Season of the Wolf

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “That’s all I’m asking for, Morris,” the mayor said. “That’ll do just fine.”

  11

  George Trbovich had called his wife Gloria from the station to tell her that he’d be a little late getting home. Chief Deeds had made him accompany Howie Honeycutt into the backcountry to bag up Mike Hackett’s remains and haul them to Dr. Steinhilber. He admitted that he didn’t think he’d ever had a worse day on the job. It hadn’t seemed to bother Howie at all, though. Howie had volunteered to go along, and according to George, he’d been chatting and telling jokes and such, all the way up and back. It was all George could do to keep from upchucking, but Howie actually ate some of a sandwich on the way back to town.

  Gloria wasn’t happy about it. Kyle, their eight-year-old, had been home from school all day, running a fever of 101 degrees most of the time. She had been hoping George would get home early so she could have some adult conversation, and maybe a little help getting Kyle fed, bathed, and put to bed.

  Instead, the dinner hour had come and gone. Night had enveloped the valley and the moon was making a valiant effort to rise above the pines. George’s dinner warmed in the oven; if he didn’t get home soon it would be a warm but inedible glob. Kyle was out on the screened back porch, huddled under a blanket watching TV while Gloria did dishes. Toweling off a pot, she stepped to the door and took a peek.

  He was curled on a wicker daybed, bathed in Spongebob’s yellow glow, clutching an Indian-print blanket so tightly to his chin that Gloria worried he would overheat. He had, perhaps unfortunately, inherited his father’s looks. Kyle Trbovich would never be a screen idol. But he had also inherited George’s huge heart and off-the-wall sense of humor, and those things carried a lot more weight than looks. At least, they did with Gloria.

  She went to the cabinet, put the pot away, and returned to the sink, glad he hadn’t seen her watching him. He was going through a strange phase, his desire for independence in constant conflict with the urge to cling ever more tightly to his mother. At the same time, his daddy worship was a powerful force. Sometimes Gloria wondered if she could handle having two cops in the family, because Kyle seemed destined to end up in that profession.

  They lived in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of Silver Gap. Between the house and the woods were a couple of cultivated fields where they raised whatever vegetables would survive the short growing season. Behind the house they kept chickens for eggs and meat in a fenced chicken yard, in which George had built a wooden coop. The door from the porch opened directly into the chicken yard, and as a result it was rarely used; instead, they typically went outside through a mudroom off the kitchen, and into the chicken yard through a gate. The kitchen window faced the backyard, the coop, and a carriage house they used to garage the tractor.

  Gloria was drying the last of the glassware when she saw something dark streak toward the chicken yard. At the same time, the chickens went berserk, squawking and fussing. “Mom!” Kyle screeched from the porch. “There’s a dog in the chickens!”

  “A dog?” Gloria was already on the move, tearing into the mudroom. “Stay there, Kyle!”

  George kept a lever action Winchester in the mudroom, a .22, good for pegging rabbits and not a lot else. But it didn’t make much noise and the recoil wasn’t bad. She snatched it down from its pegs and banged out the door, chambering a round.

  The dog, if that’s what it was, was a huge one. German shepherd, maybe. Bigger than any she had ever seen. It had one chicken by the throat, feathers wafting around it like snow. Other chickens had already fallen victim to it, and more pressed against the fence, shrieking, or were fluttering into the coop.

  Gloria was raising the rifle to her shoulder when the porch door squealed open. “Go away, bad dog!” Kyle screamed. Tears shone on his cheeks as he stomped down the wooden steps.

  The dog dropped the chicken and turned toward the boy. Its lips drew back in a snarl. Its snout was longer than most dogs’, and Gloria recalled with a stab of fear what George had said killed Mike Hackett. Wolves, he’d told her. That’s what we think, anyhow.

  “Kyle!” Gloria cried. “Run! Inside!”

  Her son froze on the steps. The wolf shifted its weight, poised to leap. Gloria pulled the trigger.

  The gun seemed loud in the night, the muzzle’s flash bright. Her round went high, tearing chicken wire on the far side of the yard. The wolf spun around to face her and Kyle took advantage of its distraction. He ran, but not back up the stairs and into the house. Instead, he ran through the chicken yard, fumbling with the chain that held the gate closed, then pounding through it. “Mommy!” he shouted. “It got Clemmie!”

  Clemmie, Kyle’s favorite egg-layer. That was the one the wolf had in its mouth when Kyle came outside.

  “Run, Kyle!” Gloria readied another round, raised the weapon again. The wolf took a couple of steps toward the gate and she fired once more. This one kicked up dirt in front of the yellow-eyed beast. It reared away, then charged through the gate.

  Kyle ran, but toward the trees beyond the yard, not the house. He was screaming, crying, blind to direction or rational thought.

  She took off after him, afraid to turn her back on the wolf but not wanting Kyle to get lost in the shadows. “Kyle! No! Come back!”

  The wolf lunged through the open gate. Feathers skittered in its wake. Gloria fired a third shot, which creased the wolf’s left haunch, even though she held the rifle out in one hand and barely aimed. She raced toward the trees, calling Kyle.

  Just past the first of the big pines, she found him. He had shrunken in on himself, skinny arms wrapped around his lean frame, cheeks glistening with tears and snot. His eyes were wide and unfocused. “Kyle!” She dropped to her knees, throwing the rifle down and putting her arms around him. “Are you all right?”

  He noticed her then, blinked and nodded and sniffed.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’ve got to get home.”

  “O-o-okay.”

  She took his hand and led him toward the house. The last time she had seen the wolf, it had decided against chasing the woman with the rifle. Now she caught another glimpse of it, pausing near the tree line, looking back as if to see if she followed. There was nothing between Gloria and the house except open space, and the wolf was well clear.

  “Go to the house and get inside and lock the door,” she told the boy. “Don’t worry about the chickens. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Mommy…”

  “I’m just going to make sure that wolf doesn’t come back.”

  “But—”

  “Do it, Kyle!”

  He sniffled again, then tore across the yard and up to the kitchen door. As soon as he was in, she went after the wolf.

  That thing had threatened her son.

  She would make sure it never did again. She would aim carefully this time, as George had taught her. One shot in its chest, another in the head, at close range. It was wounded already, maybe bleeding. She’d catch it before long.

  She levered a round into the chamber and entered the woods where she had last seen it.

  12

  As George Trbovich pulled into the drive, a hen wandered into his headlight beams. His fingers clenched on the steering wheel. The chickens were supposed to stay in their yard, and Gloria and Kyle both knew it. Neither would have left the gate open.

  He brought the truck to a shuddering halt and shoved the door open. “Gloria!” he shouted. “Gloria!”

  No one answered except the hen, clucking excitedly in the dust.

  For the drive home, he had taken off his duty belt and put it on the seat next to him. He grabbed it and dashed toward the house.

  The front door was locked. George pounded twice and ran around to the back.

  Kyle stood behind the window in the kitchen door. His face was wet, his eyes rimmed with red, but he looked okay. “Open the door!” George cried.

  “Mom said not to!”

  George’s keys were in his pocket, but getting
them out seemed like too much trouble. He scanned the trees for intruders. The chicken yard gate was wide open, birds everywhere. Something had gotten in there; feathers were scattered across the ground, pasted to pools of blood and a couple of dead hens. “Open it, son!”

  Kyle complied, but slowly, as if in a partial trance. While he waited, anxiety clawing at him, struggling for breath, George buckled on his belt.

  “Kyle,” he said when the door was open. “Where’s your mother?”

  Kyle languidly raised his right arm and formed his fingers into a pointer. “Out there. She went after the dog.”

  “What dog?”

  “The dog that killed Clemmie.”

  “Who?” Then he remembered. Clemmie the hen. “There was a dog?”

  “A big one.”

  The boy’s words were as slow to sink in as he was to speak them. Gloria went into the woods after a dog?

  It wasn’t a dog, though. He understood. Not a dog, but a wolf.

  And his wife had gone after it.

  “Did she take a rifle?”

  “She had a gun. She shot it.”

  “She did?”

  “I heard it cry, and then it ran away.”

  A surge of relief tempered George’s building anxiety. Maybe it was a dog, then, and not a wolf. Maybe Gloria had wounded it, and followed it into the woods to deliver a merciful killing shot. That would be her way.

  “Which way did they go? Exactly.”

  Kyle pointed again, more or less toward the same spot as before.

  “Okay, I’m going to find her,” George said, trying to keep his voice and manner calm. “Lock the door, and stay inside until we get home. Can you do that for me, champ?”

  “’Course, Daddy.”

  “Good. We’ll be back soon.”

  He stepped away from the door, pulling it closed, and waited until he heard the click of the lock.

  If she had shot it with the .22, then it might not be seriously wounded. He returned to the truck and grabbed a 4-cell flashlight from a door pocket. Clicking it on, he trained its beam toward the place Kyle had indicated and started into the darkness.

  The air always smelled sweet around their place, once you got away from the chicken shit. Pines graced the land with natural air freshener, and George loved the warm, loamy scent cast out by fallen needles blanketing the earth. Instead of enjoying it now, he studied the carpet for tracks, drops of blood. He found Gloria’s trail right away, and he tilted his head toward the sky and screamed out her name.

  Only the night sounds of the forest answered him.

  He stayed on the trail. Once his eyes adapted, he was able to make out the wolf’s tracks—he wanted to believe it was a dog, but he couldn’t—and hers, and the occasional splash of dark liquid that let him know the beast was still bleeding.

  After five minutes he called her again. He had to be moving faster than she had; she was no skilled tracker, and she had only the faint trail of an injured animal to follow, while he had the big streaks and scuffs left by her shoes. Until they married, she had been a city girl, and though eleven years in rural New Mexico and then Silver Gap had put a patina of country on her, it hadn’t made her into a hunter. George had been raised in the country, brought up with shooting and tracking. In his professional life he hunted people, and in his free time he hunted game.

  He kept going. His flashlight cut a funneled swath through the darkness, around which soared the big trees, whispering their disapproval in the breeze. Every now and then, he caught a glimpse of stars in the night sky. He shouted for Gloria again, and this time he heard a reply.

  “Again!” he cried. “Gloria!”

  He heard her call to him once more, and he dashed through the trees. Limbs snagged at his uniform, clawed his face and hands. She kept shouting and he followed her voice, and in another minute, his light picked her out of the gloom.

  “Gloria!” He sprinted to her, crashed into her, careful to keep his weapon pointed away. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. I’m fine, baby.” She returned his squeeze, then shifted the rifle out from between them. “I just…that thing pissed me off so much. It almost went for Kyle. I didn’t want to let it live to attack us again.”

  “Is it really a wolf?”

  “It’s a big one.” She held her left hand out, palm parallel to the ground, about three feet up. “So high. Solid.”

  “Kyle said you shot it.”

  “I winged it. It’s close by somewhere—I was hearing it whimpering when you called. I think it’s dying.”

  George realized with a start that she had nothing in her hands except the rifle. “You’ve been tracking it without a light?”

  “I know, I should’ve brought one. Stupid. I wasn’t that far behind it, and I could hear it most of the time.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  Her lips parted and her gaze sought his, then lowered to the ground. “Thank you.”

  “Here,” he said, pressing the flashlight into her hand and drawing a smaller one from his duty belt. He pointed back over his shoulder. “You took kind of a roundabout route but if you go straight that way you’ll be home in no time.”

  “By myself?”

  “You got here by yourself,” he pointed out. “I’ll stay out here and finish the thing off. Call the station and have them send a couple of guys out here with lights and guns, just in case. I’ve got my radio.”

  “You sure?”

  “Babe, Kyle’s home by himself. He locked the door, but you know that kid…he’s as likely to come looking for us as he is to stay put.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So go. Hurry. I’ll be fine.”

  “You want the rifle?”

  He showed her his Glock 9-mil. “It’s already wounded. I’ll be okay with this.”

  Gloria kissed him and started for home, flashlight illuminating her way. She was only about ten minutes away, if she took the straight shot instead of winding all over creation.

  Once the racket of her passage had faded, he listened for the wolf she’d said was whining. He wanted to wrap this up quick. It had been a hellishly long day, most of it spent in the woods, and all he wanted was a cool one and a meal and maybe some TV.

  13

  “She’s asleep, Doctor.”

  Dr. Steinhilber stood in the doorway, bidding goodbye to a couple of the visitors. He acknowledged Deborah’s whisper with the slightest nod. “Is that all of them, Mrs. Morgenstern?”

  “I’ll check.” Deborah made a pass through the living room and the kitchen. The bathroom door was open, but she glanced inside. Nobody else was downstairs. They had left casserole dishes, two pies, a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and a dish of salad big enough to feed a dozen rabbits. She understood the impulse—she had done it herself, when a neighbor’s family had suffered a loss—but how on God’s green earth these people believed that Marie Hackett could eat so much food before it spoiled was beyond her. The poor woman hadn’t eaten all day and probably would barely peck at a meal for months to come. She wasn’t that big to begin with, just a slip of a thing.

  Deborah Morgenstern lived just down the road. She and Henry had never had children of their own, and since Henry was gone, she had more or less adopted the Hacketts, stand-ins for her own nonexistent family. She was their nearest neighbor, since the Fellowes family had moved away early in the year. The FOR SALE sign still ruled a corner of the yard, but it had a decided lean to it, and no one had been around to straighten it for some time. Deborah had been mostly living at Marie’s since Mike took missing, and Dr. Steinhilber had appointed her her neighbor’s keeper.

  He was closing the door as she returned. Outside, she heard the crunch of tires on gravel as the last car pulled away. “They’re all gone,” she announced.

  “Thank God. They mean well, I know. But one of them’s nosier than the next. I thought they were going to start going through her mail. And maybe her underwear drawer.”

  Deborah’s face heated up and
she knew she had gone crimson. A doctor had to be matter-of-fact about all sorts of things, she knew, and Dr. Norman Steinhilber seemed to take pride in saying things to shock the people of Silver Gap. She found him entertaining, if sometimes a bit hard to take. But she knew what he meant about the people he had just shooed away.

  “They’ve brought far too much food,” she said, leading him into the kitchen. “She’ll never eat it all. You should take some.”

  “I just might,” he said. “It’s a pity Henry’s gone. He did love a good casserole, I seem to recall.”

  Henry, her husband. Dead nine years now. Dr. Steinhilber had been at his bedside when he went. “He did, at that.”

  “Then there’s the Mitchell family,” he said. “Those three kids always look underfed. I could take a dish or two over there. If you don’t think Marie would miss them.”

  The Mitchells lived on the edge of town. If Silver Gap had ever had a railroad, they would have lived on the wrong side of it. They were the worst sort of trash, Deborah thought. For all she knew, Kelly Mitchell fed his family by trapping rats in the woods. His common-law wife Bernice was barely out of her teens, and seemed to be with child more often than not. And Dr. Steinhilber wanted to feed them? “You are full of Christian charity, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that I’d characterize it that way,” he said. “But I won’t argue with you.”

  “Take whatever you like,” she told him. “I’m sure Marie and I will have more than enough.”

  “You’re going to spend the night?”

  “I’ll sleep on the sofa down here. It folds out.”

  “Good. I don’t want her to wake up alone. Not that I expect her to wake up for a good long while. What I gave her would knock out a rhino.”

  “I’ll be here, Doctor.”