Heck with what?
I’ve been wanting to ask you something.
Ask me what? the boy said.
Well listen, champ, I was thinking of asking your mom something.
I thought you were gonna ask me something.
I am, I’m gonna ask you if I can ask her.
You’re silly.
Bill smiled. You’re probably right, he said. So I was thinking of asking your mom, maybe, if she’d want to get married. So we could be together all the time. But I wanted to make sure it’s OK with you first.
Would we get to live with you at the animals?
I don’t know. We’d all live together for sure. Maybe not at the animals though. My trailer’s pretty small for everyone to live in.
So you’d live here?
We’d have to figure that out.
The boy lay there on the pillow, looking at him thoughtfully. What about my dad?
Your dad’s still your dad and he’ll always be your dad. I’d be what you’d call your stepdad.
OK, Jude said.
OK?
Yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do that.
He smiled and Jude smiled.
Don’t tell your mom, though. It’s supposed to be a surprise.
When are you gonna ask her?
I don’t know, he said. It needs to be special.
Are you coming to Fall Festival?
What’s that?
At my school. Fall Festival. We’re singing a song about Thanksgiving.
Oh yeah, your mom told me about that. Yeah, I’ll be there.
You can ask her then. At Fall Festival. That’ll be special.
He smiled. Good idea, he said. Maybe I’ll ask her when we get home after.
Yeah, Jude said. He giggled, pulling the blanket up around his mouth. It’s a secret, he said.
Yes, it is, Bill said. You in for a bear hug?
The boy nodded and Bill scooped him up in his arms and pulled him against his chest and the swell of his belly and squeezed him tight, roughing his beard against the child’s cheek. Again, Jude said. And once more. Good night, buddy. He brushed Jude’s hair from his forehead as the boy turned on his side, his eyes slipping closed for a brief moment and then opening again. Sleep well. Dream good dreams, Bill said.
The boy’s head nodded against the pillow and Bill rose quietly and stepped into the hall and returned to the kitchen table once more.
The Tibetan book was still there but Grace had extracted the National Geographic from the mail pile and she sat at the table peering down at an open page, the brown curls of her hair turning over her wrinkled forehead. He leaned against the wall by the corkboard with its barrage of notes and notices and calendars and scraps of paper and watched her.
There’s a bunch of wolves in here, she said. This guy here reminds me of our Zeke.
Yeah, he said. Poor guy.
We’ll find him someone, she said.
I hope so.
Maybe we need to be looking in Minnesota.
Fish and Game’s gonna make it a lot harder now than it would’ve been.
We need to figure that out too, she said.
Fast.
I’ll make some calls tomorrow. Maybe to the zoo in Boise.
I don’t know if it’s gonna matter. That new DCO seems pretty hell bent on closing us down.
It’s probably not as bad as you think.
I don’t know about that.
Don’t give up so easy, Grace said, smiling faintly.
I’m not.
You sure?
No.
He was standing behind her now and she reached up to stroke his beard. Before her on the table, the magazine was open to a series of small photographs boxed in gray, indeed some wolves among them. One chased a flock of ravens. Another looked askance at the photographer. Black spruce and jack pine. Heron and eagle and nuthatch. From a frostlike tuft of red and green lichen peered forth the empty socket of a deer skull. Sunset birds. Slick waterways snaking through black spindly branches. Places not unlike his own forest and yet so different. The foliage. The feel of it.
Grace’s finger moved to point to an image of a wolf standing by the snow-covered carcass of a deer. Pictures like that make me wish we could get him out, she said.
Crippled wolf wouldn’t live long out there, not with winter coming.
He still needs a pack.
I keep hoping that he’ll figure out we’re his pack.
I don’t think that’ll ever happen if he hasn’t figured it out by now.
Maybe we need to call in to Minnesota. But I don’t know how we’d get a wolf across state lines.
We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Grace said.
You’re always so dang positive about everything.
That’s my job, she said.