by Maria Vale
“Did they feed him? He needs water. My wife must be… My wife…”
“He’s fine, Mr. Fanning. We’re going to get you there as soon as we can.”
“Look.” Doug pulls out his radio. “Why don’t you talk to your—” Before he can hand it to Mr. Fanning, Thea plucks the radio from Doug’s hand.
“What are you doing?” Doug asks.
She twists the dial, finding nothing but static. “That’s unfortunate. The reception up here is so spotty.”
The three of them start very slowly back toward the staging ground, Mr. Fanning talking disjointedly, worriedly, though Thea’s quiet responses seem to calm him just a little. Doug stomps and grouses behind them. When they stop to let Mr. Fanning rest, Doug pulls Thea aside.
“What are you doing?” he whispers angrily. “Just let him talk to his son already.”
“I think it’s better to wait till the trailhead,” she whispers back.
Mr. Fanning comes closer, trying to listen. “Is there something about Timmy? Something you’re not telling me? Did he get hurt?”
“Mr. Fanning. Give me a second, and I’ll get him on the radio.”
“Doug, plea—”
Doug ignores her.
“Mr. Fanning?” He holds up a finger and then calls someone on the radio. “Here’s your son.”
“Dad?” I recognize the voice on the radio as one of the men from the trailhead.
“Dad?”
The old man blinks and then holds the radio away, staring at its dark face. “What the hell are you trying to pull?” He drops the radio. “Where is my son? Where’s Timmy?”
The radio falls, still faintly echoing with the man’s voice. “Dad? It is me. It’s Tim. Dad? Dad!”
The father lurches back toward the mountain, screaming for the boy who is so vivid in his memory.
Thea leaves Doug sweeping the ground for his radio while she follows Mr. Fanning. She lopes across the rough terrain and catches up to the old man. She doesn’t try to stop him, just parallels him, talking to him in that quiet voice. After a while, she moves slower and he slows down too.
Doug shouts, giving directions as the trail fills up with EMTs, rangers, CASART, and Tim, the burly forty-five-year-old with a fringe of gray hair and a fringe of rosy fat, who probably hasn’t been called Timmy for thirty-five years. There’s a lot of frightened shouting between father and son.
I stay well back, lying in a dirt hole left by an uprooted oak. There are too many eyes and too many lights that, if they shine my way, will catch the green lucidum of my eyes, and someone will shoot. I lie below the level of the fingery roots and wait. These people all know each other, so there is the endless human ritual of promises that no one intends to keep.
Get together.
At the pond, at the bowling alley, at church.
With the kids, with the wives, with the team.
Soon, soon, soon, soon.
Never.
Thea says nothing. Just recovers her jacket, hat, gloves, and headlamp from the EMTs and heads back into the trees, returning the way she came.
“Thea!”
She stops but doesn’t turn around. Doug’s booted feet come running after her.
“You knew he wouldn’t recognize his son?”
“Of course I didn’t know. But listening to him…I just thought maybe it was best to wait.”
“Oh Jesus, The. Let me give you a ride.”
“It’s all right. It’s not far,” she says and starts walking into the woods. “It’d take longer in a car.”
“But it’s the middle of the night.”
“I’m good,” she says, but before she can take another step, he grabs her arm, pulling her close.
“Thea, please. Promise me you’ll think about what I said.” And for some unaccountable reason, I hate this man who is touching Thea and still smells like her.
“I’m sure I will.” Then…she rubs the back of his hand. It’s a gesture that looks a lot like There, dear, don’t fret and nothing like You make my spine tighten and my legs clench, and later when I touch myself, it is your name—oh, Doug—that I will scream into the night.
And I can tell that Doug knows it.
“You’re going to regret it some day,” Doug yells to the bright light bobbling into the black forest. “When you wake up in that cabin in the middle of nowhere with no one to talk to but cats.”
“You’re right about that,” she says, her voice fading in the distance. “Always been more of a dog person.”
With a little gleeful kick of leaf litter in Doug’s general direction, I trot along parallel but hidden by the dark woods and my own silence, because neither Doug nor I want her walking alone.
For a human, she moves quietly. To a wolf’s ears, it sounds about like an arthritic bull moose, but still, unlike most humans who blunder around in a shell of disruption, treating the rest of the world as an inconsequential backdrop, she is aware. She pays attention to everything, gives everything its due.
She stops to listen to a woodcock call out his heart (meeep meeep meeep), and because he is doing something really important, she slowly moves away so he can have a little privacy.
It doesn’t take her long to get to her cabin, and when her door closes, I lower my head to the ground. The man who doesn’t use her front door has been back. Even worse, he has used her front door. He went in and came out again, but to be sure, I run to the side window and jump up, the pads of my front paws landing silently on the windowsill.
Thea’s cabin is so small that I can see immediately that she is alone. She’s already hung up her coat. Her boots are side by side next to the door as she crouches in front of a cast-iron stove, scraping away ash. She puts on new kindling and prods it into place. Then a new log. The stovepipe creaks as the fire starts, and smoke mixes in my nose with the slow ferment of pine needles dampened with snow.
She sits on the side of her bed, her hair falling forward over her shoulders and touching her knees. She stares at her knuckles for a long time.
Eventually, she stands, her hands at her buttons and then at her zipper, then her thumbs hook over her waistband and pull low enough for me to see the top of her hips.
Oh god. Just one more minute, I tell myself. She shifts her hip; her jeans lower on one side. Just one more minute, I tell myself. She shifts the other hip, her jeans below the level of her black underwear. One more minute…
The wind changes, bringing the stench of the man who has now used the front door. The man who stood here, doing exactly what I’m doing.
I am better than this. At least that’s what I tell myself. A shiver runs across my withers, and lowering my head, I follow that man who has gone uninvited through her front door. His stench leads east through the spotty woods. I move carefully, keeping close to uneven ground near trees, because I know this must be Liebling, and however strong I am, if those traps are still out there, I will be broken.
A possum scurries across my path, heading straight for a tree. I’m full, but I eat him anyway. Because of that perspective thing.
Liebling lives in a trailer. Not an RV; there is no vehicle here, just a white trailer with a beige-and-brown curlicue painted on the corrugated-metal side. It isn’t old, but it’s also not well maintained. A wire from the trailer loops around trees, heading, I presume, to the roadside and an illegal hookup.
The lights are blazing inside, so I circle the trailer cautiously, giving the rusting jumble of traps in the back an especially wide berth. With more of a bump than a jump, I put my paws carefully on the metal lip of the window, looking through the thin, lopsided blinds. He must have about as much room as Thea, but it is full, crammed with the thinginess of humans. A big boom box. A small TV on top of a VHS machine surrounded by piles of black plastic tapes with scraped-off labels. A microwave sitting on a propane stove. All sorts of objects
I can’t identify but that were probably once “As Seen on TV”: a high casserole, a giant dumpling press, a plastic dish with fine combs for holding bacon upright. I know because there is still bacon in it, sitting in a puddle of cold grease.
Liebling is asleep on a bed that takes up all of one end of the trailer. He is still in his clothes, his feet hanging over the side of his bed, his boots kicked higgledy-piggledy to the floor next to a clear bottle of gin or vodka.
A gun rests on the beige-and-brown plaid arm of the built-in sofa next to his head.
I really don’t like this man. The most satisfying thing to do would be to break through the flimsy front door and grab his neck in my jaws, then disembowel him. Satisfying but also messy, a potential PR disaster for the forever wolves, and a Slitung, if the Pack found out I had changed Offland and killed a human.
Besides, Pack law dictates that life not be taken frivolously and that anything we kill must be eaten. I really don’t want to eat Liebling. I ate part of a state trooper once. He tasted like fat and Styrofoam. It was a week before I could eat anything other than oatmeal.
As soon as I’m in skin again, I nudge the door, because it’s always worth trying the easy option first.
There is no latch, just a loose circle of string on the inside that keeps the door closed. All it takes is tracing one finger up through the gap to unhook the string and open the door. Unfortunately, the door is poorly hung and swings against the metal side of the trailer with a violent bang.
Liebling wakes with a start, his bleary, bloodshot eyes fixed on my naked body crowding in through the door of his cabin. He shrieks, and everything moves very fast. Grabbing for the gun on the sofa arm, he knocks it to the floor, then throws himself after it, dislodging the bacon cooker, so that when he tries to right himself, he slips on the bacon grease and hits his head on the edge of the white table holding the TV, which shudders for just a second before falling onto his neck. The gun in his hand goes off, and his hips jerk up, then settle back down with a sigh.
Blood seeps from under his body, mixing with bacon fat.
Well.
I lean over to feel his pulse, careful to avoid actually stepping inside. No matter where I place my inexpert fingers, there is nothing. I don’t feel anything about his death. Humans think that their deaths are somehow more significant. Wolves don’t see it that way. A human’s death is no more significant than a deer’s, except for that thing about humans tasting so much worse.
I only meant to tell him that I knew he’d entered Thea’s cabin unlawfully and would be serving him with a cease-and-desist letter. What killed him was his humanity: carrion and guns and too much stuff.
When I leave, I don’t close the door.
Folding myself back into the front seat of my car, I check my reflection in the rearview mirror. My hair bristles with forest detritus. My naked skin is caked with the scabrous bits of mud and the drying gore of that possum and the last gluey remains of my fur.
Okay, maybe I did have something to do with his death.
Still not going to eat him.
Chapter 10
Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 15 days
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 15 days
I rubbed away enough of the mud and gore to slip past the somnolent parking attendant and the distracted night desk. In the shower of the gray suite, rivulets of mud and blood flow down the drain until finally they don’t and it’s just soap. I’m almost asleep when a waiter knocks on the door with breakfast. But instead of the continental breakfast I’d ordered yesterday, he lifts the bell on a full American with extra bacon. I wave him away, the taste of last night’s superfluous possum rising suddenly in my mouth.
At nine, I call Samuel to ask him if he’s found out anything about Liebling. There’s a long pause.
“I left it on your desk yesterday.”
“I’m not at my desk. I’m in Albany.”
“You know I don’t like transmitting anything electronically.” He whispers electronically with this odd emphasis like it’s an obscenity.
“Samuel, just send it to me.”
It turns out that Robert Liebling’s real name is Robert Darling. There is an outstanding warrant for criminal trespass in Orlando where an old girlfriend had gotten a restraining order. Another outstanding warrant from some small town outside Oklahoma City. Samuel says he has dispatch records as if I needed further evidence that this is a man prone to violence against women.
It’s about what I expected. There are two reasons humans live so far off the grid: either they see themselves as woodsmen, the heirs to Thoreau, or they’re thugs on the lam.
I’ve known heirs to Thoreau, and they do not crap up their living spaces with a lot of stuff that is “As Seen on TV.”
Before heading back to Thea’s cabin, I call the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department, and by the time I arrive, there’s already a black SUV with a big, gold star parked in front. Doug himself is parked in front of her door, talking to Thea.
“And you are?” Doug props his hand on the top of his holster.
“Elijah Sorensson.” I bend my head in Thea’s direction. “Thea’s lawyer. I was the one who called about Liebling.”
“Darling, you mean.”
“Exactly. Did you get him?”
“Manner of speaking,” Doug says, looking at me suspiciously, but at least he drops his hand from his holster. I try not to look at Thea. “We went to his cabin. Seems he shot himself.”
“Suicide?”
“Doesn’t look like it. As far as we can tell, he was drunk, reached for his gun, slipped around, the gun went off, he fell. The place was a mess. Animals got in.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, grimacing. “Animals.”
“You called from New York?” When I hesitate, he explains that he knows most of the lawyers in Hamilton County and that my phone has a 917 area code.
“I had work in Albany when I heard from our firm’s investigator and was worried. Due diligence, you know.”
“Are you normally this diligent?” He’s five inches shorter than I am, but I have to give him credit for not backing down, the way most humans do when they’re forced to crick their necks to look at me. “Calling us,” he says, “that I understand, but coming up here? Even from Albany, it’s a schlep.”
“Halvors, Sorensson & Trianoff is very thorough.”
He sucks at his lips and then lets them go with a pop. “Okay, well. See you around, Thea. You know you can always call me.”
She stands behind him on the threshold. “Thanks again. And I am sorry.”
“It’s all right. I should’ve known. I guess I always did.”
He closes her door and then gives it an extra pull until the latch catches properly, as though showing me that he is someone who has learned how to close this door.
“You’ve got me blocked in,” he says, nodding toward my car.
Doug pauses, his foot propped on the running board of his SUV.
“Eli?” he says.
“Elijah.”
He looks from his high perch directly into my eyes. “You know, last year, I was standing right where you are. And it was Lee, the guy before me, getting into his car. Getting ready to drive away. I’ll tell you what he told me. ‘You think you’re going to make her right, domesticate her, but you’re not.’ So now I’ll tell you the same: you’re not.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just her lawyer.”
“And I was just her drinking buddy,” he says with a shrug. Then he clambers into his SUV and slams the door. In my Land Rover, I watch him pull the seat belt across his chest and catch his eyes in the rearview mirror.
I don’t belt up.
• • •
Thea’s cabin is spare and self-contained, the exact opposite of Liebling’s trailer. Everything has its place: t
he backpack she took to find Mr. Fanning hangs from a cast-iron hook screwed into the wood. Ropes in differing lengths and thicknesses—each neatly tied and whipped in yellow—hang nearby, along with an ax.
Hanging from a hook up above everything is a long, dusty, mud-colored canvas case with H. VILLALOBOS stenciled in red letters.
The only furniture is a chaise with worn black-and-white floral upholstery that is clearly not original. A single wooden chair, a small pine table hinged like a school desk, and a bed.
“Coffee?” she asks. “I was just about to start another pot. Late night last night.”
“Yeah. Sure. Thank you.”
She pours some water into the teakettle and sets it on the cast-iron stove.
“It’s the least I can do for your help,” she says, retrieving a mason jar filled with ground coffee and another of sugar.
I try to imagine how to spin what little I did into something impressive. Magnificent. Something that will make her crave my power and my position. Make her feel how utterly imperative it is to see me again. To be with me.
Unlatching what looks like a small safe built into the side of the cabin, she pulls out a carton of milk. From a low shelf above her sink, she retrieves a single cup and a bowl with steep sides.
“Here’s the truth. I didn’t do anything. The letter you wrote for Liebling? The one that you showed me in New York? It would have been just fine as it was. A change or two maybe to make it stronger. Our letterhead, sure. But it was fine as it was.”
“So why did you say it was more complicated?” The smell of coffee hits the back of my throat as she spoons the grounds into the filter.
“Because I wanted to see you again.”
She stops for a moment before screwing the lid back on and returning it to the cold box.
“That’s kind of pathetic.”
“I know. I’m not used to being pathetic, but there it is.”
A thin wisp of steam starts to curl up from the kettle.
“And why are you here now?”
“Same reason. I wanted to see you again, and after yesterday…I wasn’t sure you would.”
