Before leaving, he clipped the alert beeper onto his belt as he checked his wolf-scan. The GPS-based, radio-collar system showed all his seven wolves’ heartbeats humming along, including that of Gretel, the alpha female. Sure, Gretel’s heart rate was faster than the others, up at 125 beats per minute compared to Zane’s at 84 bpm, but 125 wasn’t out of the norm for an afternoon roam, and neither was 84. Zane, the wily old Casanova wolf, was probably letting the females do the hunting to save his energy for better things. A man after my own heart, Andy thought.
Andy set the alert to beep him if any of their heart rates hit 200 bpm or if any changed by more than 30 percent over a 15-minute period. Experience taught him that at even around 160 bpm it could be hackles up, snarls, teeth-bared, real back-off stuff, but not too big a deal. But at 250, it’d be a chase or an attack and Andy liked to monitor those, especially after learning Gretel was pregnant. The screen mapping her routes showed a significant shift in her habits; she was avoiding the edges of the pack’s territory so he guessed she was looking to establish her den, even though it was a bit early in the season up here for mating. He had regaled everyone at Daisy’s with the news that day, and the next, as proud as a husband who’d just learnt his own wife was pregnant… though if that lying, scheming bitch was, Andy thought, it wouldn’t have been his.
He loved his canis lupus grey wolves for what they were, and for what they did. And for never accusing him of being ugly, or stupid. With their central role in maintaining a balance in nature, wolves were an “apex” predator. The remaining elk and deer herds around these parts got to profit from the wolves culling out their weakest, but being mostly killers of foraging herbivores, the wolves also boosted the survival of the region’s delicate alpine flora, which in turn improved the perching and feeding prospects for birds and butterflies. Andy also saw his wolves as the mountain’s providores. When they did kill an elk—mostly a sick calf or an old female—what they left of the bloody carcass would be a feast for a horde of scavengers: black bears, ravens, coyotes, golden eagles. Even the beetles and squirming maggots would be food for the regenerating flocks of magpies, warblers and nuthatches.
Andy loved his mountain, and he loved his wolves, and his bitch of a wife could simply go and fuck herself.
55
ISABEL GLANCED AT the grey puffballs flitting across the sky and saw they were turning just the slightest pink. With some regret, she thought, tonight’s would be her last sunset this trip, with the chopper due the following lunchtime, a day-and-a-half before the State of the Union Address. It gave her plenty of time to get organised since it would be flying her straight to Washington DC, where Ed and Davey would be joining her.
Leaning down to place her sketchpad on the worn porch boards by her side, she rubbed her hands above the brazier at her feet, hoping the breeze would stay weak so she could stay outside and take more shots. Last night, even from inside through the window, the sunset had been spectacular drawing her back outside for its neon yellows and ochres slowly spraying across the sky, turning into oranges and reds, and eventually fading into deep, long pinks and satiny purples. The longer she’d looked at it, the more it sparked memories of George’s favourite shirt back from when she first arrived at Half Moon Bay, the one he only wore on his and Janis Joplin’s birthdays, claiming the singer had given it to him at Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love in 1967. She smiled, wondering if George still had the shirt somewhere and remembering how, whenever he told his Joplin story, Annette had always rolled her eyes and busied herself.
Checking the small screen on the back of Davey’s camera, she noticed its disk was nearly full. She wondered why, since the guy in the store had guaranteed a capacity of a thousand shots and she had to be hundreds short of that.
She was right. The folder called PIX contained 202 shots, which from the thumbnails seemed mostly hers, and the other folder, labelled VID, only listed three. Videos, she guessed. Digital cameras could do that, she recalled, but thought they must be mammoth video clips. But she hadn’t taken any herself, at least not intentionally, and started wondering if it was one of those annoying instances of accidentally tapping the ‘on’ button, with the video camera rolling and rolling and making a mind-numbing clip of the insides of her pocket, or something equally inane.
She sipped her Virgin Mary, its thick tang of tomato juice rolling over her tongue just giving it enough coating to take the big smack of spice and pepper she liked to lace it with. The breeze puffed an icy breath over her face before it moved on, tinkling the branches of fir overhanging just a few feet away from the porch.