They had put the word out to the various agencies across the Rockies that they were looking for a female wolf, not for breeding but to give Zeke a partner so that he would not feel so alone. But Bill did not want to bring in another animal unless it could not be released into the wild and he knew a tame wolf, a pet, would likely be killed by the wild creature that Zeke continued to be. And so they waited for responses, hoping that some rescue they had never heard of would call them to say they had an animal too maimed to be released into the wild, an odd thing to wish for and yet there it was. But no rumor of injured wolves of any kind had come to them in the two years since they had first picked up Zeke from a rancher, the wolf’s paw ruined by the claw trap that had ensnared him.
The rancher might have shot the wolf—that had certainly been the intent—but instead he had called the sheriff who had then called the rescue, and Bill had driven out to the ranch and had seen the wolf for the first time, a creature of such beauty and dignity even in the moment of its greatest fear that Bill’s heart shattered to see it. The wolf had stood when he had approached, not growling or cowering but only standing there, the look in the wolf’s eyes one of intelligence and even understanding as he stared at the man who would likely kill it in the next instant, the evidence of such an intent held in his hands. But of course Bill did not kill the wolf. The expected bang of the bullet had instead been the short pop of the dart and the wolf had spun around quickly and then lay panting, its crushed paw dragging an orbit of blood against the white crust of the snow, the trap leaping and rattling at the end of its stake-driven chain.
Now what? the rancher had asked him.
Now we wait a bit for him to sleep and then you pull that trap off him.
He’s not gonna bite me, is he?
If he does it won’t be any worse than what you did to him.
The rancher shuffled his feet against the frozen gravel of the road. I should have just shot the goddamned thing.
Yeah? So why didn’t you?
I couldn’t. Don’t know why. They’ve been at the livestock. Scaring the shit out of my old lady too. But something about it … I just couldn’t.
They stood there, watching as the wolf began to whine and then, at last, to lie down in the snow.
Bill returned to the truck and retrieved the snout noose, although he did not think he would need to use it now, holding the steel pole over his shoulder and then handing it across to the rancher.
What’s this? the man said.
Tell you what, Bill said. You slip this over his nose and I’ll get the trap off.
He showed the rancher how to use it, the way in which the slipknot could be tightened at the end of the pole. Then he slung the dart gun over his shoulder and pulled his gloves over hands already aching from the cold.
The snow outside the bed of the road was deep and uneven and they moved those last twenty or so yards across it in slow, careful steps, the rancher’s breath puffing white clouds into the air. When he reached the animal, they both stood looking down at it. A magnificent creature, sleek and thin, its fur light gray and tipped with black points, mouth open and tongue lolling pink against the snow. An animal so wholly suited to the forest that seeing it prostrate on the frozen earth seemed impossible. What was he to do with it once he had it back at the rescue? Killing it was inconceivable but holding it in a cage not much better.
Christ, the rancher said. Just that single word.
Bill’s eyes had come to the paw, or what remained of it: a mess of purple tendons and raw red muscle and exposed bone. Had he come an hour later the wolf would have freed itself, the remains of the severed paw caught in the jaws of the trap while the animal disappeared into the dark forest, trailing blood from its stump. Bill knew such an animal would not survive long in the wild, not with the heavier snows of winter still coming. He would survive at the rescue but the paw was gone either way. There was no doubt about that fact at all.
He imagined the pack swinging south out of British Columbia and dipping across a border that held no meaning to its motion, flowing as one through the dark wet trees and taking its prey when it could, a group of animals perfectly evolved to survive and their understanding of that world distinctly drawn to render all other concerns invisible. They would be like ghosts fading into and out of the forest: sawtooth ridgetops, silver water, the scent of prey upon the air. And you some separate and recondite creature residing in an entirely different world. What you see are threats and disasters and horrors the likes of which those ghosts could not even imagine, time flattened out of its circle and running in a thin sharp band, straight and level, and that faint bubble of world in which all animals run and hunt and graze eviscerated everywhere by its razored edge. You are a man standing inside one such bubble above the unconscious body of a ghost from another, watching its breath steam and the purple-tendoned gap in its foreleg continue to bleed out slowly against the snow.
From where he stood, Bill could see the ranch house in the distance: a wooden box with warm yellow light at the windows, the black stalk of a chimney from which rose a slow curl of pale smoke. The sheep were penned a few dozen yards away against the wall of an iron-gray barn that dwarfed the house itself, and in the several acres of cleared and snow-covered pastureland that stretched out before both structures a herd of six or eight horses stood in a tight knot against the cold. He could see how it all could look like a meal, the prey ready and waiting and out in the open as if arranged on a serving tray.
He knew then that it had been the last image of freedom the wolf would ever see, for when it opened its eyes it would be at the rescue, where all sense of free will would be lined and limited by the extent of the wire fence that demarcated its enclosure. A geography of endlessly moving mountains and rivers that flowed at last to a small ring of biting iron.
IN THE MORNING he dropped Jude off at school, the boy giggling and talking nonstop about the secret they shared and Bill smiling into the bright clear light as it streamed in upon them from every direction. The boy held the ragged field guide in his hand the whole while.