Part 3
Reed opened the door and stepped aside just far enough for Grant Pike to see him. Pike’s greeting paused halfway out. He recovered with a glance toward the blankets and a concerned lowering of his voice.
“You should have called me, Jack. My crew has a holding pen. We could have saved everybody a night on the floor.”
Jack handed the pup to Evelyn before he stood. Pike wore the expensive waterproof coat he used for taking visitors out on the boats, and his boots left gray slush on the entry mat. He stayed at the threshold when Reed put a hand against the frame.
“Tell me about the workers who were threatened,” Reed said.
“Ask anyone down at the sheds. They heard it.”
“I need someone who saw it.”
Pike looked past him. “A wolf is sitting beside your stove. Do we really have to argue about whether that’s a problem?”
Evelyn straightened. “It is a problem. That’s why the department knows where she is, and why we’re arranging care.”
“Then we’re all trying to do the same thing.” Pike spread his hands, almost smiling. “I’ve got equipment. You’ve got a sick animal in a house with no fence.”
Jack knew how easily the room could turn against him. Pike could describe the open door, his old rifle, a wild mother and four pups on the floor, and every word would be true. The shoulder wound would require a longer explanation. So would the tag now sealed in Reed’s case.
Ash stood over her litter. Pike took out his phone, and Evelyn moved between the lens and the pups.
“Put it away,” she said. “You’re upsetting her.”
“Documentation.”
“You can give your statement outside,” Reed told him.
Pike’s eyes stopped on the case. “What exactly are you documenting, Daniel?”
Reed asked who had used the cooperative’s snowmachines near the weather station. Pike said he could hardly keep track of every employee during a storm. Then he looked at Jack and said, mildly, that a man with Jack’s history ought to think carefully before taking responsibility for another emergency.
Jack’s fingers curled against his thigh. He could feel the distance from his hand to the front of Pike’s coat, short enough to close before Reed moved. Across the room Ash turned her head at the change in his breathing.
He opened his hand.
“Dr. Shaw is treating them,” he said. “Reed is handling your complaint. You can leave us to it.”
Pike waited for more. When nothing came, he put his phone away and adjusted the collar of his coat. Reed went onto the porch with him, and their voices became indistinct through the door.
Mae picked up the cup Jack had left on the floor. “He never knocks at the chapel,” she said. “Only comes through when there’s somebody to take a picture.”
Evelyn made a brief sound that might have been a laugh. Then the weakest pup shifted against her hand, and her attention returned to him entirely.
The vehicle left. Reed stayed long enough to send the first photographs and arrange another patrol when the roads allowed it, then went back to the station to finish recording the tracks before the snow covered them. Jack held the lamp while Evelyn examined the wolf again. Each time Ash stiffened, they gave her room.
By afternoon the house smelled of drying wool and the reheated soup Mae had brought from town. She set a bowl beside Jack without asking whether he wanted it. When Evelyn told her there was time to go home and change her wet socks, Mae took the empty blanket sack and left.
At the chapel, Mae unlocked the side door and stood in the cold vestibule until her eyes adjusted. Services happened there on holidays and the occasional Sunday Father Paul could come; most other days she kept it closed. Nathan’s stove still occupied its corner, the pipe fitted through the wall with the exactness that had once irritated her when supper was waiting.
Pike’s remark about Jack’s history had followed her down the hill. She knew how often she had used the same words. Yet all morning she had watched Jack get up on his bad knee whenever Evelyn needed something, then sit back down with the pup that might not live.
She went to the candle cupboard. The box beneath it contained Nathan’s maintenance notebooks and tapes, packed there after his death. For years she had dusted the lid without opening it; she had thought she knew what had happened, and could not bear the rest of what was inside. Now she lowered the box onto her lap.
Today she took out the notebook with the water stain. She knew which date to look for, though it took two attempts to turn the thin pages without tearing them. Near the bottom, Nathan had written that the cooperative’s boat had gone out without notifying the shore station. Below that were notes about the main radio failing and Jack going on foot to the backup antenna.
The final line was squeezed into the margin: Jack’s outside trying to bring us back. Don’t put this on him.
Mae read it again with her finger resting under the words. She had spent eight years picturing Jack indoors, listening to a call he failed to answer. The picture had acquired details she could no longer remember anyone telling her.
Father Paul found her on the low bench when he came back to check the storm shutters. He set down his tools, and Mae handed him the notebook without trusting herself to explain.
He read, then looked toward the box. “He used to record the radio when it was giving him trouble. Is the player here?”
“In the cupboard. It hasn’t worked in years.”
“I’ll look at it.”
Mae wrapped the notebook in her scarf. Evelyn was waiting for the dry blankets she had promised to bring, and there was a wolf pup whose breathing still needed watching. She left Father Paul with the machine open on the bench and went back up the hill.
At the cottage, Jack was trying to eat his cold soup when Ash rose. She tugged at the loose edge of her dressing, went to the door, and stood with her nose at the seam. When he opened it a few inches, she slipped through before he could move the screen into place.
Evelyn came to his side. The mother was already below the porch, heading toward the station, while the four pups shifted on their bedding behind them.
“I’ll stay with them,” Evelyn said. “Call Reed.”
Mae had just reached the gate. She looked down at the departing wolf, then up at Jack, and tightened her grip on the blanket sack.
“Go,” she told him. “We’re here.”
He called Reed, who was still on the station road. Then he took his flashlight and followed the tracks Ash was leaving in the new snow.
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