Kesh (19 page)

Kesh felt the hair on his back rise. “You're Mr. Garou, aren't you?”

The wolf's body relaxed and eased down in a kind of sigh. “Yes. I'm Louis Garou; but then again, I'm not really.”

“I don't understand.”

“No, I suppose you don't. I don't know how you could, and I don't completely understand any of this myself. You see, a long time ago, I or, more to the point, Louis Garou, took a very wrong turn. I… he…we have done terrible things in our life. We did… do these things almost unconsciously, and I am at a loss to explain them. Well, anyway, like you, the spider appeared to me many years ago, and the animal spirits began to rise all around me, and they were a force for renewal and goodness. I didn't qualify. I had a dark place inside of me, and I'd already done plenty to hurt others.”

“Then a few years back I met Carl White, an old Indian guy who had a shack and a few acres up the river, not far from the shanty town. I needed his land. No, that's not quite true. I wanted, I mean Louis wanted his land. The old man cursed me with his last words, and the same earth power that revealed your deeper self and made your coyote spirit come out played this dirty trick on me. In the day time, I am the man you know as Louis Garou. Then every night, I become the
loups garou
, the forest werewolf. It seems that I am destined to try to undo my own evil each night.”

Kesh sniffed. “You haven't been doing a very good job, have you?”

Kesh was tense, his muscles poised to run. The wolf studied him and his face softened. “You don't have to be afraid of me. It's the man inside of me that you have to fear. Remember, I saved your life. I prevented your freezing to death.”

Kesh felt anger rising. “Yes, you did, but first you burned down Jesse's house and killed Daisy.”

“Daisy?”

“Jesse's dog. You didn't have to do that.”

“No, no. I can't deny that you're right, and I don't understand why Louis would do such a thing. It wasn't helpful, and she was a good, sweet creature. He told his men, his fools, to scare them, and they acted cruelly. It's true that Louis did not kill the dog himself, but he is responsible.”

“No. You are responsible! You are Louis Garou!”

The wolf looked away toward the trees. “Yes, that's true. I am responsible of everything that has happened. I am Louis Garou, even now.” He turned back to look at Kesh. “Yet, you saved my life today.”

“Maybe I didn't know it was you.”

“Maybe not, but I don't believe you didn't know. I think you've known all along from the first time you met me on the trail.” Kesh didn't respond. The wolf said, “I think you understand more about me than you let on.”

Kesh swallowed hard. “I didn't know. At least I wasn't sure, but I felt something about you, something worthwhile, something good.”

The wolf looked away and sighed. “You are a strange boy, Kesh Jones. I don't quite know what to think.” He paused and looked hard at the coyote. “I am going to leave now,” he said, and he turned back toward the dark grove of trees.

“But you're hurt.”

“Yes, I'm hurt, but these wounds will heal.”

“Where will you go? What will you do?”

The wolf said, “I don't know, but the answer frightens me more than you can understand. Goodbye, Kesh Jones.” With that, he slipped into the black edge of the woods.

Kesh watched him disappear, then turned and ran north along the river. Away from the burning helicopter, the constellations blazed white hot in the December sky. To the north, the Aurora Borealis pulsed in fluorescent green and white waves from far above the Arctic Circle. Kesh stopped and yipped with happiness. It was all so beautiful. Then, from the distance, starting slowly and growing in a crescendo, a long howl rose into the Christmas Eve night. Something in the wolf's call sounded hopeful to Kesh, and he raised his head back and answered.

The small group was waiting when Kesh returned to the factory compound. When he told them about his meeting with Garou, Jesse was furious. “Do you mean to say you let him go? How could you? Don't you remember what he did and how many people he has hurt? Now he's still out there, and he'll do it all again. What were you thinking, Kesh?”

“I had to let him go, Jess. I had to save him from the fire. Don't ask me why, but I know it was the right thing to do.”

Jesse stepped back. “I don't know how it could be right. Garou is pure evil. I would have finished it.”

Kesh took a breath. “I don't think so. I think you would have done exactly the same thing.”

“I don't know, man. But I sure hope you're right about that monster.”

Under his breath, Kesh whispered, “I do too.”

In the meantime, Officer Wolfe had reverted to human form and he and Jesse's father had been talking in low tones. Now he beckoned, “Jesse, would you come over here? We want to talk to you about something.” The three huddled together. Kesh felt it would have been wrong to listen in, but by the almost reverential look of the group, he knew something important was happening. When they had talked for a moment, Jesse glanced at Kesh and smiled then moved excitedly toward him. Kesh thought his friend had that look people have when they just have to tell you something important. “What's up, Jess? What is it?”

“You know Officer Wolfe, he's Indian, Ojibwe, like me. Anyway, he asked if I would like to learn to drum and dance.”

“Drum and dance? What do you mean?”

Officer Wolfe and Kesh's father had joined them. “Powwow drumming and dancing,” said the man. “Jon and I think it's time Jesse gets a taste of Indian Country and learns about his people and his culture.”

Jesse's dad sighed, his body and face tightened and his eyes glistened with tears. “Michael is right. It's time Jesse finds his family again and understands who his mother was, because that's how he will know who he is.” He cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Michael.”

Jesse said, “Can Kesh be there too? I mean, when I drum?”

The big man laughed. “Kesh can be there when you drum and when you dance. In fact, he can dance too. You know Kesh, although everyone is welcome to Powwow with our people, I think, in fact, there just might be a little Ojibwe in this Jones family too.”

Kesh felt as if his whole body smiled, his heart felt strong, and his ears filled with the movement of hundreds of creatures, some gnawing, some searching and reporting, others looking out for dangerous conditions and substances. He glanced at Jesse. His friend's face was transformed. He looked strong, proud and happy. He smiled back the way coyotes do, and a clock chimed somewhere. It was Christmas day.

 

 

Except for the soft padding of tiny feet in the hidden places, the house was quiet and warm. The clinking of pots and pans came from the kitchen, and a pile of red, green, silver, and gold wrapped gifts overflowed beneath the Christmas tree. There were more than usual this year. Outside, the scrape, scrape, scrape of a metal shovel on concrete meant his dad was clearing the front steps and driveway for the guests who would be arriving shortly. Kesh climbed the staircase to his room, switched on the light, and sat down at his desk. He flipped open the notebook, wrinkled in places by rain, and he began to write.

 

So, that was the end of Garou's Chemical Company—at least the beginning of the end. By daylight, everybody was home, normal children again, excited to open Christmas presents and call their friends, excited to celebrate the holiday. The end had been set in motion. The wires, and tubes and everything else that made a factory run were well on the way to being dismantled and stripped clean. The dangerous chemicals were still dangerous, but they had been isolated, and the evidence left little doubt about Louis Garou's crimes. I don't know what's going to happen next. I suppose other companies will try to replace the plant with their own factories, and that might not be such a bad thing, but we won't be fooled again. More and more children, and even some grownups, are finding their inner selves, their animal spirits, and their connection to the earth. In time, maybe not in my time, but eventually the Garou chemical factory will disappear, and if we're lucky, most people will never know it even existed in that place. The river will recover, and the land will heal. The earth has a way of reclaiming what is taken.

I'm afraid this won't be a happy time for everybody. Good people have lost jobs, and Jesse and his dad lost their home and their beloved Daisy. Earlier today, Christmas day, as the sun rose on a new age, Mr. Madosh built a funeral pyre on top of the ashes of his house and we cried as we sent Daisy's sweet, gentle soul into the sky on a ribbon of soft cedar smoke.

Jesse and his dad will be over soon. They'll stay with us over Christmas and for as long as they need after. His dad says he'll have cleared out the charred remains of the house by spring, and he'll begin to build again. They plan to visit Jesse's mom's home, a reservation a few hours north of here, and Jesse has already heard from an aunt he didn't know he had. He's got cousins too. I guess that's a different kind of building.

 The dismantling of the factory will continue, probably for years, and the rest of the world will settle back into its strangely normal routine. Muskrat says most of the cats, moles, badgers, snakes, fish and the rest will just become kids again, forgetting what they had done and who they were inside, but not all of them. In moments, often as they dream, they will become spirit creatures, soldiers in the fight to regain the human spirit and its place in the natural world.

Some of us will never forget. Muskrat says coyotes are more than teachers and tricksters. He says they are restless creature and Jesse, Kiran, and I have been changed forever. We all know that the factory man is still out there, and our job has just begun. If one Louis Garou exists, it seems pretty likely that a lot of others just like him are out there too. We will never be able to rest, not because anyone or anything force will force us to push on, but because—well, because we're coyotes. I'm glad about that. I don't ever want to lose this.

Others will also remain steadfast and awake. Some will take their animal forms for the pure joy of it, to burrow or fly or, like little Morgan Kuhn, will rocket the river and leap into the air then disappear again beneath the surface. I wonder how the adults will change. And I think about Garou a lot. I don't understand much about what happened to him, but I know he isn't all bad. Part of him, the loup-garou, the wolf who runs in the night, wants to make up for the evil the man creates in the daylight. I feel sorry for him, and I hope he finds some kind of peace. It must be terrible to be so tormented. Even so, I will never let my guard down.