The Wolf Gift (33 page)

Suddenly, softly, Jim’s voice brought him back.

“This is an exceptional place, this,” Jim said. “Ah, but what a price you’ve paid for it.”

“Don’t I know?” Reuben pressed his lips together in a bitter smile.

He put his hands together in an attitude of prayer and began the Act of Contrition: “ ‘O my God I am heartily sorry’ … heartily sorry, I am; with all my heart, I swear it, I am heartily sorry; please show me the way. God, please show me what I am, what manner of thing I am. Please give me the strength, against all temptation, to do no harm to anyone, somehow to do no harm, but to be a force for love in Your Name.”

He meant these prayers, but he did not deeply feel them. He had a sense of the world around him, insofar as he could grasp it, and of the tiny speck that was the planet Earth, spinning in the galaxy of the Milky Way, and of how tiny was that galaxy in the vast far-flung universe beyond human grasp. He had the sinking feeling that he was speaking not to God but to Jim, and for Jim. But hadn’t he spoken to God in another way last night? Wasn’t he speaking to God in his own way when he looked out there at the living, striving forest and he felt in all his parts that that striving of all living things was a form of prayer?

The silence was filled by sadness. They were united in sadness. Reuben said, “Do you think Teilhard de Chardin could have been right? That we fear that God does not exist because we can’t
spatially
grasp the immensity of the universe; we fear that personality is lost in it when maybe it is a superpersonality that holds it all together, a superconscious God who planted evolving consciousness in each of us—.” He broke off. He’d never really been good at abstract theology or philosophy. He hungered for theories he could understand and repeat when he needed to repeat them, in which every single thing everywhere in the seemingly hopeless reaches of space had a meaning and a destiny—even Reuben himself.

“Reuben,” Jim answered, “when you take the life of a single sentient being, innocent or guilty, you go against that great redeeming power,
whatever it is, however it might be described—you annihilate its mystery and its force.”

“Yes,” said Reuben. He kept his eyes on the oaks that were fading into shadow as he watched. “I know that’s what you believe, Jim. But it doesn’t feel that way when I’m the Morphenkind. It feels like something else.”

R
EUBEN HAD PUT
the lamb shanks on for supper before he’d ever gone out in the woods. The meat and vegetables were simmering in the Crock-Pot all afternoon.

After Laura made a particularly luscious salad, of lettuce, tomato, and avocado tossed in the most delicate olive oil with herbs, they sat down to dinner in the breakfast room and Reuben, as usual, devoured everything in sight while Jim touched a little of this and a little of that.

Laura had put on what Reuben thought was an old-fashioned dress. It was made of yellow-and-white-checkered cotton and had sleeves with carefully sewn cuffs and white floral buttons. Her hair was loose and shining. And she smiled spontaneously at Jim when she drew him into conversation about the church and his work.

Conversation between them became easy; they talked about Muir Woods and Laura’s research on the “understory” there, that is, the floor of the forest and how to prevent it from being destroyed by the constant foot traffic of the thousands of people who, understandably enough, wanted to see the unbelievable beauty of the redwoods for themselves.

Laura spoke not at all of her past, and Reuben certainly didn’t feel he had the right to move the conversation into the dark waters, and Jim spoke with enthusiasm about the St. Francis dining room and the number of Thanksgiving meals they hoped to serve this year.

In the past, Reuben had always helped serve on Thanksgiving at St. Francis, and so had Phil and Celeste and even Grace when she could.

A heavy gloom fell over Reuben. He would not be there this year, he sensed it. And he would not be home for Thanksgiving either, when the family gathered at 7:00 p.m. for the traditional meal.

Thanksgiving had always been a sparkling, convivial event in the house on Russian Hill. Frequently Celeste’s mother joined the family, and Grace thought nothing of asking any intern or resident working
with her, especially if he or she was far from home. Phil wrote a new poem each year for the occasion, and one of his old students, an eccentric genius who lived in a Haight-Ashbury flophouse, frequently wandered in and stayed until someone inevitably challenged him on his intense conspiratorial views of society being destroyed by a clandestine organization of the rich and powerful, after which he would storm out.

Well, Reuben was not going to be there this year.

He walked Jim to the car.

The wind had come up off the ocean. It was dark at six o’clock, and Jim was anxious and cold. He agreed to tell the family Reuben needed this time alone, but he begged Reuben to stay in contact.

At about that moment, Galton drove up in his shining pickup truck and announced jubilantly, as his feet hit the flagstones, that the mountain cat that killed his dog had been “got.”

Jim, in his inevitably polite manner, showed great interest in what Galton was saying. So Galton pulled his collar up against the wind and told the whole story of the dog again, how the dog had once read minds, sensed danger, saved lives, worked miracles, and turned off a light switch regularly with its paws.

“But how did you find out the big cat is dead?” Reuben asked.

“Oh, they found her out there this afternoon. She’d been tagged by the university four years ago, tagged on her left ear. It was her, all right, and whatever got her gave her what for! There’s a bear out there in those woods, now you be careful, you and that pretty girl.”

Reuben nodded. He was turning to ice, but Galton seemed impervious to the cold in his goose-down jacket. He railed against the mountain cat. “They should have given me a depredation permit to shoot that sucker,” he said. “But oh, no, they were going to wait till she killed a human being and, believe me, she would have, too.”

“What about her cubs?” Reuben asked with a little bit of concealed glee. He was gloating inwardly that he had slain the cat and half devoured it, and it gave him a sinister pleasure that Jim knew this, because he had told Jim, and Jim could say nothing, and Galton would never know. He felt ashamed of these feelings, but mostly he remembered the cat, the feast, the bower in the trees, and he was gleeful and that was all.

“Oh, those cubs will scatter now and find new territory. Maybe one of them will hang around here, who knows? There are likely five thousand of those big cats in California. One come into town and took a
walk in north Berkeley, right past the shops and restaurants, not so very long ago.”

“I remember that,” said Jim. “Caused a little panic. But I’ve got to run. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Galton, and I hope to see you again.”

“So you have your very own priest in the family,” said Galton as Jim drove his old Suburban towards the forest, the taillights soon disappearing in the dark. “And you drive the Porsche, huh, son, and he drives the old family car.”

“Well, it’s not as if we don’t try to get him a decent set of wheels,” said Reuben. “My mom bought him a Mercedes, and he lasted with that about two days. He just took so many wisecracks from the homeless in his parish, and then he brought it right back.”

He took Galton’s arm. “Come inside,” he said.

At the kitchen table, he poured Galton a cup of coffee, and asked what Galton had known of Felix Nideck.

“What kind of a man was he?”

“Oh, the finest. An Old World aristocrat, if you ask me. Not that I know a hell of a lot about aristocrats. I guess in truth I don’t. But he was larger than life, if you know what I mean. Everybody out here loved him. There never was a more generous man. When he left these parts everybody was the loser. Course we didn’t know we’d never see him again. We always thought we would.”

“How old was he when he disappeared?”

“Well, they said later on that he was sixty years old. That’s what the papers said when they started really looking for him. But I never dreamed he was that age. He didn’t look a day over forty. I was forty myself when he disappeared. If he was a day older, well, you couldn’t prove it by me. But come to find out, he’d been born in 1932. That was news to me. Of course he wasn’t born here, you understand. He was born overseas, and came out here later on. I knew him for a good fifteen years, I’d say. That’s about right. I never could quite figure out how he could have been sixty years old. But that’s what they said.”

Reuben only nodded.

“Well, I’ve got to get going,” Galton said finally. “This coffee’s warmed me up. I only came to check on things, make sure you’re all right, and by the way, did that fella ever find you, that old guy, that friend of Felix’s?”

“What fella?” asked Reuben.

“Marrok,” said Galton. “I saw him a couple of nights ago down at the
Inn. He was having a drink down there. And he asked if I knew when you were coming back.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, he’s been around for years. He was Felix’s friend, as I said. He always stayed up here at the house when he came, at least until Marchent would throw him out. She did that from time to time. Marchent couldn’t stand him, really. But she always let him back in. He’ll be coming around, probably just out of respect for Felix and the family, that’s all. He’s not nosy. He probably just wants to know the house is all right, in good hands. I told him it was in very good hands.”

“Marchent and he didn’t get along?”

“Well, they did when she was a little girl, I guess, but after Felix disappeared, I don’t know. She wasn’t too keen on him and one time she told me she’d get rid of him if she could. My wife, Bessie, said that he was in love with Marchent, you know, coming on to her and all, and Marchent didn’t like it. Marchent wasn’t going to stand for any of that from him.”

Reuben didn’t respond.

“And the brothers hated him,” Galton said. “He was always getting the brothers in trouble. They’d be up to something, stealing a car, getting some liquor, you know, that they weren’t old enough to be buying, and he’d turn them in.

“Their father couldn’t much stand the man either. Abel Nideck was nothing like Felix Nideck, no, nothing at all. He didn’t run Marrok off, he just didn’t have the time of day for him. Then of course they weren’t here a lot of the time and neither was Marchent. Marchent argued for him for Felix’s sake, I figured. Sometimes he slept in the back bedroom upstairs, and sometimes he slept out in the woods. He would camp out there in back. Liked to do that. Liked to be alone.”

“Where did he come from? Do you know?”

Galton shook his head. “There were always people coming to see Felix, friends of his from … heck, all over the world. This fella’s Asiatic, Indian perhaps, I don’t know. He’s kind of dark skinned with black hair, very well spoken, like all of Felix’s friends. But he certainly was too old for Marchent, though he was like Felix, you know, he doesn’t show his age. I know how old he is because I remember. He was here when Marchent was a little girl.” He looked to each side as though someone was going to sneak up on him and then he said in a confidential voice, “I’ll
tell you what Marchent said to Bessie, she said, ‘Felix told him to look out for me, to protect me. Well, who’s going to protect me from
him
!’ ” He drew back laughing, and swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “But he’s really all right. Why, when Abel and Celia were killed, he came up here and stayed with Marchent so she wouldn’t be alone. That’s about the only time she ever really needed him, I suppose. Didn’t last that long. You sure as hell don’t have to let him hang around this place, you know. This place is yours now, son, and people have got to get used to that. It’s not Felix’s house. Felix is long gone.”

“Well, I’ll be on the lookout for him,” Reuben said.

“Like I was saying, he isn’t really a bad fella. Everybody knows him around here. He’s just one of those strange international drifters that was always around. But this is your house now.”

He walked Galton to the door.

“You come down to the Inn tonight if you want to have a drink with us,” he said. “We’ll be celebrating that the cat that got my dog has been got!”

“The Inn? Where’s the Inn?”

“Son, you can’t miss it. Come on down to Nideck. Nideck’s got one main street. It’s right there.”

“Oh, the bed-and-breakfast, yes, I saw it the first day I came up here,” Reuben said. “It was for sale.”

“Still is, and will be for a long time to come!” Galton laughed. “Nideck’s twelve miles inland. Why would anybody ever come to a bed-and-breakfast in Nideck? You join us tonight. We’d love to see you both there.”

Reuben shut the door behind him and went into the library.

He opened the folder with the papers that Simon Oliver had sent him pertaining to the house. There was a handwritten list of contractors and service people that Marchent had made for him during that last hour before she’d been killed. Just maybe …

He had the copy somewhere.

He found it.

He went down the list quickly. There it was, Thomas Marrok. “Friend of the family who appears from time to time. May ask to sleep in the woods out back. Old friend of Felix. Up to you. No special favors recommended. Your call.”

He went upstairs and found Laura in her office.

He told her everything Galton had told him.

They got into the Porsche and drove down to Nideck.

There was a cozy dinner crowd in the main room of the Inn when they entered. It was rustic, with rough wood walls and an old man in the corner playing a guitar and singing some mournful Celtic song. The place had red-and-white-checkered tablecloths and candles.

The innkeeper was in his little office, with his feet up on the desk, reading a paperback novel and watching a rerun of
Gunsmoke
on his little TV.

Reuben asked him if he knew a man named Marrok, and if the man had had a room here in the last week.

“Oh yeah, he’s been around,” said the man. “But he didn’t stay here, no.”