25
Beth woke as if an alarm had pulled her out of a deep sleep. One minute she was in a dreamless state, and the next she was aware that a man was watching her. A very tall man who was not Ash Martin, the pool rider. The jolt pulled her straight up onto the seat of her pants and set Herriot into a brief frenzy of barking.
“Where’s Ash?” She asked this before she was fully upright. There was a low campfire between Beth and the stranger, who answered her question by nodding toward the stainless trailer set up behind them. Ash had courteously offered it to her the night before; she had opted to stay under the stars. Irrationally, she thought the wide-open space would be the wiser choice, because out here there was nothing to separate her from Mercy, though she hadn’t seen the wolf since yesterday’s cougar incident.
The sun had yet to rise above the surrounding ranges. Herriot stood on alert, ears and tail erect, beside Beth. But the dog was looking toward the nearby thicket of spindly gambel oaks and didn’t seem at all bothered by their unknown company. Maybe man and dog had met while she slept.
Satisfied that the slender trees hid no threat, Herriot settled down beside her owner again.
“Sorry to startle you,” the man said.
“You didn’t.”
He smiled at her the way her father used to do, wise to her false claim but willing to let her keep her pride. Her heart connected the men so immediately that a knot formed in her throat, but their similarity was intangible. She tried to put her finger on it. This man didn’t look anything like her father. The stranger was slim and clean-shaven, brown-skinned, and his every limb was long. His fingers seemed almost skeletal, and his legs accounted for nearly two-thirds of his height. At odds with his lanky body, his face was almost perfectly round, as if boasting of his Native American ancestry. If he was from around here, it was the Southern Utes who populated most of this territory. His glistening black hair was pressed down close against his head, the effects of a hat plus days without a shampoo. A peace pipe hung from a leather strap around his neck.
The cows were active already in the dark, making their peaceful sounds of meandering, chewing, snorting, calling. Occasionally a calf lowed, looking for its mother, and got a swift response. When Beth was a girl, she had been in the habit of opening her bedroom window during the spring months between calving season and the drive to the mountains, just to hear these comforting noises.
The man dropped a small pine log on the fire. It sizzled with morning dew.
“I thought Ash was alone,” she said.
“He needs his sleep. Name’s Wally.”
This Wally looked no more like her forgetful friend at the Blazing B than he looked like her father. It was tempting to read something into the coincidence, but what was so special about sharing a name with another man? She could only speculate how many women around the world were named Beth.
“I’m Beth. You come up to spell Ash now and then?”
Wally poured coffee from a pot into a tin cup, then stood and leaned over the warm flames, stretching out to hand it to her. She accepted this gesture as an affirmative answer to her question, then wondered why she had.
“I expected that to burn out,” she said of the fire, testing the rim of the cup with her lips. The metal had, within seconds, become too hot to sip. She set it beside her to cool, and Herriot sniffed it.
“It did. But here we are.”
“Well, thanks for jump-starting it.”
“Your wolf was here.”
A dozen questions rushed Beth’s mind, but she asked this one first: “My wolf ?”
“The one you call Mercy.”
He was smiling at her again, that disconcerting, paternal, all-knowing, and gentle grin. Now it spooked her a little. She picked up the coffee, burning her knuckles as they came against the tin, and drank the scalding brew, though sealing her lips would have been a more effective way to conceal her surprise. The coffee transformed her tongue into sandpaper and then she dropped the cup because it was too hot to hold.
She exclaimed when the coffee splashed her left thigh, then madly blotted her soaked jeans with her shirt. That liquid would leave a burn, maybe even a blister that would make riding Hastings a misery.
“Wolves haven’t been in these mountains in a long, long time,” she said, focusing on her fiery skin.
“More accurately, you’d have to say wolves haven’t been seen in these mountains that long. I suspect you could find someone who’s seen them here and there, if you asked the right questions of the right people.”
“Have you seen them?”
“I just told you your wolf was here, didn’t I?”
“I meant before tonight.”
“Depends what you mean by seen.”
Beth’s coffee-soaked jeans clung to her leg. She tried unsuccessfully to pull the fabric away.
“He’s a bold one,” Wally said. “Sat and watched you as closely as I was watching it. Right there.” He pointed to the trailer’s rear tire.
“So close? And Herriot didn’t go bonkers?”
“You know your dog better than I do.”
Beth began to believe that she was dreaming. That instead of antelopes climbing up wolves, her mind had started constructing angels out of men she knew.
“How did you know I call him Mercy?” she asked him.
Wally laughed, and a small flock of birds took flight from the thicket, chattering. The sounds were as pleasant as the lowing cows, all of nature calling to each other in a harmonious way that seemed both beautiful and strange.
He said, “Because that’s the wolf’s name. What else would you call him?”
I will show you mercy, the wolf had said to her as she lay next to Joe’s broken body. And again when it led her to the dying pronghorn. As if wolves could speak.
Beth stared at Wally and couldn’t stop herself from smiling too. Did he also have a bond with the animal? The possibility of being able to talk with someone, even if only in a dream, about her experience filled her with anticipation.
“So you know my next question,” she said, leaning forward.
“You want to ask how I know its name.”
She nodded.
“I know it the same way I know yours,” he said. “Bethesda.”
“I see. So the real reason you know all these things is because this conversation isn’t real, and all of it’s happening inside my mind.”
“I know names because the One who does the naming happens to like me. He lets me in on it once in a while.”
“And who would that be?”
Beth waited while he stared into the fire and sipped from his own cup. She noticed a small trowel standing upright in the dirt next to his hip and an old tin coffee can, the kind with a plastic lid. Perhaps he had used it to clear out the cold ashes when he rebuilt her fire.
“Well,” she prodded. “Who named the wolf ?”
“The same One who names all things, including you.”
“My parents named me.”
“Sometimes parents pick the right name. Other times the One has to work around their personal tastes.”
The fire crackled. “That is very creepy one-with-the-mother-earth talk!”
His pleasant expression took on a shadow of disapproval. “Is it? I didn’t say anything like that. Your ears are prejudicial.”
“Prejudicial how?”
“You see that I have close ties to the original people of the valley, and you assume that because of my heritage I can’t serve the same God you serve.”
Embarrassment returned Beth’s attention to her burnt leg. “Then tell me again what you said. Please.”
He spoke slowly. “I said that the One who names all things named both you and the wolf who follows you.”
“You are saying that I belong to God. And the wolf does too.”
“Yes.”
“And that my parents got my name right.”
“Yes.”
She found this funny. She laughed a little bit.
“Did your parents get your name right?”
“No. They called me Shrieking Eagle.”
Beth bit down on her smile and said kindly, “Well, I can see that you don’t really seem like the shrieking type, Wally.”
She had never encountered an angel, but no other idea could explain this man. The pain in the skin of her thigh was all too real for a dream.
“People change as they grow. They grow into their true names. Not everyone has the privilege of understanding this.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“Consider your wolf. Most people see wolf. They think cattle-killer, or endangered species, or maybe nice photograph. But you see Mercy. It changes the way you think. His name was made known to you because your eyes were clear when you looked at him.”
“The first time I met him,” Beth said, “I thought I heard him . . . tell me something. He said, ‘I will show you mercy.’ ”
“And did he?”
“If you mean did he restrain himself from killing me, yes.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, but it’s a start.”
Beth sighed. “What did you mean?”
“This wolf is going to show you mercy.”
“But he already—You mean he’s going to again? Later? When?”
“I don’t know.”
In her mind, Beth tried to assemble the strange pieces of her wolf encounters into a meaningful whole. “He showed me . . . ,” she began, then tried to concentrate on each event. “He showed me a dying antelope,” she said. “And I healed it.”
“You did? You healed this animal?”
“It sounds crazy, but I don’t know how else to explain it.”
Wally stretched his hands out to the warm fire.
Beth looked at Herriot and said, “What did he show you, girl?”
Herriot dropped her head to her front paws, and her eyes blinked closed, the picture of contentment.
“Do you believe in miracles?” she asked Wally.
“Every day,” he said.
“You mean miracles happen every day?”
“I mean I believe in them every day. Some days you get up and can’t believe they’re possible. Or you don’t want to. So every day, I believe in them all over again.”
“Have you ever seen a miracle?”
“Don’t have to see them to believe in them.”
“I agree. I think. But still—have you ever seen one?”
“What do you call a miracle?”
“You and I seem to need a dictionary.”
He patted his jeans pockets. “I left mine at home.”
“A miracle is . . . something you can’t explain.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
Beth crossed her arms. “It’s something that happens outside of the laws of nature.”
“You mean the laws of nature as we understand them?”
“That might be splitting hairs.”
“No more than saying wolves haven’t been here, when it’s closer to the truth to say no one has seen them. Knowing many of the laws of nature is not the same as knowing all of the laws. Two very different things, not one hair that’s been split.”
“I healed a dying antelope. I made a broken bird fly again. I diagnosed this sick horse—”
“That wasn’t a miracle.”
“Helping the horse?”
“That was your own talent.”
“I have no talent, just a dream of becoming a vet.”
“No vet can close a wolf bite in a pronghorn’s throat without stitches,” Wally said.
“As I said, I’m not a vet. Wait a minute—”
“Neither are you the one who gets credit for these events. You did not heal the antelope. You didn’t make the bird fly. And I’ll reconsider my opinion: perhaps it wasn’t even really you who diagnosed the horse.”
“You’re saying I have talent, but that really God did it,” Beth said.
“You did what you had the opportunity to do. And the One who orders the world worked through you. We do what we can with the resources God gives us, Bethesda. We should try to do no more than that.”
“I want good things for the people I love. Is that so much to ask?”
“You can want them, but you can’t always provide them.” Wally leveled his eyes at her from across the fire. “That saddle was not yours to give.”
Beth put her face in her hands. It was frustration, not tears, that she was trying to hide.
“That horse would have lost her eye with or without that stupid saddle,” she muttered.
“How do you know that?”
Beth dropped her hands. “Are you kidding me? Are you saying that if I hadn’t stolen Jacob’s saddle the horse wouldn’t have lost her eye?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she wouldn’t have lost her eye. Maybe you could have healed it. Maybe you could have healed Joe’s leg. Maybe you wouldn’t have broken Joe’s leg in the first place.”
“Well, which one is it? Why don’t you know?” she yelled.
“I’m not permitted to know.”
“I want to know!”
“What is it, exactly, that you want to know, Beth?”
“I want to know why God would heal a stupid antelope and let my father die!”
Wally’s eyes were full of compassion, and she wondered how her mind had thought him up. Oh yes—he was based on her dad. Her dead father, and the Wally of the Blazing B.
“I don’t believe the antelope lived either.”
“What?” she sputtered. “That’s your answer? Do I have a gift of healing or not, Wally? Does God work miracles through me or not? Does he even do miracles, or is everything arbitrary? Are good and evil just flukes? I mean . . . my father. This is the most unfair punishment. For one mistake.”
The rising sun behind the gambel oaks cast long shadows over her shoulders, but their dark and elegant fingers were swallowed by the light of the campfire. They couldn’t touch her companion.
“What seems like punishment might be God’s redemption,” he said.
“I’m going to go back to sleep, Wally. You’ve been no help to me at all.”
He smiled at her again. She lowered her head onto Herriot’s back as if it were a pillow.
“Will it help if I tell you how to get to Burnt Rock from here?” he said.
“I thought Mercy would lead the way.”
“No. I’ll give you a map.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“But once you reach Burnt Rock, you must follow the wolf.”
“I’ve been following the wolf.”
“Only very recently. Herriot figured out that part a long time before you did,” Wally said. “The time to follow the wolf is when it seems like you don’t need to anymore.”
Beth was quite ready for this dream or visitation or whatever it was to end. She had simple questions and was tired of the complicated answers.
“He’ll lead you to your grandfather,” Wally said. “He’ll protect you from the predators. There are more predators. More cougars.”
The promise of mountain lions and the sound of a spade penetrating the ground jarred Beth’s sleepy mind. She heard dirt like a waterfall pouring into a container. It was a hollow, wistful sound.
He said, “And I’ll give you one last tip.”
Beth felt this dream-like meeting slipping away beneath her heavy head. “What?”
“Take a bath before you go. Use this dirt I’m digging up for you. Mix it with the creek water. Put the mud on that burn. It’ll wash right off.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
“Nothing’s arbitrary,” Wally said. “No matter what you think you see.”
The second time Beth woke, the sun was higher and the towering shadow of Ash Martin was shading her tired eyes.
“Sleepin’ hard for a gal who’s drunk all the joe,” he said, lifting the empty pot off the charred remains of the fire and shaking it. Beth pushed herself up. Herriot had wandered off, and Beth’s neck was strained. The inside of her thigh felt scorched and raw.
“Wally drank it all,” she said, not expecting him to understand. “I got one sip and a bad burn.”
Ash examined the pot with renewed interest.
“You met Wally?” he asked, and Beth felt her stomach drop.
She looked around for the man she didn’t believe was real. Her hand bumped something on the ground at her side. She picked it up. It was an old coffee can topped with a red plastic lid. She peeled it back. The can held about two cups of dirt.
“You know him? Where is he?”
“Dunno. I didn’t know he was here.”
Beth’s throat was thick and dry. “I guess he just got in last night, then. Uh, how do you know him?”
“He’s an old mountain man. Lived here in the San Juans his whole life.”
“Does he travel with you?”
“Now and then, on his terms.”
Beth’s mind was whirling. “He likes his terms.”
Ash chuckled. “That he does.”
Beth stood and reached for her backpack with her free hand. She was trying to remember the details of their conversation, but the content was already elusive. In the top of her bag, poking out from the unzippered compartment, a hand-drawn line of red ink traversed her neatly folded map, and several protein bars wrapped in silver foil were tucked behind her change of clothes. She fingered the food, and it was no imagination. She thought of the dirt and the mud, and wondered if it would also be real.
“Back in a few,” she said absentmindedly, and she carried her belongings and the coffee can toward the creek, walking stiffly to prevent the denim of her jeans from chafing her inflamed skin. Riding Hastings was top on her list of things she didn’t want to do right now. But she had to get to Burnt Rock.
Ash must have noticed her limp.
“Going after some mud?” he asked.
Beth stopped and turned around. “How is it that two guys so far from civilization seem to know every little thing about me?”
“Just do whatever he told you to do,” Ash said. “Don’t ask me to explain it. Cuts, bug bites, sprains, bruises, heck—broken bones. All I know is it works every time.”
“Magic mud? Maybe you ought to bottle it. Make some extra bucks.”
“It’s not the mud that works. It’s Wally’s digging that does the job. Can’t bottle that.”