The bearded farm boy must have heard me drive up because he came around the greenhouse with a root chopper in his hand and a wary expression. After a moment, he managed to summon a smile. I had hoped no one would be at home so I could snoop around in private. As a game warden, I was not bound to obey property lines, woodland fences, or even NO TRESPASSING signs under certain circumstances; I suspected, however, that the assistant attorney general who advised our department would have said that none of those conditions applied to this particular freelance caper.
Zane wore a bright white bandage on his head wound, but it was the only clean thing about him. His hair and beard were matted, and he reeked of perspiration with a hint of weed, but all it would have taken was a shower and a shave for the handsome dude to win a modeling contract.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.” I had forgotten about his hearing difficulties until he spoke in that telltale monotone.
“Where did you expect to see me?”
He didn’t realize it was a joke until I cued him with a smile of my own.
He played with his erratic hearing aid. “Any news about the wolf?”
“Still alive.”
“Really? That’s amazing!”
“He’s not out of the woods. When I saw him this morning, he was unconscious and running a fever. Dr. Holman is worried about sepsis.”
Zane glanced in the direction of the tree line and dabbed at his eyes, trying to hide the pain this news caused him. I found it hard to dislike the man. His feelings ran so deep.
“What’s the status of your truck?”
“Not good. I snapped both axles. I’m going to need to buy a replacement, it looks like.”
“So you’re stranded here, in other words. Where’s Indigo?”
“Farmington. She had a doctor’s appointment.”
“Listen, I was hoping you had time to answer a few quick questions for me.”
“What about?”
“The wolf.”
“I’ve told you everything I know already.”
“Pretty often in my line of work, I discover that people know more than they realize. And I’d love to see the inside of your yurt if it’s not too much trouble. I’ve never been in one before.”
Zane Wilson, I had seen from the moment I’d met him, was a polite, accommodating man—perhaps too accommodating. While he might have been willing to stonewall me concerning Shadow, he was too well-mannered to resist my request to see the inside of his one-of-a-kind dwelling.
“I don’t want to impose,” I added with false graciousness.
“No worries, man.”
I followed him across the piazza of mud.
“I noticed you call this place Forest Farm II. Where was Forest Farm I?”
“That was the Nearings’ place in Cape Rozier. Scott and Helen Nearing. You ever read The Good Life?”
“No.”
“It’s essential reading.”
“I was struck by the motto on the sign, about your government not being my government. What’s up with that?”
His high cheekbones took on a pinkish tint. “That was Indigo’s idea. It’s one of Scott’s quotes. Kind of like his mission statement. She feels the same way about things, I guess.”
“But you don’t?”
“I’m more into compromise and reconciliation. Restorative justice. That kind of thing.”
The yurt consisted of a single circular room, larger than I had expected, with a king-size bed at the center. The rest of the furniture was minimal: a folded futon, a table with four chairs, a couple of bureaus and end tables. An opaque skylight at the apex of the roof let in some grainy light. The floors were all of varnished pine except where Turkish carpets lay scattered about. The woodstove, which doubled as the cooking stove, was kicking out some serious heat. An old-time icebox and a sink with a hand pump rounded out the décor.
“This is a beautiful space,” I said, genuinely impressed.
“It took a lot of work.”
“I bet it did.”
Instead of kitchen magnets or to-do lists, the icebox had a hand-lettered plaque attached to the door.
OUR COMMANDMENTS
We wish to set up a semi-self-contained household unit, based largely on a use economy, and, as far as possible, independent of the price-profit economy which surrounds us. We would attempt to carry on this self-subsistent economy by the following steps:
1. Raising as much of our own food as local soil and climatic conditions would permit.
2. Bartering our products for those which we could not or did not produce.
3. Using wood for fuel and cutting it ourselves.
4. Putting up our own buildings with stone and wood from the place, doing the work ourselves.
5. Making such implements as sleds, drays, stoneboats, gravel screens, ladders.
6. Holding down to the barest minimum the number of implements, tools, gadgets, and machines which we might buy from the assembly lines of big business.
7. If we had to have such machines for a few hours or days in a year (plow, tractor, rototiller, bulldozer, chain saw), we would rent or trade for them from local people instead of buying and owning them.
“Those commandments are different from the ten the nuns taught me at St. Sebastian.”
He smiled. “Oh, those are from the Nearings, too. From Living the Good Life. It’s funny, you know. I was the one who introduced Indigo to them, but she’s become a lot more hard-core about this stuff than me. She wants everyone to hear the message.”
I sat down at the table without Zane inviting me to do so. He stood with his arms hanging at his side, unsure. The warm air rising from the stove created currents that circled the room and fluffed the hair on my head. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“Absolutely. You want to try some of my ’shine? Mary won’t share her secret recipe, but I’ve been watching her, and people say my stuff isn’t half-bad. Indigo and I want to open a real distillery and tasting room out on the main road next year.”
“I can’t drink alcohol on
