Beth’s coffee-soaked jeans clung to her leg. She tried unsuccessfully to pull the fabric away.
“He’s a bold one,” Wally said. “Sat and watched you as closely as I was watching it. Right there.” He pointed to the trailer’s rear tire.
“So close? And Herriot didn’t go bonkers?”
“You know your dog better than I do.”
Beth began to believe that she was dreaming. That instead of antelopes climbing up wolves, her mind had started constructing angels out of men she knew.
“How did you know I call him Mercy?” she asked him.
Wally laughed, and a small flock of birds took flight from the thicket, chattering. The sounds were as pleasant as the lowing cows, all of nature calling to each other in a harmonious way that seemed both beautiful and strange.
He said, “Because that’s the wolf’s name. What else would you call him?”
I will show you mercy, the wolf had said to her as she lay next to Joe’s broken body. And again when it led her to the dying pronghorn. As if wolves could speak.
Beth stared at Wally and couldn’t stop herself from smiling too. Did he also have a bond with the animal? The possibility of being able to talk with someone, even if only in a dream, about her experience filled her with anticipation.
“So you know my next question,” she said, leaning forward.
“You want to ask how I know its name.”
She nodded.
“I know it the same way I know yours,” he said. “Bethesda.”
“I see. So the real reason you know all these things is because this conversation isn’t real, and all of it’s happening inside my mind.”
“I know names because the One who does the naming happens to like me. He lets me in on it once in a while.”
“And who would that be?”
Beth waited while he stared into the fire and sipped from his own cup. She noticed a small trowel standing upright in the dirt next to his hip and an old tin coffee can, the kind with a plastic lid. Perhaps he had used it to clear out the cold ashes when he rebuilt her fire.
“Well,” she prodded. “Who named the wolf ?”
“The same One who names all things, including you.”
“My parents named me.”
“Sometimes parents pick the right name. Other times the One has to work around their personal tastes.”
The fire crackled. “That is very creepy one-with-the-mother-earth talk!”
His pleasant expression took on a shadow of disapproval. “Is it? I didn’t say anything like that. Your ears are prejudicial.”
“Prejudicial how?”
“You see that I have close ties to the original people of the valley, and you assume that because of my heritage I can’t serve the same God you serve.”
Embarrassment returned Beth’s attention to her burnt leg. “Then tell me again what you said. Please.”
He spoke slowly. “I said that the One who names all things named both you and the wolf who follows you.”
“You are saying that I belong to God. And the wolf does too.”
“Yes.”
“And that my parents got my name right.”
“Yes.”
She found this funny. She laughed a little bit.
“Did your parents get your name right?”
“No. They called me Shrieking Eagle.”
Beth bit down on her smile and said kindly, “Well, I can see that you don’t really seem like the shrieking type, Wally.”
She had never encountered an angel, but no other idea could explain this man. The pain in the skin of her thigh was all too real for a dream.
“People change as they grow. They grow into their true names. Not everyone has the privilege of understanding this.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“Consider your wolf. Most people see wolf. They think cattle-killer, or endangered species, or maybe nice photograph. But you see Mercy. It changes the way you think. His name was made known to you because your eyes were clear when you looked at him.”
“The first time I met him,” Beth said, “I thought I heard him . . . tell me something. He said, ‘I will show you mercy.’ ”
“And did he?”
“If you mean did he restrain himself from killing me, yes.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, but it’s a start.”
Beth sighed. “What did you mean?”
“This wolf is going to show you mercy.”
“But he already—You mean he’s going to again? Later? When?”
“I don’t know.”
In her mind, Beth tried to assemble the strange pieces of her wolf encounters into a meaningful whole. “He showed me . . . ,” she began, then tried to concentrate on each event. “He showed me a dying antelope,” she said. “And