History of Wolves(27)

There was a bright yellow pine needle hanging from his gray beard.

He swung his legs off the lawn chair and started to stand. “You back now? I’ve been waiting here—”

His aggrieved expression drained the moment he stepped out of the shade. That’s when he understood a mistake had been made, and forgot he’d made it just as fast, giving in to a long, laden blink of his eyes. When he opened them again, he was squinting so intensely he looked like he was in pain. “You?” he asked. “Excuse me,” he added, all politeness. “Do I know you?”

“Nope,” I said, though it wasn’t quite the truth. I’d poured his coffee at the diner more than once, and years back, when I was twelve, I’d competed against his two nephews, and won, in the Two Bears Classic Dogsled Race. He’d given me a slap on the back at the finish line.

He put a palm to his gut, sliding it up his Forest Service T-shirt to his throat. A sliver of belly grinned out at me. “It’s like a tree is growing from my chest, you know? I don’t feel right. It’s like my mouth don’t fit on my face or something.” He rolled his jaw. “Don’t mind me,” he apologized.

He turned from me, found another can on the ground to crack open. When he turned back again, his brow was creased.

“You still here?”

I reached for my backpack, unzipped. Pulled out a pair of boots.

“This is private property,” he explained then. But sadly, as if it couldn’t be helped. “No hunting or fishing allowed.”

Did he think I’d pulled out a tackle box or something? A gun? “I’m not hunting.”

“No—” he had to search for the word. He had to look at the black-and-orange sign posted to a tree in their yard and read it. “Tesspressing.” He giggled.

“Where’s Lily?” I blurted.

“Lily?” He shook his head slowly, as though he bore the weight of all the world’s mysteries. “Gone with that lawyer son-of-a-bitch. She said to me when she left, ‘Keep the house nice.’ And look! I’ve had all my fun outside, like she asked. I did dishes, right? I kept it up good.” He sat back down in his lawn chair, grunting, as if the mere mention of these tasks had drained him.

As he slumped down, he pointed warily at the boots now cradled in my arms. “What’s tha—?”

“It’s—” I was trying to think of some way to explain. Before I could answer, though, he brought his palm over his face like a lid.


In front of the trailer again, I hesitated for a moment near the door. Then I set down the black suede boots I’d taken from my backpack. I wondered if there was any way to leave a note and decided immediately there wasn’t. Bending down, I arranged the boots under the awning on the front step: toes pointed forward, heels lined up. I gave one of them a quick stroke on the flank before I took off running down the road. I’d collected them from the lost and found last Thursday after class, carried them in my backpack in the canoe across three lakes, brought them all the way here for Lily. I think I’d meant them as a kind of gift. I think I meant them as some token of secret understanding or agreement. But as I hurried down the gravel road, as I headed toward Lake Winesaga and my boat, I glanced back once, and there they stood—the boots I’d stolen for Lily. Their effect on the trailer step was very different from what I expected. They looked like an invisible, implacable person standing watch at her door. Accusing, blocking the entrance.


*


The lake, when I got back to it, was rough with waves. My stomach rumbled. There was nothing in my backpack now save my Swiss Army knife and the rain slicker. I’d brought no provisions. I plucked a small unripe raspberry from a bush near shore and rolled it over my tongue before spitting it out. It was haired and hard. I thought of Paul. I thought of Paul in his cabin—taking down the tent with Patra, Leo presiding with the spatula—and I decided to practice survival, right then and there. I practiced being starving, stranded, a hundred miles from civilization, from people. I shoved off with my paddle in the canoe and headed straight to the center of Winesaga, where waves crushed against the prow and mist wetted my face. The boat bobbed, and I dug in deeper with the paddle to straighten my course. To my right, to my left, the black-arrow faces of loons appeared over and over. Or maybe it was the same loon, diving under my boat, trailing me. Loons have been known to do that.

This time around the three lakes ran together. All the RVs on shore looked alike. Clotheslines whipped with towels, fishing boats nodded on ropes. The occasional beer can or milk carton skated across the water. To pass the time, to distract myself, I counted eleven (plus one) RVs and eleven (plus one) boats. I counted eleven minus two ducks on the bank, eleven strokes of the paddle to the portage: it’s easy to make a pattern if you fudge. You can take eleven breaths and then hold it. You can see eleven stars appear over the horizon if you don’t look for more.


I only have one real memory from when I was four. It involves Tameka, who was a year or so older, who slept with me in a bottom bunk in the bunkhouse until the commune broke up. Tameka had a drapey orange sweater with big alphabet letters, which she rolled into fat donuts at the sleeves. The scar on her left elbow was purple. Her hands were a deep brown on the backs, white on the heels. Of course, there were lots of Big Kids around, faster and older than both of us, who moved in a pack and hit. But Tameka was quieter, lovelier. Mine. She bit her nails off into a pile, saved them in a clear plastic Baggie she squashed into a ball and put in her armpit. Her stash, she called it. Don’t tell, she whispered. Of course I wouldn’t. Of course not.