Part 2
Jack took the knife away and slid his free hand under the pup instead. Its body fitted against his palm, smaller than the weight of the wet net had suggested. He lifted just enough to take the strain off its throat.
The wire ticked against a nail. His arm locked, and for a moment he could hear Specialist Sean Larkin calling him from a place no longer on any map Jack kept. Sean had been twenty-two. Jack remembered the freckles more clearly than the face in the Army photograph.
Ash pushed her muzzle into the opening beside his wrist. Her breath touched his skin, and the pup gave a faint twitch against his hand. He pressed his chest into the deck until he could feel its solid edge beneath him.
“I’m here,” he said, mostly to steady his breathing.
He worked through the frozen mesh without pulling on the animal. His bad knee slipped once, striking the frame hard enough to make him bite the inside of his cheek. Ash stayed beside his arm while he loosened the last binding strand.
His wife had held an injured gull in this same awkward way years earlier, one hand cupped around its body while he found a box. He had warned her it would fly away as soon as it could. She had looked up from the bird and asked whether he expected a thank-you note.
He could hear the amusement in her voice now, unexpectedly clear. Then the net yielded, and the pup came into his hand.
He wrapped it inside his coat against his sweater. A piece of the net and its attached snare came free with him; he pushed the snagged bundle into his bag. Ash rose, waited while he got his feet underneath him, and followed him back up the trail.
The three pups were still together on the bedding when he got inside. Jack set the fourth beside them, and the mother curved around all four so quickly he barely got his hands away.
Jack emptied his bag onto a sheet of newspaper. A metal tag swung from the snare ring, and he angled the lamp over it. Under the thawing ice were the words NORTH SHORE COOPERATIVE.
Grant Pike owned the cooperative. His fuel kept the school bus running through winter, and his men had replaced half the rotten boards on the public dock. Jack had fixed engines for him and taken payment in the same office where the youth baseball photograph hung above the desk.
Headlights crossed the window while he was looking at the tag. Evelyn came through the door carrying her bag, snow packed around the tops of her boots. She stopped to take in the mother and the four pups before setting anything down.
“That one was caught under the station,” he said.
Evelyn looked at his wet coat, his shaking hands, and the wolf’s shoulder. “Sit down where she can see you.”
She kept her movements small. When Ash stiffened, she waited; when the wolf shifted toward her pups, Evelyn used the opening to observe what she could. The fourth pup, recognizable now by a dark patch behind its ear, remained limp beneath his mother’s muzzle.
Evelyn had a heat pack wrapped in cloth, a thermometer, and the patience to stop when Jack wanted her to hurry. She told him what she needed held and where to put it. He concentrated on being useful without reaching for anything she had not asked for.
By the time she could examine the mother more closely, dawn was paling the snow outside. Ash tolerated brief contact while Jack sat near her head, but a low growl ended one attempt and Evelyn withdrew. Later, with the pups settled, she managed to clean and dress the shoulder.
“There’s an older rubbed area under her neck,” she said. “Something held her there. And this small puncture could be from an injection. I can’t tell you what, or when.”
Evelyn photographed the tag where it lay. “Leave everything together. I’ve spoken to the duty officer. Daniel Reed is coming, and I’ve been asked to keep them stable here until they can approve a safe move.”
Jack started to answer, but a knock came from the porch. He opened the door to Mae Bell, who held a sack of blankets against her hip.
“Evelyn called,” she said. “These are washed. Paul helped me fetch them before he went to check the chapel generator.”
She went past him and put the sack near the stove. Father Paul had been a Navy electrician; if the power failed, the chapel would have its lights. At sixty-four she still moved with the brisk economy he remembered from the lighthouse workshops, though she lowered herself carefully when Evelyn asked for a folded cloth. She did not look at him again.
Mae’s husband, Nathan, had maintained the lighthouse before automation. He had died during a storm eight years earlier; they had found him below the southern rocks two days afterward. A failed radio, an unanswered call, and Jack away from his post had hardened into a version of that night the town could repeat in three sentences.
He had tried explaining at first. Later he had let the explanations go, unable to get past the fact that Nathan was dead and he was still making breakfast.
The radio under the shelf crackled. Mae pulled a blanket straight with both hands, drawing its edge so tight that Jack thought the old seam might tear.
“Nathan would have had that on tape by now,” she said to Evelyn. “Recorded every fault. Wrote them down, too.”
Jack remembered the little machine on Nathan’s bench, its buttons stained with grease. He turned the volume down without meeting Mae’s eyes.
Ash lifted the weakest pup before Evelyn could reach him. She came slowly toward Jack, favoring the injured shoulder, and lowered the small body beside his bent knee. He could see her ribs moving under the wet fur.
He looked at Evelyn. She put the warm cloth into his hands and nodded toward the pup.
Jack gathered him up. He had held his wife on her last night in the hospital with the same fear of letting a movement become an ending. Now there was a small pulse against his fingers, and Evelyn was telling him something practical he could still do.
“Like that. Let me see his face.”
Ash went back to the other three. Her eyes closed briefly, opened, then closed again. Mae reached past Jack to move his untouched tea somewhere he would not knock it over.
Trooper Daniel Reed arrived carrying snow in the folds of his coat. He had stopped at the weather station first, following the location Evelyn gave him, and photographed the damaged deck and fresh snowmachine tracks near the road. He took charge of the wire, recording where Jack had found it.
“Pike called in a complaint,” he said. “Says a wolf has been tearing up gear and threatening his workers.”
“Did anyone get hurt?” Evelyn asked.
“He hasn’t given me a name.”
A motor sounded below the window, then cut out beyond the bend. Ash’s head came up. Reed switched off his flashlight and listened until the engine started again and moved away.
“Someone stopped there while I was coming up,” Evelyn said quietly.
Reed put the evidence bag into his case. “If Pike turns up, let me speak to him.”
Jack was still holding the pup when a vehicle came up the drive. This time its lights crossed the whole room, and a man knocked as though he had an appointment.
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