Wolf Season

by Helen Benedict

  Sighing, she stretches out her legs, takes another swallow of wine, reaches for her phone, and gets back to the business of being a parent.

  “You got a minute?” she asks when Louis picks up, trying not to let the words stumble tellingly around in her mouth.

  “Sure. I am watching a movie with Tariq, though. What’s up?”

  “I found out more about Rin Drummond’s wolves. Guess what? It’s against the law to keep wolves as pets in New York.”

  “Beth, nobody has any wolves.”

  Pulling her left leg farther up her thigh, she examines the gold nail polish peeling off her big toe. “I don’t know about that. If what Tariq said is true, it means she’s keeping illegal, dangerous predators inside our own woods. Don’t you see how crazy that is?”

  Louis takes a moment to reply. “Look, we’ve all got enough on our plates right now with the storm damage. I heard it was a tornado as well as a hurricane. Did you?”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s why it tore up the clinic so bad.” She picks up her glass and drains it.

  “Right. So try to relax, okay? See you later.” And, to her surprise, he hangs up.

  She stares at her phone a minute. “Screw you, Louis!” Tossing the phone down, she empties the last of the wine into her glass.

  At the top of the stairs, Flanner is glaring down at his mother. His dad would never let her drink like this night after night or talk like that at the phone. Where is the mom she was only a short while ago? The mom who made Flanner proud of his family, a Marine Corps family, the most important family he knows?

  “Fuck,” he says under his breath. “Shit, ass.” He storms into his room. “Dick.”

  He paces the floor, restless, miserable. Seizing his pillow, he hurls it as hard as he can at the window. It only falls with a soft and maddening puff to the floor. So he takes his shoes out of his closet—his sneakers and baseball cleats, dress shoes and flip-flops—and throws every one of them with all his strength through his bedroom door, making them slam against the far wall and ricochet down the hall, leaving black marks all over the yellow paint.

  Still not enough. He races around his room, yanking open doors so he can slam them shut, pulling out drawers and throwing them to the floor with a bang. Bang and bang and bang! He stops to listen. No response.

  Giving up on his room, he runs into the bathroom to look for something big to break. There he sees it, the perfect target: a jumbo-size bottle of blue mouthwash. He picks it up, raises it above his head, and, with a great heave, flings it into the tub.

  Thud.

  The bottle lies there unaffected, the neon blueness inside barely foaming.

  “Mom!” he screams, pounding through the hallway, almost tumbling down the white-carpeted stairs. “Mom!”

  Beth has fallen asleep on the couch, the TV still on. She is slumped sideways, mouth dangling open. Lips wet.

  “Mom, wake up!”

  Flanner pulls back his arm and slaps her as hard as he can across the face.

  9

  FOG

  On the morning Tariq is finally allowed to visit his mother, he cranes forward to peer through Louis’s windshield at the crowd of hospital buildings looming in front of him. One gray monolith attached to another, they look as big as a city, glittering under a sky bright and hard as tin. A great stretch of asphalt spreads around them, not a tree or flower in sight.

  “You ready?” Louis asks.

  Tariq unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out, the air so humid it drops over him like a blanket. Shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, he shuffles after Louis across the parking lot, the heat rising from the ground in waves, enveloping his face in the stink of hot tar and rubber. When they reach the three revolving glass doors flashing in the sun at the entrance, he stops.

  Louis rests a hand on his back. “I’m right here, bud, don’t worry.” He guides him into the dark gape of a door, which whips around, catapulting them from the blaze of the day into arctic air and whiteness.

  Tariq shivers, a gallop of panic in his chest. If his mother were here beside him instead of lying in a bed somewhere in this giant refrigerator, he would let himself hold her hand. He almost reaches for Louis’s before remembering he’s too old for that now.

  Louis walks over to a tall counter, more wall than desk, and murmurs to a man dressed in blue scrubs. He returns to attach little tags to both their chests. His says VISITOR: MARTIN. Tariq’s says VISITOR: CHILD.

  “You all right?” Louis bends to look into his face.

  Tariq fixes his eyes to the floor.

  Once more settling a palm on his back, Louis ushers him into an elevator and they rise with a series of sickening glides. Up and up. Tariq stares at the row of large black buttons, each rimmed with orange, each lighting up then dimming, one after another. “How high are we going?”

  “Twenty-two. Almost there.”

  Finally, the door says ding, opens with a whoosh, and they step onto a floor exactly as white and frigid as the one they just left. Tariq shivers again. “Mama isn’t dead, is she?”

  Louis darts a look at him. “Of course not.” He pauses. “She is probably asleep, though.”

  “I hope Mustapha’s not here.”

  Louis, too, harbors less than charitable feelings toward Mustapha Rasheed, Naema’s suitor and fellow Iraqi. The man has been pursuing her for longer than Louis has even known her, a fact that keeps him tossing in a particular anguish for much of every night.

  “Here we are,” he murmurs as they approach a room labeled 2204A. “She has a roommate now, so we have to be quiet.”

  He pushes open the door and they step inside, where they are confronted by a wall of murky green curtains. He leads Tariq past them to a second set by the window. “In here.”

  Parting them just enough to slip through, Louis moves up to the bed and gazes down at Naema. Tariq hangs back, squeezing his lips together. He tries to ignore the beeping machines around the shape of his mother, the tubes snaking from her arms, the ache gathering in his throat.

  A long moment passes before Louis speaks again. But finally he whispers, “I’ll wait for you in the hallway,” and leaves.

  Tariq eyes the high white bed for some time, waiting for his courage to appear. Then he forces a step forward. And another. One more. Slowly, he tiptoes over and peers down.

  That can’t be his mother. Her face has no expression at all under her mask. Her skin is a sickly waxen color, her body so thin it looks as flat as a leaf.

  He leans closer. Her breathing sounds like the rattle of stones drawn under a wave.

  “Mama?”

  She shows no sign of hearing him.

  “Mama!”

  Still nothing.

  “Mama!”

  Her eyelids flutter. And then, at last, she opens her eyes, her beautiful eyes, their irises a deep gold flecked with green; the exact color of Gray’s.

  She turns those eyes to Tariq and smiles. He can tell because they crinkle at the edges, even though he can’t see her lips under the mask. She can make no noise—her lungs aren’t strong enough for even a sigh—but she does manage to slide her hand across the bed and open her fingers for him.

  “Mama,” he says with a sob, laying his forehead on her palm. He reaches across the bones of her hips and holds her as tightly as he dares. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” He looks back up at her.

  She caresses his cheek and, with the slightest of movements, she nods.

  Out in the hallway, Louis is straining to hear what he can from Naema’s room. He longs to be in there with her but knows not to intrude, so rests his hands on a windowsill, gazing through the grime-streaked glass into the tinny sky beyond. Below, a jumble of buildings and parking lots. Above, a smear of cloud. In front, a shimmer of his own reflection.

  If Naema fails to survive this—if she fails to rise to her feet, sweep her braid over her shoulder and resume her previous self—how will he ever look at Tariq without weeping?

  That evening, while
Louis is rifling through his refrigerator for something to make for dinner and Tariq is reading upstairs in the spare bedroom, Beth calls again. Seeing her name, Louis is tempted not to answer. But his manners, along with his promise to her husband, get the better of him.

  “I found out more about Rin Drummond,” she says without preamble. “This friend of mine at city hall looked up her property lines for me and he said she inherited a hell of a lot of land from her husband’s family. It reaches way back behind the hill—my hill—right across the township line. Those wolves are scarily close, Louis, just like I thought!”

  Louis shuts the fridge, glancing at his watch. He should call his store before it closes. As manager of S&A Lumber, the biggest retail shop in Huntsville, it is his job to make sure everything is in order for the fall rush this weekend. His customers have been frantic lately, in a panic over fixing all they can of the hurricane damage before the cold weather sets in.

  “Louis? You there?”

  “Yup. What were you saying?”

  “I’m saying I decided to do something about this before those wolves attack someone. So I reported Rin to the cops.”

  “What? Oh shit, Beth. Why?”

  “I told you why.”

  “But you don’t even know if she has any wolves.” Feeling in need of a breeze, Louis crosses the sweltering kitchen and opens the back door to his deck, still in splinters from the storm.

  “Of course I do! Flanner said he heard them in the woods with Tariq and I don’t happen to think my kid is a liar. Tariq isn’t, either, from what I know of him. Why can’t you admit how dangerous this is? Jesus!” She hangs up.

  The phone rings again.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’m just stressed right now.”

  Louis pictures her standing alone in her kitchen, a drink in one hand, phone in the other. Hair disheveled.

  “We’re all stressed. Don’t worry about it.” He leans wearily against the door frame, watching a hornet drag its bulbous abdomen up the wall. “But what did you tell the cops? I mean, Rin Drummond is on her own out there, raising a kid by herself like you. And she’s not . . . well, wouldn’t it better just to leave her alone?”

  “I only asked them to check on her, that’s all.” Beth pauses. “Listen, I don’t suppose you feel like swinging by for a drink, do you?”

  Louis knocks the hornet down and steps on it. “Thanks, but I can’t. I took Tariq to see his mom this morning and he’s too upset to see anyone. I should stay here with him.”

  “I’ll come by your place, then. Just for a quickie. Why don’t you ask him about the wolves again while I’m on my way?” And she’s gone.

  Louis closes the deck door and rubs his forehead. Then he mounts the stairs, knocks on Tariq’s door, and pokes his head in. “Can we talk a sec?”

  Tariq glances up from his book. He is stretched out on the single bed in the corner, sitting up against the pillows, his prosthetic leg lying on its side nearby, and he has that faraway glaze in his eyes of someone dragged out of a dream. His face looks particularly small and pinched at the moment, particularly young.

  Louis sits on the end of the bed. “You okay, bud? Want to talk about this morning at all?”

  Tariq drops his eyes back to his book.

  Louis waits a beat. “Listen. Flanner’s mom is coming over. Not Flanner, just her. If you want to stay out of the way up here, I’ll cover for you.”

  Tariq riffles the pages. “Thanks.”

  “What’re you reading?” Louis takes the book from him. “Oh, White Fang. I remember that. Like it?”

  “Nope. I think it’s dumb. It makes wolves sound so mean.”

  Louis hands it back, seeing his opening. “You’ve gotten pretty interested in wolves, haven’t you? Is it ’cause of the ones you saw at Mrs. Drummond’s?”

  Tariq flashes him a look of alarm and then lowers his eyes again. “There aren’t any wolves.”

  “You sure? That’s not what you told me the other day.”

  “I know.” Tariq scrapes a spot on the book’s cover with his thumb. “I was just pretending.”

  “I figured. Still, a game is one thing, a lie another.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Tariq pulls on his leg, and taking the book with him, leaves for the bathroom.

  Louis stands to go, too, but first he runs his eyes over the room. White walls, forest green rug, single bed with a pale yellow coverlet. It was Melody’s study once, but her desk is gone now, as are her books, her shelves, her apricot curtains, even her satin cream wallpaper, Louis having ripped out all her belongings long ago. Every chair and rug, picture and vase, hairpin and sock. The result is a home as soulless as a chain motel and an absence that hangs in the air like a fog.

  Melody spiraling down and down. Her young face lifted to him, eyes black with pain. He too absorbed in himself to see. “I’m in your way,” her note said. “My own too. Don’t go into the bathroom, just call the cops. I love you.”

  When Beth arrives wearing a clinging summer sheath of electric blue and matching earrings, Louis is embarrassed. She looks dressed for a date, not the early-evening coffee he is determined to serve, and he worries he has misled her. “I’d invite you to sit out on the deck but it’s still a mess,” he says awkwardly, and tells her about the tree trunk and garage door.

  “No problem. It’s muggy as hell outside anyway.” The humidity is indeed pressing against the windows like a hot-breathed dog.

  They move to his living room, it beige furniture and café au lait walls just as self-effacing as the rest of the house. She takes the sofa, he an armchair, a fan clacking noisily in the window. He gives her a glass of ice tea—she turned down the coffee—but she doesn’t look exactly happy with it. He can smell the alcohol on her like a stale perfume. It is long past time, he thinks, for Todd to come home.

  Shaking off her high-heeled sandals, she stretches her legs out on the dark wooden coffee table, which Louis has waxed to a gleam, and gets right to the point. “So what did Tariq say?”

  Louis moves his eyes to the curtainless window, the blanched sky filling its frame. “He says he made it up about the wolves.”

  She tosses back her hair, loose today despite the heat, and rubs her bare feet together, flexing them like the dancer she was, her toenails a sparkling silver this time. “Well, I’m sorry, Louis, but he’s lying. I asked Flanner about it again and he said that they not only heard the wolves loud and clear but that Rin told them she has wolves. Three dangerous, wild wolves right here in our own woods! That woman is out of her mind.” She takes a swallow of tea. “Where is Tariq anyhow?”

  Louis is more inclined to believe Tariq than anything Flanner might say, but he’s not going to pick a fight about it. “At a friend’s house.”

  “He is? I thought you said he was too upset to see anyone. Who is it? A kid from school?”

  Louis refrains from telling her this is none of her business. Instead, he blurts in some desperation, “Want something stronger than ice tea? We could probably both use it.”

  She brightens at this, suddenly looking extremely pretty. Her eyes are not only a luminous jay-feather blue but enormous and long-lashed, if overly laden today with makeup. She has that classic, commoditized, white-girl face you see on supermarket magazines, Louis decides; the kind of face Melody used to insist on admiring more than her own, no matter how much he tried to persuade her otherwise.

  “So anyway, I called the cops again,” Beth continues when he comes back from the kitchen with two cans of beer. “This time, they told me it isn’t always illegal to keep wolves after all; you just need a special kind of license. I asked them to look into whether or not Rin has one. Bet she doesn’t.”

  “Seems to me it’d make more sense to call the ASPCA about something like that.” A fresh wave of anxiety for Naema washes through him. He wishes he hadn’t offered Beth beer. He wishes she would go home.

  “Maybe. But I thought I’d start with someone I know first,
this state trooper I was in high school with. Mike Flaherty. Know him?”

  Louis shakes his head.

  “He’ll do whatever I want.” And reaching for her beer, she sends Louis a wink.

  10

  KNOT

  It has taken Rin the entire morning to finish sawing the old oak and all its memories into chunks, and now she is glossed with sweat. The weather is still eerily hot for the last week of August—almost as hot as the Sandbox, only humid instead of skin-desiccatingly dry—so she heads to the kitchen for water. Filling her glass at the sink, she looks up and catches sight of Juney through the window, stepping along the lilac path in her usual weightless way, cane swinging, feet careful but sure. But her brow is in a pinch and her mouth pulled into a thin, unhappy line. Rin sets down her water and goes to the back door to meet her.

  “Hey, little bean, something wrong?”

  Juney only says she’s thirsty and hot, so Rin pours her some water, too. Taking the glass in both hands, Juney sits in her usual chair and starts up her humming again. Her moods have become so changeable that Rin wonders if some female hormones are kicking in, young as Juney is. She still looks like a stick, but lately she has been wistful and withdrawn in a way that is entirely new. If she isn’t building up hormones, she is certainly building up secrets.

  “Mommy?” she says after a long silence, her hands still around her glass. “You think wolves can understand human languages?”

  Rin loves questions like this. She leans against the sink, settling in to answer. “Some, yes. Their names, of course, and tones like affection or anger—but you know that. They aren’t as good at it as dogs, though, ’cause they haven’t been bred to—”

  “Do they understand Arabic?”

  Rin frowns. “Is this something that Hajji kid told you?”

  “Don’t call him that. He’s got a name.” Juney pulls herself up in her chair, posture as severe as a drill sergeant’s.

  Rin examines her hands: meaty, rough, the lines in her palms etched by chain-saw grease, nails caked in oak dust. “Have you been talking to Tariq about our wolves?”