Wolf Season

by Helen Benedict

  “Louis, do not be foolish. It is not your fault.” She lays her hand on his arm, sending a tingle through his body. “Say nothing to Tariq, please. He does not wish to talk about it.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Come see for yourself.”

  When Louis returns at ten that night, aching from the sight of Tariq lying in bed, forehead stitched and discolored with bruises, gaze turned inward, he finds every dish in the kitchen washed and put away, every magazine in the living room stacked, every towel and sheet Todd used laundered and perfectly folded. Even the floors are mopped. Suddenly afraid Todd has run back to Beth after all, Louis tiptoes upstairs and cracks open the guest room door. But there he is, breathing the heavy sighs of the deeply asleep. He looks peaceful. He looks happy.

  Part Three

  OCTOBER

  20

  BOX

  Beth lights a cigarette and props herself against the outside wall of DanceHi, shuddering under the new cold while three rumpled pigeons forage through the garbage at her feet. DanceHi is placed between a pizza joint and a Subway, and their debris tends to overflow all over the street: Paper cups and ketchup-stained napkins. Half-chewed crusts. Wads of foil. Still, she prefers to take her break out here with the garbage and other smokers than inside over stale gossip and doughnuts. She thought she had conquered the smoking habit long ago, but since Todd’s last visit home she has needed nicotine the way she needs air.

  “You got any plans tonight?” asks Roz, one of her coworkers, a giraffelike young woman who runs the yoga classes offered in the back of the store. “’Cause if you don’t, a bunch of us are going to this cool bar I know over on Delaware.”

  Pinching her lips around her cigarette, Beth gathers her hair into a topknot and fastens it with the rubber band she keeps around her wrist. Enough time has passed to allow her bruises to fade; the wounds that hurt are all invisible. “Which bar?” she asks without interest, pulling up the collar of her denim jacket against the wind. Beth is at least twelve years older than the other women at DanceHi, and although two of them are mothers, she often feels as if she is working with high school kids.

  Roz squints at her a little shyly, pushing back her own hair, a heap of black corkscrew curls that reminds Beth of Cher in Moonstruck. “The Slinger. But don’t worry if you’ve got something better to do.”

  Beth takes a prolonged drag. What does Roz imagine her life is like? A long string of parties and men lining up to take her out on dates? Once she leaves work, it will only be to return home with Flanner, lock the doors and windows, and sit there jumping at every sound. Even after Louis shanghaied Todd to the Adirondacks and she changed all the locks, and even though Louis kept texting to say he had Todd under control, she could never shake the certainty he would return to beg and cry and blame his flashbacks, only to hurt her again. During all five remaining days of his furlough, she spent every night lying rigid in bed, listening for the creak or rattle that could be his footstep. And now, these two weeks later, standing outside DanceHi on a frigid Albany sidewalk, knowing he is back in the badlands of Afghanistan, she still feels as vulnerable as if he were waiting around the corner.

  “No, I don’t have any plans. I need to pick up Flanner from football practice at seven, so I can’t stay long. But I’d love to come.”

  When she and Roz reach The Slinger that night, it turns out to resemble a low-life cowboy saloon more than anything Beth would call “cool,” complete with a covered porch, swing doors, and windows festooned with neon outlines of naked women, legs spread, nipples blinking. Inside, a toadlike fellow with a face almost as wide as his shoulders is tending bar. Several obvious drunks are clustered loudly around the jukebox, a gang of workmen is clogging up most of the room in their telltale overalls, and there is hardly a woman in sight.

  “You come here a lot, did you say?” she asks Roz as they elbow their way through the men.

  “Oh, only once in a while.”

  They find their three workmates waiting for them in a battered wooden booth and squeeze in beside them, Beth ending up on the outside edge with her back to the door. “What’s your poison?” Roz asks after they’ve poked and joked themselves into place.

  Beth already wants to leave. She has never felt at home with these women. Different generation, different lingo, different problems. She feels old.

  “They make amazing martinis in this place,” Roz says. She calls over the waitress, a woman of about fifty who is the height of an eight-year-old, with an underdeveloped body and a wrinkled, mannish face. Her name tag says, HI! I’M GRETEL, but her dour expression strikes Beth as closer to that of the witch. Beth wonders where on earth this bar finds its staff.

  Roz orders the drinks, which turn out to be served in globular glasses the size of heads. “Holy shit!” the women exclaim. “Hey, to Friday frigging nights, right?” Each has to use two hands to heft her glass to her mouth.

  Beth can tell they are attracting attention from the men in the bar, which isn’t surprising. DanceHi hires only the fit and pretty, and as it not only sells exercise clothes but offers Beth’s old people’s dance classes and Roz’s young people’s yoga, the boss insists the women dress accordingly, so they make quite a sight in all their black spandex. She runs her eyes over her companions: Roz with her mass of curls, lips painted the same glaring red as Todd’s dead Camaro. Terri, svelte and brown, eyes as big as a doe’s. Lynnette and Jen blond, pink, and blow-dried. But their conversation is already turning her catatonic. Boyfriends, TV shows, exercise routines. And dullest of all, as Beth is lucky enough not to need one, diets.

  Drinking down her martini faster than she means to, she wonders what she would rather talk about. Certainly not Todd. Not the hurricane or war or politics, either, all of which have come to feel like the same thing. But she does wish she could talk about Flanner. How moody he has been lately, how incommunicative and sullen.

  Beth’s shame over Flanner’s attack on Tariq has so paralyzed her she has never been able to call Naema to ask if he is all right. She hasn’t found a way to bring it up with Flanner, either, tell him how wrong he was or punish him. She can’t even figure out what to say to him about Todd, or how to cheer him up or help him feel safe, feeling anything but cheerful or safe herself. She tried going back to the Family Readiness sites for advice, reading articles with titles such as “A Parent’s Guide to the Military Child During Deployment.” But the platitudes and obviousology only made her feel conned. And when another site recommended that she comfort her own military child with a Hug-A-Hero doll, she almost threw her laptop out the window.

  “Did I tell you my son nearly got attacked by a wolf?” she blurts into the conversation, needing to defend Flanner now, make him seem less the bully she is afraid he has become and more the victim. The others stop talking and look at her.

  “What?” Roz says.

  “There’s a lunatic woman who keeps wolves in the woods behind my house and one of them tried to attack my kid.”

  “She keeps wolves?” says Terri, who has a little boy of her own. “He must’ve been scared shitless.”

  “He was. I don’t think he’s been the same since. It really shook him up.”

  “I bet. Did you call the cops?”

  “I did, yeah.” Beth polishes off her tub of a drink.

  “Another, anyone?” Roz asks so quickly that Beth suspects she doesn’t believe a word she just said.

  “Why not?” someone replies, and Beth feels a skip of mood at the prospect.

  Roz waves Hi! I’m Gretel down and orders a second round and a bowl of chips, while two furred and tub-bellied men amble over. Soon they are squeezed up on the other side of the booth, facing Beth. “Hey, what’d you do with Hansel, lost him in the woods?” one of them says to the poor waitress when she brings the drinks, guffawing and plunging his fingers into the chip bowl. She looks at him stonily and clumps away.

  Beth buries her face in her fishbowl of a martini and stops listening, mesmerized instead by
the man’s fingers plunging again and again into the chips. Short and thick, patches of hair beneath the knuckles, nails grimy and ragged—the fingers of a mechanic. She glances at her own hands, slender and clean, their nails shaped into perfect almonds and freshly polished hot pink. Todd used to say he thought her hands were “beauteous” in the days when he still said such things.

  “Hey, Beth?” Roz says after a stretch, the first time anyone has addressed her for at least ten minutes. Beth looks up. “Has your husband gone back to Afghanistan yet?” Roz looks at the men importantly. “Her husband’s a marine. War hero. He’s got all kind of medals. So Beth here, she has to be real strong. Run the home, work, raise her kid all alone while he’s away. I admire her, truly do. You don’t mind me bringing that up, do you, Beth?”

  Beth feels the heat rush to her cheeks. “No, it’s all right.” She drops her eyes again to the chip bowl. “I did have to learn to be strong, it’s true. Had to learn how to wait, too.” She falls silent. Why is she even saying this? She is grateful to Roz for not mentioning all the sick days she took while the bruises faded; the telltale sunglasses when she returned. But she doesn’t want to go into all the things she’s had to do for Todd. Ever.

  Her phone chimes in her purse at that moment, a chirpy little jingle she picked this morning to lift her spirits that is already irritating as hell. She fishes among the tangle of Kleenexes, tampons, comb, wallet, lipstick, and compact to pull it out.

  Three missed calls. All from Flanner.

  “Crap!” She slaps it to her ear. “Flanner! I forgot!”

  “Mo-om! I been waiting and waiting and calling and calling. All the other kids went home hours ago and it’s dark and cold and I’m hungry!”

  “Oh Flan, I’m sorry. I got—delayed and I didn’t hear the phone, it’s so noisy where I am. I hope you’re not alone?”

  “No. Coach is waiting with me, but he’s fucking mad about it.”

  “Don’t say that word. Can’t he just drive you home?”

  “He says it’s not allowed if you aren’t there. When can you get here? It’s been hours and hours!”

  Beth looks at her watch. “It’s been one hour, honey. But I’m sorry. I’m coming right now. Tell Coach I’ll be right there. Okay?”

  “Mom, you suck.” Flanner hangs up.

  “I’ve got to go,” Beth says, jumping to her feet and dropping both her phone and her purse to the floor, the martinis hitting hard. She sways and grabs the back of the booth. “Whoa.”

  “You gonna be all right to drive?” asks one of the men, rising.

  She narrows her eyes at him. “I’ll just get a quick coffee at the bar.” Picking up her bag and phone, she leaves.

  Flanner is waiting for her by the school gates, looking small and miserable in the dark, a grumpy coach by his side. Beth pulls up to the curb and rolls down her window, apologizing and hoping neither her breath nor her enunciation will give her away. The coach grunts and frowns and gets into his own car while Flanner climbs into the back.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she says again. “We’ll order in some pizza for a special treat, okay?”

  “I’m not hungry,” he mutters.

  “Of course you are. How was practice?”

  “Fuck practice,” he replies, and refuses to say another word.

  The next morning, Beth sits alone in the kitchen, pressing a cup of hot coffee to her chest and letting its steam mist her face, having already downed three Advil and a pint of orange juice in an attempt to scour her head of the martinis. She closes her eyes, the lids like flaps of sand. The cartoon voices from Flanner’s TV are needling into her temples like dentists’ drills. At least she managed to drive home without either an accident or a police encounter—unusually lucky, given the predilection of local cops for hanging around places like The Slinger to pick up people like her. Still. Weaving along like that, Flanner yelping in the back, cursing . . . She opens her eyes, wincing against the light, and shifts uncomfortably in her chair. What the hell is the matter with me?

  Pulling her blue satin bathrobe tighter around her with a shiver, she rubs her feet together, so cold and sandpapery they don’t seem to belong to her at all, and stares into the swirl of her coffee, trying not to let the prospect of the Saturday ahead sink her into an even darker mood. As much as she dislikes the tedium of her workweek at DanceHi, the weekends are worse. Nobody to call, nobody to see. How did this happen? A short while ago she had truckloads of friends, not only from her Huntsville childhood but from her queen bee days in high school, when every boy in town was panting after her. Beth of the dancer’s body and swingdangle hair, Beth of the blue-jay eyes, Beth of the swish and sway. . . . She smiles wistfully. She had more recent friends, too: military wives, workmates from her old job as a hostess at a fancy restaurant in Albany, mothers from Flanner’s school. But over the past year or so, they all seem to have melted away. Quite a few, she knows, dropped her because they couldn’t stand Todd, for which she can hardly blame them. Naema, whom she has always liked, she lost thanks to Flanner, now forever banned from Tariq’s company. But the others? Is it just that she has been so overwhelmed she’s neglected them? Or is it—and this thought sends a corkscrew of misery through her—that Todd has turned her into a person nobody wants to be around anymore? Whatever the reason, she seems to be reduced to no friends at all now, aside from Louis and those girls from work, who, she might as well face it, are so brainless she cannot abide them for longer than it takes to gulp a cocktail. Her life has become as boxed in as a closet. Flanner scowling and withdrawn. Nothing to look forward to but TV and her wine. And lurking beneath it all like an underground oil spill, the knowledge that one day Todd will be done with war and come home for good.

  She takes a sip of coffee, burning her tongue, and raises her head to look over her kitchen: its buttery surfaces, bee-splattered curtains, ornately framed cake recipes. I have to get out of here. Out of this house and out of this town. But to go where? Not to her parents, sunning it up in their retirement condo in Miami—God forbid. Not to her brother, Billy, either, who is busy cultivating so-called medical marijuana in Sonoma County and hasn’t spoken to her for years. So where?

  Hearing a car pull up outside, she carries her coffee to the window, assuming it’s Louis, who has been checking in on her now and then ever since he rescued her from Todd. Even his company, taciturn as it is, would be welcome right now, although she would prefer that he not see her like this: hair unkempt, yesterday’s eyeliner smudged down her cheeks, breath martini-bad and mood even worse.

  But it isn’t Louis. Rather, an unfamiliar polished black car is parked by the remains of the maple tree. She watches as both front doors swing open and two men climb out, bodies as stiff as surfboards, bald faces blank. They are wearing the dress uniform of the Marine Corps, which she hasn’t seen since she attended Todd’s induction ceremony fifteen years ago. Perfect red stripes down the outsides of their pressed blue trousers. Immaculate gold buttons. Gleaming white belts tight and straight. Equally white caps precisely aligned atop their shaved heads, their glossy black brims like little shelves.

  She watches the men pull down their jackets until they are smooth and crisp. She watches them settle their shoulders and lift their chins. And she watches them advance, side by side, in a slow and even march across the yard, up the steps of her porch, and to the threshold of her sunny front door.

  21

  FIRE

  Rin is sunk deep into one of the dog-haired armchairs in her living room, looking through her favorite wildlife veterinarian book for reasons why a wolf might lose its appetite. Silver has been eating less and less this past week, and instead of bounding up eager-eyed when Rin calls, she only slouches over now, head hanging, tail down. Rin wonders if the problem is her teeth. Perhaps she has started chewing the chain link again, as she did when she was younger, or maybe her gums are decaying—after all, Silver is nine years old, a senior citizen in the lupine world. But there are other possibilities, too. She coul
d be diseased. Or she could have absorbed the visceral stink of Rin’s dread.

  Flaherty called again last week. Just as Rin was beginning to hope he had forgotten all about her—that he had better things to do with his law-enforcing time than bother some harmless woman in the woods about her animals—the phone rang and there he was, pointing out that his deadline had long since passed and he hadn’t noticed anything resembling either a license application or proof she has huskies coming in from her direction. She did her best to summon all her indignation and hard-earned veteran arrogance again, but he was clearly unimpressed. It made her want to rip out the phone and throw it at the bastard’s meddlesome head.

  After he was done lecturing her, she had to call Betty and let the dog lick her for a long time. Tongue wet and warm, brown eyes forlorn. “Betty,” she said, “this doesn’t look good. Help.” Betty blinked up at her. Rubbed her head against Rin’s knee.

  Now Rin puts down the book, goes out to the barn to pick up her medical kit, and heads back to the fence. For the first time in years, she feels the way she felt so often in the army, dragging herself through the days with a sense of foreboding so tangible it feels like a cage tightening over her ribs.

  At the wolf pen, she calls Silver, who limps over, coat matted, legs trembling. Her normally bright eyes are dim and so mournful they seem to be saying I’m done for. Give up.

  Rin steps inside the pen, endures Gray’s inspection, and coaxes Silver to sit on her haunches and open her mouth—she has trained her to do this much, at least. Gray hovers nearby, keeping an eye on them both.

  It is always something of a shock to look in a wolf’s mouth. Canines as long as a thumb. Incisors serrated like knives. Not to mention breath strong enough to knock out your sinuses. Rin lifts Silver’s lips. Her gums are indeed inflamed: red where they should be black, ragged where they should be smooth. Bleeding where there shouldn’t be blood.