Authors: Pat Murphy
He gazed into the darkness, where the wolves howled. She touched his shoulder as if to reassure him, to tell him there was no cause to worry. And she left him, running into the night.
Max leapt to his feet, starting after her. But she had disappeared into the darkness before he could take two steps. “Sarah!” he called after her. “Sarah! Come back!”
The banshee chorus of wolves was the only answer he received.
“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond;
cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.”
—Mark Twain
M
AX STAYED UP FOR HOURS
, feeding the flames and listening in the darkness, hoping that Sarah would return. The frogs sang in the marsh by the lake. Bats swooped low over the lake, feeding on insects. At last, the half-moon rose, casting a glowing path of silver on the surface of the lake.
The girl had not come back. Max retired to his tent, where he spent a restless night.
He was frying flapjacks for breakfast when the girl returned, carrying a haunch of bear meat. She greeted him with a radiant smile. The angelic beauty of her delicate features contrasted sharply with the bloody meat that she carried.
He accepted her gift of meat, motioning her to sit by the fire. She stayed with him that morning and ate his flapjacks with great gusto. When he fried up some of the bear meat, she sampled the cooked meat carefully.
Throughout breakfast—and throughout the rest of the morning—Max taught her English. She was a quick student, remembering the words he had taught her on the previous day and adding to that vocabulary eagerly. Behind those angelic blue eyes was a sharp intelligence, Max realized, and a hunger for knowledge. In the early afternoon, she left him, indicating with gestures that she would be back. She returned in the late afternoon with a freshly killed rabbit. Her wolf trotted along behind her and shared in the rabbit, devouring the intestines while they dined on the meat, roasted over the fire. Max gave her another language lesson, during and after dinner. When the sun set, she and the wolf left him, summoned by a chorus of wolves.
Over the next few weeks, this became their pattern. She arrived each morning with gifts of fresh game and edible wild plants. Sometimes her wolf was with her; sometimes she was alone. He cooked for her—she had a passion for biscuits and flapjacks, and she came to tolerate cooked meat, though she preferred to eat it raw. He taught her English, expanding her vocabulary from nouns to verbs and helping her construct short sentences. “This is a tree.” “I am hungry.”
He worked to teach her concepts as well as words. The knife, the lariat, Max’s cooking fork—these were all tools. This is my knife; this is your knife.
He had so many questions for her. How have you survived for all these years in the wilderness? Why haven’t you made contact with anyone before now? Where did you get your clothes, your weapons? She could not understand his questions yet. But given time, he was confident that she would understand him.
At first, she was wary around him, keeping an eye on his every move, always alert. Her wolf—Beka was the animal’s name—was also watchful.
But after a time, both she and Beka began to relax. On the third day, Beka accepted a biscuit when he offered it, and by the end of the week she leaned her big head toward him so that he could rub her ears. Between lessons, Sarah and Beka would play in the grass, chasing one another in a game that looked very much like tag.
The first time one of their games ended in a wrestling match, Max was horrified. Sarah and the wolf were rolling in the grass, growling ferociously. Beka’s teeth flashed in the sun as she snapped at the girl, but somehow, miraculously, the girl’s hands were always out of reach when those cruel jaws snapped shut.
“Sarah!” Max shouted, grabbing a stick from the pile of firewood, a club that he could use to beat the wolf and drive her away from the girl. “Beka!”
The two stopped their play—for it was nothing more than that—and stared at him. He stopped where he was, holding his club and frowning.
“Oh,” he said. “You’re just playing.”
“Playing,” Sarah agreed. She was sitting beside Beka, leaning against the wolf. As Max watched, she reached under the wolf’s chest and grabbed a paw. With a quick movement, Sarah flung her weight against the wolf’s shoulder, toppling Beka. The game was on again.
Sometimes, when lessons were done, Max sketched Sarah. Once, on a long sunny afternoon, as she and Beka napped in the meadow, he sketched the two of them. Sarah curled up in sleep, knees drawn to forehead, arms wrapped around knees, feet tucked close to buttocks. Beside her, Beka lay at ease, her head leaning against the girl’s leg, her paws twitching as if she were running in her sleep.
Sarah’s hands, clasped around her knees, were so small, so delicate. There was a thin line of dirt beneath each broken fingernail. Three scars, spaced about as far apart as Beka’s teeth, marked the back of her left hand—souvenirs, he suspected, from a play fight that had been too rough. An assortment of cuts and scratches decorated her knuckles, the inevitable consequences of an active life. A scrape on one hand from climbing the cliff; a cut on the other from a fishhook (he had taught her to fish).
Max remembered a hot summer night, many years ago. He had been sitting on the porch with his wife. His daughter, just five years old, had fallen asleep, half-sprawled across his lap. Sweet Nell—awake, she was all arms and legs, elbows and knees, a noisy blur, always in motion. Asleep, she grew soft, rounded, her breath coming and going as quietly as the wind in the trees.
He wished he had drawn her then. But he had not known then how precious that time was. That knowledge had come too late.
A breeze from the lake blew a strand of hair across Sarah’s face. Max reached out to smooth it back. Before he could touch her face, her eyes were open, watching him. Relaxed, but always alert.
He glanced at Beka. The wolf was watching him, too.
He smiled, knowing that however small and frail she looked, Sarah was far from helpless. “Sleep,” he said.
“Sleep,” she repeated softly.
Sarah found the language lessons both fascinating and tiring. She was eager to learn how to communicate with this strange man named Max.
As her language skills improved, he asked her about her past. How had she come to live among the wolves?
It was difficult to communicate abstract concepts. Max managed to get across the idea of “yesterday,” but for Sarah all of the past was one long yesterday. Yesterday, she killed the bear. Yesterday, she was a pup. Yesterday, she suckled at the breast of her mother, Wauna.
One warm afternoon, they sat on the granite slab, looking across the lake, talking together as best they could. “Yesterday,” Max said. “You lived with the wolves.”
Sarah nodded.
“Yesterday before that,” he said, “you lived with the wolves.”
“Yes.”
“And before that?”
“Many, many yesterdays,” Sarah said. “With the wolves.”
“Before that,” he persisted. “Where did you live then?”
She frowned then, thinking of Mama and Papa. She felt a tension in her throat and her chest, as if a great hand were squeezing her heart. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He was studying her face, and she sensed a tension in him. After all the time they had spent together, she could read him as she could read the wolves in her pack. “I think you do know,” Max said. He touched her hand. “Do you remember your mama? Tell me.”
She growled then, pulling her hand free. She leapt from the sun-warmed granite and ran away. When Max called after her, she did not look back. She joined the pack, where no one would ask her about times past. Yesterday, and yesterday, and yesterday—they did not matter. That was done with. That was gone.
She curled up with Wauna and Yepa that night, sleeping between them, taking comfort in their warmth. She groomed her foster mother’s thick fur, trying not to think about yesterday. That was over.
Sarah did not return to Max’s camp until sunset of the following day, appearing beside the fire when Max had all but despaired of seeing her again. “Hello, Sarah,” he said, looking up from the fire. He had decided that he would not push her to remember if she did not want to. “Are you hungry?”
She accepted the biscuits he offered, crouching by the fire and holding them tight in her hands. For a moment, she did not eat.
“Before the wolves,” she said at last, “before the wolves, there was Mama. There was Papa. Then something bad.” She used a word from Malila’s language that meant “wicked, evil.” “And I go with the wolves.”
Max nodded, imagining little Sarah running away from the scene of her parents’ murder, weeping and finding comfort among the wolves. He put his arm around her shoulders. She was trembling, and Max knew it wasn’t from the cold. “Here now,” he said soothingly. “You don’t have to talk about it. You don’t have to remember.”
A week later, Max left the lake and returned to civilization. He had never intended to stay in the wilderness for as long as he had. He had used the last of his flour, the last of his oil, the last of his coffee. The nights were growing cold. He shivered in his bedroll, wondering where Sarah slept, how she kept warm as the nights grew longer.
“I must go soon,” he told her one morning. “I want you to come with me.”
“Where do you go?” she asked.
“Back to Selby Flat.” He had, over the past week, prepared for this moment by telling her about Selby Flat. He had talked about Mrs. Selby, a woman like her mama, and about the wonderful foods that Mrs. Selby would make for her. Biscuits and bread and apple pie. He had talked about her aunt Audrey, who would be so glad to learn she was alive. It had been hard to come up with any other enticements. Sarah did not like clothing; she did not trust people. But he knew she liked biscuits and he thought she’d like Mrs. Selby and her aunt. “You’ll see Mrs. Selby there. And your aunt will come and get you.”
Sarah studied him. “Many people in Selby Flat,” she said. “That’s right. Many white people like you. Will you come with me?”
She shook her head. “No.” She offered no polite excuses, no explanation. Just a simple answer.
“Why not?”
She frowned, puzzled by his need for an explanation. It seemed so obvious. She had never been in a mining town, but she had seen many miners, studying them from hiding. She could imagine a place with many miners crowded together. Why leave the mountains to go somewhere crowded and dirty? “I do not like the mining town,” she said.
“You need to be with your own kind,” he told her. “You need to be with other people.”
She stared at him, remembering the white men she had encountered before she met him. The man who shot Omuso for no reason. The brothers who had killed Malila’s grandfather and assaulted her. Crazy men, who attacked without warning. “White people are dangerous,” she said.
Max bit his lip, but did not reply for a moment. Watching his face, she thought he might agree with her. After all, he had come to the mountains alone. She thought that he had his doubts about white people, too.
“No,” he mumbled. “No, you can’t think that way. Some people are bad—but there are many good people. You must come with me. At least for a little while. You can always come back to the wolves.”
Again, she shook her head, frowning. “I stay in the mountains.”
“There are many things there that you will like,” he said. “Mrs. Selby makes excellent biscuits. And apple pie like you’ve never tasted!”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I stay here,” she said.
“No. You have to come with me.” He talked a great deal then—about Selby Flat and her aunt and civilization. She did not understand all of the words he used, but she understood enough to know that he wanted her to go.
“Later,” she told him.
She left not long after sunset. For a time, Max sat by the fire, watching the flames die to coals. Then he went to bed, where he tossed and turned, unable to sleep for wrestling with his conscience. He could not leave the child in the mountains alone. Yes, she thought she was happy, but it wasn’t right. He would not be able to explain to Audrey that he had found Sarah and lost her again. She had to come with him. If he had to hog-tie her and sling her over the back of his mule, he’d take her back.
From a sheltered hollow by a granite boulder on the far side of the lake, Sarah watched Max’s campfire die down. She leaned against the stone. It retained the heat it had absorbed during the day, warming her as it cooled in the night air.
She had sensed a change in Max when she refused to go with him. As he talked about Selby Flat, he had grown more and more tense. If he had been a wolf, she would have prepared for an attack.
In the morning, Max woke from uneasy dreams and crawled from his tent. Usually, Sarah was waiting for him, sitting on the granite slab by the lake. Today, there was no sign of her.
He spent the day waiting, alone. He wondered if something had happened to the girl. Or had she somehow guessed that he planned to take her against her will? After all, she had the wisdom of a wild creature.
The next day, he waited again. Sarah did not make an appearance. That second night, the weather turned cold. He woke to snow flurries. The meadow was dusted with white; the air was cold and crisp. Inside wool socks and leather boots, his feet were icy. He knew he could stay in the high altitudes no longer.
With a heavy heart, he loaded his gear onto the mule. “You know, Longfellow,” he said to the mule. “I’d be happy if I could just see her again. That would be enough.”
He left his camp, leading the mule. By the granite slab where he had spent many an afternoon, he paused, looking out over the lake. On the bare granite slopes of the distant shore stood a figure, a human figure. He recognized the red shirt he had given Sarah. As he watched, the figure waved, a gesture of farewell.
He waved back, his heart lightening. “Good-bye, Sarah!” he called across the lake. “I’ll be back.”
The mountains echoed his voice. “Good-bye…good-bye…good-bye.” Smiling, he headed down the mountain.