Tales from the Nightside (29 page)

"Tea?"

"No, thanks."

"Coffee?"

He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Every time you ask, and every time I have to tell you, dummy, that coffee gives me gas. When are the boys coming back?"

"If they're sober, they'll be back in time for supper, as always," she said, taking his cap and stiffly new coat to hang by the wood-fed stove. "Some boys. They're almost forty, you know."

"In age, maybe, but their heads are at least two dozen years behind."

Venus tugged at the strings of her apron, letting the blue and yellow cloth tighten around her waist before she wriggled to settle it into place. Her hair was bunned gray, narrowing her face, sharpening her nose to a pale robin's beak. Only her chin remained youthfully rounded, even when she was mad.

"I don't like the way you make fun of them, Mars. They've come to hard times, in case you've forgotten the accident. It wasn't easy for them, losing both their wives as suddenly as that." She stared at him standing by the refrigerator. "Two daughters-in-law, and no grandchildren. It hasn't been easy for me, either."

"Those so-called women, and I'm sorry to say it, thought the boys had money, Venus. They took one look at our property here, didn't think anything at all about how land is cheap in this part of the state, and they talked themselves into believing we were rich. And neither Carter or Jonathan did anything to discourage them. Those women were too young and too damned impatient, and neither of my sons had brains enough to handle them."

Suddenly annoyed with himself for speaking when he should have been thinking, Mars poked aside the curtains on the back door and glared at the first staggered row of pine at the end of the yard he had cleared himself during their first summer in the valley. Seeing nothing, more angry because he thought he might, he sat at the table and dry-washed his hands. Venus moved behind him, rested her cheek against his still-thick hair, and sighed just loud enough for him to hear. Knowing she would soon begin to caution him about little Tommy across the road, he shifted uneasily and cleared his throat.

"Into town today, I heard Pierson talking at the barbershop."

"It's about time you got a haircut," she said, sitting, one boned hand snaking unconsciously across her face in remembrance of a time when her hair was black and hung in gleaming ripples in front of one eye. "You're beginning to look like a sheep dog. Don't look like a very good one, though. Even without my glasses I can see it doesn't look like a very good one."

"That's because I didn't get one. I was to the hardware store looking up a new hammer when Pierson called me in for a chat. He says, and you know how Pierson is when he says anything, he told me fat McKenzie saw the wolf last week, just before his car smacked into the telephone pole."

"He was drinking. The newspaper said so. And that mechanic had done something to the steering. You think they had a trial for nothing?"

"McKenzie was scared. He told me."

"Of what, for heaven's sake? That mechanic? Mac owed that man a fortune for gambling, and practically everyone in town heard them fighting one time or another. My God, Mars, Mac outweighed him by a hundred pounds. If he was scared of anything, it was of having to pay the man and have nothing left for his wine. You know he always drank. I knew him for thirty-five years and can't remember the day he was last sober. Even on his wedding night when he married that Cranford woman."

Mars grinned. "You were there, I suppose?"

"Mars!"

"I wouldn't be surprised. You do get around, you know."

She feigned a roundhouse slap, he mimed a ducking wince, and they laughed, forgetting the moment what McKenzie had seen.

"I'm going to take Tommy out to the cabin tomorrow to help me with the wood."

Venus wiped at the smiling tears in her eyes and shook her head. "That boy's not good for you, Mars. He's not your son, you know, and I doubt that the Dovnys will approve of your trying to make him."

"Oh, for pete's sake, Venus, his father's never home, and his mother's flat on her back because of that skiing accident that busted her back. He happens to like my company, and I happen to like his. And with no one else his age around close to play with, we get along just fine."

"Well . . ."

"We can take care of ourselves, dear, don't worry. If I see the wolf, I'll spit in its eye."

Venus tried to smile, rose instead, and bustled meaninglessly at the stove where supper was already steaming in three huge black pots.

Neither of them admitted believing there was a snow wolf in the mountains, had never even heard of such a green-eyed creature until the Dovny's purchase of the land opposite them where they had constructed the house Mars hated because it spoiled his rocking-chair view. He had met the Slavic father only once, at a Board of Education luncheon two years before at the village school. The man's English had been formal, as if memorized from a grammar book, but he charmed and was charming, and Mars had become friends with the blond-banged son when he had straightened a runner on the little boy's sled. The boy was the one who had told him and the village about the white wolf.

"Oh, I get it," Mars had said as he pulled boy and sled up a slope behind the house. "You're talking about one of those werewolf things. I've seen them a lot on television, on those horror-show festivals."

The boy frowned bewilderment until Mars had explained, then shook his head and squinted to think harder. "No, the wolf only comes when someone is to die. It's not a person."

"Funny, but I never heard of that until you came around. How does it work? Is it kind of a family tradition? Maybe a Czech folk story, something like that?"

The boy had shrugged.

"Have a chocolate bar?"

The boy nodded and stuck it in his pocket.

Mars had completely forgotten that day until Samson O'Brien claimed he had shot at a wolf bigger than any he'd seen in his life. He was jeered when he failed to produce a pelt, or the tracks when he led a group of men to the site of the hunt. A week to the day later, his wife knifed him in the back when she learned he had been seeing the daughter of the mayor.

"Mars, are you trying to hypnotize yourself, or has my company gone stale after all these years?"

He blinked, tried a boyish grin before shaking his head. "Sorry," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I was thinking."

"Well, stop it. The boys are home. I heard them on the stairs."

"You want me to go up?"

"What for?"

He shrugged. "Talk to them. See what their plans are. God knows there isn't any paying work around here."

"We won't be around that long, Pop," and Mars grimaced when he turned so abruptly he twisted his side.

The sons were twins, dark-haired, taller than their parents and heavier about the chest and waist. Carter was the younger by three minutes, but his face was shadowed with lines and puffs; Jonathan was the same as he had been at thirty, except for the eyes that seemed perpetually half closed.

"I wasn't trying to ease you out," Mars said, almost pouting, while they noisily took their places at the table.

"I know, Pop," Carter said.

"Of course he knows," Jonathan said, not bothering to disguise a slighting sneer. "He knows everything, don't you, Carter boy? Even took Pop's advice and knew enough to put the girls on that goddamned, beat-up excuse for a train."

"That's enough!" Venus said, slapping plates down in front of them. "The past is past, and I won't have that kind of talk in my house. You two have got to get back on your feet again, and soon. Your father's too proud to admit it, and too good to say it, but we can't have you around here indefinitely. It's too much of a strain."

"I know," Carter said, rising to help ladle the soup. "Just need a little readjusting, that's all. Besides, my leave's up in a week and I'll have to be getting back to camp."

"My goodness," Jonathan said, "does even a captain have to run like a buck private? Something else I didn't know. When are you going to make major, by the way? Ever?"

"Go to hell," Carter said.

"Language, brother," Jonathan said, scooping chunks of butter onto steaming slices of homemade bread.

"That's enough from the both of you," Mars said. "Your mother's right, as always. My pension can't handle everything. We love you both, but soon you've got to make a move. I'm talking especially to you, Jon. Your brother at least has a check coming in."

"Pop," Carter said before his twin could snap again, "why don't you sell the house? Maybe move to one of those retirement places. I know you love it here and all, but for crying out loud, the physical upkeep alone is going to do you in one of these days."

"I'll buy the place," Jonathan said, suddenly solicitous.

"Neither of you will," Venus said, taking her seat. "We've been here since you were born, and I'm not about to leave it now. Say grace, Mars, before I lose my appetite."

And dinner passed into evening as the snow grayed, crusted, and was littered with snapping fallen branches weakened by ice. Fireplace flames shadowed the living room in spite of the lamps, and Mars stood at a window, listening to his shattered family playing cards, listening later, as he wandered the house looking for sleep, to whispers: the house itself, talking down to dawn through the mouth of the furnace, the pops of cooling wood in the fireplace, the creaks of boards searching for a comfortable place to shy away from the rising wind; the wind, riding the back of the snow, drifting powder over the road, pushing against thin glass, humming to itself in wires strung through the air, once to a crescendo covering hushed words; the words, snapping, biting, accusing, and prodding the weaknesses of the old man in vain attempts at deadly prophecy, husking laughter when one suggested the other do Mars the fatal blow.

Standing in the hallway, Mars shivered at the door of his sons' room, pleading for a prayer, sucking back the trembling that directed him to break down the barrier and cast them out.

He thought of Tommy, the surrogate sun, and cursed his lack of wisdom that had made him a failure.

In his own bed again, wondering, he listened to the wind, heard faintly the cry of the dead calling for death.

And in the morning, after he had seen the brothers off to the village to notch another day at the tavern bar, after picking up after himself in bedroom and bath, he stood in the back yard and waited as Tommy ran awkwardly through the snow to him, dragging a sled still shining with varnish. Mars smiled, adjusted the peaked cap that covered the long blond hair, pinched the rounded cheek with his glove, and led the boy into the woods, up the slope to a narrow plateau where freshly cut stumps pockmarked the ground.

A makeshift shed euphemistically called a cabin stood bleakly at the far end of the clearing. It was missing a front wall, served as a storage area for the logs Mars cut twice each winter. Tommy scrambled from stump to stump, climbing, daring Mars to spill him into the snow. The old man smiled, encouraged the boy to play on his. own while he pulled a tarpaulin from a handmade toboggan and began loading the split wood, strapping each layer from front to back, finished with the canvas strapped side to side.

It was noon, and he was sweating, gasping, but not yet ready to give in to the aching that stretched his muscles and pounded through his lungs. He pointed out to the boy the peak where three hunters had lain wounded when a local man had gone berserk one evening in the tavern, escaped from the sheriff, and had done some hunting of his own. They had endured the freezing night unprotected except for their clothes, only one surviving to testify at the trial, dying shortly after in the county hospital.

"They saw the wolf," Tommy said solemnly, and Mars laughed, cuffed him on the back of the head.

"You never did tell me how that works," he said, deliberately light.

Tommy rubbed a black mitten across his nose and sniffed. "I told you. The wolf comes when somebody's to die."

"But no one's been killed, much less even scratched, round here in a hundred years. By a wolf, that is."

Tommy looked up into the old man's face. "The wolf doesn't do it, silly. Father says the wolf . . . I don't know. It just comes. I don't know what it eats, but it causes, not does."

"You know, maybe I should get to know your father better," Mars said, taking hold of the unraveling gray rope that was tied to the ends of the sled's steering bar. He waved the boy on, and they moved up past the cabin. "I haven't seen him in nearly two years to talk to properly. I hope he doesn't think I'm unfriendly. I just never got around to it somehow."

"He works in the city," the boy said proudly. "He comes home on weekends and sleeps most of the time. He's very tired."

Mars nodded.

"Mommy's sick all the time."

"I know, son. I heard about it in the village."

"She can't sit up like us. Her back hurts all the time."

"I know, son."

Tommy jumped off the sled, and Mars sighed gratitude as they trudged in tandem toward the run they had made the week before.

"You know something, Mr. Tanner, I think my father's trying to scare me with the wolf story. He said it comes all the way from our home in . . . in . . ." He stumbled silently, mouthing the name and trying to give it voice. Mars has learned early not to help him. Czechoslovakia was the boy's private problem. One of these days, Mars thought, he'll pronounce it right and we'll have a damn big party.

The snow crackled beneath them as they turned around, hissed like scrapping glass when Mars lay on the sled, Tommy climbed onto his back, and they raced down to the clearing.

Grinning and shouting, Mars sideswiped a log and spilled them both into a wave of snow that seeped down their necks like traces of ice. Lying with his face up, Mars squinted at the impossibly bright clouds, widened his eyes as a shadow darkened them, and saw the laughing boy hugging his face.

"Mars, I think I need you."

"My God," Mars said and clasped the boy to him, closing his eyes to keep them from emptying, opening them to see the wolf.

It was white to its tail, with glittering beads of snow and ice clinging softly to its unmatted fur, swinging as it moved silently around the edge of the clearing. Breath in turbulent rivers of misted gray snorted from its nostrils while it turned around and faced them, its ears upright, its head slightly cocked. It stalked, slowly, and Mars rocked, still chuckling in his throat, keeping the boy's face pressed to his chest. The white wolf circled, and Mars twisted on his buttocks to keep the animal from getting behind him. Snow flecked from the sky, veiling but not hiding the green eyes that were deep close to black in the creature's magnificent head.