Little Wolves - By Thomas Maltman Page 0,80
picked up the spatula and started scooping in the cement before it could dry. Minnehaha was going to be his largest statue yet, well over eight feet tall.
“Why do you miss it?”
“Nostalgia, I guess. It brought people together. It was an old story that people made sure to keep alive and pass on.” But even as Grizz spoke he knew it was more than that. The play was a direct line to his family’s past, his great-grandfather’s role in the hangings, an entire town craving redemption for what they’d done to Indians a hundred years before, dressing up in the costumes of the ones they had killed or driven away. He handed an extra spade to Lee, and they filled the base of the empty skeleton with concrete, Grizz smoothing and shaping the rough edges into a textured skin.
“Now comes the fun part. Before the concrete dries we got to put in cowrie shells and glass. Make her pretty. So when the sun shines people will see her from the road.”
“You going to put some clothes on her?”
Grizz had styled realistic clefts in the buttocks and given the giantess a massive bosom. “Nah. It’ll scandalize the little old ladies driving by on the road.”
Lee stepped back to study the statue taking shape, maybe trying to imagine. “Seth used to tell us about the naked woman they found here in the woods.”
Grizz sucked on his teeth at the mention of the woman, unsure how to respond. “Hypothermia. That was why she didn’t have any clothes on. If you’re freezing to death it feels like you’re burning up. When did Seth tell you all this?”
Lee was about to say more when the sound of snapping twigs made them turn. A young man in a russet rain slicker approached, his eyes grim and slitted. Kelan, Lee’s older brother. Lee dropped his spade into the wheelbarrow and lowered his head.
“You get on home,” his older brother told him.
“He was just helping me,” Grizz said, standing. “We have an arrangement.”
“Fuck your arrangement. Let’s go, Lee.”
“I want to stay,” Lee said. “It’s my choice.”
In answer, Kelan came forward and grabbed his little brother by the ear. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Mom thought you had fallen into one of the hog pits. She was worried sick.”
“Let him go,” Grizz said.
Lee struggled and kicked, and there were tears in his eyes, but when Kelan released him he bunched his hands into his coat pockets and started walking, not looking behind him.
“You stay away from my brother,” Kelan said, jabbing a finger in Grizz’s direction.
Grizz could have caught the finger in midair if he wanted and snapped it like a chicken bone.
The boy was walking away. The strange presence of both brothers on his land troubled him. You may have to live with not knowing, the pastor had said, but Grizz couldn’t leave it at that.
LOCK-IN
Lee Gunderson surprised Clara and Logan when he showed up for the Luther League’s fall festival lock-in. He had walked from his farm outside town and arrived without sleeping bag or change of clothes. He also didn’t have the required signed permission slip, so Logan tried to call his mother but was unable to reach her. It seemed cruel to send the boy back home, so they let him stay. The other children left a circle of space around him. Clara was there to keep order along with a couple of other adult volunteers. Logan had told her how he struggled working with young people, and the kids might be especially wild on All Hallow’s Eve. “Children and bees can smell fear,” he said.
“Try stronger deodorant.”
But she was here. She oversaw the apple bobbing and watched the older teens play hide-and-seek in the darkened sanctuary and basement, a few still finding shadowy recesses where they could make out. Only around sixteen youths from the Luther League came, most parents wanting to keep their children close to home this year. There had been talk of canceling all Halloween trick-or-treating because of the coyotes that had been seen roaming the night. No one knew how dangerous they were.
Around midnight, Logan put in a Betamax tape of The Goonies for the boys to watch while they fell asleep, and Clara took the girls next door to the parsonage. The girls unrolled sleeping bags on the living room floor and passed the hour telling ghost stories about the woman in the woods. She had long claws they said, her hair a ragged nest, and she