Sister Wolf

by Ann Arensberg

  “That’s your ploy. Your little flames never know your address. He would come and find me.”

  “I got caught once,” said Lola. “Did I tell you about young Neetsie?”

  “Awf. Pfoof.” Marit spluttered her coffee. “Is that prep-school for Anita?”

  “Her nose was so perfectly snub.” Lola was musing. “There she was, two months after I’d killed it, waiting for the same train at the North Adams Station. She fell at my feet and wrapped her arms around my ankles. She had long hair, too. Mary Magdalene. Very poor taste.”

  Marit was laughing and nodding and coughing. Some of the coffee had gone down her windpipe. The story came back to her now. Lola had stepped daintily out of her shoes and walked to a taxi, leaving Anita weeping into a pair of patent-leather pumps with flat bows.

  Solidarity was running high at Lola’s kitchen table. Did she need anyone else in the world, with Lola for a cohort? When they could laugh together like this, every hurt that she was feeling faded and scaled down to size. Laughter aired out her brain and blew away must and shadows, so that she could think like a sensible person whose days had purpose.

  Sometime this summer the ponds in the heart of the sanctuary, which were choked with algae, must be dragged with a fine-toothed rake, and arrowhead planted around the shoreline to keep the water clear. The hackberries along the south traverse were crowding and dying. With the help of Herb Frechter, she had to mark and ring the trees which could not be saved. Somewhere by the entrance she had seen a cluster of poisonous red-capped amanitas. She must call Joe Miller, at the zoo, to see if the mushrooms had an odor which would stop an animal from eating them. The sanctuary was a school, and there was more to learn than she could master in a lifetime.

  “I have to get on with my day,” she said to Lola. “The poor dog is still in his pen; it makes him frantic.”

  “Well, you’re not frantic.” Lola kissed her goodbye. “That’s all I care about. Don’t rob any more graves without me, you hear that, missy?”

  Marit raised the middle finger of her left hand for an answer, and banged out the door. She ran down the staircase and jumped to the ground from the seventh step. Inside the jeep, she gunned the motor and played a farewell salute on the horn. Her rattly chariot felt as smooth and responsive as a winged horse. Route 37 was the long way home, ending up on the Old Road boundary of her land. It wound through hills, unlike new 22, but she chose it because she liked taking curves. She had her nerve and her power back, and the sun on her face. Work and love were reconcilable in the sunlight. Her mistakes were pardonable.

  Her first image of Gabriel appeared to her, with the beak and the eye of an eaglet, proud and short, and as fierce as she was, but addicted to mildness. Gabriel made himself perform feats of moral calisthenics in order to hold his nature in check. Her own demons wore nursery faces in the daylight; nothing had happened when she let them loose, no depletion that youth and health could not make up for. She knew that she frightened Gabriel because he sensed their kinship; he did not condemn her except to keep rein on himself. If she saw him so clearly, it made no sense to leave him. From this pinnacle of energy and high spirits, attacks of jealousy seemed like hazing rites that any pledge to love’s fraternity must endure.

  As she drove on she counted off the only man-made landmarks along the road: the riding stable, the Hoe-Bowl alleys (boarded up), the brick laundry houses at the far edge of the Meyerling property, and the cyclone fence, topped with four tiers of electrified barbed wire, that enclosed her own land and its wild tenants. Or almost enclosed it. She had one job to do that took precedence over clearing algae and ringing trees. For several hundred yards between herself and the Community, in the northeast corner, the only boundary was a natural one: Yoke Pond, the deepest spring-fed body of water in the county, lying at the bottom of an ancient wood, which had never been cleared or cut for lumber since the first white settlements. Wolves will rarely swim, and the wood ran straight uphill, but every day that she delayed installing a fence in this section raised the odds of their discovery.

  Beyond the point where her land began, the Old Road was unimproved. Marit had petitioned to have the bumps and potholes left as they were to discourage traffic. The township made no objection to its largest landowner’s whim, since it saved tax dollars. It took two hands on the wheel to steer around the pits and to avoid the ditch on the fenced-in side, which was widening yearly. Marit kept her eyes fixed just ahead of her. She did not expect to have to deal with a car from the other direction. The trees were so tall, and the shrubs so thick, that the road was crisscrossed with shadows. She turned on the bright headlamps to help her see.

  She did not expect to see a man lunge into the road from the sanctuary side, caught in the beam of her lights and stumbling toward cover, carrying a rifle over his head like a soldier fording a stream. For several yards he ran in the open, alongside the road; then he dove for the bushes, using his gun to force his way through. As she pressed her foot down on the gas pedal she still had a bead on him by the rippling and shaking of the underbrush and the cracking of twigs. If she thought she could run him down, she was spared the temptation; by the time the speedometer read thirty-five, the thickets were still. He had veered off through the trees and would be lost in a field of horse corn.

  Marit brought the jeep to a halt with its nose pointed into some briars. For a moment she was strung up between horrors; she thought that she had seen a box with knobs and a speaker attached to the man’s belt. Were there snipers still in the preserve who could talk by radio? She had a vision of Swan. Swan was dead. She saw him, as clear as prescience; she saw a hole between his eyes, gray fluid draining from the hole, not red like the blood staining his flank, where a second bullet had pierced him. The gunfire had caught him heading downhill. Gravity flung him over and over until he rolled to the level ground in a dried-up gully, thrown on his side, his neck whipped back as if it were broken, his lip pulled up, baring his teeth in a kind of sneer. Pictures of carnage came to her so fast and red, reel after reel of wasted animal bodies, synchronized with the hollow boom of rifle shot, that Marit had no mind left to call on reason, to wage debate between what she might be imagining and what foretelling.

  Persons who give in to extremes of emotion get no credit for grace under pressure, or for acts of courage or daring committed in a transport. Those honors go to the straight-backed and imperturbable, not to reeds-in-the-wind or extravagants like Marit Deym. No one would commend her now for closing the doors of the jeep and remembering to pocket the key. No one would note the steadiness of her breathing or remark on her rhythmic pace as she crossed the road. There was no one to watch as she reached for a hold on the cyclone fence and thrust the toes of her sneakers into the diamond-shaped holes made by the links, as she climbed sure and cat-like twelve feet up until her waist was even with four electrified rows of barbed wire, which were vertically aligned, not tilted forward as in prison fences. There were no witnesses, so her record for immoderacy would never be balanced by the calculated risk that she was going to take.

  She got one leg over the wire, nearly brushing the barbs. For an instant she swayed on the fence, straddling the wire, holding her arms straight out from her shoulders like a tightrope walker trying out the rope. The next moment she was lying on the ground, stunned by a fall that had started as a jump when one toe, rammed too tight between the links, had caught and thrown her backward into a half gainer. How she had twisted out of a dive in that short descent, to save her head and spine, she would not remember. A long time passed before she remembered anything.

  She must have knocked her head, because her head was pounding. The second thing that she felt was a pain in one of her ankles; the third, that the left one was hurting, not the right one. Her body came back alive in bits and pieces: a wrist, a thigh, a buttock, and then their opposites. She became aware of two hands and a pair of feet and she flexed them slowly. There was still a no-man’s-land between her pelvis and her neck; she opened her eyes, looked
down, and reclaimed her torso. She knew that she was breathing by the rise and fall of her chest, or the material covering her chest, her old blue shirt. “I am banged up but good” she thought with her thinking brain. Then she formed her lips to say “Swan”: she had powers of speech.

  Some time before dark she might get around to moving, or trying to move. The sun was warm and many birds were singing. The grass felt as soft as a pillow, or perhaps it was her body that was cottony and resistless. Thoughts floated up through her mind like bubbles released from a clamshell buried in sand. She had never been able to rest except under enforcement, or to lie down on her bed without a pile of books. If she tried to sleep in the daytime, she would hear her heartbeat drumming. It frightened her. Watching the sand drain out of the top of the egg timer frightened her. Every wristwatch she had owned got wet, overwound, or smashed. She could never be still in an upright position, either; she stalked like a houseless ghost, making work for her hands. Luba would chide her from her throne of cushions: “You have no repose.” And now she was lying on the ground, or floating, without complaint, given up to the blue of heaven. The only organ that was not yet functioning was her will.

  The kiss of life was administered by a deerfly. He landed on her nose and bit into the skin. Marit was up like a shot, swearing and hopping in circles. She had slapped the bridge of her nose, not the fly, with the band of her signet ring. The commotion she made was having an effect on the landscape, as if nature were responding in its fashion to her yelps and pains. The mountain laurel was rocking, its pink flowers hobbling; the wind was blowing through a patch of ferns, except that there was no wind. Marit stopped her dancing, rooted by amazement. That bush with the round red berries was whining and barking. That bush had grown a long gray snout and a hairy tail.

  She held out her arms and laughed with relief and joy.

  “Who is in there?” she called. “Which ones? Did you come to save me?”

  For an answer, the larger bushes rustled and shook. There was a flash of red through the laurel, the rusty-red of a fox’s coat. Two brown shapes, thin and loopy, streaked out from behind the ferns—the mated minks, who were heading down to the pond. There was the crashing sound of branches trampled by heavier animals, making their way through the shrubbery back to the safe dim woods. One of the animals had seen her lying stunned on the ground, and she knew which one. He had spread the word to the others and they had gathered for a rescue or a vigil. He must have signaled that their work was done, now that she was on her feet again and lively.

  Their leader was still at his post, the last to leave. For one instant his head poked out. The gray muzzle, flecked with white hairs, and the one walleye belonged to the oldest wolf, Swan. Marit bowed from the waist, as if he were able to read this act of deference. By the time she had raised her head he was gone, like the others.

  St. Francis of Assisi would have bid the beasts into the open. He would have made them lie down and extend their paws for his touch. He would have caused them to be still while he spoke a blessing over them, or enjoined them not to harry the countryside for food. Marit was born with money, like St. Francis; she had no other qualifications for making miracles. Saints love all creatures equally; Marit loved animals better than human beings. It was no miracle that the animals had rallied around to help her; it was a tendency in their nature, and it spoke of their worth, not hers. Animals were innocent. They were not bad when they lunged and bit in pain or fear, or good when they fetched a slipper or came to heel. Those were human standards, devised for training children.

  Nikolai had been raised by children’s rules for his protection, since he must live in the world with people. Nikolai would be battering the sides of his pen. It was noon, by the sun overhead, and he had missed two feedings. Marit had half an hour’s jog through the sanctuary before she could free him. She would ask Lola to drive her back to the road to retrieve the jeep.

  Between three and five on weekend afternoons, teachers and counselors at Meyerling entertained guests of the other sex in their own rooms, which were furnished like little suites, with a sofa and armchairs. Daisy Fellowes had a miniature icebox; Rennie Gaines, the spiritual director, had a tufted kneeler; and Gabriel had a pair of badly foxed bird prints; but the most important fixture of any teacher’s room was the doorstop supplied by the Community, a brick covered in various calicoes by a previous cook. The brick doorstops had their own code life: the open position meant that the occupant was holding office hours; halfway open, that he was having a private talk; three-quarters shut, that he was working; fully closed, that he was dressing, undressing, or sleeping. This unwritten code was for the discipline of the teachers, since the blind children treated halfway and three-quarters as fully open. So did the Head Teacher, Henry Dufton, most of the time, although he could only claim to be legally blind. “We are a family,” Mr. Dufton liked to say; “we must not keep little secrets from each other.”

  News of a visitor spread within minutes of his or her arrival. Gabriel lived in the last room but one at the end of a corridor. The room at the far end was a locked linen closet, and the only room across the hall from his was unoccupied during the summer. So far, Marit had counted five faculty people passing by and glancing in, undisturbed by the fact that they had no excuse except inquisitiveness for being in that part of the hall. After the third passerby, she had taken off her sneakers and arranged her chair so that all they would see through the half-open door were her naked feet, calves, and knees. There was no point in letting them go away unrewarded.

  When Marit had reached her house at midday, she had found Gabriel sitting on the back steps. If hats had been the fashion, he would have been waiting for her hat in hand. He had enough sense not to speak to her immediately, since she was red in the face from running, and breathing hard. He followed her into the kitchen, where she cut up round steak for Nikolai, and followed her outside again while she opened the malamute’s pen. Nikolai jumped up to lick Marit’s face, fell on his food dish, wheeled back to nudge his mistress, remembered his dish of raw meat—Gabriel stood by until this frenzy of welcome had died down. Then he asked her very shyly, like a village swain, if she would come to have tea in his room that afternoon. He was on back-up duty all weekend, and he had something important to say to her. Fresh from a miracle, Marit watched him without interest. He hesitated when he spoke. His hands were clasped behind his back. In some scenarios he would have produced a little pasteboard ring box. Only after he had left, or, in fact, had bowed his way out, did she remember that she had considered sending him away.

  Two mugs were sitting on the coffee table in Gabriel’s room. Marit had finished her tea, but Gabriel’s mug was full, and she was alone. The crafts counselor had slipped on wet clay and broken her wrist, and Gabriel was even now letting her substitute into the blind maze, a series of rooms in the basement that were fitted out like a small apartment. All he had to do was to tie a black scarf over the new woman’s eyes and instruct her that she would be left there for two hours, with the lights out, during which time she was to take a bath, change into garments that were hanging in one of the closets, find the icebox, and make herself a sandwich, half of which she must leave as evidence of her effort. There was a radio in one of the rooms, but almost none of the initiates ever found it.

  Gabriel peered around the door before coming in, as if he expected Marit to be spitting tacks or to be vanished.

  “That was a long one,” she said, with a pleasant smile.

  “She balked,” said Gabriel. “I think she’s going to cheat.”

  “How can you tell when they haven’t cheated?” asked Marit, trying to keep a good interviewer’s distance from her subject.

  Gabriel glanced out into the hallway before he answered. He lowered his voice. “Blobs of mayonnaise on the floor.”

  Then he met her eyes and laughed at himself for whispering. Marit reached for his hand and steered him into the chair across from her. For the moment she had the advantage, and she enjoyed it. Perh
aps they could build a friendship out of the romantic rubble.

  “There is enough pietistic nonsense floating around here to start a church.” She was kind enough to keep her voice from carrying.

  “Hold on,” said Gabriel. “How can you be effective with blind people if you have no insight into being blind?”

  “Oh, wonderful. Admirable. There are monks who sleep in coffins so that they can get insight into being dead.”

  “Dufton may be a turkey, but he’s a genius with children.” Gabriel bit his lip, a sure sign that his temper was rising.

  “Then everyone who works here should be blind. The maze is a halfway measure. Put out their eyes instead.”

  Gabriel grew mild. He had decided to practice nonviolence. “Is there some reason why the subject of blindness makes you uncomfortable?”

  A flicker of hostility loosened Marit’s tongue. “What are they, in the first place? A bunch of overprivileged kids: they could be blind or green.”

  “I agree,” answered Gabriel. “Blindness is a privilege.”

  Neither one of them heard Daisy Fellowes coming, although she walked with an echo, like a storm trooper. Miss Fellowes never knocked and never apologized. The only grammatical mood that she used was the imperative.

  “You have a guest, Gabriel,” she announced. She also talked with an echo. “Miss Deym will have to excuse us. There is a fight in the five tent.”

  “John?” asked Gabriel, but she had already marched away.

  Marit opened her mouth to protest, but she cut herself short. Gabriel raised his palms and shrugged, a gesture of resignation that he had picked up in Cuba. He was hovering at the doorsill, pulled toward her and pulled away from her, pleading without a word. She took him by the shoulders, pointed him down the hall, and gave him a little shove to get him started.

  Marit stretched out on the couch with her fingers linked behind her head, smiling at her endless flexibility. She did not feel for a second—or perhaps for a second, but the feeling did not hold—that Gabriel’s calls to duty were an act of desertion or disrespect. Up, down, up, down: how busy he was, like a jack-in-the-box coiled to jump when the lid was opened. The jack springs up, head waggling, smiling his painted-on smile, but Gabriel had looked bothered and rebellious, and gone forth to his tasks glancing backward. He wore the institutional life like a hair shirt; at the moment it seemed that the shirt was drawing blood. Just before he went padding after Daisy Fellowes, Marit had seen a wild look in his eyes, as if his eyes had come loose and were rolling in their sockets. Captured birds had that look as well, and hawks who are given over to a novice handler.