Theft (4 page)

I carried the phone with me as I walked outside, leaned against my truck, the wheel wells as rusty as the earth I stood on, same red color that soaked the marrow of my bones. When I thought of going back to Colorado, I longed for it, yet it frightened me. I worried that this call, so out of the blue, was a set up for what I'd done. I wondered if they had somehow figured out that I was as guilty of taking a life as Zeb. I'd worked hard to bury what I knew, to redefine it to myself, to tell the story a different way. But there were the bony, hard facts of it. I was responsible for my own mother's death. Did they know that? Was that the unspoken reason for the call?

“There's a good chance I won't have any more luck finding Zeb than you,” I said. “If you already spent a day and a half tracking him, with dogs, I can't sniff things out any better than a canine.”

“I'm told you're one of the best trackers around.”

“Overstatement.”

“So you know damn well that tracking is 90 percent getting inside the head of whatever or whoever you're tracking. And you
know
Zeb.” He was right on all counts. “And he's your brother, for chrissake. You find him, he comes out alive.
We
find him, and—” He left it to me to fill in the blank. There was silence on his end of the line. He knew he had me.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll come.” My words felt hollow.

“Good.”

I had lowered the receiver away from my ear, ready to hang up, when his voice came at me again, sounding like a Dragnet man. “Without you, Willa, our choices are limited. If you don't show, I'll have to give my men the right to shoot.”

My jaw tightened. I watched Cario, his bow-legged Mexican cowboy gait. He opened the screen door, walked into my house. I couldn't stand the thought of leaving him and Magda. “I'll be there. I'm glad to do it,” I said into the phone. I hung up.

It wasn't a complete lie. To have a reason and a way to see Zeb again—I'd been waiting for that since we went our separate ways so long ago, the tug between us still visceral across place and time. The man was right. I knew everything about Zeb. And Zeb knew almost everything about me. I'd had what felt like a bird batting around in my chest since I was a kid, something caged and trying to get out. This was it: my chance to release it, once and for all. I needed to see Zeb again.

I skirted a conversation with Cario and Magda by walking around to the back door. I walked into my room, started packing, the phone call echoing through my head as resonant and haunting as the wolf howls I'd heard yesterday in the canyon.

I HAD SPENT THE day and night before working outside the borders of Días de Ojos National Forest, tracking Hector (called AM108 by the Wilderness and Water Agency reintroduction project) and Ciela (AF138), two Mexican grey wolves who had removal orders on their heads for allegedly feeding their young with meat from slow, dumb cattle, rather than wild deer, javelina, or elk.

Even after working in the field for so long, I'd never learned not to fall in love with the animals I tracked. Hector and Ciela were two of the first wolves in Días de Ojos to mate and reproduce in the wild, the offspring of Sky (AF118) and Kody (AM97) who had been released into the forest five years earlier.

Mexican wolves aren't the same as the Yellowstone wolves getting all the press. They're the most endangered sub-species of wolf in the world, and the most endangered mammal in North America. Because they don't have a national park like Yellowstone protecting them, they're more fragile. In National Parks, no ranching is allowed. National forests, however, depend on ranching. But reintroducing wolves to forest mixed with cattle ranchland was like putting sharks in a tank with guppies and then killing the sharks if the guppies didn't survive. Pretty soon, the tank is empty. Though the Wilderness and Water Agency had tried to buy the ranchers out of their easements, none were selling. The only way the WWA had convinced the ranchers to agree to the mandatory reintroduction of the endangered wolf was to have the animals declared “nonessential experimental species.” They were still “endangered,” but this special designation allowed for more “management flexibility” with Mexican wolves, which meant they could be shot and killed, “if necessary.” The double bind was inescapable: The WWA was responsible for releasing 100 percent of the wolves in the southwest states. It was also responsible for killing—either by shooting or botched relocations—most of the same wolves they'd released.

Hector and Ciela, though, had been born in the wild, had never been touched by human hands, never been collared with a transmitter. They were truly wild wolves. The Wilderness and Water Agency had agreed to monitor them by foot-tracking and helicopter only, and I worked for two large nonprofit wildlife defense organizations as an independent overseer. Just this year, the W WA had finally stopped shooting Mexican wolves for crossing out of the Días de Ojos boundaries. Hector and Ciela were the first wolves allowed to successfully migrate off the protected area, and they had made their way far from the ranchers' properties. Because of this, they had a chance of surviving. They were the embodiment of hope.

But Halvorson, a rancher from near the Navajo Nation border, said he'd witnessed Ciela and Hector and their pack (called the West Canyon pack) killing his cattle. Though Halvorson admitted he thought wolves should be extirpated and had made false claims about wolves before, the WWA said the ID was certain. Hector and Ciela's offense had gone on too long. They'd killed his livestock three times now, and Halvorson claimed he had run them out of the territory with ATVs and rifle blanks. But each time, the wolves had found their way back to their home again.

I'd tracked these wolves and found little evidence of these claims. The wolves scavenged dead, mismanaged cattle now and again, but had never killed. They were excellent hunters, and they had successfully raised their first litter. Three pups had survived to adolescence. But unless I could prove Hector and Ciela innocent once and for all, that would be their last litter. I was their final appeal.

“Hell, Halvorson's being nice about it, Willa. He could've shot them and been done with it,” Andy my contact at WWA had told me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Tell him thanks.”

So I'd spent a few days and nights with my belly pressed close to the earth, enveloped in the musty scent of leaves and dirt, watching Ciela and Hector. Over the past year, I'd gained their trust. Not the kind of trust that made them immune to humans. I'd seen them run from the slightest suggestion of human movement. But
they were used to my scent, in particular. I stayed under constant cover, but I no longer needed to look through the narrow tunnel of binoculars or a scope. Now I was able to get close enough to observe individual details: the rich black outline around Hector's grey eyes, shaped in a narrow almond; the slight glitch in Ciela's gait that told the story of a battle she'd had that we, in all our “close observation,” had missed, something that had left her permanently wounded, but thriving all the same. The will to survive inhabited her bones.

That day, I'd been ecstatic when I watched her and Hector and two other West Canyon wolves chase and kill an adult mule deer. It was one of two successful wild hunts I'd witnessed in the past few months. It might have been enough to save Hector and Ciela, if I argued my point well. But I was the only person who had witnessed their kills. Now I could not be there to talk to WWA in person. I'd written a report, told every last detail of Ciela and Hector's success. Still, as I packed for Colorado, the fate of the wolves worried the margins of my heart.

I STOOD IN MY bedroom, tossing clothes and gear into my duffle, trying to explain all this to Cario and Magda who stood, now, in my doorway, questioning me.

“I don't like it,” Cario said. He took me by the hand and led me into the living room, so he could keep watching TV while he talked. “You don't know your brother anymore, Willa. He could be dangerous, even to you.”

“Could be,” I said. I set my duffle bag down and watched a few minutes of
Anatomía de Grey
. On the screen, two patients in the ER had a large pole running through the middle of their bodies.

At a commercial break, Magda patted my thigh. “This is not good.” She pointed to the TV screen, stood up, and imitated my voice in a perfect American accent. “Why is this entertainment?
These bleeding people in pain? Take my TV why don't you? Take it to your own damn house.” She quit imitating me now and sat back down on the sofa. The soft, fleshy wrinkles on her cheeks, usually smile lines, turned to crevices of worry. “You're watching
Grey's Anatomy
, Willa, and for the love of Mary and Joseph and sweet baby Jesus, you are not complaining about it.” She shook her head. “You're not yourself. You're not right in the head.” She knocked her knuckles against my skull, took a break of silence, then reloaded. “And what about your
friend
, Christina?” She emphasized the word, reminding me that Christina meant more to me than a friend should, in her opinion. “Have you told her your hair-brained idea? Call her. She'll tell you no. She's got good sense.”

I was absorbed in the TV.

“Have you called Raymond? He'll tell you: ‘Loco.' He'll tell you: ‘Stay.'” She lost her train of thought for a moment, and I was relieved. “You know, Raymond owes me twenty dollars. Last poker game we had here on the mesa. Remember?” She nudged Cario. “I took Raymond for twenty dollars and he did not pay up.”

“Sí, Sí. Out of the hundreds he usually wins from you, that you've never paid him,” Cario said.

“Ver la televisión,” Magda said, to Cario. Then to me, “Going to Colorado, Willa. It's not good.”

My whole life was happening in double exposures now. One film played Magda and Cario sitting in my living room, joking about good times we'd had out here on this mesa. And behind that image, the film of my childhood played. “I'll be back before Raymond owes you another twenty,” I said. I tried for a smile. Magda didn't. “I have to stop by and see him anyway. Got some wolves he needs to look after for me.”

“Tell him to look after my twenty dollars.” She gestured to my small duffle bag. “That's all you're taking?”

“Won't be there long.”

“Mierda santo,” a whisper meant for Cario's ears only. “Nuestra niña es una locura.”

“Sí, está loca,” Cario said, though his eyes never left the TV.

“You bet I'm crazy. I live out on this godforsaken mesa with you two,” I said.

This time, Magda found a smile, but it faded fast. “Your brother, Mija. Let him be.” She stood up, took my hand, and led me to my bedroom. “Sleep on it.”

“Eres mi familia, you know,” I said.

“Por supuesto. Somos familia.” She hugged me, closed the door, then walked back to my living room, my TV, and her husband.