“So I heard.”
“Speaking of wolves, I mean. You know how they got there?”
Isle Royale was an island in the middle of Lake Superior. The whole island had been protected as a national park. “They crossed the ice,” I said. “How else they gonna get out there? Take the ferry?”
“Yeah, you’re funny,” she said. “What I mean is, do you know why they got there? Why they went all the way across the ice to get to the island?”
“They’re hunters,” I said. “There’s only one reason they’d go there.”
“Yeah, the moose,” she said. “The moose crossed the ice first. And then the wolves came looking for them.”
“Naturally.”
“So imagine you’re one of those moose. You think you’ve finally found a safe place, with no wolves around. And then one day…”
I kept driving.
“The wolves will always find you, Alex. Remember that.”
“I’ll remember,” I said.
“God, I can’t believe I’m back here.” She slid into a fake yooper accent. “I’m in da Yoo Pee, ay?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I hate this place so much, Alex. I can’t even tell you how much.”
“This is it,” I said. I took the left through the trees. The snow had all but hidden my access road again, I was sure I’d have to plow it again the next morning.
“You live here all year?”
“Sure, why not?” We passed Vinnie’s place first. “That’s where Vinnie LeBlanc lives,” I said. “The guy who recognized you.” There was no car in his driveway. It looked like there hadn’t been a car there all day. “I haven’t even seen him around since last night. Since the hockey game, I mean. I wonder where he is. He should meet you.”
“Why’s that?” she said. “So we can exchange the secret Indian handshake?”
“He’d want to meet you,” I said. “That’s all. I can’t imagine where he is.”
“Probably drunk somewhere,” she said.
“Vinnie doesn’t drink,” I said. It came out sharper than I expected. “I mean, you can’t say something like that if you don’t know the man. Even if you are an Indian yourself.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Here’s my cabin,” I said as we passed it. “The empty one is just up the road here.”
I parked next to the cabin. When I turned the headlights off, the night reclaimed us. We sat there in the total darkness.
“I’ll turn these lights back on until we get inside,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Leave them off. I forgot how dark it gets up here. It’s one of the only things I like about this place.”
“Too bad that full moon isn’t out tonight,” I said.
“That’s one of my first memories,” she said. “Looking out a window and seeing the snow glowing in the moonlight.” She didn’t say anything for a long moment. The silence was as complete as the darkness. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You don’t want to hear all this. I start talking about the strangest things when I’m tired.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “But you’re gonna get cold soon.”
We made our way through the snow to the front door. She shifted the bag on her shoulder.
“I wish you’d let me carry that,” I said. It was all I could do to keep myself from wrestling it away from her.
“No thanks, Sir Galahad.”
I unlocked the door and let her into the place, flipping on the lights. It was the second cabin my father had built. He thought the first one looked a little too rough and dark on the inside, so he used unstained white pine for the interior walls. It made the place look a lot bigger than it was.
“Wow,” she said. “This is nice.” There were two sets of bunk beds on opposite walls. She put her bag down on one of the lower bunks and climbed halfway up the ladder into the loft. “This place sleeps, what, about eight people?”
“Six is comfortable,” I said. “Eight if everybody likes each other.” I started the woodstove. I had already had paper and logs in there, figuring I’d have paying guests from downstate that night. “I’ll get this fire going. There’s electricity for the lights and the water, but this is the only heat. There’s no phone. You can use mine in the morning if you want.”
“No problem.” She poked her head into the bathroom. “You’ve really got hot water in here?”
“Eventually,” I said. “It’ll take a few minutes to get going. I have to go turn the water on.”
I went back outside and around to the back of the cabin. There was a little door that opened up to the crawlspace. All I had to do was shimmy my way under the cabin, wondering what sort of creatures were down there this time. I’ve seen plenty of mice under the cabins, along with a few bats, a raccoon, a possum. It’s not my favorite thing to do, but if I don’t keep the water turned off when the cabin’s empty, it freezes in the pipes.
When I turned the water on, I backed my way out the door, brushed myself off, and went back inside. I tried not to drip snow all over the place, because the puddles dry on the white pine floor and it looks like hell. It was the only mistake my father ever made when he built these cabins.
She was leaning against the sink, her coat unzipped. She didn’t look ready to get completely comfortable yet. I couldn’t blame her. No matter how much she said she trusted me, it must have felt a little strange to be here.
“You got all dirty,” she said. She was holding something in her hand. It was round and black. It looked like…
“Is that a hockey puck?” I said.
“Yeah, here,” she said. She tossed it to me.
I caught it and looked at it. There was a white circle on one side, and on it a red wheel with a wing coming off it. It was the Detroit Red Wings logo. Beneath the logo there was an autograph. Gordie Howe.
“Is this real?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Ever see him play?”
“Sure, at the old Olympia Stadium.”
“Lonnie says he was better than Gretzky.”
“He’s right,” I said.
“You can keep it,” she said.
“I can’t keep this,” I said. “It’s probably worth a lot of money.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s all I can give you right now for helping me.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“It’s Lonnie’s,” she said. “It was Lonnie’s. The last thing I did before I left, in fact I was out the door already, then I came back in and took that stupid hockey puck. God, he wouldn’t even let me take it out of the little plastic case. Think how mad he’s gonna be now.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you take it?”
“To hurt him,” she said. She folded her arms across her chest. “It’s the only thing I could think of. Pretty lame, isn’t it?”
“Here,” I said. I put the puck on the table. “You should keep it.”
She stared at it on the table and let out a long, tired breath.
“Is he that bad?” I said. I thought I had had this guy pegged pretty well when I met him, the kind of guy who doesn’t want to do anything else but play his sport, and can’t deal with the fact that he’s not quite good enough. I saw it all the time in baseball, guys who got cut and then spent the rest of their lives taking it out on the rest of the world. There’s one on the end of every bar in every town in America. But the way her voice sounded when she said she wanted to hurt him, maybe there was something else. Something a lot worse. “I know it’s none of my business,” I said.
“You know those wolves I was talking about?”
“Well, yeah, I kinda figured you weren’t talking about real wolves and real moose.”
“Let’s just say Lonnie’s the first wolf,” she said. “Not the worst wolf, just the first.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You shoot one wolf, there’s more behind him. Bigger wolves. With bigger teeth.”
I let that one go. I figured she was just talking about the rest of his hockey team. I should have asked her about it. But I didn’t.
The woodstove started to heat the place up a little bit. She felt comfortable enough to take off her coat and sit down at the table. She told me about growing up as an Ojibwa, getting out of the U.P. as soon as she could, going downstate for college, dropping out, working a lot of jobs. No matter how bad it got, she never thought of coming back up here. Then she met Lonnie. She didn’t tell me much more about him. She didn’t tell me what he had done to her, or why he had brought her back up here.