History of Wolves(24)

Sometime later—a few minutes? a few hours?—I heard Patra whispering. She was on her knees, halfway in the tent, hanging over us. She was a shadow and a scent, not much more than that, jacket drooping from her haunches.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“He’s fine,” I said.

She crawled in on her hands and knees and kissed Paul’s cheek, then, sighing, lay down between us. Her jacket smelled of fast food and wet woods. She must have come quickly from the car, because I could hear her heart pounding and then, little by little, settling down, getting back into its routine.

Though maybe it was mine I heard. Maybe I’d woken up afraid of something.

“Cozy,” she said. “So much better than being alone in a car for five hours. Or sitting in an airport parking lot.”

I turned toward her: “Where is he?”

She released a big breath. “Delayed. Delayed, then canceled.”

Patra hadn’t zipped up the tent fly, so I crawled over and did that for her. Lay back. When I did, I could feel Patra’s dry hair against my ear on the pillow. I could smell the cool woods in her hair, even over the scent of her coconut shampoo. She was still wearing her jacket, and every time she shifted I could hear it, the synthetic fibers crunching under her weight.

“I should take him to bed,” she whispered.

“Okay,” I said.

She didn’t move. She lay so still even her jacket was quiet. “I’m exhausted,” she whimpered. As she spoke, her voice did a U-turn in the dark. It drove right from exhaustion into despair, right off some invisible bridge between us.

I didn’t wonder what made her sound like that. I didn’t have to guess what upset her.

“He’s really okay,” I said.

She began to cry. She was breathing and then it was something else. She put her palm over her mouth, trying, unsuccessfully, to stop up the sound. Sorry, she might have said between breaths, or, for God’s sake, or stay here.

“Hey,” I said after a moment. “No shoes in the tent.”

So I crawled to her feet and plucked open the buckle on her little ankle boot. I slipped my fingers in and felt the bony knob of her heel, hot and damp in my hands, in her sock. Then I slipped the bootlet off, reached over and undid the other. Her feet in her socks seemed so vulnerable to me, so ridiculously small. I set her heels down next to each other, and the crying stopped. I heard it turn back into regular breathing.

Before I lay back, before I pulled up my sleeping bag, I checked the hatchet out of habit. The wooden handle under my fingers was like a promise fulfilled. I knew, before touching it, everything there was to know about it. Which made me confident and glad.


Later when I woke up, I found Patra had curled up around Paul. Back to me. But I could feel her curved spine through her jacket when I pushed in closer, all those little vertebrae linked up, all those bones laid out, like a secret. The night had come down hard, finally. Thunder was rumbling far away. Wind had kicked up waves, and they were loud enough now that I could hear them on the shore of the lake, shoving pebbles forward and back. I could hear pine needles whipping the roof of the house. I could hear Paul and Patra, breathing in syncopation.

Happy. I was happy.

I barely recognized the feeling.

So who could blame me for wishing that the husband’s rescheduled plane would drift into a lowlying thunderhead? That it would shunt in sudden turbulence, lose elevation fast? Who could blame me for hoping his pilot would be young and scared, that he’d turn around and fly back over the ocean? The husband had his own baby stars to watch over and his own mountain to do it from, in Hawaii. I longed for straight-line winds between him and me, for hurricanes off the California coast. Downpours and lightning. The thunder was getting louder now. I felt the tent I’d built gather us in, Paul and Patra. Patra and me.

I slept and woke. I dreamed of the dogs. I dreamed of taking Patra and Paul out on the canoe, currents like underwater hands thrusting the boat around, so we had to fight to go forward. My paddle guiding us toward shore. Or maybe guiding us away from it, maybe we were leaving after all. I slept and woke. Slept.


Eventually, just after dawn, I heard scuffling outside. It sounded like a slow-moving mammal, a possum or raccoon, unsettling the driveway stones. Then I heard a car door thump. Very gently I sat up and pulled the hatchet from under Paul’s pillow. I unzipped the tent, tiptoed across the braided rugs, crept to the front window. There, in the driveway, in the early morning light, stood a man in a blue slicker next to a rental car. He held a brown sack of groceries, a duffel bag. He looked bland and harmless—so when he opened the door I let the hatchet hang in my hand where he could see it. And Patra was right: I could hear him think. I could hear him taking in the dark room and the tent on the floor and the tall, scrawny kid coming out from the shadows, with a good-sized weapon.


Here’s how the story about Lily went. It was simple at first, but as time passed, as the rumor was repeated and spread, it grew more and more detailed. Mr. Grierson, last fall, had taken Lily out on a canoe. Gone Lake was the largest of four just outside town. It was so round that in the center the bank looked like a ribbon of black, and in the gloom of a mid-October afternoon, it no doubt disappeared altogether. Everyone could imagine this. It was a good choice, Gone Lake. They both paddled because, Mr. Grierson said, a little exercise builds trust between people. He sat in back and steered, though Lily, of course, could have gotten them where he wanted to go much faster. Like all of us, she could paddle a boat like she could ride a bike. Mr. Grierson, the Californian, splashed and tottered. Got his pants soaked, got his shoes wet. By the time they reached the middle of the lake, the day was gone and the water was oil black. The sky, clear, was thick with stars. And though it was chilly—though most of the aspens had let loose their leaves already—they didn’t wear gloves or hats. They had to set their dripping paddles across their laps, had to warm their hands, in turns, on a thermos lid of steaming coffee.