The Wolves of Winter
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Mom didn’t share Dad’s enthusiasm. I’d come in with a dead marten or fox and she’d give me this look. What a waste, her face would say. All my smarts and I was out in the woods killing critters.
I’d agree with her, but what’s the point?
The point? The point is, I could make it out on my own. I didn’t need the cabins, the stupid animals. All I needed was my bow and my knife. Dad would have understood.
But like all the other times before, I didn’t follow the river east. I just sat and imagined.
I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, a flapping white wing, a beady blue eye. On a branch about twenty feet up was a bird. Looked like a crow. But it was all white. Never seen an all-white crow before. I stared at the thing, and it stared back at me. Jeryl once told me that the world was changing. Maybe this was part of what he was talking about. The bird let out an annoying “Yaw,” then launched from the branch toward the river, its white wings folding like a tissue caught in the wind. Such a weird creature. I followed it because, well, because it was a white crow.
I started downhill, my feet packing the snow beneath me, the Blackstone River flowing in a silent rush. I scanned the trees, searching for the bird. That’s when I heard the rustling and saw another animal, this one walking on my side of the river. I stopped moving. A wolf. No, not a wolf. A dog. A freaking dog! Thick white fur with a streak of silver on top. Pale blue eyes and pointed ears. Siberian husky. Probably a sled dog. It was about twenty yards away, sniffing at the air. It was right where the bird had gone. I thought about all those Native American stories about shape-shifting spirit animals. Had the crow shifted into a dog? I took a cautious step, and its head snapped toward me, its ears white triangles pointing at the sky. We surveyed each other without moving. I thought, just for a second, about shooting the thing. Dog meat was meat, wasn’t it? And I didn’t know this dog. I’d never had a dog. I felt no sentimentality. But when it looked at me, I could see the curiosity in its eyes. The trust that it had learned in a world I’d forgotten about. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, shoot the stupid thing.
Then a high-pitched whistle sounded from the south, and I heard more footsteps in the snow. I ducked behind a thick pine tree and peeked out at the bank, breathing fast. That’s when I saw him. Heavy, gray winter coat, brown pack strapped to his shoulders with what looked like a blanket or a bedroll tied to the top of it. He had a skullcap covering his head, a blue handkerchief covering his face, and dark hair plastered to his forehead. Eyes that had been focused on the ground were suddenly alert and pointed in my direction. My heart banged in my ears. I flattened my back against the tree. Then the dog barked, a piercing sound. Shit. I nearly jumped out of my sexy wool underwear. He barked again. Not an angry bark. Excited, if anything. A look-what-I-found bark.
I peered around the tree. The dog was staring at me, the man staring at me. We all stared, assessing if what we were seeing was real.
“Hello?” He said it like a question. Hello? Is that right? Is that what people used to say?
I didn’t answer.
“Don’t want any trouble,” he said, pulling his handkerchief down around his neck.
“Okay,” I said. Probably should have said Me neither. The dog barked again.
“Shut it,” the man said to the dog. He looked back at me. “I’m going to keep on moving. You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.”
It wasn’t till later that I thought about how weird that was. What lone, wandering human in a world devoid of company didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to learn about the surviving human race, didn’t want a moment—at least a moment—of human companionship?
“Where you from?” I blurted as he started back up the river. He paused, turned back to me. The dog barked again as if answering for him.
“South. The States.” He didn’t return the question. Maybe he assumed I was from the Yukon.
“Any news?” I asked.
He looked at me like he was trying to understand the question.
“No” was all he said.
Then he turned his back to me and started walking.
He scared the hell out of me. A lone man, surviving on his own. How rough would he have to be to survive out here by himself? How desperate? I pictured Conrad, his face too close to mine, his body flattened against me. But I couldn’t let this man go. Couldn’t let him get away. He was a link to the world beyond our little settlement, the only link I’d seen in years and years. I had to trap him, ensnare him. I reached out with the only thing I had to offer.
“You hungry?” He stopped. The dog had given up on me and was sniffing at a tree. “You should come with me.”
The man appraised me. He was used to being alone, to surviving on his own. But he had to be hungry. Everyone was hungry.
“Okay,” he said.
6
In the life before, in Alaska, Mom was a librarian. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her now. The hardened eyes, the dirt under her nails, the pinch of her lips. Crevices of survival, of suffering, of endless winter, not of a librarian in an elementary school, handing out Dr. Seuss to kids.
But she did that, once, and she loved it.
She loved my dad too. We all did. But his death had more of an impact on her than it did on me or Ken. Before, she was something like shy. She didn’t have friends or any real social life, and she’d let Dad make almost all the decisions. Sure, she had her temper, but for the most part, she was a kind, quiet, unassuming woman. After his death, I think she felt the burden of the world on her shoulders. The burden of me and Ken. She became a strong-willed, outspoken, zealous woman full of fire and a will to survive. It’s probably what’s kept her alive so long. That and the fact that Jeryl showed up and nearly shoved us out the door. He saved us. Saved us from the town, which was rotting at the seams from flu, being torn apart by looters, and freezing in the plummeting temperatures. Our heater was broken, and the fires we had each night barely warmed our living room, let alone the whole house. I remember falling asleep, watching my breath gathering in front of my face and disappearing toward the ceiling. But Mom had refused to leave. Even after half the town was dead or on the move, she held tight to the walls of our house like they were the living, breathing reincarnation of Dad. Maybe if Walt Whitman had anything to say about it, they were.
Jeryl came over one morning with his animals all packed up and ready to go. “Mary, time to leave.”
She fought him, screamed at him, told him to get the hell out of her house. He wouldn’t budge. He started packing things up for her, and she got violent. Pushing and punching, but he just shoved her away. That’s when she ran to the basement, came up with a pistol in her hands.
“Get out.” Her voice was shaking.
Jeryl stopped what he was doing, and Ken and I watched from the living room. Deep down, I knew she’d never do it. But that’s when everything changed with Mom. My vision of her altered. She was the same, but she was different. More feral. Protective. We were still in Alaska, but that was the moment Yukon Mom was born.
Uncle Jeryl walked up to her, calm as ever, as she held that gun out to him, telling him she’d do it, she didn’t care. He reached out, took the gun right out of her hands, and she crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut loose. Jeryl knelt down, helped her back to her feet.
“Pack your things,” he said again.
We left with Jeryl’s animals in tow, with what we could bring of our lives packed on their backs. The goats, the musk ox, the donkey, and the horse. Wouldn’t you know it? The damn donkey and horse were the ones to bite the dust. The donkey on the way through the Yukon, the horse two years after. But Hector, Helen, and Stankbutt, don’t you worry, they’ll probably outlive us all.
Anyway, it’s hard to picture my mom like she used to be. From before. My before-mom. Handing out books to kids. Stamping the due date onto the little insert inside the cover of each book. That mom’s gone. Gone like chocolate, cartoons, balloons, bananas, cars, planes, buses, bus stamps, food stamps, government, gum—the sour apple kind I loved so much—commercials, sports, school, sunglasses, and summer.
Good-bye, summer.
Hello, chilly spring. Hello, long, frozen winter.
The man came closer. He had a dark brown beard and bright blue eyes that looked almost white, even against the snow. He might have been attractive once, but it was hard to tell beneath all that beard. A funny thing to wonder about someone—whether they were attractive. I couldn’t remember the last time I wondered that.
He followed me up the hill at a steady and healthy distance while the dog jumped around me, excited as a kid on Halloween. I kept glancing back at him—waiting for him to pull a knife and attack—and noticed that he was limping on his left leg. I slowed my pace just a little.
“What’s his name?” I asked, calling over my shoulder.
“Uh, just Wolf. Found him a few years back. Gave him some food. Been following me ever since.”
I looked down at the husky trotting by my side. “You know he’s not, right?”
“Not what?”
“A wolf.”
The man’s eyes dropped to the dog.
“He’s a Siberian husky. Probably a sled dog,” I said.
For a moment, there was only the sound of our breathing and the dog’s feet puncturing the snow. The man mumbled something, I wasn’t sure what, but it sounded like: “Looked like a wolf to me.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
Long pause like he was thinking about it. “Jax,” he said. Seemed like a lie, but why would he lie about his name? Something was off about this man. I knew the potential danger I was in. Alone with a strange man, in the middle of nowhere, too far away to call for help. What a stupid idea it was to invite him back to the cabins. Why had I done that? God, it was so exciting.
“Lynn,” I said, not that he’d bothered to ask my name. He still didn’t say anything. “Short for Gwendolynn. Gwendolynn McBride. It’s Scottish.” Why was I still talking? Maybe because he wasn’t.
“It’s a nice name,” he said.
We continued the rest of the way in silence, the sun a ball of flame beneath cotton clouds.
Ken, Jeryl, and Ramsey were all out when we made it to the cabins. Probably hunting, or fishing, in Ramsey’s case. Mom was coming from the animal pens, with a feed bucket for Hector, Helen, and Stankbutt in her arms. She took one look at the man and his dog and her body went stiff, her face as blank as I’d ever seen. She was wearing her brown Carhartts, black gloves, and heavy blue jacket with the fake fur lining. Her hood was pulled up, and her freckled cheeks were red.
“Lynn,” she said. The word froze in the air. I once saw a video of a woman tossing scalding-hot coffee out of her window in winter in northern Alaska. Minus-whatever temperatures. As the liquid hit the air, it puffed into white mist. The sound of my name on Mom’s lips was something like that. Lynn—puff.
“Mom, this is Jax. Found him by the river. Told him that we could spare a bite to eat.”
There was panic in her eyes as she turned to our cabin and rushed through the door, not bothering to close it behind her.
“Mom?”
I looked back at Jax. He didn’t look surprised.
“Maybe I should go,” he said. “Don’t want to upset anyone.”
Then Mom came bursting through the wooden door, shotgun in hand, pointing at Jax. Jax raised his hands.
“Mom!”
“You sick? Any fever, sniffles, cough?” Mom asked.
“Mom, he’s fine,” I said at the same time that Jax said, “No, ma’am.”
“Any weapons on you?”
He shook his head. “Had a bow. It broke when I took a spill in the snow a few days ago.”
“What do you do for food?”
“My knife.” He pointed to his belt, where a knife—nearly a foot long from blade to hilt—hung in a leather sheath. A good, healthy knife, for skinning and for killing.
“Mom, put the gun down.” She didn’t move an inch. Her gaze was trained on him. I saw her finger hovering over the trigger. She was ready to kill the man, the quiet librarian in her long gone, fire in her eyes.
“You hunt with just a knife?” Mom asked.
Jax shook his head. “Not well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken your offer for food.”
“Not my offer.” She adjusted the gun against her shoulder.
“Mom, what the hell?” I said.
She glanced at me for half a heartbeat. “This was a stupid, stupid move, Gwendolynn.”
Mom’s boots ground the snow beneath her feet as she backed up a few paces. Wolf was taking a piss on the corner of our cabin.
“Go inside,” Mom said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun toward the door. “Dog stays out here.”
“Dog does what he wants,” Jax said, lowering his hands. I don’t think he meant to sound challenging. I think he was just telling it like it was. But it didn’t do him any favors with Mom.
“As long as what he wants isn’t to come inside.” She looked to the animal shed. “He gonna bug my animals?”
Jax shrugged. “Don’t think so.”
It was then that I realized that Jax wasn’t afraid. Not in the least. You learn how to spot fear when you hunt. You can see it in an animal’s posture, in their ears, the tensing of their muscles. You know when they’re about to bolt. Jax seemed completely relaxed, tired even.
“Get in,” Mom said. It was a command.
Jax obeyed. Slowly.
If I wasn’t so embarrassed by Mom’s paranoia, I probably would have thought the sight of her cooking food with a shotgun in her hand was hilarious. I helped build the fire, set the pots, even retrieved the deer meat and vegetables from the freeze out back. She spilled hot water, nearly dropped the meat, but the whole time, she kept an eye on Jax.
“Where you from, Jax?” she asked.
“The States.”
“Where?”
Pause. “Montana.” Was he lying again? Damn. You’re not helping your case, Jax.
“You walked all this way?” Mom asked, stirring the pot and sticking the meat on a grill that Jeryl had mounted over the fireplace when we first built the cabin.
“Had a horse for a while.”
“What happened to it?”
He frowned, like he was taken aback by the question. “Went lame.”
“You eat it?”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“Language, Gwendolynn.”
Jax watched. Mom stirred the pot.
“Yes, I did. Ate what I could, packed what I could carry.”
When the food was served, Jax dove in without saying grace. Mom took up her shotgun again and aimed it at him while he ate. He didn’t seem to mind. There was something gratifying about watching him eat. Something about seeing him enjoy the food, the fact that I knew he desperately needed it and that I’d helped provide it. When there was just a little meat left, he stopped, lifted his head, and eyed the last bit.
“Full?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Eh, stupid dog,” he said, rising. The wooden chair grated against the floor.
Mom lifted the shotgun to her cheek. “What’re you doing?”
Jax picked up the meat. He didn’t say anything else. He walked to the door, opened it, and tossed the hunk of meat outside. Before he closed the door, I saw Wolf dive onto the scrap.
“You feed them once,” Jax said, “and suddenly they’re your responsibility.”
“Not how it works in my house,” Mom said.
Jax laughed, a warm sound but with a hint of sadness in it. “Don’t worry about me, ma’am. I’ll be on my way. As long as you aren’t going to shoot me in the back.”
“Can’t make any promises.”
“Thank you for the food,” Jax said, then turned to me. “Nice to meet you, Gwen.”
“Lynn,” I said.
He stepped toward the door. Mom aimed.
“Wait,” I said. “Mom, Jeryl will want to meet him.”
“Ha. Jeryl will be annoyed we let a stranger in while he was out,” she replied.
“He’s the first person we’ve seen in years. Ever, unless you count Conrad. Jeryl will want to trade news, hear his story.” Long pause. Mom’s hands dipped, the barrel of the gun dropping ever so slightly. Her arm was getting tired. She eyed Jax with suspicion. Something else in her eyes too. I decided not to ask. “You know I’m right,” I said.
Mom lowered the gun, spun a chair around, and straddled it. She rested the barrel on the back of the chair, pointing it at Jax.
“Sit,” she said.
“The gun isn’t necessary, ma’am.”
“Sit.”
He sat.
“You’re limping. Why?”
Jax’s head bowed slightly. “I took a bad spill when I broke my bow.”
“Wounded?”
“A scratch.”
“You did this a few days ago?”
“About. Days kinda blend.”
Mom bit the inside of her cheek. “Let me see.”
“It’s fine. It’ll heal.”
“Let me see.” She adjusted the rifle on the chair.
“What’re you gonna do? Kill him if he doesn’t show you?” I asked.
“Just let me see,” she repeated.
Jax stood, limped around the table, and lifted his left pant leg. On the side of his calf was a gash, two inches long. It was angry red and raw.
“Trust me,” he said. “It’ll heal.”
“Hurt bad?” Mom asked.
“Not really.”
Mom gave him a look.
“Like a bitch,” he said.
I sat, holding the gun on Jax as he reclined in my cot. I felt like an idiot with the gun on him, but Mom wouldn’t be persuaded. She didn’t trust him for a second. Any minute now, he was going to get the jump on us, rape us, murder us, and chop us into little pieces. Stupid. I aimed the gun at his face while Mom went to gather supplies.
“Sorry about this,” I said.
He shook his head. “You have to look after yourself these days.”
Screw it. I lowered the gun, leaned it against the wall.
Mom glared at me as she came up the steps, but she didn’t say anything. She had her bottle of vodka, some bandages, and a steak knife. “I’ve never been the best at this,” she said.
“You don’t have to do this, ma’am.”
“Shut it.” Mom lifted a hand, hesitated, then put it on Jax’s calf. She poured out a good splash of vodka on the cut, then dabbed it with a wet cloth. Jax grunted and twitched.
“We need to cut the dead tissue off.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s small,” Jax said.
“So was David.”
“David?” He eyed her like she was a crazy person.
“David and Goliath. He was small, but he brought down a giant.”
“My leg isn’t David.”
“And you’re not a giant.”
Mom poured a dab of the liquor onto the steak knife she’d brought and started cutting into the bad flesh. Jax closed his eyes. He didn’t squirm or call out. Afterward, the wound looked more red and raw and bigger than it had when Mom first started at it. Maybe she’d made it worse. She’d cleaned up a few of our cuts and scrapes over the years. She even gave Ken a few stitches with fishing wire after he fell down a ravine. But still, she didn’t really know what the hell she was doing. None of us did.
Jeryl’s reaction to Jax was much different from Mom’s. It was already late afternoon when he, Ken, and Ramsey came into the cabin. Mom and I were downstairs, tearing up an old blanket to use as a bandage. Mom nodded upstairs to the loft, giving Jeryl a serious look.
Then they were all crammed on the stairway, staring like a bunch of idiots.
“Who the hell are you?” Ken asked.
Jeryl looked from Jax to Mom and back again. Jax sat up in bed, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Jeryl, calm, grabbed a chair and sat next to him.
Then he started asking questions.
“What’s your name?”
“Jax.”
“You got any weapons on you?”
“Just a knife.”
“Where you from?”
“Montana.”
“Was it bad there?”
“Same as everywhere else. Not much left.”
“You sick?”
“No.”
“Been around the sick?”
“Been on my own for months.”
“Months? You’ve seen others out here?”
“A group of maybe twenty.”
“They sick?”
“Nope.”
“Seen anybody else?”
“Not for a long while.”
“Why didn’t you stay with them?”
“I keep to myself.”
“Where you heading?”
“North.”
“And then?”
“No and then. Just north.”
“You running from something?”
“Aren’t we all?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Just trying to find a better life. Same as everyone.”
“You in the wars?”
“I was the wars.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means yes, I was in the wars.”
“You have any family left?”
“No.”
“Seen any of the cities?”
“Yes.”
“Anybody left?”
“Not that you’d want to meet.”
“You hurt?”
“My leg. Just a scratch.”
“Right … you can stay till your leg’s healed up. Then you’re gone.”
“That’s not necessary. I’m fine to leave now.”
“You’ll be fed, a roof over your head.”
“Don’t want to be a bother.”
“Can’t stay in here, though. You’ll bunk with me. Ramsey, you stay with Ken.”
“I’m not sure—”
“You leave the second you can walk straight.”
“All right.”
“You try anything … and I’ll kill you.”
“Fair enough.”
7
When Dad was dying, I used to read Walt Whitman to him. Mom made me wear a stupid mask over my mouth. He could probably barely hear me. “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” I remember feeling weird about that line. Seeing my dad’s sunken lids and thinning hair and the wrinkles around his eyes that used to be laugh lines but had somehow turned into sad creases. Nothing about him looked sacred.
The wars had all but stopped. No more reports of bombs or gunfire or drone strikes. Nothing. The world had turned its attention to the flu. Maybe half of Eagle had already left, heading north. My friend Amanda told me that her mom said that the colder the temperatures the less likely it was to get the flu. Didn’t make sense to me.
“Is the flu going to kill us all?” I asked Dad one day. Light filtered through the piss-yellow curtains. On the windowsill was a can of Coke surrounded by water rings that looked like Olympic symbols.
Dad shook his head. “It’s not going to kill you. You’re a survivor. Come here.” I stood from my chair and walked over to his bed. It was closer than I was supposed to get. A single bead of sweat trailed his forehead, disappearing down the side of his face. “First you survive here.” He pointed to my head. “Then here.” He pointed to my stomach. “Then here.” He pointed to my heart. “You have to have all three.”
My hands were shaking.
“You’re gonna do fine, Lynn.” He rested his hand on my arm. He wasn’t supposed to. “You’re a survivor.”
Turns out, he was right.
Jax had gone—or been escorted, rather—to Jeryl’s cabin after dinner. Dinner had been mostly quiet. Small talk here and there. A lot of stares. A lot of tension. Even the sound of a boot scuffling beneath the table seemed to set everyone on edge. Ramsey had looked especially agitated. Kept giving Jax the stink eye. Ken mouthed off once or twice, Jeryl asked a few less interview-like questions about game and hunting and Wolf, and Mom sat silently, chewing her meat like she was trying to kill the thing all over again.