Hear the Wolves Read online

  I suspect Maren submitted those photos in an effort to pull me from my shell. She can be a jerk, my sister, but deep down, I know she cares. Just not enough to fight my father on leaving me behind.

  I’m ready to charge outside, when I catch sight of my father’s rifle propped behind the kitchen table.

  He left it.

  He left it for me to find, just in case.

  I turn my back on the relic and brave the storm unarmed.

  The freezing temperature slams into me like my family’s absence—hard and fast, with just as much consideration. Tugging my jacket tighter, I power across Rusic. The wind stings my lips and polishes my lashes.

  After I enter the chapel, the doors slam closed behind me with an echoing boom.

  The quiet rattles me more than the storm did.

  The reverend is nowhere in sight. He’s left with the rest of them, but it isn’t him I’m looking for anyway. It’s the diesel reserves he keeps on hand, and the phone that’s in his office. The one my father used to try and find where Mama had run off to. Little good it did him.

  “We must be looking for the same thing,” a voice says, startling me. I glance up to see my teacher, Mr. Foster, striding down the center aisle between the pews. Almost immediately, I feel the need to stand up straighter. “Did you know meteorologists can track blizzards using satellites and radars? They know where it’s going before anyone else. Before that they used hand-drawn charts.” When I don’t reply, he adds, as if I don’t know what he’s talking about, “The weather is turning. It may be a blizzard.”

  Mr. Foster believes I don’t have a true thought in my head, and maybe he’s right. I can’t understand his algebra very well, and I can’t analyze poems from the textbooks he brought with him from California, but I could teach him a thing or two about Alaskan blizzards. The man’s only been here a year, and he hasn’t lived through one yet.

  I cast my eyes to the floor, like I can somehow see through to the basement below and the barrels of oil that sleep there.

  “I need to haul a barrel of oil to my place,” I say hesitantly, my heart slowing now that Mr. Foster is here. He may not be my favorite person in the world, but he glows white. A safe, smart white. A use your head, not your fists kind of white. He’s stubborn—has one way of looking at people that isn’t gonna change—but him being here means I’m not alone.

  “Yeah, me too.” Mr. Foster slides his hands into pockets of expensive-looking jeans. He’s younger than my father, but I still see a touch of gray at his temples. Some of the older girls giggle in his class, and I know my mother would have worn lipstick around him if she were still here.

  Mr. Foster gazes over my shoulder. “Where’s your dad?”

  My cheeks blaze, and Mr. Foster’s mouth forms a deep grimace. He’s silently judging my father for leaving behind his daughter who everyone knows is a coward.

  “I didn’t feel like going. He agreed I’m old enough to be on my own for a day or two,” I say quickly. “But I’m supposed to call and tell him everything’s all right.”

  Mr. Foster gives his head a small shake like he doesn’t believe me. And why would he? My father or sister has had to walk me to school every day this year, and the one before that too. Mr. Foster motions to follow him. “I think there’s a phone in the back.” Halfway to the reverend’s office, he looks at me and says, “I’m not registered to vote, you know. That’s why I didn’t go to Vernon.”

  I shrug, because who cares? But I know Mr. Foster does care. He’s the only man in Rusic who dresses like he’s going somewhere fancy, and he must spend a half hour each morning before class getting his wavy black hair just right. I sometimes wonder what that California of his looks like.

  When we get to the reverend’s office, Mr. Foster places a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Take your time. I’ve got nowhere to be.”

  My heart tugs at the show of kindness, even as I remember how inadequate I’ve felt in his classroom. Even as I hate myself for opening my mouth and asking, “You’ll be out there? Because … because I’ll probably need help hauling that barrel.”

  Mr. Foster offers a smile. “Right on the other side of this door. Just stick your head out when you’re done.” I have to look away so he doesn’t see the gratitude shining in my eyes.

  The door closes behind him, and I grab the phone book wedged between two King Jameses. If I know my father, the first stop he’ll make after arriving in Vernon is Hoppy Tobacco. He’ll buy a box of cigars he’ll save for a special occasion that’ll never arrive.

  The phone rings in my good ear, my hand shaking as I wait for the store clerk to answer. Above the reverend’s office, the snow’s weight settles on the roof. How long has it been since I gauged the storm? How long have I been here?

  How much snow has fallen since I took shelter in this chapel?

  “Yes?” a woman’s gravelly voice asks.

  No This is Hoppy Tobacco! or Thanks for calling. How may I help you? The tobacco shop in Vernon is much like the butcher shop we run from our own home. No frills. No small talk. State your business, and be on your way.

  “Hi, this is Sloan Reilly. I think my father is coming to your place today? Tall man with a dark beard. He’ll be buying a box of cigars. You seen someone like that?”

  “Nah, no one’s come through yet. I get the evening crowd mostly.” The woman pauses. “Do I know you?”

  “Please, if that man comes in will you tell him to call his daughter? He’ll pay for the line.” I hope he’ll pay for the line. “It’s an emergency.”

  I wait for an answer. When I can’t stand her silence any longer, I say again, “Please.” When she still doesn’t reply, uneasiness crawls down my back. “Hello?”

  I hear it then.

  Static.

  “Hello? Hello!” I hang up the phone and pick it up again. Nothing. The line is dead. The room starts to spin once more, so I stare at my boots. Take a deep breath. I’m okay. I’m in the chapel, and Mr. Foster is in the next room.

  When I open the door, I find him staring up at a stained glass window, his arms crossed, his head tilted so that he can properly study Samson locked in deadly battle with a lion.

  He sees me and straightens. “Did you get him?”

  Mr. Foster’s eyes widen with such hopefulness that I can’t tell him the truth. “Yeah, I told him all was fine.” He frowns, unconvinced, so I add, “He’s gonna try and get a lift back anyway. He didn’t know the weather would get so bad.”

  The last part, I know, is true.

  As if to make up for my father’s absence, or maybe because he doesn’t know what to say, Mr. Foster points to a chicken near the back of the church, covered in dust, standing proudly next to a vase of silk lilies. “You made that, right? Someone told me all the kids in Sunday school were supposed to dye eggs for the Easter hunt, but instead you gathered all the shells and glued them together to resemble a chicken.”

  I glance at the chicken and remember the reverend’s words to me the day he saw it. It’s the perfect symbol of Jesus’s birth and resurrection! Only an artist recognizes art. He chuckled then. Look there, now I’m being vain.

  Though his words were kind, he was wrong. I only told my mother what’d inspired that chicken. Said my mind had swirled around our neighbor’s hens, around all those eggs, dyed and fried and gobbled up before they ever had a chance to live. I told her those chickens must feel like machines, all their babies lost to people.

  My father saw what I’d created at the church, and sighed.

  But my mother, oh how my mother swelled with pride.

  I always figured I could be an artist like Mama, and one day she noticed me gazing at her painting like maybe if I looked hard enough I could figure out how she made those colors tell a story. She smiled and said, It only takes two things to be an artist, baby girl. She ticked off the words on her fingers. Intuition and vulnerability.

  The next day I asked Daddy what those words meant, because I knew he’d have an explanation tha
t was simple. He looked at me kind of funny, but then he said, Intuition is a way of being smart. And vulnerable? Well … that’s like when you’re hunting big game, like a mountain lion, and you got to make yourself vulnerable to make the kill. It’s kind of like being brave.

  I understood him. In order to be a real artist, I had to be smart and brave. But even the teacher before Mr. Foster never called on me for answers. And Mama took my bravery with her the day she left.

  Mr. Foster taps his foot. He’s a doer, incapable of sitting still. I can’t imagine what being locked inside for days on end will do to him. “Right. So, shall we haul some barrels? I haven’t done it before. Do we just carry them over our heads like umbrellas?” He grins to show he’s joking.

  Despite everything that’s happened this morning, I nearly smile, because even though I’m crumbling on the inside, twenty minutes ago I believed I’d float away without my lasso around my father or sister.

  Now I eye that same lasso lying lifeless on the ground, and I watch Mr. Foster waving me over with an it’s all going to be okay nod. Before I can decide whether or not it’s possible to secure myself to someone new, I reach with my mind and gather that rope into my palm. I clutch the area between the loop and rope, and swing it gently around and above my head, letting the loop pull away and form a tip. At last, I release, not throw, my lasso. I even remember to follow through, just as my sister taught me.

  It lands neatly around Mr. Foster’s middle, and though I half expect it to slip over his narrow hips and slide down those skinny legs, it fits snug. And Mr. Foster doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

  I start to breathe a sigh of relief, until the doors to the chapel blow open with a crash, throwing a biting cold into the room. Someone lurches inside as the storm rages over his shoulders, casting snow on his hair, white on black.

  The young boy, Elton I think his name is, shrugs off his jacket and leads an older woman into the chapel. It takes me a moment to realize the woman is Ms. Wade.

  It takes me a moment longer to realize she’s covered in blood.

  The blizzard wails outside the chapel walls. We’ve watched the sun set and rise, and the storm only seems to be getting worse. It should have ended by now.

  We’ve left but once, Elton and I, to visit the general store. We grabbed gauze, antiseptic cream, and painkillers for Ms. Wade, and canned food to keep us fed.

  Ms. Wade stretches to the side, her face ablaze with pain. She’s in more discomfort now than when she arrived, with one hand on the boy, and the other red-stained palm pressed firmly against her middle.

  After we’d sat her down, she’d lifted her shirt and I’d nearly gagged at the sight. Four neat puncture holes decorated the place beneath her rib cage, blood gurgling from the top three, and her insides bulging at the mouth of the fourth.

  “Basement flooded from the snow again,” she’d said between labored breaths. “I was bringing up the tools so they wouldn’t rust on me. My first year to stay back on the vote, and this is what happens.”

  As I watch Ms. Wade now, I imagine her slipping on those stairs, tumbling downward with that pitchfork handle clenched in her hand. How long did she hang on to it? Two stairs? Six?

  Either way, it bested her in the end.

  Mr. Foster paces the chapel floors, his shiny boots echoing across the wood. He’s been like this ever since we discovered how little oil there was in the basement. The reverend must have finally figured out exactly how much he and the rest of the town needed to get through the year. Or maybe he’s always short right before the trip to Vernon.

  “We won’t have heat for much longer,” Mr. Foster says, as if it’s the first time he’s declared this. “The temperature inside will plummet, even if we move to a house and use a fireplace. And we’ve got to get Norma to a doctor.”

  Mr. Foster glances at Ms. Wade, and then at Elton. “What about you? Do you have any ideas?” When the boy stays quiet, always quiet, Mr. Foster says, “Christopher, did you hear me?”

  The boy flinches, presses his lips together in thought, and finally says so softly I have to bend my good ear toward him, “I asked you not to call me that. My name is Elton Dean Von Anders.”

  Mr. Foster sighs.

  I don’t know Elton well, but I used to see him with his older brother near school. In fact, I never saw one boy without the other. That is, until his brother left for college last spring. Now I only ever see Christopher—er, Elton—alone, or with his mother. His mama smiles at anyone who looks her way, and offers a warm, Praise be to you. But I’ve also seen the way she snaps at Elton when she thinks people aren’t watching. But I notice a lot of things others don’t, I guess. It’s part of being a good hunter.

  I wonder if Elton feels abandoned by his older brother. Left with a mother who always seemed so proud of her firstborn. I wonder if that abandonment feels anything like my own.

  Elton glows yellow like the morning light—a safe color, a cautious color. Though I don’t see a color on my own skin, I know my daddy would think I’m yellow like Elton.

  I clear my throat and ask, “How you feeling, Ms. Wade?”

  “I’m doing okay, hon,” she responds. It’s a lie, of course. She needs a doctor, but with no running vehicles left in Rusic, there isn’t a way to Vernon. Save for one. I turn my attention back to the woods, to the crooked spine that splits it down the middle. There, at the river, Mr. Clive’s boat lies in wait. The blizzard may be a bully—burying escape roads, knocking out phone lines, and sending old women tumbling down stairs—but the river is too strong to be bullied.

  My heart aches thinking about the last good day I spent with my mother before she left. She’d always had grand ideas, my mom. Some she’d act on, most she wouldn’t. But when she announced that she and I should travel to the river and spend the day there, my dad had scoffed. It was too far, he’d said, and we had work to do to prepare for winter.

  We did it anyway though. Left before he woke, and set off into the morning stillness. It took us from dawn to dark, but when we woke the next morning and crawled out from our dew-covered tent, the first thing we saw was the river.

  Our naked toes swished in the water as we sat on the bank, and Mama admired the ruby ring she’d won by mailing in a magazine giveaway entry card. Chosen from thousands! she’d gushed when Mr. Clive delivered the ring to our doorstep. The gold turned her finger green, and the rubies weren’t real, but the ring sparkled in the sunlight, and Mama sparkled right along with it. Those rubies were the only connection she had to a world of glamor she’d longed for so hard her heart ached deep.

  That day—before Dad lucked upon us and guided us home, angry, and yet looking at my mother as if she were a dream he wanted to capture—she gave me that ring to wear for a little while.

  Ms. Wade rises from the lemon-scented pew, making her way to the chapel restroom. She gets halfway before crumpling to her knees. As Mr. Foster rushes to her side, I decide it’s time to take action. When the blizzard wanes, we’ll still be left with snow too deep to travel through for more than a few miles. No one is returning from Vernon anytime soon, and though it’s certainly going to be warmer in here than outdoors, even without the generators, and the store can keep us fed, Ms. Wade is getting weaker, and her wounds need tending.

  “I’m going to my place,” I announce after we settle Ms. Wade in the reverend’s bed. “I need to get a few things.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Elton says.

  Mr. Foster seems poised to argue, but after casting a second look at Ms. Wade, he says, “You have to be really careful. Being out there even a few minutes could—”

  “I know,” I reply, pushing down the terror in my stomach as I’ve done since my father and sister vanished, swallowed by the storm. “We’ve done it once. We can do it again.”

  I’ll admit, though, that the terror has eased. It lives curled inside my gut, tail wrapped tightly around its body, but I can’t focus on it. I have purpose now. Ms. Wade is injured, and I won’t leave her unaided
. I know what it feels like, after all, to be left to fend for oneself.

  “I could come this time … ” Mr. Foster suggests.

  But even though I’ve never seen anything but confidence on his face at the head of our classroom, I see the uncertainty there now. Elton must see it too, because he throws open the doors to the chapel as a response, and the two of us are pulled into swirling snow. I’m nearly blinded by the wind, but I push onward, Elton’s hand gripping my shoulder. My lasso is there beneath his arms, but I have it in place for his sake as much as my own. We lean our heads into the weather and bear down. It isn’t until I near my place that I spot the first flash of black against the snow.

  There’s no mistaking what it is I see.

  Elton’s grip on my shoulder tightens as I catch sight of a second wolf racing across our town. Panic rises in my chest even as I try to stay calm. We may live side by side, but wolves don’t hurt our people, and we don’t hurt them. Truce.

  I know this, but when a snarl rises above the storm, a chill digs into my muscles deeper than the blizzard.

  “There!” Elton yells over the wind, and I turn to see four wolves tearing at the deer carcass hanging from Mr. Avery’s cottonwood. There’s little left to the animal, but still they slide their teeth between the ribs and lick the bones clean.

  Elton and I quicken our pace as my pulse pounds along my neck. I focus on my family’s cabin, and pretend that if I don’t look at the wolves, then they aren’t so close after all. Still, when I reach the porch, I can’t help glancing back. When I do, I’m frozen in place.

  A wolf stands not six feet away.

  Sniffing the air.

  Watching.

  When it takes another cautious step in our direction, and Elton makes a strangled sound, I remember myself and charge toward the door. The two of us rush inside, breathing hard, though I try to keep my composure for Elton’s sake.