Sometimes the Wolf

by Urban Waite

  Morgan there ten feet from the stairs, the light from the open door spilling onto the prairie. Morgan moving for the shadows. Bean pulled the trigger and felt the gun buck slightly. Morgan fell out of the light and into the darkness. Bean had no idea if he’d hit the man or not.

  He came down off the porch with the pistol still pointed out on the prairie, Drake’s own service weapon now tucked into the waistband of his pants.

  Grass moved in the wind, and farther on the sound of the high thin branches of the cottonwoods clacking together. Bean’s eyes trying to adjust. He came to the edge of the light and stood with the gun in a sweep of the land.

  Nothing but the high grass to see.

  For what felt like an hour he stood there looking out on the night. And then he backed away, his finger still held down on the trigger, the gun warmed in his grip. He came back into the cabin and sat for what seemed a long time with John Wesley. Bean’s legs crossed and the tail of his suit jacket spread behind him on the floor. One hand with the Walther in his lap and the other laid palm down on John Wesley’s back. The big man still warm and his face away from Bean, cheek down on the floor.

  Nothing Bean could do.

  Bean was rocking slightly and watching the open door and the night beyond when he rose and left his friend behind on the floor of the cabin.

  Chapter 23

  DRAKE AND SHERI PUT their backs to the seat and kicked at the cage. Drake counted down the time and then both of them shot out their soles at the cage a final time. Nothing moved. The car sat there rocking slightly on its springs and the sound of their breath was the only thing to be heard there in the darkness.

  He looked over at her but there was little to see. The silver light of the moon luminescent on her features, the bruises the men had left nothing but dark marks on her white skin. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I trusted Patrick, too,” Sheri said. “It wasn’t just you.”

  They’d heard three shots come from over the edge of the hill and then nothing for a very long time. He moved and kicked at the glass of the side window, feeling the body of the car shake. The bottom of his foot felt numb from the twenty or more times he’d tried to push through the rear cage.

  He stopped to catch his breath. The night cold had seeped into the car. His lungs pumping in his chest and the steam rising, then disappearing in the air before him. Free to move, he went to the window and looked out on the night as if he might find some help there.

  All he’d told the two men was that the money was down there. There was no other choice. It was all he could think of to buy time, and he looked out on the crest of the hill, hoping Morgan had taken his advice to clear out for a day or two. Just go on into town and see if his friend could give him a place to sit this all out. But the guns going off down the hill suggested otherwise.

  Sometime on the ride over he’d managed to get his hands free and he’d loosened the tape from around Sheri’s wrist as soon as the two killers had disappeared from sight. Now he tried to pry away the clear glass-like polycarbonate separating the front seat from the back. All of it supported on a metal frame that had been bolted to the floor at his feet. He didn’t have anything but his own strength to rely on and his strength wasn’t enough.

  WHEN BEAN FOUND Morgan he sat at the bottom of the cut with his back to a cottonwood trunk and his legs splayed out on the ground. He’d broken the bird gun open and it lay on his lap with the chambers exposed and the two empty shells in the dirt to his right. There was a pain in his shoulder like a knife blade any time he moved and he sat there trying to calm it away with one hand raised to the meat at his breast and the other out on the ground like an anchor.

  He looked up at Bean as he came out of the trees, moving down the slight incline to where Morgan rested. Bean carried a pistol before him and he stopped five feet away from Morgan, the barrel of the gun aimed off to the side. Morgan could see Bean was looking him over and making his judgments.

  “You were just sitting up waiting for us,” Bean said. He moved a little closer, squatting so that they could look each other over at the same level. The gun still in his hand.

  “I’ve been sitting up waiting for years now,” Morgan said. A wave of pain passed through him and he closed his eyes tight. When he opened them again Bean was still there. Morgan gave him a smile.

  “John Wesley is dead,” Bean said.

  “I expected he was.”

  “We could have just sat down and talked.”

  “I know how those talks go with you,” Morgan said.

  Bean looked from the open breech of the shotgun to the empty shells in the dirt by Morgan’s thigh. “You and Patrick, huh?” Bean laughed a bit to himself, looking back the way he’d come from. Light up the hill where the cabin bled a thin gray tone into the night air. “I would have thought you were too old for something like this.”

  “Turns out I’m not,” Morgan said. He moved a bit, taking his hand away from his chest, and watching the way Bean looked him over. The man hadn’t moved except to kneel there in front of him.

  “You were always good to us, Morg,” Bean said. “I didn’t mean to shoot you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Then what’s wrong with you?”

  There was sweat growing on Morgan’s forehead and upper lip and it felt cold in the night. “Just old,” Morgan said. “Just sitting here catching my breath.”

  Bean gave a disappointed smile. He rose and slipped the pistol into the waistband at his back. For a second he stood looking down the stream and then he turned and fixed Morgan again with a stare. “Where’s the money, Morgan?”

  “There is no money.”

  Bean knelt again, pulling the suit jacket away where it bunched between his stomach and thighs. Morgan watched him and thought of how the man reminded him of some gunfighter in a novel, pushing the jacket back over the grip of the gun before taking his paces.

  “I read the note from Patrick to his son,” Bean said. “I have the deputy and his wife back there in the car. I can tell you right now it’s you or him.”

  Morgan thought that over. The pain was coming over him in waves, and he thought again about the woman in town. He thought about Patrick. He didn’t know what to think. Morgan’s heart doing the stutter-step inside his chest.

  With one hand Morgan felt around on his jeans until he found the spare shells in his pocket. He knew Bean was watching but he didn’t care. His hand was slow and it shook too much but he got one shell out and then another. The two shells in the palm of his hand and a dry rasp now felt on his tongue as he tried to push himself up.

  “Don’t,” Bean said.

  Morgan got one shell in his fingers and fed it down into the bore. He was working on the other one when Bean put his hand out and cupped his palm over Morgan’s fist. The two frozen there like that, Bean kneeling before Morgan and Morgan sitting there with his back to the cottonwood trunk.

  “You’re an old fool,” Bean said.

  Morgan looked up at him. The words not coming and a dry heat seizing up in his chest just above the heart, his insides gone solid and heavy as cement.

  THROUGH THE CRUISER windshield Drake watched the pale indent in the sky. His grandfather’s cabin out there just beyond the ridge and no shot or sound for more than thirty minutes. He sat forward on the edge of the backseat—one hand to the cage—watching the place Bean and John Wesley had stood. There was nothing for him to do. His arms ached and his legs felt swollen from trying to kick out the doors and windows. His bad knee pulsing like a metronome.

  The keys had been left in the ignition, but the car was not on. There was no light but that of the stars and what little escaped from the cabin beyond the ridge. Drake’s eyes had long since adjusted and he could see now far away over the grass. Watching the way the moon came down silver and glossy over the fresh shoots of spring. Far away he saw the occasional headlight break over the top of a hill on the county road and then go away again.

  “What do you think?” S
heri asked.

  “Morgan?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t know what had happened to Morgan and he went on watching the ridge before him and thinking about the morning. Drake leaving Morgan to go west over the mountains and the old man simply turning to walk back out into the grasslands to set his snares. Every day seeming to repeat itself like the one before.

  “I can’t say,” Drake finally said, though he knew it was probably too much to hope for. And he thought what little time they had left owed a lot to Morgan.

  It took Drake a second to notice the figure come up over the ridge, the head visible first, backlit by the pale light of the cabin. Then the shoulders came into view. A black figure standing there looking at the cruiser. He watched and waited. Drake’s face still at the window and then when the man turned in profile to look out at something far away on the county road, Drake saw it was Bean.

  The chill went down Drake like ice on the skin. He fell back against the seat, covering Sheri as much as possible. Listening now to Bean’s footsteps as he came down off the ridge and made his way to the car.

  Drake looked around but there was nothing for him to use. There was nothing he could do but wait it out and hope somehow to escape notice. Though he knew it wasn’t a possibility and Bean knew exactly where they were.

  Drake heard the shuffle of gravel under Bean’s shoes and then he didn’t hear anything anymore. The warmth of Sheri’s body under his, the strangled breathing as they both tried to make themselves as small as possible. Drake looked up and Bean stood outside the door, just his body visible through the glass, the Walther tucked into the front of his pants next to Drake’s own pistol. The black sides of his jacket outlining the white belly of Bean’s shirt.

  Drake’s eyes ran along the walls of the cage but there was no escape. Both he and Sheri moved all the way across the seat, as far away from Bean as they could get. Nothing to prevent Bean from just reaching in and pulling them out one at a time.

  But then Drake saw what had taken up Bean’s attention on the county road. Blue and red light now beginning to flicker on the white of Bean’s shirt. Drake rose and looked behind down the gravel road. The first halo of flashing light showed over the horizon and then the grille lights came into view over the far ridge.

  The car was a long way off but it was moving fast, running down the road with the gravel popping beneath the tires. Drake turned and saw Bean had backed away into the grass. He stood there now with his body toward Drake, both guns loose in his hands by his thighs, and his face turned to the oncoming blaze of light.

  Drake watched Bean until he took one step back and then another. He was looking at both of them now, the guns still in his hands and the light growing on his face. Drake watching Bean there in the grass, his legs dipped into the prairie like a man wading backward into a swimming pool, first one foot, then the other.

  And then Bean was gone. A few hesitant steps before he turned and disappeared over the ridge, the black jacket waving behind him as he cut down through the grass and went from sight.

  PART V

  THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS

  Chapter 24

  DRISCOLL WALKED OVER FROM the Impala and told them a body had been found in Maurice’s house. Drake and Patrick were sitting on the stairs and Patrick looked up when Driscoll mentioned the house but didn’t say anything. Driscoll went on and told them the coroner was waiting on a set of dental records to make a positive ID, but the body looked to be Maurice’s.

  After a while Patrick turned to Drake. “Did you see anything when you were there?”

  Drake looked over at his father and then looked away again. There were flashlights moving out over the grass. Driscoll had called two marshals in and they worked as a team with four deputies from the local sheriff’s department, their flashlights swelling up over the landscape and then moving off again. “I don’t know,” Drake said. He shook his head. He didn’t want to tell his father about it.

  They were sitting on the front stairs of Morgan’s cabin. Patrick’s wrists were cuffed behind him and Gary, Driscoll, and Sheri stood in a half circle around them. All with their arms crossed to ward off the cold.

  There had been three shots. The first two—Drake guessed—were from Morgan’s bird gun and the last from a pistol. Thirty minutes later Bean had come up the hill and stood next to the cruiser. Drake was thinking about it now. He was thinking about it all and trying to put it back together but nothing seemed to fit.

  The first thing they’d seen when they’d come down the hill was John Wesley where he lay just inside the door. He’d taken a load of shot to the shoulder and then another load in his chest and stomach. He was dead and Drake looked around the small cabin for any other sign. The bird gun was gone and so was Morgan. There was a piece of firewood on the floor and the broken glass of the window fallen all around it. The iron stove still had some warmth to it but the room was cold with the window busted in and the door open on its hinges. A single chair had been knocked on its side, another one close by the stove sat alone.

  Patrick was still waiting on some sort of answer from him, but Drake didn’t have anything to say. He was angry with his father. Just yesterday he’d sat on this same porch with Morgan like nothing would happen. Drake somehow believing this, knowing now how wrong he had been.

  The difference between what he wanted and what would actually happen complete as two passing worlds up there somewhere in the stars. Mostly, though, Drake was angry with himself for letting Patrick convince him they could have some kind of normal life; drinking beer on the back porch and watching the apple orchard with the smell of barbecue and smoke in the air.

  The saddest part about it all was that Drake still wanted those things. Only now he knew they would never be. For a long time Drake watched the flashlights out there in the grass. The deputies were taking their time, working their way down the hill with the night wind moving the grass. Soon they’d be into the cottonwoods and up the other side. He wondered how far they would take it.

  “Was it Maurice?” Patrick asked.

  Sheri stirred. “I’m sorry, Patrick. I know he was a friend of yours.”

  Drake wouldn’t look at his father. Anything his father touched seemed to turn to blood on the floor—pools and pools of it.

  He shook his head and looked up to Sheri. He didn’t know what there was left to say. Nothing was how it was supposed to be and Drake pushed himself up and walked the few steps toward her. He hugged her, holding her close, her chin resting on his chest and her forehead to the bottom of his jawline. Drake kissed the top of her head, feeling one of the welts that had risen close to the bone, and then taking her hand, he asked her to step away.

  In that moment he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care that his father was sitting there on the stairs watching them. He didn’t care about Driscoll or Gary or what they might want. Drake only wanted his life with Sheri to go back to some form of normality, though he could honestly say he didn’t know what that might be anymore.

  They were careful not to go too far—only to the edge of the cabin light. They sat and watched the deputies out there as they moved over the grass. Drake kept his hand on hers. The warmth of her body felt close to him.

  “What happens now?” Sheri asked.

  “I don’t know,” Drake said. He looked back to the cabin. Driscoll, Gary, and Patrick there. He felt her hand tighten on his.

  After a while she asked, “Why doesn’t Gary or Driscoll go help the marshals?”

  “I don’t think either one wants to leave the other one alone with my father.”

  Sheri’s eyes shifted over the small gathering at the foot of the stairs. Drake saw her waver there for a second and then look to Drake. “Twelve years ago Patrick did it, didn’t he?”

  It took Drake a while but eventually he nodded. He watched her take that in. He waited for her to say something and when nothing came he asked her about Bean.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 
Drake didn’t know what to say. He knew he had to ask but the asking was painful and he was having a hard time forming the words. He looked away from her now toward the search party out there in the grass. The flashlights were farther away from them, almost at the cottonwoods. With his eyes still out on the rolling hills, he said, “I just need to know if you’re okay.”

  “He didn’t do anything to me.”

  “And the house? The place that they took us—could you find your way back there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think I could, either.” He turned to take her in. She wouldn’t look at him now.

  “Are you asking if he hurt me?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Not in that way,” she said. “He took something from me that I don’t think I’ll be able to get back for a long time.”

  Drake waited. He didn’t want her to go on but he couldn’t stop her.

  “I’m telling you he didn’t rape me. He didn’t get off on that. He wanted to make sure I knew I was helpless. He wanted my security. He took that all away from me. And now he’s out there somewhere.” She paused. “It’s almost worse that way,” she finally said.

  He turned, looking away for a time before coming back to her, watching as the search party lights reflected on her pupils. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Are we okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  PATRICK RAISED HIS head when the shouting started down by the creek. He stood and Driscoll put a hand to his shoulder but then removed it after he saw Patrick wasn’t trying to run.

  They covered the ground together, Patrick in the lead with Driscoll and Gary following close behind. Drake and Sheri cutting across the grass toward them. All of them in the near black of night until Gary brought out a small flashlight and flicked it on.