The Wolves of Winter

“Bye bye, Gwendolynn,” he said as I walked away.

“Fuck you, Conrad.”

2 (#ulink_85a4697f-c572-5760-ad6f-06851a6ab65d)

I’ve always hated my name. Gwendolynn. It’s too long and sounds stupid. It means something about the moon. Or maybe it just means moon. I can’t remember. And I hate Gwen too. Sounds like it’s from the Stone Age. So I go by Lynn. Only my mom calls me Gwendolynn, or my brother, Ken, when he’s being an ass, which is fairly often. Dad always called me Lynn because he knew I liked it. Whenever I complained about my name, he’d quote Walt Whitman. “I exist as I am, that is enough.” He loved Walt Whitman. Used to go to the river and read Leaves of Grass. He gave me a book of Walt Whitman’s collected poems, and I still have it. I read it often. I can’t say I really appreciate or understand it. Sounds like the rantings of a guy who may or may not think he’s a tree. But something about his poems is comforting. Probably because they remind me of Dad.

Our settlement was four buildings strung together in a narrow valley surrounded by hills. To the west rose a giant limestone ridge, mostly covered in snow now, but in the warm season, it was quite a thing to see. Beyond that were the white-capped Ogilvie Mountains, jutting up like the backs of giant beasts. To the east, over a spruce-dotted hill, was the Blackstone River—shallow and mostly frozen over this time of year. Mom and I lived in the biggest building, a log cabin. It was the first place we built, where we all stayed in the beginning. Me; Uncle Jeryl; Mom; my brother, Ken; and Ramsey—the son of Jeryl’s best friend, who was taken by the flu back in Alaska.

Thank God Jeryl was good with his hands. He and Dad built a cabin down the river a few miles out from our old home in Eagle. We went there in the summers until the powers that be came and tore it down because we didn’t own the land or have a license to build. I still have fond memories of that cabin. Our Yukon cabin was nothing like that one. It was merely functional, and then just barely. In the spring, the wind sluiced through it, but in the winter, when the daylight shriveled to nothing, when it got too cold, we packed the crevices with snow for insulation. When a good fire was burning, it didn’t take long to heat the small space.

Eventually, Jeryl and Ramsey built a log cabin next to ours. Smaller than ours, but when you stepped inside, it looked more or less the same. Same wooden walls, a fireplace, a single bedroom, and a loft overhead with another cot. Then, after the first two years, Ken decided to move out. He built an even smaller place. Yup. You guessed it. A log cabin. Four walls, fireplace, cot, and, of course, the poster. The stupid poster of two girls in bikinis next to a race car. They had huge, fake boobs and flat stomachs. Ken, at eighteen, had decided that the poster was worth dragging across the border into the Yukon. Mom said no of course, but he snuck it in his jacket. The corners of it were curved, and the whole thing was wrinkled and worn. I hated that poster. It was a reminder of the worst parts of the old world.

The fourth building was the animal shed, which doubled as an equipment shed and storage for firewood. We had two goats named Hector and Helen, and one musk ox named Stankbutt—everyone else called him Jebediah, but Stankbutt fit for obvious reasons. Hector and Helen were good for milk, cheese, and warning us with their incessant wails when wolves were about. They were also good for making kids that would one day replace them. Stankbutt, on the other hand, was good for nothing. He was old too. While the goats were only two when we left Alaska, he was five. And after seven years of freezing temperatures and crap food, he couldn’t have much more left in him. Both Jeryl and Ramsey had musk ox fur coats that they swore by, but other than that, the fat, hairy ox was more or less useless. Jeryl offered to make us coats of our own, but Mom had brought to the Yukon so many leggings, wool sweaters, and thick down jackets that we never took him up on his offer. One extra-lean winter was all it was going to take and good-bye, Stankbutt. You’ll taste delicious.

We grew crops behind the storage shed. There wasn’t much to our little family farm. Just a flat bit of land where we dug up the earth and planted carrots and potatoes. Like everything else, it was covered in snow now, but come spring, we’d tend to the softening ground. But that was spring. That was a long ways away. Not to mention the fact that last year’s spring was the shortest we’d had yet. Maybe, eventually, there wouldn’t be a spring left for potatoes to grow. But that wasn’t worth thinking about quite yet.

As I approached our little town-camp-settlement, I tried to get my story straight. I’d considered not telling my uncle Jeryl about what happened with Conrad. But what was I going to say about my puffy cheek, my swollen eye? Admitting that Conrad had gotten the best of me, that he’d held me down in the snow and done what he’d done, made me look weak. But saying that I tripped and fell made me look like an idiot. No, I had to come clean. I honestly didn’t know what Jeryl would do, though. Kill him? Talk to him? Nothing? No, not nothing. Ken would do nothing. Suck it up, he’d say, being the compassionate, caring older brother that he was.

The snow on the tops of our cabins had piled up. Maybe a foot. Jeryl would have to get the ladder soon and give them a good dusting. Piled snow can break wooden roofs over time. Funny thing about snow. You pick it up in your gloved hand and it feels like a handful of flour, easily blown away in the wind, but pile it on, let it sit for a while, and it’ll bend the strongest wood. Snow can save you and sustain you, crush you and kill you. Snow is a fickle bastard.

Like always, Jeryl saw me coming. Don’t know if he looked for me, heard me, or had some sort of sixth sense, but whenever I returned from hunting or checking the traps, if he wasn’t with me or out hunting himself, he’d step out of his cabin and watch me come in, help me bring in the kill, or just ask me about the hunt.

When I slushed my way through the snow toward him, he had a scowl on his face. Even his mustache seemed to frown. Jeryl—unlike the rest of the males in our little settlement, who may, for all we knew, have been the last men on earth—shaved his chin baby smooth. But he left his mustache long and well groomed. Of the limited supplies we were allowed to bring with us from Alaska, Jeryl had deemed his razor a nonnegotiable necessity. He used the fats from our kills—deer, elk, moose, rabbit, fox—to shave with. The habit gave him a ganky smell, but you got used to it. It became part of who he was.

Jeryl’s black coat stood out against the shining silver snow. He studied my swollen face. “Let’s put some meat on that.”

I didn’t say anything, just followed him out back. As we passed my mom’s place—which was as much my place, but I still considered it hers—I kept glancing at the door, waiting for it to burst open. I could imagine her look of horror when she saw my face. I was twenty-three, but Mom was still Mom and, in a lot of ways, still treated me like a child. There’s a reason kids are supposed to leave their parents. Maybe it was time I built my own cabin. Or, better yet, ventured out on my own into the frozen white world.

“Best stay away from her for now,” Jeryl said as if he’d read my thoughts.

We knocked our boots on his front door to get the snow off. I left the sled outside and set my bow down next to the door. We stepped into his cabin. Jeryl went to his strongbox of frozen meat and returned with a big slab of elk—at least, I think it was the elk he’d gotten a week back—and slapped it against my face.

“Ow,” I said, more annoyed than hurt.

“Keep it pressed tight.”

“Where’s Ramsey?”

“Fishing.”

Jeryl reached for his rifle—a Marlin lever action that he was never too far away from—and set it on his table. Then he grabbed his cleaning kit. Whenever he was troubled or needed to have a serious conversation, Jeryl cleaned his gun.

“So?” he said. Which meant Tell me what happened.

“Conrad stole my kill. Trapped a buck down in the ravine and he snipped my wire.”

Jeryl took the small bristled brush and stabbed it into his rifle. The smell of the cleaning fluid—I had no idea how he still had some left; maybe he made his own—blended with the scent of old spruce beams, filling the cabin with a heady, heavy aroma.

“And?”

“And? What do you mean and? Isn’t that enough? He’s a thieving bastard.”

He eyed me. Both he and his mustache disapproving. “And what happened next?”

“I told him the animal was mine, tried to make him give it back.”

“And he didn’t.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway.

“And he didn’t.”

The meat was freezing my entire face and melding into my cheek. I pulled it off. It was heavy in my hands. Solid protein and fat. If it thawed, we’d have to eat it that night.

Jeryl looked up. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Talk to him? We gotta kill him! He’s been nothing but trouble since he moved in. First he steals my kill, next he’ll steal our meat right out from under us. Who knows, maybe he’ll kill us in our sleep. He’s gotta go.” I didn’t like raising my voice to Jeryl. Maybe because he always seemed so calm, or maybe because, for better or worse, he tried his best to fill in for my dad. He failed, but at least he tried.

Jeryl turned his gun over, examining his work. “You know how many people are left in this world?”

The chamber clicked shut. A sad wind rattled through the cabin.

“No,” I said.

He nodded. “Me neither,” he said, as if that proved his point.

Uncle Jeryl was the least superstitious man in the world. Sure, he believed in God, but in the most normal way possible. Went to church on Sunday—back when there was a church to go to—prayed before each meal, and did his best to do things right.

He never went in for luck, energy, speaking in tongues, or spiritual warfare. He called that “hippie stuff.” He had his gun, his Bible, and his razor, and he was happy. His best friend in the whole world was Ramsey’s dad, John-Henry. They’d both worked construction, had been friends since they were kids, and had done nearly everything together. Hunting, fishing, chess, school.

When John-Henry died in the flu epidemic, Jeryl took Ramsey in, no questions asked. He was John-Henry’s son, nothing more to say. Jeryl never showed any signs of grief. He just moved on with life. Things needed to be done.

Somewhere around the fourth spring out in the Yukon, he, Ken, and I spotted a grizzly just west of Conrad’s place. It had this strange silver marking on its back and was the biggest bear I’d ever seen. Were grizzlies supposed to be that freaking huge? Anyway, Jeryl caught us completely off guard when he lowered his gun, a strange look coming over his face. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s John-Henry.”

Ken and I looked at Jeryl, wondering if he was making a joke. He didn’t tend to make jokes.

“What do you mean?” Ken asked.

“I mean exactly what I said. That’s John-Henry right there.” He smiled, which was incredibly rare, and shook his head. “Old rascal.”

We looked from the bear, who was digging something up in the snow, to Jeryl, who was now eyeing the bear through the scope on his rifle.

“Jeryl,” Ken said. “You don’t mean that the bear there is John-Henry, do you? John-Henry, your friend? The one who’s been dead for years?”

“I know he’s dead, son. You think I don’t? I also know John-Henry when I see him, and I tell you what: that bear is John-Henry.”

Jeryl took aim.

“Wait,” I said. “If that’s John-Henry, why’re you going to kill him?” I wasn’t really concerned for the bear or John-Henry. I was mostly confused and a little bit scared that our uncle had lost it.