“Row to my voice!”
He didn’t leave. He’s here. “Keep yelling!”
“Come on, Wolf Girl. You’re nearly in.”
I put my back to his voice and close my eyes again, but this time I row with everything.
“You comin’?” he yells.
“Yep. I’ve got Will.”
“Of course you do.”
“His arm’s busted.”
“Keep rowing!”
I keep rowing.
“Keep coming!”
I keep coming.
“Almost there.”
I look behind me and I see the dock. I see Virgil jogging along the pier. He’s waving his gorgeous arms. I keep rowing. I row to the nearest slip and crawl out of the boat. I drag my rope and tie up. Will’s still not moving. He’d better just be passed out. He was hard to row in. “Will, we made it.”
The snow is quiet. All I see is the boat and the cloud and the pier.
I sit down on the dock and look around. No one.
“Virgil?”
I’m not shaking anymore.
“Virgil?”
Everything stops hurting.
I go to sleep.
38
GOING TO HEAVEN
I KNOW I’M dead and in heaven because I am in my father’s truck, sitting in the backseat next to Virgil. He has both his arms wrapped around my shoulders but he’s not looking at me. I am rolled in a fluffy blanket. My dad is driving, with Eloise riding next to him. We are heading through the trees toward town. Dad’s lights are shining on the road. The old men trees are watching over me. I close my eyes. Dying is perfect.
When I wake up again I am not dead, or perfect. I am alive and in pain in places I never knew existed. I’m wearing mittens so heavy I can’t pick up my hands. The faces from my heaven are here though: Dad, Virgil, Eloise, Aunt Jean, Officer Smith, Mr. Muir, and my entire obnoxious journalism class. My heaven is crowded. But it’s warm. I go back to sleep.
The next time I wake up, Dad is standing over me, and he says, “You’ve milked this long enough.”
I sit up. I’m in my own bed but I’m wearing somebody else’s blue silk nightgown. My mittens are actually giant gauze bandages. My head is sweaty. The crowd’s gone, but Virgil is in the corner with his head against the wall, asleep. I look at Dad. “Whose clothes are these?”
Dad takes my hand, which hurts. “Eloise thought you needed some new things.”
Virgil startles awake. He looks at me and jumps out of his chair. “Hey! Oh, hey, you’re back.” Virgil’s smile glides over his face. His eyes are swollen and bloodshot, but his smile is all sunshine. As quick as that, I’m warm.
Dad lets go of my hand. I fumble it back. I say, “Did you come get me?”
Dad cracks a smile, too. “Virgil and I showed up first. Will’s family came right after. And then Officer Smith and Eloise.”
“I remember being in the truck. Kind of. How did you find me?”
Dad says, “I’m a guide, remember?”
Virgil says, “Kenner called him.”
Eloise waltzes in. “Look who’s awake. How’s our little hero?”
My mind wakes up a little more. “Where’s Will?”
“They had to Life Flight him to Idaho Falls,” Dad says.
“Is he okay?”
“He alive,” Dad says. “But he’s in bad shape. Inside and out.”
My mind scrambles backward. “Has he said anything?”
Dad says, “Mr. Martin called today. We’ll get the police involved when Will’s out of the woods. Guess you were right, KJ.”
I lie still thinking how hard this is for Will and his family. How hard it’s going to be for a long time. I would have loved to have been wrong about Will.
Finally Virgil says, “You looked like a Popsicle when we found you.”
“It was so cold. . . .” I replay the last few minutes before I got to the dock. Suddenly my face feels more than warm. “Who found me?”
Dad shakes his head. “Here it comes.”
Virgil’s smile hyperextends.
“My shirt,” I whimper. Unconscious in a training bra. I feel red welts forming over my whole body. “Holy smack.”
Dad tries to frown, but he can’t. “I’ll let it slide this one time.”
Eloise shakes her head at me, “Tried to tell you girl. Underwear. It makes a statement.”
Few things are more illustrative of the intellectual and
emotional struggles we’ve endured than are the wolves.
Paul Schullery, The Yellowstone Wolf
39
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS
I GET A FEVER and don’t go to school for three days. I read Jane Austen and eat bear claws with Eloise and Aunt Jean. The second afternoon Eloise, Jean, and Dad even go get coffee together and leave me alone with Virgil. Maybe there are some advantages to having our parents be friends after all.
The traveling doc at the clinic says my hands will heal as long as I wear the mittens and keep them plastered with antibiotic cream. “You are lucky to be alive. A few scars on your hands will just make you look outdoorsy.”
On Thursday my dad threatens to make me some sauerkraut and I decide to go back to school. I wear a hoodie with a big pocket to hide my mittens. Everybody knows about what happened but nobody talks about it, at least not to me. Will’s picture still hangs in the main hall with the award for Most Valuable Player three years in a row. Some things about small towns don’t change, they just stop being talked about in polite conversation.
It’s ironic to me that I started writing the column about wolves so everyone would get the real story. Now I know a real story about wolves, and I’m not talking. But if someone asked me, I’d tell them that Cinderella doesn’t have a fairy-tale ending and if you want to be a princess you’d better be ready to take a royal beating.
The good news is that my teachers, including Mr. Muir, are going to let me make up my work. He’s says if we hit it hard for two weeks I might not fail his class or the college entrance exam. He’s not making any promises though.
The best news at school is that Mrs. Baby has a brand-new baby boy and she named him Robert Virgil Brady. Baby, what a woman.
We have a baby shower in her bedroom. Addie gives her a quilt. Sondra gives her a certificate that says baby Robert has a star named after him. I give her a fleece baby coat and a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens. All the boys go in on a set of miniature lightsabers. Dennis’s idea, I’m thinking. Virgil takes her picture surrounded by her family, and everyone smiles at the same time.
I get the call while I’m in the shop. Dad hands it to me with his eyebrows raised. “It’s for you.”
I grab the phone with my mittens. “Hello?”
“Ms. Carson?”
“Yes,” I say cautiously to the deep voice on the other end.
“This is Ed Buck.”
“Mr. Buck? Oh, hi!” I say, steadying myself.
“I heard a rumor about you. You seem to have a knack for becoming the news instead of writing it.”
“It’s a bad habit. I’m trying to overcome it.”
“Well, I just thought you’d like to know. I’ve been on the phone with some folks this morning at the capitol. Their feeling is that Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming aren’t going to have enough signatures to put the referendum on any of their ballots this year.”
I fumble with the phone. “Can you say that again?”
“They won’t be shooting non-aggressing wolves legally this year.”
I lean backward just a fraction, just for a little support in my time of happiness, but the wall I’m leaning on turns out to be a nylon tent. I fall into it and drop the phone. I scramble for the phone as quickly as I can with bandages. “Mr. Buck, are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here. Where are you?”
“Sorry. I dropped something.”
I hear a dry, salty laugh in the receiver. “Well, just thought you’d like to know.”
“T
hank you so much. For everything.”
“Listen, Miss Carson, this isn’t the part of the story where I’m telling you that we all live happily ever after. This is a victory for the wolves and you were part it. Maybe bigger than you realize. But eventually the states are going to have to manage this situation themselves. And when that time comes we’re going to have to have a plan that keeps a reasonable amount of wolves and cattle and elk alive.”
“Okay,” I say.
“You be good now.”
The phone clicks. I lie still in the fallen tent. There are a million shiny stars on the shop ceiling and I want to count them.
Dad comes over “You okay?”
I grin from one happy ear to the other. I say, “I’ve never been better in my life.”
KJ’S WOLF JOURNAL
Cinderella surprised everyone. Twice. First she fought off her sister to save her pups. Then she saved her pack, by gathering all twenty-freaking-one pups, including her sister’s, into a single den. And they all survived. The scientists just scratched their beards, except Eloise, who doesn’t have a beard and who thinks Cinderella is going to rewrite a few more books before she’s done.
Not bad for a princess.
40
WOLF DREAMS
AFTER THE LAST day of school I go to the tree house. It snowed this afternoon so all the lovely mud and wildflowers have been covered back up with a white blanket, but it won’t last. At least the mud will be back, sooner or later. Blankets cover things, but they don’t change them.
I use my arms to climb up. I’m taking good care of my hands these days. As soon as they’re healed my dad says he’s going to teach me how to solo guide on the river. He says I only need about four hundred fishing hours and I’ll be ready to go.
I lie still. The snow has stopped and the sky is clear and blue. It’s almost warm.
Virgil and Eloise are moving home to Minnesota tomorrow. Virgil says he’ll come back in August to visit. He wants to learn how to row. And he doesn’t know if he can live without seeing Kenner’s cows every couple of months.
We joke about it, but I don’t want him to go. The hard cold truth is that he might not come back. People change. Things happen. I try to imagine a future where we are together, but there are so many things ahead that I can’t see anything but this afternoon’s sky. Maybe the future is like rowing for shore. Your only choice is to try or give up.
The wind blows the snow off the tree and it touches my face. The air smells clean and crisp. I hear dogs barking in town and it reminds me I haven’t heard anything about the wolf I saw in the woods. Not a single reported sighting. I guess anything could have happened to it. I think about the other wolves I’ve met this year, and it makes me feel lonesome all the way through. I curl up in a ball and take a nap.
I dream about wolves. I see them running in perfect coordination and I follow them, but I’m not a wolf. I’m not prey. I’m nothing but myself.
I wake up to the sound of someone climbing up the tree house ladder. It’s Virgil.
He sits next to me. “What are you doing up here?”
“Dreaming,” I say, rubbing my face. “How did you find me?”
“I’m good at that,” says Virgil. “Did you notice it’s freezing again?”
I look at the sun. It’s in a different position from when I fell asleep.
Virgil says, “It’s a lot of work keeping you alive, you know that?”
“That’s what you’re for.”
“Hardly.”
“What do you mean? I couldn’t have survived this year without you.”
“You wouldn’t have had to survive if I hadn’t come along and made such a mess of everything.”
“Give me some credit, Virgil. I was a mess a long time before you got here.”
“Well, now I’m the mess.” He taps his foot in the snow. He shakes his hair over his face. “I don’t want to go.”
“People always say that. Right before they go.”
“What if I don’t? Would it ruin your life?”
I stare at him. Carbonated blood rushes to my head. “Virgil . . . have we had this conversation before?”
He looks away.
I pull him back to face me. “I thought I dreamed you saying those things. I never got to say I feel the same way.”
He puts his hand on my arm. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’m not as tough as you are.”
“Are you kidding? You’re so stoic you don’t even get mad when people shoot you.”
“That was easy. This totally sucks.”
“So we’ll figure something out,” I say. “Where’s midway between Saint Paul and West End?”
Virgil beams. “Well . . . there’s a gas station in Medora, North Dakota, called the Turquoise Turtle. They sell carrot juice slushies.” He pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to me. He’s written me the directions. Like I can drive to North Dakota.
He smiles and pulls me backward against his chest. He wraps his arms around me. I’m completely warm.
I say, “We’ll ruin each other, okay?”
“Okay,” he says.
We sit quietly.
Virgil says, “What were you dreaming about?”
“Wolves.”
“You need a new hobby.”
I look off into the trees. “You know what makes wolves magnificent?”
“Good teeth?”
“They’re great killers.”
Virgil rubs his chin. “Twisted . . . but interesting.”
“Lots of animals are stronger, faster, smarter, or more exotic than wolves, but the way they hunt . . . that’s what makes us hate and love them.”
Virgil doesn’t talk for a while. I love that about him. I love listening to him think, especially when he’s thinking about something I said. I lie back in the snow, so I can see him. I want to remember everything about how he looks right now. The scar on his cheek is an asymmetric dimple. Like everything else about him, it’s beautiful to me. Finally he says, “That’s because we’re killers, too.”
“Some of us are. But we get to decide. A wolf just is.”
He lies down next to me. “KJ, you’re beautiful when you’re obsessing, but I’m freezing.”
“I think I’m finally getting it.”
“Pneumonia?”
“I mean that I don’t want to be a wolf.”
He says, “I kind of like you as Wolf Girl.”
I kiss him. Not a dweebie high school kiss, but a Montana spring kiss. “Do you want to go now?”
“No,” he says, kissing me back.
We lie next to each other and watch the clouds pass. They’re white clouds in a wide-open sky. Not a storm in sight. But you can never tell what the weather’s going to do next around here. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Whatever is coming, right now it feels pretty good.
Epilogue
THE BIG ONE
I SIT WITH Dad in the middle of Wade Lake. The ice is finally off, but it’s still cold enough for coats. Dad won’t let me row even though my hands are fine. He says he wants me to save my strength for the fish I’m going to land, but I know he just has a case of BDG (Bad Dad Guilt). I let him row.
We fish with nymphs. The fish are hungry, but they’re feeding on the bottom because of the cold. When it gets warmer in a week we’ll be into the season full on and won’t have a day to fish for ourselves until September.
Out of nowhere Dad says, “Do you miss him?”
I look up mid-cast and pile my line like a five-year-old. I reel in and start detangling. “Yeah,” I say.
He says, “He’s going to have a lot on his plate this summer.”
I cast again and mend my line. The secret to lake fishing is patience. You can’t rush lake trout, but you can sucker them with a good drop. “I know,” I say. “He’ll be back.”
“His mom’s probably got him traveling. I guess. Probably going all over the world this summer.”
I look up before I
cast out again, “He’s in Saint Paul. In summer school.”
“Or he’s in Saint Paul.”
“But I do miss him.”
We fish without talking for a time. The fish don’t seem interested in what we’re selling. My dad switches to a Woolly Bugger. After another five minutes he pops out a brown trout that looks about half starved. “Hungry and dumb,” says Dad, as he releases the brown back into the water.
He takes a break and eats an apple. “It’s a good thing you did with the wolves.”
“You aren’t mad?”
“It turned out all right.”
“Didn’t do you any favors.”
“Or you either, I guess.”
“I guess,” I say.
Dad sits back and watches me cast. I’m stiff but I’m getting my line out there anyway. He doesn’t correct me. I feel good. I touch the water with my fingers and think of wolves: wild wolves, bad wolves, great wolves, dead wolves, fierce wolves.
“How did you do it?” he says. His voice is taut but not unhappy.
“Do what?”
“How did you make it back to shore? You were so blue when we found you, I thought you were dead.”
I don’t make a joke to change the subject. I don’t say anything. I just cast while I think about what I will tell him, and how much of it I need to save for myself. I know he’s been saving this question, carrying it around like his last sandwich. When I don’t answer he pulls the brim of his hat down and goes back to casting.
Suddenly my line disappears and my reel explodes with the gorgeous sound of spinning gears. I nearly lose my grip, but I manage to recover and keep my tip up. This is a monster.
My dad shouts, “Whoa! Can you hold him?”
I shout back, “If the leader holds.”
“He must be as big as the boat. Give him the whole reel if you have to.”
I give this brute the reel but I have to fight to keep him from going under the boat. My dad says, “Don’t hurt yourself now. I can take him.”
Kristen Chandler Page 23
