Part 4
“Not on this trip, sweetheart.” I set the drawing on top of my clothes and pulled her onto my knee. “But when I come back, I’m home for a whole month.”
She counted something on her fingers, lost her place, and started again. I held the calendar steady while she marked the day I expected to return. Before dawn, I kissed her forehead where she slept at her grandparents’ house and left the drawing in my truck where I could see it.
I drove north in February, through western Montana and into Canada, with a load that needed careful watching on the grades. A week later I was in Fairbanks. The assignment kept me moving between the city and supply points farther north, and I learned which stops had a working connection before I learned where to get a decent meal.
Sometimes Iris had plenty to tell me. Sometimes she wanted to finish what she was doing and handed the phone to Beth. I tried to be pleased that she was happy, then sat in the cab afterward with my thumb resting on the dark screen.
The country still got to me. On a clear night, I watched the northern lights move above a row of parked trucks while my breath froze against the collar of my jacket. For a few minutes I could understand the boy at the fence so well that I forgot how long I’d been gone.
By late April, on my final southbound haul toward Fairbanks, I was counting days again. Patches of dark ground had begun showing beside the Dalton, though the shaded places still held winter. Water ran beneath ice that looked solid until you came close enough to hear it.
I had passed a maintenance turnout with a pickup parked in it when I noticed movement below the road. An animal was trying to pull itself out of a break near the edge of a river channel. Each time its front feet caught, part of the rim broke away.
I brought the rig into a wide gravel pullout and set the brake. On the road channel, I called out my location and said there was an animal in trouble below the bank. An answer broke through the static, but I couldn’t make out the words.
From the cab, I thought it was a dog. I took my coat and went down the bank, looking for a collar as I approached.
Then another animal moved among the spruce on the opposite side. A third stood farther downstream, narrow-faced and still, its back level with the others’ shoulders. I stopped before I reached the ice.
The animal in the water was a wolf.
Her muzzle came up, dark with water, and dropped again. She wasn’t making the sounds I had expected. There was only her breath, the scrape of claws against ice, and the river pushing beneath her.
The adults along the bank watched me. One took several steps away when I moved, then stopped behind a tree. They had room to leave, and I was grateful for that; I couldn’t have gone closer if they had crowded me.
I looked back at the road. The truck was above me, engine running, Iris’s drawing clipped inside the windshield. The wolf tried again and failed, her front legs sliding into the hole.
I could have climbed back to the radio. By the time someone with proper equipment arrived, I didn’t think there would be an animal left to help.
I laid my coat on the snow above the broken edge and went out low. I remember being afraid now, although afterward people told the story as if I hadn’t been. Every little shift beneath my weight made me think about Iris waiting for the day she had marked.
The wolf’s eyes followed my hand. A crescent was missing from the outside of her left ear, and water had flattened the fur along her forehead. When I reached for her, she jerked away, then lacked the strength to do it a second time.
I caught the heavy fur behind her neck and pulled. Her front legs struck the rim, but her body stayed in the current. I tried to move backward, and the ice beneath one knee gave way.
Cold water went through my clothes before I understood where I had fallen. My chest hit the edge, forcing the air out of me; when I tried to breathe, my face dipped into the water. I came up coughing with one hand still caught in her wet coat.
For a moment I couldn’t pull or let go. The wolf’s foreleg moved against my arm, and I found room beneath her shoulder for my other hand. I dragged until her chest came over the broken rim, then kept moving while the ice cracked behind us.
We reached the sloping bank in a mess of loose snow and water. I fell backward, expecting her teeth, and covered my face with an arm. She lay beside me instead, breathing in short, harsh pulls.
It was only when she shifted that I saw how broad her belly was beneath the soaked fur. Pregnant. The thought arrived slowly, as if my mind had to come back down the bank to find us.
I had been holding one animal. There were others inside her.
She got her front feet beneath her, rested, then stood unsteadily. The other wolves had moved closer but stayed clear of me. I lowered my arm and watched her pick a route away from the broken edge.
At the first trees she stopped. The torn outline of her ear stood against the snow, and her head turned toward me. I couldn’t tell what she saw or remembered; I only knew I had never been so relieved to watch something walk away.
One by one, the others followed her out of sight. The sound of the river seemed louder after they were gone.
I tried to get my coat. It lay only a few feet uphill, still dry where I’d left it, but my first attempt to stand ended on my hands and knees. I stayed there, waiting for my legs to do what I asked.
The shivering was so hard it hurt my jaw. I could see the edge of the truck’s trailer above the bank, and I tried calling toward it, though there was nobody in the cab to hear me. My voice came out too thin to carry.
I crawled toward the coat and got one sleeve beneath my hand. For a while, that seemed like enough. The coat was there, the truck was there, and if I rested I could make the short climb.
I thought about calling Iris. I was supposed to ask her whether she’d finished the picture of her grandparents’ house. Then I realized I was lying on my side and had stopped trying to stand.
Above me, a pickup slowed. Its door closed with a familiar, heavy sound, and someone called down the slope.
I opened my mouth to answer. I couldn’t make my daughter’s name come out.
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇