The Wolves of Winter

Jeryl lowered the rifle. “Got to let him go. You think he wants to be a grizzly?” He asked the question like it was the most natural thing in the world. No, of course he didn’t want to be a grizzly, who would?

Jeryl aimed again, but either we spooked the bear or he found something interesting on the other side of the hill because he bounded out of sight. Jeryl lowered his rifle and stepped in the direction of the bear. “Gotta go after him.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Ken said. “We—”

“Didn’t say we,” Jeryl said. “I gotta go after him. Head on back. I’ll be home for dinner.”

Then he started down the hill after that giant John-Henry grizzly. Ken yelled after him, saying that he was being stupid and was going to get himself killed. It’s not like we didn’t think Jeryl could hunt and kill the bear, but the whole thing felt weird. And wrong. Either way, Jeryl continued like he was in a trance, not turning or acknowledging Ken in the least.

We did see Jeryl that evening for dinner. He came back with a distant look on his face. A mixture of joy and grief—I can’t really explain it. But the John-Henry bear had eluded him.

“He’ll be back,” Jeryl said. “Or I’ll find him. I owe him that much.”

Since then, Jeryl’s been on the lookout for that bear. And we all pretty much ignore it.

“No, you won’t talk to him; we’re going to run him off our property and that’s that.” Mom threw another log on the fire. Ashes scattered like dust and a coal jumped out, landing on our very burnable floor. Jeryl stomped it out with his boot, his gun relaxed in the crook of his arm. Mom had turned into a cornered animal the moment she saw my face. She was all black stares and narrow eyes. Green eyes, like mine. Red hair, like mine. She was taller than me, but everyone said I looked like her. And although we didn’t always agree, we agreed on this. About Conrad. Talking wasn’t good enough.

“Nobody’s running anybody anywhere,” Jeryl said, calm as ever.

“Oh, so you’re fine with this?” She pointed to my face. “We just let him get away with it?”

“Didn’t say that. Said I’ll talk to him.”

“The only talking he’ll listen to is at the end of your gun.”

“Maybe, but I’m gonna try my way first,” Jeryl said.

She glared. She had a good glare too. It had sharpened over the years. When Dad was around, before the flu, it was a dull pencil. Now, through hardship and a shitload of cold air, it was a fine needle. Not that it did anything to old Jeryl. He stared right back at her. Me in the middle. I felt anger pooling in the pit of my stomach. This was exactly what I didn’t want, them fighting over me like I was a child.

“Well, when are you going?” Mom asked.

Jeryl nodded as if that was permission to leave and headed toward the door.

“I’m coming too,” I said, stepping toward Jeryl.

“No,” both Jeryl and Mom said at the same time.

“It’s my problem, I’m going to fix it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Mom said.

“I agree,” said Jeryl, lowering his thick gray eyebrows at me. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“Maybe it needs to be made worse.”

“Lynn,” he said in his most serious tone. “You trust me?” I hated it when he said that. He’d said it often enough in the past. You trust me? Then we leave Alaska. You trust me? Then we settle here. You trust me? Then we grow potatoes and carrots. He hadn’t steered us wrong yet. We were alive, after all.

I took a long breath, sucking in smoke and wood and cold, then sat down in a chair next to the dining room table. The chair wobbled with my weight. I looked at Mom. She was chewing the inside of her lip like her teeth were trying to gnaw their way out.

Jeryl swung the heavy wooden door open, but it caught on the floorboards on the backswing as he left. It never closed right.

“You shouldn’t have gone to his house. You should have come straight back here and you know it,” Mom said.

“I should have stabbed Conrad in the face.”

Mom walked toward the door. Metallic light spilled in through the slit and onto Mom’s skin, making her look like the Tin Man. She watched outside for a second. “If it was me going, I’d come back with his head,” she said.

“If it was me, I’d come back with his balls.”

“Gwendolynn.”

I shrugged.

She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled as hard as she could. It slammed shut.

3 (#ulink_3e9d21ae-312d-5b4e-80cd-dd4e2b1425c4)

If life in Alaska was a dream, life in Chicago was a dream within a dream. Were there ever really buildings that tall? That many people crammed onto a street? That many cars driving late into the night? Sounds like an ugly fairy tale. We lived there till I was twelve, before we moved to Alaska, before the bomb hit New York, before the fires started, before the TVs went out, the planes stopped flying, and before everything south of the border felt like a war zone. Dad worked as a biologist for the University of Chicago. I think he did some teaching, mostly research. Chicago was where I watched the attack, the beginning of it all.

Ken and I were getting ready for school. I was eating a bowl of Golden Grahams when Dad, calling from the living room, said, “Mary, get in here.” We could tell from the sound of his voice that something was wrong, so we followed Mom in, my mouth still full of half-chewed cereal. The first thing I remember seeing was fire on the TV. Giant flames pumping black smoke. It was the Pentagon, Dad said. At first everyone thought that a bomb had gone off in the building. Later they learned that somehow a group of hackers had managed to take control of one of our drones. That’s when everything really started.

We moved shortly after that. But not because of the wars. Mom and Dad would never admit to it, but something bad had gone down at his work. I don’t know what, or whether it was related to the war. But from the way he and Mom avoided talking about it, and the looks they gave each other when I asked, I knew there was more to the story. So we had to move. I didn’t care much about the truth, or maybe I didn’t really want to know. Didn’t want my dad to have done something wrong. So I left it.

I remember the drive from Chicago. We left in a hurry. Like Dad was anxious to be out of there. I was crying because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my friends. “Don’t be a little cry-baby,” Ken said. The trip was a blur of hotels, passing mountains, small towns, and loud semitrucks. It felt like we were on the road for months. And along the way, news of the war followed us. On the radio, on TVs in run-down diners. The US was tightening the noose on terror. Bombs were being dropped. Lots of them. But it was still the early stages, before things got really bad. Before the flu.

When we crossed the border, the guard asked where we were going.

“Vancouver,” Dad said.

“What for?”

“Visiting family.”

“How long will you be in Vancouver?”

“A couple of weeks.”

It was the first time I’d heard Dad lie.

I sat on the stump in front of our cabin and repaired my wire trap, winding the broken ends together over and over again. It wouldn’t hold as well—a deer could probably pull it apart—but still, it was better than throwing the wire away. I’d have to set it lower to the ground, go for smaller game like a fox or a hare or a marten. All because Anthony Conrad was a selfish ass. My face throbbed, the wind stung my cheek, and I could still feel his weight pressing against my body. His hands on me. His fingers. I felt sick. If I’d told Jeryl about it, maybe he would have agreed to kill Conrad. But that would have required actually telling Jeryl—saying the words out loud. I didn’t think I could. My hands started to shake. I stuffed the wire into my coat pocket and looked south. Coming down the path I’d made in the snow was my brother, Ken, carrying what looked like a hare. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and his hood was zipped tight over his neck. When we first moved out here, the sight of him with that rifle made me angry and jealous at once. Jeryl wouldn’t let me shoot one. Our ammo was too precious, and I was too young and too lacking in the penis department. But I had my bow and I was a good shot. Ken would never admit it, but I was the best, better than him, better than Ramsey—though that’s not a surprise—and better than Jeryl. A woman’s weapon, Ken told me once. I didn’t care. I brought in just as much game as he did.

When he approached, he gave me a hard look. “The hell happened to you?”

Ken was never one for subtlety.

“Conrad.” No point in lying; he’d hear the truth soon enough.

“What’d you say to him?”