The Tenderness of Wolves

by Stef Penney

  ‘I don’t know exactly where he is, but we could probably find him. But if you are looking for a criminal, you will not find one. He does not know what he does.’

  While Stewart is speaking, Parker takes pipe and tobacco out of his pocket. As he does so, a scrap of paper falls onto the floor between his chair and Stewart’s. Parker does not notice, teasing strands of tobacco out of the pouch and firming them into the bowl. Stewart sees it and bends down to pick it up. He pauses fractionally with his hand on the floor, then hands it back to Parker, all without looking at his face.

  ‘I will arrange for a couple of the men to search for him. They should be able to follow his tracks.’

  Parker puts the fragment of paper back in his pocket with barely a break in the ritual of filling the bowl. The whole incident has taken perhaps three seconds. The two men have sat side by side during the whole conversation without exchanging so much as a glance.

  Near the end of the corridor, Parker turns to me. ‘I am going to get ready.’

  ‘You are going?’

  I assumed his questions were answered. Foolish of me; of course he would not believe anything Stewart said.

  ‘He never said he did not send Nepapanees to Dove River.’

  His certainty irritates me, so I do not reply. He is looking at me with that peculiar blank intensity of his, which speaks of great concentration while giving no clue as to its subject, or even its tenor. But it is only the habitual lines of his face that make you assume anger and violence are behind it; now I know that it is not so. Or perhaps I have lulled myself into a false sense of security.

  ‘You still have the shirt from Elbow Ridge?’

  ‘Of course I have. It is rolled at the bottom of my bag, underneath my fur-lined coat.’

  ‘Fetch it.’

  Halfway across the open ground behind the stores, the sun breaks through a gap in the cloud. A shaft of light, solid as a staircase, strikes the plain beyond the palisade, illuminating a stand of scrub willow, skeined with snow and glittering with icicles. Its brightness is piercing; its whiteness hurts the eyes. As suddenly as a smile, the sun causes beauty to break out on this sullen plain. Beyond a range of a hundred yards, all imperfections are hidden. Beyond the palisade lies a perfect landscape like a sculpture carved in salt, crystalline and pure. Meanwhile we trudge through roiled slush and dirt, trampled and stained with the effluent of dogs.

  The widow is in her hut with one of her sons, a solemn-looking boy of about eight. She is boiling meat over the fire, squatting beside it. She looks, to my eye, thinner and more ragged than when I last saw her, and somehow more native, although with her fine features she is, of all of them, the most clearly a half-breed.

  She looks up without expression as Parker enters without knocking and says something I don’t catch. She replies in another language. My reaction to this–a sudden and violent jealousy–takes my breath away.

  ‘Sit down,’ she says listlessly.

  We do so, on the blankets round the fire. The boy stares at me steadily–winter petticoats do not make sitting on the floor an elegant task, but I do my best. Parker starts in a roundabout way, asking about the children and giving his condolences, to which I murmur agreement. Eventually he gets to the point.

  ‘Did your husband ever talk about the Norwegians’ furs?’

  Elizabeth looks at him, then at me. It seems to raise no recognition in her.

  ‘No. He did not tell me everything.’

  ‘And the last trip he made–what was the purpose of it?’

  ‘Stewart wanted to hunt. He usually took my husband with him, because he was the best tracker.’ There is a quiet pride in her voice.

  ‘Mrs Bird, I am sorry to ask you this, but was your husband ill?’

  ‘Ill?’ She looks up sharply. ‘My husband was never ill. He was as strong as a horse. Who is saying that? Is that what Stewart says, huh? Is that why he walked on ice he would never have walked on?’

  ‘He says he was sick and did not know his own children.’ Parker keeps his voice low, not wanting to include the boy. Elizabeth’s face literally contorts with feeling–disgust, or contempt, or rage or all of them–and she leans forward, her face a livid orange from the fire.

  ‘That is a wicked lie! He was always the best of fathers.’ There is something frightening about her; hard and implacable but also, it seems to me, true.

  ‘When was the last time you saw your husband?’

  ‘Nine days ago, when he left with Stewart.’

  ‘And when was the last time he had been away before that?’

  ‘The summer. The last voyage they made was to Cedar Lake at the end of the season.’

  ‘He was here October, the beginning of November?’

  ‘Yes. All the time. Why are you asking this?’

  I look at Parker. There is just one more thing left to do.

  ‘Mrs Bird, I apologise for asking this, but have you one of your husband’s shirts? We would like to look at it.’

  She glares at Parker as if this is insurmountable insolence. Nevertheless, she gets up with a jerky movement and goes to the back of the hut, behind a curtain.

  She comes back with a blue shirt folded in her hand. Parker takes it and unfolds it, spreading it out on the floor. I take out the dirty roll, wrapped in calico; I spread it out, stiff and fouled, the dark stains giving off a rank odour. The boy watches us solemnly. Elizabeth stands with her arms folded, looking down on us with hard, angry eyes.

  Instantly I see that the clean shirt is smaller than the other. It seems incontrovertible to say that they could not belong to the same man.

  ‘Thank you Mrs Bird.’ Parker hands her back her husband’s shirt.

  ‘It’s no good to me. There is no one to wear it now.’ She keeps her arms folded. ‘You wanted it, you keep it.’

  There is an unpleasant twist to her mouth. Parker is disconcerted. It’s a novel and refreshing experience for me–seeing him not know what to do.

  I speak for the first time. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bird. I’m sorry we had to ask you, but you have helped greatly. You have proved that what Stewart says is a lie.’

  ‘What do I care? I don’t give a shit for helping you! Is it going to bring my husband back?’

  I stand and pick up the soiled shirt. Parker is still holding the other.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ On a level with her, only two feet away, I look into her eyes, which are a clear grey-brown, set in a mask of fury and despair. I feel withered by it. ‘I really am. We are going to …’

  I wait for Parker to break in and explain what we are going to do. Any time now would be fine. He is on his feet too, but seems happy to let me do the talking.

  ‘We are going to find justice.’

  ‘Justice!’ She laughs, but it’s more like a snarl. ‘What about my husband? Stewart killed my husband. What about him?’

  ‘For him too.’ I am backing towards the door, more anxious to leave than to stay and find out why she is so convinced of this.

  Elizabeth Bird grimaces–a rictus that looks like a smile, but isn’t. It emphasises the skull beneath the skin, and gives her the appearance of a death’s-head, animated but not alive; wan, bloodless, radiant with hate.

  Walking back to the main building, Parker gives me the clean shirt, as if he doesn’t want the taint of holding it any more. He feels guilty for upsetting her.

  ‘We’ll show Moody these,’ I say. ‘Then he will see.’

  Parker shakes his head slightly. ‘It’s not enough. That shirt could have been there a few months.’

  ‘You don’t believe it was! And you believe her too–about her husband’s death, don’t you?’

  Parker glances at me briefly. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re going, then.’

  Parker assents without speaking. I feel that familiar crushing weight on my chest, and my breath seems stuck in my throat, although we have walked only a few dozen yards.

  ‘If he killed his guide it would be madness for you to
go alone. I will borrow a rifle. If you don’t take me with you, I will follow your trail, and that’s all there is to it.’

  Parker does not speak for a moment, then looks at me again, a little ironically, I think.

  ‘Don’t you think that people will talk if they see us leave together?’

  There is a great leap in my chest as the weight takes wing. Suddenly even the compound looks beautiful to me, the sun painting the dirty drifts by the fence a glowing white-blue. Momentarily I am sure that no matter the danger, armed with right, we cannot do other than prevail.

  The feeling lasts almost until I reach my bedroom door.

  Laurent was often away on business. Francis knew as much, and therefore as little, as anyone else about his mysterious absences. In summer the wolves disappeared from the forest thereabouts, so this was when Laurent carried on his trading. That summer he seemed particularly busy–or perhaps it was just the first time that Francis had cared whether he was there or not–and made trips to Toronto and the Sault. When Francis asked him about his time away, Laurent was casual or downright evasive. He made jokes about lying drunk in bars, or visiting prostitutes. Or perhaps they weren’t jokes. The first time he mentioned a whorehouse, Francis stared at him with dumbstruck horror, feeling an intense and dreadful pain around his heart. Laurent took his shoulders and laughed, shaking him roughly until Francis lost his temper and shouted; hurtful things he couldn’t later remember. Laurent laughed at him, and then, suddenly, lost his temper too. They hurled insults at each other, until there was a sudden hiatus in the shouting and they stared at each other, mesmerised and reeling. Francis was hurt and hurtful; Laurent had a cutting, cruel way of putting him down, but when, afterwards, he apologised, he was so serious and sweet and beseeching–that first time he went down on his knees until Francis had to laugh and enthusiastically forgive him. It made Francis feel old–even older than Laurent.

  Then there were the men who came to see Laurent at home. Sometimes when Francis went down and whistled outside the cabin, there would be no reply. That meant Laurent had someone with him, and often they would stay the night before shouldering their packs and trudging off, dogs at their heels. Francis discovered in himself a deep and terrible capacity for jealousy. On more than one occasion he would come back early in the morning and conceal himself in the bushes behind the cabin, waiting until the men left, studying their faces for clues, finding nothing. Most of the men were French or Indian; long-distance, disreputable-looking men more used to sleeping under the sky than a roof. They brought Laurent furs, tobacco and ammunition, and left the way they had come. Sometimes they didn’t seem to bring or leave with anything. Once, after a particularly hysterical argument, Laurent told him that men came to him because they were setting up something, a trading company, and it had to be a secret because they would bring down the wrath of the Hudson Bay Company if anyone found out, and that was something well worth avoiding. Francis was delirious with relief, and made up for it with an excess of high spirits, whereupon Laurent picked up his fiddle and played it, chasing him round the cabin until Francis burst out of the front door, gasping with laughter. There was a figure on the path, quite far away, and he bolted back inside. He only saw it for a moment, but he thought it was his mother. After that he lived in a terror of uncertainty for days, but nothing changed at home. If she had seen anything, she could not have thought anything of it.

  Autumn came, and with it school, and then winter. He could not see Laurent so often, but occasionally he would creep down the path after his parents had gone to bed, and whistle. And sometimes he would hear an answering whistle, and sometimes he would not. As time went on it seemed to him that the frequency with which his whistle was answered grew less and less.

  Sometime in spring, after Laurent had been away, again, to some unspecified destination, he started dropping hints that something big was going to happen. That he was going to make his fortune. Francis was confused and disturbed by these vague, usually drunken allusions. Was Laurent going to leave Dove River? What would happen to him, Francis? If he tried to lead him (cleverly he thought) into clarifying his plans, Laurent would tease him, and his teasing could be blunt and cruel. He frequently alluded to Francis’s future wife and family, or to whoring, or living south of the border.

  There was one occasion, the first of many; they had both been drinking. It was early summer, and the evenings were getting just warm enough to sit outside. The first bees had emerged from wherever they had spent the cold months and buzzed around the apple blossom. Only seven months ago.

  ‘Of course, by then,’ Laurent was alluding to his unspecified future riches again, ‘you’ll be married on some little farm somewhere, with a handful of kids, and you’ll have forgotten all about me.’

  ‘I expect so.’ Francis had learnt to play along with these dreary little scenarios. If he protested, it just tended to egg Laurent on.

  ‘I guess when you leave school you’re not going to stay here, huh? Nothing much for you here, is there?’

  ‘Nah …’ Spect I’ll go to Toronto. Maybe I’ll come and visit you in your bath chair once in a while.’

  Laurent grunted and drained his glass. It occurred to Francis that he was drinking more than he used to. Then he sighed. ‘I’m serious, p’tit ami. You shouldn’t stay here. It’s a nothing place. You should get out as soon as you can. I’m just an old country fool.’

  ‘You? You’re going to be rich, remember? You can go anywhere you want. You could move to Toronto …’

  ‘Oh shut up! You shouldn’t be here! You certainly shouldn’t be here with me. It’s no good. I am no good.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Francis tried to still the tremor in his voice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re drunk, that’s all.’

  Laurent turned to him, forming the words with alarming clarity. ‘I’m a fucking idiot. You’re a fucking idiot. And you should just fuck off back to your mama and papa.’ His face was mean, his eyes narrow with drink. ‘Go on! What are you waiting for? Fuck off!’

  Francis stood up, in agony. He didn’t want Laurent to see him cry. But he couldn’t just walk away either, not like this.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘I know you don’t. And you don’t mean it either when you talk about going to whorehouses and having kids all over the place, and … all that. I see how you look at me …’

  Ah, mon Dieu! Who wouldn’t look at you like that? You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But you’re a fucking stupid kid. I’m bored with you. And I’m married.’

  Francis stood in stunned disbelief, unable to reply to this. ‘You’re lying,’ he said at last. Laurent looked up at him, wearily, as if telling him had relieved something.

  ‘No, it’s true, mon ami.’

  Francis felt as though his chest was being ripped apart. He wondered why he did not fall, or faint, since the pain was so dreadful. He turned and walked away from the cabin, and kept walking through one of his father’s fields and into the forest. He began to run, his breath so ragged it disguised the sobs tearing through him. After a time he stopped running and went down on his knees in front of a huge pine, and rammed his head into the tree’s bark. He didn’t know how long he was there; perhaps he had dazed himself, glad of the pain that crowded out the other, more terrible, torment.

  Laurent found him just before dark. He tracked him down like one of his stricken wolves, following his erratic progress through the bush. He bent down and cradled him in his arms, his fingers discovering the wound on his forehead, tears gleaming on his cheek, whispering that he was sorry.

  Briefly, Francis thought that after that night, he had won. So what if Laurent had been married, so what if he had a son; that was all in the past: it didn’t matter now, to them. But still Laurent resisted his attempts to pin him down, to find things out. The truth was, he didn’t want Francis to change anything about his life, didn’t want Francis as anything other than an occasional diversion. Francis, his voice uneven
and thick, accused Laurent of not caring about him. Laurent, brutally, agreed.

  And on, and on. The same conversation repeated with slight, pointless variations over many summer nights. Francis wondered how much longer he could stand this exquisite torture, but could not stop submitting himself to it. He tried to be casual and light-hearted in Laurent’s presence, but hadn’t had much practice. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that sooner or later Laurent would push him away altogether. But like a moth drawn to a candle flame, he could not stop himself from going down to the cabin, although Laurent was increasingly absent. He didn’t understand how Laurent’s feelings could have changed so much, when his had intensified.

  And then, somehow, his father found out.

  It wasn’t a cataclysmic event. It was more as though his father had been putting together pieces of a puzzle, patiently watching and accumulating the fragments, until finally the picture had come clear. There were the times when Francis had not returned until after his parents had got up, and he had muttered unconvincing comments about early-morning walks. Then there was the time that his father had arrived at Laurent’s cabin and Francis was there, and he pretended to be taking a wood-carving lesson. Perhaps that was when he knew, although he gave no outward sign of it. Or there was another time, ill-advised, when he claimed he had stayed the night at Ida’s. His father had raised his eyebrow very slightly, but said nothing. Then Francis, panicking, had to find an excuse to rush over to the Prettys’ house and find Ida. He wasn’t sure what to say to her either, but concocted a story about having gotten drunk in Caulfield and having to hide it from his parents. Her face was stony and set, and though she nodded agreement, she looked at him with wounded eyes and he felt ashamed.

  However it had happened, his father, who for some time had found it hard to talk to Francis–and they were never that close–became intolerable. He never said anything directly, but would not look him in the eye when speaking to him, and only did so to order him to carry out some chore or mend his behaviour. He seemed to regard his son with a cold, withering contempt; it felt as though he could hardly bear to be in the house with him. Sometimes Francis, sitting at the table in the frigid zone between his mother and father, felt a nausea welling up in his throat that threatened to overwhelm him. Once, while speaking to his mother about something, he caught his father’s eye on him, unguarded, and saw in it nothing but cold, implacable rage.