Part 6
“Your plane,” I said. I showed Iris the two boarding passes and let her hold mine while we walked to the gate.
In Fairbanks we transferred to a little plane that made her grip my hand during takeoff. She loosened her fingers when the river appeared below us. By the time we landed near Alder Crossing, she was leaning across me to see a moose beyond the runway fence.
Claire waited beside the airstrip. She crouched in the gravel instead of reaching past Iris to hug me, and brought a small carved wooden wolf from her coat pocket.
“I thought you might like this.”
Iris turned it over, examining the paws. “Did Dad save one like him?”
“A female,” Claire said. “But yes, one like that.”
Iris put the wolf beside the stuffed moose in her arms. Within minutes she was telling Claire that I had almost dropped a suitcase and asking whether moose ever stood in the road.
We rented a cabin near the community building. It had two upstairs bedrooms, a kitchen opening into the main room, and a shallow woodshed roof beneath the back bedroom window. Claire helped us find shelves for Erin’s books, then asked Iris where she wanted the photograph of her mother.
I found work with a maintenance contractor. I already understood heavy engines, but operating a bulldozer took instruction and practice; for weeks, a man with thirty years on the machines corrected things I hadn’t known I was doing wrong. At quitting time, I washed my hands and went home.
Iris began leaving her drawings on my chair because she knew I would sit in it that evening. We arranged her schooling through the regional program, made regular calls to Ray and Beth from the community building, and learned to keep spare supplies. Claire still had night shifts, and I learned which dinners could survive being reheated late.
Before Claire brought over the last of her boxes, she spread her shift calendar on the kitchen table. She circled the mornings when she would need to sleep and asked me to keep those hours quiet. Then she put a square around a Saturday she had off.
“I’d like to take you both to the river that day,” she said. “No errands on the way. No fixing anything for anybody.”
Iris asked whether she could paint rocks. Claire considered this, then said she had been hoping someone would. I wrote PICNIC inside the square, and Claire added my name beside the food list.
She and Iris picked blueberries together that summer. Claire listened to elaborate explanations about imaginary animals, and Iris learned to leave her alone for a little while after a difficult shift. When Claire wanted company, she asked for it; when she needed sleep, I took Iris out with me and left a note saying when we’d be back.
One evening, after Iris was asleep, Claire sat beside me on the porch steps. Her fingers touched the back of my hand. I turned mine over and held hers, staying there after the air cooled and neither of us had anything more to say.
The cabin backed onto an old game trail. We saw tracks after rain, and sometimes heard wolves beyond the woodshed at night; I kept the trash secured and made sure Iris understood that the carved wolf belonged in her hands and the real ones didn’t.
Late one evening I stepped out for firewood and saw five pups near the trees. For a moment they were almost in a row, until one climbed over another and spoiled it. Behind them stood the female with the crescent missing from her left ear.
I stayed on the porch. She watched me with her head level, and I counted the pups again because I couldn’t help it. Five of them, solid on their feet where there might have been none.
“You’re welcome,” I said quietly.
She turned, and they followed her into the brush. I never put food out or tried to call them back. But the adult pack continued using the trail, sometimes close enough that I waited inside before fetching wood.
Several weeks later, a shout outside woke me. A wolf gave a short, harsh bark near the porch, followed by somebody swearing. I had just put my feet on the floor when the front door broke inward.
I reached the bottom of the stairs as five men came into the main room. One had a knife held low beside his leg; another was looking back through the wrecked doorway. Claire and Iris were on the landing behind me.
“Food. Coats. Money,” the man with the knife said. “Get it, and nobody gets hurt.”
He looked past my shoulder as he said the last part. I moved until the narrow foot of the stairs was directly behind me.
“All right.” I raised my hands. “Claire, the cash box. Under our bed. Take Iris and bring it down.”
We had no cash box. Claire looked at me for half a second before pulling Iris toward the bedroom.
“They’ll call somebody,” the man said.
“There’s no cell service here.” That was true. The work radio was downstairs, on a shelf beyond the kitchen table, and I couldn’t reach it without leaving the stairs. “You’ll hear if they open the window.”
He jerked his head, allowing them to go. Behind me, the bedroom door closed and something heavy scraped across the floor.
The man nearest the kitchen took a step toward the radio. I reached for the knife on the cutting board before he could get between me and it, then backed into the stair opening. I didn’t think I could win. I thought about the woodshed roof beneath the bedroom window and how long Claire would need to get Iris onto it.
One of the men grabbed my sleeve. I pulled away and felt a cut open along my forearm, hot beneath the flannel. Another struck my shoulder, driving me into the newel post; my knife slipped from my hand and landed beside the stairs.
I shouted for Claire to stay back. A man at the doorway shouted too, but he was looking outside, not at me.
The female wolf stood beyond the broken threshold. I saw the gap in her ear before I understood what was happening. The man nearest her swung a bundle at her face, then kicked as she came forward.
She sprang at his raised arm. He stumbled backward into the room, and the other adult wolves surged through the opening behind her.
The table went over with a crash. The man holding my sleeve let go and spun into another wolf’s path; the leader swung his knife and fell when the man behind him struck his legs. His knife clattered across the floor. I pressed myself against the stairs while fur and furniture hid most of the room.
There were screams, snarls, the scrape of boots trying to find purchase. One man tried to rise and was knocked against the fallen table. Another curled beneath his coat, holding his arms over his head.
I couldn’t count seconds. I could count the men when the movement finally slowed: all five were down, wounded or scrambling to cover themselves. Nobody was trying to reach the stairs.
The wolves began backing toward the open door. The female remained between the room and the threshold until the others were outside. She wasn’t calm, and I didn’t move toward her.
Then her head turned, and for a moment she looked directly at me. My bleeding hand was pressed against my shirt, the other still braced on the stair rail.
“Thank you,” I said. “They’re upstairs. You kept them safe.”
She stepped backward over the splintered doorframe and was gone. Above me, Iris called my name, but none of the five men on the floor moved to stop me answering.
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