The Animals: A Novel (15 page)

There’s a bunch of wolves in here, she said. This guy here reminds me of our Zeke.

Yeah, he said. Poor guy.

We’ll find him someone, she said.

I hope so.

Maybe we need to be looking in Minnesota.

Fish and Game’s gonna make it a lot harder now than it would’ve been.

We need to figure that out too, she said.

Fast.

I’ll make some calls tomorrow. Maybe to the zoo in Boise.

I don’t know if it’s gonna matter. That new DCO seems pretty hell bent on closing us down.

It’s probably not as bad as you think.

I don’t know about that.

Don’t give up so easy, Grace said, smiling faintly.

I’m not.

You sure?

No.

He was standing behind her now and she reached up to stroke his beard. Before her on the table, the magazine was open to a series of small photographs boxed in gray, indeed some wolves among them. One chased a flock of ravens. Another looked askance at the photographer. Black spruce and jack pine. Heron and eagle and nuthatch. From a frostlike tuft of red and green lichen peered forth the empty socket of a deer skull. Sunset birds. Slick waterways snaking through black spindly branches. Places not unlike his own forest and yet so different. The foliage. The feel of it.

Grace’s finger moved to point to an image of a wolf standing by the snow-covered carcass of a deer. Pictures like that make me wish we could get him out, she said.

Crippled wolf wouldn’t live long out there, not with winter coming.

He still needs a pack.

I keep hoping that he’ll figure out we’re his pack.

I don’t think that’ll ever happen if he hasn’t figured it out by now.

Maybe we need to call in to Minnesota. But I don’t know how we’d get a wolf across state lines.

We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Grace said.

You’re always so dang positive about everything.

That’s my job, she said.

They had put the word out to the various agencies across the Rockies that they were looking for a female wolf, not for breeding but to give Zeke a partner so that he would not feel so alone. But Bill did not want to bring in another animal unless it could not be released into the wild and he knew a tame wolf, a pet, would likely be killed by the wild creature that Zeke continued to be. And so they waited for responses, hoping that some rescue they had never heard of would call them to say they had an animal too maimed to be released into the wild, an odd thing to wish for and yet there it was. But no rumor of injured wolves of any kind had come to them in the two years since they had first picked up Zeke from a rancher, the wolf’s paw ruined by the claw trap that had ensnared him.

The rancher might have shot the wolf—that had certainly been the intent—but instead he had called the sheriff who had then called the rescue, and Bill had driven out to the ranch and had seen the wolf for the first time, a creature of such beauty and dignity even in the moment of its greatest fear that Bill’s heart shattered to see it. The wolf had stood when he had approached, not growling or cowering but only standing there, the look in the wolf’s eyes one of intelligence and even understanding as he stared at the man who would likely kill it in the next instant, the evidence of such an intent held in his hands. But of course Bill did not kill the wolf. The expected bang of the bullet had instead been the short pop of the dart and the wolf had spun around quickly and then lay panting, its crushed paw dragging an orbit of blood against the white crust of the snow, the trap leaping and rattling at the end of its stake-driven chain.

Now what? the rancher had asked him.

Now we wait a bit for him to sleep and then you pull that trap off him.

He’s not gonna bite me, is he?

If he does it won’t be any worse than what you did to him.

The rancher shuffled his feet against the frozen gravel of the road. I should have just shot the goddamned thing.

Yeah? So why didn’t you?

I couldn’t. Don’t know why. They’ve been at the livestock. Scaring the shit out of my old lady too. But something about it … I just couldn’t.

They stood there, watching as the wolf began to whine and then, at last, to lie down in the snow.

Bill returned to the truck and retrieved the snout noose, although he did not think he would need to use it now, holding the steel pole over his shoulder and then handing it across to the rancher.

What’s this? the man said.

Tell you what, Bill said. You slip this over his nose and I’ll get the trap off.

He showed the rancher how to use it, the way in which the slipknot could be tightened at the end of the pole. Then he slung the dart gun over his shoulder and pulled his gloves over hands already aching from the cold.

The snow outside the bed of the road was deep and uneven and they moved those last twenty or so yards across it in slow, careful steps, the rancher’s breath puffing white clouds into the air. When he reached the animal, they both stood looking down at it. A magnificent creature, sleek and thin, its fur light gray and tipped with black points, mouth open and tongue lolling pink against the snow. An animal so wholly suited to the forest that seeing it prostrate on the frozen earth seemed impossible. What was he to do with it once he had it back at the rescue? Killing it was inconceivable but holding it in a cage not much better.

Christ, the rancher said. Just that single word.

Bill’s eyes had come to the paw, or what remained of it: a mess of purple tendons and raw red muscle and exposed bone. Had he come an hour later the wolf would have freed itself, the remains of the severed paw caught in the jaws of the trap while the animal disappeared into the dark forest, trailing blood from its stump. Bill knew such an animal would not survive long in the wild, not with the heavier snows of winter still coming. He would survive at the rescue but the paw was gone either way. There was no doubt about that fact at all.

He imagined the pack swinging south out of British Columbia and dipping across a border that held no meaning to its motion, flowing as one through the dark wet trees and taking its prey when it could, a group of animals perfectly evolved to survive and their understanding of that world distinctly drawn to render all other concerns invisible. They would be like ghosts fading into and out of the forest: sawtooth ridgetops, silver water, the scent of prey upon the air. And you some separate and recondite creature residing in an entirely different world. What you see are threats and disasters and horrors the likes of which those ghosts could not even imagine, time flattened out of its circle and running in a thin sharp band, straight and level, and that faint bubble of world in which all animals run and hunt and graze eviscerated everywhere by its razored edge. You are a man standing inside one such bubble above the unconscious body of a ghost from another, watching its breath steam and the purple-tendoned gap in its foreleg continue to bleed out slowly against the snow.

From where he stood, Bill could see the ranch house in the distance: a wooden box with warm yellow light at the windows, the black stalk of a chimney from which rose a slow curl of pale smoke. The sheep were penned a few dozen yards away against the wall of an iron-gray barn that dwarfed the house itself, and in the several acres of cleared and snow-covered pastureland that stretched out before both structures a herd of six or eight horses stood in a tight knot against the cold. He could see how it all could look like a meal, the prey ready and waiting and out in the open as if arranged on a serving tray.

He knew then that it had been the last image of freedom the wolf would ever see, for when it opened its eyes it would be at the rescue, where all sense of free will would be lined and limited by the extent of the wire fence that demarcated its enclosure. A geography of endlessly moving mountains and rivers that flowed at last to a small ring of biting iron.

IN THE MORNING
he dropped Jude off at school, the boy giggling and talking nonstop about the secret they shared and Bill smiling into the bright clear light as it streamed in upon them from every direction. The boy held the ragged field guide in his hand the whole while.

He was still smiling as he returned to the trailer in the woods, parking his truck and descending the birch path to the rescue once again. Bess was already there, the coffeepot in the office full and hot. He poured himself a mug and went about the morning feedings. Cinder purred at him when he approached, the sound of her like an engine, her big front paws pressing the moist earth. Hungry, little girl? he said.

The mountain lion looked at him, one-eyed.

He pressed the feed bowl through the hatch and closed it and she came down through the gate and then he could hear the sounds of her great sharp teeth gnashing the food. Breakfast is served, he said.

When he returned to the office it was after ten and a handful of visitors wandered the paths, Bobby, Chuck, and Bess acting as tour guides, Ashley manning the tiny, closet-like gift shop. He finished off the coffee and took the pot outside to refill it with water from the hose and returned to the office. It was then that he saw the red light blinking on the answering machine. He pressed the button there and listened to the tape whiz back and then the click as he poured the water into the coffeemaker’s reservoir.
Mr. Reed
, the voice came,
Steve Colman at Idaho Fish and Game.
And he froze there next to the desk, listening, the now empty pot clutched in his fist.
I called over to my people at Interior and I’m sorry to say that the wolf and the bear are both gonna have to be removed from the site. Ditto with all the carnivores that fall under Fish and Game jurisdiction. So that’s the bad news. Good news is that I think we can get you permitted for the smaller omnivores like, say, the raccoons and such, but
—

The message was cut off, the machine clicking and whirring again and then falling silent.

He set the empty pot on the desk and leaned forward and pressed play once more and listened again to the message and then a third time.

Removed from the site, Colman had said. So that’s the bad news.

On the far wall, illuminated now by the slant of morning light and faded with age, hung the framed drawing he had made soon after that single visit to Idaho with his mother and brother: the drawing a mess of color and texture and line not unlike the drawing Jude had shown him the night before. There were few specifics from that first trip to Idaho in his memory, but he could remember the bear: how the animal would look at him with eyes that seemed both intelligent and interested. His uncle taught him how to feed the grizzly and he remembered, still remembered, the feeling, perhaps for the first time in his life, that he was doing something important, that he was needed and wanted. The bear seemed to respond to him in ways that he did not even respond to Uncle David, approaching the front of the cage whenever the boy appeared and the boy standing for hours there, talking to him and scratching his neck with a stick through the woven and welded metal.

He made the drawing when they returned to the dry basin of Battle Mountain and he asked his mother to mail it to his uncle. A month later he had been surprised to receive a package from Idaho containing the field guide, the book he had just given Jude, a volume filled with line drawings and terse descriptions of the plants and animals of his childhood landscape.

The second effect of the drawing he did not know about until he returned. He had been eight years old when he mailed his uncle the drawing. When he returned, thirteen years later, afraid and churning with guilt, he had seen that drawing again, that image from his long distant past, the same crayon and marker illustration of a smiling bear, now enclosed in a little frame upon the wall in his uncle’s office, and the wooden sign at the bear enclosure had been made to match his childhood spelling, not Major but Majer. They had moved it when the bear had been moved and it was worn by years of weather but its carved inscription remained legible enough:

Behind it Majer sniffed the air, scenting Bill’s approach as he walked up the path from the office, the animal’s great head tilting slowly from side to side in a kind of dance.

Hey old buddy, Bill said. The bear looked at him expectantly. How are we doing?

The bear nodded its head slowly.

No treats just now, but it’s checkup day so Gracey’s coming to see you. You know what that means.

The bear looked at him as if he might manifest a treat by sheer force of will or of longing.

You’re just gonna have to wait, Bill said.

Can he understand you? a girl’s voice said.

He turned. Beside him, just a few feet from the front of the enclosure, stood a young girl not much older than Jude, her parents flanking her on either side, both smiling expectantly. In some ways it made him sad to see her there. He wanted to sit alone with his friend. That was all. But here she was. He sure can, he said.

How do you know?