The Wolf Border

by Sarah Hall

  The following week, Left Paw’s radio collar arrives by courier, sent by a Mr R. E. Buke, postmarked Clarkston, Washington. Kyle opens the package and holds up the device to show her, then tosses it onto the office table. The collar has been cut, the transmitter is broken, its electrical chip pried out – probably smashed or doused in solvent. A sudden heaviness enters her, confirmation of the worst.

  They got him, she says.

  Kyle reads the note and relays its information. Mr Buke found the collar lying on the path near the Snake River Bridge. The centre’s address and logo were printed on the inner tag. Perhaps it was tossed from a vehicle travelling on the overpass, he speculates – the spot being notorious for dumping.

  Good of him to send it back, I suppose, she says.

  Kyle looks at her.

  Oh come on. R. E. Buke? Rebuke?

  What. Really?

  Yeah. Tossed from a vehicle, what an asshole.

  He shakes his head, swivels the office chair back towards the computer and the loose stack of envelopes on his desk, and begins to sift through them for hand-addressed ones – possible donations.

  Really? she asks again. That’s a bit too clever, isn’t it? And brazen.

  If you want to try to find him in the Clarkston and Lewiston phone book and write a thank-you note, be my guest.

  He continues sorting the mail. Rachel reaches over and picks up the collar. The strap has been sawn through, some kind of industrial cutter. She hopes to God he was shot, rather than trapped or run over or anything worse. She isn’t angry. The game is stupid and sufferable; she and the other Chief Joseph workers are often agents for the losing side, but she must play the part. She puts the collar down. The Reservation is protected, but there are almost 800,000 acres, with few enough tribal members and settlers that witnesses will be unlikely. The authorities cannot help. Such crimes are seldom prosecuted. Meanwhile, the hunters are good at what they do: they know the movements of the packs, the trailways. And a dispersing male is, for some, the highest prize. She knows the refrain well. Spreading their goddamn scourge. Let them get a foothold and they will be upon you, threatening your livestock, your home, your family. Bullshit, semi-biblical paranoia. Left Paw will be a good trophy. Plenty of taxidermists would agree to the work, even the ones in town with award-winning mounts and sophisticated websites – no need to go to some unlicensed backwoods skinner. The pelt is probably already on display, in a den or hanging on a timber wall, arousing admiration. She picks up the phone, dials the number of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, asks what tags have been turned in. Kyle swivels in the chair, holds up a cheque.

  I have a winner. Five-hundred and eighty-nine dollars and twenty-five cents from the Greer High School charity drive. Go Roosters!

  So the game continues. Some days this is as good as it gets, transforming the prejudices of the next generation. Hearts and minds won by Kyle’s high-school ‘Paw-Talks’, by the eager T-shirted volunteers who steward busloads of children round the visitors’ centre and clear up after their picnics, and by her, the hours spent in the makeshift lab, considering serotonin and keeping the anger down, though it rises like indigestion.

  She likes the routine. The stove burning through cords of wood and the walls of the cabin creaking and clicking as they warm. A young black bear – not hibernating – demolishes the communal bins. On nights when the road is clear they go to Sammy’s, or The Red Barn, or Big Sky Shack, play pool and drink beer, listen to eighties music. The weekly special: venison burger, venison stew, Ma’s Trapper Loaf. They receive Canadian footage of the pack and upload new photographs onto the website. There’s a debate on the website forum about using numbers rather than names. A debate on the forum about the definition of animal intelligence. New portraits of the centre workers are taken, too: Kyle, laconic, his dark eyebrows shadowing his dark eyes. Rachel, actually smiling. Oran, grinning and woollen hatted, looking like a West Coast stoner, which he is. She continues to avoid Oran. It has not lasted with the volunteer, who is sniffling while she works and being comforted by her co-worker. Twice he knocks on her cabin door late at night. She ignores him.

  Late in the month the centre receives another report from the Canadians. Caribou numbers are down: the pack has split to become more effective. The radio signal shows them a hundred miles apart. Christmas arrives. She receives a luxurious card from Annerdale, the paper glossy and gold embossed, and an invitation to join the Earl for drinks at the hall on the morning of the 25th, if she is back in Cumbria for the holiday. On the day itself, while the others are preparing the communal meal, she phones Willowbrook. 10 p.m. GMT. Binny sounds tired, congested, and out of sorts. Lawrence has been there most of the day with Emily, who has no doubt rubbed their mother up the wrong way.

  We could Skype, Binny says. Dora has it on her computer.

  I don’t have a camera on mine, Rachel says.

  Can’t you click it or whatever you do? You’re not working today, are you?

  No. Day off.

  Though she has been rereading her chapter. Binny coughs, coughs again, the phlegm thick-sounding. Finally she clears her throat.

  Have you rung Lawrence?

  I was just about to.

  Ring your brother.

  I was just about to.

  Ring him.

  At the New Year’s party they put tin lanterns up in the office and push the tables against the wall. Rock music hammers from the stereo. She dances with Kyle. She dances with Oran. The volunteers are a couple. There is nothing else for them to do, especially at night. A few friends from town and from the Reservation join the festivities. Kyle’s brother, who came to the last two New Year’s parties, has been sentenced to nine years. White brandy has been brought in from someone’s still, a lethal demi-john. It is eye-wateringly strong, tastes of Vaseline and sour apples, and burns all the way down. Oran is smoking hydroponic weed, heating knives on the hot plate of the boiler. They party hard, one of dozens of groups lost in the woods, getting industrially fucked up. She dances with Kyle again. He does not usually dance. They dance slowly, their closeness unfamiliar, disarming; she thinks, Shouldn’t I know? The brandy is cut with something else maybe, will crystallise her brain or send her blind; she doesn’t care. It strips sense and inhibition. The back of his shirt is damp. She can feel the slow ride of his back. Midwinter’s Law of Misrule. He says something into her hair. The question is unfathomable, or wasn’t a question. Her hands, when she stares at them, are like dead birds on his shoulders. So what, she thinks. Soon everything will end, even the stars. OK, she says, OK. OK.

  Midway through the act she loses concentration or realises the mistake. They begin to move out of unison. They change position – her on top. It does not work. It becomes ridiculous. Slap, slap. Nothing feels right. They stop. Sorry. The failure is humiliating. She kneels and goes down on him, but the sensation of her mouth is too light, or he is impartial, or alcohol has killed their nerves. He pulls her up and kisses her, but she leans away. He turns her round and on her side, takes hold of her hip, locks her neck inside his elbow, which is better. His movements are enormous, too strong, going on until she might break, the chaos of bedding, the bed trying to shift across the floor. Then it is over. Wetness like blood slopping inside. Fumes of liquor and sweat linger in the room.

  When he is unconscious she leaves to go back to her own cabin, through the stiff iced branches. No sound, no wind, the year is too stunned to begin properly. The stars are nailed tight, holding up the enormous black sky. The air is immaculate, too difficult to breathe. She stops and kneels and vomits, acid washing up her throat, her nose and eyes stinging. She feels raw. Under her hands, the ground radiates cold. She lets it creep up through her bones, like an infection. Impossible to think of seasons now, of summer’s spontaneous brush fires, grass so aspirated the reflection from a parked car’s mirror could ignite it. Her hands begin to ache. After a while she stands and walks on through the white branches.

  The following morning there is a pho
ne call from England – the manager of Willowbrook. The line is faint; Rachel is not properly awake. Her head blooms with pain, terrible and frontal. Her mouth tastes evil. The conversation begins murkily – a message from Binny, or something about Binny. In the end the hangover acts as prophylactic for the shock, when everything finally becomes clear. Binny has taken an overdose of aspirin and Amlodipine. She was taken to hospital in Kendal as soon as she was found. She was listed as a DNR. They worked on her until the seizures became too much for her heart. He is sorry to break the bad news, he says. Perhaps he could call back later when she has had a chance to absorb the news? Rachel thanks him. She hangs up. She sits for a moment, in the quiet of the cabin, then looks up her brother’s number and dials it. She does not expect him to answer but he does.

  It’s Rachel. They just rang me.

  Lawrence is too distraught to speak coherently.

  I can’t believe it, he says. She isn’t. Why would she do it?

  Rachel does not say – but she could – because Binny wasn’t a hysteric, because she was a dyed-in-the-wool, high-calibre, selfish bitch. Then again, was the action really so inappropriate, really so bad? Get off the bus when it’s your stop.

  I think maybe it was her plan.

  I don’t understand. She planned it?

  Maybe.

  How do you know?

  Something she said when I was there.

  What the fuck?

  Her brother begins to cry, hard sobs, which he muffles. Rachel’s heart begins to bark and her head swims; she feels as if she will be sick again.

  Why didn’t you warn me? he asks.

  Lawrence, she says. Come on.

  But he is lost in grief. She listens to him weeping, the sound both awful and remote. Emily takes the phone from him. No greeting. No consolation.

  I think we better call you back later, she says. He needs to rest.

  Is he alright?

  Obviously not. His mother just died.

  His mother. As if Rachel were not related, as if she were a stranger to the events. There is little point trying to liaise with Emily. Rachel hangs up. Whether they will call back, she does not know.

  She sits by the ashy stove, a blanket cast around her shoulders, her feet bare and numb on the floorboards. She pictures a pure, clear glass of water, but it seems like a fantasy, out of her reach. The soft layers inside her skull throb. After a time, there is a knock at the door. She does not answer. She hears Kyle’s boots breaking the crust of new snow as he walks away. She gets up and moves cautiously to the kitchen, runs the tap and puts her head underneath it, drinks as much as she can without vomiting. The brandy from the previous night seems to reanimate. The room hazes. She sits by the cold fire, feeling drunk again.

  The manager of Willowbrook calls a second time – the hour late in the UK. He is sorry again for her loss, he says. Dreadfully sorry. Everything was done by the book, interviews have been conducted with staff, there were no signs, such a situation is unusual. Covering his ass, she thinks. Does she have any questions? he asks. She doesn’t. Among the possessions there is an envelope addressed to Rachel from her mother, he says. The care home will post it immediately, of course.

  No. Just open it, Rachel tells him.

  It looks like private correspondence. It’s no trouble to post. I wouldn’t want to intrude.

  She convinces him that it will be simpler this way. Another heavy snowfall is due in Idaho. Postal deliveries may not reach the centre; it could be weeks before anything gets through. There’s a pause, silence. She imagines him sitting at his desk, in lamplight, the envelope being opened, probably with a paperknife, respectfully.

  It’s more of a note, really, he says. I wonder if it mightn’t be better to send it on to you.

  No. Please just read it.

  I’m sure your mother would have wanted you to know how much she loved you, he says. She talked about you all the time. About how proud she was.

  Rachel baulks. His words are excruciating to hear, ludicrous. The comment so blatantly twee and false, it is almost as bad as his breaking the news of the death. This man knew Binny; he knew her proclivities, her disposition. Rachel sits rigidly, waits for it all to be over. The manager clears his throat, then reads.

  Dear Rachel. We all choose. You can come back home now. Binny.

  *

  A polar vortex over North America. The heaviest snow for fifty years, structures locked in ice. January is all drifts; the forest disappears under white cataracts. Bannisters of ice form along the stacked roadside timber. The sky is iron-grey and unforgiving. Idaho exists in a delirium of cold, the number of old people dying soars. The neighbouring states, too, report record snowfalls. The Snoqualmie and Lolo passes remain closed. Avalanches in the Cascades.

  Rachel misses the funeral. She does not send a wreath. She does not supply words of remembrance for the service. Communication has ceased between her and Lawrence, that is to say, between her and Emily, who has assumed control of the proceedings, and after a huge argument on the phone about duty and emotional incapacity, excludes her. She is now fully a criminal in exile. Another hard layer forms around her heart against her brother’s wife. The end ceremony is irrelevant, she tells herself. It is meaningless. What matters is the relationship through life. Would Binny care if she attended? She would not. She tells herself this, pours a drink, opens the cabin window, and leaves it wide until the cold is unbearable.

  The centre winds along at its winter speed. In the evenings the workers play cards, watch DVDs, are sequestered in their cabins reading. Rachel tries to continue with her book chapter, but cannot concentrate. Her mind drifts back to her mother, and New Year’s Eve. Bereavement has displaced any initial awkwardness with Kyle that might have occurred. He is kind to her, gives her space, does not raise the subject. She tries to write a letter to her brother, but she hasn’t the skills, emotional or linguistic, and she is full of bile. Something massive and primary feels as if it has broken. Their connection always seemed pinioned by their mother. So what, she tells herself. Let it go.

  The snow keeps coming, blanking everything. When she walks out in it she can barely see. Days pass, weeks. Thoughts of her childhood: high-stakes weather in the Lowther valley, almost legendary in her imagination, helicopters flying over Lakeland carrying new electricity pylons after storms had brought the others down. She and Lawrence, clad in woollens and wet boots, watching them cut the cables and lay the poles down on the moors, like a game of matchsticks. In the mornings she feels sick and tired, viral; her body knows the wrongness of what has occurred even if her mind won’t metabolise it.

  When the thaw comes, she and Kyle venture out to reposition the cameras by the den site. They drive into the Reservation and then hike seven miles, sharing water, saying little. The ground is turgid, swamp-like. The hardwoods are scarred by black frost, their bark sodden, their deepest membranes still rigid with ice. They labour over the winter debris. There are small new lakes in the forest, melt-water runoff. In the brush a loon stumbles about, lost, directionless. It eyes them, panics, flaps and trips over twigs. Kyle steps away, quietly. Rachel watches the bird for a moment, then follows after him.

  And still, they have not talked about what happened. She is grateful not to have to. It’s her call, she knows; he will wait, perhaps indefinitely, he will not push, and she does not have to think about the meaning of what happened. She could tell herself it was a dream, an altered state, brought on by the moonshine brandy. Nor has Kyle criticised her for not attending the funeral. The only assistance he offered:

  I can get you over to Spokane on the old silver road, if you want to go.

  As if it were simply the snow preventing her. No doubt he would have found a way to the airport, but when she said no, he nodded and left the subject alone, intuiting, perhaps, the difficult navigation of families. His brother has written to him, asking for money to support his girlfriend and baby while he is incarcerated.

  Will you give it? Rachel asks.

>   She’s still dealing from the house, he says. Yeah, I’ll give it.

  The Clearwater River is in spate, hauling debris down from the Bitterroot Mountains, rolling dead branches up along the banks, and ferrying the carcasses of mammals, half-submersed and unrecognisable in the water. There are high reefs of silt. They walk uphill, away from the flood zone, and arrive at the abandoned den. One of the cameras is lurching from its mooring in the tree. There’s no guarantee the dugout will be reused but it has been occupied for three consecutive years, so the chances are good. The root system is sturdy. It is in good repair, even after the hardest of seasons. Kyle reroofs the camera’s shelter. The branches drip and twitch. It is still cold, but the world has softened and will soon bud.

  Rachel sits and watches Kyle hammering the bolts.

  You alright? he asks, without turning.

  Yes.

  But there is a strange heaviness in her, like the beginning of flu. Not sadness exactly. She is not sad about losing Binny. Nor regretful about the nature of their relationship – things couldn’t have been different. Nothing would have changed the dynamic, no more than the elliptical orbit of planets can be altered by human hand. She had the only version of her mother she could have had; Binny had the only daughter. In some ways they were motherless, daughterless. It feels more like an existential malaise of some kind. Sorrow for time, for its auspices, its signification. She feels, for the first time in her life, weary, and old. But that isn’t really it, either. She doesn’t know what’s wrong.

  I think that’ll hold, Kyle says.

  Great.

  Ready to head back?

  Yes.

  Sure you’re OK?

  I’m fine. Tired. Think I need some sun.

  She stands, tries to shake it off. They begin back through the great, dank arboretum.