The Wolf Road (34 page)

Penelope dropped her arms and started walking to me. Halfway she stopped. Strange look passed over her face.

I didn’t pay it no mind at first, ’stead I pushed open the door. Smell a’ dust and damp hit me. Saw holes in the roof right off, a branch in there clogging out the light. Single room, bed on one side covered with a sheet hanging from the ceiling like a canopy. Black iron wood burner sat in the middle a’ the room, chimney twisted and useless. Pile a’ logs. Pots and pans. Window looked out onto the river, not that you’d know it for all the grime. Place looked like a hungry bear been through it and found not much a’ anything, ’cept maybe whatever was under that sheet.

Penelope called me from somewhere outside.

I found her behind the cabin, staring down at a scrap a’ earth.

“What’s that?” I said.

She turned around and stepped to the side. She weren’t staring at a scrap a’ earth. She was staring at the wooden cross stuck in it.

“It says Philip,” she said. “Your father.”

Twinges ran through me. Short, sharp pains in my hands and feet and head.

“You said they was alive,” I said, all quiet.

“I said there was no death record.”

Next to the grave was a half-dug pit. A grave what didn’t get filled.

“Only one a’ them,” I said. “Maybe Momma’s still living, off with a new man in Halveston or some such place.”

I weren’t convincing no one, least of all me. Thought a’ that sheet over the bed and my toes went cold.

I went back in the cabin and stood beside that bed, Penelope with me.

“Want me to do it?” she said and I said yes.

Slow, she lifted up the sheet. Saw the feet first. Gray and withered. Then the rest a’ her. Dried out like tinder. Dead lips pulled back over her teeth made it look like she was screaming at the world. ’Tween her hands, them hands what wrote my letter, lying on her chest, was a shovel, still caked with dirt. She must a’ buried her man then came in here to sleep and just not woken up. Surprised the bears didn’t find her.

“Hi, Momma,” I whispered.

I didn’t realize I was shaking all over till Penelope put her hand on my arm. Then around my shoulders. Then pulled me into a hug. I ain’t much for hugging on a normal day but this weren’t no normal day. I held on to Penelope like I was holding on to life. I must a’ cried but I don’t remember now. Everything came crashing down on top a’ me. All them hopes I had of a loving family, arms ’round me, telling me them three
I love you
words what no one ever had.

“I’m sorry,” I said into her collar.

“What for?”

“There ain’t no gold to pay that Frenchwoman.”

“It’s OK,” she whispered. “I’ll be OK.”

I buried my momma next to my daddy. Penelope made a cross and carved her name on it.

Muriel.

Made me wonder brief what my name was. That weren’t something I’d thought about, not in my whole life, till I saw that wood marked. I wondered what would be written on my cross. Elka weren’t the name these folk gave me or what my nana called me, but everyone who knew my real name was dead. Weren’t no one left to know me as what these folk intended, weren’t no one left to ask. I was dead now, what meant no one was going to help me.

“Should we make death records for them?” I asked Penelope when we drove that cross into the dirt.

She stood quiet for a while, looked all ’round the claim, at the river and the sluices.

“Not yet,” she said, then went inside the cabin.

I stayed outside. Weren’t no way I was going back in there yet.

My parents was dead. People what I didn’t know from a shit in the woods. They was all I had this last year. They was all I was shooting for.

Now what? What was left for me now ’cept a killer on my tail and the law closing in ’round my neck? What was left? I turned away from them graves and the people what slept in them and went down to the riverbank.

Tin River was pure wild. I watched a pair a’ deer, a doe and her young, snipping shoots on the other side a’ the water. A big cow moose walked slow and steady far to the east. The smell of it was more a drug than all the whisky in Halveston, fresh and crisp and full a’ truth. Ain’t no lies out in the wild, ’cept what people take with ’em. Ain’t no disappointments. Things are what they are. Pine trees smell a’ pine. Bright-red berries are warning you not to eat ’em. Bear won’t try to kill you ’less they think you’re trying first.

I kicked the rusted-up pump, sent a rain a’ brown flakes into the grass. It didn’t look in too bad shape, though I didn’t know shit about machines. I can build a smokehouse in an afternoon with a knife and a handful a’ nails but ask me to clean an oil filter and you might as well throw that engine off a cliff all the good I’d do.

Heard Penelope in the cabin, clattering about, throwing junk out the door. Huffing and wiping her forehead.

“Find a broom,” she shouted in a tone what weren’t friendly.

If she hadn’t found one, there weren’t one in that tiny cabin.

I went into the trees, found a nice straight sapling and some bracken. Ten minutes later I went into the hut and asked her what needed sweeping.

“We should make this place habitable,” she said, took the broom off me. “Can you climb onto the roof, try to dislodge that branch?”

I felt like my arms and legs was made a’ metal. Everything was slow and difficult. Every time I caught a glimpse a’ them graves the weight got heavier. Felt like it was pushing on the inside a’ me. Trying to get out a’ the breaks in my skin. My nose was full a’ the smell of it. My mouth wanted to shout it. My eyes wanted to cry it. My ears wanted to block it all out.

But I couldn’t break. There weren’t no sense to it. Night would come soon and bitter cold would come with it. Ain’t no time for grieving in the wild. I weren’t going to be the next person to die in that cabin and nor was Penelope. I got up on the roof and started chopping limbs off the branch to free it.

There was some good to it, I suppose. With my momma and daddy dead, they didn’t have to know what I’d turned into. They’d remember me as that pretty baby they left in Ridgeway. Maybe they died thinking I’d turned into a schoolteacher or married a kind fella. They’d never know about Kreagar and all them things we did. They wouldn’t get Lyon knocking on their door.

That was a mercy right there.

I hoped they died thinking good a’ me, if they thought ’bout me at all.

I sawed off that last limb with the teeth on the back a’ my blade and hauled the branch out the roof, threw it on the ground. The hole weren’t that bad.

I could fix it. I could fix it all.

Penelope tidied up the inside a’ the cabin, swept out all the dry leaves and dust. I used the sides a’ the sluice boxes, ’least the planks what weren’t rotten, to fix the roof and by sundown we had ourselves a mostly closed-up cabin. Together we straightened the chimney pipe and she set a roaring blaze going in the stove.

We burned them sheets.

Sat on stools, not a crumb to eat, we kept that fire hot as the cold crept in.

“What do we do?” I asked.

My head was full a’ buzzing flies and my eyes kept seeing my momma’s dried-out feet.

“Nothing tonight,” Penelope said.

Her face was pale, even in firelight, and blank. For the first time, I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking and it didn’t look like she was close to telling me.

“Are you all right?” she asked me, after a few minutes a’ quiet.

“Will be, soon,” I said. “You?”

She looked at me. Her eyes were red and I weren’t sure if it was from the fire or dust or something worse.

“We’re safe here for now,” she said, felt like she was choosing her words careful. “Officially, your parents are still alive, which means they still own the claim.”

“What if people find out they dead?”

“Then the claim goes to the highest bidder and we don’t have two coins to rub together.”

“And we don’t have nowhere to go,” I said, finishing up her words.

We’d been at Tin River less’n a day but I liked it. It was quiet, away from people, away from danger. Felt like I was back at Trapper’s hut. I could hunt here. I could build A-frames to stretch deer hide and trade it in Tucket for steel traps and maybe a shotgun ’case a’ bears. I could build a smokehouse and make some a’ that jerky what me and Trapper made. Penelope could tend the hut, help clean the kills, keep the fire lit. Maybe we could even find a few flakes a’ gold.

“How do we stay here?” I said. “I want to stay here.”

Penelope breathed in deep, figured all the options.

“We lie. Then we mine this place down to the last flake to pay off Delacroix, if she ever finds us.”

Felt like laughing.

“I don’t know shit ’bout gettin’ metal out the dirt. And what you mean we lie?”

“Your parents will have claim papers somewhere.”

She explained the whole process a’
bequeathing
a claim to a relative or friend and in truth, I weren’t paying no attention. I didn’t understand most of it and I trusted she needed this place more’n I did so weren’t ’bout to lie. Long and short a’ it was, we find the claim papers, fake some signatures, then go back to Tucket and file the papers with the clerk. She said if we found gold afore we did all this, that gold was worth ’bout as much as gravel out the river.

—

We found the claim papers the next day, hidden ’neath a loose floorboard. Also found a mason jar near half full a’ nuggets the size a’ my fingernails. No dust. No flakes. Goddamn chunks.

Penelope gave a whoop a’ joy at seeing it. She said we could buy new sluice boxes, fix the pump, maybe buy a wooden rocker and some new shovels. I said we’d need a rifle too, in case a’ bears.

“How you know so much ’bout minin’?” I asked.

Penelope was practicing my daddy’s mark on a bit a’ paper. After a few tries she got it as close as if it was his ghost guiding her hand.

“When my father said we’d be traveling north to the mining towns, I started researching. I read half a dozen books and articles about it, and about the most common injuries and illnesses the miners get. To better treat them.”

“Damn good job you did else we’d be up shit creek right ’bout now,” I said.

“At least we know there’s gold here,” she said, nodding at that jar on the table. That yellow metal gleamed and twinkled in the sunlight, felt like it was putting me under a spell. I just wanted to touch it, wanted to hold it close and wanted to show what I found to anyone I saw. Here, look, this is mine and I’m a goddamn god walking now.

“Why don’t we just buy the claim with all this?” I said.

“Why give it up when we don’t have to?” Penelope said, smiling, and I couldn’t much argue with that.

“Is Elka short for something?” she said, pen over a dotted line, “I’ll need to put a full name.”

“Put yours,” I said, and her forehead crumpled up like the paper.

“Why?”

“My parents didn’t name me Elka. Kreagar did. What means he’ll know I’m here. What means Lyon will too. Put yours.”

Penelope looked at me close. Sunlight came bright through the window, lit up that gold, lit up her eyes and her hair the same color. She ain’t never looked prettier.

I’ll always remember her like that.

“You know what you’re doing right?” she said. “You realize what you’re giving me?”

I shrugged. “A pile a’ dirt. A falling-down cabin.”

“A home,” she said. “A piece of the world to call mine.”

“I’d like to hope I can stay long as I want too,” I said, smiling, showing off all my teeth.

Turns out that weren’t all that long.

Penelope went to file them papers with the clerk in Tucket the next day. She said they looked at her funny but stamped ’em all the same. Signatures matched and it was such a remote claim what hadn’t posted any gold finds in the last few years, they didn’t much care who dug it. No fuss. Claim was hers and weren’t no one what could take it away. It was easy, she said, easier’n she ever thought it would be.

That made me nervous.

She didn’t take none a’ them nuggets with her, but she didn’t come back to Tin River that afternoon empty handed neither. She had an official, bona fide claim permit and another piece a’ paper, folded in half, what she gave to me. Look a’ death on her face.

I unfolded the paper and it was like looking in a charcoal mirror.

“Shit,” I said.

“They’re all over Tucket. They weren’t there yesterday. And that isn’t the worst of it,” she said, breathing heavy, pacing all ’round the room.

“Delacroix’s men,” she said, voice going up high, scraping her hands through her hair, “the ones she had with her in Halveston. Far too well dressed for a place like Tucket.”

My face was all over and there was people in that town what had seen it. Delacroix’s dandies had seen it too. And them nice Thompson folks.

Penelope must a’ seen where my thoughts were headed. She put out her hand and said, sneering look on her face, “Before you accuse Mark and Josie of turning you in, I went to see them.”

“They seen this?”

“I asked them not to say anything, told them you were a victim, not a criminal. They’ll stay quiet.”

I hissed out all my air. “Ain’t no tellin’ for how long.”