Little Wolves

HAYING SEASON





After two weeks of working at the farm, few outward signs showed in Lee. His face had tanned, but his plump cheeks and flabby stomach looked undaunted by all the hard work. Near the scar on his left arm, the skin was prickled by hundreds of small scratches and gashes he’d picked up baling hay.

Late afternoon found them in the hayfields once more, Grizz driving a lumbering International tractor that was trailed by a baler and Lee standing on the hayrack. The tractor glinted silver; the baler licked up lumps of hay from the green ground and spat them out in neatly roped twenty-pound bales that Lee caught and stacked on the hayrack beside him. He had to keep his balance as the rack swayed over the uneven ground and the bales came without ceasing. Each bale had to be wedged in tight, a mountain of hay that might come tumbling down if Lee’s aim was not quick and true.

Grizz saw all this, saw the changes in the child. Lee did not hate farmwork the way Seth had, even hard moments like this, and there was plenty of work any given season. Grizz had sold the property around the mountain to the county on the condition that the limestone never be excavated, the burial mounds left undisturbed. In perpetuity, the last of the tallgrass would not be cut. The land would remain as it was, a beautiful portrait of another time. No one would ever disturb Seth’s grave.

The funds allowed Grizz to purchase another semi, and he went to work for co-ops in neighboring counties fulltime, driving loads. He still only just scraped by each season, and after a wet spring the crops went in late this year. Grizz was, as always, nervous about the harvest. He still awaited the perfect season. He still lived in the land of next year, but he was alive and doing what he loved. And there was one boy, at least, whom he had reclaimed from hell.

Haying was hot, dirty work. Sharp straws poked out from the bales to jab and claw his skin. By the end of the day his body was furred in a fine green dust. But Lee was no longer the tenderfoot, not the foolish boy who showed up in short sleeves to bale hay and left with aching, bleeding arms. His skin was tougher, his balance even and confident. His back no longer ached in the morning. When the ancient baler choked on too large a lump of hay, Lee could hop down and fix the jam. He had learned to handle the far more complicated gearing of the International and could guide the big tractor over the uneven ground on days Grizz let him drive a load of hay up from the fields. Hay stuck to his sweat-streaked skin. Blades of it probed for tender places to make fresh wounds. He breathed in the tractor’s exhaust and dust and bugs kicked up from the fields.

And yet it was beautiful to be together in the hot sundown. Swallows dipped and dived around them, hunting insects the tractor stirred up from the soil. The fields shone emerald in the fading light. From this upper pasture, the two had a view of the river valley, and Grizz turned now to point toward the west where thunderheads piled up. They would have to hurry before the rain came. If the hay got soaked, it would mold and rot, and all their hard work would be for nothing. The wind already carried the sweet smell of wet. A shadow from a chicken hawk riding on a thermal passed over the field and chased away the swallows. Lee took the bales and formed neat square stacks while Grizz kicked the tractor into higher gear. They worked in a wordless rhythm, moving faster to beat the rain, his focus on maneuvering the tractor in tight turns, Lee yanking out bales and tossing and stacking.

Then the work was done, and Lee rode down the hill standing atop his lurching hay mound, sapped but triumphant. From his perch, twenty feet above the mowed ground, he could likely see the old landing on the other side of the valley, the silver glinting of the river, and beyond it the rim of the world itself, turning black now with storm.

Lightning rippled from boiling clouds, followed a few seconds later by grumbles of thunder. Grizz heard the cattle moan out in the yard. One large drop of rain splashed his cheek. “Hurry,” he called to him, grinding the tractor to a halt outside the barn. Lee scrambled down from the pile of stacked bales, chunks of loose hay spraying down along with him.

A minute later, Grizz emerged from the barn with an immense blue tarp and a coil of rope and motioned for Lee to climb up again. Back atop the hay, Lee took the end of the tarp just as the rain began to lash down. Lee balanced along the flat surface, the tarp fanning out behind him. Wind lifted the sheet and nearly tore it from his grasp. Grizz was shouting from below while he clutched a rope that held it from the other end. Rain blinded him. Grizz imagined the tarp filling up like a sail, lifting the boy and carrying him straight into the thunderheads. But Lee got down on his knees to keep his balance and crawled, still dragging the flapping tarp behind him. Then he was climbing down the other side, the billowing plastic stretching and then lying flat across the bales. Wind and rain battered both of them. Lee was drenched by the time Grizz came around the side with another rope to secure it. “You can let go now,” he told him. “Let’s get you inside.”

On a normal day they would sit out on the white sagging porch and sip tea with fresh mint pulled from the weedy garden Jo had once tended. Sometimes they were joined by the pastor’s wife with her baby girl. Seth’s old girlfriend had moved back to the Cities along with her father.

On this day, Grizz left him alone to undress in the mudroom, stripping off his soaked socks and the very same ragged shoes he had worn during his tumble down the mountain. After a few minutes he carried to him a bundle of musty-smelling clothes and an old towel. “You can shower down here. I have some shoes that might fit you as well.” Lee frowned and said nothing, but when he came back upstairs he was wearing the Judas Priest shirt from Seth and his son’s jeans and shoes. “These clothes?” he said.

“Yeah. They were his.”

Lee said nothing.

“I’ll drive you home.”

“That’s okay. The rain’s stopped outside.” They both listened in the new quiet. The faint sound of a radio crooning trickled in from the next room. “I don’t hear it anymore.” What they heard was the cattle crying out in their pens, and then above it a single, solitary howl.

“Maybe I should drive you.”

“No. Let me do this. You said they were afraid of you.”

“They won’t let me get near.”

“And the town may hunt them again next year, if they keep going there.”

“It may be that they already have a taste for killing, for housecats and such.”

Lee walked outside. Deep ruts in the gravel driveway had become small ponds where the moon’s face came and went. When the moon appeared the fields turned luminous. The little wolves were in the meadow, under the cliffs Lee had fallen from. The sound of rain still dripping through the trees filled up the dark woods.

The coyotes romped in the grasses, scaring up mice, their spines arched. They cackled when they caught one and lapped it up with their long tongues. Then they turned, the wind having carried the scents of Grizz and Lee out to them. They smelled Seth on his clothes and the gray loped toward him, his tail bristling. A warm breeze from the mountain washed over them, rippling the clothing they wore, like the sweet breathing of some benevolent giant. Lee didn’t hesitate to go forward, and Grizz shut his eyes and whispered a prayer that no harm would come to the boy. He had to let him go, for both their sakes. Lee was among them now, the coyotes circling him as he walked in the meadow. They passed from the waving tallgrasses into the dark trees where the shadows were dancing, a boy and three little wolves who came to him when he held out his hand.





AUTHOR’S NOTE





THE MURDER STORY THAT sparked this novel is based on true events in the town of Morgan, Minnesota. I heard only the barest details—a boy with a shotgun tucked into his coat going to his teacher’s house and then killing the sheriff by shooting through the car door. In my original draft, I had not intended to write anything about it, but I woke up one morning hearing the voice of a father wondering over his son and what he has done. I had to set it down, and when I did, his voice took over this story. Jessamyn West once wrote, “Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” While writing Little Wolves I intentionally avoided finding out any more details about the actual case. New to parenthood myself, I had to follow this father’s voice, and this novel is where he led me.

As I wrote, other stories came to me. A Lutheran pastor who had just finished serving a congregation out on the prairie told me about her church’s strict rules regarding the burial of the dead and her struggles with these customs. In the cemetery behind the church, suicides were not allowed to be buried with the saints and instead went into a separate corner. As far as I know, the congregation continues this practice to this day.

These stories form the skeleton, and they are both true, but all else is purely a work of the imagination.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NO WRITER I KNOW of is able to function without a supportive community. With two young children at home, I would not be able to find time and energy to write without the loving support of my wife, Melissa. Years spent visiting and sometimes living at my in-laws’ farm has taught me time and time again the vital connection between land and families. For the stories and knowledge they have shared with me I am grateful, as I am grateful to my own parents for raising me with the freedom to take risks, for forgiving me when I fail, and for teaching me how to go on.

As a graduate of the creative writing MFA program at Mankato, I’ve been fortunate to have stayed in touch with many friends. Nick Healy, who read this story when it was just a kernel, is one such wise voice who guided me along the way. Nick also introduced me to the Wednesday Writers in Mankato: Nate Leboutillier, Nicole Helget, Tom Flynn, Aaron Frisch, Rick Robbins, and Gordon Pueschner all provided inspiration and help. Here at Normandale Community College, where I’m part of a thriving AFA program in creative writing, I’ve been able to work with other fiction writers like John Reimringer, Alicia Conroy, and Charlotte Sullivan and many others, gifted writers who understand the importance for teachers of writing to stay active in the craft. They’ve read various chapters, giving encouragement at just the right times.

I’m grateful to the state of Minnesota for an Artist’s Initiative Grant that allowed me travel to Southwest Minnesota and see the places featured in this novel as well as mentor with accomplished writers like Caroline Leavitt.

Along the way I’ve also made friends with good people like novelist Peter Geye, whose exciting feedback about the novel this summer gave me the courage I needed to send it out. Peter also introduced me to agent Laura Langlie, who has been wonderful every step of the way.

Editor Mark Doten at Soho Press believed in this book enough to take a chance on it. Read this work knowing that his keen insights and brilliant edits helped make this what it became. If it shines, it’s because Mark saw the raw material and helped polish it into the present form.

Invariably, this will go out into the world and I will realize that I have forgotten someone here. There are too many to list. I knew a long time ago that I wanted to be a writer. I was only able to become so because of the great teachers and books and friends and family and students who’ve inspired me.

I’m grateful. Thank you one and all.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR


THOMAS MALTMAN’S ESSAYS, POETRY, and fiction have been published in many literary journals. He has an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His first novel, The Night Birds, won an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. In 2009 the American Library Association chose The Night Birds as an “Outstanding Book for the College Bound.” He’s taught for four years at Normandale Community College and lives in the Twin Cities area. Little Wolves is his second novel.