’d never seen a baby before. Then he seemed to remember Kathy was there too and touched his cap.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘You’re Mr Lovelace.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Your husband said—’

  ‘Come in. Nice to meet you.’

  She held out her hand and he looked down at it as though he didn’t understand why it was there. Then he slowly took off his heavy glove and then a thinner glove beneath it and by the time he was ready to shake hands, Kathy was embarrassed and wishing she hadn’t bothered. His hand felt cold and gnarled, like the limb of a frozen tree.

  ‘Your husband said—’

  ‘Mr Lovelace, would you mind coming inside. I don’t want this little monster catching cold.’

  He hesitated and she could see he would prefer to stay where he was. But she held the door open and reluctantly he stepped into the kitchen, his eyes fixed again on the crying baby.

  ‘Can I get you some coffee or something?’

  ‘Is he yours?’

  Kathy laughed. This was one strange old guy. Whose baby did he think it was?

  ‘That’s right. Though, times like this, I’m open to offers.’

  ‘What’s he hollering about?’

  ‘He’s hungry, that’s all. I was just feeding him.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘He’ll be one come the end of January.’

  Lovelace nodded, considering this. Then, abruptly, he took his beetle eyes off the baby and fixed them on Kathy.

  ‘Your husband said I could borrow the chain saw, cut me some firewood.’

  ‘Oh, sure, that’s fine.’

  ‘He said it was in the barn, but it’s not.’

  He looked down. The chain saw was on the floor, right by the door, among all the boots. Clyde had filed and oiled the chain at the kitchen table last night, while lecturing her for the umpteenth time on how she shouldn’t go telling anyone about the wolfer.

  ‘Can I take it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Please.’

  He bent and picked up the chain saw, then opened the door.

  ‘Won’t trouble you again.’

  And before Kathy could say it was no trouble at all and was he sure he didn’t want that cup of coffee, the wolfer had gone.

  Lovelace had been looking for the wolves for fifteen days now, combing the canyons and forest for tracks and scanning the air for signals. But he’d seen no sign of them, nor heard a single howl.

  He’d started from the north, where Calder said he reckoned they were, and worked south along the mountain front, methodically checking each trail, ravine and creek on the map. He knew that the biologist woman and Calder’s son would be out radio tracking, so to avoid them he always chose the routes he figured they’d be least likely to use, looping high into the backcountry and dropping down from the west.

  The weather was a curse. It had snowed almost every day since he arrived, as if God was on the side of the wolves and trying to hide their tracks from him. And it was the kind of snow that made the going slow and heavy. It was some time since he’d worked country this big in weather this bad and he’d forgotten what a toll it took.

  The snowmobile made too much noise to use the whole time. He liked to hear and not be heard. So he only used it to get himself up high and then he would find a safe place to leave it and use skis or snowshoes, depending on the terrain and the condition of the snow.

  He had stripped his pack to essentials, but what with the tent and food and the rifle and radio scanner, it still felt heavy as a dead man on his back and at times like this, after a long day’s trudging, he barely had the energy to pitch the tent and crawl in.

  He lay now in his sleeping bag, looking at the map with his flashlight, working out where he’d go when he’d eaten something and rested and waited for the blizzard to blow itself out. He’d smelled it in the air when it was still light and seen it in the yellow lowering of the sky. It was nearly twenty below outside and after pitching his tent, his hands had been numb and useless. He had the little Coleman stove going to melt some snow to drink and his fingers were starting to tingle and hurt as the blood seeped back into them.

  On the map, he saw he was above a place called Wrong Creek. Lovelace remembered the name from when he was a boy. There was a story about how it came to be called that, but he couldn’t remember it. High above it, he noticed the crossed pickax symbol of a mine, no doubt disused, and made a mental note to check it out. It might be somewhere he could use for dumping the wolves. Assuming he ever caught them.

  He reached into his pack and hauled out the scanner. The cussed thing weighed a ton and was good as useless anyways. Without a clue as to what frequencies they had the wolves’ collars set to, it was like looking for a flea in a fur shed. And even if he was lucky enough to stumble across a signal, there was no knowing if it was a wolf. There were sure to be other animals around that had been collared by some biologist or other. It might be a bear or mountain lion, even a coyote or deer.

  He switched the scanner on and went through the motions for the tenth time that day. It took him half an hour and, predictably, he found nothing but the mindless rush of static. He switched it off and pushed it away. Next time he went back to the trailer for provisions, he’d ditch the damn thing.

  He forced himself to eat some deer jerky and melted some snow on the stove to drink. Then he killed the flashlight and lay on his back, staring blindly at the tent roof until he saw it give the faintest yellow tinge of the dying light outside.

  All day he’d been thinking about the Hicks woman’s baby. Not yet a full year old. He’d found it hard to take his eyes off the creature. Those tiny pink hands and the little face all screwed up and screaming for his mother’s teat. The noise, the energy, the sheer, explosive life in the little thing had quite shocked him.

  He had known the young of many species, known what they smelled of and felt like and the different noises they made, be it in life or in the throes of death. But he’d never known a human baby. In all his long years, he’d never held one in his arms nor even touched one. Nor had he ever smelled that warm, sweet, puppy smell he’d smelled that morning.

  Early in their marriage, he and Winnie had discovered that they weren’t able to have children. She’d been keen to adopt, but he didn’t like the idea of rearing another man’s child and so they never had.

  Whenever possible, he had avoided any contact with children and always steered well clear of babies. Perhaps he feared they might touch some painful spot within him. Like him, Winnie had been an only child and so there were no nieces or nephews who might have come to visit or later to bring children of their own.

  Suddenly, and for no rea
son that Lovelace could then have made sense of, he thought about that last evening he’d spent with Winnie at the hospital.

  The doctors had told him in hushed tones outside in the corridor that she was slipping away. And when he went in and sat down beside the bed, he’d thought her already gone. Her eyes were closed and he couldn’t see her breathing. She looked so frail and pale and bruised from all the tubes and wires and things they’d stuck into her. But her face was peaceful and after he’d been sitting there some time, she opened her eyes and saw him and smiled.

  She started to talk, so softly he had to lean in real close to hear her and it was as if she was in the middle of a conversation that had already been going on awhile in her head. He supposed it was because she was so full of drugs, but it was almost like she was already halfway to heaven and was taking a little rest and looking back on life before she finally left it behind.

  ‘I was thinking, Joseph. About all those animals. I was trying to work out how many it must be. How many do you think?’

  ‘Winnie, I . . .’ He took her hand in both of his. He had no idea what she was talking about. Her voice was like a dreamy child’s.

  ‘How many? It must be more than thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe. Hundreds of thousands. Do you think it’s that many, Joseph?’

  ‘Winnie,’ he said softly. ‘What animals, dear?’

  ‘Could it be a million? No. No, not a million. Not that many.’

  She smiled at him and he asked her again, gently, what animals?

  ‘Why, silly, the ones you’ve killed. All these years. I was trying to add them up. It’s so many, Joseph. All those lives, every one of them a separate life.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be fretting about things like that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not fretting. I was wondering, that’s all.’

  ‘Wondering.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She suddenly frowned and looked at him with great intensity.

  ‘Do you think, Joseph, their life is the same as ours? I mean, what it’s made of, that little flicker or spirit or whatever it is, inside them. Do you think it’s the same as what we have inside us?’

  ‘No, dear, of course it’s not. How could it be?’