The Wolf Path

by Judith Van GIeson

At the end of the movie, he stood on the stage with his hands on his hips. His wary eyes circled the auditorium, but he didn’t seem to find what he was looking for. “I hope that movie gave you something to think about,” he said. “I won’t be a bit surprised if I get hassled after the program by the local sheriff who, I hear, is not crazy about wolves. If anybody wants to stick around and be a witness, your help would be appreciated. Now … any questions?”

  A pale, skinny boy wearing a baseball cap turned backwards and a black Anthrax T-shirt that advertised either a rock group or a livestock disease leapt to his feet so quickly that it looked as if he’d sat through the rest of the program just to get to this. “I got a question,” he said. “I want to know why she …” he pointed to Jayne, “won’t let anybody go to the falls no more.”

  Jayne gave the boy a hard smile. “The ranch is still my private property.”

  The boy was not impressed by smiles, good looks or property rights either. “We’ve been swimming there since we were kids and the people that owned the place before you never cared about private property.”

  “Well, I do,” Jayne shrugged.

  “You got something to hide?” the boy asked.

  The bright color in Jayne’s cheeks didn’t come from blush on. “I have nothing to hide but if I want to keep people off my land I’ve got the right. The deed has my name on it, nobody else’s.”

  Another boy stood up beside the first one, wearing a similar Anthrax-and-jeans uniform. He had wheat-colored bangs that flopped in his eyes. “It’s the only place to swim for fifty miles. We’re not members of some country club, you know.”

  Jayne’s charm—like her lip gloss—was slick, bright and starting to wear off. “Get under a hose for all I care. Your rights end where my property begins,” she snapped, “and no one gets on my ranch without my permission. You got it? No one.” It may have been an acceptable point of view in California, where every undeveloped piece of land was protected like the gold mine it was expected to become, but Soledad was a long way from California and a long way from gold.

  Juan raised his hands. “Hey, folks, come on, lighten up. Siri’s picking up on the bad vibes.” Sirius had, in fact, begun pacing anxiously. “I’ll tell you what, let’s all have a good howl to calm everybody down.” Juan threw his head back and let out a long, expressive “aaahoooo.”

  “Aaahoooo,” the kids chimed in, louder and louder, entering into the spirit, except for the Anthrax boys who turned tail and walked out.

  “Aaahoooo,” said I. It beat primal screaming or being yelled at in a crowded motel ballroom by some ESThole. Someday a New Age entrepreneur would probably make a bundle traveling across the country giving howling workshops.

  Sirius was not impressed. All howling meant to him was that he didn’t have to perform any more, the program was over. He padded to the door and waited to be let out.

  ******

  “That went well,” I said to Juan as we walked across the parking lot toward the battered van that he and Sirius traveled the country in. “I didn’t notice anybody in the audience who looked like they were getting ready to arrest you.” Jayne followed behind us, holding the wolf’s leash and talking to him all the while. A group of Upward Bound students followed her. One of them reached out and patted Sirius.

  “He’s so soft,” the girl said.

  “Now remember,” Juan answered. “He’s your friend, but he’s not a pet.”

  “He’s a great guy,” Jayne said, “but awfully quiet. Is he always that quiet, Juan?”

  “Pretty much.” Juan said to her and then to me, “It’s not over till I’m out of Soledad. Believe it. The police are too smart to take Sirius away in front of a bunch of school kids. That’s why I don’t arrive until the program starts and I don’t advertise where I am staying, either.”

  Victim mind? Paranoia? Caution? Wisdom? I hadn’t decided yet. Paranoids have real enemies, too, but a sure sign of losing touch is attributing superior intelligence to them. I don’t often give small- town law enforcement officials a lot of points for brains; stubbornness maybe, brains no.

  When we reached the van, Juan opened up the side door and Sirius leapt in. The back of the van was his home, and chain link separated him from the driver and passenger seats. Juan turned on the engine and the air conditioner. It was too hot to be sitting in a car in a fur coat.

  “You’ll be staying at the ranch, won’t you?” Jayne asked me. “Good. I’ve got some local people coming over later who Juan wants to educate about wolves.” She threw up her hands. “Me, I think it’s impossible to change minds around here, but Juan insists on trying.”

  “You won’t know if you don’t try,” Juan said.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know these people as well as I do. I’ve got my truck so why don’t you follow me on back to the ranch.”

  “Okay,” I said, but as I turned toward the Nissan, a police car drove up, parked and disgorged the local sheriff.

  “Here it comes,” said Juan, shaking a weary head. “I knew it.”

  “Bastard,” whispered Jayne.

  The sheriff was wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. There was a lot of him and the exertion of pulling the bulk from one hot place to another was producing sweat—in buckets.

  “That’s a wolf you’ve got in there, isn’t it?” he said, indicating the van. “You need a permit to bring a wild animal into Soledad County.”

  I handed it to him. “Here it is.”

  “And who might you be? “ he asked.

  “Neil Hamel,” I replied. “Juan’s lawyer. The permit is in order.”

  “Um,” said the sheriff, replacing his Ray-Bans with a pair of reading glasses and taking the time to study the fine print, the punctuation and the spaces between the lines, too.

  “Maybe there’s a place for him in our program,” joked one of the Upward Bound kids.

  “Do you think he’s smart enough?” whispered another.

  The sheriff eyed the kid over the top of his glasses, then went back to his reading. “It’s completed all right,” he said begrudgingly, “but how do I know that this here wolf”—he looked toward the van—“is the same as this wolf?” he rattled the papers in his hand. “I think I’m going to have to bring him in and have the vet look him over to be sure.”

  “That wolf belongs to me. You’ve got no right to bring him anywhere,” Juan said.

  “It would be an illegal seizure,” said I.

  “If you don’t cooperate I’ll have to call the vet in to tranquilize him.”

  “Tranquilize him?” Juan said. “You mean kill him, don’t you? You watch, kids, if he tranquilizes Siri, the next time we see him he’ll be dead. ‘Too bad we miscalculated the dose,’ they’ll say. That’s the way they work and they’ve done it before.”

  The kids hung around the door of the van. “Lighten up, dude,” one of them said.

  The sheriff sputtered, Jayne looked at her watch, a car flew across the parking lot, spinning gravel as the driver braked to a stop and hopped out. He ran toward us, the cameras hanging from his neck flapping, tape recorder in hand.

  “Tom Charleton, Soledad Times,” the reporter said, pushing the record button.

  “I should have known you’d show up,” grumbled the sheriff.

  “It’s about time,” said Jayne, but she smiled as she said it, the confident smile of someone whose plan had worked. You had to wonder why people so skilled at getting the press and the public for free were wasting their money on a lawyer.

  “If you take that wolf I’ll be taking photographs of you doing it. If you have it tranquilized, I’ll have to photograph that, too,” Tom Charleton said.

  “Now Sheriff, do you want to see a picture of yourself in the paper tomorrow, taking away the animal who has been an inspiration to these kids who are trying so hard to improve their lives?” Juan said.

  “That animal’s a troublemaker and a killer,” replied the sheriff. “The wolf’s no inspiration for nob
ody except to make more trouble for law-abiding citizens. You keep that animal locked up, you hear. He gets loose and you’re going to be answering for it.”

  “Yessir,” one of the students giggled. But it was hard to tell which student. The sheriff tried but he couldn’t do it, so he turned on his heel and walked away.

  “Thanks, kids, and you, too, Tom,” Jayne said.

  “It’s news,” said Tom. “I’d like to come out to the ranch tomorrow and get some pictures of you and the wolf,” he said to Jayne.

  “No problem,” said Jayne. “Call me.”

  “Aaahoooo,” one of the kids started to howl, and another picked it up until they were all howling. Sirius did not answer.

  3

  JAYNE’S RANCH WAS close enough to town for her to get in every day if she wanted to and she had a big 4 x 4 truck to do it in. It had the tires and springs necessary to cushion the ranch-road blows. She led the way down her dusty road, Juan and Sirius followed in the van and I followed them. She took the bumps a hell of a lot easier than the elephantine van or the pint-sized Nissan, which had toy tires and no shock absorbers that I noticed. Every rock in the road made a lasting impression on my butt. Jayne sped away while we crawled over the top of one rut, down a valley, up the next. She was putting miles between us, but no one was in any danger of getting lost; the road didn’t go anywhere else and the cloud of dust she stirred up would be visible from the next county.

  The road was only three miles long, but it felt like a hard thirty. The ranch buildings were a mirage. I could see them (when Jayne’s dust storm didn’t cloud the view) but it was hard to believe I would ever reach them. It had probably been a completely isolated spot at one time and on two sides it still was; the spiky Soledad Mountains were on the east, the south was ranch desert that rolled across the horizon. The highway over the pass was probably the northern boundary and the sprawl of suburban Soledad marked the west. To a Californian urban sprawl meant real estate investment and I had to wonder if that was why Jayne had bought the place—the proximity to development. As we got closer it began to look like a desert paradise, the kind of place that Conservation Committees lusted after and that should never be broken up. The house and outbuildings were nestled in close to the mountains. There must have been some water near the house because there were trees shading it, not big trees, but trees. A pen held a bunch of horses and they collected at the near end of it under the trees. Jayne waited while Juan and I parked our vehicles and got out. The air was pure and still, the hundred-mile view went beyond Soledad into the next county. The birds in the chamisa sang a happy song.

  “You’ve found paradise this time, babe.” Juan said.

  “You know what paradise means to me, don’t you?” she smiled and rested her hand, briefly, on his arm. “I can ride every day.”

  Up close you could see that paradise needed home improvements; the barns lacked paint, adobe slid off the walls of the house. Houses require maintenance, adobes more than most. If you didn’t pay attention, a couple of good hailstorms could pelt your walls off, and this was the season for it. This place was a kind of desert paradise, like Juan had said, but it wasn’t a place I’d want to live in alone (and I like living alone); too much solitude (I don’t consider horses good company), too much work. I didn’t know how much time Jayne spent in solitude, but I could see she hadn’t been doing the work.

  Jayne went inside to get ready for the meeting. Juan led Siri over to the tennis court and I followed him. The court, which was hidden from the house by a shed and some trees, was as neglected as the rest of the property. The sagging net was ripped, the all-weather surface had cracked and weeds were poking through. It’s a tough weed that can break through pavement and survive without water. The chain-link fence was still intact, however, which made the court good enough for Juan’s purposes.

  “I always look for a tennis court when I get to a new town,” he explained. “It’s a great place for Siri to run around and it’s about the only place you’ll find in most towns that’s got walls high enough to hold him. A wolf can jump an eight-foot fence from a standstill.” He led Sirius onto the court and shut the gate and the two of them began to play. Juan threw a tennis ball and Sirius chased it. The ball bounced, the wolf pounced like a stiff-legged dog and, like a lot of dogs, although he wanted Juan to throw it again he didn’t want to give the ball back. The love Juan had for Sirius was palpable, but it was tough love. He treated the wolf with discipline and respect; he didn’t baby him. I leaned my shoulder against the fence and thought about what makes a wild animal so irresistible. A large part of it has to be their furriness. I wondered if it was some deeply buried genetic memory of a time way back when we were furry (or at least hairy), too. When I see fur like that I want to touch it and then I want to bury myself in it.

  Off in the distance a dust devil made its way up the road and at the center of the swirling storm was a truck, which became visible once it parked and the dust settled down. It wasn’t much of a truck, your basic brown model that had humped a bunch of bad roads. The bed was closed in like a camper. A man stepped out and wandered over to visit. He looked like a cowboy in jeans, boots, a Western shirt—a cowboy with ulcers. He had the sour expression that goes with an acidic stomach. His hair was gray and thin, and he looked to be middle to late fifties, a few years older than Sololobo, about the same height, although more tense and wiry. His skin, which was probably naturally white, was suntanned, deeply lined and weathered. His neck was scaly as an old turtle’s. That’s the way Anglo skin gets in the Southwest when people don’t use sunscreen. His cheek twitched sporadically as if a cricket had gotten under his skin and was itching to get back out. His right hand, scarred and crippled, hung limp at his side.

  He offered his left hand to me. “Norman Alexander,” he said.

  I took it. “Neil Hamel.”

  “Let’s see, you’re probably not a rancher so you must be a biologist or an environmentalist.”

  “Lawyer,” I said.

  “I suppose they’ve become as necessary at environmental meetings as everyone else.”

  “S’pose so.”

  Juan had walked up to the other side of the fence from where we stood. Sirius chased the tennis ball. I was curious to see how he would introduce himself. “Juan Sololobo,” he said, reeling off the name without a trace of embarrassment.

  Norman Alexander looked at the wolf. “How old is he?” he asked. “Two?”

  “That’s right,” said Juan.

  “They’re still quite playful at that age. Where did you get him?”

  A suspicious glaze was slipping over Juan’s pale eyes. “You’re not with the government, are you?”

  Norman’s cheek jumped. “Not anymore, and even if I were still employed I wouldn’t be working for the branch that would bother you. I was a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist in Alaska before I retired, and I did a lot of research on wolves. Do you think Jayne would have invited me here if I intended to arrest you?”

  “I didn’t know that Jayne had invited you,” Juan said, but he was visibly relieved, relieved enough to open the gate, come outside and shake Norman Alexander’s hand. “I’ve been breeding wolves at my place in California off and on for about twenty years. I try to breed for sociability. This program wouldn’t work if I had a wolf who didn’t like people.”

  “I’d get him a companion, if I were you, maybe a dog,” said Norman Alexander. In the court the wolf was ignoring us and playing with the ball.

  “He’s got one, a malamute, but that dog, Io, got into a fight right before we left and he’s been laid up. He’s been a good buddy to Siri.” Juan had brought a chain with him which he used to pull the gate shut. He fastened it with a padlock. “See you later, pal,” he said to the wolf. We began walking toward the house. “What’s your part in this meeting?” he asked Norman Alexander.

  “Scientist,” Alexander said.

  We walked through the courtyard and into the house. The courtyard had a forgotten ambian
ce and was as overgrown as you can get in the desert. The gate that led outside hung permanently loose and open. Terra-cotta pots under the portal were filled with weeds. The house itself felt worn out by history. Jayne seemed to be letting time march through the house—in the front door, out the back.

  I followed Juan and Norm into the living room, which was large enough for dances and weddings and had a fireplace so big you could walk into it if you wanted to. There was plenty of space for a grand piano and several groups of furniture, but they weren’t here. The space was filled with floating flecks of dust. There was a large credenza along one wall with shelves where Jayne appeared to keep her valuable papers. The credenza was made out of ancient, elaborately carved dark wood—the kind of piece that some conquistador had hauled over here from the old country, that belonged in a museum or a Texas lawyer’s office. Jayne didn’t have the desk to go with it, however, only a card table and some metal chairs. She’d set the card table up for the meeting with a pot of coffee, sugar, cream, cookies, honey and herb teas. The only other furniture in the room was a sofa with lariat-swinging cowboys etched into the wood and two chairs to match. They were collectors’ pieces, too, but of a different kind, the L.A. kind, the kind people love for their funk, furniture that belonged in the den, not the living room, or not this living room, anyway.

  This room had once been graceful and elegant, I thought, the floors polished and decorated with Oriental rugs. A chain with a bare light bulb that hung from the ceiling looked like it had once balanced a chandelier. Faded pink velvet drapes hung over the casement windows. They reached from ceiling to floor, which made them too heavy to billow, but the windows were open and the velvet did shift position every now and then. The living room walls had probably been museum white once but were darkened by soot except for evenly spaced rectangles where paintings had hung, valuable paintings I imagined, because the one that remained was by an artist I consider the most valuable of all, Frida Kahlo. It made me wonder what Jayne’s last husband had been. A gentleman rancher? A drug dealer with good taste? Money (wherever it comes from) enables you to hang somebody else’s misery on the wall and suffering was something Frida knew all about.