Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves

‘What do I care? I don’t give a shit for helping you! Is it going to bring my husband back?’

I stand and pick up the soiled shirt. Parker is still holding the other.

‘I’m so sorry.’ On a level with her, only two feet away, I look into her eyes, which are a clear grey-brown, set in a mask of fury and despair. I feel withered by it. ‘I really am. We are going to …’

I wait for Parker to break in and explain what we are going to do. Any time now would be fine. He is on his feet too, but seems happy to let me do the talking.

‘We are going to find justice.’

‘Justice!’ She laughs, but it’s more like a snarl. ‘What about my husband? Stewart killed my husband. What about him?’

‘For him too.’ I am backing towards the door, more anxious to leave than to stay and find out why she is so convinced of this.

Elizabeth Bird grimaces–a rictus that looks like a smile, but isn’t. It emphasises the skull beneath the skin, and gives her the appearance of a death’s-head, animated but not alive; wan, bloodless, radiant with hate.

Walking back to the main building, Parker gives me the clean shirt, as if he doesn’t want the taint of holding it any more. He feels guilty for upsetting her.

‘We’ll show Moody these,’ I say. ‘Then he will see.’

Parker shakes his head slightly. ‘It’s not enough. That shirt could have been there a few months.’

‘You don’t believe it was! And you believe her too–about her husband’s death, don’t you?’

Parker glances at me briefly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re going, then.’

Parker assents without speaking. I feel that familiar crushing weight on my chest, and my breath seems stuck in my throat, although we have walked only a few dozen yards.

‘If he killed his guide it would be madness for you to go alone. I will borrow a rifle. If you don’t take me with you, I will follow your trail, and that’s all there is to it.’

Parker does not speak for a moment, then looks at me again, a little ironically, I think.

‘Don’t you think that people will talk if they see us leave together?’

There is a great leap in my chest as the weight takes wing. Suddenly even the compound looks beautiful to me, the sun painting the dirty drifts by the fence a glowing white-blue. Momentarily I am sure that no matter the danger, armed with right, we cannot do other than prevail.

The feeling lasts almost until I reach my bedroom door.

Laurent was often away on business. Francis knew as much, and therefore as little, as anyone else about his mysterious absences. In summer the wolves disappeared from the forest thereabouts, so this was when Laurent carried on his trading. That summer he seemed particularly busy–or perhaps it was just the first time that Francis had cared whether he was there or not–and made trips to Toronto and the Sault. When Francis asked him about his time away, Laurent was casual or downright evasive. He made jokes about lying drunk in bars, or visiting prostitutes. Or perhaps they weren’t jokes. The first time he mentioned a whorehouse, Francis stared at him with dumbstruck horror, feeling an intense and dreadful pain around his heart. Laurent took his shoulders and laughed, shaking him roughly until Francis lost his temper and shouted; hurtful things he couldn’t later remember. Laurent laughed at him, and then, suddenly, lost his temper too. They hurled insults at each other, until there was a sudden hiatus in the shouting and they stared at each other, mesmerised and reeling. Francis was hurt and hurtful; Laurent had a cutting, cruel way of putting him down, but when, afterwards, he apologised, he was so serious and sweet and beseeching–that first time he went down on his knees until Francis had to laugh and enthusiastically forgive him. It made Francis feel old–even older than Laurent.

Then there were the men who came to see Laurent at home. Sometimes when Francis went down and whistled outside the cabin, there would be no reply. That meant Laurent had someone with him, and often they would stay the night before shouldering their packs and trudging off, dogs at their heels. Francis discovered in himself a deep and terrible capacity for jealousy. On more than one occasion he would come back early in the morning and conceal himself in the bushes behind the cabin, waiting until the men left, studying their faces for clues, finding nothing. Most of the men were French or Indian; long-distance, disreputable-looking men more used to sleeping under the sky than a roof. They brought Laurent furs, tobacco and ammunition, and left the way they had come. Sometimes they didn’t seem to bring or leave with anything. Once, after a particularly hysterical argument, Laurent told him that men came to him because they were setting up something, a trading company, and it had to be a secret because they would bring down the wrath of the Hudson Bay Company if anyone found out, and that was something well worth avoiding. Francis was delirious with relief, and made up for it with an excess of high spirits, whereupon Laurent picked up his fiddle and played it, chasing him round the cabin until Francis burst out of the front door, gasping with laughter. There was a figure on the path, quite far away, and he bolted back inside. He only saw it for a moment, but he thought it was his mother. After that he lived in a terror of uncertainty for days, but nothing changed at home. If she had seen anything, she could not have thought anything of it.

Autumn came, and with it school, and then winter. He could not see Laurent so often, but occasionally he would creep down the path after his parents had gone to bed, and whistle. And sometimes he would hear an answering whistle, and sometimes he would not. As time went on it seemed to him that the frequency with which his whistle was answered grew less and less.

Sometime in spring, after Laurent had been away, again, to some unspecified destination, he started dropping hints that something big was going to happen. That he was going to make his fortune. Francis was confused and disturbed by these vague, usually drunken allusions. Was Laurent going to leave Dove River? What would happen to him, Francis? If he tried to lead him (cleverly he thought) into clarifying his plans, Laurent would tease him, and his teasing could be blunt and cruel. He frequently alluded to Francis’s future wife and family, or to whoring, or living south of the border.

There was one occasion, the first of many; they had both been drinking. It was early summer, and the evenings were getting just warm enough to sit outside. The first bees had emerged from wherever they had spent the cold months and buzzed around the apple blossom. Only seven months ago.

‘Of course, by then,’ Laurent was alluding to his unspecified future riches again, ‘you’ll be married on some little farm somewhere, with a handful of kids, and you’ll have forgotten all about me.’

‘I expect so.’ Francis had learnt to play along with these dreary little scenarios. If he protested, it just tended to egg Laurent on.

‘I guess when you leave school you’re not going to stay here, huh? Nothing much for you here, is there?’

‘Nah …’ Spect I’ll go to Toronto. Maybe I’ll come and visit you in your bath chair once in a while.’

Laurent grunted and drained his glass. It occurred to Francis that he was drinking more than he used to. Then he sighed. ‘I’m serious, p’tit ami . You shouldn’t stay here. It’s a nothing place. You should get out as soon as you can. I’m just an old country fool.’

‘You? You’re going to be rich, remember? You can go anywhere you want. You could move to Toronto …’

‘Oh shut up! You shouldn’t be here! You certainly shouldn’t be here with me. It’s no good. I am no good.’