“Hop back inside and stay warm, ma’am. We’ll take care of the rest,” said the pilot, and he and his co-pilot hoicked up two of the boxes each, one on top of the other, and trudged through the few inches of heavy powder left lying on the path to the shack.
She smelled the fire they’d set even before she walked in but, once inside, the stubborn mustiness of ingrained mildew from the half-century the former owner had been cloistered here hit her. She had changed the furnishings last year but still the mouldy odour clung. It would lift in a few hours, she knew that, once she’d aired the place or got accustomed to it; though which it was, she was never sure. It seemed self-defeating having a fire and simultaneously holding the door open, but it always seemed to work.
Before the two men left, Isabel ticked through her checklist, opening up the lockbox in the cabin to make sure all her “outside” gear was still there and in order—thermals, cap, face mask, gloves, parkas, overalls, snow shoes, cross-country skis, poles, boots, rug, sleeping bag and blankets. The stack of firewood she’d collected last time she was here was untouched and still dry, and the three fire extinguishers were still rating well in the green safety zone. She inserted the new batteries she’d brought in the lanterns and checked the drawer for the spare globes.
“No radio, ma’am?” asked the pilot.
“That’s the point… sanctuary. No radio, no TV. There’s not even any phone signal up here.”
BY mid-afternoon the next day, Isabel thought she had captured almost enough frames on Davey’s camera to keep him happy. She kidded herself she was following in the footsteps of Claude Monet’s famous painting series, Cathedral at Reims, by snapping her shack at various times of day from the same spot to reflect the varying shimmers, sparkles and moods. It wouldn’t be long before dusk’s fade to nightfall would drag her back outside to capture her stunning finale.
She’d sketched, too. Today, it was the unusually gnarled and twisted hemlock, the proudest in the stand not too far from the shack, and she had been pencilling it from three perspectives and in four lights, until around three when the wind blew up. At around 100 feet, to her, it was Roget’s Peak. What fascinated her most was not its height or the knots that made it an unappealing construction timber, but its rough scaly bark, in the past valued by the leather industry for its tannins. What she had been drawing was the maze of cracked, carved furrows crossing and recrossing the trunk on their journey upwards through its arrogant upsweeping foliage, speedways and rest stops for ants and other bugs in spring. To her, it was like her political career so far: heading everywhere, yet arriving nowhere. Inhaling its Christmas tree perfume wasn’t a good idea, rekindling her broken promise to Davey. As a sort of recompense, and she knew it was facile, she pulled out his camera from her pocket and took a few close-ups of the trunk. With the sun getting low, she packed up her sketching gear, and stripped some pine needles off a fallen branch.
When she was inside the shack, after rebuilding the fire, she connected the camera to her laptop, and as an afterthought tossed the hemlock leaves onto the flames. With her only companion the smoky tang and crackle, she opened up the trunk shot and continued to sketch it, until a distant wolf howled, startling her out of her solitude.
She put down her crayon.
Wolves. When she was buying the shack, she had been told there was a grey wolf reintroduction program up here, so she checked with the experts. According to them, there had never been a single documented attack on an adult by a healthy wild wolf in recent history. But that had never been a complete comfort to her. What if a wolf was unhealthy was the question she had asked to a blank stare.
She got up to latch the door.
54
THE NEXT EVENING, in his work cabin high above the small town of Manifold, Fish and Wildlife Service ranger Andy Goodman was fixing for a night out at Daisy’s Bar & Grill. He was a regular, always cracking his jokes, and when he was sober, they were sometimes funny. When he was off duty, humour and booze were his crutches. Andy knew he wasn’t the best-looking guy around; his wife had told him often enough, what with his big ears, his acne scars and the stubble he kept to hide them. She had complained so much, why she married him in the first place was a mystery to him, but at least, he thought, it would have a happy ending. She was about to be his ex.