Part 8
Owen knelt without moving his foot. He covered his hand with the cloth and lifted the pup, feeling warmth through the whole little body now. After placing him beside his siblings, he left his hand still until Flint had inspected them.
The heated transport vehicle took most of the morning to reach the field station. Caleb drove ahead. Laura monitored the family in the secure space arranged for them, while Owen stayed in the seat the crew had assigned him.
Every time the vehicle slowed, he wanted to check beneath the covering. Instead he watched Laura’s hands and waited for her to need him.
At the station he carried the familiar bedding into the quiet treatment area. Laura spoke with the staff taking over, answering questions and reviewing the smallest pup’s progress. Ruth and Dennis had followed in another vehicle and waited outside.
When there was no task left for Owen, he returned to the parking area with the folded cloth under his arm.
The weeks of recovery lasted longer than he had expected. Flint’s shoulder needed time. The dark-marked pup tired before the others, and the team wanted all four strong enough to stay with her.
Laura passed along the reports. At first Owen asked whether he could visit. Then he stopped; the crew was reducing human contact, and he understood why.
He still looked toward the bare place beside his stove when he came in at night.
By release day the road had dried in patches, with old snow lingering only where trees kept the sun off it. Owen traveled with Laura and Caleb to the forest edge. Ruth had Walter’s notebook in her bag, though she left it there. Dennis stood beside her near the vehicles.
Flint came out first. The fur on her shoulder had grown unevenly around the healed wound. She put her weight on that leg without hesitation, tested the air, then turned toward the sounds from the pups’ carriers.
Owen took a step and stopped himself. He had imagined clean snow and some certainty that the forest would receive them kindly. Instead there was mud underfoot, insects hovering above a warm hood, and his knee aching from the drive.
A field worker stood by the open carriers. Laura touched Owen’s sleeve and withdrew with the others, leaving space between him and the wolf.
He lowered himself onto his better knee. Snowmelt soaked through his jeans. Taking off his glove, he rested his palm on the ground and waited.
Flint approached far enough for him to see a small notch in her ear. She smelled his fingers, then pressed her nose briefly to the inside of his wrist.
The laugh escaped before he could contain it.
“Off you go.”
She turned. Three pups scrambled onto the ground and bunched behind her, all legs and restless curiosity now. The smallest sat at the edge of his carrier, considered the drop, and tried to get his feet beneath him.
Owen began to reach, then lowered his hand again.
The pup made it down. He took several awkward steps and bumped Owen’s boot with his nose before turning toward his mother. At a fallen twig he lifted one foot much higher than necessary and stepped over.
Flint brought the four together and entered the trees. Just before the brush hid her, she looked back, ears turning toward something beyond Owen’s hearing. Then he could no longer pick her coat out from the branches.
He stayed kneeling until Laura offered her arm. His leg had stiffened, and he accepted without pretending otherwise. Together they walked through the mud toward the waiting vehicles.
The first camera photograph arrived while he was making tea. Above the counter, his wife’s picture hung upright now, away from the window’s reflection.
On his phone, Flint stood in a clearing with four pups around her. The smallest had a branch clenched in his mouth, nearly too long for him to move. His dark ear mark was easy to see.
Owen laughed, alone in the kitchen, then asked to have the photograph printed.
Taking it to the chapel, he passed Caleb at the weather station. The cages had been dismantled, and the trooper was posting warning notices. The cooperative’s access to the investigated sites had been suspended. Other photography excursions were being examined, but no one was calling the case finished.
Ruth pinned the picture beside the service schedule and a handwritten reminder about the gate. The chapel stayed open for people caught in poor weather. Dry socks waited near the entrance; tea sat beside the kettle. An open notebook held prayer requests for people offshore or in the hospital, sometimes no more than a first name.
Owen stayed for a cup with two men he had long seen avoiding each other. One passed the sugar. The other asked whether he had managed to repair his boat.
Back home, Owen finished the board he had been carving. The grain had chipped around a few letters, but he left them as they were: SHELTER HERE. NO NEED TO STAY.
He fixed it above the door, adjusted the crooked nail, and went inside at the kettle’s whistle. Laura was due after her last call. She often stopped now, though she kept her own house, and he had learned to put out two cups without making an announcement of it.
The flagpole cable could still wake him. Some nights he sat rigid on the mattress before setting both feet on the floor and identifying what he heard: the sea, the heater, a branch against the gutter. He waited until he could get up without carrying the other place into the room.
Sometimes he took his tea onto the porch. Down the road, Ruth’s light remained on at the chapel.
Caleb brought another camera photograph later in the year. The young wolves were nearly as large as Flint, strung out behind her across a pale hillside. Laura pinned it beside Owen’s wife while he objected that there would soon be no kitchen wall left.
After she turned away, he straightened the pin.
The first snow of the next winter had begun whitening the porch when Ruth arrived with a pie. She pushed it into his hands before he could ask about the walk.
“Nothing split at the chapel,” she said. “Plenty of big rounds behind the shed, though.”
Owen set the pie on the counter and took his axe from beside the entry. Laura was climbing out of her car when he came down the path after Ruth.
Her laughter carried above the surf. Owen lifted the handle a little in acknowledgment, then lowered it safely beside his leg and followed Ruth toward the chapel.