Midway up the path, though, he froze. The trees swayed and murmured, and when they went silent he heard something else in the distance. It was faint, lilting, and it stopped almost as soon as it started. He took another step and froze again, turned back toward the lake, and heard it again, louder and more mournful this time. A howl, a wolf’s howl. One wolf usually meant many.
He tried to move in a lull after the second cry but couldn’t — he was spellbound. The light had come fully up but was still drab. A third cry went up, and he walked back to the beach. God, it’s beautiful, he thought. And no sooner had he thought it than the howl was answered. The wolf song permeated the air, seemed even to warm it. He fixed his eyes on the shoreline, scanned it from the cliff face they’d fished off the other day to the impenetrable spruce stand on the north shore of the lake. He couldn’t see them, but the howling had entered him. It filled him the way the foghorns had as a child.
They sang for a long time. He wondered if the hunt was over and they were celebrating their kill, or if they’d simply been lost in the night and were calling each other back to the den. Maybe there were pups, maybe it was a long call to danger.
When they stopped he started back for the house. He considered its black windows as though from a distance they might let onto something other than what was really there. He saw a light flicker on in one of the windows and his father’s head appear. It looked like a scene from an Impressionist painting. But the image only lasted for a second before the old man turned and disappeared from the light.
“BRIGHT-EYED AND BUSHY-TAILED,” Olaf said. “You hear the wolves?”
“I looked for them.” Noah stopped in the kitchen.
“There’s a pack in the neighborhood. Their turf comes right up to the shore across the lake. Far as I can tell anyway. If you’re quiet and sit still long enough, sometimes you can see them watering themselves in the morning.”
Noah filled the kettle and put it on the stove.
“I saw you down there listening. Awfully brisk morning to be out in your skivvies.” His father’s union suit hung on him, and he had the afghan slung over his shoulders like a shawl. “Twenty-eight degrees according to the thermometer.” He pointed out the kitchen window.
“I’ll bet it’s five degrees colder once you get away from this house. You’re killing me with these fires.”
“I can’t feel it,” Olaf said, dropping back on the sofa. “I can’t get warm enough.”
“That why you slept on the couch last night?”
Olaf nodded, settling back under the quilts. “The bedroom gets so cold.”
Noah sat in the chair. “I’ll get back at that tree in the gulch today. We’ll restock this place with firewood yet. And I’m going to get that chain. I’ll leave as soon as I finish the coffee. You want to come with?”
“I’ll stay put. But you can take my truck again if you want. Knutson’s opens at seven. Better fill the gas can, too.”
“I will.”
Olaf laid his head down on the pillow and let out a long, quiet sigh. “I feel better today, out here on the sofa. Like I’m on vacation or something. A night at the Ritz.”
“If only we could call for room service,” Noah said, getting up. “I could use one of those breakfasts you were talking about last night.”
“They’ve got good cinnamon rolls at the Landing. Bring a few back with you.”
“I’ll do that. Don’t go anywhere.”
A smile turned up half of Olaf’s mouth.
AT THE HARDWARE store a half-dozen men, all as old as Olaf, milled about a deer stand that, according to a handwritten sign, had just arrived in stock. Each of the men had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand and wore a plaid or blaze-orange hunting vest. Noah walked to the back of the store and rang the service bell on the counter. One of the men in the group excused himself and hustled back to help Noah.
“ ’Morning. What can I do for you?”
“I need a length of chain.”
“Any particulars?”
“Is there such a thing as three-quarter-inch. . something? Polyurethane coated? I need twenty feet of it.”
“Let me show you what we’ve got,” he said, motioning with his long arm for Noah to follow.
A couple of aisles over several spools lined the shelf. “This what you have in mind?” the old man said. “It’s your standard high-test, shot peened, poly coated. What do you need it for anyway?” He put his nose up in the air and looked at Noah through the lenses of his reading glasses.
“I don’t know exactly. It’s not for me, but it looks like it’ll do.”
“If it doesn’t work, bring it right back and we’ll get you what does.” He hollered toward the back of the store, and a tall teenager with a baggy Gunflint football jersey hanging on him stepped from behind a door. “Cut me twenty feet of the three-quarter-inch poly, all right?”
“Sure thing, boss.” The kid hurried behind the counter for a chain cutter.
“He’s a good worker,” the old man said. “Hard to find up here.”
“Good help’s hard to find anywhere,” Noah said, meaning to sound conspiratorial.
“Of course, you’re a Torr. I’ve been trying to figure it out since you walked in. All you Torr fellas are twelve feet tall. But I must’ve known you when you were knee high to a grasshopper.” He cleared his throat. “Your grandpa bought everything he needed to build that place from my pop, one of our first big customers. He used to play poker with him right back there.” He gestured to an office behind the counter. “How’s your dad doing anyway? Haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He’s okay.”
“Tell the old codger Knut says hello. Tell him to come down and have coffee some morning.”
“I’ll do that.”
The kid brought the chain and set it on the counter. Knut put it in a paper bag and took eight dollars from Noah. “Remember,” he said, “if that doesn’t work for you, bring it back.”
“I appreciate it,” Noah said. “And I’ll tell the old man you say hello.” The bag seemed to weigh a hundred pounds.
At the Landing he filled the gas can and the truck before he went inside. The empty gravel parking lot and old-fashioned gas pumps finally made the place seem as remote as it was, and he imagined everything buried in snow. He pictured himself clamping his feet into a pair of cross-country skis and getting back to the cabin by way of fresh tracks in the spring corn. He imagined the labor, sweat, and reward. He could hear the fresh klister wax singing under the skis.
When the tank was full he went inside to pay and pick up the box of cinnamon rolls his father had requested. A bell chimed as he opened the door and walked into the deserted store. No cashier greeted him, only the smell of baking bread thick in the air. In the bakery case pastries as big as his feet lined the shelves. They looked better than anything he’d ever seen.
OLAF STOOD IN the middle of the yard wearing his ancient pea-coat, mukluks, wool cargo pants with pockets ballooning on either leg, and a pair of worn choppers. He held a thermos in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other. Noah parked the truck, took the bag with the chain from the seat beside him, and met Olaf in the yard.
“What are you going to wear when it starts getting cold?” he asked.
Olaf smiled. “Any luck with the chain?”