The Wolf Road

by Beth Lewis

  I didn’t have none a’ them storm shutters on the cabin, just wood ones, and they wouldn’t last long. Only hope I had a’ living through it was the larder. I levered up the floorboards, hunkered down with the zip bags a’ salmon, and pulled the boards back.

  Then it hit. Like a charging bear slammed right into my chest.

  Deafening and crashing and shaking up everything. It weren’t like no thunderhead I ever lived through. Doubted there’d be a cabin left when it passed over.

  Don’t know how long it raged up above me. Could a’ been days. I sat ’neath my cabin, in the dark, freezing cold, while the rest a’ the world was pulled down around me.

  I noticed the quiet. That meant I was still alive, at least. But I had a fear in me ’bout what I’d find when I went outside.

  I climbed out that larder, my bones creaking and feeling like they would snap for the cold. It was just ’bout daylight but I could barely see it for the snow. I was buried. The whole cabin was under ten foot a’ whiteout. One a’ my windows was broke and the snow poured in. The thunderhead had put me in a prison cell, that’s for sure, and I deserved it. This was me now, till I could dig myself out. If I ever could.

  It was over, weren’t it?

  Lyon had her man and he’d swing in Genesis. Penelope had her man, whatever was left a’ him. And me? Shit, I didn’t need or want no man. I had my walls. Had my quiet. Hell, ain’t nothing more quiet than snow. Had the rest a’ my rotten life to figure what had happened in them first eighteen years and forget it.

  I couldn’t light the fire, so I ate one a’ them sides a’ salmon raw. Almost threw it back up. Penelope didn’t come back that night, nor the next. I bet that storm tore up Tucket something awful. I wondered brief how she was doing, what she was doing, if she was happy out there. Then I told myself I was stupid. There weren’t no happy in Tucket for that family. There was grief and anger, and I was the cause a’ all that. No matter how you want to spin it, I led Kreagar here. Right to their front door. I said it would happen, first day we set foot in Tucket, I said so. Cursed Penelope for thinking otherwise. Wolf weren’t warning me off Penelope in that shelter cabin. She weren’t the dangerous one. I was, and he was trying to tell her, make her run and get shot a’ me. I weren’t built for human company. I bring a rain a’ shit and blood down on anyone I come near.

  Just like Kreagar.

  I’d had a fear in me since the reverend’s table that I’d turn right into him, I’d be the new beast a’ the woods, hunting them what didn’t stand no chance. He killed the doctor’s boy and Mark’s to show me what I done to Lyon’s. He was laughing in the trees while I was screaming. He’d been waiting for me to figure his way was my way and I was him all through. Just what he wanted a’ me. I thought I’d taken that last step into the dark afore I got to the Thompson house, afore I played in the snow with the boy and promised to keep him safe. But I heard them words in my head then and they was Kreagar’s. Just ’cause I was raised by that man and had done terrible things in his name, didn’t mean I would become him. I always said I walked my own path, found my own track in this world, and the sound a’ them words right in that moment, reminded me a’ that.

  Least I had that. Least I hadn’t become him. Not yet anyways. That gave me a mite a’ solace while I was trapped in snow and sorrow.

  I spent them days after Kreagar and the boy tense and waiting, slow digging my way out the cabin window. Every sound what hit my ears was muffled and hard to place and I thought it was horses. Hooves kicking up dirt, boots crunching on snow. Coming for me for what I done. That door in my head was wide open. Kreagar kicked it in for me and ushered me inside with a big sweep a’ his arm. She know who pulled the trigger?

  Only one person what weren’t me knew for sure what happened that day back in the Mussa Valley. That man was sitting in a jail cell or already hanging off the Genesis tree. Felt like I was just the same, every day waiting for the snap a’ the rope ’round my neck.

  When I finally dug myself out, I quick realized the thunderhead brought full-blown winter with it. The cold came harsh and fast to Tin River and Tucket. That storm had dropped double, maybe three times, the amount a’ snow what was normal. It cut off every path to Tucket, sealed up Tin River and me with it. Even Lyon and her long-legged horses couldn’t wade through this. This weren’t just a snow flurry what settles the ground. This was the long, dark night, the few hours a’ sunlight a day till the world turns again, and it brought more and more snowstorms, heaping white on white, bending the trees, sending all the critters into their dens to starve.

  Penelope never came back, a’ course. I ate every other day and with just me out there, the salmon we caught and the rest a’ the supplies we’d got was enough to get me through to spring.

  I didn’t see no other person that whole winter while I cleared the snow ’round the cabin and fixed up all the bits what the thunderhead broke. It was like I was cracking rocks in a quarry with chains ’round my feet, trying to do something worthwhile as my penance. Board up the window, split the boulder. Shore up the porch, haul the rubble. Maybe I was rebuilding a life. Every nail in a loose roof tile was a step closer to redemption.

  I was miserable and rightly so. It was lonely and cold and I craved company worse’n I ever craved food or water. Never thought I’d say that in truth. Always thought I wanted the lonesome life. People is trouble. Folk have darkness in them what the wild don’t, and that scared me silly. Kreagar had that dark, so did Penelope for what she did to Bilker and her daddy, what meant I did too. It weren’t a dark that the light could disappear and it took me all them winter months to figure that.

  I boiled snow for water and set traps when I could for fur and meat but I didn’t hold much hope to catching anything. Didn’t deserve it. The wild agreed and my traps came up empty or sprung by a pigeon. Pigeons make good eating but in them months food was ash on my tongue, stone in my stomach. When I slept it was like someone in my head was flicking on a projector in a picture house, showing me all them memories, all them decisions I made and dark times I’d got through. The reverend’s knife dragged over my back all over again. The hog man breathed over me, bore down on my chest. The dear Thompson boy lay in that forest a’ blood and me, just minutes too late to save him. That blond boy in the meadow, screaming, then the gunshot waking me up sweating and crying. Suppose that’s what guilt and fear do to you, turn all your memories into devils scratching inside your head.

  More’n once I thought ’bout cutting a hole in that river ice and lowering myself into the pull a’ the water. I’d die a’ the cold or drowning but it only mattered that I’d be dead. Thought ’bout just walking into the snow, no coat, no boots, no hope. Thought ’bout using the rifle or anything to make it all stop. All them memories was beating down my door, wanting a piece a’ me. Every night when I closed my eyes I saw the Thompson boy drawing at his table, smiling and showing me as part a’ his family. I saw Missy, that poor woman what I brought right to Kreagar, who showed me tenderness by bandaging up my burned hand. I saw Kreagar and Trapper and my momma and daddy and Lyon and Penelope, all shaming me and sneering down at me.

  Only one fleeting moment that winter gave me any kind a’ hope for a life beyond all this. One morning I was clearing a fresh fall a’ snow off the roof. It was getting too heavy for the wood to support and I didn’t fancy fixing it all over again. I sloughed off a chunk a’ the powder and watched it fall with a crump on the ground. Then I saw it. Across the river, near the trees on the other side a’ the meadow, a wolf padded silent through the drifts. Ain’t no telling if it was my Wolf, but it could a’ been and that was enough. The wolf disappeared and I didn’t see it again in them eight months a’ winter.

  When the sun came back and the snow started melting, I felt that stone in me start to crumble. Spring was all ’bout new life, a’ course, and maybe I’d be allowed one. A fresh start.

  One day, the snow most melted and cabin ’bout fixed, I was chopping wood when Penelope came back to
Tin River.

  I dropped my ax and stared.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” I said back.

  She had dark rings ’neath her eyes and she looked thinner’n the last time I saw her. Outside the Thompson house. An hour afore Kreagar killed the boy. Felt like another life.

  We went inside the cabin and I stoked up the fire and set a kettle boiling. We sat quiet for a while and I felt squirmy inside her just being here. Didn’t right know what to say.

  “What have you been doing all winter?” she asked me, staring ’round the cabin at the empty salmon bags, papers and pencil on the table.

  I shrugged. “This and that.”

  My voice sounded strange inside my head. Croaky and weak. Then I figured why. It ain’t been used in months.

  Penelope picked up a piece a’ paper and looked at all them crooked letters.

  “You’ve been practicing?” she asked.

  “Sometimes. Don’t think I got it right.”

  She put the paper down. Didn’t look at me. Then she took out something from her pack, wrapped in cloth, and handed it to me. I knew the weight of it right away. I threw off the cloth and felt like smiling.

  “My knife?” The one I last saw stuck in Kreagar’s shoulder.

  I hadn’t thought a’ much else this winter. Kreagar. Blood. Guilt. They did a dance in my head all them months. All that changed was who was leading the waltz.

  “Lyon gave it to me,” Penelope said. “I didn’t feel right keeping it.”

  Felt like I was seeing a friend again, holding that blade, wiped clean a’ all the things it’d done. I murmured my thanks.

  “How you been?” I said.

  “How do you think?” she said, on the edge a’ spite.

  “If you came here to fight, just get started. I got wood to chop.”

  Penelope said nothing for a minute, was like she was trying to gather up all them thoughts, calm herself down enough to say what she truly wanted to say. She dug into her pocket, handed me a piece a’ newspaper.

  Spidery black writing and a photograph. Kreagar. I knew them tattoos, no matter how bad the picture. He weren’t swinging from a tree. He was sitting in front of a stone wall, arms tied behind his back. Black spots what weren’t tattoos on his chest.

  “They shot him,” Penelope said. “Lyon called it execution by firing squad, but she was the only one with a gun.”

  My hands started shaking. “When?”

  “A week after…you know.”

  Before winter. All these months, he’d been dead the whole time. His body was frozen in the ground. I didn’t know right how to feel ’bout that. I suppose I’d sentenced him to that myself when I set that flare, when I threw my knife. But it didn’t stop me from feeling like I’d lost Trapper all over again. My true daddy, the one what I shared blood with, was outside this cabin, turning to bones and dust in the ground, along with my momma, and I didn’t know them from strangers in the street. But the man what raised me and saved my life that night in the woods when I was seven, the man what taught me to hunt and trap and set fires and smoke, the one what’d patched me up when my knife slipped and what stayed by my bedside that winter I had a weak chest. That man was dead now and so was the demon inside him. He’d found peace at the end of Lyon’s six-shooter and the world was that bit brighter for it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Penelope, and I meant it.

  “Lyon told me something when I went to see her, after it all calmed down,” she said.

  My insides went cold.

  “She said Kreagar told her what happened to her son and she said he was very convincing.”

  Turned to ice.

  “What he say?” I asked. But I knew, ’course I knew. It weren’t hidden from me no more, that door was off its hinges, turning to kindling in my mind.

  She just looked at me, waiting for me to tell her.

  I nodded, felt heat in my face. “He said I did it, didn’t he?”

  Penelope looked down at her feet.

  “She comin’ for me now the snow’s most melted?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  Right then I’d a’ let her. She could drag me back to Tucket and shoot me dead too for all I cared. All that mattered to me right then was Penelope and what she thought a’ me.

  “Did you kill her son?” she asked, and her tone said she’d been wanting to ask that forever.

  My eyes prickled. “Yes.”

  “Oh God, Elka…” she said, put her hand over her mouth. The horror in her eyes was enough to set my tears falling free.

  “I didn’t know…” I said, and I didn’t. “My head made doors and locked all them memories behind. The things Kreagar did to them women, with the…the eatin’…I ate it too and, hell…I liked it. I feel sick for it now. I didn’t know. I didn’t know till I got away from him. I didn’t see like I do now.”

  Getting out them words was like pulling spines out a’ bear’s paw. It weren’t easy, it hurt like hell and wouldn’t stop bleeding, but it had to be done.

  “We was hunting, he pointed out a young buck,” I said. Penelope closed her eyes but I needed to get it all out, suck all that poison out a’ me. “Sandy-colored thing, lighter fur than most other deer. It was the first time he let me shoot with him. I was excited, like he finally trusted me. I lined up the shot with him next to me. The buck was just standing there, lookin’ at a butterfly or somethin’. Then I pulled the trigger. He was so proud a’ me.”

  “That wasn’t a deer, Elka,” Penelope whispered, horror all through her voice.

  “Was to me. Then. There ain’t no excusin’ it, I know that and I’ll take my punishment, but I swear up and down I didn’t know what I was doin’. Kreagar didn’t kill kids. He never did. Until the doctor’s son in Halveston. Was me who shot Lyon’s son. I did it and that bastard son bitch Kreagar’s been showing me what I done all up and down this country. He’s been throwing my sins in my face and them boys were the price. I got to live with that every damn day same as I got to live with not being able to save Josh. I was too late, Penelope, too goddamn slow running after, too…I don’t know, I couldn’t save him.”

  She looked me right in the eye then. Felt her gaze in me, searching ’round for lies she weren’t going to find. She must a’ decided ’cause she got up, walked over to me, and hugged me tight to her. I froze a second then relaxed into her, wrapped my arms ’round her, and cried it all out. I ain’t never cried so much as I had done in that cabin, for my dead parents, for myself, for the boy, for Kreagar, now for what I was ’bout to lose.

  “You have to go,” Penelope said, kissing me on top a’ the head.

  “What?” I said, pulled apart from her.

  “Lyon will kill you. You have to go.”

  “I deserve it,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, you don’t. Kreagar did.” Then she knelt down in front a’ me and put her hand on my cheek. “Remember what I said? You’re a diamond, Elka. Underneath it all. Nothing can change that. I don’t want to see your picture in the newspaper.”

  I frowned deep then and tried to figure all her words into some kind a’ order what made sense. “You…you don’t hate me?”

  She smiled, sad then, and her eyes started glistening. “Of course I don’t.”

  “But…” She knew all I done. Every bit of it. She’s got to hate me. “What about the Thompson boy?”

  She tensed up then and I feared I’d undone all that mending. “Kreagar killed him and you warned me that he would, all those months ago when we first got to Tucket. You knew bad things would happen and I didn’t listen. I did as much as you in getting Josh into those woods but you’re the one who caught Kreagar. I can’t hate you for that. Neither can Mark or Josie or Jethro.”

  I’d most forgotten ’bout them over the winter. Them names brought sunshine pictures back into my head and it made me hurt all the more.

  I shook my head. “I deserve Lyon’s firin’ squad for what I done. Three boys is dea
d ’cause a’ me. I killed one and I couldn’t save the others.”

  Maybe if I’d figured earlier what I done to Lyon’s boy I could a’ saved Josh, or the doctor’s son. Maybe God or the wild or something up there would a’ let me save him if I admitted to myself what I done, took my punishment when I first seen Lyon in Dalston. But I didn’t, I didn’t know what I seen back then and I made the same mistake twice. Them gods were saying, Elka girl, you ain’t taking no responsibility for what you done so we’re gonna make you and you gonna see the truth of it.

  “I deserve to hang,” I said.

  “No you don’t, no you don’t.” Then she leaned close, put her forehead on mine, and said words what I never thought I’d hear from no one. “Much as I want to slap you sometimes, I still bloody love you, all right? I love you, Elka.”

  I didn’t bother to stop the tears. After all this time, this journey up the world, I finally heard them words spoken to me by someone what meant it. All this time searching for my momma and daddy to get that and it was Penelope all along. I played them words over and over and I stamped them on my brain, over every bloodstained, evil memory I had. I love you, Elka. I love you, Elka. I grabbed Penelope and I hugged her so tight I didn’t never want to let her go.

  Then she said something else what made me tighten up that grip till she couldn’t get no breath in her.

  “And I forgive you, for everything.”

  Was that enough? Was this one person’s forgiveness and love enough for all my sins? Then I decided that it weren’t the number a’ people whose forgiveness mattered. It was who that one person was. Penelope was enough. Just her was enough for me and always would be. She was my redemption and my salvation. I always figured a sweet apple ain’t never going to grow on a sour apple tree, but maybe I had more sugar in me than I thought. If this peach of a woman, with all her smarts, thought I was good down deep, then maybe I was.

  “You have to go,” she said, and I said OK.

  Penelope left not long after that. She hugged me and she cried and thanked me over and over for pulling her out that crate last spring. She told me I was the best friend she ever had and to take care a’ myself out there. We both knew I weren’t coming back. We both knew we weren’t going to see each other again. All that I had left in Tucket was grief and a bullet with my name on it. I waited till I couldn’t see Penelope no more, till she was through the trees and gone ’round a hill, then I packed a bag.