Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

  I hurried through the offices and out into the courtyard. Susana turned when she heard my footsteps, her face flushed with anger. “Elena,” she said, “you must do something about them!”

  The others merely went on yelling. I had been right. It was Gilberto, Eduardo, and Lucia, and they were right in the middle of one of those monumental quarrels that my people are famous for.

  “. . . contrived to steal our heritage, and I will not allow it!” This from Eduardo.

  “You were amply taken care of in your grandfather’s will. And now you want more. Greed!” Lucia shook a finger at him.

  “I merely want what is mine.”

  “Yours!” Lucia looked as if she might spit at him.

  “Yes, mine.”

  “What about Gilberto? Have you forgotten him?”

  Eduardo glanced at his brother, who was cowering by the fountain. “No, of course not. The proceeds from the Sacraments will be divided equally. . . .”

  “I don’t want the money!” Gilberto said.

  “You be quiet!” Eduardo turned on him. “You are too foolish to know what’s good for you. You could help me convince this old witch, but instead you’re mooning around here, protesting that you only want to see the Sacraments.” His voice cruelly mimicked Gilberto.

  “But you will receive the money set aside for you in Grandfather’s will. . . .”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “Not enough for what?”

  “I must finish my life’s work.”

  “What work?”

  “My film.”

  “I thought the film was done.”

  Eduardo looked away. “We ran over budget.”

  “A-hah! You’ve already squandered your inheritance. Before you’ve received it, it’s spent. And now you want more. Greed!”

  “My film. . . .”

  “Film, film, film! I am tired of hearing about it.”

  This had all been very interesting, but I decided it was time to intervene. Just as Eduardo gave a howl of wounded indignation, I said in Spanish: “All right! That’s enough!”

  All three turned to me, as if they hadn’t known I was there. At once they looked embarrassed; in their family, as in mine, quarrels should be kept strictly private.

  I looked at Lucia. “Miss Sanchez, I want to see you in my office.” Then I motioned at the brothers. “You two leave. If I catch you on the premises again without my permission, I’ll have you jailed for trespassing.”

  They grumbled and glowered but moved toward the door. Susana followed, making shooing gestures.

  I turned and led Lucia Sanchez to the office wing. When she was seated in my visitor’s chair, I said: “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Then I went downstairs to the basement. The book I’d been looking for the night before was where I’d left it earlier in the week, on the worktable. I opened it and leafed through to the section of pictures of the artist and his family.

  When young, Adolfo Sanchez had had the same chiseled features as his grandsons; he had, however, been handsome in a way they were not. In his later years, he had sported a beard, and his face had been deeply lined, his eyes sunken with pain.

  I turned the page and found photographs of the family members. The wife, Constantina, was conventionally pretty. The daughter, Rosalinda, took after her mother. In a couple of the photographs, Lucia looked on in the background. A final one showed Adolfo with his arms around the two boys, age about six. Neither the wife nor the daughter was in evidence.

  I shut the book with shaky hands, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I should go to the special exhibits gallery and confirm my suspicions, but I didn’t have the heart for it. Besides, the Sacraments were as clear in my mind as if I’d been looking at them. I went instead to my office.

  Lucia Sanchez sat as she had before, roughened hands gripping her shabby leather bag. When I came in, she looked up and seemed to see the knowledge in my eyes. Wearily she passed a hand over her face.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve figured it out.”

  “Then you understand why the boys must never see those figures.”

  I sat down on the edge of the desk in front of her. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I’ve told no one, all those years. It was a secret between my brother and myself. But he had to expiate it, and he chose to do so through his work. I never knew what he was doing out there in his studio. The whole time, he refused to tell me. You can imagine my shock after he died, when I went to look and saw he’d told the whole story in his pottery figures.”

  “Of course, no one would guess, unless. . . .”

  “Unless they knew the family history and what the members had looked like.”

  “Or noticed something was wrong with the figures and then studied photographs, like I just did.”

  She acknowledged it with a small nod.

  “Adolfo and his wife had a daughter, Rosalinda,” I said. “She’s the daughter in the Sacraments, and the parents are Adolfo and Constantina. The resemblance is easy to spot.”

  “It’s remarkable, isn’t it . . . how Adolfo could make the figures so real. Most folk artists don’t, you know.” She spoke in a detached tone.

  “And remarkable how he could make the scenes reflect real life.”

  “That, too.” But now the detachment was gone, and pain crossed her face.

  “Rosalinda grew up and married and had the twins. What happened to her husband?”

  “He deserted her, even before the boys were born.”

  “And Constantina died shortly after.”

  “Yes. That was when I moved in with them, to help Rosalinda with the children. She was ill. . . .”

  “Fatally ill. What was it?”

  “Cancer.”

  “A painful illness.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did Adolfo decide to end her misery?”

  She sat very still, white-knuckled hands clasping her purse.

  “Did you know what he had done?” I asked.

  Tears came into her eyes and one spilled over. She made no move to wipe it away. “I knew. But it was not as it seems. Rosalinda begged him to help her end her life. She was in such pain. How could Adolfo refuse his child’s last request? All her life, she had asked so little of anyone. . . .”

  “So he complied with her wishes. What did he give her?”

  “An overdose of medicine for the pain. I don’t know what kind.”

  “And then?”

  “Gradually he began to fail. He was severely depressed. After a year he sent the boys to boarding school in Mexico City . . . such a sad household was no place for children, he said. For a while I feared he might take his own life, but then he began to work on those figures, and it saved him. He had a purpose and, I realize now, a penance to perform.”

  “And when the figures were finished, he died.”

  “Within days.”

  I paused, staring at her face, which was now streaked with tears. “He told me the whole story in the Sacraments . . . Rosalinda’s baptism, confirmation, and marriage. The same friends and relatives were present, and the same parish priest.”

  “Father Rivera.”

  “But in the scene of extreme unction . . . Rosalinda’s death . . . Father Rivera doesn’t appear. Instead, the priest is Adolfo, and what he is handing Rosalinda appears to be a communion wafer. I noticed that as soon as I saw the figure and wondered about it, because for the last rites they don’t give communion, they use holy oil. And it isn’t supposed to be a wafer, either, but a lethal dose of pain medicine. At first I didn’t notice the priest’s resemblance to the father in the earlier scenes because of the beard. But when I really studied the photographs of Adolfo, it all became clear.”

  “That figure is the least representational of the lot,” Lucia said. “I suppose Adolfo felt he couldn’t portray his crime openly. He never wanted the boys to know. And he probably didn’t want the world to know, either. Adolfo was a proud man, with an artist’s p
ride in his work and reputation.”

  “I understand. If the story came out, it would tarnish the value of his work with sensationalism. He disguised himself in the penance scene, too, by having his hands over his face.”

  Lucia was weeping into her handkerchief now. Through it she said: “What are we going to do? Both of the boys are now determined to see the Sacraments. And when they do, they will interpret them as you have and despise Adolfo’s memory. That was the one thing he feared . . . he said so in his will.”

  I got up, went to the little barred window that overlooked the small patio outside my office, and stood there staring absently at the azalea bushes that our former director had planted. I pictured Gilberto, as he’d spoken of his grandfather the other day, his eyes shining with love. And I heard Eduardo saying: “I worshipped the man. If it wasn’t for his guidance, I’d be nobody today.” They might understand what had driven Adolfo to his mortal sin, but if they didn’t. . . .

  Finally I said: “Perhaps we can do something, after all.”

  “But what? The figures will be on public display. And the boys are determined.”

  I felt a tension building inside me. “Let me deal with that problem.”

  My hands balled into fists, I went through the office wing and across the courtyard to the gallery. Once inside, I stopped, looking around at the figures. They were a perfect series of groupings, and they told a tale far more powerful than the simple life cycle I’d first taken them to represent. I wasn’t sure I could do what I’d intended. What I was contemplating was—for a curator and an art lover—almost as much of a sin as Adolfo’s helping his daughter kill herself.

  I went over to the deathbed scene and rested my hand gently on the shoulder of the kneeling man. The figure was so perfect it felt almost real.

  I thought of the artist, the man who had concealed his identity under these priestly robes. Wasn’t the artist and the life he’d lived as important as his work? Part of my job was to protect those works; couldn’t I also interpret that to mean I should also protect the memory of the artist?

  I stood there for a long moment—and then I pushed the pottery figure, hard. It toppled backward, off the low platform to the stone floor. Pottery smashes easily, and this piece broke into many fragments. I stared down at them, wanting to cry.

  When I came out of the gallery minutes later, Susana was rushing across the courtyard. “Elena, what happened? I heard. . . .” She saw the look on my face and stopped, one hand going to her mouth.

  Keeping my voice steady, I said: “There’s been an accident, and there’s a mess on the floor of the gallery. Please get someone to clean it up. And after that, go to my office and tell Lucia Sanchez she and her great-nephews can view the Sacraments any time. Arrange a private showing for as long as they want. After all, they’re family.”

  “What about . . . ?” She motioned at the gallery.

  “Tell them one of the figures . . . Father Rivera, in the deathbed scene . . . was irreparably damaged in transit.” I started toward the entryway.

  “Elena, where are you going?”

  “I’m taking the day off. You’re in charge.”

  I would get away from here, maybe walk on the beach. I was fortunate; mine was only a small murder. I would not have to live with it or atone for it the remainder of my lifetime, as Adolfo Sanchez had.

  Cave of Ice

  On the hottest day of summer in the year 1901, Will Reese disobeyed his father’s orders and returned to the ice cave. He just couldn’t stay away any longer. He had thought about little else but the cave for the past week.

  The entrance was at the bottom of a deep, rock-strewn depression on his folks’ sheep ranch, one of many such pits in this section of the southern Idaho plain. His father had told him they were collapsed lava cones that had been formed by long-ago flows from the extinct volcano nearby. As Will climbed down into the depression, the temperature dropped with amazing swiftness. At the bottom, near the cave opening, the air had a wintry feel. The coldness was what had led him to the cave that day last week, after he had come here on the trail of a stray Hampshire yearling.

  Will donned his sheepskin coat, lit the lantern he had brought, and wedged his tall, lank frame through the fissure into the cave’s main chamber. When he stood up, the light reflected in dazzling pinpoints from a hundred icy surfaces.

  Ice filled the cave, from frozen pools along its floor to huge crystals suspended from its ceiling twenty feet above. A massive glacial wall bulked up directly ahead, a wall that might have been a few feet or many yards thick. Several natural stone steps, sheeted with ice, led up to a narrow ledge nearby. On the ledge’s far side was an icefall, a natural slide that dropped fifteen feet into an arched lava tube. At the bottom of the slide was a jumble of gleaming bones, probably those of a large animal that had fallen down the slide and been unable to climb out.

  Will could see his breath misting frostily into the lamplight. He could hear water dripping into the cave from underground streams, water that would soon be frozen. He felt the same excitement he had the first time he’d stood here. An ice cave! He hadn’t known such things existed. But his father had; Clay Reese had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, which he tried to slake by reading and rereading mail-order books on many different subjects. He had told Will about the caves, after Will had raced home with news of his find and brought his father back.

  There were two kinds of ice caves, one type found in glaciers and the other in volcanic fissures such as this one. Usually the ice in both types melted in warm weather, but this was one of the rare exceptions. No one knew for sure how or why such caves acted as natural icehouses. Perhaps it had something to do with air pressure and wind flow. The phenomenon was very rare, which made Will’s discovery all the more special to him.

  His father, however, hadn’t seemed to understand this. “I don’t want you coming back here again,” he’d said. “Now don’t argue, Son. It’s not safe in a cave like this . . . all kinds of things can happen. Stay clear.”

  Will had tried in vain to get his father to change his mind. Clay Reese was sometimes difficult to talk to, and lately he had been even more reticent than usual, as if something were weighing on his mind. A fiercely proud man, he had once dreamed of attending college, a dream that had ended with the death of his own father when he was Will’s age, fifteen. Disappointment and hard work had turned him into a private person. Yet he and Will had always shared a closeness based on fairness and understanding. Until now, he had always listened to Will’s side of things. Will just didn’t understand the sudden change in him.

  Will spent the better part of an hour exploring. Between the ice wall and the near lava wall was a passage that led more than fifty yards deeper under the volcanic rock, before it ended finally in a glacial barrier that completely filled the cave. Small chambers formed by arches and broken-rock walls opened off the passage. The cave was enormous, no telling yet just how large.

  But an hour was all he could spare. He would be missed if he stayed much longer, and he had already been reprimanded more than once this week for neglecting his chores. He made his way back to the main chamber and slipped outside, shrugging out of his coat.

  The summer heat was intense after the cave’s chill; Will was sweating by the time he reached the rim of the pit. He started toward where he had left his roan horse picketed in the shade of a lava overhang. But then he stopped and stood shading his eyes, peering out over the flat, sun-blasted plain.

  Billows of dust rose in a long line, hazing the bright blue sky. Wagons, four of them, were coming from the direction of Volcano, the only settlement within twenty miles. They weren’t traveling on the road that led out among the sheep ranches in the area; they were coming at an angle through the sagebrush. And they seemed to be heading toward Will.

  Frowning, he moved over next to his horse and waited there, hidden, holding the animal’s muzzle to keep him still. The wagons clattered ahead without changing course, and finally drew to
a halt at the far end of the pit, where it was easiest to scale the rocky wall. Close to a dozen men clambered down and began to unload lumber, a keg of nails, coils of rope, axes, picks, shovels, and other tools.

  Stunned, Will saw that one of the men was his father. Clay Reese, in fact, seemed to be directing the activities of the others. Will also recognized Jess Lacy, proprietor of the Volcano Mercantile, and Harmon Bennett, president of the bank. The other men were laborers.

  “First thing to do,” Will heard his father say, “is clear a path into the pit so we can take the wagons down there. We’ll also have to enlarge the cave opening.”

  “Dynamite, Clay?” one of the men asked.

  “No. Picks and shovels should do it. Then we can start building the ramps and cutting the ice into blocks.”

  Along with Jess Lacy and Harmon Bennett, Clay Reese disappeared inside the cave. The other men began clearing away rocks, grading a pathway for the wagons.

  Will had seen enough. He led the roan away quietly, then mounted and rode out across the plain. His shock had given way to a sense of betrayal.

  The town could use ice on these scorching summer days, when cellars weren’t able to preserve meat and other perishables; Will understood that. But what he didn’t understand was why his father had kept secret his decision to sell the ice. The cave belonged to Will more than to anybody, because he had found it. So why hadn’t his father told him about what he intended to do?

  Will decided to ask him at dinner.

  He rode out to the ranch’s north boundary fence to make one of three repairs he had been asked to attend to. By the time he finished, it was too late to make the others; the sun was just starting to wester. He rode on home.

  The ranch wagon stood in front of the weathered barn when he arrived, but his father’s saddle horse was gone. So were two of the family’s three sheep dogs. The other dog followed him into the barn, its barks mingling with the bleating of the sheep in the pens that flanked the shearing shed. He unsaddled his roan, fed it some hay, then crossed to the small sod house under the cottonwoods and went inside.