The wheels of the cart bumped over roots, digging into the soft forest soil. Each jolt sent a dull, aching pain through James’s body, pain that seemed to come not from his paralyzed limbs, but from his very heart. He lay on old, musty-smelling hay, staring up at patches of clouds drifting through the pine canopy. The air was thick, filled with the scent of needles, damp moss, and something else, something wild and foreboding.
Mary walked ahead, hunched over, her strong, calloused hands gripping the shafts tightly. She didn’t turn around, didn’t say a word, and that silence was more terrifying than any scolding. James remembered her differently, remembered how, many years ago, her laughter had echoed through this very forest in rural Oregon as they gathered berries in their youth.
He remembered the warmth of her hand in his, back when he was still a strong, capable carpenter leading her to admire the log cabin he had built. Where had it all gone? The stroke had split his life in two, before and after. Before was the scent of wood shavings in the workshop, the excited bark of a dog at dawn, the respectful murmur of voices at the town meeting.
After was humiliating helplessness, the stench of urine and bedsores, and the gaze of his wife, full of deep, festering hatred. He tried to speak, to make some sound, to ask where they were going, but only a strangled wheeze escaped his throat. Mary flinched as if struck and stopped.
The cart came to a halt under the deep shade of a sprawling old oak whose branches reached toward the sky like bony fingers. The woman walked around the cart and looked into her husband’s face. There was no pity or hesitation in her eyes, only a scorched desert of exhaustion and resentment.
She grabbed the side of the cart and forcefully tipped it over. James tumbled heavily to the ground, his shoulder striking a protruding root. Pain shot through him, but he couldn’t even cry out.
He lay on his side like a discarded sack, looking up at her. Mary dusted off her hands, adjusted her scarf, and said, without looking at him, words as cold and sharp as shards of ice, “This is where you’ll die, old fool. I’m tired of cleaning up after you.”
She turned and walked away without a glance back. Her figure quickly dissolved into the green gloom of the forest. James was left alone.
He listened to the fading creak of the cart, then the chirping of a bird, and then a crushing silence, broken only by the blood pounding in his ears and the desperate, soundless scream of his soul. He stared into the void where she had gone, and in his still-clear, living eyes, two questions froze: Why? For what? But there was no answer. Only the forest, indifferent and eternal, ready to embrace him in its cold arms.
In that night’s silence, under the canopy of the old oak tree, the helpless man, for the first time in many long months, felt not fear or loneliness, but a strange, nearly forgotten feeling of protection. With the first rays of dawn, timid and cold, James awoke from oblivion. The night had passed in a strange half-sleep; at times he sank into a heavy slumber filled with fragments of the past, at times he came to, feeling the warm, living body beside him.
The wolf had not left. He was still lying there, curled up in a ball. His steady breathing was the only sound breaking the morning silence.
The old man felt a torturous thirst. His throat was dry, his lips cracked. He tried to swallow, but there was a lump in his throat.
The wolf, as if sensing his suffering, lifted his head and looked at him with piercing yellow eyes. Then he stood, stretched his powerful body, and gently nudged James’s cheek with his wet nose. The old man let out a faint groan.
The wolf nudged him again, more insistently, then took a few steps to the side and turned back to look at him. His gaze was meaningful and demanding. He came back, nudged James once more with his muzzle, and again stepped away, indicating a direction.
James understood there must be a stream down in the lowland. He remembered it. The wolf was showing him where the water was.
But how could he get there? He couldn’t move. The beast, seeing the man wasn’t moving, came close, pressed against his back, and began to push. Slowly, inch by inch, he moved the helpless body across the damp ground, over moss and last year’s leaves.