17 WOLVES

17

WOLVES

Past midnight, having left both Wuthering Heights and the dreams of a ghost town that haunted her nap in a library armchair, Vida steps onto the front porch where Lupo is waiting. He sits at the head of the steps, alert, her friend since she fed him and his pack wild berries eight months earlier.

Although he could have leaped through the kitchen window that she left open for him, he presumes to enter the house only when she is awake. She can't explain how he knows when she's sleeping or why he respects her privacy on those occasions. The connection between them is more than the human-canine bond; it's a covenant so precious to her, of such a mysterious—even mystical—nature, she is loath to question or analyze it, out of concern that to do so would diminish the strange but comforting allegiance that has formed between them.

She had last seen him three weeks earlier, on the alluvial field, where he visited while she worked the earth for her living. As always, he came with his pack, which then numbered five. Some of the nine that once followed him evidently had gone off to form another pack, though it was likely that a couple females remained with him and were in the dens they had made, sheltering with their offspring until the newborn pups opened their eyes after two weeks and became confident of their footing in three.

Now, as ravelings of clouds seem to test the blade of the moon, Lupo's companions are nowhere to be seen, although they are surely nearby, concealed and watching. Lupo remains sitting, neither prostrating himself nor exposing his belly while the other wolves can see him. In the house, in Vida's domain, he will invite a tummy rub and a cuddle, but never in the wild.

"I am so pleased to see you," Vida says.

His tail sweeps the porch floor.

"I was dreaming of you just a minute ago. Can a dream draw you to me?"

His tail moves, but slower, and he cocks his head inquiringly.

"What do I think? I think it can. Maybe especially now, when I'm in some trouble."

Lupo's tail quiets, and he gets to his feet.

She feels not in the least foolish when she describes her situation to this creature. "There's this man, Nash Deacon. I can deal with him, but I need to know for sure what he knows."

She holds out the white fedora once worn by Belden Bead, and Lupo comes forward to sniff it.

"Can this man be found?" she asks.

Lupo meets her stare. His eyes seem to offer not only depths to be explored, but also realms other than the kingdom of wolves in which he is a prince.

"What do you think, Lupo? Can this man be found?"

After tipping his head back and flaring his nostrils to test the air, he turns and pads down the porch steps.

As the cricket chorus ceases celebration of the night, Vida follows Lupo across the area that she regularly mows and then along the path to the center of the meadow, where her uncle lies beneath a granite monument. During this part of the search, the lord of the wolves keeps his nose close to the ground, like a myopic scholar with face pressed near the faded pages of an ancient volume, the better to study an account of a lost moment in history.

Lupo circles the gravestone, head raised now, surveying the moonlit meadow. With Vida following, he moves south, eventually crosses the dirt driveway, and wades into another expanse of tall grass.

The night, which seemed mild when they had been on the porch, feels colder now—as though, by an inversion of the laws of physics, the thermonuclear stars in their infinitude have begun to chill the universe. Vida shivers as the wolf moves inexorably toward what she has asked him to find.

When Lupo stops and turns and looks up at her, the crescents of ice in his eyes are reflections of the moon.

Even after eight months, there has been no subsidence of the soil, for she had been sure to compact it well. The grass has fully recovered from the excavation.

Considering how swiftly Lupo has located this interment, Vida imagines it will be even more easily found by a cadaver dog trained to smell and seek human remains. Nash Deacon, being a sheriff's deputy, might have brought such an animal onto her property when Vida was at the alluvial field or elsewhere.

Eight months earlier, there was no enforcer of the law to whom she could turn for help or exoneration. Nor does any law now exist that serves the likes of her, other than the natural law by which she lives and by which the world is ordered and healed, if sometimes slowly, through the passage of time. Her problem is that she must live moment to moment, and her next crisis is fast approaching.

When she follows Lupo out of the unmown grass, his loyal pack of five is waiting on the unpaved driveway, their coats silvered by moonlight and their interest attested by animal eyeshine. He leads them single file toward the house, and Vida follows.

She sits in a rocking chair, and the wolves lie contentedly on the porch, with Lupo at the head of the steps, so that he can survey the meadow where crickets are in chorus again. On a few occasions, Vida has given the wolves treats other than blackberries. She has nothing to give them now, and they want only companionship. They breathe in the night and all its fragrant information. They sigh and yawn. Some snore, but they don't all sleep at the same time, because they are by nature prudent sentinels. One sleeper sometimes whimpers or even issues a cry of distress, but the others have good dreams, which they signify only by thumping their tails on the floorboards. Vida finds their contentment comforting.

When she wakes hours later, the night is gradually retreating from the blush of dawn, and the wolves are gone.