by Elyse Draper
“Christopher, you need to send a message to Michael, and find out when he will be visiting today.” The shock of her touch vibrates through my nerves, and I hear a soft growl coming from my throat in answer to her statement.
Pressing the plunger down on the coffee press, I can smell the rich scent as it pulls me from my thoughts of Ellie. With my mug in hand, I move to sit down in front of the computer, and type a quick message to Michael.
Then pulling up my bookmarks, I continued with my on-line research from yesterday. Michael has given me a lot to think about … he considers himself an amateur folklore historian. His particular area of interest is wolves. Many of the stories he has shared with me are tales of their steadfast ability to exist unseen. Dream world guides and protectors, cunning and intelligent, their highest priority is family, and their fierceness is undeniable. They are hunters of opportunity; only two members of a pack can actually take down a full grown bull elk. The wolves have been seen by the native people here, as a fellow tribe, brethren of the wild … not to be messed with, only respected. I questioned him if he thought members of those tribes had abilities like mine. I wonder if they were able to see how wise and dangerous these creatures could be.
On that note, Ursa sits down next to me and cocks her head. Looking at the computer screen with great curiosity, her eyes studies the picture I’ve pulled up … it looks just like her. The intelligence in her attitude is unmistakable, only to be contradicted by the savage stains of the dark black organ blood that she is licking off her nose.
The pictures that flash up in her mind’s eye are ones of family. The pack waiting in their meeting place, a beautiful meadow nestled deep in the trees, far from human observers.
They don’t worry about other predators; together they are the top of the food chain … except for the all too clever, two-legged predators that leave out poison and set traps. Humans don’t mind the hierarchy; they don’t understand the primeval code that dictates honesty in nature. Brutal … there is no room for kindness in the natural world, but sneaky manipulation is an entirely human trait.
The pack has memories that are shared, passing down mental pictures, filling their minds like reoccurring dreams. Visions, which are always accessible to their fellow wolves, remind them of their all-important history. Records of times past, shared, momentous such as how to hunt as one, never leave one of the pack behind, and never forget the significance in the order of things … in nature or in the pack. Ursa shares these insights with me, a lowly human; and the philosophy I am learning from her is making me stronger by understanding my true insignificant place in the world.
“Okay Ursa, I know you miss them. Are they close?” Living vicariously through Ursa’s familial obsessions has saved me from my loneliness. I have never felt such a connection to anyone -- except for Ellie. Ursa has given me the endowment of belonging to something more substantial than simple human companionship. I’m afraid that after she leaves, and the connection is broken, I won’t be human enough to ever return to normal life.
Inside the image projected by her thoughts, I can tell the pack is only about a ten-minute hike away. “Michael probably won’t answer me back for an hour at least … I guess we could go for a short visit.”
Just as if they were reading my thoughts, Lune and Ursa sit waiting at the front door. I pull on a long-sleeved tee and a hoody, finally slip into my Carhartt jacket, and slide my Sorrels back on. We are out the door before anything can interrupt us from our mission to visit the pack.
Chapter 2
Michael
*Michael*
“Coffee, I need coffee … Michael, who in the hell are you talking to?” Groggy, I shake the cobwebs from my slushy brain. I’m starting to sound like that damn kid … talking to myself all the time. I need to stop falling asleep in that chair; you’d think I’d have learned after the first twenty or so kinks in my neck … that is not a bed.
The taste of whiskey is still burning the back of my throat as I try to brush my teeth. I think my tongue has grown a coat that the coldest wind couldn’t blow through, much less the bristles of my toothbrush. Grabbing hold of the doorframe, I start pulling myself up, releasing and then up again. I'm hoping that doing pull-ups until my arms feel like Jell-o will sweat out the last dredges of anxiety, and subsequent alcohol, that was brought on by my dreams of Lilly. The thoughts that have plagued me for the past six years are still edgy, dulling a bit, but still edgy … then Christopher had to come along and sharpen the blade.
Ever since that kid showed up, everything has become prickly, with clarified images. Once upon a time, I had daydreams, just simple fantasies about enchanted things, but now everything has an answer, everything is grounded … real, with serrated edges that have cut my beliefs into shreds. I thought I had only one belief … trust empirical evidence. Only in the minds of men, do you actually find fantasy searching for form. I loved the mythology of the local tribes, even doing research as far north as the Inuit … it wasn’t real, just folklore… a fantastic story to follow. I was letting my mind drift along like watching TV, thinking 'what if', but nothing more.
Then Christopher appeared, cold and withdrawn for the first month. I kept checking on him, something didn’t feel right about someone so young, buying that cabin. When I did some digging and found that he paid cash for the property; I knew something was out of the ordinary. My instincts told me he was a good person, lost and troubled, but ultimately good and he needed help. I wish I had ignored my instincts and left the kid alone.
Through the strain of my last few pull-ups, I can’t help but reprimand myself for always having to ask “why” and cockily stating “prove it”. In law enforcement classes, we learn that we aren’t supposed to care why a guy beat his wife, just prove that he did it and get on with life. Leave the 'whys' to the court system. Here, as a game warden, I can get away with searching for answers to 'why'. In Montana there are so many extenuating circumstances that sometimes I have to understand the details, and use discretion in order to build foundations of respect. We have to form productive relationships with the hunters and local community; it’s the difference between one man watching over hundreds of miles, or hundreds of conscientious people banded together, taking care of each other and our resources.
About five weeks after Christopher moved into the cabin, I tracked yet another blood trail on to his property. I knew that I had a poacher in the area, and I had to catch him. This particular hunter wasn’t after trophies though, he was after meat. I knew ahead of time that I wasn’t looking for a sportsman, just a guy trying to survive. But I have a job to do, and that means that I can’t allow hunting without the proper tags, and absolutely not during the off season. When I caught him in the act outside Christopher's cabin, he came out to see what the problem was … then the strangest thing happened.
Christopher cocked his head and stared into the hunter’s eyes, and then started talking to no one, “Did you know he has a family? They haven’t been able to afford groceries for about three months now. His kids have all lost weight; he’s afraid they’re wasting away. The cow elk he killed last month … he kept some of the meat, but traded the rest for produce and propane. He’s afraid that they’ll run out again during the next big storm, and die in their home … alone, cold and hungry.”
The hunter and I looked at Christopher like he’d just stepped off the moon. Quickly regaining my thoughts, I turned and looked into the guy’s eyes for myself … he was crying, standing open-mouthed, staring at Christopher, tears rolling down his astonished face. “It’s true. Everything he just said is true. I haven’t even told my wife about my fears riding on the coming storm.”
“If this is true …why didn’t you talk to someone about your situation? We have resources through the local food bank. I’ve delivered game there myself, to be distributed to families in need. Don’t you think that is a better way to feed your family? Your kids don’t need their father to be put in jail, on top of dealing with starvation.” People�
��s pride always blows my mind, how hard is it to ask for help?
Christopher squinted at me like he was making up his mind on something. Then nodding he forced his scrutiny back on the hunter. “I’d listen to the warden, sir … he’ll make sure you and your family find the help you need.” With that ending remark, he turned and walked back into the cabin like nothing unusual had passed between us.
Not sure what to make of what had happened; I went back to business as usual. The hunter didn’t put up a fight, and we had his paperwork done in no time. We waved the fines with a warning that if we caught him again, we could take everything he used during the illegal hunt, including his guns and vehicle. Then I personally drove him over to the food bank and helped him get signed up with the appropriate programs, and then put him in touch with separate public welfare groups that would help with his family’s other needs.
I still check on him and his family; smiling, I can picture the kids putting weight back on, a healthy glow returning to their smiling faces.
Christopher got under my skin from the beginning, but after asking him about his ‘talents’, as he calls them, I couldn’t leave him alone. Then he found that wolf, injured when she was hit by a logging truck. She wasn't in too bad of a state, probably just nicked by the bumper, but she definitely had some recouping to do. He had already started nursing her back to health when I discovered that he was hiding her. I should have taken her to my biologist or vet, but I was afraid that taking her away from Christopher, and his crazy dog, would kill her. I’ve never seen a stranger connection before in my life … now she has become our secret. Some part of me, which agrees with my common sense, keeps telling me she’s wild and dangerous … god help me if she hurts the kid, and people find out I’ve been covering for them.
After working together on interrogations, using his skills as a truth detector with my informants, and talking on ride-alongs, I find myself looking after Christopher, like he's a younger brother. He has always been forthcoming about what he can do, and even though I’ve seen it first hand, I still have a hard time believing my own senses.
Without Christopher, I wouldn’t have been able to take down a whole poaching ring … it was awe-inspiring to watch him simply pull information out of someone’s head. When he explained that he “hears” the truth said, but unspoken, in someone’s mind, I couldn’t believe my luck. We have a routine now, I ask certain questions that would bring up information, and questions that I know would be answered in lies. Meanwhile Christopher stands outside the door and listens to the honest answers forming secretly in the individual's mind. No one sees the kid, and after the interrogation, he heads back to his cabin. Later he tells me everything he has uncovered, and no one is the wiser.
I’m hoping that Christopher is starting to trust me enough to tell me the whole story … like who he talks to all the time. Where the scars, he’s always fingering, came from? What is he hiding from? Every time he figures out that I’m digging for information, he turns his talents on me. This last time was too much, he went too far … asking about Lilly. All I did was ask him who this ‘Ellie’ was that he keeps talking to. Then I recognized his glazed expression as he searched through my head, inevitably pulling out my heart. I knew right away the connection between Ellie and Lilly is love; he is consumed by love for his Ellie, plain and simple.
Cloudy and suffocating, the memories the he pulled are drowning me, as if they happened yesterday. They led me to the whiskey last night; the memories have a mind of their own, leaving me feeling drained with an acidic taste, like bile, in the back of my throat. I understand love … vicious and unfair. The greatest paradox is that something as insubstantial as a chemical reaction in the brain … can break you and lift you up in one breath. Saying “I love you” for the first time makes your hands shake, and turns your insides into mush … but when it’s forbidden, the nerves can crush you.
I told Lilly that I loved her, idiot that I am. When I was sick with a fever; she held me together when I thought I was falling apart. Crushing me now, I remember the night I left my uncle’s ranch … turning to look at her … she stood stunned in her kitchen. Her lips glistened slightly, still wet from my kiss. My last words, young and inexperienced, “I can only give you love.” Forever preserved in my head, “I will give you love.”
Sober, shaking, and sweaty, I walk into my kitchen in the present again … and as I pour a cup of coffee, I realize that not even the thick black ambrosia is going to pull me out of the daydreams turned nightmares, about Lilly. What was I supposed to do? She was married with a child, loveless in spirit… but married nonetheless. I wanted to save her, more than anything else in the world I wanted to give her a life … but that was my dream, not hers. I wanted a life where we could talk about anything, from theology to fishing … I could talk to her, I loved talking to her.
I would fantasize at night about her having a life with me … never judgmental; she made me feel good in my own skin, seeing even my flaws as strengths. Six years difference, six irrelevant years. God, I wished I was born earlier, but then there’s no way to know if we would have ever met. In your teens and twenties, six years might as well be a lifetime. She was getting married around the time I was celebrating my 15th birthday. I was fantasizing about the girl that sat in front of me in English, while Lilly was preparing for the arrival of her son.
When I went to work at my uncle’s ranch, I never could have imagined that I’d find my heart attached to the wife of the foreman. I was so young, emotionally inexperienced, I should have been attending frat parties … but I had to make money if I ever hoped to finish my degree. Every night when the rest of the workers would go to the bar in town, I’d stay behind … and watch her. Walking across the yard, dried weeds would grab at the bottom of her skirt and scratch at her ankles … I memorized her movement, the flow of her steps.
To this day, I can feel the weight of her breath and the smell of the air in her wake: clean, like she cleared the dust away just by walking through. I remember looking through the kitchen window, watching her dance alone … clumsy yet so seductive. Smiling at her charm, I would wonder if this was what it was like to find your soul mate. If this was what it was like, to truly understand the shape of your heart … not the one-dimensional shape in a deck of cards, but a creature existing in multiple dimensions painfully thrashing in my rib cage.
So naive, so thick … I thought she would be a passing phase; I was bound to outgrow my feelings. Now, six years later, everything inside me still tells me, I’ll never feel that overwhelmed by another person again. But what was I supposed to do? Try to break up her marriage? There was a child involved; she would never let ‘us’ hurt that little boy. She would rather live, accepting the deal she was given … than hurt her son in any way.
All these memories stirred up by that kid poking around in my head. He had to ask that one question … damn him, “I see a wadded up note … written in smeared ink, 'I love you, too … but I can’t even give you that much. I’m sorry.' Signed; 'Always yours in spirit, Lilly'. It’s constantly in your thoughts. Then, I see you walking away, suitcase in hand. You throw the note into a fire … why?”
I can understand the innocence in Christopher’s question. He couldn’t possibly know that burning Lilly’s note, my only keepsake of her, was one of the most stupid and painful things I’ve ever done.
Holding my mug like it was some sort of safety line, I sat down at the computer to check my E-mail. As soon as I saw the letter from Christopher, I knew I was going to be spending my next three days off, at his cabin, waiting for the arrival of our pups. Good; maybe I can finally get the answers I’ve been looking for.
Christopher and Lune have been acting like impatient fathers, waiting for the whelping to start. I’ve taken over two garbage bags full of news paper for the birthing, and stockpiled other supplies like a stethoscope, hemostats, blunt-end scissors, a bottle of iodine, and a rubber pediatric bulb syringe … better to be prepared. Last week when I checked on Ursa,
I noticed she had started shedding out, blowing her coat; her body is getting ready to start nursing. She was already lactating, and her belly had dropped ... to tell the truth, I’m surprised she hasn’t gone into labor yet. During my visit, I explained how to build a whelping pen, and told Christopher to put it near the wood burning stove. I hope he listened to me, and spent time with her in the pen, so she would get use to the idea of delivering her pups in the confined space, with an audience. I have to admit, I’m excited, too. Hell, the anticipation has turned me into that pacing idiot in a delivery waiting room … luckily Ursa is patient with us guys; any other expectant mother would have started throwing things at us by now.
After loading up my truck with everything we might need, and a bag of clothes to last through the next three days, I'm ready to go. Christopher has asked me to stay with them during my days off, if Ursa hasn’t given birth yet. As much as I’ve become attached to the kid and his animals, my skin still crawls at the prospect of spending that much time alone with Christopher’s 'gifts'.
Pulling up in front of his cabin, I noticed that the generator was already running ... Christopher must have been making sure there was a fresh charge in the cabin’s battery.
Walking up to the front door, I knocked … but no one answers. I can't hear Lune or Ursa’s nails clattering around on the hard-wood floor. I try the door handle, unlocked … huh, that’s strange. Maybe Christopher took Ursa and Lune out for a walk. I hope he’s keeping track of where Ursa’s wandering around, just in case she has one of the pups.
