Sister Wolf (23 page)

He was not needed at Meyerling; but he would be needed at the Deym place, where another crisis was brewing, if he had heard right. His appetite for emergency was depleted. He tried to summon up his love for Marit, as a goad. His feelings failed him, as his stamina had failed him. He set out along the main road to the Deym house, choosing the longest and the hardest route.

Gabriel toiled three miles along the highway on foot, refusing rides from a baker’s truck and a youth on a motorcycle. The asphalt surface had softened in the heat, and burned through the rubber soles of his canvas shoes. The glare was intense; black dots swarmed in front of his eyes like avenging gnats. A case of migraine and blisters were fit companions in his state, since this was the head that had reasoned that Aimée must practice walking by herself, and these were the feet that had refused to guide her from the chapel to the mansion. If wolves had killed her, as the Sheriff contended, then Gabriel had fed her to the wolves; if she drowned before the animals had found her, then Gabriel had held her under water.

He turned down the rutted road that led into the woods, the same woods he had hiked through in better days, when he had only one death on his conscience. The woods were shady and still, but alive with insects. Soon Gabriel’s arms were covered with swellings, which he would not scratch. Biting creatures hummed around his ears; he never raised a hand to brush them off. The stinging flies that dogged him were more merciful than his thoughts.

Marit would be faced by the Sheriff and his posse, demanding the expulsion of the wolves. It was his duty to stand by her and to give her what support he could, even though her feeling for the wolves repelled him, since they had played a part in taking a human life. Marit did not share his reverence for life; no man and woman should mate without shared values.

The road came out at the top of a high sloping meadow. The meadow grass was mashed down by tire tracks, which crisscrossed the field all the way to the sanctuary gates. Through the glare, which was as white and dense as mist, Gabriel saw a horde of people by the gates, a horde of colored specks forming and re-forming, and larger shapes reflecting the sunlight, which must be cars and trucks, brought to a stop, not parked, all over the bottom of the meadow. Masses of clouds were hanging in the sky that would later bring rain.

Gabriel stretched his neck in the heat, watching the cloud banks melding and changing, and the menagerie of figures formed by clouds: the ostrich, the dragon, and the bull, and the lion with its head resting on its paws. From this high place he could see two counties, one of them in a neighboring state, and the purplish crest of Greylock, which passed for a mountain among the Berkshire Hills. Gravity inclined him downward; but he did not hurry. For an instant he imagined retreating or deserting. He had no taste for crowds or angry litigation. A hawk soared overhead, riding the air currents, barking and scanning the ground for mice and grasshoppers. Gabriel felt his chest lift along with the hawk, but he stayed on the land, short and earthbound.

As he walked where gravity pushed him, bearing down on his heels, he began to hear the noise from the crowd, a carnival sound, high-pitched and excited, like bursts of laughter and the exchange of taunts and dares. His vision, weakened by the sun, was slowly clearing, enough to make out some holiday sights: a group of women unfolding a checkered cloth, a little boy pulling a toy wagon, a girl releasing a white balloon, which floated up and out of her reach, higher and higher, until it sailed over the cyclone fence. Gabriel wondered if Marit had opened the meadow to the villagers, as she did, from time to time, for the campers at Meyerling. The cluster of people at the gate must be waiting for her to bring the keys. Perhaps she was going to take them on a guided tour of the sanctuary, a shrewd plan which would defuse any panic that the Sheriff had been spreading. Gabriel glanced back up the slope at her house and the low stone railing surrounding the terrace. Someone was moving across the terrace, coming down the outside staircase at a run. It was a woman, but she was blonde and wore a skirt.

Gabriel was close enough to name some figures at the gate, Skeeter and his old man, Norb; Bill Weebs, squatting at the outer edge; Frank Segalla, the Meyerling handyman, with a bandanna tied around his neck to catch the sweat. He saw the Sheriff’s ten-gallon hat at the center of the group, but the Sheriff himself was dwarfed by taller bodies. Suddenly the crowd fell back. The hat and the man were hunched over the padlock, ramming a metal bar through the shackle of the lock and between the gateposts, leaning on the bar and forcing it sideways. The fence posts clashed, but the padlock held. Brower moved in with an axe, pushed the Sheriff aside, and struck the lock with the head of the axe. The lock sprung. The gate wavered open. The men roared and the women clapped.

Gabriel waited, but the crowd did not pour through the gate. They ran back through the field where the cars were scattered; they were going to drive into the sanctuary. There was no service road; the cars with low chassis would never make it. Gabriel tried to move, but his legs felt like stretched-out elastic. He saw rear doors pulled open and trunk lids snapped up so hard that they bounced on their hinges, threatening to slam closed on the legs or the heads of the men who were reaching inside. Gabriel had some force left in his arms. He raised a hand to wave, but the gesture was feeble. The men emerged from their cars. Gabriel shut his eyes. He did not see them loading the chambers of their deer rifles. By the time he could look again, they were inside the fence, keeping down and spreading out into the brush like commandos.

The body of Marit Deym lay where it fell. The bullet that had entered her chest would have passed between the eyes of the wolf whom she called Swan. The old wolf licked her face and pushed her with his nose to break her sleep. Two wolf pups tumbled over her feet, snuffling and growling and biting each other’s paws. The young male, Killik, sat at rest, like a watchdog chained up. In the wide clearing where Marit had jumped from the top of the fence the Friday before, a ring of men, their guns on the ground, hung back in the shadows, which were deepening as the afternoon sun moved down the sky. The wolves had claimed Marit’s body, taking precedence over any human kin.

It was never clear whose bullet had killed her, since no one came forward to contest the dubious honor. When the wolves strayed into the open, more than one man had taken aim and pressed the trigger. Marit had appeared from nowhere and jumped into the line of fire. Behind a laurel bush near her body, someone found a rolled-up blanket and a canvas bag, filled with cans of food, two sweaters, and a box of matches. Lola, who arrived too late, identified the clothes.

It was Lola who walked through the sentry pack of wolves, while the men looked down or turned their faces aside. She bent her cheek over Marit’s mouth and felt no breath. The pulse was still when she pressed the vein at the base of her neck. There was a streak of dirt on Marit’s forehead. Lola took out a handkerchief and rubbed the spot away. In death as in life, Marit’s hair required attention. Lola combed it into order with her fingers.

Lola wanted to kiss Marit’s cheek, which was not yet cold; but she would never have embarrassed her friend in front of such low company. She tried to read Marit’s face, for a record of how she had lived her last few hours; but she could not see any traces of anguish or devastation. Marit’s mouth was slightly open and her face wore a little frown, the puzzled expression of a sleeper who may be dreaming. For a second she was cross with Marit, and wanted to shake her, as if Marit was holding back and refusing to confide in order to tease her.

As she laid Marit’s outspread arms along her body, Lola noticed the heavy ring she always wore, Vlado’s ring, with a coat of arms engraved in onyx, a chevron between three towers, the towers in flames. Lola took the ring off and tried it on her hand. It fit the middle finger, where Marit had worn it. It was all Lola had left, except for a pair of Marit’s socks, which she had borrowed on a rainy day and never returned.

Marit’s ashes are locked in the Deym vault on the grounds of St. Stephen’s in West Niles. Vlado and Luba were never Anglicans. They chose the church because Stephen was the patron saint of Hungary. Lola got into a mean tangle with the minister over Marit’s burial. The Reverend Kip did not want the remains of a suicide in his churchyard. The rumor of suicide had been going around, spread by the townsfolk to ease a collective bad conscience. Lola argued lamely at first. Marit had owned a revolver, a delicate ladies’ handgun of German make, but she had closed the house and gone to defend her wolves unarmed, unless the box of matches could be counted as a weapon. Then it occurred to Lola that the worthy Reverend could not read her mind. He did not guess that Marit could be charged with worse deeds than taking her life. Lola’s arguments gained force and the Reverend knuckled under. She was proud of herself. She had settled her friend’s affairs. Marit was her wolf, and she would guard her story from the knowledge of vicious men.

Gabriel left Meyerling one morning before the rising bell. He gave no notice and left no address. He never wrote for his wages or for his clothes, which may still be stored in a carton in the attic boxroom. His bed was unmade, but his desk had been cleared and emptied. For years he avoided the state of Massachusetts. He could not make himself tend two graves in the same Berkshire county.

Ann Arensberg was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Havana, Cuba. She worked as an editor at the Viking Press and E. P. Dutton. She is the author of
Sister Wolf
, which won the National Book Award for Best First Novel in 1981;
Group Sex
; and
Incubus
. Her short fiction has been included in the O. Henry Awards Prize Stories anthologies. She is currently finishing her fourth novel. She and her husband, Richard Grossman, are residents of Salisbury, Connecticut.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to E. P. Dutton and J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. For permission to reprint an excerpt from
The Little Flowers of St. Francis
, translated by T. Okey. An Everyman’s Edition. Reprinted by permission of the publisher in the United States, E. P. Dutton, and by permission of J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London.

Copyright © 1980 by Ann Arensberg

Cover design by Tammy Seidick

978-1-4804-7080-4

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com