Tyrell Johnson - The Wolves of Winter

“What’d you say to him?”

Oh, there was so much wrong with that question, I didn’t know where to begin. I tried to let the anger blow over me like snow on a car windshield—distant memories: Dad driving, Mom sitting up straight in the passenger seat, looking worried, Ken playing his DS, me watching the snow flash in the headlights and shoot over our windshield in a silver blur, like magic—but it didn’t work, shrugging my anger off, that is. Ken had a talent for making me pissed as hell.

“What did I say? He stole my kill. I told him to give it back. It was a buck too, probably a hundred times the size of that little bunny you got there.”

“A kill is a kill. Least I got mine. A bird in the hand and all that.”

“I’d have got mine if Conrad hadn’t stolen it.”

“Guess you should have asked nicely.”

“I did.”

“I bet you did.”

I looked down at my stupid hands. They were still shaking.

Ken just stood there, assessing me. “Well, Conrad’s an asshole anyway.”

I nodded.

“Jeryl know?”

I nodded again.

“He going to talk to him?”

Nodded.

“He’ll kick his ass. Buck up,” he said, then nudged me on the shoulder and turned around toward his cabin. It was as close to Sorry, Lynn, that sucks. Conrad deserves to be strangled by his own guts as I was ever going to get from Ken. It wasn’t very consoling, but, weirdly enough, I did stop shaking.

Some of the things we brought from Alaska to the Yukon:

Guns. The two rifles, the shotgun, and two handguns. One of the rifles was Dad’s, the rest of the guns were Jeryl’s.

Ammo. We brought a shit ton of ammo. Boxes and boxes stacked on the back of the horse. Most of it Jeryl and Dad bought honestly. But I know a good portion Jeryl took from an abandoned store after the looters started breaking windows and taking what they wanted. We were going to run out eventually, but we were careful with our shots.

Fishing equipment. Two poles, hooks, leads, lines, an extra reel, and power bait, which ran out the first year. We used worms after.

Gardening equipment. Rake, shovel, hoe. Seeds for potatoes and carrots and beans. The beans didn’t last long.

Tools. Hammer, nails, hinges, saw, rope, twine, wire, and some steel wool.

First aid kit. A small crappy one, next to useless.

Clothes, clothes, clothes. Winter jackets, boots, pants, wool everything—socks, leggings, sweaters, shirts—and plenty of gloves.

A few plates, two pots, and silverware.

Books. Mom brought some textbooks and magazines to help keep me educated. I outgrew those fast enough.

We brought some food, spices, and salt.

Mom brought a picture of her, Dad, Ken, and me that she kept over the fireplace in our cabin. A trip to Disneyland. We all looked happy.

I brought my bow, arrows, the knife Dad gave me, the book of Walt Whitman poems, and nothing else. I had to leave my goldfish in the tank. I called him Bear Cub. I dumped the rest of the food in there with him before we left. Maybe he rationed it.

Jeryl hadn’t been gone for an hour when a gunshot rang in the distance. Conrad’s place was about three miles off, but in the deadened, empty terrain, a gunshot from three miles is easy to hear. I dropped the wire and stood. Ken burst out of his cabin, rifle slung over his shoulder.

“I catch you following me, I’ll shoot you myself,” Ken said, running toward the noise.

I almost grabbed my bow anyway because to hell with him. But I didn’t. I backed down like an obedient little girl, picked up my wire, and held it as I watched Ken bound toward the sound of the shot.

I won’t say I was scared to go. Because I wasn’t.

The sun had already rolled down behind the mountains, outlining them in a dull silver-yellow, when Jeryl and Ken finally came home. The hearth fire cast wavering shadows across their pink faces. Ken was hefting a brown sack over his shoulder—the one Conrad had used to carry some of his belongings into the Yukon. I immediately recognized the smell of raw meat. They’d brought back my kill. But the sack wasn’t big enough. A deer that size would have produced twice as much meat.

“What happened?” I asked. Mom and I both rose from our chairs by the fire. We’d been staring into the flames, playing that game of who can say nothing the longest. We played it often.

Ken looked to Jeryl, leaned his rifle against the wall, and started for the back door. “Got half the deer, gonna go put it in the freeze.”

“Jeryl?” Mom said.

Jeryl kept his gun cradled in his arms like a baby. He turned to me. “He won’t be bothering you again.”

“And we’re just supposed to take Conrad’s word for it?” Mom asked.

Jeryl ignored her, kept talking to me. “Best stay away from his house for a while.”

“That’s it?” I said. “Half the deer, and I best stay away from him?”

Silence. Heavy like a fresh blanket of snow. The fire snapped.

Jeryl turned to the door. “I better make sure Ramsey came back from the river all right.”

“Dammit, Jeryl,” Mom said. “We heard the shot. What happened?”

“He’s not dead, if that’s what you’re asking.” He turned to her then, meeting her eyes. “But he won’t be bothering us anymore.”

4

Things I miss about summer:

The sun.

Warmth.

Wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

Freezies from the corner store.

Sandals.

Swimsuits.

Hot dogs.

Hamburgers.

Any food that isn’t moose, elk, deer, rabbit, goat cheese, goat milk, potatoes, and carrots.

Flights to California.

Watching movies.

Dad teaching me how to fish.

Dad reading Walt Whitman.

Dad telling me to go to bed and that he knows that it’s still light out but it doesn’t matter. It’s nighttime.

Dad singing in the shower.

Dad laughing.

Dad.

Dinner was venison that night. I mean, why not? And potatoes and carrots. They tasted a lot like the potatoes and carrots we ate last night, the night before, the night before that, the night before that, and the night before that. Good old easy-growing, durable, freezable, nutritious potatoes and carrots. Thank God for them. Sometimes, I’d close my eyes and pretend that the potatoes were french fries and the carrots were deep-fried and covered in soy sauce. It didn’t make them taste any better. Ken ate with us, and Ramsey and Jeryl stayed at their place, maybe cooked up a few grayling if Ramsey had any luck at the river.

Outside, large, flat UFO flakes had begun to fall. The fire popped, Mom’s fork clinked against her plate, Ken’s mouth made a sucking sound as his teeth gnawed at the rough meat, and I stared at the wall.

Regular old dinner with our regular old family in a regular old world.

I remember sitting by the fire drinking tea that Mom made from the rhododendron leaves she collected in the spring—didn’t taste very good, but it was a nice change from water and goat milk—when Ramsey asked Jeryl how the wars began. When everything started, Ramsey had been too young to have really known what was going on.

Jeryl took a deep breath and launched into it. “Well, it wasn’t sudden, I’ll say that much. It wasn’t one event. No meteorite, earthquake, or tsunami. Those things you always hear about. The seeds of it started early in the century—you read about nine-eleven in school?—and the anger just sort of snowballed. I don’t think one person ever said to the other: ‘Is this it? Is this the apocalypse?’ You’d hear about the occasional bombing, shooting, but otherwise things were mostly calm, relatively speaking. You could watch the news and hear about the War on Terror mixed in with a feel-good bit about pandas being born in the zoo.”