by BK Loren
About another hundred yards from the gun, a pocketknife lay in the snow. Like the gun, it had been dropped recently. It sent a chill through me when I ran my fingers across the engraved initials: ZPR. Zeb was setting up his trackers. He didn’t know I was among them. Whatever plan he had for them would be the same plan he had for me.
I wanted to turn back, to tell Polo I quit. I craved my safe home on the mesa, the loved I shared with Magda and Cario and Christina. I wanted my life back. But I had not seen or heard from anyone in my blood family for so long. And my brother was here. As far as I could tell, he was entangled with the mountain lion. And I was entangled with him.
Zeb
IT HAD BEEN A kind of meditation, the mulch of the hut wrapped around him, the warmth in there, the smells of the earth, the complete quiet. It felt like home to him, like his body was already becoming earth. It felt good to him, and he knew he was ready. This had been the time he needed to solidify his choice. He knew it was the right decision, but he had not let it sink into his body—not all the way. Now he let it consume his muscles, his heart.
At twilight, he left the shelter he’d built. He destroyed it, scattered the rubble around, even strewed some into the trees, and then he left. He had with him the handgun he’d tossed to himself as he fled his cabin, his wallet, a pocketknife, the clothes he wore, nothing more that he could name.
What he felt first was harder than he imagined it would be: the letting go. If life had ever made sense, it would have been a slow and steady letting go from beginning to end. But it was the opposite of that. It was a constant piling on, a weave of love that knitted its way more permanently into him daily. The absurdity of it had drained him and confused him—this intense love he’d been born with living side by side with the fact that no connection ever satisfied him. If he’d sometimes avoided connection, it had been because he craved it so much, and it was never enough.
He walked deeper into the forest and farther from the place where he had spent so many years with a woman he cared for, living on a patch of earth that had grown to feed and hold his tangled roots. As he walked away from it, he could feel the roots snapping, his life falling away from him. It was as if the mountains folded around him like huge hands, and as he stepped, the hands clasped around him and cut off any access to where he’d been. There was no turning back. Everything behind him grew dark, and what was in front of him grew more visible. Eventually, and for the first time since he was a kid, he had only the present in front of him, no past. To get there, he had to let go of the cabin; he had to let go of Brenda; he had to let go of his life.
With the twilight wrung from the horizon now and the inky night saturating the frayed edges between land and sky, he began to feel his life as his own. Like springing a lock on his ribcage, his entire body felt open, and it felt right. He could hear better, see better, smell better. His senses were so keen it felt as if he could smell and even taste the mountain lion every time he inhaled. It was the one connection he could never sever.
He kept on toward the rocky outcropping just below the cliffs where he knew the cougar had claimed a cave as her own. In the past, she had waited for him at his cabin. Now he would do the same: meet her where she lived. If she was out, this is where he would wait for her when she returned. If she was in the cave now, he could track her from there. Either way, he would find her.
Anything that had comforted him in the past felt heavy now. First, there was the weight of the gun he’d taken with him. He tried but could not remember when or if he had ever set foot in the wilderness without a weapon of some kind. He didn’t think about the men tracking him. He had not forgotten they were there, but they didn’t matter now. He took his gun from the deerskin pouch he’d made and he let it fall. When it hit the ground, his body felt different. Not better or worse. But new and deeply familiar all at once. He kept on, and he felt himself craving the lightness he’d felt when he’d let his gun fall. He took out his pocketknife, the one Brenda had given him long ago, engraved with his initials: ZPR. He let it fall, too.
Without his knife and gun, he had to pay more attention to things moving around him. His naked awareness was his only protection now. It made him a better follower of the cougar, he thought, the attention he had to pay to every sound. He spotted three snowshoe hares, one right after the other, weaving so fast through the trees, white on white and barely a shadow cast by the waning moon. In the new snowfall, any scat was easy to see and identify. The place was alive with what had been left behind, even if no animals were visible at the moment. He saw the prints of the lion in the snow. They crossed with the snowshoe hare prints, and his heart thrummed. His mind blurred with desire, and he crossed the tracks of the hares, and he traced step for step the prints of the cougar. She was nearby and she was silent, watching him. He could feel her, but he couldn’t see her; not yet.
His bad hip caught on the craggy spur in his bones, and he made his way to the nearest fallen tree and rested for a second on the trunk. Then he stood back up again, began walking. He was about five hundred yards from the base of the cave where his mountain lion wintered. Recent traces of her encircled him now. Every one of his senses piqued. He would make his way up to the mouth of the cave. In his mind, he had an appointment with the lion, a mutual agreement to settle something with her once and for all. He could not see her. But he would wait.
Brenda
SHE DROVE TIRED AND exhilarated through the sunrise-colored sandy hills of the Painted Desert. It was a beauty she felt she’d never seen before, though she’d seen it several times when she’d passed through, driving with Zeb. But there was a difference in her now, something settling even as it swelled in her. She didn’t know what was happening with Zeb, but she knew he had always wiggled his way out of trouble, and she knew her time with him up till then had made all the difference in them both. Whatever they shared—call it love, call it understanding, call it history—it had made a difference in their lives. Without the whiskey soaking her mind, she knew this. She wanted to see Zeb soon. She wanted him to see her now, to introduce him to her father, to Raymond; maybe she even wanted to start over.
She looked at the outline of her route, saw addresses of about a dozen hospitals and private plastic surgeons where she needed to pick up wasted body parts and haul them back to the desert where they’d swelter in the sun and seep into the earth while the people where she lived worried about how to best recycle things like yogurt cups and toilet paper rolls. She noticed that the absurdity of it didn’t piss her off like it usually would. It even made her laugh a little.
When her cell phone rang, she looked at the caller ID, saw the area code, and smiled. Raymond calling already. She hit the answer button. She didn’t even give him a chance to speak before she said, “Damn, I miss you already, too. I can’t wait to get back to see you again.”
“Can you make that sooner rather than later,” Raymond said. “The coming back part?”
“Love to. Soon as I finish this route,” she said.
“Understand,” Raymond said. “But I have a situation. I need your help.”
“I don’t know, man. Best I can do is make it an overnight,” she said. “I have—”
Raymond’s voice grew uncharacteristically forceful. “I understand,” he said, again. “But this is not something I’m asking for me, Bren. It’s something I’m asking for the wolf.”
She stopped and listened now. He explained the situation to her, how he’d been taken in and she was his one phone call. “There’s no telling when or if someone will get to that wolf,” he said.
There were no words between them for a while. She knew Raymond had been here before. It was the reason she’d left long ago, and he knew that. She heard him sigh on the other end of the line. “Brenda, call Simon. Please. He’ll tell you everything you need to know,” he said, “He’ll tell you he doesn’t know shit about animals, but he knows a helluva lot, actually. He knows that wolf—Ciela—has got to be in a cool place, not sitting in my truck
in the middle of the damn desert. He knows what to feed her. Tell him you can help. Tell him there’s no other choice right now. Because there is no other choice right now, Brenda.”
She listened to him explain that she needed to go back, find his truck and Ciela parked along the side of the road, get Simon to help her take Ciela to the Snack-n-Pump, and then release her into the store. “Just till I get back,” he said.
When she told him it sounded crazy and like a jacked-up idea that only he could dream up, he said. “I know what you think of me, Brenda. But you gotta believe me this time. You have to help that wolf, just till we can get her some medical attention.”
“How about I take her to Wilderness and Water? She’s a part of their reintroduction project. They’ll know what to do with her.”
“Good idea, Brenda. Take her to the place that’s arguing in favor of shooting her. Take an injured wolf to them. See what happens.”
She heard her own sarcasm in her father’s voice, familiar and direct and comforting.
“Look, W WA is technically not supposed to be managing these specific wolves anyway. These are outside their territory. These are our wolves. Can you do it? Can you go back and help her?” he said.
The possibilities of what could happen if she went back and did what her father was asking her to do played in her head. There was nothing legal about it, she was pretty sure of that. And she was saddled with this new obsession she had with doing the right thing. She wanted to get back to Colorado, collect an honest paycheck from that asshole, Mike, to figure out what the hell was happening with Zeb, and then make her way back to the reservation, to spend some time with her father again, really get to know him this time. She was ready for it.
She held the phone to her ear in a kind of stupor of emotion. There was no figuring it out logically, no answer that was right or wrong. She had only her instincts to guide her. “Okay,” she said, finally. “I’ll go back. I’ll help the wolf.”
This time she made that twelve-point U-turn in less than ten. She headed back to the reservation, and by afternoon, she was on the road where she’d left Raymond earlier that morning. She was praying, as Raymond had taught her to do when she was younger, which meant she was singing softly to herself as she drove. Prayer like that makes things possible, Raymond had told her. She needed to believe that everything was possible right now. She needed to believe that Mike would pay her, that the wolf would still be there when she got there, that the sun would not have gotten to Ciela, that Simon would meet her and help her. She needed to believe she had the confidence and the craziness required to get this job done.
She dialed the number Raymond had given her, introduced herself.
“Brenda?” Simon said on the other end of the line. “You’re back? I had no idea that’s why Raymond was taking the day off. That’s good. That’s a damn good reason.”
“Raymond’s not here,” Brenda said.
Simon made a whistling noise. “Well don’t talk to me before you talk to Raymond. You gotta go see Raymond first.”
“I’ve already seen my father. I need your help with something,” she said. She told him that she’d spoken to Raymond, that he’d been arrested. Then she outlined the wild-ass plan her father had laid out for her and Simon.
A FEW MILES SOUTH of Raymond’s, she saw her father’s truck sitting by the side of the road, desert heatwaves trembling around the crate that held Ciela. She ramped up her prayer now, the song rising up in her as a way of burning off the fear that frayed her edges. She swung down from the truck, felt her breath catch in her chest, and walked fast to the crate. She looked inside. Either way it happened, it would feel the same to her—if the wolf was alive, if it was dead—she was scared as shit of both options. She stood, now, at the back of the truck, looking in. There was no telling what lay in front of her, if that heap of animal was sleeping and breathing, or if it had quit living. The crate turned everything dark, outlined by the blinding sun. “Shit,” she whispered, to herself; then she took a step closer. When there was nothing, she leaned in toward the metal bars of the crate and blew lightly, and just then the entire crate jolted forward toward her, and the sound the wolf made was nothing less than a scream so humanlike it could have been a child, the sentient quality of that cry. She leapt back, stumbled almost to the ground, and it was okay. It was even good, this fear she felt, because it was something. It was tangible and real and goddamn if she was not there, on the reservation, doing something good for her blood-father. He had not disowned her when she left him before. “They’re the most bonding creatures on earth,” Raymond had said to her, long ago, speaking of wolves. She understood now what he had meant by the power of the bond that is family. She understood that it had far less to do with blood than she’d imagined when she was a kid. It had to do with love. Raymond, this wolf, Zeb—these had created the family she chose.
Brenda stood a distance from the crate. She knew that the other wolves would be nearby, that they would stay for a few days, waiting. There was no way she’d be able to lay eyes on them, but she knew they were around, watching her, maybe even counting on her to come through for Ciela. She felt somehow dedicated to them. It felt good, that responsibility.
She leaned on the truck, waiting for Simon now. When she saw his red El Camino come lumbering down the road, she flagged him down. The size of the car made Simon look even smaller than she remembered him, but that didn’t keep her from wrapping her thick arms around him and smothering him with a huge hug. Simon blushed, and the white stubble on his chin brightened. He laughed in the same way he used to laugh years ago. He had a hard time breaking that hug with Brenda. Eventually, he patted her on the back and let go. Then the two of them set to work.
It took some maneuvering of the vehicles to get things started. She had to drive her rig to Raymond’s place, leave it there, pick up Raymond’s keys, and drive back to Ciela with Simon. “You sure we’re up to this?” she asked Simon.
“Doesn’t look to me like we have a choice, does it?” Simon said. “We can leave Ciela here to die in the sun. We can take her to WWA, where who knows what’ll happen to her. Or we can do what Raymond told us to do.”
“There’s no vet we can take her to?” she asked.
“It’s illegal,” he said. “Working on these wolves. There’s one guy who works with Raymond. Just with Raymond.”
“Hell,” she said. “This is crazy.”
Simon laughed. “You’ve been away from the reservation too long if you think this is crazy.” She laughed right along with him this time. Because Simon was right. Things happened here, absurd things—like carrying a wolf in a crate to a Snack-n-Pump—but somehow things felt right, not absurd, not on this land. She listened to the jumble of voices on the radio stations Raymond had preset in the truck. She couldn’t help but laugh a little more.
In the parking lot of the store, she pulled the truck into the only sliver of shade, a knifelike strip cast by the building itself. There wasn’t too much to say to Simon now. There was just work to be done. So Simon and Brenda took to ripping down the racks of Slim-Jims and bison jerky that Raymond had so tidily organized and priced several nights earlier. They hauled most of what could be eaten into the stock room and into the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Then they locked the front door of the store.
The Snack-n-Pump was far from empty now, but it was as cleared out as Brenda and Simon were going to get it. The last arrangement Simon made was to take a couple of big buckets from the shelves and fill them with water. The two stood looking at each other now. “Well,” Simon said.
“Okay,” Brenda said.
They walked to the bed of Raymond’s truck and tossed a thin tarp over the crate to blind the wolf to their presence. After that, they scooted the crate with Ciela in it onto the open tailgate. Already, Simon’s worn cowboy shirt was wet with sweat, and Brenda was now wishing she’d gotten a drink of water when they filled the buckets in the store. On three, they lifted the crate and waddled awkwardly to the b
ack door, breathing hard and grunting. Once inside, they stood on both sides of the crate. The door could swing open on a hinge, or it could be lifted like a guillotine. With her hands covered by the tarp and her heart slamming to remind her she was doing something important, Brenda reached down and unlatched the door. The two looked at each other, counted breaths, and on three, they pulled the tarp up and the door open.
If she was healthy enough, Ciela would step out, and if Simon and Brenda hauled ass enough, they might make it out of the store before the wolf knew she was free, or at least, free enough to shop at the Snack-n-Pump. Brenda was the first one out the back door, and she held it for Simon. When he slammed the door shut behind him, the two of them collapsed against it. “Shit,” Simon exhaled.
“Holy shit,” Brenda said, and the two of them wilted at the knees.
THEY SPENT THE NEXT few hours sitting in front of the store, staring through the smudged plate glass window, waiting for any sight of Ciela. If tourists came by, they shooed them away. “Inventory,” Simon explained. “We’re closed today for inventory.”
“Inventory usually takes place inside the store,” one businessy-looking traveler said.
“It’s Indian inventory,” Simon said. “It’s different.”
The guy looked down at Simon, confused, then walked away.
“Try and call Raymond,” Simon said, after hours of seeing nothing but the cash register and the half-cleared aisles and no sign of Ciela. “See if they let him out yet. Tell him what’s going on. It’s worth a try,” Simon said.
Brenda dialed and then clicked the end button when Raymond’s voicemail came on after one ring. “Shit.” She hung up the phone. “We need Raymond.”
