The Wild (23 page)

He had been spoken to across the miles by a real, living wolf! He had spoken wolf-to-wolf! As a wolf he was here in this place, and he was one with the whole kingdom of the wolves.

The howl died away, ending on a low note that carried in its tone a text of warning. Bob howled back at once, all of his excitement and joy flowing into the soft, curving sound.

The reply came as quick, from the north and from many wolf throats, a high scream of a note, speaking volumes of subtle language, building pictures in his mind of limpid eyes and fast teeth. Was this alien speech rejection or welcome? He listened and their voices touched him to the bottom of his life. He wanted to be among them, to be one with them, to love them and live among them. Cindy, they're wonderful, they're like gods! Cindy, I—

I still miss you.

But he started out at once, tracking them with a competent nose.

Even though he was still in New York State, he'd encountered a wolf pack! A big one too, judging from the number of different voices in their howl. He found himself looking around for a pay phone to call Cindy and tell her to get in touch with the Department of Environmental Conservation. Wolves in New York: what good, what happy news.

Then he thought: maybe DEC already knows. What if they
did
tell the public? Would not people come forth with their guns, eager for trophies, eager to kill the evil thing of the forest? No, the presence of these wolves must remain a secret. In their world they were powerful, they were kings, but in man's world he had to remember that they were vulnerable little creatures without a future.

He smelled them again, this time when the wind blew from behind him. This scent was stronger and he detected in it something new, something so exciting that he almost collapsed. A female odor, definite, musky, deep as wood, so intense that for a moment he could actually see her, the face of perfect beauty, its sleek snout, its fine, black ball of a nose, and the heartbreaking line of the eyes, so expressive and subtle. He was embarrassed, confused. This was not a woman's face, but it was the most feminine face he had ever seen.

All of his knowledge of wolves arrayed itself. before him. The books sped past in memory:
Of Wolves and Men.
Erik Zimens's
The Wolf: A Species in Danger,
the work of Dan Mech. He remembered his time in northern Minnesota, the wolf he had seen, and his dreams of wolves, his lifelong wandering in the shadows of his own desires. Now he ran, a wolf at last, seeking what his soul had wanted, maybe from the very beginning of its existence, which was to fulfill this odd destiny.

The wolf pack is a tightly knit organization, made up of animals who have known one another from birth. It is not generally open to strangers. Wolves are fierce territorialists, protecting their hunting grounds from outsiders. They are expert fighters. They have a strict and elaborate hierarchy.

He followed the trench of tracks in the snow, never losing it for more than a few seconds, his nose drawing him after them with great accuracy. As he moved along, he thought he could smell other wolves much more clearly than he could anything else, almost as if his nose was more perfectly adapted to this odor than to any other.

He did not move fast. If he ran, his back, shoulder and thigh hurt, and when he breathed deeply, his ribs wrapped him in a band of pain. Trotting along, he again scented the female. Something turned in his loins, and he moved faster despite the pain. He was astonished at himself. He was having a strong sexual stirring. This was the mating season for wolves, or the beginning of it. He did not feel the steamy sense of desire that Cindy evoked in him. This was more pure than the inventive love of humans: this was lust in a form so simple that it was perfectly clean; it was sex devoid of all but purpose.

His desire made him imagine the gentle aroma of cubs, feel their soft fur. He had to father cubs,
had to!
He gasped as he ran, he panted even in the cold. His desire came cracking through the layers of self: cubs, cubs, cubs. She was in heat, she was a goddess, and he had to have her. He stopped, raised his muzzle, and howled. In that howl he knew that there was more than quest and loneliness, there was also a challenge he was helpless to suppress.

The replying howl washed over him, a tumult of passion, and it was not kindly passion. It was fierce and immediate and full of snarl. Behind it was fear, and he knew that he was approaching them too directly. A pack of wolves is an ancient and very subtle social structure, governed by rituals and laws that must go back in an unbroken tradition to the very origin of the species.

There were things in that howl that made Bob stop and listen most carefully. Terrible things, anger, bitterness, suspicion. There was also a pride so great that it awed him. The howl was rich and full and decisive, beginning and ending with a single, great tone. It was the voice of the leader.

Bob ignored the warning in the howl, the implication of murder. He had to; he could not bear to think that the wolves would do him any injury. After all, had not that wonderful female in her kindness licked him? Hadn't she? What healing she had in her—were it not for her, he would have awakened in great anguish. As it was, her tongue had accomplished significant healing. He could move and he was certainly not going to die.

For hours and hours he followed the trail of the pack. They were going north, farther and farther, never stopping, never even reducing their pace. He had prided himself on his speed and range, but these wolves were much faster than he. He believed that they had gone as far as forty miles last night. Evidently the odor of the bear had been strong enough and unusual enough to bring them out of their normal territory, to which they were nervously returning.

It was just getting to be evening when he found himself at the edge of the forest. Before him was the St. Lawrence.

He looked out across the tumult of ice.

The seaway must be at least a mile wide here. It was a white, tumbled emptiness, cracking and thundering as the current underneath shifted the ice floating on top.

On the far edge of the ice, where it softened into a smooth, snowy strand, he saw something that stood his hair on end. There were at least a dozen black dots there.

On a nearby bush there were a group of strong scent marks, pungent, redolent with the particular urine odor of this pack. It was not a bad scent. It was sour and warm and penetrating. Interesting. He sniffed carefully.

Then his body did something that he did not expect: it raised its leg and urinated, obliterating the territorial marker.

The wolves on the far bank had become very still, and were now hard to see, a fuzzy clutch of black blurs in the winter emptiness.

He smelled them, raised his head, and howled again. They howled back, angry, afraid, full of warning.

His answer was the only one he could give: he trotted out onto the frozen water. Whatever happened, he had to try and join these wolves.

They were the center and purpose of his life, he now understood that clearly.

They howled again. The sound was frank with menace. Bob lowered his head against the vicious wind. The time had come to face them.

Chapter Twenty

T
HE STACK OF FILTHY DISHES TEETERED ON THE EDGE OF
the counter. Cindy turned, snatching at them. Her uniform snagged against a loose corner and she went down amid a cascade of plates, cups, silverware, hamburger crusts, and wet cigarette butts.

She sat there in the rubble contemplating a half-eaten pancake that had adhered to her apron. From the other end of the counter Louie Parma, the owner of Parma Lunch, clapped, a series of dismal pops. Misery swept Cindy. She got up, murmuring a "sorry, Louie," and started picking up the shards. A piece of glass jabbed her finger. A convulsive jerk caused her morning's tips—a dozen or so quarters and dimes—to fall out of her pocket and roll away among the chipped and broken dishes. "Sorry, Louie, sorry."

She shook the tears from her eyes. As she started organizing the rubble into a pile she saw Louie's neatly polished shoes appear. "How much?" he asked, pointing a toe toward some of her coins.

"Six dollars."

"I'll take that and dock you another twelve, we'll be even."

"Okay, Louie." Her salary was five dollars an hour and she'd been here since 6:00 A.M. It was now eleven, which meant that less these deductions, she'd cleared only seven dollars on the morning. That was important, vitally so: Kevin would have to eat the last of the spaghetti tonight; she would skip the meal.

No matter what, she was not going to call Monica. The woman was slowly coming undone, tortured by her inability to understand what had happened to Bob, and unable to enlist the aid of any of her fellow scientists and doctors in her research. Monica was now a haunted woman, her practice in ruins, her wealth disappearing into the well of what the rest of her profession saw as an insane quest.

Monica was no longer a source of money, support, or anything else. Cindy felt so sorry for her, but there was nothing she could do. Her concern was finding Bob again and really communicating with him. Only then, with him and understanding him, could she and Kevin hope to have any peace.

Joe Running Fox, also, was obsessed with him. He had guided them to Olana and then disappeared—when was it, in February? Yes, and here it was the end of March.

Joe knew that Bob was somewhere near here. If Joe found him, Cindy knew that he would be back. As it was, he lived out in the snow, a frostbitten ruin of a man, almost an animal himself. He prayed to the old Indian gods. He searched.

As she dumped the remains of the plates into a gray busman's tray, she remembered that she would still be able to keep her lunch tips, which might be as much as eight dollars if those darned highway engineers didn't take up table one the whole time and not leave anything again.

She took her mess out back herself, not caring to confront Willie Clair, the dishwasher and busman, with the results of her mistake. He'd scream at her, then subside, walking back and forth slapping his hands against his thighs and cursing.

When she opened the back door, a blast of wind made her stagger. She glanced up, into the clear, frozen air. Immediately beyond Ontario Street the forest began. She looked into the blue, shadowed fastness of it. Week after week she had walked this forest, through what seemed an endless winter. She had come to see it as intractable, hostile, and joyless. It was devoid of poetry, of hope: in all the weeks of her searching she had heard wolves howling exactly once.

She and Kevin were fugitives from ordinary life. He was no longer in school. He had become fierce and domineering. Night after night he awoke screaming, so often that they could not keep a room for long. They'd about used up Olana, as a matter of fact, moving from the Gracey Hotel to Mrs. Winslow's to the Indian Inn, where the puffy, woebegone Sim Jones was beginning to shake his head whenever he saw the boy.

"Cindy, you got customers," shouted Louie.

"On my way, Lou!" Table one was occupied by two people, a thin, sallow woman with a cigarette between her fingers and a big man who looked like a wax effigy of himself. That table was the big one. "Hi, folks," Cindy said, "sure you don't want a booth?" Seeing two people at his big table would put Louie into a funk for the rest of the afternoon.

"This's fine," the woman said. "Gimme coffee and one of them nut rolls."

"Coffee and you got cherry pie?"

"Yes, sir, we sure do."

"I want apple. Cherry's too damn sweet."

The woman laughed. "What do you do that for, Bud? You always do that. 'Got coffee?' 'Yeah.' 'Gimme tea.' I couldn't believe that when you first did it." She looked up at Cindy, smoke rising from her wide, tight smile. "Can you believe this man?"

Cindy smiled. She did not laugh. It would take an extra tip to get that out of her. She turned and posted the order on Louie's turnstile. His face, already dark over the loss of the big table, darkened further when the highway engineers came blundering in, knotted in the doorway, and stared at the table. There were mutters. One of them nodded his head and the group left, tramping back into the snow, headed no doubt for Clasby's down at the other end of Ontario, or for the McDonald's that stood near the high school.

Louie shook his head. "You got no sense," he said bitterly. "There goes twenty-five bucks if it's a dollar. What the hell am I gonna do with all the extra hamburger I got in for those guys?"

"Eat it."

"Gimme a kiss, cutie."

She thought how nice it would be to take a whip to Louie's great lardbag of a rump. She could imagine his flesh rippling and his voice cracking while she did to him in the body what he was doing to her in the soul. He's paying me and I hate him, she thought. Isn't that typical, ungrateful bitch that I am?

"C'mon." He made yet another halfhearted snatch at her. Then his eyes met hers, his big animal eyes. The Indian had called her hawk, Bob wolf, Kevin owl. This was hyena, this sweat-sheened short-order cook with a fleck of tobacco from his long-chewed morning cigar still adhering to one of his front teeth.

She shook her head, backing away from Louie. There was no use yearning for Bob. Even if she managed to find him again, he would no doubt run away once more.

At first she had been furious with him, but time had made it more clear that he'd seen no alternative. How could she house him, feed him? And what about their love?

There was a man in that wolf body, and she loved the man. But the animal—it was mysterious and, frankly, horrible.

There was no time to think about these things now: she had another table to work: Big Charlie Tolner had just come in with his brother Little Charlie from their garage over on LaSalle.

That made Louie happy again: the Charlies tended to favor Clasby with their business. "You guys walk? I ain't seen a car."

"My truck's busted," Big Charlie said. "So's his. We's out last weekend after us a moose, ha-ha. Almost got us a wolf. They're comin' down farther every year. Not enough deer and moose up in Ontario, I expect."

Cindy might as well have been dealt a blow to the side of the head. She took a large, unlikely step, slopping coffee out of both mugs, ruining the piece of cherry pie she had just cut.

"Wolves," she managed to croak. "Charlie, did you say you saw a wolf?"

"Big black fella, thin as hell, standin' up beside the St. Lawrence. Just stood there, lookin' at us. We got two good shots at him."

Her skin felt like a sheath of snow. "Did you hit him?"

"Nah. He's a smart sonembitch. Most wolves, they start runnin' like hell, you shoot at 'em. This old guy, he see's he's got the St. Lawrence behind him. He runs out on that ice and we can just take our time. We got a wolf pelt. This fella takes cover, like. See, he goes up behind a big chunk of crack ice." The Charlies both stared at her, their left eyebrows raised in identical expressions of astonishment at the memory. "We run after him, but he got away," Big Charlie said.

"Slunk through the ice mounds near the bank," his brother added.

It was Bob. It had to be him. She could picture him: thin, scraggly, smart.

Out on the St. Lawrence. "Where?"

"Oh, well..."

"Please tell me, you guys."

"The DEC—"

Her mind was twisting and turning on itself. She had to know, had to get it out of them. "I don't care if you were poaching or whatever it's called." Both Charlies looked away. She went for the dumb one. "C'mon, Big Charlie," she said, "tell me where you saw a wolf. I think it's so exciting." She hated the fake sex in her voice. Big Charlie didn't hate it, though. His ears turned red.

"Oh, well, we were out about twenty miles up from the bridge. We were on that piece of land owned by those city people."

"The Jews," Little Charlie said, as if this would excuse their trespass.

Cindy didn't know a thing about who did and didn't own land around here, and she didn't give a damn. All she could think of was Bob. She squared her shoulders and raised her chin, thinking of the nobility of her love. It was always the men who embarked on quests in the old stories, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain. Women stayed at home and raised the children. Well, she wasn't that kind of a woman. Her quest was clear, as fine and perfect as Sir Gawain's: she had a grail, too, the sacred body of her love.

"Cindy," Big Charlie suddenly blurted, "you care to take a drive over the border Saturday? Maybe go up to Voix and have a little supper at Antoine's?"

Louie stared, openmouthed. Little Charlie began giggling silently.

Without a word she turned away from the table of the two gargoyles. "Sweet," Big Charlie said as his brother collapsed into open laughter.

"Willie won't bring in the damn potatoes," Louie snarled as she came back to the counter. "You go get 'em."

He was referring to the two-hundred-pound sacks of frozen french fries that were due to be delivered today. "Lou, I can't possibly! I can't drag those bags."

"You do it, or you've got your walking papers. And I want them in the back of the freezer, not all jammed up around the door like he does it."

Feeling hopeless, Cindy put her beautiful blue cardigan from Bloomie's and better days on over her thin nylon uniform and went struggling out into the glaring, icy light of noon.

She tugged miserably and quite hopelessly at one of the big gray sacks. Louie was a cruel man. They were all cruel. The women around here were huddled misanthropes, slaves and sloven whores. What a misbegotten place.

It came to seem even more misbegotten a moment later, when both of the Charlies appeared, one at each end of the restaurant. She stepped back, only to see Louie's shadow in the doorway. He had locked the door.

So that was what this was about. When had they had time to plan? There hadn't been a word spoken between them. Without another thought she started running, wobbling across the snowy parking lot in her cheap flats, the wind eating at her body, making the cardigan seem almost imaginary.

They came along behind her, moving heavily but with surprising speed, the two Charlies. "Come on, Cindy," Big Charlie cried, "won'tcha? Why won'tcha? A little blowjob ain't nothin' to a woman."

"Oh, God."

They appeared beside her. She did not like the sweat sheening Big Charlie's face or the clicking wheeze that Little Charlie developed when he ran.

Big Charlie's hand brushed her shoulder. "Them shoes are no good in this hardpack," he said absently, as his arm closed around her neck. "You had no chance."

She could see Louie's shadow in the back door of the diner. He waved at her, a hesitant gesture, as if he was seeing her off on some undesirable voyage. Her impulse was to kick and bite and claw, but she controlled it. She was not a weak woman, but these two men were certainly her physical superiors. Quietly, carefully, she reviewed her options. She was being walked along, Big Charlie tugging her by the neck, Little Charlie with his homy fist around her wrist.

Taking a deep breath, she screamed. The sound was high and thin, more like the squeak of chalk on a blackboard than a human noise. Little Charlie looked up at her out of the comer of his eye. "That wasn't too good," he said happily.

When she was a kid, she had been able to scream marvelously well. She closed her eyes, tried to calm herself enough to organize some more effective noise. They were passing her rooming house. If only their room wasn't at the back, Kevin might hear. He'd be there—because she did not want to put him in one of the local backwater schools where he'd be taught nothing more challenging than Gum-Chewing 101 and probably beaten to a pulp as well, they had decided he would go into hiding for the duration of the search.

He spent his time reading. He was on
Remembrance of Things Past
now, and he wanted to get the walls lined with cork like Proust had.

Big Charlie's hand pushed against her left breast. The sensation was disgusting, a nauseating thrill that churned to pain when he squeezed. This time she screamed with fierce energy. In response the two men began moving faster down the freezing, silent street. "Somebody help me!" Was the whole town dead? No, more likely everybody around here except Kevin was off at work or at school, Kevin and that inert old man who inhabited the little house at the end of the block. He wouldn't come out. If the world ended, he would meet it staring out that window of his. "God help me! God help me!"

Big Charlie moaned. "Come on, Cindy, we won't hurt you. Please, I just want you to treat me like a man. Honey, I could give you a good life."

"Let me go, you filthy creep. You smell like a wet cigar butt."

"I'll stop with the cigars if that's what it takes. You don't like 'em—done! Howya like that? Cindy, I got nobody, I'm getting older. You're young. I'll leave you everything in my will. I got money, Cindy! Marry me."

"Help! Help!"

The door of the old man's house flew open. Astonishingly, Kevin came rushing out. Behind him was the old man himself, carrying a tall, rusty halberd. In his hands Kevin brandished a volume of the
Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Oh, Lordy, now look what you done, Cindy! Hold on, fellas, she don't need help. Lord, what is that, an ax?"

"Unhand her," Kevin shrieked. "Mr. Forbes has been trained on his weapon!"