So you’d live here?
We’d have to figure that out.
The boy lay there on the pillow, looking at him thoughtfully. What about my dad?
Your dad’s still your dad and he’ll always be your dad. I’d be what you’d call your stepdad.
OK, Jude said.
OK?
Yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do that.
He smiled and Jude smiled.
Don’t tell your mom, though. It’s supposed to be a surprise.
When are you gonna ask her?
I don’t know, he said. It needs to be special.
Are you coming to Fall Festival?
What’s that?
At my school. Fall Festival. We’re singing a song about Thanksgiving.
Oh yeah, your mom told me about that. Yeah, I’ll be there.
You can ask her then. At Fall Festival. That’ll be special.
He smiled. Good idea, he said. Maybe I’ll ask her when we get home after.
Yeah, Jude said. He giggled, pulling the blanket up around his mouth. It’s a secret, he said.
Yes, it is, Bill said. You in for a bear hug?
The boy nodded and Bill scooped him up in his arms and pulled him against his chest and the swell of his belly and squeezed him tight, roughing his beard against the child’s cheek. Again, Jude said. And once more. Good night, buddy. He brushed Jude’s hair from his forehead as the boy turned on his side, his eyes slipping closed for a brief moment and then opening again. Sleep well. Dream good dreams, Bill said.
The boy’s head nodded against the pillow and Bill rose quietly and stepped into the hall and returned to the kitchen table once more.
The Tibetan book was still there but Grace had extracted the National Geographic from the mail pile and she sat at the table peering down at an open page, the brown curls of her hair turning over her wrinkled forehead. He leaned against the wall by the corkboard with its barrage of notes and notices and calendars and scraps of paper and watched her.
There’s a bunch of wolves in here, she said. This guy here reminds me of our Zeke.
Yeah, he said. Poor guy.
We’ll find him someone, she said.
I hope so.
Maybe we need to be looking in Minnesota.
Fish and Game’s gonna make it a lot harder now than it would’ve been.
We need to figure that out too, she said.
Fast.
I’ll make some calls tomorrow. Maybe to the zoo in Boise.
I don’t know if it’s gonna matter. That new DCO seems pretty hell bent on closing us down.
It’s probably not as bad as you think.
I don’t know about that.
Don’t give up so easy, Grace said, smiling faintly.
I’m not.
You sure?
No.
He was standing behind her now and she reached up to stroke his beard. Before her on the table, the magazine was open to a series of small photographs boxed in gray, indeed some wolves among them. One chased a flock of ravens. Another looked askance at the photographer. Black spruce and jack pine. Heron and eagle and nuthatch. From a frostlike tuft of red and green lichen peered forth the empty socket of a deer skull. Sunset birds. Slick waterways snaking through black spindly branches. Places not unlike his own forest and yet so different. The foliage. The feel of it.
Grace’s finger moved to point to an image of a wolf standing by the snow-covered carcass of a deer. Pictures like that make me wish we could get him out, she said.
Crippled wolf wouldn’t live long out there, not with winter coming.
He still needs a pack.
I keep hoping that he’ll figure out we’re his pack.
I don’t think that’ll ever happen if he hasn’t figured it out by now.
Maybe we need to call in to Minnesota. But I don’t know how we’d get a wolf across state lines.
We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Grace said.
You’re always so dang positive about everything.
That’s my job, she said.
They had put the word out to the various agencies across the Rockies that they were looking for a female wolf, not for breeding but to give Zeke a partner so that he would not feel so alone. But Bill did not want to bring in another animal unless it could not be released into the wild and he knew a tame wolf, a pet, would likely be killed by the wild creature that Zeke continued to be. And so they waited for responses, hoping that some rescue they had never heard of would call them to say they had an animal too maimed to be released into the wild, an odd thing to wish for and yet there it was. But no rumor of injured wolves of any kind had come to them in the two years since they had first picked up Zeke from a rancher, the wolf’s paw ruined by the claw trap that had ensnared him.
The rancher might have shot the wolf — that had certainly been the intent — but instead he had called the sheriff who had then called the rescue, and Bill had driven out to the ranch and had seen the wolf for the first time, a creature of such beauty and dignity even in the moment of its greatest fear that Bill’s heart shattered to see it. The wolf had stood when he had approached, not growling or cowering but only standing there, the look in the wolf’s eyes one of intelligence and even understanding as he stared at the man who would likely kill it in the next instant, the evidence of such an intent held in his hands. But of course Bill did not kill the wolf. The expected bang of the bullet had instead been the short pop of the dart and the wolf had spun around quickly and then lay panting, its crushed paw dragging an orbit of blood against the white crust of the snow, the trap leaping and rattling at the end of its stake-driven chain.
Now what? the rancher had asked him.
Now we wait a bit for him to sleep and then you pull that trap off him.
He’s not gonna bite me, is he?
If he does it won’t be any worse than what you did to him.
The rancher shuffled his feet against the frozen gravel of the road. I should have just shot the goddamned thing.
Yeah? So why didn’t you?
I couldn’t. Don’t know why. They’ve been at the livestock. Scaring the shit out of my old lady too. But something about it … I just couldn’t.
They stood there, watching as the wolf began to whine and then, at last, to lie down in the snow.
Bill returned to the truck and retrieved the snout noose, although he did not think he would need to use it now, holding the steel pole over his shoulder and then handing it across to the rancher.
What’s this? the man said.
Tell you what, Bill said. You slip this over his nose and I’ll get the trap off.
He showed the rancher how to use it, the way in which the slipknot could be tightened at the end of the pole. Then he slung the dart gun over his shoulder and pulled his gloves over hands already aching from the cold.
The snow outside the bed of the road was deep and uneven and they moved those last twenty or so yards across it in slow, careful steps, the rancher’s breath puffing white clouds into the air. When he reached the animal, they both stood looking down at it. A magnificent creature, sleek and thin, its fur light gray and tipped with black points, mouth open and tongue lolling pink against the snow. An animal so wholly suited to the forest that seeing it prostrate on the frozen earth seemed impossible. What was he to do with it once he had it back at the rescue? Killing it was inconceivable but holding it in a cage not much better.
Christ, the rancher said. Just that single word.
Bill’s eyes had come to the paw, or what remained of it: a mess of purple tendons and raw red muscle and exposed bone. Had he come an hour later the wolf would have freed itself, the remains of the severed paw caught in the jaws of the trap while the animal disappeared into the dark forest, trailing blood from its stump. Bill knew such an animal would not survive long in the wild, not with the heavier snows of winter still coming. He would survive at the rescue but the paw was gone either way. There was no doubt about that fact at all.