Sometimes the Wolf

by Urban Waite

  Drake nodded and watched his father. Now it’s me and him, Drake thought. When did that happen? When has that ever been the way things were? Drake certainly hadn’t played a part in the second mortgage Patrick took out on their house, on the money he owed. All that had added up after Drake’s mother passed and there just wasn’t anything in the bank for the bills.

  “I was away for a long time,” Patrick said. “I thought about a lot of things. I know going back to Silver Lake is what I have to do now. But someday I plan to build a cabin in the woods—live like your grandfather. Just disappear.”

  Drake shifted, rolling his shoulders back. “Don’t disappear just yet. You’re still out on parole. Plus I wouldn’t be surprised if the forestry service had some sort of restraining order out against you after all the time you spent in the woods last time you were free.”

  “Very funny,” Patrick said. He had his eyes on the side mirror and it made Drake look to the rearview, scanning the highway behind. Nothing to see but a tall line of semis and the daytime running lights of cars shining back on him.

  Drake took the exit. He slowed into a stop sign and then turned to the east, where there were several gas stations and a McDonald’s. Up the road he saw where a big warehouse store was going in, the skeleton of the place big as an airplane hangar.

  “You need money?” Drake asked.

  “No, just a bathroom.”

  Drake pulled in beside one of the pumps and watched his father go in. With his credit card Drake paid the machine and let the tank fill, sitting in the car with the door open and the sound of the engine ticking beneath the hood. With his hand he pushed into the muscle of his thigh and felt the tendons pull. Two years before he’d been shot in the knee while trying to help out a DEA agent by the name of Frank Driscoll, and there were pieces of Drake’s patella still floating around through his insides. All of it the result of a bust Drake had tried to make on a man smuggling drugs over the mountains outside Silver Lake, a former acquaintance of his father’s.

  With the door open he brought his legs around, resting them on the pavement and working the muscle in his hands, the smell of gas strong in the air. There had been physical therapy for a year afterward, lessons on how to shift his weight, how to swing his knee, and try to minimize the limp he would have for the rest of his life.

  All the people we try to be, Drake thought. All the people we will be in a single life.

  On the weekends Drake still pushed the ball up the court at the local high school. Wearing a knee brace. His bad leg constantly losing the battle with his good leg. He’d had to adjust for how he shot, making sure he came off his good leg when he ran in for a layup. He had to think about it now, the way he couldn’t jump as high anymore. He’d always been an outside shooter, playing point in college, he’d spent most of his time moving the ball around at the top of the key, or stepping back beyond the three-point line to line up his shot. But he’d put on weight since then. He’d slowed. And even keeping himself in shape he knew he’d never be the same player he once had been. Though he was teaching himself to be something different now, not worse or better, but something different. Smarter perhaps. Drake didn’t know. The person he was then so far from the person he was now.

  He sat in the car with the door open. The smell of gasoline dissolving in the air as he ran his fingertips over the muscles of his thigh, pushing the strain away. His fingertips digging for the familiar scars and wounds of his past.

  A minute later his father came out of the gas station wiping his hands down the sides of his pants to dry them. “I worried about you when I read in the paper what happened,” his father said.

  “It’s nothing now,” Drake said. “It stiffens up on long drives.”

  “You were shot twice, weren’t you?”

  “Once in the knee and once in the arm,” Drake said. His hand on his kneecap and the slight indentation left in the bone from where the bullet had passed through. He’d thought in that moment, two years before, he was a dead man, and that all he had tried to do in his life had been for nothing. A scar in the shape of a star on his forearm where the second bullet had gone in, and the dark purple sliver of tissue at the back of his left hand where he’d caught a knife through his palm. Thinking on it now he couldn’t even begin to put it back together, or reason out why he was still alive. But he was. All that in the past and now he sat trying to wring the stiffness from his leg.

  When he raised his eyes from his knee, his father was no longer looking at him, his head up, with his focus across the street. “You know those men over there?”

  Drake turned and found where Patrick’s gaze fell. A new-model Lincoln Town Car with two men inside, sitting in the McDonald’s parking lot. “I don’t think they care much about us,” Drake said.

  “They’re a little too far for me to make out.”

  “I don’t recognize them,” Drake said.

  “They pulled off the highway as we came up the exit,” his father said. “They’ve been sitting like that ever since I got out of the car and went inside.”

  Drake stood and put his hands to the small of his back, working his shoulders until he heard the ligaments pop. “Is that why you were looking in the side mirror?”

  Patrick stood watching the men. “Why are they just sitting there? Why don’t they go in?”

  “They could have gone in while you were in the bathroom.”

  “I wasn’t in there that long.”

  Drake stared at his father and then looked back at the men. “Is there a reason they’d be following us?” The pump clicked off and Drake walked back to take the hose from the tank. “Are you feeling all right, Dad? You’re scaring me a bit here.”

  Drake watched as his father’s eyes quivered, something watery and loose in their stare before they broke away and met Drake again. “Just paranoid, I suppose. Too much time locked away in small places seeing things that aren’t there.”

  Drake nodded, taking the receipt from the machine. Patrick stood on the other side of the car, the beard and stark white hair giving him a mythical quality, like some piece of history come to life from a book. “You sure you’re okay, Dad?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just feels different out here, I guess.”

  “That’s fine,” Drake said. He started the car and pulled it around to the road, feeling the engine work as he pressed his foot down and angled for the interstate.

  In his rearview Drake watched the road, waiting to see if the Lincoln would round the corner and take the entrance with them. Nothing there to see, and only the semis out on the interstate as he pushed the accelerator again and headed north.

  Chapter 2

  THERE WAS THE SOUND again of something hitting against the metal—the thump of an elbow, the beat of a foot, the hard strike of a palm against the inside of the trunk lid. The skinny man looked to the side where the big man sat and then he looked behind him, over the backs of their seats to where the leather—with every knock—seemed to palpitate like something alive.

  He turned and ran his eyes to the gas station across the street. The car they’d been following since that morning now pulling out into traffic, headed toward the highway again. He watched it go, tracking it with his eyes as it went. And then when it was gone he got up from the Lincoln and walked around to the back where the sounds could be heard.

  There were several children playing inside on the McDonald’s play structure—twenty feet of slides and rope ladders, a bridge of netting from one plastic tower to the next. One overweight boy of eight or nine there at the edge, surveying the land, watching the skinny man where he stood in the parking lot. The two stared at each other for the beat of a second. The boy there and then gone, called away by his mother or by some other child.

  The man turned and opened the trunk. The driver there in the belly, his face showed as only a mash of dried blood and broken bones. One side of his skull sagging like melted rubber, cheekbone to eye socket crushed inward. And the skin purpled and swollen from
when he’d been beaten unconscious.

  The skinny man took it all in quickly, looking to the McDonald’s and then looking back on the driver. He dropped a fist fast into the windpipe of the man and crushed the driver’s larynx. Then as the eyes opened wide, the driver’s lungs struggling to breathe, the skinny man bent downward and with two hands took hold of the driver, breaking his neck as deftly as a farmer snapping the neck of one of his chickens.

  Chapter 3

  YOU GOT SOME TIME?” Drake asked as they came into Silver Lake, the houses all strung together along the road. Prefabs with vinyl siding and patchy lawns farther out, and as they came into town, two-story clapboards with wood-frame windows and lopsided porches. A single yellow caution light dangling where the two main roads came together and then split apart again.

  “Plenty of time,” his father said, leaning into the windshield to take in the town. “Hasn’t changed much, has it?”

  “A few more logging outfits,” Drake said. They came to the blinking yellow and Drake turned the steering wheel to the left, heading away from the lake.

  When they came to the metal Quonset hut five miles up the road, Drake pulled into the gravel and set the brake. “This is new,” Patrick said.

  “Fish and Wildlife put it in a few years back. I’ve been helping them out. This morning on the way to pick you up I spotted a wolf just off the lake road.”

  “A wolf?”

  Drake nodded. “Positive.”

  “No shit?” Patrick said, leaning forward to take in the hut like he might see the wolf standing there before them. “Your grandfather used to tell me stories about the old packs that ran in the North Cascades. Nothing like that when I was around. This must be the first wolf in fifty years.”

  “At least.” Drake pushed the door open and moved to get out, pausing and looking back at his father. “You hear from him at all? Grandpa? Is he still crazy?”

  “He wrote me a few times. Says he’s getting old. Told us to come visit when we had a chance. Says he’s been shooting gophers and prairie dogs. Sent me a recipe for chili a few years ago. Same crazy old man.”

  “What kind of chili?”

  “It wasn’t beef.”

  “Sounds about right,” Drake said. “I’m surprised he wrote you.”

  “Living out where he does I think he gets lonely,” Patrick said.

  Drake told his father he’d be only a moment and then got up out of the car and closed the door. He could smell the tree pollen in the air. The first buds of spring showing on the stink currant branches off the road.

  Nothing up the road but forest, and then eventually, thirty miles on, the border crossing into Canada. A single booth set in the middle of the road with red-and-white pole gates hanging off either side, like a trawler on the ocean. Drake took a breath and felt the sweet air at the back of his throat, cold and mineral as snowmelt. He nodded to his father and then went on to the hut.

  He smelled the deer by the time he had the door open and he put a hand to his nose to quell the stench. “How long did she sit in the sun before you brought her in?” he asked.

  Ellie Cobb leaned out from behind a metal cabinet. Eight years younger than him, she wore a pair of safety glasses over her dark eyes, her brown hair tied back and the green Fish and Wildlife uniform visible beneath a yellow rubber apron. With a gloved hand, she removed the glasses and stood. “When you left the message this morning you didn’t say anything about the deer being half-eaten.”

  “She wasn’t half-eaten when I left her,” Drake said. He was standing close by Ellie now and he could see how the wolf had cleaned one of the flanks to the bone. A strong light focused down on the remaining muscle. The musk of the deer floated in the air, and an underlying smell of the wilderness.

  The room they stood in a mix of salvaged wood furniture—culled from some government office in Olympia—and the more modern stainless examination tables toward the back, where a series of freezers lined the wall and filled the room with an electric hum. Each freezer containing the various remains of one thing or another, finds either Drake or Ellie had brought in over the last few months: a frozen coyote, a flattened porcupine, and the remains of a diseased elk.

  Drake picked up a pair of surgical tongs and folded open the stomach cavity. The innards torn and the ribs snapped in a jagged fashion Drake knew had not been done with human hands. When he looked over at Ellie to tell her about the wolf, the Fish and Wildlife officer’s eyes were looking past him.

  Drake turned and found his father there, the big canvas coat on his shoulders and a hand held to his nose.

  “Ellie Cobb,” Drake said, “this is my father, Patrick.”

  “The convict,” Ellie said, a playful smile on her face as she said it. “I’d heard your time was coming up.”

  “Ex-con,” Patrick said, extending a hand to Ellie.

  She looked down at it a moment and then gave him a weak wave with her gloved hand. “Sorry,” she said. “Blood.”

  His father nodded and forced a smile. He was standing about two feet away from where Drake leaned over the carcass. “My son tell you I was getting out?”

  “Actually, no. The sheriff, Gary, said you might be around soon. Bobby only told me about it when I pressed him a little.”

  “Gary is the sheriff now?”

  Ellie looked to Drake.

  “Gary was my deputy,” Patrick explained.

  Ellie’s eyes locked on Drake. “I thought Bobby would have told you.”

  “Bobby doesn’t tell me much of anything. I half expected I’d be catching the bus this morning.”

  “Bobby seems pretty good at keeping secrets. You have any advice for me if I decide to go rogue?”

  Patrick ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking it through. His eyes dancing over her and then away again. “I can tell you what not to do,” he said. “Don’t smuggle drugs in across international borders. Don’t let anyone know you’re doing it. And . . .” He looked around the room in mock suspicion. “Don’t get caught.”

  “I see you’ve been rehabilitated,” Ellie said.

  “Totally cured.”

  Drake watched Ellie to see how she was taking it. There was an undeniable level of sarcasm in Patrick’s voice and it was hard to know what to do with it.

  “You feel guilty about any of it?” Ellie asked.

  “I’d take it back if I could,” Patrick said. “I messed a lot up. I was the sheriff and I was arrested right here in town. I tried to run but I didn’t make it far. I got cocky. Of course I didn’t know it at the time. But sitting in Monroe for all those years I can see how it all spiraled out of control for me. I tried to sell too much at one time. People start to take notice.”

  “Those people being the DEA?”

  “When I started out in this I didn’t have a lot of options. No one wants to do business with a sheriff and I rushed into it. I needed the money. The DEA offered my contact down in Seattle a deal and that deal involved me. I walked right into it. I really didn’t even need the money at that point.”

  “And you got out this morning?”

  “Only three hours ago.”

  “It must feel pretty good, like a birthday or something.”

  “Yeah, a birthday I only get to celebrate every twelve years.” Drake’s father blew air through his teeth and looked around at the room. “Bobby told me about the wolf, I thought I’d come in for a second. I didn’t expect to meet anyone like you in here.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Ellie asked.

  “You’re the best thing I’ve seen in twelve years.”

  “The state prison offering charm school now?”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “Just before shop class and after basic auto maintenance. It’s real popular.”

  “I bet.” Ellie looked from Patrick to Drake and then dropped her eyes to the half-eaten carcass on the table.

  Drake turned and looked at his father. “You think you could give us a moment?”

  “Yeah, no problem. I just ca
me in to give the place a look.” He nodded a good-bye to Ellie and then smiled toward Drake. “Bobby, I’ll be out by the car when you finish up here.”

  Drake watched his father walk back toward the front entrance. When the door drew shut, Ellie said, “You definitely didn’t mention he was such a smoothy.” A playfulness showing on her face again.

  “I didn’t know you were into older men.”

  “Only if they’re old enough to be my father,” Ellie said. She gave Drake a wink. “That bad-boy thing really gets me going, you think he’d wear a leather jacket if I asked?”

  “You can stop anytime, Ellie.”

  “Just having some fun. Just being polite. The guy has been locked up for twelve years.”

  “Uh-huh, and it’s your job to cheer him up?” Drake said. He could feel the flush of blood on his cheeks. He didn’t know why he felt this way about her, or what to call it. Protective? Maybe. Ellie was like a little sister to him. She’d grown up in the town and then left for college, later applying to Fish and Wildlife. She’d been something like twelve years old when everything had gone down with Drake’s father. And just like everyone else in Silver Lake, she knew almost every detail about the case.

  “He could probably use some good times,” Ellie said.

  Drake shook his head, trying to get a handle on it. He thought if he opened his mouth to speak his voice would break like a teenage boy’s. He swallowed, wetting his throat, knowing it was all talk, and that Ellie was giving him a hard time like she always did. “You thought you’d just flirt with him a little?” Drake said. “Show him a good time?”

  “The convict thing? It’s the one thing he’s known for, isn’t it? That and knowing every inch of these mountains.”

  “That’s what happens when you spend a couple years smuggling drugs over them.” Drake laughed, but it felt forced, and he looked to the front door of the Quonset hut and wondered what his father was doing outside.

  With one gloved hand, Ellie pushed the light back from the carcass and flicked off the power. “I didn’t know it was for that long.”