Hunger of the Pine

had thrown their traditions away in favor of alcohol and chew. Equally, they seemed less ruined by life out on the streets. Perhaps because, having been stripped of their culture, they had lost everything already. Or perhaps it was because living nomadically, relying on whatever bounty could be hunted or found, was in their blood already. Their lives did not seem as devastated by lack of possessions. And the sun did not seem to wear them down the same way. The tragedy was in their extraction from the land. It was in the annihilation of their culture. It was in the loss of their tribe. Wolf did not find it as easy as others to accept what had happened to his people. The tragedy of it was heavy upon his back. He felt eaten alive by it. Wolf would vacillate between a modern embodiment of a medicine man and dissolving into suicidal crisis. When Aria watched him, she felt like maybe he helped people so that one day they might just turn around and rescue him from this torment that he seemed to carry with him everywhere he went.

Apart from Robert and EJ, the person Wolf spent the most time with was Anthony. He was a scrawny man, who lived beneath the blue tarp affixed to the chain-link fence on the far end of the lot. He had attended one of Mike’s morning coffee socials, which Aria had yet again been motioned over to attend. The seam just between the brim and cap of his olive-green baseball hat was stained with sweat. He had small, dirty-green eyes with so much sclera that they reminded Aria of shark eyes. His sandy blond hair was cut short, his beard and mustache trimmed. After years of harsh treatment, his body was stiff and weathered. His skin bore the corrupt color of a permanent sunburn. His hands, graceless in their movements, were covered in cracks and callouses.

Anthony had killed a man. When he was young, he had been a bucker at a logging company in Idaho. When he found out that his wife had been cheating on him with a man who worked beside him every day as a faller, he drove over to the man’s house in a rage to confront him. The screaming match escalated until the other man threatened to call the police on him for trespassing. When Anthony didn’t leave, the man pointed a rifle at his face. This made Anthony so angry that he grabbed the gun and wrestled him for it. When he ended up with the gun, as if overtaken by something other than himself, he pointed it back at him and shot twice. Anthony tried to skip town, but was arrested two days later. He was charged with voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

His parole papers had been signed off years ago. But to get a job, or buy a car, or qualify to rent an apartment, as a convicted felon had proved to be impossible. So, he turned to robbery and had spent his time since then in and out of jails. On occasion, he would intentionally get himself arrested to escape the cold of the winters before deciding to come out west to California.

Anthony found life outside prison unmanageable. He no longer felt wanted in society. There was no way to transition from life behind bars to life outside them. Perhaps Wolf offered him a sense of tribal belonging that society would not afford him. Perhaps Wolf was on a mission to save the part of himself that lacked a tribe externally through Anthony. But unless Wolf had sunk into the intentional isolation of one of his downward spirals, the two were inseparable. Anthony followed Wolf around like a beta member of a two-man wolf pack.

Ciarra had tried to bum a smoke off of Aria one day the previous week. When Aria told her that she didn’t have any, Ciarra had put two and two together and realized that Aria didn’t have any money. Suddenly the tables flipped from “you help me” to “I’ll help you.” She promised Aria that she could find work for her and that it didn’t matter how old she was or wasn’t.

Without Ciarra needing to say what the work was, Aria knew. There was no other reason to beat around the bush about it. Before she accepted, Aria weighed the burden of her circumstance against her conscience. She felt the malaise of the stigma that came along with prostitution. She didn’t want to wear the scarlet letter of it. But at the same time, she wasn’t particularly identified with her body. It had been used on multiple occasions by men already. She found herself unable to care about something that never felt like it was hers. Besides, it wasn’t like she would be spoiling something that was pure to begin with. In fact, part of her liked the modest kick of empowerment that she felt in response to the idea that as opposed to giving it away for free, she would be getting something in return for it. If they didn’t care about her at all, at least she’d be able to use them mutually in order to buy food and clothes and eventually get a place.

What made Aria hesitate was not her conscience; it was knowing that Ciarra was no philanthropist. Ciarra’s “love,” like so much of the “love” Aria had been given throughout her life, was more like a spider’s web, designed to ensnare. She could feel the sense of forced allegiance in the pretense of caring that Ciarra had fashioned to disguise her own need for power and control. Aria did not want to give in to it. But she was also in a lose–lose situation. To turn Ciarra’s help down was to establish herself as a foe from the get-go and to suffer the consequences. Aria eventually accepted Ciarra’s offer, hoping not only to get a leg up on life, but