Little Wolves - By Thomas Maltman Page 0,84
itself. The statues were leering figures under the November sky, their pearly skins glittering as they watched, through bottle-green eyes of glass, Clara walk among them. A forest of stone monsters, the foes of Hiawatha. She imagined Seth as a boy playing among them, a toy bow flinging arrows at the frozen figures.
The farmhouse below stood on a small rise overlooking the yard. Though the white paint of the boards peeled away, betraying its age, the limestone foundation looked sturdy, except for a warping, wraparound porch.
Skeletons of abandoned farm equipment were tucked back in the grove, an old H tractor up on blocks, a rusting cattle trailer beside an open corn bin that had willow trees growing inside it. The barn had the same matching limestone foundation as the house. Cattle milled uneasily in their pens, wading through deep pools of manure that also caked their hides and hung in dirty green strings from their faces. They pressed close to a wire fence as she approached, and one, shorter than the rest, bellowed, his primal challenge ringing through the empty yard.
The house faced east to take in the mountain and rising sun. The mountain. Clara had caught glimpses of it from the road, but now with fall stripping the leaves from the trees it rose before her, the curved slope like the gray back of some immense sleeping animal. She saw the form of a giant in the shape, the small hills beside it his shoulders, the rounded head of waving grasses. As mountains went, it was smaller than she’d imagined it, no more than three hundred feet by her estimate, but it was like nothing else around it. A sacred place, her father promised, with a healing limestone spring that spilled down to join the river. Some large bird, an eagle or a red-tailed hawk, circled the summit, riding a thermal in a gyre. The kid was buried up there. It was where the coyotes denned, the place of her father’s stories. I’ve told you all you need to know, he’d promised her when they last spoke. Here was the mountain, and Clara had found her home, though she could not climb it today, with the smell of snow in the air, with all that was happening in this place. Her earlier sense of worry had not evaporated. She faced the silent house, fingering the coyote’s claws in her pocket, for courage or luck.
“Hello,” she called out, knowing before she even stepped up to knock on the door that no one was there. The walk had done her good, woke up her sluggish mind. In the cold, she felt her blood beating and the snug presence of the baby inside her. She sat on the porch to catch her breath just as Grizz Fallon walked out of the grove, lugging a bundle of wood, an ax slung over his shoulder.
He had not spotted her yet, and for a moment she thought of ducking around the porch and hurrying home. Instead, she waited as Grizz walked her way. She’d forgotten his size, broader in the shoulders than Seth, his long arms looped around the logs he carried, the knuckles thick and scarred from years of labor. He wore tan coveralls and a quilted flannel shirt, an orange hunting cap pulled low. “Mrs. Warren? What brings you here?”
INTO THE PIT
“It’s Clara,” she said. “Should I come another time?” She had her arms wrapped around herself. Grizz registered something familiar about her face, the sharpness of her features, those luminous brown eyes. She didn’t wear any makeup, didn’t need it. He felt he had known her from somewhere long before this.
He rested his ax against the porch and glanced toward the cattle. What had brought her here, walking all this way from town? It seemed the world wasn’t ready to leave him alone just yet. “I got chores to do, but I suppose I can spare a few minutes.” He carried the wood up the steps, shouldered open the front door, and nodded to the entryway. “It’s a little messy. I haven’t had many guests.”
She followed him in. The radio he’d left on spread murmuring voices through the house, Waylon Jennings. Grizz set his bundle of wood down on the bench, shrugged out of his flannel, and then unlaced his boots before gesturing toward the living room. “You can wait there. I’m going to get a fire going and then I’ll heat us some coffee. You drink coffee, right?”
“Sure. I won’t be