The Wolf Road (31 page)

“He’s a man,” I said, stepping over a lichen-bloomed rock, “I always knew that.”

Penelope huffed a bit then creased up her forehead. “A man couldn’t do what he did. He’s a monster.”

I laughed. “Ain’t no monster. Monsters ain’t real ’cept in kids’ imaginations, under the beds, in the closets. We live in a world a’ men and there ain’t no good come out of tellin’ them they monsters. Makes ’em think they ain’t done nothin’ wrong, that it’s their nature and they can’t do nothin’ to change that. Callin’ ’em a monster makes ’em somethin’ different from the rest of us, but they ain’t. They just men, flesh and bone and blood. Bad’uns, truth, but men all the same. What Colby did to us was worse’n bad but that don’t make him a monster. He chose what he did same I choose to snare a rabbit for eatin’. Am I a monster?”

Penelope shook her head.

“Then he ain’t neither. He’s just a bastard. Nothin’ a man can do can make him stop bein’ a man.”

Penelope didn’t say nothing more right away, she kept that frown on her head and didn’t look at me. Maybe I shouldn’t a’ brought up Colby, maybe it was too raw to be talking a’ him in the same breath as Kreagar.

“What was Hallet like, as a man?” she asked me.

Tell you the truth I hadn’t thought about who Kreagar was afore he was Kreagar in months. That man what I knew, Trapper, he was dead. Had his throat slit by Kreagar’s charcoal face in Dalston and by Lyon’s icy words and by me knowing they was truer’n anything. I ain’t never talked about him, not to no one.

“I called him Trapper,” I said, picking each word careful out my head. “He found me in the woods when I was seven. I stole a piece a’ jerky off his porch, see, and he chased me with a shotgun. Damn though, that jerky was worth it. Ain’t never had the like outside that hut. Afore him I was with my nana, her cooking was boiled beef and dirt compared to Trapper’s.”

Penelope half smiled at me. Figured she didn’t like me speaking well of a man like Kreagar. But I carried on anyway.

“He taught me things,” I said, remembering all them lessons with a tiny heart swell. “How to hunt, trap, find rabbit runs for snares. Taught me what plants I could eat and what would kill me stone dead. All them things what have kept us alive and fed out here the last few weeks are ’cause a’ him. Can’t be forgettin’ that just ’cause he done awful things to other people. He always taught me in a way what I understood, no matter how old I was.”

“He sounds…nice,” she said, though I felt her pain to say it.

“He had a temper on him somethin’ rotten, a’ course,” I said, then pulled up my sleeve and showed her a line a’ little white scars on my forearm. “Got them when I set off a marten trap by mistake. He pried it off me then made me sleep outside for three nights for ruinin’ his trap. He said no critter gonna come close to a trap what’s stunk all up with human blood. Might as well throw the damn thing in the river.”

“He and my father sound like kindred spirits,” Penelope said, sad but smiling.

I helped her over a sharp-edged boulder, one a’ them what got kicked up by the Damn Stupid and hadn’t had time to get softened by the wind and rain. They was all over this forest and made the walking slower’n I would a’ liked.

“You don’t say much ’bout him.”

“There isn’t much to say. He’s dead.”

“I figure that’s when there’s the most to say. Ain’t no one arguin’ with you.”

Penelope didn’t say nothing for a quarter mile. She just stared at them boots and kept her footing.

“He liked books,” she said, “and newspapers, magazines, everything written. He and his father kept everything from before the Fall. I grew up reading about a lost world.”

“Can’t a’ been much worse than this one.”

“My father told me it was a cold war at first, nothing happened, no one died. Then it just
happened
. They attacked or we did, I don’t think anyone knows for sure anymore. Bombs started falling, people thought the world would be changed,” she said, keeping pace with me. “There was so much tension, so much paranoia, neighbors turning on neighbors, rich on poor. So when the war broke out, it was like the dam finally broke. It lasted years, killed God knows how many people, tore the world apart. Even heard some people in White Top call it the Cleanse. When it was over, it was a new start but nobody won.”

Her voice turned sour and her face twisted up to match. “The world didn’t change. There is still murder, still rape and fighting. We fucked it up,” she said. “We had this chance, this clean slate, and we just carried on the same as we always have.”

I knew what she was talking ’bout, knew why she was sore over it. I seen all them evils a’ this world firsthand and they done damage to me I don’t even know about yet.

“I suppose it ain’t what’s different now that’s more fearful,” I said, “it’s what stayed the same. I grown up from a seed in this world, don’t know no other. I lived each day like I weren’t going to get no food nor water. Every day I did was a good day. I can’t expect more’n that. In truth, girl like me can’t expect much a’ this life and I never have. You got to live in the here-now, not the back-then. Else you’ll send yourself mad.”

“Is that why you didn’t see what Hallet was doing? You didn’t add up all the pieces from
back-then
and figure it out. Ever think you could have stopped him killing?”

She’d turned fierce on me, taken her own hurting and made it my fault. I didn’t like it one bit.

“You want to be careful with what you say next,” I said, turning my voice hard as flint. “I like you, Penelope, but you make out like I killed them women and that kid along with him and we’re done. That Frenchwoman and all them hog men can have you.”

Penelope flinched and sighed heavy like all the air and fierce went out a’ her at once.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think that, I didn’t mean that. I just wish…” She stopped short a’ actually saying anything ’bout herself.

Instead she said, “I suppose even those closest to us can be strangers.”

Way she said it told me she knew that all too well.

“Your daddy?” I asked.

She nodded. Didn’t say more and I didn’t ask more. I figured she’d tell me ’bout him when we was far enough away from him and his memory that she weren’t afraid no more. That could be Tucket, hell, that could be the moon for all I knew, but I weren’t going to push. I wouldn’t have no one pushing me so I couldn’t right expect the same a’ her.

“I like to think, Elka, that if you’d known,” she said slow, “that you would have turned him in.”

I liked to think that too, but in truth, I ain’t sure if I would. Trapper was the only family I had and it was like a knife in my chest to leave that. I could a’ turned him in, told Lyon that hell yes I knew him and he was in a hut ten miles off the dirt track out a’ Ridgeway. I should a’. Then the doctor’s boy would still be breathing.

But hell, if I followed that road a’ thought, I wouldn’t a’ run from Lyon, wouldn’t a’ ended up in Colby’s crate, what meant I wouldn’t a’ found Penelope. She’d be in Delacroix’s cat house right now if I’d turned him in. Ain’t no changing it and I wouldn’t, knowing what I know now.

“Can’t be livin’ in the back-then,” I said, “ ’cause it’ll damn near break your heart.”

Penelope smiled and said, “I grew up in a house obsessed with the past. It’s hard to let go.”

“By the sounds of it, you and your daddy lived a damn fine life down south,” I said, stopping at the edge of a stream to fill up the flask.

“Few years after Mother died, Father became sick of treating White Top’s rich,” she said, crouching down to splash her face. “He said they were the ones that caused all the heartache of the world and he felt like by setting their broken bones or curing their children’s sore throats, he was just as bad. So he dragged me up here to administer to the miners. That’s where he was needed most, he said.”

“Somethin’ true awful must a’ happened ’tween there and that lake,” I said, taking a long drink from the flask. I weren’t expecting her to tell me and she didn’t.

“We should speed up,” she said, smiling all stiff at me.

I laughed to myself and she saw it. We was playing a game, me and her, and hell if it weren’t a little bit fun. I ain’t never cared ’bout another person and what they been through in their lives but Penelope had me snared up like a rabbit first time out its hole. First time I saw her I thought, This girl ain’t going to last the night. But, strike me, she did and she kept lasting and kept surviving and I ain’t never met no one like that. First time I think in all my life, what must a’ been close to eighteen years by then, I didn’t want to be alone in the wild. Strange feeling that I ain’t never felt with no one else. Penelope got under my skin, dug them long nails in, and weren’t going nowhere.

We didn’t talk much more that day. Couple a’ times Penelope pointed out a mushroom or plant fat with berries and asked if we could eat ’em. Only if she wanted to be toes-up afore sunup, I said, but found her a few cloudberries sweet as honey what stopped her moaning for a few hours.

Hour or two afore sundown, we found a spot to camp. I left Penelope the reverend’s tinderbox and quick told her how to get a fire going. Then I headed off into the woods to set snares. They was a long shot, we weren’t going to be there long past dawn, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to set ’em. Dusk was coming, what meant the deer would be on the move. Found me a trail and quick set my last two heavy snares into spring traps. Set a few simple snares round rabbit runs then picked my way back to camp.

Penelope sat there, grin spread wide across her face, all lit up by roaring firelight.

“Look!” she said, voice all squealy.

My eyes caught the tinderbox. She’d used most all the wax paper when I would a’ done it with a piece the size a’ my fingernail. Year ago I would a’ tore her down for that; wasting tinder ain’t nothing to be proud of, but right then, I didn’t care one stitch. She could a’ used the straps off the pack to light that fire and I still would a’ been happy for her.

“Shit,” I said, sitting down and warming up my hands. “Soon as you catch your first rabbit, you ain’t gonna need me no more.”

She laughed, that ringing bell sound, what meant it was true, then put her long arm ’round my shoulders, pulled me close, and kissed me hard on the side a’ the head.

“Sorry my dear, but you’re stuck with me,” she said, and let me go, fat smile still on her face.

“Shit,” I mumbled, and she punched me in the arm. Girl could hit harder’n I thought.

Full a’ surprises she was.

“I figure we walked just shy a’ thirty miles,” I said. “This pace, we’ll be in Tucket afore sundown tomorrow.”

Penelope turned serious. “Do you want to go straight to your parents’ claim?”

Strange squirmy feeling set itself in my belly. “Don’t know,” I said. “What…what would you do?”

She took a long breath. I could see them thoughts churning up ’neath that blond hair. “I would…I would get to Tucket tomorrow, find a room, then approach them in daylight.”

I nodded along with her.

Then I heard a
snap
out in the trees and the telltale thudding on dirt. I sprang up, pulled my knife out my belt and told Penelope to stay put, keep the fire high. She knew better’n to argue or ask questions.

I dashed off into the forest, heart right up in my mouth I was so excited. Found my trap and in the last light a’ the spring day, I saw a small, pale brown shape struggling. I came up on it slow. It was young and small, but more’n enough for me and Penelope. We’d be feasting tonight. I got closer, through a stand a’ cottonwood trees. It weren’t moving quite right for a deer, maybe it was lame or its bloodline way back was affected by the Damn Stupid bombs. Still good eating on it though.

I hadn’t had deer since that last buck I shot with Trapper near a year ago. First time he let me pull the trigger. That feeling, that rush a’ heat and excitement, came back to me now. All them deer I skinned and gutted with him didn’t feel like this one. They was bigger, hide smoother, hair that little bit longer.

The deer saw me and froze. I put my knife in my belt and put my hands out to it, giving all the
shh
noises I could. Step by step I came up on it, then when I was close enough—

“Hey! Get away from him!” Man came screaming out the trees.

I fell backward, pulled out my knife, and held it out ready to cut.

The man, black-skinned and with a brace a’ rabbits slung over his shoulder held his hands up.

“Please,” he said, voice gone soft, “please, my son.”

In the dying light, I looked again at what was caught in my snare. I scrambled backward, till my back smacked ’gainst a tree and I couldn’t go no further. Blood pounded in my ears and cut out any sound. Weren’t a deer. Weren’t a deer. Weren’t a buck or a doe or a yearling.

It was a boy and he was crying.

The man knelt down and freed the boy’s leg from my snare. The kid stood up and clung on to his daddy.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I breathed them words in and out of me and I stared hard at that child, fluffy black hair on him, “I didn’t see, I couldn’t see.”

The man looked at me with a deep frown on his face. “No harm done,” he said, and he said it kind and I didn’t right believe the tone.

“He should know better than to go wandering off,” the man said, smiling and stroking the boy’s hair.

“Mark,” the man said, held out a hand to me. “Thompson. This is Josh. Is that your fire back there?”

Penelope. My gut froze.

“I saw the light,” he said, warm in his voice but the rest a’ him was shaking. “I’ll trade you a rabbit for some heat tonight.”

He grinned and it was one a’ them real grins. I didn’t have no fear for the fella right then, but the boy caught in my snare had shook me up something awful and there weren’t no way I was letting my guard down around them two. Not now, not never.