Lone Wolf

against the house, high enough that their slobbering snouts appeared briefly at the window, then disappeared.

“Down!” Wickens shouted, and the jumping stopped.

When Dougie came back in, we all took our seats, Wickens at one end, his wife at the other, her chair backed up to a pantry door with a lock on it. The rest of us filled in the spots between, May at one corner by her father, head down.

Wickens lowered his head. “Dear Lord, please bless us and lead us into righteousness, and welcome the guests at our table, and we thank you for this food, and ask that you say a special prayer for our friend Morton, who was taken by one of your creatures, and we trust that it is all part of your divine plan, amen.”

“Amen,” said the rest of the family, all except for May, who had started to cry.

“There, there, sweetheart,” said Timmy, slipping an arm around her.

“It was an awful thing,” said Dougie. “I remember him saying to me, just before he went out, that he was going to find that damn bear once and for all. Who could have guessed that it would be the bear who got him.”

How many more times, I wondered, would it be drilled into us how Morton Dewart had come to an end?

The family started passing around food. There was a roast of beef, a few rare slices already cut and lying in a pool of watery blood, some breaded fish fillets, boiled vegetables and mashed potatoes, slices of white bread stacked on a plate. Wickens produced, from his pocket, a jackknife that he used to spear slabs of meat and drop them onto our plates. It was plain fare, basic home cooking, and it was, to be honest, pretty good. I didn’t realize, until I started digging in, just how hungry I was from working around the camp all day.

I reached for a slice of bread, slathered it with butter. “You’d seen the bear around here before, had you?”

Jeffrey piped up. “Not me, but Grandpa says it was around a lot.”

Timmy smiled. “And it’s a good thing you didn’t run into him, or he’d of had you for breakfast, young man.”

“Chief Thorne’s talking about getting a party together to go after him, kill him,” Dad said. “Was that your idea?”

“Uh, nope, but it’s a darn good one,” said Wickens. “Isn’t that a good idea, everyone?”

Much nodding around the table.

“You know what’s funny,” said Dad, and every time he opened his mouth he was making me nervous, “is that they didn’t find a rifle anywhere near where they found Morton. He must have taken one with him, right, if he was going out to kill a bear?”

What on earth was he doing?

I’d never have told him this had I thought he was going to bring it up with the Wickenses. This was the sort of information you held back until the time was right.

The table suddenly became very quiet. Wickens glanced at Wendell and Dougie, his wife looked at May, and May kept her head down. Only Jeffrey had something to say. “That’s totally weird, huh? Where would his gun go? Where do you think it went, Grandpa? Do you think the bear would have taken it? Can you imagine that, a bear walking through the woods with a shotgun?” He cackled, then noticed that no one else was laughing. “Sorry,” he said.

“That’s okay, Jeffrey,” said Timmy Wickens. “But you know, he might actually have picked it up, walked a ways off into the forest, and dropped it. I’ll bet you it’ll turn up eventually.”

I was betting he was right. And I was willing to bet that it would be in the next day or so.

“Tell me about Mr. Dewart,” I said.

May would have been the logical one to answer this, I figured, but she looked too distraught, so her stepmother Charlene stepped in. “He was a nice boy. From the city, but he was working up this way and got to know May, and it was just like having a third son around here. They was really hitting it off nicely. He was lots of help around here, good at fixing things, tuned up our cars and everything.”

“He seemed a bit funny lately though,” said Jeffrey, making a butter puddle in his mashed potatoes.

May spoke. “Jeffrey, eat your dinner. You’ve had enough to say tonight.”

“I was just saying, that’s all. He-”

“I said, eat your dinner and keep your thoughts to yourself.”

Jeffrey frowned, took a forkful of mashed potatoes, the dam breaking and the butter flowing out.

It was quiet for a while after that. Periodically, Wickens or one of the boys would sling a piece of fat or a scrap of bread out the window, and the dogs would fight over the snacks, snarling and barking. “Let’s give ’em some fish,” Wickens said, sticking a fork into a fillet and tossing it out the window. The dogs went into a frenzy. I thought of Bob’s stringer, empty but for some severed pickerel heads.

“Oh no,” said Charlene, looking down. “There’s another one of those goddamn field mice.” She pointed down by the baseboard, where a small gray mouse was inching along tentatively.

“Everyone quiet,” Wickens said, and a hush came over the room. He reached for the knife he’d used to serve the roast, held it by the blade between his thumb and forefinger, then, faster than you could blink, launched it and hit the wall. The blade went through the mouse, pinning it to the baseboard, where it twitched and wriggled.

“Awesome, Grandpa!” said Jeffrey, who scrambled out of his chair to yank the knife out of the wood, the mouse still impaled on the end of the blade. He handed it triumphantly to his grandfather. Wickens flicked the knife with his wrist, sending the nearly dead rodent sailing out the open window. Outside, the dogs growled at each other, fighting for the tidbit.

Wickens wiped the blade on his pants, then used it to spear another piece of meat on the table.

“Anyone for seconds?” he asked me and Dad.

“Nothing for me,” I said.

“I’m stuffed,” said Dad.

12

AS I DROVE DAD to the lawyer’s the next morning in his pickup, he said, “I feel a bit bad, talking to Bert Trench about evicting the Wickenses, when they had us to dinner last night and all. I mean, it’s not much of a way to show one’s gratitude.”

I glanced away from the road long enough to look at him. “Are you kidding me? Were you at the same dinner I was at?”

“It just doesn’t seem very grateful, that’s all.”

“Dad, we’ve been over this. You think they had us for dinner because they like us? They were putting on a show. It was like opening night on Broadway. How many times did someone remind us that Dewart was killed by a bear? The whole fucking family was in on it-well, May didn’t really have that much to say. But even the kid mentioned how Dewart had been killed by a bear. It’s like they were trying to implant memories. By the time the evening was over I was convinced I’d seen Morton Dewart head out to kill that bear. And why do you figure they wanted to do that?”

Dad gazed out the window.

“Dad?”

“Well, it could still be because he was. And they need to talk about it. Wouldn’t you feel the need to talk about it? I mean, from the very beginning, ever since those damn dogs chased you back over the fence, you’ve been just bound and determined that those dogs killed that man, that they’ve been covering it up. It’s like you think Wickens meant to kill that man with those dogs, that it was deliberate, and you’re basing that on what? Betty’s glance at a corpse, and some feelings you’ve got, and a missing rifle.”

“Oh, and while we’re on the subject, what the hell were you thinking?”

“What?”

“Last night? Bringing up that thing about the rifle? Were you out of your mind?”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been going on like it’s a big deal, so I thought I’d mention it, see what they thought.”