Ordinary Wolves (28 page)

January came out gripping a cup of coffee. He watched for a minute. “Tie them tight. Don't take much for Dennis to get hay on his horns.”

Cheryl walked up. She touched the blood vessel on my forearm. “Hi.” She smiled up at January and retrieved a net needle loaded with #21 twine.

“Hello, May Fly!” January was pleased to have her attention. “How are you? Did I miss your birthday? How's your ma?” He flung his coffee grounds in the grass.

“Next week. I'll be nineteen. Mom got an extra section to Crotch Spit today.” Cheryl started hanging the lead line, facing us across the net. I cinched a half hitch and glanced up as she did. Her eyes were the color of the webbing, sea green, flecked with black, like rocks on Jupiter's moons. I wanted to travel on them and camp.

“Aw!” January shouted. “Been a coon's age since I flew up Crotch Spit way! That's getting close to this kid's country!”

The webbing was airy and nylon-slick and the needles twanged softly each time a loop released. January went inside, and cars passed, and we talked occasionally, and worked in comfortable silence. “You don't have to help,” I said. “I know,” she said. “It's relaxing. I like menial labor. I like it out here.” Idly, I thought about being happy, practicing being happy. This might be a good time.
If she'd just kiss me.
I concentrated on breathing. On the burn of the twine on my raw fingers. I wondered what happiness
felt
like. The thing that came to mind was being outside, with a friend. What did it feel like to January, or Abe? Enuk? Janet? Lance? Was happiness some blend—20 percent desire, 30 percent perspective, 50 percent circumstance—like Upton tea? With these fancy human brains—and Sears catalogs—was happiness doomed to be ephemeral? Why should Cheryl or dollar bills control the weather of my happiness?

We worked hour after hour. Streetlights flicked on, and headlights on traffic, and the net was done. Cheryl helped pluck stray grass out of the webbing and bag it so loose dogs couldn't tangle in it. We went in and slumped on January's couch and groaned and stretched our stiff backs, flattened feet, and sore red fingers. He handed us icy beers out of the freezer. Cheryl's warmth was close along my side. She was flushed and polite, and I couldn't believe any of this, and while she went home to change, I stood outside and breathed the cool fumey air, listened to the
constant cars, and couldn't believe all the wires, all the many planes still in the sky, how often people changed clothes, or really any of it at all.

 

 

LANCE LED THE WAY
into Blues Central's bathroom. He locked the door. Music leaked under the walls. The toilet was sticky with piss, and good toilet paper lay wadded on the floor. He thrust out a tube of hair gel. “Bought this for you.”

“I thought it was bad to have greasy hair. Abe washed ours once a month, in the dishpan, all in the same water.”

His laughter echoed off the porcelain. “Damn, Scroat! Didn't you say something about wanting to try everything? It is bad if it's your own grease. This is mousse.”

I leaned against the sink, tipsy from the beers. The music throbbed. The gob of green sat in my palm slimy as loon poop. “Bucks, moose, beaver . . . cars named after Indian tribes. Everything means sex, money, or sports, right?” Gingerly, I rubbed the goo into my long hair. “I think it's all a sign of things that can fight and still get extirpated. I haven't seen any cars or football teams named Frostbite, Virus, or Death.”

“You're tight,” he muttered. “Relax into the rhythm.”

In the mirror—blurrier than Dawna's in the old Wolfglove shack—a grin curved my inebriated face. My hair looked wet, darker. “‘Hold level ten?'” I flattened my nose. “Do they have moose or ‘rhinoceros' or something for styling your nose? I always thought if I could be Eskimo I'd be happy and friendly.”

“Reaganomics. ‘When we're all rich we'll all be generous. Until then fuck you and the environment you rode in on.'” He balled up his jacket. “Here. Hold her like she matters. First you're going to slow dance.” He moved my hands. “Right hand just above her belt, left hand out, palm up. Isn't she cute? You tall guys get all the babes.”

I gripped the jacket, one sleeve extended. “You're forty-two. Don't you have things to be doing more important than teaching me to dance?”

His arms dropped. “Apparently not.”

“Oh. Was that an insult? Are you tired? We could quit.”

He sashayed past. “The insult is that you limp around like you're the Lone Stranger. Don't you ever consider that most people are searching for the same things you are?” Out in the bar the song stopped. “Okay, dance with me.”

I stepped forward, an inch. He was half a foot shorter. Slowly I curved my stiff arm behind his belt.

“Don't go all puckered. You here to learn? I learned in a bathroom.” Lance batted his eyelashes. “Care to dance, cowboy?”

It wasn't merely touching another man—a mechanic from the shop, no less—it was plain touching. I remembered longing for hugs from Janet, and slaps of cool-handed friends, flinching whenever it happened. Lance held my hand gently. I didn't dislike it as much as I expected. He placed his other hand on my shoulder. “Relax.”

“What do you mean, everyone is like me? I think the wind is a thousand times more interesting than basketball. I think most caribou are more deserving than most people.” He twirled us in lazy circles. “Other people know what to say. I don't even know what to want. America wouldn't function if everyone was like me.”

He rotated us backwards. “This is jitterbugging.”

He demonstrated regular dancing, sort of rhythmic hopping, but he was impatient now, eyes narrowed and not paying attention. He claimed I was passable and unlocked the door. A huge stubbled man in Carhartts and a sweatshirt shouldered toward the door.

“Coupla little queers! Shoulda figured.”

My eyes dropped to the floor. Lance turned, suddenly focused, the way he was when he was under an automobile. “You a registered dumbfuck? Or just practicing for the exam?” His voice was honest and interested, as if he were asking the specific gravity of battery acid.

The man wheeled in the doorway, hands rising. “What? What did you say, midget?”

“I said we don't need your compliments tonight, thank you.”

Bewilderment played on the big meaty face. The man rubbed at his chest with both thumbs. Lance looked like a boy next to him. I stood
palms against a wall, somewhere between giggling and getting out of the way.

The man squinted, and shoved into the bathroom.

Lance turned, lips tight and ugly over his tangled teeth. “See, Cutuk? We all want a few dead wolves, don't we?” He put his arms in the sleeves of his jacket, tugged quickly at the collar. “I am tired, you're right. Give me a call tomorrow.” He walked away.

I stood confused. Then lonesome, suddenly homesick.
People
—
would it work better for me to delete
all
expectations?
“Maybe you need to think of them as caribou,” I muttered aloud. A raven-haired woman was pressing past, Japanese and a perfect nose, breasts firm against my arm and back. She reached up and kissed my jaw. “Hi, gorgeous,” she said brightly. The homesickness went out like a candle. Lance vanished in the squeeze of bodies taller than he, my thoughts of him now shifting, “friendly” and “cool” buried by thoughts that took more effort, something complex, dark, unpredictable, like ice—what cold current swept below? I missed the simplicity of his laughter and quick crooked-teeth smile. Why did I miss the superficial?
Because you want to be normal!
Suddenly I realized that standing here in Blues Central I looked absolutely normal. An all-American male, not too wiry, too blond, too white—unfortunately, that made the stuff underneath all the more alien.

Out past the band, Cheryl waved wildly at a table. I stood, marveled at her lack of self-consciousness, then moved toward her. It felt strange to walk toward a woman and have her smile in welcome. I could see myself loving this feeling. Staying for this feeling.

“—blues.” She shouted in my ear. She wore a hint of glossy lipstick.

I swallowed beer, the bubbles pleasant. How did people hear in bars? They seemed able to talk through this impossibly loud music. Blues made me think of Melt's radio, of a drifting shortwave station and staticky blues around the barrel stove. Janet: Arii,
that kind. Old
taaqsipak
mans moaning about their babies.

Cheryl motioned me to dance. She led to the edge of the sweaty jiggling bodies. My gaze swung in careful panic, expecting the roar of a hundred village jeers. Aiy!
He can't!
I felt myself backing up, out into snow, looking
through clear walls at all these dancing people; they couldn't hear me and leaned close to their noisy friends, all laughing and linked by
their
nature: the Beatles and Cougars and Juicy Fruit of their shared generation.

Two women glanced over, smiled. The dancers were older than us. What had Lance said to do with my hands? I put my smoky arms around Cheryl. “You're blond and beautiful.”

Her chin thrust out in a flirty pout. Her lips touched my ear. “Are those two incongruent?”

“Apparently not. You're the finest tippy golden flower—”

Her laughter sailed out, and a rare thing happened: I didn't want to be somewhere else. A
taaqsipak
elder was rasping out a song and the music slid and rocked and boomed, and carried me to pleasant places. Dancing was freedom. I felt tapped into the angles and crosspieces that held the universe together. Finally, I wasn't banging into them blind, but riding these angles I'd sensed had to exist.

 

 

ʺCOME ON, CLAYTON.
I'll buy you breakfast.” Her gaze was the green-blue dawn of a promising day; it was 2:00 A.M. and I had my arms around her.

“I'm not excited to trade this for chicken eggs . . .”

Cheryl led the way to her truck. She lit a cigarette, handed me the pack, and unlocked the door. She talked of a Rabbit she'd owned previously. “That car had no balls.”

A grin stretched my face. “Rabbits have very efficient balls. They come out through the belly skin in the spring when they need them.”

She blew smoke and laughter in the truck. “I have fun with you, you know that? Tell me your Eskimo name again?”

“Cutuk.”

“Cutuk, if you don't want breakfast, let's drive up O'Malley.”

I looked out the window at how little we had in common.

“What should I do with my cigarette butt?”

“Just throw it out the window. Everyone does.”

Somehow I didn't trust the trees not to have feelings, or friends, or power over luck. The shamans had left behind taboos that we inhaled with every breath in Takunak—not even aware of being infiltrated. I put the butt in my pocket. How could I explain to Cheryl the ways superstition sprouted when you were drifted under in a sod igloo in a million acres of night? Up on Hillside, she parked and rifled her purse to find gum. The city lay twinkling below in haze and spring half-twilight. Was this the “parking” that guys leered about? It scared me, peering down at the electric fungus of Anchorage spread across the earth.
Gonna plenty dark if their lamp finish,
Enuk said. Cheryl put one elbow on my shoulder and flung hair out of her eyes. I chewed, hoping not too loud.

A raven hurried past, flying east into the pass in the mountains.
Kaung-kung.
I rolled down the window, eyes following the bird. I'd read that only females made that sound. “Kaung-kung,” I answered perfectly. “Huuuuuuuuuuuuuooooo.”

Cheryl giggled. “All those years you spent in the wilderness, did you see wolves?”

My mouth started to open, ready to flood out the city lights with stories of home. But would telling be bragging? I wondered if I were a name-dropper. A wolf-dropper. Here, and everywhere, I realized I walked a slushy path between the battle lines of Cabela's hunters and nature lovers, and if she were half as cynical and judgmental as I, she'd find me a traitor, a double agent, an assassin of the wolf god, a meat eater, and a tree hugger, too. Abe would say what he felt. Dawna, too. Jerry? He'd keep his mouth shut. My head spun. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't want to lose this girl. Sexy and made up, able to cook an octopus—from a world far above the consternation of red fingers, a dog team that wouldn't pass, and not knowing how to chew gum.

“J-just ordinary wolves.” My fingers laced behind her neck and drew her soft lips to mine. This courage shocked me. Her perfume coiled in my lungs. I wondered where Dawna was. Like she might be watching.

“Ordinary wolves?” Her eyes waited, mesmerizing.

“I mean, no Mowgli and Gray Brother stuff.” I pictured the last wolf I'd seen, in the den above the rocks; and downstream in the willows, rabbits
chasing each other, mating; wolves hunting rabbits who were not paying as sharp attention as something so anxious to pass on genes should be paying; and possibly Enuk, focused, snowshoeing stealthily after the wolves, also focused; and . . .

I kissed Cheryl. Golden hair hung a shimmering tent around her face, her shirt open and showing the arch of her breasts. She kissed back, satisfied to let the conversation founder. My arms felt strong and weak, trapped by her perfume, and I wanted her body more.

She started the engine, drove effortlessly the grid of streets to her dad's, led me through rectangle doors to her room in the basement, confidence in her fingertips that held mine, born in her every cell. My cells sown without confidence, fertilized with
naluaġmiu-
scorn. In the thin light and in her arms I was afraid. I might do it all wrong and she would laugh. She would tell her friends and they would laugh.