The Wolf in Winter (2 page)

The Collector lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as his house burned.

CHAPTER

II

The wolf was a young male, alone and in pain. His ribs stood out beneath his rust-brown fur, and he limped as he drew closer to the town. The wolf’s pack had been annihilated by the shores of the St. Lawrence River, but by then the urge to roam had already taken him, and he had just begun moving south when the hunters came. His had not been a large pack: a dozen animals in all, led by the alpha female that was his mother. They were all gone now. He had escaped the slaughter by crossing the river on winter ice, flinching at the sound of gunfire. He came across a second, smaller group of men as he neared the Maine border, and sustained an injury to his left foreleg from a hunter’s bullet. He had kept the wound clean, and no infection had set in, but there was damage to some of the nerves, and he would never be as strong or as fast as he once had been. The injury would bring death upon him, sooner or later. It was already slowing him down, and slow animals always became prey in the end. It was a wonder that he had come so far, but something—a kind of madness—had driven him ever onward, south, south.

Now spring was approaching, and soon the slow melting of snow would commence. If he could just survive the remainder of the winter, food would become more plentiful. For the time being, he was reduced to the status of a scavenger. He was weak from starvation, but
that afternoon he had picked up the scent of a young deer, and its spoor had led him to the outskirts of the town. He smelled the deer’s fear and confusion. It was vulnerable. If he could get close enough to it, he might have enough strength and speed left to take it down.

The wolf sniffed the air, and picked up movement among the trees to his right. The deer stood motionless in a thicket, its tail raised in warning and distress, but the wolf sensed that he was not the cause of it. He tested the air again. His tail moved between his legs, and he drew back, his ears pinned against his head. His pupils dilated, and he exposed his teeth.

The two animals, predator and prey, stood united in fear for a moment, and then retreated, the wolf heading east, the deer west. All thoughts of hunger and feeding had left the wolf. There was only the urge to run.

But he was wounded, and tired, and winter was still upon him.

A SINGLE LIGHT BURNED
in Pearson’s General Store & Gunsmithery. It illuminated a table around which sat four old men, each of them concentrating on his cards.

“Jesus,” said Ben Pearson, “this is the worst hand I’ve ever seen. I swear, if I hadn’t watched it dealt myself I’d never have believed it. I didn’t even know cards went this low.”

Everybody ignored him. Ben Pearson could have been holding four aces dealt by Christ himself and still he’d have bitched. It was his version of a poker face. He’d developed it as a way of distracting attention from his regular features, which were so expressive as to give away his every passing thought. Depending upon the story that one was telling, Ben could be the best or the worst audience a man might wish for. He was almost childlike in his transparency, or so it seemed. Although he was now in his seventies, he had a full head of white hair, and his face was comparatively unlined. It added to his air of youthfulness.

Pearson’s General Store & Gunsmithery had been in Ben’s family for four generations in one form or another, and yet it wasn’t even the oldest business in the town of Prosperous, Maine. An alehouse had stood on the site of what was now the Prosperous Tap since the eighteenth century, and Jenna Marley’s Lady & Lace had been a clothing store since 1790. The names of the town’s first settlers still resounded around Prosperous in a way that few other such settlements could boast. Most had roots back in Durham and Northumberland, in the northeast of England, for that was where Prosperous’s first settlers had originally come from. There were Scotts and Nelsons and Liddells, Harpers and Emersons and Golightlys, along with other more singular names: Brantingham, Claxton, Stobbert, Pryerman, Joblin, Hudspeth. . . .

A genealogist might have spent many a profitable day scouring the town’s register of births and deaths, and some had indeed journeyed this far north to investigate the history of the settlement. They were received courteously, and some cooperation was offered, but they invariably left feeling slightly dissatisfied. Gaps in the town’s annals prevented full and thorough research, and making connections between the settlers of Prosperous and their ancestors back in England proved more difficult than might first have been expected, for it seemed that those families which departed for the shores of the New World had done so in their entirety, leaving few, if any, stray branches behind.

Of course, such obstacles were hardly unfamiliar to historians, whether amateur or professional, but they were frustrating nonetheless, and eventually the town of Prosperous came to be regarded as a dead end, genealogically speaking, which perfectly suited the inhab­itants. They were not unusual in that part of the world in preferring to be left untroubled by strangers. It was one of the reasons their forefathers had ventured so far into the interior to begin with, negotiating treaties with the natives that held more often than not, giving Prosperous a reputation as a town blessed by the Lord, even if its
inhabitants declined to allow others to share in their perceived good fortune, divinely ordained or otherwise. Prosperous did not invite, or welcome, new settlers without specific connections to the northeast of England, and marriages outside the original primary bloodlines were frowned upon until the late nineteenth century. Something of that original pioneering, self-sufficient spirit had transmitted itself down the generations to the present population of the town.

Now, in Pearson’s General Store, cards were exchanged, and bets were placed. This was nickel-and-dime poker in the most literal sense, and it was a rare evening when any man went home with his pockets more than a dollar or two lighter or heavier. Still, bragging rights for the rest of the week could be gained from a good run of cards, and there had been times when Ben Pearson’s fellow players had chosen to avoid his store for a couple of days in order to let Ben’s triumphalism cool a little.

“I’ll raise you a dime,” said Calder Ayton.

Calder had worked alongside Ben Pearson for the better part of half a century, and envied him his hair. He owned a small share in the store, a consequence of a brief period of financial strife back in the middle of the last century, when some of the townsfolk had allowed their attention to wander, what with the war and all, and ancient, careful habits had been set aside for a time in the hope that they might eventually be abandoned altogether. But folk had learned the foolishness of that way of thinking, and the older inhabitants had not forgotten the lesson.

Thomas Souleby pursed his lips and gave Calder the cold eye. Calder rarely went above a nickel unless he had a straight at least, and he’d flipped his dime so fast that Thomas was certain he was holding a flush or better. They always played with one-eyed royals as wild cards, and Thomas had caught a glimpse of Calamity Jane squinting at him from Calder’s hand—Thomas not viewing it as cheating if someone was careless enough to display his hand to all and sundry. It was what
had made him a good businessman in his day, back when he worked in corporate acquisitions. You took whatever advantage came your way, and you milked it for all it was worth.

“I’m out,” said Luke Joblin.

At sixty he was the youngest of the quartet, but also the most influential. His family had been in real estate ever since one caveman looked at another and said to himself, “You know, his cave is much bigger than mine. I wonder if he’d see his way to moving out. And if he doesn’t see his way to moving out I’ll just kill him and take his cave anyway.” At which point some prescient seed of the Joblin clan had spotted an opportunity to make a percentage on the deal, and perhaps prevent some bloodshed along the way.

Now Luke Joblin made sure that real estate in Prosperous stayed in the right hands, just as his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather had done before him. Luke Joblin knew the state’s zoning and land-use regulations backward and forward—not surprising, given that he’d helped write most of them—and his eldest son was ­Prosperous’s code-enforcement officer. More than any other family, the Joblins had ensured that Prosperous retained its unique character and identity.

“The hell do you mean, you’re out?” said Ben Pearson. “You barely looked at those cards before you dropped them like they was poisoned.”

“I got nothing but a hand of cultch,” said Luke.

“You got nearly a dollar of mine from the last eight hands,” said Thomas. “Least you can do is give a man a chance to win his money back.”

“What do you want me to do, just hand your money over to you? I got no cards. This is a game of strategy; you gamble when you’re strong, you fold when you’re weak.”

“You could try bluffing,” said Thomas. “You could at least make some kind of effort.”

It was always like this between them. They liked each other well
enough, but the pleasure each derived from the other’s company was directly proportionate to the degree of pickle he could give over the course of an evening.

“I brought the whisky,” Luke pointed out. “It wasn’t for me, you’d be drinking Old Crow.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

“Ayuh, this one’s a sippa,” said Calder, laying on the accent with a trowel. “Wicked good.”

Each man took it in turn to provide a bottle for the weekly poker night, although it usually sufficed for two evenings, and it was a point of pride to bring along something that satisfied all tastes to a degree. Luke Joblin knew Scotch better than any of them, and that night they were drinking an eighteen-year-old from Talisker, the only distillery on the Isle of Skye. It was a little spicy for Thomas’s palate, but he had to admit that it was far superior to The Glenlivet, which had been his selection some weeks earlier. Then again, Thomas had never been one for hard liquor, preferring wine. He gave the whisky a second swirl from habit, and took a small mouthful. He was starting to like it more and more. It certainly grew on a fella.

“Maybe I’ll let you off this once,” said Thomas.

“That’s generous of you,” said Luke.

In the end, Calder took the pot with a flush, just as Thomas had anticipated. Thomas was enduring a mauling that night. If things kept going the way they were, he’d have to break another dollar.

By unspoken consent, they rested for a while. Talk turned to local matters: business dealings, rumors of romances, and problems in the town that needed to be addressed. Tree roots were just about coming through the sidewalk on Main Street, and the Town Office needed a new boiler. A dispute had also arisen over the old Palmer house, with three families seeking to acquire it for their children. The Palmers, a private couple even by the town’s standards, had died without issue, and represented the end of their line in Prosperous. The proceeds
of their estate were to be dispersed among various charities, with a portion going also to the town’s central fund. But living space was at a premium in Prosperous, and the Palmer house, though small and in need of repair, was much coveted. In any ordinary community, market forces would have been allowed to prevail, and the house would have gone to the highest bidder. Prosperous, though, didn’t operate that way. The decision on the sale of the house would be made according to who was owed it, who had the best claim upon it. Discussions would be held, and a consensus reached. The family that eventually acquired the house would make some reparation to the others. Luke Joblin would get his commission, of course, but he would earn it.

In effect, the poker night functioned as an unofficial meeting of most of the board of selectmen. Only Calder Ayton didn’t contribute to the discourse. Meetings bored him, and whatever Ben Pearson decided was always fine with him. Old Kinley Nowell, meanwhile, was absent on this occasion, laid up in hospital with pneumonia. There was a general feeling that Kinley didn’t have long on this earth. Possible replacements had to be considered, and Ben now raised the matter with his fellow selectmen. After a little back-and-forth, they decided that some younger blood wouldn’t hurt them. They’d approach the elder Walker girl, Stacey, once the chief selectman had given her consent. Hayley Conyer—she didn’t care to be called a selectwoman, didn’t approve of that kind of nonsense—was not one for poker games or whiskey evenings. Ben Pearson said that he would talk to Hayley in the morning and sound her out, but he told the others that he didn’t anticipate any refusal, or any problems with the nomination. Stacey Walker was a clever girl and a good lawyer, and it never hurt to have lawyers on call.

Thomas Souleby wasn’t so sure. He felt certain that Hayley Conyer would object, and she retained a rarely used power of veto when it came to nominations to the board. Conyer was a strong woman who
preferred the company of men, and had no particular sense of obligation to others of her sex who might be a threat to her position. She wouldn’t welcome the arrival of someone as young and vibrant as Stacey Walker, and Thomas believed that, in the case of the Walker girl, Conyer might well have a point. He had ambitions of his own to lead the board once Conyer was gone, whenever that might be, and had worked long and hard to ensure that he had as little competition as possible. Stacey Walker was just a mite too clever, and too ambitious, for Thomas’s liking. While he frequently clashed with Conyer, he would not object to her using her veto to shoot down the Walker nomination. Someone more suitable could be found; someone more substantial, more experienced.

Someone more malleable.

Thomas stretched and took in the old store, with its curious mix of expensive artisan products alongside the regular items that you could buy for half the price in a Hannaford or a Shaw’s. Ben certainly wasn’t shy with his pricing, Thomas would give him that, but there was also the matter of convenience, and exchanging gossip, and supporting local businesses to consider. It was important that money stayed within the town’s precincts wherever possible. Once cash started leaking out, Prosperous would be financially sound in name only. For the early settlers, the name had been part prayer, part aspiration. Now it was a reflection of the reality of the town’s situation: it had the highest per capita income in Maine, a fact that might not have been immediately apparent were a visitor to judge it on appearances alone. Prosperous maintained a low profile, and did not call attention to itself.