Hiram chuckled at the term. “How big?”
“Golf ball.”
“I noticed it a couple of weeks ago. It’s an umbilical hernia. I decided to leave it alone. It was about the size of a gumball then.”
“Well, it’s bigger now.”
“I’ll fix him up tomorrow. It’s going to be a slow day. Yep, I’ll just cut the ol’ boy open and fix him right up.”
Carolyn left the room. Hiram listened as she started to get dinner together in the kitchen. He went to help, the way he helped every night. The accounting firm where Carolyn once worked had folded and she hadn’t found a new job. It had been two years and she’d pretty much resigned herself to not finding anything, so she had stopped looking. Hiram didn’t care. They had enough money. They didn’t do much traveling. But he hated her periodic complaining about being a housewife. He would respond by saying that he didn’t think of her as a housewife, but rather a full-time gardener/painter/wrangler/everything else. He’d point out how much money she was saving them by doing what someone else would charge a bundle to do. But she still complained while doing nothing about it. He walked to the kitchen cupboard for the dishes.
“I was over at the Stoval place today,” Hiram said. “Did you know that Mr. Stoval just up and left?”
“Really?”
“Mrs. Stoval told me. I guess she doesn’t have many people to talk to, being out there all by herself.”
“She was lucky you were there, wasn’t she?”
Hiram set the plates on the table and looked at Carolyn. “Anyway, I mentioned that we might have her over for dinner.”
“How nice.”
“What is it with you? If I were talking about Mitch Greeley or old Mrs. Jett, you wouldn’t sound like this.”
Without looking away from the pasta on the stove, Carolyn said, “I don’t guess we’d be having the same conversation about them.”
“We don’t have to invite her.”
Carolyn turned off the flame under the pasta, then drained off the water in the sink before turning to Hiram. “I’m sorry. I’m tightly wound today. I think I’m feeling cooped up or something.”
“Want to go out? Drive to town and take in a movie?”
Carolyn shook her head.
“What about an early morning walk up to the falls?”
Carolyn smiled in weak agreement.
An hour after dinner someone rang the bell. Hiram and Carolyn were reading in the den. Hiram was just beginning to nod off; the journal was resting on his lap. Carolyn looked at him as if to say, who could that be? and didn’t move. Hiram got up and went to the door, opened it, and found Lewis Fife, all three hundred pounds of him standing on the porch.
“Well, they did it,” Lewis Fife said quickly. He was out of breath, panting.
“You didn’t walk over here, did you?” Hiram asked.
“Are you crazy? Of course not. I drove, but I took your steps two at a time,” Lewis Fife said.
“There’s only four steps, Lewis.”
“Give me a break, man. I weigh a ton. You try hauling this shit around.” He grabbed his stomach and showed it to Hiram. “Are you going to let me in?”
Hiram stepped aside and called back to Carolyn as the big man entered. “It’s Lewis.”
Carolyn came and stood in the doorway to the den. “Good evening, Lewis,” she said.
“Ma’am,” Lewis said and tipped a hat he wasn’t wearing. “Well, they’ve done it,” he said again.
“Done what?” Hiram asked.
“They killed that cat. Trevis Wilcox and his boy shot him up in Moss Canyon and just now dragged him down. They’re down in the village at the grocery-store parking lot. I thought you ought to see it.”
“Why?”
“Christ, man, you’re the vet around here. Not that you can help the beast now, but take a look at it and tell us if you think it’s the right cat.”
“The right cat? I never saw it.”
Lewis Fife bit his lip and said slowly, “Well, the Newton kid said the cat he saw was a lot bigger and, you know, when you’re scared everything looks bigger, but still.”
“Okay, I’ll come down.” Hiram turned to Carolyn. “Do you want to come with me?”
“I don’t need to see a dead lion. I don’t think you need to see it either.”
“Probably not, but I’m going anyway.” Hiram looked at Carolyn’s face. She disapproved, but he could see that she was not up to an argument.
“Please don’t get all upset.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Lewis Fife said.
• • •
Hiram and his father searched all day, went home, and then returned to the woods the following morning. Hiram watched his father’s face as they rode, his chin and cheeks darkened by a thick stubble. He didn’t much like his father, not because he was a bad man, not because he was mean, but because he never seemed to want more for himself, never opened books, and seemed afraid when Hiram did.
“So when we find him, Hiram, I’m going to let you have him,” his father said.
“I don’t want him, Dad.” Hiram sucked in a deep breath. “You know, Dad, there’s probably not ten wolves left in these parts. We shouldn’t be killing them.”
“You’re gonna shoot him, all right. It’ll be kind of a rite of passage for you.”
Hiram didn’t say anything, but a chill ran through him and he felt like crying.
From up high they could look down to the beaver pond. There were no animals around and Hiram got a bad feeling that the wolf was near. They rode down the slope slowly. Hiram’s father carefully pulled his rifle from its scabbard.
And there it was. The wolf was trotting along the near side of the pond, moving upstream. His coat was dark gray and he was carrying his bushy tail high. It was a big wolf. Hiram guessed that the animal weighed over a hundred pounds. It was beautiful, moving effortlessly. He loved the wolf. And when he looked at the smile on his father’s face he was filled with hate. He was embarrassed by the hatred, afraid of it, sickened by it, feeling lost because of it.
“Come on, boy,” Hiram’s father said.
Hiram followed reluctantly. They rode down across the meadow and past the pond and then circled wide away from the creek and back to it. The wolf was standing in a thicket, just thirty yards away. Hiram could see his eyes, the rounded tops of his ears.
“He’s all yours, boy,” Hiram’s father said.
“I can’t do it,” Hiram said.
“Shoot him,” the man commanded. “Shoot him or you ain’t no son of mine.”
Hiram looked at his father’s unyielding eyes.
“Shoot him.”
Hiram raised the Weatherby and lined up a shot. The wolf didn’t move; his eyes were as unyielding as his father’s. He squeezed off the round and watched as the startled animal had only enough time to change the expression in his eyes. The wolf looked at Hiram and asked why, then fell over dead as the bullet caught him in the chest with a dull thump. A shockingly small amount of red showed through the fur.
Hiram turned to his still-smiling father and said, “I hate you.”
“Fine shooting.”
“You didn’t hear me,” Hiram said. “I hate you.” He stared at his father until the man looked away. Hiram turned his horse and stepped off in the direction of the pond.
“You had to do it, Hiram. That wolf was threatening our welfare, your family,” the man called after. Then, more to himself, he said, “He was killing our stock. He had to be done away with.”
Hiram rode home alone, feeling scared of what his father would do when he arrived, feeling scared by what the lost spirit of the wolf was going to do to him. Tears began to slide down his face and he wished that his father could see them.
As he rode down the steep ridge above his family’s home Hiram saw them in the pasture. Six dogs were chasing a small ewe, sliding on the wet grass as she made her sharp turns. Hiram was filled with such anger that he couldn’t breathe, his hands mindlessly raised the rifle, and he found himself drawing a bead on one dog and then another. He fired and missed badly, but the dogs went running away. He looked up the ridge and saw his father staring down at the dogs, staring down at him. Hiram gave his horse a kick and trotted home.