Wolf Season

by Helen Benedict

  So. They’ve come.

  Both vehicles pull up to her gate and stop, flashing their panic flashes. The doors open and a phalanx of armed men in uniform tumbles out and stands there.

  Too late now to sneak Juney into the car and flee. Too late to lure the cops to the woods or hide her wolves, either; she can only hope they’ll hide themselves. But not too late to offer her usual welcome.

  “Get off my property now!”

  The dogs are charging already, barking and growling, hackles raised like collars of thorns. They hurl themselves against the gate, nothing between them and the uniformed stiffs but Rin’s jury-rigged barrier. They clearly want to tear the heads off those cocky-faced bastards. Rin wouldn’t mind if they did.

  But the cops don’t budge. Not one of them. And then she sees something she never wants to see again. A fat, round-faced cop in front yanks out his pistol and aims it right at Betty.

  That does it. Rin is not letting any chickenshit civilian cop shoot her animals.

  “Leave my dogs alone!” she screams and raises her rifle, sighting it above his head. Then she sees something else. The three other cops drop down by their cars. And the one in front lifts his pistol, training it dead on her.

  “MA’AM PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON,” a voice bellows through a megaphone. “PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON AND CALL OFF THE DOGS.”

  Convoy to Tikrit, moondust storm in our eyes, scarves over our mouths . . . gust of wind, sudden clearing . . . heads poking above a berm, black scarves over their own faces . . . RPG . . . incoming . . . Jay . . . your blood and your blood and your blood . . .

  “Mommy wait!” Juney screams, stumbling into chairs, tables, stools, cats as she flies to the door. “MommyMommy!” But Mommy doesn’t hear because Mommy is shouting and yelling in her other world. Tariq catapults out after Juney, trying to reach her, to hold her back, to call wait and wait and don’t and don’t! The two of them hurtle through the door, across the porch and up to Rin. “MommyMommy . . .”

  Rin aims her warning shot over the cop’s head.

  The cop points the muzzle of his gun directly at her.

  Two bullets, one an arc, one an arrow, slice through the air.

  30

  PEACE

  When the sun has slipped far enough down that evening to send beams through Naema’s narrow windows, lighting up her attic bedroom like a lantern, she untangles herself from her bedspread and slides her leg over Louis’s. Outside, a cardinal whistles in the distant woods, its song seesawing through the trees. Inside, the only sounds are Louis’s breathing and the whispering rustle of sheets. “Naema?” He parts her hair so he can see her eyes. “If only you knew . . .”

  “Shh. It does not need words.”

  She rests her head on his chest, nestling against his long body, his skin warm and silken. “Well, perhaps there is one thing I will say,” she murmurs, smiling at herself. “I have always known I had to wait for a truly good-hearted man. And this is you, my friend . . . of course it is you.”

  Louis is about to reply in kind when familiar hot fingers of shame grip his neck. He shifts in the bed, still holding her, although uneasily now. “But I don’t understand. Why me? I thought you wanted to be with Mustapha.”

  “Mustapha?” She lifts herself to her elbow to look at him. “Oh, no. He is much too broken for love.”

  “More broken than I am?” Louis says wryly.

  “Of course.” She frowns, reminding him that she has no patience for the self-pity of American soldiers. “I never told you this because it is his private business, but his wife and both his children, two little girls, they were all killed when a bomb fell on their house in Mosul. If I were to love him—and I do not—he would cling to me like a man drowning. And I would drown with him.”

  Louis takes a moment to absorb this. “But that’s what I mean. How can you be with me after what we did to your country? Why am I any better than Jimmy Donnell?”

  She caresses his cheek. “Louis.” Her voice is softer now. She knows he is only expressing the remorse of every American who has retained a conscience about the war, and she has made her peace with that. She has had to, raising her son as an American, working with the children of American veterans. She has had to teach herself that not all Americans—not even soldiers like Donnell and Louis—are the same as their leaders, any more than she was the same as Saddam. “You are my best friend and that is what counts. And you and I have already overcome much of this, have we not? So we shall keep trying, agreed?”

  “Of course.” He pulls her to him again. But, he adds silently, I’ve still done what I’ve done and I don’t see how we’ll ever overcome that.

  When her cell phone rings moments later, they are deep in a kiss. “I am sorry, but a doctor must always answer,” she says with regret, so Louis eases himself off her. She turns and picks up the phone.

  “Dr. Jassim?” a gruff male voice barks. It sounds more like a command than a question.

  “Yes, who is speaking?” She shifts back a little, pressing her buttocks teasingly against Louis.

  “Are you the mother of Tariq Jassim?”

  She springs up. “Who are you?”

  Louis sits up, too.

  “This is the police, ma’am. We need you to come to Saint Peter’s Hospital. We’re heading there with your son.”

  “Allah save me! Is he hurt? Oh please, please no.”

  But there is no answer.

  She jumps out of bed, pulling on her clothes. “We must go. The hospital, it has Tariq.” She neither cries nor screams, only switches into physician mode: cool and efficient. But she can feel the ground tipping on its side, ready to plunge her yet again into tragedy.

  A few minutes later, Louis is hurtling with soldier speed through the evening rush hour toward Albany.

  The drive is short but feels unbearably long. Every traffic light creeps by as if sleepwalking; every yawning commuter inches along as if intentionally blocking their way. Naema is praying fervently to Allah in her head; Louis to his own panoply of nongods.

  “I can’t believe that fucker didn’t tell you if he’s hurt,” he says through his teeth as he swerves past a Volvo. “But if it was really bad, they would’ve said, I’m sure.”

  She grips her knees with both hands, trying to believe this. “But what could have happened to him?” Then she gasps, “The wolves!”

  “What? You mean they’re real?”

  “Yes! Oh, Louis, he promised to stay away from them!”

  Mike Flaherty is pacing the waiting room just inside the hospital’s emergency entrance, casting uneasy looks at the child sobbing in the corner. He was only doing his duty, right? A police officer is trained to shoot back when shot at, and surely what happens next is up to fate. But what will the investigative board say, let alone his superiors? And the press? Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the press. He wishes with every bone in his body he could be at home with his wife, who always helps him figure out what to do. Damn that Beth Wycombe. She’s never brought me anything but misery.

  At last, the two people he’s been waiting for come running in wearing the wild expressions he sees all the time in his job—he can tell from the face on the woman, who is panting heavily, that she’s the lady he called. She runs right past him, but the man with her, big and dark and, judging from his haircut and posture, a veteran, gives Flaherty a look that roots him to the spot.

  Naema flies over to the sobbing child curled tight as a snail on a corner bench. “Tariq, are you all right?” She runs her hands over him quickly and gathers him into a hug. “Alhamdulillah, you are not hurt! But what happened? Tell me, habibi, quick.”

  He grips her tightly, sobbing so hard he can barely speak. But finally, he pulls out of her arms and points at Flaherty, who backs toward the door. “Make that man go away, Mama. He’s scaring me! He’s the one who shot her! He shot her right down!”

  Part Four

  NOVEMBER

  31

  FLAG

  “Flanner?” Beth ca
lls up the stairs. “Come here.”

  No answer.

  “Honey, come! I need to talk with you.”

  Still no answer.

  With a sigh, she mounts the steps, watching her feet sink into the white carpet one after the other, her toes inside their stockings looking like netted shrimp.

  She knocks on his door. No doubt he is playing another of his violent video games or looking at war porn. That’s how he spends most of his free time these days. She knocks again.

  “What?”

  She pushes the door open. He is indeed sitting on his bed, rattling away on his laptop.

  “Flan?” She walks over. “Close that thing a moment, would you? I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  He scowls but does as she says.

  She sits beside him, running her eyes around his room, which has become forbidden territory to her these past weeks. The rumpled red-and-black NASCAR bedspread. The posters of football stars grinning out at her, teeth polished, necks like sides of beef. The meager collection of sports trophies gathering dust on a near-empty bookshelf.

  She looks up to see a new Marine Corps recruitment advertisement tacked to the ceiling over the bed, a soot-smeared grunt grimacing down at her, his enormous assault rifle pointed right at her nose. She wonders where on earth Flanner found that.

  “Flan, look at me.”

  He glances at her with the wary expression of someone expecting punishment. Nearly three weeks have passed since Todd’s death, yet she has never succeeded in getting Flanner to talk about it. Sometimes she senses him watching her, but as soon as she catches his eye, hoping he’s ready, he hurries away. Still, she tries again now.

  “Are you all right, honey? Because you don’t seem all right.”

  His narrow jaw tightens. But he says nothing.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking. How would you like to move?”

  He drops his eyes back to his laptop. “Move?”

  “Yes. Move away from this house. Away from this town. Go to New York City.”

  “When?”

  “Now. As soon as we can pack. I’ll put the house up for sale and we can just go.”

  “You mean in the middle of school and everything?”

  “Yes. In the middle of school and everything.”

  Flanner opens his laptop. “Sure. Whatever.”

  For the next three days, Beth allows Flanner to stay home so the two of them can empty the house room by room, selecting what to pack, what to toss, and what to store. Beth bundles up every last shred of Todd’s Marine Corps belongings: photographs, boots, uniforms, medals, belts, and socks, along with all her honeybee soaps and towels, throws what she most abhors away and takes the rest to Dump King O’Malley, a former marine himself with the purpled nose and ballooned belly of a drinker.

  “You sure you want to leave this stuff here?” he says as he paws through it. “This is nice shit, Beth.”

  “Shit, yes. Nice, I don’t think so. Give it away. Keep it. Burn it—I never want to see it again.”

  Flanner tosses out everything that reminds him of Tariq, camp, childhood, or school. All he keeps are a few clothes, his father’s knife and the baseball mitt, and, most important of all, Todd’s Purple Heart and Combat Action Badge, which he fishes out of the garbage while Beth isn’t looking and hides in one of his socks.

  The expensive furniture she puts in storage: the white couch and chairs, the velvet cushions and beds and smug yellow curtains, all of which now nauseate her. And then she packs some more, until she has reduced an entire household full of objects to whatever she can stuff into the little red Fiesta she bought with the Camaro insurance money. After all, she thinks as she walks through the denuded house for a last check, what does she have to keep her here? She never cared for her job at DanciHi or anyone in it. Louis has let her down. She can no longer face Naema. She certainly wants nothing to do with Mike Flaherty, not after that terrible thing he did. And the idea of staying in this town of her childhood and marriage makes her feel as if someone is holding a pillow over her face. But what she does have is Todd’s life insurance, the death benefits due to her as a military widow, and the proceeds to come from the sale of the house, which the real estate agent told her should happen in no time. “Nice location,” he said, dollar signs flashing in his eyes. “And you’ve kept it in such good shape, too.”

  Another thing she accomplished with no help from a husband.

  By the fourth morning, the house is empty, the car packed, and she and Flanner are standing in the daffodil hallway with their jackets on. “Ready?” she says, the car keys swinging from her hand.

  “Yep.” He heads out the front door without so much as a glance behind him. “Bye, house,” he adds, and ducks into the car while Beth climbs in beside him. She allows him to sit in front only because the back is crammed with suitcases, the television, both their laptops, and a jumbo sack of her shoes, as well as—and this she doesn’t know—the folded flag from Todd’s coffin, which Flanner also rescued from the garbage and secreted at the bottom of his suitcase.

  “Ready to leave for New York City and a brand-new life?” she asks him.

  He looks over at her, his eyes and hair and freckles all a matching ginger under the metallic November sky. “What’re we gonna do first?”

  “Find a hotel, then an apartment, and then a school for you and a job for me. I thought we’d try Brooklyn, see if we can afford it. It’s supposed to be cool. Sound good?”

  “I guess. Better than this dumbass town anyhow.” He hits the dashboard exactly the way Todd used to. “Let’s blow this place forever.”

  And so they do.

  32

  UNDERGROUND

  The road to Rin Drummond’s house is damp and shadowed under the gray light of November, the woods on either side so dense they shut out all but a glimmer of sky. Tariq rolls down the back window of Louis’s car and sniffs. He wonders if Juney can smell the dying leaves wherever she is. If, that is, she can smell anything at all.

  At the sign PRIVATE KEEP OUT I MEAN IT, Louis turns into Rin’s pitted driveway and bumps along it for some time, careful not to lose his tailpipe to one of its potholes. Planted at regular intervals on both sides are the hand-painted NO ENTRY, GO AWAY signs he remembers, along with as much concertina wire as he used to see around a forward operating base. He reaches the heavily fortified gate and stops.

  “Mrs. Drummond, she must have been very afraid to have put up all these barriers,” Naema remarks.

  Louis nods and squeezes her knee.

  “If the dogs are here they might not let us in,” Tariq says, the first words he has spoken the entire drive.

  “But they know you well enough by now to be friendly, don’t they?” Louis asks.

  “Maybe. I don’t know what they’ll be like without Juney or her mom here.” Tariq opens the door and climbs out, his throat pulpy.

  Not a single bark or growl. Nobody runs to meet him. Nothing moves.

  The gate turns out to be ajar, its padlocks cut, electricity off, so he pushes it open to let Louis through. Louis parks on the grass and he and Naema get out to stand beside Tariq, huddling against the cold in their winter jackets as they look around. The old red barn, its roof caved in at the back. The tumbledown animal huts. The lawn hidden under a quilt of orange and brown leaves. The shattered willow lying with its head in a stream. The remains of the oak, roughly sawn into logs and stacked in a pile by the barn.

  Without speaking, they turn toward the main house, which to Naema, who has never seen it before, appears on the verge of collapse. The roof is sagging, the walls patched, the rooms attached to its corners barely holding on. Four wicker chairs clutter the porch, along with a row of potted geraniums, several knocked over, stems broken, flowers crushed. The floor is stained with a long streak of rust-colored blood.

  “Wait here. I’m going inside,” Tariq says, his voice low. He climbs the stairs, leaving Naema and Louis out on the grass. “Betty? Rufus?” he calls. “Ric
ky? Pop? Purr? Patch?”

  Nothing.

  He steps over the blood, careful not to look at it, and tries the handle of the front door. It opens. Slipping inside, he stands a moment to listen. The foyer is dark, the house suspended in silence.

  He tiptoes into the living room, which is equally lifeless, equally silent. How different it is from that cozy evening when he was sitting here by the fire, telling Juney the stories in the flames. He thought this room the friendliest place in the world then. But now the fireplace is dead, and even though sweaters are still dangling from hooks, the rugs still rumpled, and the couch and chairs as dog-haired as ever, the air has lost all its embracing scents of sizzling wood and sleeping animals.

  Unable to bear the desolation, he hurries into the kitchen. But here it is even worse. The glass of milk Juney was drinking while Rin called the veterinarian is still on the table. The saucepan on the stove is still full of the water and potatoes Rin was about to boil for dinner. The tomatoes Juney was washing, the carrots he was chopping—all are untouched. On the floor in the corner, the cat food bowls are empty and licked clean. “Purr?” His voice is scarcely a whisper. “Patch?”

  And then, at last, a tentative meow. And the motley nose of a tabby pokes out from behind the refrigerator.

  “Purr.” He crouches to see if he can spot Patch, the tortoiseshell, too. “Here.” He fills a water bowl from the faucet and another with the ground meat he knows to find in the pantry alongside the wolf food. Then he puts them by the refrigerator to entice the cats out, pretending Juney will appear as well, slip into the kitchen from wherever she is hiding and say, “Tariq, you’ve come!” But the last he saw of her, she was being pushed into a police car, screaming for her mother, who lay in a mass of blood.

  Purr is the only one to emerge. She laps the water thirstily and gulps down the food while he waits. Then she looks at him, meowing until he picks her up. Tucking her in the crook of his arm, he strokes her head and carries her outside.