Nevada Barr - Winter Study

In another setting, Anna might have taken offense at the scorn heaped on the rangers and management of Isle Royale. Being law enforcement and, with her new position at Rocky Mountain, at least nominally management, the mean-spirited gossip should have offended her. In principle, it did and, like the ongoing sexual teasing of Robin, grew tiresome, but it didn’t hurt her feelings. There was a habitualness about it that transcended insensitivity or insult. Like the other rituals, it had evolved over the years, and they carped with much the same lack of devotion as illiterate Catholics mouthing a Latin mass.

Anna was happy to sit without speaking and let it wash around her. She couldn’t remember being so hungry. The helpings she was given – and the seconds she took – were double what she was accustomed to, yet she was as excited about the dessert as any of the men and had to restrain herself from asking for more ice cream.

When the meal was finished, Ridley and Adam thanked Jonah for a fine dinner. Anna hadn’t seen the old pilot do anything, but, not wanting to be rude, she thanked him as well. Jonah hauled one of the two large metal containers of hot water that lived on the woodstove and poured the double sinks full. He and Ridley began pulling on yellow rubber gloves as Jonah joked about his favorite subject; this time it was Ridley he pretended was madly in love with him and was lecturing him about unwelcome visits to his room in the night. Neither was gay – Anna would have bet on it – it was simply another game that had taken root so long ago no one was sure why they still played it.

She offered to do the dishes, which she thought was mighty big of her, but was met with uncomprehending and none-too-friendly stares. Precisely what custom dictated who a chief bottle washer was, she didn’t know, but, wanting to help, to thank them for the meal, to ingratiate herself – or whatever it was she felt a need to do – she insisted.

Confused rather than appreciative, they abandoned her to it. The only one who remained to help or keep her company was Dr. Huff.

“Do you want to wash or rinse, Kathy?”

“ Katherine. Rinse.” That speech brought the sum total of words the woman had uttered since the toilet seat introduction to about twelve. She made Robin seem like a motormouth.

As the steam rose and the pile of dirty dishes diminished, to make conversation Anna asked Katherine what her doctorate was in. Again, there was the odd ducking flinch and the furious blush. Katherine wasn’t much older than Robin, not yet thirty, yet her skin had the opacity associated with women considerably past menopause. The blush didn’t prettily pink her cheeks but dyed them the color of new brick.

“I haven’t got it quite yet,” Katherine admitted. Moisture blanked her glasses, and Anna couldn’t read her eyes. “I’m all-but-dissertation. Bob – Dr. Menechinn – has my thesis. Then it goes to committee. It’s on the wolves in Wyoming. The alphas have started mating with more than one female in the pack.”

“They must be becoming habituated to humans,” Anna said.

They had progressed to the flatware, washed last, and dumped into a long-handled deep-fat fryer set in the rinse water for that purpose – another rule, and one Anna would have bent had not Jonah appeared behind her and Katherine with the implement and the instructions at the proper moment – when Katherine whispered:

“God’s nightgown.”

The archaic oath made Anna laugh. The look on Katherine’s face made her stop. Religious awe or deep-seated horror drew the skin around her eyes tight. Her jaw had gone slack.

“What is it?” Anna demanded.

Katherine pointed at the small window over the sink. Her hand was shaking so bad tiny bubbles from the dish soap floated free and rose on the warm air. When Anna tossed the flatware into the rinse, steam had blanked the window. Undoubtedly shattering half a dozen traditions, she wiped it clear with the red dishrag.

Silver light from a three-quarter moon caught ice crystals on the snow and rime on pine needles and tree branches. In the superdried air, the light was so pure the world beyond the glass glowed with it, and Anna could see with surreal clarity. Whatever Katherine had seen was gone. Or had been imaginary.

Hands dripping, Katherine turned and ran to the common room.

Anna ran after her, drying her hands on her trousers. Katherine squeezed behind the television set, cupped her hands against the glass of the picture window and pressed her face to the glass. Anna did the same.

Delineated by moonlight and snow, seven wolves trotted across the compound. Heads low, they came single file, long legs and big paws carrying them effortlessly over the patchy snow. Anna’d seen wolves in captivity, seen wolf pups, but to see seven adult wolves in the moonlight, wolves that moved through the night the way they were meant to, the moon catching their fur until they were frosted with silver, their shadows black on the ground, was pure magic.

Then they were gone, the last tail swallowed up by the shaggy line of birch trunks at the edge of the clearing.

“Wow!” Anna whispered inadequately.

“They’ve never done this. Never. Not even close,” Ridley said.

“Something’s got them stirred up.” He’d crowded so close behind Anna, she felt his breath on her hair. He must have noticed the moment she did. He backed away awkwardly.

The others began to move and talk. Katherine remained immobile. Her face had the same rapt look that had scared Anna over the dirty dishes. In a child, she would have termed it awe. In a woman grown, it was the aspect of true love beholding the object of adoration.

“I didn’t think they came around people,” Bob said.

“They don’t,” Ridley replied. “Three times in the last fifty years, we’ve found wolf tracks in the housing area. Not a pack, tracks of a single wolf. Every time, there was a dead wolf in the carpentry shop, either dissected or about to be. They stay away from us and we stay away from them. We try and keep it that way. In wolf/tourist run-ins, wolves always come out the losers. The island is too small to destroy or transport a wolf without damaging the population and screwing up the study. Something stirred them up,” he repeated.

“The windigo,” Robin said. It sounded as if she wanted to believe in a windigo more than moose meat. People loved their ghosts, demons, fairies and angels. Anna didn’t. For her, stark reality was magical, mysterious and sufficiently deadly. She didn’t need to put monstrous faces on starvation and cruelty, or wings and feathers on hope.

“I thought windigos were strict humanitarians,” she said. “Don’t they just eat people?”

“Everybody loves junk food,” Jonah said.

“They smell the blood of the moose,” Bob said. “Their sense of smell is acute.”

“Exactly.” Ridley’s word was agreeable but the tone was not. The lead researcher evidently didn’t like an axman from Homeland Security educating him on wolf traits. “They can smell over a thousand times more efficiently than humans. And they can smell humans. We must reek like a paper mill to them. There is any number of ways the pack could get to the moose. Why come so near us?”

“Do you think the other packs will come?” Robin asked.

“They shouldn’t.” Ridley moved to the piano bench and began pulling on high-waisted woolen ski pants, snapping the suspenders over his shoulders.

“If they do, it could get ugly,” Adam said, and Ridley shot him a look, a widening of the eyes and downturn of the lips that Anna associated with social conspiracies, like listening to your best friend lie her way out of detention.

“Pack wars,” Robin said somberly. Anna figured it out. They were trying to scare the pants off the Homeland Security guy.