He sliced off another portion of lynx and laid it on Slone’s plate.
“What’d your father mean, you were unnatural? What’s unnatural about you, boy? You look wholesome enough to me.”
“My father is dead. I am alive.”
“Me too. My ancestors on the Yukon worshipped the wolf as a god, you know.”
“Your ancestors are white like mine.”
“On the outside, that’s true.”
“It’s an odd people who will butcher their god.”
“Kill your god and you become your god. For survival, not sport, of course. Look at where you are.”
“I see sport here.”
“I trade them pelts with Hank. He can sell them at the city, mostly marten and lynx he wants. They fetch a good price for him, more than wolverine or wolf. He trades me provisions, brings whatever I might need for the season. That’s called a living, not a sport, I’d say.”
“Tell me where she is.”
“It’s not for me to tell. I’ll feed and clothe a traveler but I don’t meddle. Meddle is for others. There’s no meddle here. The animals and weather have their rules and I obey those.”
They finished their meal without words. The hunter pressed tobacco into a pipe and passed it to Slone. From a flagon he poured moonshine the color and scent of gasoline. When Slone drank from it the liquid hollowed his sternum, sprawled in flame across his stomach. They smoked in quiet. Slone looked to the large hide hanging behind him, a shape and texture and tint he’d never seen before, neither bear nor moose nor caribou. He asked about its origin.
The hunter grinned, flecks of meat packed between his teeth. “Do you like a story, traveler?”
“I like the truth.”
“The truth. Every story is the truth,” and he laughed the smoke loose from his nose. “Okay. I’ll tell you. It was ’85 when I shot it. Early winter just before freeze-up. About a mile west of here, coming down a ridge into a ravine. Everything dusted with snow but not that hard cold of January yet. The ravine still running. It looked like a brown bear from the crest of the ridge. They’ll stand on their hind legs, you know, to reach up a tree. And I saw it that way, standing. But then the path dipped down and around and when I had a clear view again, maybe eight minutes later, it was still standing. No brown bear stands that long. And through the glasses I saw it, its face gorilla, but not. A sagittal crest like one of them Neanderthals in the National Geographic pictures. Overall, I’d say, it was six hundred pounds easy but with the body shape of a human. You can see from that skin there behind you it was over seven feet in height.”
Slone turned to look, then handed the pipe back to the hunter.
“But it was the eyes that got me. They were human eyes. Larger, of course, but human in every way. Its gaze, I mean. It was aware, self-aware. It was the Kushtaka. I heard about it all through my youth and there it was, clear as the day around me. It had a young one with it. With her, it was a female, I could see the teats. Young one about five feet, less hairy. Its face like any child’s you’d see. A little monkey nose. But already muscular. Round with muscles, and it just a little thing. They were at the water drinking and it seemed she was teaching the young one something. About fish, I thought. And then pointing up into the tree at birds but I couldn’t see what kind. The son of a bitch had speech. The damnedest thing.”
He raised the pipe, took the smoke down deep into himself.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime, as you can guess. I was a good eighty feet away but on my belly in thin snow and camouflaged real good in wolf down. Any wind there was in that ravine was against me, so they couldn’t smell a thing. I had a .308 Winchester then, you know, the finest rifle ever made. It took that young one’s head half off. The mother saw it before she heard it. Then she howled. Some sound, I have to tell you. Not like a wolf but a man’s howl. It was the damnedest thing: half in the water, she tried to hold the young one’s head together, where it was split, as if she could undo what been done. Of course she couldn’t. And she just howled, looking up and around like it was lightning that did it. I dropped her right there, with the young one in her arms, right through the heart. You can’t get a better shot than that.”
He paused to finger more tobacco from a pouch.
“I had a sled with me on the ridge top but I couldn’t fit them both on it. I mean, I couldn’t tote all that weight, heavy bastards. I tried going back that night for the young one but the wolves had their dinner of it. And I ate all winter of the mother. A pork taste, I’d say, not like moose or bear. Not gamy like wolf. The strength that meat gave me, the spirit of the Kushtaka in me… I can’t explain it. I had orgasms just standing here, not stroking myself, nothing like that at all. Just standing. I saved the eyes too, those amazing eyes. They’re around here somewhere.”
Slone drank again from the mug and they finished the last of the tobacco. Soon he rose and went slowly over to Medora’s boots. He squatted and brought one to his face and inhaled the sweat-strong fur.
“You’re welcome to the woman’s boots. They’re yours, really. I don’t meddle.”
Slone returned the boot and stood. On a low table there among bullets and tools was the key to Medora’s truck fastened to a key ring Bailey had made at schooclass="underline" a smiley-faced heart of fired clay painted over in scarlet gloss. Slone held up the key, dangled it in the jumping firelight for the hunter to see.
“Yes. I traded her trucks. She took my Ford. I got the better of the deal, I’d say, for that Chevy. But the Ford is a damn good truck too. She didn’t want her vehicle spotted on roads, I’m guessing. I don’t like to meddle. Told her just take mine, I’d trade her, an even swap. Plus the boots I made her.”
Slone removed the key ring, felt its polished flat weight in his palm, ran a thumb over its surface, then slid it down into a pocket. He said nothing.
Inching along the ribbed wall of the cave, he examined the wolf masks in museum display, each one crafted to look hellish and rabid.
“You’re welcome to any of them masks there. Have your pick of them. It’s not my business but I can see you need to let your wolf out a little. When’s the last time you showed the monster in you, boy?”
Slone chose the black mask with elongated snout and overlarge fangs. With the leather straps he fastened it to his face through his yellow wreath of hair.
The hunter was bent now over the stove, adding a wedge of wood, and when he turned he seemed ready to say something. But Slone was in the mask with a knife gripped by the blade, handle aimed at the hunter.
They stood that way regarding one another, their fire-thrown shadows towering about the cave. Seconds later the blade pierced the hunter’s chest to the handle, just above the aorta. Midway between them in the air the blade had caught the quick glint of firelight. In a gasp the hunter looked at the handle stuck to his chest, then at the upright animal across the cave. It seemed he wanted to ask yet another question he’d just lost the language for.
He needed both hands to yank out the blade. The coin-slot wound was black and withholding blood. He stood inspecting the knife almost in admiration of its design and the blood began seeping from the slot. Still gasping, he glanced at the monster in the mask. He stepped to the grizzly skin and collapsed on his back, waiting for what more would come.
Then Slone was above him, handgun aimed at the hunter’s hairline, his own breath wet within the wolf face. Through the eyeholes of the mask he could see the hunter blinking and breathing, asthmatic, his lips trying to speak to whatever god he claimed for his own. Slone put the bullet in the hunter’s forehead and watched the hole ooze a blackish blood.