The Wolf Road (33 page)

“We ain’t got no coin,” I said. “We sleepin’ in the woods?”

Penelope smiled at me and told me to follow her. Her sharp eyes had picked out something I’d missed and that put me right on edge. I weren’t used to the back foot. It weren’t no fun place, but after all this, I figured Penelope knew what she was doing.

But she damn well didn’t.

We was walking to the bridge over the river. On the other side, at the lumberyard, I saw a reunion ’tween a man and a woman. Mark and the boy had made it to Tucket in ’bout the same time as us and he was there, hugging what I figured must be his sister.

I grabbed Penelope’s arm and said, “Not a chance. We ain’t stayin’ with them.”

“Why not?”

I pulled her back, out the middle a’ the road.

“Too dangerous,” I said, and I weren’t meaning for us.

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re good people.” Penelope had a frown on her what could curdle cream. She yanked her arm free a’ me.

“Exactly. They’re fine people,” I said, hissing out my words, “and I don’t want them to come to a bad end.”

“What are you talking about?” Penelope asked, looking at me like I was one a’ them loons right out their cage.

I pulled her in close so no one around could hear. “If that man and his boy help us out, help
me
out, that’s enough to put ’em in harm’s way if they ain’t already.” Penelope tried to interrupt me but I weren’t having it. “That doctor in Halveston, he helped me, he was the kindest soul I met this side a’ Couver City. Kreagar knew it, don’t ask me how but he did, and now that doctor’s son is dead. All ’cause a’ me. I ain’t havin’ no more blood on my hands.”

Penelope relaxed, her face broke into sympathy. “That was a coincidence. A horrible, terrible coincidence, but you can’t blame yourself. Hallet isn’t here, is he? He’s down in Halveston.”

I shook my head, felt my fear boiling up to rage. “Kreagar is
everywhere
. He’s a hunter, a damn fine one; you ain’t gonna see him till he wants you to and by then he’s already lined up his shot. He’s here. I can feel it.”

“Elka,” Penelope said, put both her hands on my arms, “calm down. He’s not here. He’s not watching us, and if he is, that boy has got his family around him to protect him. Nothing is going to happen to them but I’d really,
really
like to sleep under a roof tonight.”

I looked her in the eye, saw pleading, saw dog-tiredness, saw a kind a’ certainty I didn’t have. Them eyes was telling me to trust her. Wolf would a’ growled and said, No, ma’am. Suddenly felt an aching in my chest for that beast. He had it simple: a forest, a saddle a’ rabbit—that was all he needed and time was, it was all I needed. I looked over my shoulder at the lumberyard, lamps burning in the low light, voices shouting happy tidings carrying on the air, across that calm river. Penelope was saying to me, though not using her words, that her and me belonged with people, not sleeping in the dirt. Wolf didn’t like people, that was plain, and few months ago nor did I, but I had me a cloud in my head.

In truth, I didn’t know right what to do.

And I chose wrong.

I nodded to Penelope and walked half a step behind her across that bridge. Stood half a step behind her when we came up on the lumberyard. Mark and his sister were standing outside a pair a big barn doors, painted red once but faded to blood-brown. His face lit up the dusk when he saw us coming.

The boy was by the barn. He chucked sawdust in the air and ran about ’neath the flurry. Motes a’ pale yellow, flakes a’ wood what had been spruce and alder and cherry and oak, covered his hair, turning it from black to white, like he had the sun rising behind him, lighting him up. He was smiling wide and laughing. Nothing like the boy I met in the woods. That made it all the worse. My stomach swirled and churned like an eddy in a high river. Stuck in one place, trying to force itself out the corner and sail down the stream free as wind. I watched that boy spinning like a sycamore seed ’neath that sawdust as Penelope talked her way into the Thompsons’ house. I felt like my insides was turning to stone. Felt like I was cracking up and splitting down the middle.

The Thompson sister was saying my name. Tore my eyes off the boy and looked at her. Smooth brown skin and black hair cut down to her scalp. Arms what had felt true work, hauling lumber no doubt, and a scar along her chin too perfect to be from a milling accident.

Her name was Josie and she said I was welcome at her table anytime. I shook her hand. Rough as mine and strong. She was taller’n me but only by a hair. I liked her and I didn’t make no bones about it.

“Thank you,” I said, and smiled true, a bit a’ relief in me that the boy had a woman with arms like that to look out for him. “Penelope been wantin’ a proper roof over her head for weeks.”

“We have plenty of space,” Josie said, voice like sunburn and smoke. “You got Mark here to work on time and that’s worthy of a master suite.”

She nudged her brother but his face twinged like the joke weren’t funny. Penelope was smiling at Mark like they was back in the woods, all twinkles in her eyes and I felt a mite squirmy being so close to ’em. Stomach sank at the thought a’ making talk with ’em all evening.

Josie led us all ’round the barn and mill yard to a small house sitting out on its own in the middle of a field. I knew it was a field, ’stead a’ just
land
on account a’ the fence. I don’t like fences. They’re like teeth sprouting out from the earth, sharp and open, a trap waiting to spring. You ring your patch with teeth and you make a mouth what’s going to swallow you up. A fence is a way a’ showing the world what exactly you got claim to. In my head that just makes it all the more easy to take away.

The house was one with stairs up the middle, a second floor and bedrooms off all sides. It was the biggest house I ever been in and was made mostly out a’ stone. Felt old inside, maybe even made afore the Damn Stupid. Carpet on the floor worn down to threads. Cracks running through plaster walls. Paintings in frames hung skewed. Place smelled a’ woodsmoke and barbecue sauce and the long hallway carried the sound a’ clattering pots from the kitchen. More people. More people Kreagar could choose.

Josie’s husband, pale as chalk and hair color a’ that sawdust, came jogging down the hall, smiling and wiping his hands on a cloth. Jethro. Josie and Jethro. They had music in their names and music in the way they moved, grabbing each other, kissing cheeks, hands shaking mine and Penelope’s and Mark’s, all without pause. Jethro was a coiled-up spring where Josie was water. He jittered, she flowed.

Much as I tried to keep myself cold to them, they had something in them what warmed me up, melted my ice. I cursed ’em for it later, when the snow came and the world went to shit. But right then, I was happy for the fire and the food and the company. Six a’ us sat ’round a scratched-up wooden table in the middle a’ the kitchen, Jethro stirred pots, served up plates a’ ribs and piles a’ potatoes and greens. I ate like it was my last meal and it sure felt like it was. Sat next to the boy, seeing his eyes light up, shoving fists a’ mash in his mouth. Didn’t know it then, what was going to happen. Not like I know it now. But my body, my wits, was telling me something.

Demon settled in my gut, took up a home there, put himself up a fence. What I owed to Penelope stopped me from running out that door. I stayed quiet most the night, kept my eyes down. Soon Josie stopped trying to talk to me, soon the boy fell asleep ’gainst my arm. They laughed. I didn’t.

Mark and Penelope asked each other question after question—why you got that bandage on your leg, where you travelling from, White Top? Beautiful town. I watched them, turned toward each other in their chairs, paying no mind to no one else at the table. Josie and Jethro had eyes on Penelope too; you couldn’t help it. She was a beauty no doubt and she made everyone laugh and smile and forget. Even the boy seemed to like her. It was like I was looking in from outside. It was normal and human and they was having fun and I realized how happy I was for Penelope that she got to speak to someone other’n me.

Night drew in and Penelope and me shared a room. It had two narrow beds either side of a small table and no matter how soft that mattress, how heavy that blanket, I couldn’t find no comfort. Couldn’t close my eyes for seeing Kreagar. Saw him walk through the door. Saw him climb through the window. Saw him standing on my bed, scrap a’ hair and blood in his fist. Brown hair. Boy hair.

No sir, I couldn’t find no comfort.

Penelope slept like she ain’t got no secrets. A thunderhead wouldn’t a’ woken her ’less it threw her up in the sky. She opened her eyes to watery dawn and smiled at me, asked me how I slept.

“Nervous?” she said, still wrapped up in the blanket.

“What I got to be nervous ’bout?” But I knew. I knew exactly.

“When did you last see them?” she asked.

She sat up and rubbed her head, her hair stuck out all over like a squirrel tail.

I shrugged. Didn’t know when I last seen ’em. In truth, I didn’t remember ever seeing ’em. Felt like this was a goose chase when the goose already went south for winter.

“You don’t have to come,” I said. “You can stay here and make house with these folks.”

Penelope raised her eyebrows at me, set her jaw hard, and told me to shut up and get dressed.

“We’re leaving after breakfast,” she said.

And we did. Breakfast a’ fried eggs and thick bacon. We left with promises to come back and see them all soon. Penelope left Mark with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. Left the boy with the same. I ain’t the kissing type.

Walking helped my nerves. When you’re walking, you ain’t really anywhere. I could walk forever, keeping moving, keeping going. You ain’t got to make conversation. You ain’t got to explain yourself. Penelope read the map, kept us going straight. I walked out a’ Tucket with a rock in my chest. Sharp and cold and pressing right down on the core a’ me. I saw Kreagar in every man we passed by, saw him ’tween the trees when we got up into the woods, saw him staring out at me from still water. Figured it was only a matter of time afore one a’ them phantoms was real. He was getting closer to me or maybe I was getting closer to figuring out his words, figuring out why he didn’t kill me on the reverend’s table.

I was. Them doors in my head was rattling ’gainst their chains.

My parents would help, they’d protect me, they’d forgive me. That’s what parents do, ain’t it?

“We’re close,” Penelope said. “That ridge up there, it’s this one on the map. The claim should be just the other side. If we follow the river, we’ll be there in an hour.”

This close, my gut started twisting. I’d always imagined my folks would run at me, arms open, cheering they joy at seeing the daughter they left behind, throwing up gold like confetti. Didn’t cross my mind the truth of it. This far north the cold don’t just freeze you. It don’t just crack your skin and stop your heart. It turns you to ice on the inside. People up here were hard as the ground, they say howdy with a rifle, and there ain’t no reason my parents wouldn’t be the same, if they was there at all.

The Tin River claim, what my parents owned, sat on the inside bend a’ the river. The water made the land into a pocket, the ridge behind it acting like a natural barrier to the weather. Penelope said the river was a shoot a’ the Yukon, come wending its way ’cross the land, leaving gold like a trail. A log cabin sat square in the middle a’ the flat land, just out a’ flood reach. Spruce and fir grew up tall and strong behind the cabin, rising up onto the ridge some ways. There weren’t no other shack or road or person in sight and after the few months I’d had, it was a goddamn paradise.

Penelope nudged me, smiling, and opened her mouth to call out but I grabbed her arm.

“Not yet,” I said.

Something weren’t right.

A wooden sluice box sat quiet and dry on the grass, moss growing up its side. A handful a’ green plastic pans, some broke, some covered in black mold, was strewn about all over the place. A water pump was rusting near the bank. The hole they’d dug in the land, running along the length a’ the river bend, was more a meadow now. Summer wildflowers grew up in clumps, covered up forgotten pipes and shovels.

No one stirred inside the cabin.

Only sounds on the claim was birds tweeting in the trees, the rushing a’ the river, rustling a’ rabbits and small critters preparing for winter. Sound a’ my heart. Sound a’ Penelope breathing.

I started walking to the cabin. You can’t never be sure in these parts. My momma or daddy could a’ seen us coming, could be waiting behind the door with twin barrels a’ buckshot. I stepped up onto the porch, heart beating right in my mouth.

“Momma?” I said, loud enough to get through the door. “Daddy?”

Expected one a’ them to throw open the door, wrap me up in they arms and say, My girl, we could a’ shot you!

But they didn’t.

Door weren’t even closed. It was getting on for noon but there was only darkness in that cabin. I looked behind me. Eyes found Penelope standing a ways back, arms crossed over her chest, deep creases a’ worry in her forehead.

“Ain’t no one here,” I shouted. “Looks like there ain’t been no one here for least a year.”