Empire of Wild

by Cherie Dimaline

  Someone was gently shaking her. She opened her eyes and twisted in the bed—why was she in bed? She pulled herself up on her elbows, her head aching, and looked around her. She was being unloaded from an ambulance.

  “Wait, what’s happening?” Her voice was dry in her throat. Then she remembered and crisis bloomed in her guts.

  “Where is Victor?” She coughed, trying to free her voice.

  The paramedics ignored her, fidgeting with the collapsible wheels and the IV as they pushed her toward the hospital’s glass entranceway.

  “Excuse me? Can you tell me where my husband is, please?” She struggled to sit upright in the moving bed. She saw the cop from the tent talking to a nurse by the door. “Officer? Hey, officer!”

  He jogged over.

  “Mrs. Beausoliel, I’m Sergeant McAllister. We’ve brought you here to regional hospital to get you checked out.” His uniform was crisp and new, but he’d taken his cap off and his voice was soft. His brown hair shone red in the sun.

  Her head swam as she looked up at him. “My car. My purse.” She had to get out of here. Where was maybe-Victor? “Wait, how’d you know my name?”

  “Your purse is here.” McAllister pointed to the brown satchel tucked in by her feet. “It’s where I got your ID. Sorry, ma’am, but I had to grab info for the medics here. And your car is safe and sound back in the Walmart parking lot. Good thing too, because you were in no shape to drive. Be glad you passed out when you did.” He gave her a cop-gaze over the rim of his not-quite-mirrored sunglasses. “Let’s get you inside.”

  “Do I have to stay?” She tried to sound steady, which she was definitely not.

  “How ‘bout this: if the doctor gives you the all-clear, we part ways on good terms.”

  She was pretty sure he had no legal way to make her see a doctor, but like any good Catholic of a certain age, she was scared shitless both of authority and of making anyone feel bad. So she lay back down and allowed herself to be wheeled in, the cop keeping pace beside her.

  They parked her in a room separated from an old man on a breathing tube by a green curtain that didn’t quite reach the floor. She watched feet in soft, white shoes flicker by.

  She asked the sergeant, “Did you find out who the man at the church was? Is his name Victor?”

  “First things first. Why don’t you tell me what happened today?” McAllister sat in a chair beside her gurney and took out a notepad.

  She tried to explain herself. She told him about Victor’s disappearance, the missing persons report, the search parties, the bed with the sheets that never warmed up. She told him about the Reverend, who was somehow that same missing husband. She told him about the blonds in their uniforms and Mr. Heiser and what he’d said to her about Victor being dead, and then about throwing up and feeling horrible, and then, next thing she knew, the paramedics were laying her down.

  “Well, that sounds a lot like what I was told by the other party,” McAllister said. “I did speak to the church members onsite, including the man you claim to be your husband.”

  “Is he here?” She reached for McAllister and the IV needle tugged in her vein. She winced and dropped her hand.

  “No, he isn’t, and he’s not your husband, ma’am. His name is”—he flipped back in his notebook—“the Reverend Eugene Wolff.”

  Joan stared at him. “Are you certain?”

  “Well, he is, ma’am.”

  “Any chance he’s been, you know, brainwashed?” She knew what this sounded like, but it was all she had.

  “He showed me his ID. He didn’t seem to be confused or under duress. I also talked to a few of the others travelling with him, who said that the Reverend has been in their company for over three years, whereas your husband’s been missing just under a year.”

  He spoke with compassion, which had the effect of pushing Joan into the thin mattress until she was sure her ribs would crack from the weight of her disappointment. She closed her eyes to block him out, to block everything out.

  * * *

  They discharged her early the next morning. She called a cab and asked the driver to drop her back at the Walmart in the cloying dawn. She felt tiny, weak. It took so much effort to close the taxi door. She approached her car, waiting like an obedient dog, dropped her heavy purse on the hood and walked the perimeter of where the tent had been just yesterday. There was nothing left but a few strips of black hockey tape stuck to the ground where they had held down wires, maybe even the ones that powered the lights that studded the cross. So much for staying another day. So much for the possibility of Victor.

  She sat down on the pavement, trying to pull a clear image of the Reverend Wolff to mind, but all she got was Victor on their wedding day in his rolled shirtsleeves and best black sneakers, an arm around her waist on the dock, a bottle of champagne in his other hand. “We did it, kid,” he had said, and kissed her just below the hairline.

  Joan, cross-legged in the oily lot, touched the same spot on her forehead. Her fingers were shaky as baby birds. Then she stood, walked back to the Jeep, picked up her purse and climbed in.

  What now?

  She had to find the tent. There must be a website or at least a Facebook page? She dug her phone out of her purse and touched the screen. It lit up with multiple notifications—missed calls from her mom, from Junior, from Zeus’s mother, Bee, a few unknowns. There were text messages too. She opened these first.

  The last one was from Junior.

  They think it was animals—dogs, maybe wolves. Call us. I need to know where you are right now.

  “What the fuck?” She typed:

  I’m at the Walmart on 11, by Travis’ place. What happened???

  She scrolled up to find a text from Bee.

  Holy shit Joan, I’m so sorry about Mere. Can you believe it? People are freaking out! Come by the house—there’s a lot of us here. Zeus is worried about you

  Mom.

  Baby CALL ME ASAP

  Junior.

  Where are you, J? Have you heard? I’m headed back to the house.

  Mom.

  Oh ma mere. Who? Why? Whatever you do, DO NOT go down to the Airstream alone. We’ll go together as a family

  Zeus.

  Love you Auntie

  Her phone vibrated in her hand. A new text from Junior.

  We’re coming to get you. Joan, Mere’s gone. We’re on the way to you. No more than an hour. Hang tight.

  Joan chain-smoked in the heat of the front seat until her brothers came to collect her. When they got to her, they guided her into the passenger seat so George could drive. Even when they passed into territory as familiar as their own pulse, Joan wasn’t sure where she was.

  VICTOR, IN A TWENTY-SIX-ACRE CELL

  Victor’s mother showed him how to skin a rabbit when he was four years old. He remembers the thin connective tissue, marbled like the curve of a gum bubble, and the stick and pull of drying blood between his fingers.

  “Don’t hold it by the head to peel. A head’s not a strong enough thing.”

  Victor nodded, twisting his own head to feel the flex and give at the base of his skull.

  She cut the brown corpse, from the horizontal slash at its throat used to bleed it out, down to the tail, curving around the sex organs, the knife slanted to separate fur from meat.

  “Keep your blade sharp. You don’t want hair getting in.” She pushed a finger into the opening left by the knife, her nail making a small crescent against the wet belly skin.

  She broke bones away from joints. She split and yanked out the pink hindquarters, peeling them free.

  Then she put the flesh in his hands, holding his fingers in position to show him exactly how to do it. “Tight. Don’t let go.” She squeezed his weaker grip for reinforcement.

  The rest came out like a lady unzipped from a gown.

  He thought of this now as a rabbit hopped by, inches from his head. At least, he thought it must be a rabbit from the skip-run of its passing. It was too dark to know for s
ure. He was prone on the ground, the deep cold of the soil making a bruise of his back. He remembered how good that rabbit tasted when his mother stewed it up, how each bite was a prayer of gratitude. He lifted an arm and dropped his hand over his belly. He made an assessment with his fingers, checking the curves, tapping the empty hollow, like he was buying a melon from the grocery store.

  Nope, still not hungry. Though the memory of food was a kindness in this isolation.

  And then there was something else. He turned onto his side and stretched out his neck toward it, his nostrils flared—there was a smell in the air under the density of wood, above the mineral wet of soil. A woman.

  A face came to him, soft with laugh lines and with a ridge of small, brown beauty marks along her jaw like a constellation. Straight teeth, dark eyes, dark hair. Her name…it was almost there, it was rolling slow up his throat. He felt hunger for the first time in memory. He reached both hands out in the dark. And then the wind blew warm, pushing into him, making it hard to breathe. He opened his mouth and it worked its way past his teeth. It was like his throat was full of someone else’s breath. The image of the woman’s face with astronomy on her skin was being pulled out of him. He was losing her.

  The trees in this place shook but made no noise, the leaves quiet like lush flaps of felt and hide. No noise except for a far-off song raising itself up from an unseen horizon. He sat up, squinting, fighting to hold on to her. She was speaking to him now, her mouth shaping what he knew were the curves and full stops of his name, but he couldn’t hear her. There was only the drone of a far-off hymn like elevator music in this small patch of forest, obliterating every other sound.

  He lifted a finger to his mouth, spit on it and touched the tip on the matte grey of a maple trunk. And he wrote, rewetting his finger when it grew dry. For a moment he saw her name, darker grey against the light, pulled from memory and ache and terror. And before the wind blew it away, he said it aloud, and it was his once more.

  Joan.

  3

  PACK DYNAMICS

  Heiser preferred blondes but settled for the redhead. She wasn’t all that smart and was no great beauty, but she had something he valued more—discretion. It was getting harder and harder to find companions in the congregation who wouldn’t gossip. He placed a hand on the back of her head and ruffled her curls a bit.

  “There’s a good girl.”

  She mumbled a response around his dick. It sounded like gargling.

  “Shh.”

  He turned and looked out the car window. With every mile it was becoming easier to breathe. The reflection of the passing trees slid over the Buick like bars. They were headed north. There was safety in distance.

  It was his own damn fault. He saw that now. He should have noticed how close the last stop was to Arcand. But he’d been too busy dealing with relentless PR for the new pipeline consultations: too many posed handshakes with men in headdresses; too many dummy copies of agreements to pretend sign for the press as the real deals were being sweated out between lawyers in the backrooms.

  He didn’t like making mistakes. He laced his fingers into the girl’s hair, massaging the back of her scalp. She moaned and pulled at the seatbelt that still held her in the seat beside him, inching a little closer so she could take more of him in her mouth.

  Heiser’s sharp intake of breath was a hiss through clenched teeth. He closed his eyes briefly, then resumed watching the fields and thin forest whip by. He put a little pressure on the back of her head, switching hands for a moment to check his watch. Nine a.m. It felt later. It had already been a long day and he’d barely slept last night.

  He’d figured, since he had already fucked up on the logistics, he might as well take care of some things in Arcand. Fucking Métis never used to be an issue. No one gave a shit about the halfbreeds in these deals. But now, they were everywhere, on everything. If he had to see another fucking sash or hear another goddamn fiddle…

  And then this woman, this Joan, comes into the tent losing her damn mind? Thank god she had the courtesy to show up half-cut. Made it easier to shake her loose. Way to live a stereotype, lady.

  Someone always has to lead, to be the alpha. He sighed. Might as well be him. He’d been a leader his entire life, something passed down to him from his grandfathers in the old country before Bavaria joined Germany proper and their culture was absorbed and watered down.

  His own father, Heinrich Heiser, had emigrated from Munich to Edmonton with his moody wife, two suitcases of clothes and a working knowledge of the English language. Not enough to write poetry but good enough for janitorial work at the high school. Thomas had only been one and didn’t remember much of the early years except for the dogs. They would break out of their own backyards to follow him to school and back.

  “Opa Emo, he had lots of dogs too,” Heinrich had told him as they walked to the park with their baseball gloves. Heinrich was determined his seven-year-old should learn baseball, like all boys in North America.

  “I don’t have dogs.”

  “Yes you do, just not any that you need to feed or bathe. All these are yours.” He waved his arms to encompass the three that trotted alongside them and the others running parallel to him along the nearby street. “Emo told me the Heisers always had dogs, and before them, wolves.”

  “Wolves?” Thomas looked up at his father. Wolves interested the boy. More than baseball. More than his mother. She was a hard woman who kicked the canines that showed up on their doorstep, and dragged him to church too often. She was fascinating but only from a safe distance.

  He stopped walking and grabbed his father’s hand. “Please, Daddy, tell me about the wolves.”

  “Yes okay, okay.” Heinrich detached the boy’s fingers and held the baseball in front of his nose. “But only if you catch ten throws all in a row.”

  He tossed the ball at the boy and jogged ahead to the park. Thomas looked down at the ball at his feet. It would be near the end of the summer before he heard any stories about wolves.

  In grade eight, he narrowly escaped getting his ass beat by two older boys because an Irish wolfhound bounded into the schoolyard and skidded to a stop over Heiser where he curled on the ground. In his senior year of high school, a couple of beagles and a chihuahua sat outside his Corolla while he lost his virginity, howling when he came.

  Thomas had always been the leader of the pack, ever since those first gatherings of dogs. Eventually, he used his ability to dominate creatures in order to grow a successful consulting company. And now, of all things, he had a travelling Christian ministry to take care of. Not that it was all that hard. Christians were like house cats, really. Just leave out the sustenance and let them roam in a confined space where they think they’re free. Having to do the dirty work was nothing new for Thomas.

  The girl reached into his open fly, going for his balls. He slapped her hand away, but then found himself watching her mouth work, so much blood rushing to his groin that his head felt light. He overlapped his hands near the nape of her neck and held her there, red curls twisted between his fingers, then bucked against her face, pushing more firmly when she tried to pull back. That’s when he saw the blood spatter on his shirt cuff.

  He finished, quick and quiet, and released his grip.

  The girl sat up, tits spilling out of her open blouse, fat and veiny. “Mmm,” she said, and wiped the corners of her mouth. “That was good, baby.”

  He called to his driver. “Robe?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Stop at the next gas station. I’d like beef jerky. And a Gatorade.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Not the orange kind. That shit is terrible.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The girl strained against the seatbelt to lean her head on his shoulder. He shrugged her off and pulled his pocket square out to clean himself. She wiggled as close as she could get, watching him with needy eyes. Christ. Almost time to find a new one. He pointed to her chest and said, “Put those away.”


  “On second thought, no Gatorade,” he said to the driver. “I want milk.”

  4

  GOD OF ALL THINGS FIERCE

  Zeus stood on the periphery of the group of hunters while they planned and packed for the cull in the church parking lot. He was ready to step up if someone would let him. He could have argued that being named for the god who was responsible for werewolves should mean something. But when the guns were shouldered and cocked for a last check, he flinched. Then there was the fact that he couldn’t push a scope up against his thick glasses in a way that didn’t make them shift, which skewed his vision so that he wanted to puke. And he didn’t have a father to argue his case. It would embarrass him in front of the men if his mother tried to do it. So he backed down before he could step forward.

  The job they gave him was the role of oshkaabewis—a helper for the ceremony to come. In the community that meant a church funeral, then a giveaway for some of Mere’s things, and then a party to rival all the fiddles and wine in heaven.

  The hunters counted bullets and consulted maps and then slipped into the nooks of bush still left in their territory, knotted along the boundaries of domesticated land. They needed to kill the thing that took the old woman—to put down the animal that had tasted human flesh. It was solemn work dictated by the black-and-white laws of grief and peace. And they were glad for the chance to be tested, to play out the role handed down to them through blood memory. Even with their GPSs and Bass Pro Shop Gore-Tex vests they felt a connection to this old work, and they were grateful for it.

  This was one way in which they pushed back against the jobs that took them into town, into the city. This was how they healed from the humiliation of tags and fines and charges levelled by agents of the Ministry of Natural Resources. The hunt was prayer. A few of them hoped they wouldn’t have to be the one to take the target down. The rest asked to be the one who did. These were the men who carried tobacco with them to offer to the animals’ spirits.