be freed in the blackness to stumble towards the light never knowing the identity of the hulking hooded giants who had avenged them. And the sure-footed hunters were gone, vaulting over the rooftops once more, their paws and garments stained with blood, their mouths smeared with it, their stomachs full.
They dozed like a litter, piled on one another in the hold of the plane. Somewhere over the Pacific they dropped their bloody garments into the sea, and emerged into the chill windy night of Mendocino County in the fresh rags they,d taken for their return - still bleary-eyed, glutted, and at peace, or so it seemed, silent on the short ride to Nideck Point as the rain, the familiar, relentless California rain, beat upon the windshield.
"Now that was hunting!" said Stuart, staggering in a half sleep towards the back door. And throwing back his head he let out a wolfen howl that echoed off the stone walls of the house, the others dissolving into soft laughter.
"Soon," said Margon, "we hunt the jungles of Colombia."
Reuben dreamed, as he dragged his exhausted limbs up the stairs, that Laura would be there waiting for him, but she was not. Only her fragrance was there in the soft down comforter and pillows. He took one of her flannel nightgowns from the closet, and held it in his arms, resolving to dream of her.
Hours later, he awoke to the miracle of the blue sky over the Pacific and the miracle of the dark blue water glittering and dancing under the sun.
Showering and dressing quickly, he went out to walk in the bright and glorious light, marveling at the common spectacle of snow-white clouds moving beyond the gables of the house which rose above him as severe and strong as battlements.
One had to live on this bleak and chilly coast to understand the full miracle of a clear day when the marine mists were simply gone as if their wintry reign had finally ended.
It seemed a lifetime ago that he had come to this very terrace with Marchent Nideck, and he had looked up at this house and asked of it that it give him the darkness, the depth, he so needed. Be the minor-key music in my life, he had said to it, and he had felt certain the house answered him, promising revelations of which he could not dream.
He walked across the windswept flags, straight into the brisk and fresh ocean wind, until he stood at the old broken balustrade that separated the terrace from the edge of the cliff, and that narrow perilous path that led down to the ribbon of beach below with its forlorn rocks and bleached driftwood.
The sound of the surf swallowed him whole. He felt weightless, and as if the wind would support him if he let himself go, with arms out towards the sky.
To the right of him rose the dark green tree-shrouded bluffs that sheltered the redwood forest. And to the south the twisted Monterey cypress and scrub oak that the wind had turned into tortured sculpture.
A tragic happiness took hold of him, a deep recognition that he loved what he was, loved it, loved the mad hunt in the filthy corridors of the brothel in Juarez, loved the mad sprinting through the clean forest north, loved the feel of the victim in his teeth, or the beast struggling so desperately and vainly to get away from him.
But there was a deep awareness in him that this was only the beginning. He felt young, powerful, and safe from a reckoning. He felt he had time to discover how and why he was wrong, and why he must change or give up the Wolf Gift that had extinguished so many other passions in him.
Heaven and hell wait for the young. Heaven and hell hover beyond the ocean before us and the sky spreading above us.
So the sun shines in the Garden of Pain. In the Garden of Discovery.
He saw the face of his brother on Thanksgiving night, saw Jim,s sad weary eyes, and his heart broke, as if his brother were more important than God himself, or God himself was speaking through Jim as he might speak through anyone put in our inevitable or accidental path, anyone who threatened to call us back to ourselves, who looked at us with eyes that reflected a heart as broken as our own, as fragile, as disappointed.
The wind was icing him now all over. His ears were cold and the fingers with which he covered his face were so cold he could scarce move them. And yet it felt so good, so lovely, lovely as it felt to feel nothing like this at all when the wolf garb protected him.
He turned and looked back again at the house, at the high ivy-covered walls, and the smoke from the chimneys winding skyward - to be snatched by the wind, to be dissolved into invisibility.
Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lost - a heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.
He did lean into the wind; he did let it hold him there, and keep him from falling into space, keep him from tumbling down over the balustrade and cliff, down and down and down towards the rocky surf.
He took a deep breath, and the tears came into his eyes, and he felt them blasted off his cheeks by this same wind that was supporting him.
"Lord, forgive me my blasphemous soul," he whispered, his voice breaking. "But I thank You with all my heart for the gift of life, for all the blessings You have rained down upon me, for the miracle of life in all its forms - and Lord, I thank You for the Wolf Gift!"
The End
August 2011
Palm Desert, California