The Wolf Road (41 page)

“When’s it good,” I said, blinking at the sun, “to do somethin’ bad?”

Saw a puff a’ her breath but couldn’t look at her face.

Took her a while to say something, and when she did her voice weren’t light with talk a’ twinkling snow. “When you have no other choice.”

Tone of it made me turn.

“Ain’t we always got a choice?”

“Not always. When it’s your life or theirs.”

Thought brief she was talking ’bout Bilker but there was something in her face, stony white like a smooth wall built up to keep out wolves, that said otherwise.

“Your daddy?” I said, and she met my eyes. She looked like she was ’bout to deny it, ’bout to try to bluff her way clear.

We was beyond that.

“He sold me. To Delacroix.” She sniffed up the cold, then smiled. “But you already knew that.”

“Had me a feelin’. Why’d he do it?”

“Morphine habit and no money to pay for it. We were at the lake and I overheard him one evening talking to a Frenchwoman in a clearing between the lake and the road.” Her voice turned bitter. “It was strange because there was no one else out there, you know, I hadn’t seen anyone else for days and days. That’s what made me listen. They agreed on a price and Delacroix said she’d send men to collect me in the morning. My father…God…he said he got the better deal.” She shook her head then kept on. “I was so
angry
at him. He was meant to protect me, not throw me to the dogs for a fix. I let my anger get the better of me. I waited until he was addled, dragged him to the lake, and swam him out to the middle of it. He couldn’t swim, you see. When I got to Genesis and met Colby, I was too messed up to realize what he was doing or that he was Delacroix’s man. I was on my own for the first time, he was there and he offered to take me to the ferry boat. He was kind and handsome, you know how it goes.”

“Why’d you lie ’bout it?” I said.

“It’s not that easy to admit to murder.”

Wanted to say,
I know. Dammit, I know.
The face a’ that hog man, turned slack when my knife stuck his throat, still came to me when I shut my eyes. Still felt his breath. I murdered him, but he weren’t the one locked in my head. He weren’t the one. But my mouth wouldn’t make the sound. My throat wouldn’t give it breath. You can’t admit to someone else what you’re too damn afraid to admit to yourself. We was all allowed secrets and me and Penelope had figured that between us a long time ago.

“I trust you, Elka,” she said, so tender I put my arm ’round her.

Then she leant her head on my shoulder and said, “Are you going to do something bad?”

Felt heat in my eyes, like sparks come straight out a fire. I already done something bad. So many bad things. What was one more? I didn’t answer her ’cause in them moments, them quiet, still, perfect white moments outside our cabin, on our land, with naught but each other and a fire in the grate, I couldn’t tell her a lie.

In my head, lying now would be the worst thing I could do. Better to tell her nothing than a lie.

She felt me tense up, felt my chest go tight ’neath her head. She sat up, took my hand, and said, “What you did with Kreagar…it doesn’t matter now. You’re not the same person. You’re not him.”

My chin started trembling. “How’d you know?”

“Kreagar wouldn’t have pulled me out of that crate. Or out of that river. Would he?”

He would a’ pulled her out just to kill her himself later.

I said no.

“Underneath all the grime,” she said, smearing a spot a’ dirt on my cheek with her finger, “you’re a diamond, Elka, clear and tough and priceless.”

“But you don’t
know
…” I said, in no more’n a whisper. That heat in my eyes burned, everything went flickery and blurred up with tears.

“I know enough,” she said, but she said it in a strange way. That same way she said it to me ’bout her daddy. I hadn’t told her ’bout the…what Lyon made me remember. The way she was looking at me, mix a’ humoring and pity, same way she looked at me back in Halveston when we found out ’bout the doctor’s boy and his poor legs, that same look what said she knew what Kreagar done and she knew what I done.

My tears dried up. All the snow cooled down that heat and she nodded to me, slowly, reading all them thoughts right off my face.

Right then all I wanted was to get the hell away. Shame ran all through me like the whole Yukon river was rushing in my veins. I stood up, stumbled off the porch and into the snow, messed up all that perfect white, just like I’d messed up everything else.

“Elka.” Penelope stood up too but I couldn’t look at her, not now, not ever never again, no sir. “Elka it’s OK,” she kept saying, but it weren’t. ’Course it weren’t. She’d figured it. All this time at Tin River thinking I’d got free of it, that I could live a real proper true life after all that I done. It was all horse shit and I was a goddamn fool for thinking otherwise. Penelope knew what Kreagar done to the doctor’s boy, shit, everyone did. She put all the twos together and got four and got me. She’d snuck in them doors a’ mine when I wasn’t watching and part a’ me, that dark part, wanted to slap her clean ’cross that pretty cheek for the betraying of it. That’s what it was, after all, betraying. Knowing something ’bout me that I didn’t even proper know myself. Damn her, she
knew
. Anger and rage gritted up my teeth, seized up all my muscles, made everything in me hard and jagged and stabbing. I shook all over, hot was back in my eyes.

I tried to hold it all in, keep all the heat from spilling over and melting the world. I dug my teeth into my lip so hard I tasted blood. Made my stomach tighten up.

I spat on the snow. Great smear a’ red almost sizzling. That was it. I seen it right there in that tiny little picture and everything came clear and calm. Blood on snow was my mark on the world. It was a horror at first, made people look and question and for a time worry ’bout how it got there. It’d never be more than a freak thing to stare at and quick shuffle away. But then, come spring, it’d be gone, melted, everyone would forget it was ever there, no matter how bad it was, no matter how shocking.

“I’m goin’ huntin’,” I said, and pushed past her into the cabin. Couldn’t look at her. I grabbed my knife and hat and stormed back outside. She tried grabbing me but I shook her off. She tried talking to me but I ignored her. I was hurting right down deep, worse’n Kreagar ever hurt me. There was once pureness ’tween me and Penelope what me and Kreagar never had. We’d both come out a’ them crates with new lives but now she rubbed blood and shit in that. Weren’t her fault, ’course it weren’t, but it felt like it in my raging head. She should a’ damn well said something. She knew the rotten core a’ me and my shame and that was too much. Hell, I couldn’t make peace with what I done, I sure as shit couldn’t make peace with someone I cared for knowing ’bout it too. Why didn’t it matter to her? Why didn’t she go running from me, screaming? Why was she still here?

Then I figured it and it was the one thing what kept me from throwing my fist to her face. She ain’t been in all the doors in my head. There was still that one there, locked up with padlocks and chains and bolts slammed home. If she’d opened that one, if she knew what was in there, she’d be out that cabin quicker’n you could spit, calling out for Lyon and her iron bars.

Penelope shouted my name, shouted it loud and raw till she was all but screaming. Shocked birds out their nests, sent critters fleeing. Heard tears in her voice, heard confusion and anger and all kinds a’ things what I couldn’t, didn’t want to, make sense of. Broke my black heart to hear it. When I got to the trees, I paused brief, there weren’t no going back after this, after I left this place what we’d made into some kind a’ home. Penelope seen me stop, figured she knew why. I turned ’round, looked at her, standing there wrapped up to a bundle in coats and a blanket, holding something up over her head. She shouted and her voice carried crisp right to my ear.

I’d forgot the rifle; how was I going to shoot moose without a rifle? Felt my knife on my belt, stroked my thumb over that worn-down nub on the handle and turned away, started out into the trees.

I didn’t need no rifle no more, did I?

I weren’t hunting moose.

I circled wide ’round the claim so’s Penelope wouldn’t figure on where I went and made my way through the trees. Snow was tough going and soaked my boots and trouser legs with chill. I liked winter for the quiet, the feeling a’ curling up next to the fire, knowing you got chores but thinking, Hell, I can’t go hunting in six foot a’ snow, then curling up all the tighter. Hated winter for the wet, water goddamn everywhere, getting in all the things it shouldn’t. But you got to take the good with the rotten.

Heard a noise somewhere behind me. A crunch a’ hard snow. Either it was a fat pinecone falling or someone walking in step with me made a mistake.

I stayed still. Listened. Scanned them trees for puffs a’ breath.

Nothing. Not a whisper.

Pinecone, I thought. Or a squirrel what froze in the night and couldn’t hold on no more. I put it down to nature and carried on.

I got to Tucket near noon. Stuck to the tree line, out a’ sight a’ any folks what might be out in the snow. Josie’s lumberyard was running and smoke and steam came out the top a’ the barn. I quick stopped into the jailhouse, where Lyon said she’d be, and left a message with some freckled lad in a hand-me-down uniform.
Be ready,
I said,
bring guns.
Turns out I was expected and that set my heart going rough and ragged.

“She left you this,” the lad said, and took out something from ’neath the counter, wrapped in brown cloth. A red tube ’bout a foot long with a plastic cap.

“What is it?”

He looked at me bored and dull in the face, like he’d just woke up. “Flare. She said pull the cap when, you know, you’re ready or whatever.”

“What’s it do?” I said, turning it over, sniffing it.

He yawned and shrugged and I was sick a’ him quick. Left without another word and put the flare in my pocket. Made me a mite nervous. Lyon weren’t here, but she was prepared. I weren’t. Not one bit. Made it all real and that set my belly churning up. Hands shook and I said to ’em to calm down, it was just the cold. Told myself to put on a merry face and dredge up the friendlies.

The kid had to believe me.

Kreagar was close, I could feel him in the hairs on my neck and smell his stink on the wind. I knew him better’n I knew myself, that’s for sure. Kreagar didn’t have no secrets from me no more, he’d laid all his bloody cards on the table while I still had a king lost in my coats. He’d be in these trees, waiting like one a’ them fish what’s a rock till a guppy comes along then
snap
. Laughing in the trees would be his ripples in the water. Clumsy footsteps in the snow would be his ridges in the sand. He would follow them, no question.

I got close to the Thompsons’. Saw Josie come out the house and head to the barn, wiping her face like she’d just got her fill a’ Jethro’s cooking. Could see Jethro through the window at the back a’ the house, cleaning up in the kitchen. Spotted Mark in the barn, in a string vest despite the cold, hauling logs onto the cutting table. Gentle and strong and a good father he was and I almost ran back to Lyon and told her No, ma’am, I can’t give you Kreagar.

Almost.

’Stead I went through the trees, ’round the barn and house, till I was on the far side. Then I saw the boy. Playing in the snow, making angels and throwing handfuls at the boards a’ the house. I didn’t see no kid then. I saw that curly black hair as a pelt. Saw them pudgy arms as bait. I told myself I’d keep the boy safe, no doubt, he was just there for play, just long enough for Kreagar to show himself.

I’d gone to that house with a single thought in my head, one path I could walk down, but that path went twisting and forked and broken and I lost my way quick. I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did. That I got to tell you right now, though it won’t make much difference no more. What’s that saying ’bout the road to hell and good intentions? I was running down that damn road, barefoot and full a’ regret. But shit, I couldn’t hate what I was ’bout to do too much, figured it’d lead Lyon right to Kreagar and stop God knows how many more killings. That ain’t a bad thing, is it? Them thoughts were what damned me to the pit without no hope a’ salvation. Right then, in the real, deep, primal part a’ me, I didn’t think I was doing nothing wrong.

After all, I thought in them moments afore I said my hellos to the boy and all them moments afore when I was making up this plan a’ mine—this awful, horrible, terrible plan—that sometimes you got to tie up a kicking rabbit to lure in a wolf. The human in me figured the rabbit would wriggle free in them last seconds or I’d shoot the wolf afore it sunk its teeth. Wild part a’ me knew it was easier to catch a wolf what had a full belly.

Then I stopped dead, full a’ shock and disbelieving.

That was Kreagar thinking. They was Kreagar words in my head. They weren’t mine, weren’t me. Not no more.

Knowing that, feeling that black poison in me, like oil swimming on water, my legs went from ’neath me and my knees hit the snow. I wanted to slap myself, kick myself, rip my goddamn brain out a’ my head for even coming up with the idea, rip my heart out for believing it was
right
. My guts wanted to heave up them thoughts and spill ’em, hot and steaming, on the snow. I wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it. No sir. Whatever I was, however bad I was, I weren’t Kreagar. No sir. I weren’t him. His rules a’ living weren’t mine and I wouldn’t look at human life like he did, as nothing more’n meat. That boy weren’t bait. That boy weren’t a deer or a rabbit or a thing to hunt. He was snow-pure and sweet as his uncle’s apple pie.