“Coffee, I need coffee … Michael, who in the hell are you talking to?” Groggy, I shake the cobwebs from my slushy brain. I’m starting to sound like that damn kid … talking to myself all the time. I need to stop falling asleep in that chair; you’d think I’d have learned after the first twenty or so kinks in my neck … that is not a bed.
The taste of whiskey is still burning the back of my throat as I try to brush my teeth. I think my tongue has grown a coat that the coldest wind couldn’t blow through, much less the bristles of my toothbrush. Grabbing hold of the doorframe, I start pulling myself up, releasing and then up again. I'm hoping that doing pull-ups until my arms feel like Jell-o will sweat out the last dredges of anxiety, and subsequent alcohol, that was brought on by my dreams of Lilly. The thoughts that have plagued me for the past six years are still edgy, dulling a bit, but still edgy … then Christopher had to come along and sharpen the blade.
Ever since that kid showed up, everything has become prickly, with clarified images. Once upon a time, I had daydreams, just simple fantasies about enchanted things, but now everything has an answer, everything is grounded … real, with serrated edges that have cut my beliefs into shreds. I thought I had only one belief … trust empirical evidence. Only in the minds of men, do you actually find fantasy searching for form. I loved the mythology of the local tribes, even doing research as far north as the Inuit … it wasn’t real, just folklore… a fantastic story to follow. I was letting my mind drift along like watching TV, thinking 'what if', but nothing more.
Then Christopher appeared, cold and withdrawn for the first month. I kept checking on him, something didn’t feel right about someone so young, buying that cabin. When I did some digging and found that he paid cash for the property; I knew something was out of the ordinary. My instincts told me he was a good person, lost and troubled, but ultimately good and he needed help. I wish I had ignored my instincts and left the kid alone.
Through the strain of my last few pull-ups, I can’t help but reprimand myself for always having to ask “why” and cockily stating “prove it”. In law enforcement classes, we learn that we aren’t supposed to care why a guy beat his wife, just prove that he did it and get on with life. Leave the 'whys' to the court system. Here, as a game warden, I can get away with searching for answers to 'why'. In Montana there are so many extenuating circumstances that sometimes I have to understand the details, and use discretion in order to build foundations of respect. We have to form productive relationships with the hunters and local community; it’s the difference between one man watching over hundreds of miles, or hundreds of conscientious people banded together, taking care of each other and our resources.
About five weeks after Christopher moved into the cabin, I tracked yet another blood trail on to his property. I knew that I had a poacher in the area, and I had to catch him. This particular hunter wasn’t after trophies though, he was after meat. I knew ahead of time that I wasn’t looking for a sportsman, just a guy trying to survive. But I have a job to do, and that means that I can’t allow hunting without the proper tags, and absolutely not during the off season. When I caught him in the act outside Christopher's cabin, he came out to see what the problem was … then the strangest thing happened.
Christopher cocked his head and stared into the hunter’s eyes, and then started talking to no one, “Did you know he has a family? They haven’t been able to afford groceries for about three months now. His kids have all lost weight; he’s afraid they’re wasting away. The cow elk he killed last month … he kept some of the meat, but traded the rest for produce and propane. He’s afraid that they’ll run out again during the next big storm, and die in their home … alone, cold and hungry.”
The hunter and I looked at Christopher like he’d just stepped off the moon. Quickly regaining my thoughts, I turned and looked into the guy’s eyes for myself … he was crying, standing open-mouthed, staring at Christopher, tears rolling down his astonished face. “It’s true. Everything he just said is true. I haven’t even told my wife about my fears riding on the coming storm.”
“If this is true …why didn’t you talk to someone about your situation? We have resources through the local food bank. I’ve delivered game there myself, to be distributed to families in need. Don’t you think that is a better way to feed your family? Your kids don’t need their father to be put in jail, on top of dealing with starvation.” People’s pride always blows my mind, how hard is it to ask for help?
Christopher squinted at me like he was making up his mind on something. Then nodding he forced his scrutiny back on the hunter. “I’d listen to the warden, sir … he’ll make sure you and your family find the help you need.” With that ending remark, he turned and walked back into the cabin like nothing unusual had passed between us.
Not sure what to make of what had happened; I went back to business as usual. The hunter didn’t put up a fight, and we had his paperwork done in no time. We waved the fines with a warning that if we caught him again, we could take everything he used during the illegal hunt, including his guns and vehicle. Then I personally drove him over to the food bank and helped him get signed up with the appropriate programs, and then put him in touch with separate public welfare groups that would help with his family’s other needs.
I still check on him and his family; smiling, I can picture the kids putting weight back on, a healthy glow returning to their smiling faces.
Christopher got under my skin from the beginning, but after asking him about his ‘talents’, as he calls them, I couldn’t leave him alone. Then he found that wolf, injured when she was hit by a logging truck. She wasn't in too bad of a state, probably just nicked by the bumper, but she definitely had some recouping to do. He had already started nursing her back to health when I discovered that he was hiding her. I should have taken her to my biologist or vet, but I was afraid that taking her away from Christopher, and his crazy dog, would kill her. I’ve never seen a stranger connection before in my life … now she has become our secret. Some part of me, which agrees with my common sense, keeps telling me she’s wild and dangerous … god help me if she hurts the kid, and people find out I’ve been covering for them.
After working together on interrogations, using his skills as a truth detector with my informants, and talking on ride-alongs, I find myself looking after Christopher, like he's a younger brother. He has always been forthcoming about what he can do, and even though I’ve seen it first hand, I still have a hard time believing my own senses.
Without Christopher, I wouldn’t have been able to take down a whole poaching ring … it was awe-inspiring to watch him simply pull information out of someone’s head. When he explained that he “hears” the truth said, but unspoken, in someone’s mind, I couldn’t believe my luck. We have a routine now, I ask certain questions that would bring up information, and questions that I know would be answered in lies. Meanwhile Christopher stands outside the door and listens to the honest answers forming secretly in the individual's mind. No one sees the kid, and after the interrogation, he heads back to his cabin. Later he tells me everything he has uncovered, and no one is the wiser.
I’m hoping that Christopher is starting to trust me enough to tell me the whole story … like who he talks to all the time. Where the scars, he’s always fingering, came from? What is he hiding from? Every time he figures out that I’m digging for information, he turns his talents on me. This last time was too much, he went too far … asking about Lilly. All I did was ask him who this ‘Ellie’ was that he keeps talking to. Then I recognized his glazed expression as he searched through my head, inevitably pulling out my heart. I knew right away the connection between Ellie and Lilly is love; he is consumed by love for his Ellie, plain and simple.
Cloudy and suffocating, the memories the he pulled are drowning me, as if they happened yesterday. They led me to the whiskey last night; the memories have a mind of their own, leaving me feeling drained with an acidic taste, like bile, in the back of my throat. I understand love … vicious and unfair. The greatest paradox is that something as insubstantial as a chemical reaction in the brain … can break you and lift you up in one breath. Saying “I love you” for the first time makes your hands shake, and turns your insides into mush … but when it’s forbidden, the nerves can crush you.
I told Lilly that I loved her, idiot that I am. When I was sick with a fever; she held me together when I thought I was falling apart. Crushing me now, I remember the night I left my uncle’s ranch … turning to look at her … she stood stunned in her kitchen. Her lips glistened slightly, still wet from my kiss. My last words, young and inexperienced, “I can only give you love.” Forever preserved in my head, “I will give you love.”
Sober, shaking, and sweaty, I walk into my kitchen in the present again … and as I pour a cup of coffee, I realize that not even the thick black ambrosia is going to pull me out of the daydreams turned nightmares, about Lilly. What was I supposed to do? She was married with a child, loveless in spirit… but married nonetheless. I wanted to save her, more than anything else in the world I wanted to give her a life … but that was my dream, not hers. I wanted a life where we could talk about anything, from theology to fishing … I could talk to her, I loved talking to her.
I would fantasize at night about her having a life with me … never judgmental; she made me feel good in my own skin, seeing even my flaws as strengths. Six years difference, six irrelevant years. God, I wished I was born earlier, but then there’s no way to know if we would have ever met. In your teens and twenties, six years might as well be a lifetime. She was getting married around the time I was celebrating my 15th birthday. I was fantasizing about the girl that sat in front of me in English, while Lilly was preparing for the arrival of her son.
When I went to work at my uncle’s ranch, I never could have imagined that I’d find my heart attached to the wife of the foreman. I was so young, emotionally inexperienced, I should have been attending frat parties … but I had to make money if I ever hoped to finish my degree. Every night when the rest of the workers would go to the bar in town, I’d stay behind … and watch her. Walking across the yard, dried weeds would grab at the bottom of her skirt and scratch at her ankles … I memorized her movement, the flow of her steps.
To this day, I can feel the weight of her breath and the smell of the air in her wake: clean, like she cleared the dust away just by walking through. I remember looking through the kitchen window, watching her dance alone … clumsy yet so seductive. Smiling at her charm, I would wonder if this was what it was like to find your soul mate. If this was what it was like, to truly understand the shape of your heart … not the one-dimensional shape in a deck of cards, but a creature existing in multiple dimensions painfully thrashing in my rib cage.
So naive, so thick … I thought she would be a passing phase; I was bound to outgrow my feelings. Now, six years later, everything inside me still tells me, I’ll never feel that overwhelmed by another person again. But what was I supposed to do? Try to break up her marriage? There was a child involved; she would never let ‘us’ hurt that little boy. She would rather live, accepting the deal she was given … than hurt her son in any way.
All these memories stirred up by that kid poking around in my head. He had to ask that one question … damn him, “I see a wadded up note … written in smeared ink, 'I love you, too … but I can’t even give you that much. I’m sorry.' Signed; 'Always yours in spirit, Lilly'. It’s constantly in your thoughts. Then, I see you walking away, suitcase in hand. You throw the note into a fire … why?”
I can understand the innocence in Christopher’s question. He couldn’t possibly know that burning Lilly’s note, my only keepsake of her, was one of the most stupid and painful things I’ve ever done.
Holding my mug like it was some sort of safety line, I sat down at the computer to check my E-mail. As soon as I saw the letter from Christopher, I knew I was going to be spending my next three days off, at his cabin, waiting for the arrival of our pups. Good; maybe I can finally get the answers I’ve been looking for.
Christopher and Lune have been acting like impatient fathers, waiting for the whelping to start. I’ve taken over two garbage bags full of news paper for the birthing, and stockpiled other supplies like a stethoscope, hemostats, blunt-end scissors, a bottle of iodine, and a rubber pediatric bulb syringe … better to be prepared. Last week when I checked on Ursa, I noticed she had started shedding out, blowing her coat; her body is getting ready to start nursing. She was already lactating, and her belly had dropped ... to tell the truth, I’m surprised she hasn’t gone into labor yet. During my visit, I explained how to build a whelping pen, and told Christopher to put it near the wood burning stove. I hope he listened to me, and spent time with her in the pen, so she would get use to the idea of delivering her pups in the confined space, with an audience. I have to admit, I’m excited, too. Hell, the anticipation has turned me into that pacing idiot in a delivery waiting room … luckily Ursa is patient with us guys; any other expectant mother would have started throwing things at us by now.
After loading up my truck with everything we might need, and a bag of clothes to last through the next three days, I'm ready to go. Christopher has asked me to stay with them during my days off, if Ursa hasn’t given birth yet. As much as I’ve become attached to the kid and his animals, my skin still crawls at the prospect of spending that much time alone with Christopher’s 'gifts'.
Pulling up in front of his cabin, I noticed that the generator was already running ... Christopher must have been making sure there was a fresh charge in the cabin’s battery.
Walking up to the front door, I knocked … but no one answers. I can't hear Lune or Ursa’s nails clattering around on the hard-wood floor. I try the door handle, unlocked … huh, that’s strange. Maybe Christopher took Ursa and Lune out for a walk. I hope he’s keeping track of where Ursa’s wandering around, just in case she has one of the pups.
I decide to unload the truck, and check on the progress of the whelping pen. I think mostly, I am just biding time until I can watch the interaction between the kid and the wolf. Their connection gives me the willies, but at the same time I catch myself watching them like they are the starring act at the local circus.
After about twenty minutes, I decide I probably ought to search for them, just in case Ursa went into labor while they were out. Tracking has always been second nature to me, but Christopher has an amazing talent for hiding his tracks if he doesn’t want to be found … luckily that wasn’t the case today. His heavy boot prints, and Lune’s paws, left holes pressed into the deep snow… they were being lead by Ursa’s huge prints. She definitely knew exactly where she was going, but trudging through the snow had to be hard on her, in her condition. I can tell she was having problems: some of her tracks were strained, and she had to sit a few times to rest. Whatever drew them out here; it must have been extremely important to her. By this stage, if she was still in the wild, she would be looking for a quiet place to hunker down and give birth, not wading through two-and-three-foot snow drifts.
“What are they up to? Where did they need to go?” I can see my breath when I whisper the words, like steam hanging over a hot spring in winter.
As I approach an opening in the trees, I can hear the panting and muffled growls erupting out of more than two muzzles.
“The pack! Damn him! Like one wolf wasn’t enough to worry about, he has to play with the entire, damn pack!” I curse myself for speaking out loud, but fortunately Christopher and his 'friends' are too busy to pay attention to my interruption.
If I thought, watching Christopher and Ursa was amazing; watching him with the pack is mind-blowing. The Alpha sits next to him on his right, Ursa and Lune on his left. An older female is doting over Ursa, licking her face and putting her muzzle under the pregnant wolf’s chin. The nurse-wolf is inspecting her as if to say; look up so I can check your eyes. And how have you been holding up? In the meantime Christopher nods once in awhile in the Alpha’s direction, and then says something that sounds like deep incomprehensible mumbling. As this meeting happens on the sidelines, the real show is going on in front of them, where five other members of the pack wrestle and play. The intricate dance is a jumbled mess of teeth and fur, the only clue to its friendly nature are the tails wagging happily in the air.
The sight of the pack is breathtaking; they are the epitome of grievous beauty. I’ve never seen a human standing among them like this. Usually, when I work with the biologists, we have to tranquilize them so that we can check their health stats and chip them. We would never assume that approaching them like this was a good idea.
I remember asking Christopher why he named Ursa that, instead of the name the biologist gave her. He told me when he asked her what her name was; she showed him a picture of the constellation Ursa Major. I thought he was full of crap. The connection between the kid and the wolf was hard to ignore, but communicating … that was just impossible.
Now, watching him with the pack I understand, I finally understand … at some point Christopher stopped being solely human and became something more … something primal; he is wild.
I feel a pit form in my stomach as the comprehension filters into my head, “He’s not in danger from them … he’s as dangerous as them.”
This time my whispered words bring the attention I was hoping to avoid. The Alpha turns his head and focuses his hard, golden eyes on me standing on the outskirts of their meadow. Responding to the Alpha’s shift in attention, Christopher looks over his shoulder and shakes his head. He reaches down and says something to the wolf as he strokes the massive animal’s neck. I understand right away that he is soothing the creature, explaining that I am of no danger to the pack. Christopher then raises his hand open-faced toward me, warning me to stay where I am, and not to move.
As he walks over to me with Lune at his side, the pack closes rank around Ursa. They lick her coat, whine, and gently paw at her sides. Then the pack splits and lets the Alpha walk in closer to her. He puts his muzzle on top of hers and rubs the side of his face up to the top of her head. That gesture must be the signal to the rest of the pack that it is time to leave. As they move away, into the trees on the other side of the meadow, Ursa walks laboriously over to join Lune and Christopher, who are now standing right in front of me.
As I look into Christopher’s eyes, I feel dumbfounded … this friendship was never about me protecting him from the big bad world; he allowed this friendship in spite of his version of the big bad world.
I suddenly feel very foolish for seeing him as a kid; he understands more about the dangers around us than even the most experienced survivalist. He and I never had a conspiracy protecting Ursa. Christopher and nature have an agreement that humans aren’t supposed to understand. I suddenly feel very small and insignificant standing next to his relationship with the wolves. Bitterly, I have to laugh at my mistaken opinion that Christopher and Ursa should be performing as the starring acts at the local circus.
Christopher looks at me with a smirk growing on his face. He shakes his head and simply says as he walks past, “You give me too much credit. I really do think I’d be at home in a freak show.”
Silently I turn, and follow the self-proclaimed freak, and his sideshow animals, out of the forest and back to the cabin.
