I say, “Can I have the licorice your mom sent?”
My mind circles back to Cinderella. I tell Virgil about what I read on the Internet.
“Maybe they’ll just kick her out,” Virgil says.
“That’s how it works, I guess.” I say. “Payback’s an alpha female.”
At last we drive into the Lamar Valley. I roll down the window and let the cold air blow my foggy thoughts out of the truck. The smell of pine fills the car. In spite of everything, the space in this open range makes space in me, for things that are still possible. The snow blankets the higher ground, but the plain is sprouting life. The buffalo are here en masse, gorging on the new grass while their calves charge in all directions. Elk lounge in the lodgepole. Eagles and ospreys perch in groups. Cranes and herons crisscross the sky while pronghorn dart in the meadows. The Serengeti of the West is in full swing.
When we turn at Slough Creek I feel the old excitement. We drive up to the campground on the gravel road. A solitary man stands on Dave’s Hill as we pass. We recognize him and stop to ask what he’s seen.
“Didn’t see it myself but I just heard that mean old Number Forty kicked the stuffing out of Number Forty-Two tonight. Getting too hard to see anything now, but I heard it was a bad one.”
“Did Cinderella, I mean number Forty-Two, get up?”
“Yeah she got up, but she crawled off to her den on her belly. Getting ugly up there, ain’t it?”
I thank him politely. I wonder if the wolves have any idea how entertaining their misery is to our species.
As we’re leaving the man says, “Hey, did I see you two on the news the other day?”
Virgil says, “Must have been somebody else.”
By the time we set up camp and eat it’s nearly dark. Slough Creek is bear central so we don’t cook anything, and we put everything edible—but us—in the car. We sit close to the fire and each other to stay warm. I can’t stop my brain from looping around about William and my dad. What if William tries something again when I’m not there? What if I’m exaggerating this whole thing? Who did he mean by “someone I care about”?
Virgil says, “So are you going to tell me or what?”
I take a deep breath. “I saw William setting snares inside the park. When he drove off, his truck made a noise like the one my dad described the night of the fire.”
“It backfired?” says Virgil. “Huh. I never thought of that.” He looks like I just told him Will has a bad haircut.
“Did you get the part about the snares? Choking wolves to death inside the park? I’ve had this conversation with my dad already. It’s not just the backfire, which, by the way, sounds disgustingly distinctive. It’s the way William acted. The way he talked about his ‘rights’ . . . and the way he wields his trusty shovel.”
“His shovel? Did he hurt you?” says Virgil.
I explain about batting practice and Will’s threats. Then I tell him about my dad, and how he thinks the solution to everything is to stick me in a pumpkin shell and there he’ll keep me very well. I say, “William wants to hurt things. Even Heidi said she wished he’d go back to school.”
“That’s why he can’t go back to school, KJ. He’s got problems. And it’s not his knee. He’s made up his mind that the wolves are the reason the ranch is losing money and he’s stuck there.”
“Exactly. And the worst part is I’ve helped him do it. I’ve made the wolves a scapegoat for the whole town. Every time I screwed up I gave normal people a reason to hate everything wolves stand for. I’m the perfect diversion.”
“West End can be a mean little town. Why do you blame yourself for that?”
“Because it’s
my
mean little town.”
Virgil blows into his hands, then holds them over the fire. “You could leave.”
I stir my stick in the embers. The ashes flutter up and make my eyes blur. “Right. And go where?”
“Minnesota has a hog festival in June.”
I laugh like I’m choking. “A hog festival?”
“In the fall you could finish up at my school. They’d love you on the newspaper back there.”
I stop stirring. “Minnesota? And what about my dad?”
“You’re leaving in a year anyway. Your dad would probably be relieved to have you far away from all this junk.”
The idea of leaving all this trouble behind . . . I know it’s impossible but it sounds so good right now. Of course my dad won’t go for me shacking up with Virgil. He’s liable to come shoot Virgil in his sleep just for tonight.
Virgil goes to his sleeping bag. He takes off his boots and then his shirt and then his pants. His boxers are taxi yellow. Everything about his body is real and beautiful.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“I’m cold.” He shrugs and climbs inside his bag. “You should try it.”
“My dad warned me all you wanted to do was take my shirt off.”
“I took
my
shirt off.” Virgil props up on his elbow. “Is that what you think?”
“I think you’re not a big fan of clothes, on anyone.”
“True. But you’re not anyone to me. I want you to come with me to Minnesota. With or without your shirt.”
I take off my shoes and then climb into my bag. I unzip my jeans. I writhe inside my bag like a pubescent caterpillar. My head pounds. Minnesota. I’d start to eat pig’s knuckles and talk like Virgil. Could I really leave? Could I do that? By the time my jeans are off I’m nearly sweating. I put my head out. “Yeah, I’m warmer.”
“It works better if our bags are right next to each other,” he says. “Well, it actually works best if you’re in my bag, but I don’t think that’s a good idea tonight. You might take advantage of me.”
I scoot closer to Virgil and then lie on my back and look up at the sky. There are a lot of other places to live besides this postage stamp in the middle of nowhere. Of course my dad won’t let me. But I’m more trouble than I’m worth now. He gets new guides in a week. He could just hire one extra. I could finish high school without the scarlet
W
on my chest. And I’d be living with Virgil. We could get into the same college and then be this amazing wildlife team that travels all over the world. We could have our own television show and action figures. “This summer?”
“I don’t think we should wait until summer.” Virgil rolls around in his bag. He looks nervous again. “I should have told you.”
Not words I want to hear. “Told me what?”
Virgil pulls his bag up under his arms like a towel. I can see his goose-bumpy shoulders in the light of the fire. “A few weeks ago Kenner told me that he thinks that Will shot at the ice sculpture in the parade. Kenner said he felt bad because he was the one that told William about the rumor that Dennis and I were making a float. William volunteered to work at the staging area and he would have seen the Cadillac and had time to get up on a rooftop. The Steak House has a ladder that would have made it easy. Kenner said he asked Will about it after. Will said, ‘Freedom of expression goes both ways.’”
“Freedom of expression?”
“Yeah. Exactly. The next morning I went out and took pictures of the tires on the old truck Will keeps behind the barn.”
“Frankenstein? Let me guess, they match the pictures you took by the Dumpster at the fire.”
“They’re a little skinnier than usual and they make a funny tread. I looked them up. Ford made ’em like that in the early thirties but then they changed them after the war. So it’s pretty convincing.”
“Convincing! I can’t believe you!” I say. “You knew Will nearly killed my dad and you kept working there?”
“That’s why I worked there, sort of. After the fire, I thought the best way to deal with all the hysteria in town was to spend time with the people who were the most angry, and the Martins seemed like they were at the top of the list—literally. I didn’t figure out that Will set the fire until Kenner told me about the parade. But by then Will seemed to be doing so much better. I thought if I told you, you’d flip out.”
Good guess.
Virgil shakes his head. “This has gotten completely out of hand. We’ve pushed him off the deep end.”
“Now who’s taking someone else’s blame? Will’s cuckoo all by himself.”
“Sure he’s messed up, but don’t you see how we’ve helped? His family trusted us and we got their stock killed and made them the joke of every ranch from here to North Dakota. Do you think people will run their cattle on their pastures now?”
“Are you serious? You think this is all our fault?”
He talks faster. “I think it’s time to leave.”
“You’re leaving? School’s not even over.”
“I don’t care about school. Everyone needs some time to cool off.”
“Come on, Virgil. Will needs a whole lot more than a time-out.”
“Eloise will be fine with you coming to Saint Paul if your dad says yes.”
“Does she know . . . about Will?”
Virgil shakes his head. “Are you kidding?”
We’re excruciatingly silent. I close my eyes but I can still see the pinpricks of stars inside my lids. Across the air comes the sound of howling. Three short yips and a long call. It’s close.
The sound calls something back to me. I sit up. “I can’t just leave. You can’t leave either. We have to go back and tell the police.”
Virgil looks up at me. “Tell them what? No one will believe
us
. It will just make a bigger wedge between you and your dad and the town. And the Martins will be torn apart.”
I try not to raise my voice but I can’t help it. “So what? Will did it!”
He shoves his hand through his hair. “Nobody wins if you go after Will.”
“Nobody wins if I don’t. I saw a bruise, Virgil . . . on Heidi’s arm.”
“Stop it, KJ. In all the things that Will’s done he’s never intentionally hurt anybody. Kids get bruises.”
“Sometimes they do,” I say.
A wolf yips and howls again.
I listen and then I try to listen to myself. “And sometimes . . . sometimes you have to bust some heads.”
A solitary howl floats across the valley.
“What do you do with the heads once they’re busted?” says Virgil.
My voice raises again. “You can’t yoga your way out of everything.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“What do you think of me? What kind of a person can leave her dad and just hope he doesn’t get nailed by the local whack job? What kind of person looks the other way while people go around torturing animals? And maybe kids?”
Another wolf returns the call, with a long deep howl.
“I’ll take you back in the morning,” he says. “Then I’m out of here.”
“You have to tell the police.”
He says, “I should never have told you.”
I roll over and close my eyes until they leak.
A while later I drift off. I have my old dream about wolves. A pack of seven or eight. I’m human so I kick at them and throw my fists. They rip and swallow whole pieces of me but I don’t die and I can’t escape. I just keep fighting.
I wake up to the sound of a wolf whining.
“Hey, knock it off,” says Virgil.
“What?” I whisper.
“You kicked me.”
“Sorry.”
The whining comes again but fainter. There are no corresponding calls like last night. Something’s wrong. I look at my watch. It’s four thirty.
“Let’s go,” I say, nudging him.
“Go where?” Virgil says.
I reach around for my two-way radio and turn it on to the station Eloise uses. If there’s something going on with the wolves the Wolf Mafia will be talking about it. Virgil stays in his bag. I listen while I pull on my clothes and roll up my stuff. I hear static and people jabbering with excited voices. Then I hear Eloise’s voice. “. . . Specimen Ridge.”
Virgil sits up. He grabs the radio and adjusts the dial.
From the speaker a man’s voice says, “Wounded wolf. It’s staggering. I can’t see who it is. We need somebody fast.”
There is flurry of people trying to cut in and then we hear Eloise again. “Wolf down. Collared. Not sure which . . . Right off the road, in the ditch off by Specimen. It’s not moving.”
Voices clamor over the radio to identify the wolf. Each collared wolf has an individual frequency it emits when its mortality signs indicate death.
A voice on the radio says, “Maybe Number Thirty-Four, sounds like his signal.”
Eloise says, “It’s not Thirty-Four. Too far from home.”
Another voice says, “Has to be a Druid. As far as we know, they were the only pack in this area last night.”
I feel sick. “It’s Cinderella. Forty’s killed her.”
Over the radio Eloise says, “Forty was spotted at Forty-Two’s den last night. Forty-Two had One Hundred Three and One Hundred Six with her, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s her.” I kick dirt on the fire.
“I’ll start the car,” says Virgil.
After driving a few long painful minutes, we pull into the gathering congestion and hike down the road to the ditch. The sun’s starting to come up. In the center of the crowd is a man I recognize as Mitch Tanner, the head biologist in charge of the reintroduction. He waves his arm across the crowd and it hushes instantly. “Everybody, we’ve got an injured animal down here. Could we get you to stand back?”
Someone yells, “Who is it, Mitch?”
Smith pauses. The dread inside of me makes it hard to hear. He says, “I’m afraid it’s number Forty and she’s in bad shape.”
There is a communal gasp.
Number Forty? Not Forty-Two, but Forty.
“Well, what do you know?” says Eloise. “Cinderella grew some teeth.”
I follow Eloise and Virgil into the coats and bodies, but I can’t keep up. I am buried in parkas. I keep moving forward, pushing through the crowd. I fight the panic that is swelling up inside me. When I reach the front, I see Mitch Tanner, Eloise, and two rangers, inspecting the body. The ranger’s hands are covered in blood.
A ranger has been posted to keep everyone else back. I wait until his back is turned and then get close enough to see giant gouges on the wolf’s shoulder and stomach. Parts of her head and face are ripped wide-open.