Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me (28 page)

An olive sleeve grabs my shoulder. “We need you to move back, miss. For your own safety.”

I glare at him. “She’s not going to hurt anybody. She’s dead.”

He tips back his green hat with the perky tassel. “Nobody said that.”

“What are they doing?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to step back now.”

“If she’s not dead, why don’t they take her in?”

“Miss. They’re doing everything they can. In most cases we just let nature take its course.”

Something loud is ringing in my brain but the sound is too loud for me to hear. I feel Virgil standing next to me. I notice that people are staring not at the wolf but at me. Eloise looks over. Virgil takes my hand and pulls me close. “Let’s get out of here.”

The ranger gives him a sympathetic nod, like I’m having a seizure.

Tanner and his crew slide a small tarp under the wolf and wrap up her body. The cleanup is quick and efficient.

Tanner carries Forty to his truck, and gently places her on the front seat, as if she’s alive, and then gets in with one of his olive sidekicks. He gives the crowd a pacifying wave. The truck pulls out fast with a siren twisting on its roof, winding past the mess of cars parked in the road.

Virgil and I walk through the crowd. Phrases float around me.

“Did you see how they gutted her?”

“Do you think she’ll make it?”

“Not a prayer.”

“Hey, aren’t those the kids on the news?”

I want to yell at these people. This isn’t a television show; it’s real life. Virgil grips my hand so tight I can’t feel it. He practically shoves me in the car.

“Are you okay?” he says.

“They ripped her face off.”

“Wolves are thorough.”

“She was the alpha, with pups. Wolves don’t do that.”

Virgil starts the car, “I’ve never seen it before. But the pack probably just got sick of Forty’s abuse. When she came to Cinderella’s den, Cinderella and the others had a chance and they took it. They busted some heads.”

“And what if they hadn’t?” I shoot back.

The scar on Virgil’s perfect cheek is red. “They’re wolves. Do you get that? That’s how wolves are.
You
don’t have to be like that.”

“I’m not.”

Virgil pulls the car over sharply to the side of road and nearly hits a fat man coming out of his Winnebago. Virgil grabs my arm hard. He’s not Gandhi now. “I’m not kidding. It will only make it worse. Why don’t you get that?”

He puts both arms around me, crowding out everything but him. Everything is jerking and spinning inside of me. I pull away and stare him in the face. It’s like when I looked at the wolf, only different. I see him and I see myself. I see that I’m wrong and so is he. In that moment I know there is a place between fighting and backing away, a place that transcends fear and creates the possibility of change. It’s the very same place in me where I love Virgil. I bury my head in Virgil’s coat. I stop spinning. I am perfectly quiet in his arms.

I’m not afraid to love Virgil anymore. But I can’t let that be my reason for what I do next.

THE BIG BAD WOLF

WE DRIVE WITHOUT talking for three hours. I don’t believe he can leave. I’ve lived in this town all of my life, and now after nine months I can’t imagine West End without Virgil.

I ask him to drop me in the street in case my dad is inside, waiting with a Smith & Wesson. Virgil parks by the curb and we roll the windows down. I don’t know why. Down the street a tour bus rolls past. The tourists are starting to come back. I hear a dog barking. It’s only mid-morning but it feels like this day has lasted my whole life.

Finally I say, “It’ll probably be good to get back to Minnesota.”

“Not really.”

“So stay.”

He turns his head away from me. “I’m going to miss you, Wolf Girl.”

If I say good-bye to Virgil my face will melt.

I get my bag out of the back and put it by the side of the road. He gets out of the car and stands next to me. He takes my hand and rubs it. Honestly those hands should be registered as lethal weapons with intent to brainwash. I take my hand back.

We stand in the street. Both of our faces start melting.

“Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is walk away,” he says.

I say, “Sometimes it isn’t.”

He gets in his car and drives away.

 

I need to go in my room and collapse until next spring. But I don’t.

My dad isn’t home, the car is, and he’s left the keys hanging on the ring. The odds of this suggest I’ve used up all my good luck for the day. I leave my dad a note. “Gone to Martins. Be back soon.” I hope I’m telling the truth.

 

I try to sound natural. “Hey, Kenner.”

“Hey,” says Kenner. For some reason he smiles at me.

Heidi is jumping all over me. The kittens came in a big way and Heidi has brought me three of them to hold at once. Mrs. Martin looks happy to see me, too, in spite of everything. I say to Kenner, “I know you’re busy with work and all but can I talk to you about something?”

“Why don’t you two run out to the bunkhouse and get out of my hair?” says Mrs. Martin.

“What about me?” says Heidi.

“You better get those kittens out of here before your dad comes home, or we’re going to be having kitten soup for dinner.”

We walk out to the bunkhouse in awkward silence. I see Frankenstein and the boat are both gone. When we get inside, Kenner plunks down on a chair and stares up at me. “So get it over with.”

“What?”

“Your speech. You telling me how sorry you are about the cattle. But you want to work out here during the summer ’cause you heard that our weights are still better than everybody else’s. My mom’s been pecking at my dad about it all morning.”

“Your weights are better?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t mean they’re fat as they’d be if there were no wolves. But we did okay. Probably just a fluke.”

“That’s amazing.”

“You skipped the ‘I’m so sorry about everything part.’”

“I am sorry about everything.”

“I’ve been making your life hell since third grade. We’ll call it square.”

I walk over to the cabinet and look it over carefully. I wonder how much more wire Will has behind the door. I don’t want to get Kenner into this. But he is. We all are. Now I have to use a small bluff. “How soon until William gets home from the lake?”

He looks surprised but doesn’t ask how I know. “Depends on the fish, I guess. Why?”

“I found Will putting up snares. He threatened me.”

Kenner doesn’t say anything at first. His eyes wander around the shed. “Why are you telling me?”

“He also threatened to do something to ‘someone else.’ Who do you think that would be?”

“How should I know?”

“Because you know everything he does.”

“I don’t. I really don’t.”

“The parade, the stores, the snares. What’s next?”

“What? Just because he hates wolves doesn’t mean he did those things.”

“What’s it going to take? Shooting somebody? He needs help and he won’t get it if everyone keeps pretending this is about wolves.”

Kenner glares at me. “Yeah, I know what kind of help you’ll be. The same kind of help Virgil is, not keeping his big mouth shut. Can’t even come out here and face me.”

“This isn’t Virgil’s problem.”

“It isn’t yours either.”

“Will’s made it my problem. “

“Well, then I guess you’ll have to deal with it.”

“Turns out Will’s not a very sneaky arsonist. He left something next to the fire at our store.”

Kenner stands up and kicks at the chair. It skitters across the floor and falls to the ground. “Haven’t you ruined my family enough?”

I say, “I care about your family. But he started the store on fire. Yesterday he was talking about hurting someone. He’s out of control.”

Kenner glares at me. I’m sure he wants to pound me flat, but he doesn’t. I walk over and pick up the chair and sit down in it.

He says, “So you’re going to turn him in, is that what you came out here to tell me?”

“It can go that way. But if he admits to the fire and the shooting, things are going to be a lot different for everybody. He might not even go to jail.”

“You do believe in fairy tales.”

“Anything else you want to tell me before I head to Holiday Point?”

His eyes tell me I’ve guessed right again. He says, “Get out of here.”

“I am sorry about everything,” I say.

I sneak out so Heidi won’t see me leaving without petting her kittens.

Will usually launches his fourteen-footer from the same place Dad keeps his small drift boat in a slip, Holiday Point, but not always, so it was good to get that out of Kenner. With a little luck I should be able to find him. If the weather holds. Then I’m going to need a lot of luck.

Normally with clouds on the mountain like they are today, I might wait a few minutes before I launch, watching the wind. But I don’t have that kind of time. Once Will knows that Virgil is gone, it’s going to be harder to be persuasive. A lot depends on me being persuasive.

I row out into the choppy water. My hands are still tender from the snares incident, but I stretch out my legs and row hard. The lake is cluttered with runoff debris. I navigate a group of floating logs being visited by mergansers. I watch a bald eagle searching for fish. I wish I was doing this for fun. I wish I had gloves.

I row west toward the dam. I steer clear of another group of logs even bigger than the last. I keep going. The fishing is impossible for novices in this part of the lake, which is why I think I’ll find Will here. Like me, he’s always doing things the hard way.

I get lucky. Within forty minutes of leaving the pier I see him. He sees me, too, and he stays put.

By the time I row up near his boat my heart is pounding a hole in my chest, and I’m reciting lines to myself about accidents and destiny. Mainly I hope it’s not my destiny to be one of William’s accidents.

“Look who’s here,” says William. “Miss Random Acts of Irritation.”

“How ya doing, Will?” I come in parallel to Will’s boat. Close enough to talk, but far enough away to row backward if I need to.

Will says, “I
was
pretty good until about one minute ago. You come to give me another lecture about wolves?”

“No. But I want to talk to you.”

“That’s funny, because I want to fish.” His lips smack when he talks, and his eyes are watery. He’s drunk.

“You have a lot of empties,” I say, looking at the beer cans he’s stacked on the other seat.

“What else is there to do around here but drink, fish, and hunt? I guess there’s one other thing but you’re not my type. Are you my type, KJ?”

This isn’t going to work. Isn’t that what Virgil said? I didn’t count on William being drunk. I feel the panic rising in my throat but I ignore it and focus on the next step. My dad says the fastest way to sober up a client is to give them a bill.

Will says, “Did you come out here to stare me to death?”

A gust of wind raises white tips around our boats. I know I can’t dance around this but I’m afraid. Finally I say, “Your truck left tracks in the snow at the fire.”

“What?”

“You left tire tracks when you set fire to the Dumpster outside of our store. You were probably in such a hurry to get out of there you didn’t think about it. But Virgil took pictures. A lot of pictures. Those are unusual tires. And so is the noise your truck makes. Which my dad heard loud and clear that night and described in detail to the police.”

Will squeezes his beer can and throws it into the water. The white caps tip it back and forth and carry it away. “You think I started that fire?”

“Yes, I do. And I think you shot at the ice statue from the Steak House rooftop.”

“Oh, yeah?” Will’s not much of poker player. His face twists up. “You think too much.”

“Accidents happen. It’s what we do next that matters.”

“You been working on that?”

“Kinda.”

“Keep working.”

I row closer to him. I can smell the beer from my boat. “You can’t keep snaring, shooting, and setting fire to everything that pisses you off.”

He spits over his boat. “I can try.”

“I don’t think you started out to hurt people.”

“I started out to get rid of wolves that aren’t supposed to be here. And pretty soon that will be legal.”

“I saw the bruise on Heidi’s arm. Did you mean to do that?”

Will is sloppy from drinking but I’ve hit the nerve I was looking for. “I’ve never touched Heidi.”

“The college should have given you a second chance. Your parents dumped on you. The ranch is bleeding money no matter what you do. It’s enough to get to anybody.”