Summer of the Wolves

by Polly Carlson-Voiles

  “Looks like Friday will be moving day,” Ian said. “Just a sec. I have to finish this. Did you eat?”

  “Pearl sent these.” She unwrapped two blueberry muffins from a napkin and looked around for a plate to put them on, or at least a paper towel. “Do you have any dishes? I’ll get something.”

  “Frills,” he said, picking up a muffin. “Looks delicious. Thanks.” She guessed after being a bachelor so long, he’d developed casual habits.

  He took a bite and looked back at his computer screen, where columns of numbers trooped across the page. “Plans for the Center. Budgets for buildings and enclosures and what not. Not my favorite chore.”

  Nika looked around. His cabin was messy, with packs, books, radio parts, reports, and tools scattered across every surface. In the food area, a single jar of trail mix rested on a stack of books. CDs were stacked in uneven piles beside his CD player. Old blues, Scott Joplin, classical. Two guitars hung from pegs on the wall.

  His clothes were neatly folded on the unpainted wood shelves of an open closet in the corner. A small couch with leaf print fabric sat by itself on a bright red and orange foreign-looking rug in the center of the room. In one corner was a bed. Against the back wall was a potbellied wood stove with curvy legs crouched on a platform of bricks. With its almost-human shape, it seemed like it should have a name, like Gertrude.

  Nika was avoiding the subject that was festering. She picked a piece of muffin off the front of her shirt.

  She wanted to say something, but her words vaporized. Her face must have shown how she stopped herself from speaking.

  “What’s up?” Ian asked. He stacked his papers, packed his computer in a case, and gathered his socks and boots.

  She plopped down on the small couch and ran her hand over the faded green fabric. “Well, okay . . .” She shrugged and tried to force a smile, but it stiffened up. “So why can’t I ever be with Khan again, after he’s in with Luna?”

  Ian walked slowly over to the couch, dropped his boots onto the floor, and sat next to her. They were both silent. Then he shifted to face her. “We all have to have rabies shots to be with the animals after they are in the Center. Then we don’t know about Luna, yet—socialized wolves can be more dangerous than wild wolves.”

  “But you never told me I couldn’t be with Khan. In the big pen. I only know because I found your list at the Center.” Her voice got very quiet. “It’s like I don’t matter.”

  “Of course you matter, and I’m sorry if you think—” Ian put his head back and took a deep breath. “I never should have done this, let you help raise the pup.” It was as though he were talking to himself. “I thought it would be a way for us to . . . well, to work together, get to know each other. It was a mistake. I didn’t realize you might, well, that the pup might—”

  Anger brought her to her feet, and she turned to face him.

  “That I might love him and want to keep him? Is that what you mean?” What did he expect when he’d handed her a helpless pup and asked her to hold it close?

  “Look, Nika. You haven’t made this easy.” He stood up and paced barefoot. “First, you decide to take Khan without a leash, knowing I wouldn’t approve.”

  “I just wanted him to know what it felt like, to be free like a wild wolf.”

  “That wasn’t your decision to make.”

  “Obviously,” she threw back.

  “And you almost lost Khan. Then I find out you and Thomas released Bristo’s animals and are in trouble with the sheriff. Again, deciding to do something you both knew your families wouldn’t like.”

  “We’re doing community service to pay back for that!”

  Ian’s face was red. “As if this weren’t enough, then you feed a wolf, and that wolf gets shot!”

  “Shooting the wolf wasn’t because we fed her. She might have died! It was Bristo!” Didn’t he understand? It was because of them that Luna was alive!

  “You endangered yourselves. You figured she was Bristo’s runaway, and you knew the man had shown threatening behavior before. No one should ever feel certain that a wolf is totally safe. Finally, you went there just as a storm was brewing, instead of coming home. None of this shows good judgment. How can I trust you?” Ian threw his hands up in a helpless gesture.

  “Well then, maybe you should just send me home, if I’m that much trouble.”

  “Oh, Nika,” Ian said, half groaning and turning toward his desk.

  Nika charged out the door, slamming it behind her. She felt sick as she ran to the dock. A fight like this was new to her. There’d been a girl in her second foster home who liked to hit and seemed to wait for Nika around every corner. Nika had hit her back once, hard. She remembered the sound. It didn’t feel good, even though the girl deserved it. But this was different. This felt dangerous. It felt as if, just by getting mad, she could lose everything.

  That night was still and dry. Nika’s sleeplessness became a net for every sound: loons, the scuffling of small rodents, the short barking call of an owl. The fight with Ian kept rolling over and over in her mind. It was so confusing. There was only one thing that could make her feel better.

  After Pearl was in bed and Ian had gone down to his cabin on the beach, she collected the old raggedy sleeping bag and followed the moon up the path, not even using a flashlight. The night was cloudless. Inside the pen, as she slid into the bag, she felt a mist of dew settle on the nylon. Khan came to nestle quietly beside her as though agreeing with the need for stealth. His eyes sparked in the moonlight, and she felt his breath against her arm. Most of the night the wolf slept. Most of the night she didn’t.

  When she woke at dawn, Khan was gone. She didn’t want to get up. Maybe if she never crawled out of her sleeping bag into the thin light of the soundless morning, nothing would change. The warmth of Khan beside her at midnight would never cool, and every morning forever the wolf would greet her like a wave smoothly running to shore.

  But then, if she didn’t get up, they couldn’t have a last run. She’d planned not to run with Khan again, because of Ian. But then they had argued, and she figured she’d never have another opportunity in her whole life. Just one more time. She pulled herself out of the sleeping bag and slipped out of the gate to visit the outhouse. On her way back she picked up meat scraps from the fridge.

  Back in the pen, she put the scraps on a rock and waited. The agile pup, now weighing nearly forty-two pounds at fourteen weeks old, trotted down to accept his gift. After a quick greeting, Nika opened the gate, and Khan lengthened his smooth black shape to bullet down the path.

  Today, instead of disappearing or playing hide and seek, Khan ran circles around her as they walked. He bumped his head under her hand and once took her hand in his mouth and pulled as if he wanted her to play. She stopped, said “No!” then pushed him over on his back, having to be forceful and use both hands. He squirmed, and when he quieted, she rubbed his belly.

  They went to the rendezvous spot as usual, where they watched the blaze of early sun cut through the trees like stage lights. On the way back they stopped and searched for any blueberries that might be still ripening on the ridge. Khan picked berries the way he often ate, lying down. He picked delicately with his teeth. This is what I’ll remember, Nika thought. I could be a cave girl or an early Native American girl or an old woman, and it would be the same—two creatures together, feeling freedom and connection to the plants and rocks and scents surrounding them. Ian had told her that one single underground root system made one huge organism of connected aspen trees as big as seventy-five football fields. With Khan she felt like she was a part of something like that now.

  The changing light told her it was time to get back. Ian and Elinor were probably waiting.

  Elinor lured Khan into his old plastic baby kennel with morsels of moose meat. Nika rushed to the pen for the sleeping bag and what was left of the old stuffed bear, then trailed the caravan led by Maki and Ian carrying the kennel down to the dock. In the boat she sat on the f
loor next to the covered kennel and crooned to Khan as they crossed the unwrinkled waters of Anchor Lake. Once they came ashore, she stayed with him again in the back of the pickup, until they all crowded into the room-size holding pen at the Center. No one talked much. Elinor and Maki went back inside, leaving Ian and Nika with a heavily panting Khan. With his ears back in worried position, he looked small and scared.

  Soon Khan panted less and accepted water. Being so focused on the pup, Nika had forgotten all about Luna. Then she heard the whimpers, almost like pup-whimpers. Luna was lying with her legs straight out in front of her, facing the rolling gate between the enclosure and the holding pen. Her eyes fixed on Khan’s kennel as she emitted a groan, then whimpered again, her jaws dripping as though she had her eye on a tasty treat. Ian had said something about the hormone prolactin and how it made adult wolves feel parental. He nodded and let Khan out of the kennel. The pup curled his body as he rushed over to the fence. Luna growled and Khan turned on his back. Did this mean Luna might hurt Khan? Ian and Elinor smiled at each other and returned to the Center, saying they all needed to give the wolves some time to adjust. Nika tucked down in the back corner of the holding pen to watch.

  Later when the wolves were calmly lying on either side of the fence, Nika got up to go back inside. As she approached the Center door, she saw two figures in the window of the office. They were facing each other. She slowed to a stop. Then the two figures came together and kissed. It was Ian and Elinor.

  A whirlwind of feeling came over her. She went out the other gate and hurried toward the parking lot, her face burning. She would wait for Ian in the truck.

  After a while, Ian came through the Center doors, looking puzzled. He walked to the passenger side of the truck where she was slumped in the seat.

  “Where did you go? We want to show you something. We’ve been waiting.”

  Nika shrugged. We!

  Ian put his hand on the truck door handle, pausing, as though trying to figure out what was going on now. Then, with a no-nonsense look on his face, he opened the door, took her arm, and gently pulled her from the truck. “You’ve got to see this.” He kept his hand on her arm all the way into the building, as though she would suddenly bolt down the street. Which was possible, in the mood she was in.

  They marched through the office and out the back door, where they stopped by the holding pen. Both wolves were at the fence, but this time Khan was chewing on something between his front feet. Luna stood on the other side of the fence, looking down, strings of drool falling from her lips. The object Khan was chewing on was a raw chicken.

  “Luna gave him a gift,” Ian said quietly. “She dug a hole under the gate and pushed the chicken into it until Khan could grab hold and pull it through.”

  “Wow,” said Nika. “Are you sure?”

  “Yup,” Ian answered, smiling. “Elinor watched. Luna worked away at it for about fifteen minutes.”

  So maybe Khan had found his pack. Nika should be glad for him. Ian was. And because she wasn’t entirely, she felt selfish.

  But in a way it made her decision easier.

  The silvery-tan wolf wore a pathway in the grass beside the smaller pen. When she gazed at the pup, saliva filled her mouth, and an urge came over her. She wanted the pup to be closer, to taste his breath in her mouth, to run beside him through the trees.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In the pale green light after sunset, Ian and Nika pulled up to Pearl’s dock. Nika jumped from the boat and held the ropes while Ian got out. The sound of the ratchets in the lift crank usually meant to her that everyone was home and safe, but tonight the sound brought no comfort. She felt tired. She dragged her feet the last bit up the darkening path to Pearl’s. All she wanted right now was to be alone in her room to absorb the loss of Khan, and the new image of Elinor and Ian together.

  As they came through the door of Pearl’s, Nika headed straight for the stairs.

  Pearl was knitting in a pool of light from a small reading lamp. “I’ve got some chicken wild rice soup,” she said. Ian smiled at Pearl and went straight through into the kitchen.

  Nika said, “Oh. Thanks. But maybe later.” She made an effort to smile as she stood at the bottom of the steps. As a reflex, she thought, I should go up and check on Khan. Then she remembered. The pen was empty. She almost felt like going anyway, but Pearl and Ian would be watching, feeling sorry for her. Sympathy was not what she needed right now.

  Almost the whole time Nika had been in Pearl’s house, Khan had been here as well. It felt so strange.

  Nika had to change gears. She had to pump herself up with enough strength to make a giant choice, her choice, to take a giant risk. She dove into her messy closet to look for the cash she’d been keeping for emergencies. It should be with her return ticket, inside a large manila envelope. At first she didn’t find the envelope and panicked. Finally, she found it in a carry-on bag buried at the back. She transferred the ticket and cash to her backpack, along with her student ID, a few clothes, and her journal. She found the wolf logs with the report she’d written, and threw them in. She climbed up onto her bunk to get her family photos and the ones Thomas had taken of her with Khan on the Big Island. Then she crammed in a few more clothes and a toothbrush. When everything was ready, she shoved the backpack into the closet. If someone asked about it in the morning, she would say it was her wolf project she needed to finish.

  After some clattering in the kitchen, Nika heard footsteps go out onto the porch. Pearl and Ian were probably having their evening tea. They talked longer than usual, their voices murmuring like a river over rocks. Finally Ian called up the stairs, “See you in the morning, Nika.”

  After a few minutes quiet footsteps ascended the stairs. “I’ve brought some soup and cornbread,” Pearl said through the door.

  Nika slid from her bunk and opened the door. “Thanks, Pearl,” she said, taking the tray and smiling. Thank goodness for Pearl. Nika’s stomach had been turning inside out. No one could fool Pearl.

  Her hunger gone, Nika tried to sleep, but she kept hearing the fierce whistling of the wind in the eaves. Khan was afraid of the wind. What would he think in his new pen, with no place familiar to hide?

  In the morning, after eating oatmeal she found in a pan on the stove, Nika gathered up her overstuffed backpack and met Ian at the dock. The sky was like a faded gray sweater today, soft and dull and close. In Red Pine, before he inserted the key in the ignition of the truck, he turned to look at her.

  “I know this is hard. Remember, you can always visit the wolves privately at the fence, as long as you’re out of sight of the visitors.”

  This was a long way from running with Khan on the Big Island. As they drove to the Center, Nika gripped the door handle tightly, and didn’t respond.

  “Of course, we still need them to be accustomed to some handling, for vet checks or maintaining health, but mostly we want them to live as natural a life as possible while captive.”

  “Why even socialize them if you can’t hang out with them?”

  “I’ve told you before, Nika. The socializing is for the wolves, not for us. So we can care for them, so they won’t be stressed out by people.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter.” Nika closed the truck door and with a backwards wave, she headed off to the Greenstone Home for Seniors. Thomas had been right. Volunteering with seniors was much better than she’d expected.

  Later, back at the Center with her back against Luna’s fence, Nika sat beside Khan, maybe for the last time. He was lying on his side in the shade of a large pine branch someone had propped up for him. Nika thought about wire cutters. How great it had been to watch the foxes escape from Bristo’s! She wished she could do that for these two, even though she knew that what Thomas said was true—they wouldn’t last long on their own.

  She watched Khan’s flank rising and falling. She felt tears begin to build. Without her consent, they began to roll down her cheeks. Khan tilted his head back to look at her face. Soon
he was on his feet, watching her.

  “I guess they’re not going to let me take care of you anymore,” she said, looking into his golden eyes.

  Khan came very close and stood quietly, the sun heating his black coat under her hand. She took a deep breath and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  “You’ll have Luna, that’s the main thing, someone who talks wolf and plays rough and runs with you. And you’ll have tasty roadkill. No one will shoot you. You’ll have Dave if you get sick.” Khan turned to the fence, his eyes trained on the dense trees that hid the back portion of the large enclosure. Luna must be back there. Nika knew it was impossible to read his wolf mind, but when he cocked his head to look and listen, she imagined he was wondering about his new life, too.

  When Ian and Elinor came out to the holding pen, Elinor was holding a yellow sticky note in her hand.

  “More surprises, Nika,” she said, briefly leaning down to rub Nika’s shoulders, as her mother might have done. “We got an e-mail in response to that ad. A woman about fifty miles from here lost her captive female wolf in a storm last spring. A tree crushed the fence, and the wolf escaped. I called her. Her description sounds just like Luna.”

  “Is she going to take her back?” Nika jumped to her feet, alarmed. She really didn’t want this to happen. She was just beginning to accept that Khan and Luna would be together.

  “The neat thing is that she sounded pretty happy to hear about our situation here and says she’d like to donate Luna to the Center, with visiting privileges. I think she found out that keeping a wolf as a pet was harder than she thought.”

  On her walk to town, Nika looked at her watch. The online schedule said the bus left at 4:40 every day except Sunday. It was just past noon, so she had plenty of time to get the ticket and head back to the Center for one last goodbye with the wolves. She’d even have time to buy a sandwich, though how she would ever eat again was a mystery. Her stomach fluttered and churned like a fishbowl full of minnows.