Big Picture: Stories

Wolf at the Door

The last pink wash of daylight through the den window was no longer enough. Hiram Finch pulled the beaded chain on the green-shaded lamp beside the table and continued writing. His pen had moved fluidly from a rather controlled script to a loose scrawl that was allowing him only a few words per line. He paused, sipped his tea, then filled his cup again from the fat blue pot that had been a gift from an Australian couple who had come through with a sick horse a couple of years ago. He got up, opened the woodstove, and laid the page down on the red-and-orange-glowing coals. He watched it catch flame and then closed the door. He heard the quiet steps of his wife approaching from the stairs.

“You need another log in the stove,” Carolyn said, sitting down in the overstuffed chair and blowing on a mug of coffee. The aperture of her lips was perfect for playing her flute, which for so many years had lain idle in a drawer somewhere in the house. “I think it’s colder in here than it is outside.”

Hiram put a couple of small alder logs into the stove and poked at them with the iron, loosening the bark to allow the flames to lick through to the wood.

“I think you should just let it go,” Carolyn said.

Hiram nodded and sat back at the table by the window, picked up the pen and tapped it against his corduroy leg. “I suppose that would be the wise and prudent thing to do.”

“I suppose.”

“This table is getting wobbly,” Hiram said, grabbing it by the edge and giving it a small shake.

“You’re just going to get all riled up and then they’re going to do what they’re going to do anyway.” She blew on her coffee. “Just follow the path of least resistance for once.”

“Just leave me alone. Please.”

“Sure thing.” Carolyn sipped from her mug.

“Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Okay.”

Hiram sighed. “Christ, I just apologized.”

“And I said ‘okay.’ Okay?” Carolyn stood and looked about the room as if trying to remember some undone task. “I’m going upstairs to read for a while.”

“All right.”

Hiram watched her leave the room. He tossed the pen onto the table and looked out at the lavender-approaching-violet sky. He’d seen a falcon knife through the night out this window earlier, right across the moon like a ghost, and he wanted to see one now. Carolyn was probably right, he should just let it go. He couldn’t stop them. The lion was indeed dangerous; any animal like that which wasn’t terrified of people was dangerous. It apparently was not the least bit shy like other big cats. It came down to kill a lamb or a couple of chickens every couple of weeks and had nearly scared to death a teenage boy who was tending a fence. Although it was unclear whether the animal was actually interested in him, because in the boy’s words it walked by “just as casual as anything.” So they were going to kill him or her; no one knew the sex of the cat. They only knew that it killed and was large and wasn’t much impressed by human presence. Hiram’s irate and raging letter to the county commission wasn’t going to stop them from putting a bounty on the lion’s head. The crazy veterinarian who lived on the hill might be fine for looking into bovine eyes and studying the stool samples of sheep and horses and dogs, but what did he know about lions?

Hiram heard Carolyn upstairs in the study and felt bad for talking to her the way he had. He got up and climbed the stairs, leaned against the doorjamb, and watched her scanning the books in the case.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted,” he said.

“That’s okay,” she said without looking up from the books.

“You’re right about letting it go, you know.”

“Whatever.”

Hiram watched as she took a book and sat down on the love seat. “I’m going to check the horses.” If she did offer a response, Hiram didn’t hear her. He went back downstairs and left the house. He crossed the yard to the stables, finding as he entered that the horses were somewhat agitated, stepping back and forth and complaining a little.

“What’s wrong, girls?” he said, turning on the lights and looking through the center of the barn and out the back. “What’s got you all jittery?” He took the flashlight from the wall by the door and walked across the dirt floor, shining his beam into the corners of the stalls, and petting the noses of his horses. “No food now, silly,” he said to his too-fat Appaloosa. He walked out the other side of the barn and shined the light into the corral, sweeping the baked hard ground for any sign, although he knew this was a wasted effort given the condition of the earth and his ineptitude as a tracker.

• • •

Hiram recalled when he was seventeen and his father’s flock had been attacked by what was thought to be a wolf. Two lambs and two ewes had been torn to pieces and were strewn about the pasture nearest the house. That was the amazing part, that the carnage had been so close. Hiram’s father was upset with eight-year-old Carla because she had the sheepdog sleeping with her in the house.

“At least, he would have barked and I would have known something was going on,” Hiram’s father said. He stood at the fence just outside the back door and looked out across the pasture. “Damn wolf.”

“Zöe could have been killed, too,” Carla said.

Hiram’s father didn’t respond. Hiram had been walking about the pasture. The sheep ran from him every time he drew near, still anxious, still bleating crazily. He was on the other side of the fence.

“Dad, I don’t think it was wolves,” Hiram said.

“And why do you say that?”

“A wolf wouldn’t have killed so many animals.”

“Wolves, then.”

“Wolves don’t kill like that. They would kill only the lambs and eat them; they wouldn’t leave most of them lying all over the place. I think it was dogs. I think somebody’s dogs got loose and went wild.”

“You know as well as I do that there’s a wolf around. You saw him with your own eyes up on the mountain.”

“I think it’s dogs.” Hiram looked down at Carla and then at the border collie who was scratching her ear with a hind foot. “And I think they would have killed ol’ ugly right there if she had been out.”

“Zöe’s not ugly,” Carla said and she knelt to hug the animal around the neck.

Hiram’s father was not much taken with the theory. He just muttered something about getting his rifle.

The following day, a fine rain fell and most of the mountain seemed unusually quiet. Hiram sat astride his horse, Jack, a twelve-year-old gelding who behaved as if he were three. He held his father’s Weatherby rifle across his lap while he watched his father, who had dismounted and was poking through a pile of animal scat with a stick.

“Looks like dog,” Hiram said.

Hiram’s father nodded and climbed back into his saddle. “I don’t know. Got hair in it.”

They rode on up the mountain and Hiram recalled all the stories the Indians told about the wolf and its power and he wanted to believe that the animals were a part of the place, wanted to believe that he was a part of the place. His father and mother always laughed at him when he talked about such things, called him “youthful.” Hiram didn’t know any Indians but he had read a lot about them, especially the Plains Indians, and although he knew that his sources might be questionable, he still wanted to believe them.

“Dad,” Hiram said as they topped a ridge. “Can’t we just scare the wolf away?”

Hiram’s father laughed. “You mean like reason with him?”

“What about getting one of those tranquilizer guns and relocating him?”

Hiram’s father shook his head. “Where would we get one of them guns? Besides, we can’t afford it. Nah. Anyway, a wolf ain’t nothing but a big, evil dog.”

• • •

The caked blood was still flowing slowly from the cuts across the backs of the palomino’s hind feet. Hiram let go of the leg and stood away, perspiration dripping from his face. The woman holding the horse’s halter stroked his nose and settled him down, making soothing sounds, the kind of sounds one reserves for animals. The horse had gotten tangled in some barbed wire.

“I could just shoot myself,” the woman said.

Hiram shrugged. “Accidents happen to animals, too.”

“It’s my fault though.”

“The wounds aren’t too bad,” Hiram said, coughing into a fist. “The worst part is across his fetlocks. I’m going to give him a shot of antibiotics and leave an iodine solution with you. Just dab it on twice a day. Might sting him a little.”

“He’s such a big baby,” the woman said.

“Yeah, I know. It’s because he’s a male.” Hiram reached into his bag for the antibiotic and syringe. “You can’t blame yourself,” he said. “What good does that do?” He filled the syringe, stood, and quickly stuck the horse’s flank, pressing the plunger in. He saw the woman flinch. “Better him than you.” Hiram had known Marjorie Stoval since she and her husband moved down from Colorado Springs six years before. He was used to seeing mainly her during his calls. The last few times Mr. Stoval had been conspicuously absent; the toy sports car that never seemed to go anywhere was now gone. He looked past the horse at the rolling pasture and the steep foothills behind it, ochre and red in the heat of early summer.

“You’ve got a sweet place here,” Hiram said.

Marjorie nodded, stroked the blond horse’s neck, pulling his mane with each pass. She seemed lost in thought. She was an attractive, young-looking woman, but Hiram believed from previous conversations that she was about forty-five, although there was not much gray in the dark hair she wore pulled back.

“Well, I guess I’m done.” Hiram closed his bag and picked it up, yawned, and as he did, realized that it was a tick of his that surfaced when he was nervous.

“Tired?” Marjorie asked.

“I guess.” As they walked back toward Hiram’s truck, he said, “Other than the scratches, Cletus looks pretty good.”

“My husband left me,” Marjorie Stoval said abruptly.

Hiram swallowed and looked beyond his truck at the two-story log house. “Yeah, well, I suppose these things happen.”

“He moved in with a young woman over in Eagle Nest. They live in a trailer. Can you imagine that?”

Hiram shook his head. At the truck he put his bag in the bed, pushed forward against the cab wall, cleared his throat, and turned to the woman. “My wife and I are pretty decent company. Why don’t we call you and arrange a dinner over at our place?”

Marjorie paused as if considering whether the offer was some kind of mercy dinner, then said, “That sounds nice,” in a noncommittal way as she smoothed the hair back from her face.

Carolyn was painting a metal chair set on spread-out newspapers on the front porch. Hiram stopped and looked at her. He reached forward and wet his finger with the blue paint streaked across her forehead.

“I’m glad this stuff is water-based,” she said, setting the brush across the open can and standing up straight. She stretched her back and smiled at him.

Hiram smiled back, remembering a time when they would have kissed, a time when he would be gone most of the day and would miss her badly and she would miss him, too. They used to talk a few times during his work day, but not now. Now, he simply came home, Carolyn smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“Anything interesting today?” she asked as she stepped back to scrutinize her work. “I don’t know if I really like this blue. What do you think?”

“Blue is blue.” Hiram stepped past his wife and into the house, putting his bag on the table just inside the door and walked into the den where he fell into the overstuffed chair in front of the woodstove. He glanced at the coffee table where there was a stack of journals he had been meaning to read, needed to read.

Carolyn came in and sat on the sofa. She was sighing and still stretching her back.

“Is your back all right?” Hiram asked.

“It’s just stiff from squatting.”

“Would you like me to rub it for you?” he asked, but he didn’t really want to do it. He would have liked a back rub, but the offer was not forthcoming from Carolyn. He leaned his head back, briefly studied the ceiling, then closed his eyes.

“Maybe later,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “I found a lump on Zack’s belly this afternoon.” Her voice was closer now. Zack was a one-hundred-twenty-pound mutt Hiram had brought home from the shelter about five years ago. “It’s kinda big.”

“Where on his belly?”

“Just above his tallywhacker,” Carolyn said.

Hiram chuckled at the term. “How big?”

“Golf ball.”

“I noticed it a couple of weeks ago. It’s an umbilical hernia. I decided to leave it alone. It was about the size of a gumball then.”

“Well, it’s bigger now.”

“I’ll fix him up tomorrow. It’s going to be a slow day. Yep, I’ll just cut the ol’ boy open and fix him right up.”

Carolyn left the room. Hiram listened as she started to get dinner together in the kitchen. He went to help, the way he helped every night. The accounting firm where Carolyn once worked had folded and she hadn’t found a new job. It had been two years and she’d pretty much resigned herself to not finding anything, so she had stopped looking. Hiram didn’t care. They had enough money. They didn’t do much traveling. But he hated her periodic complaining about being a housewife. He would respond by saying that he didn’t think of her as a housewife, but rather a full-time gardener/painter/wrangler/everything else. He’d point out how much money she was saving them by doing what someone else would charge a bundle to do. But she still complained while doing nothing about it. He walked to the kitchen cupboard for the dishes.

“I was over at the Stoval place today,” Hiram said. “Did you know that Mr. Stoval just up and left?”

“Really?”

“Mrs. Stoval told me. I guess she doesn’t have many people to talk to, being out there all by herself.”

“She was lucky you were there, wasn’t she?”

Hiram set the plates on the table and looked at Carolyn. “Anyway, I mentioned that we might have her over for dinner.”

“How nice.”

“What is it with you? If I were talking about Mitch Greeley or old Mrs. Jett, you wouldn’t sound like this.”

Without looking away from the pasta on the stove, Carolyn said, “I don’t guess we’d be having the same conversation about them.”

“We don’t have to invite her.”

Carolyn turned off the flame under the pasta, then drained off the water in the sink before turning to Hiram. “I’m sorry. I’m tightly wound today. I think I’m feeling cooped up or something.”

“Want to go out? Drive to town and take in a movie?”

Carolyn shook her head.

“What about an early morning walk up to the falls?”

Carolyn smiled in weak agreement.

An hour after dinner someone rang the bell. Hiram and Carolyn were reading in the den. Hiram was just beginning to nod off; the journal was resting on his lap. Carolyn looked at him as if to say, who could that be? and didn’t move. Hiram got up and went to the door, opened it, and found Lewis Fife, all three hundred pounds of him standing on the porch.

“Well, they did it,” Lewis Fife said quickly. He was out of breath, panting.

“You didn’t walk over here, did you?” Hiram asked.

“Are you crazy? Of course not. I drove, but I took your steps two at a time,” Lewis Fife said.

“There’s only four steps, Lewis.”

“Give me a break, man. I weigh a ton. You try hauling this shit around.” He grabbed his stomach and showed it to Hiram. “Are you going to let me in?”

Hiram stepped aside and called back to Carolyn as the big man entered. “It’s Lewis.”

Carolyn came and stood in the doorway to the den. “Good evening, Lewis,” she said.

“Ma’am,” Lewis said and tipped a hat he wasn’t wearing. “Well, they’ve done it,” he said again.

“Done what?” Hiram asked.

“They killed that cat. Trevis Wilcox and his boy shot him up in Moss Canyon and just now dragged him down. They’re down in the village at the grocery-store parking lot. I thought you ought to see it.”

“Why?”

“Christ, man, you’re the vet around here. Not that you can help the beast now, but take a look at it and tell us if you think it’s the right cat.”

“The right cat? I never saw it.”

Lewis Fife bit his lip and said slowly, “Well, the Newton kid said the cat he saw was a lot bigger and, you know, when you’re scared everything looks bigger, but still.”

“Okay, I’ll come down.” Hiram turned to Carolyn. “Do you want to come with me?”

“I don’t need to see a dead lion. I don’t think you need to see it either.”

“Probably not, but I’m going anyway.” Hiram looked at Carolyn’s face. She disapproved, but he could see that she was not up to an argument.

“Please don’t get all upset.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Lewis Fife said.

• • •

Hiram and his father searched all day, went home, and then returned to the woods the following morning. Hiram watched his father’s face as they rode, his chin and cheeks darkened by a thick stubble. He didn’t much like his father, not because he was a bad man, not because he was mean, but because he never seemed to want more for himself, never opened books, and seemed afraid when Hiram did.

“So when we find him, Hiram, I’m going to let you have him,” his father said.

“I don’t want him, Dad.” Hiram sucked in a deep breath. “You know, Dad, there’s probably not ten wolves left in these parts. We shouldn’t be killing them.”

“You’re gonna shoot him, all right. It’ll be kind of a rite of passage for you.”

Hiram didn’t say anything, but a chill ran through him and he felt like crying.

From up high they could look down to the beaver pond. There were no animals around and Hiram got a bad feeling that the wolf was near. They rode down the slope slowly. Hiram’s father carefully pulled his rifle from its scabbard.

And there it was. The wolf was trotting along the near side of the pond, moving upstream. His coat was dark gray and he was carrying his bushy tail high. It was a big wolf. Hiram guessed that the animal weighed over a hundred pounds. It was beautiful, moving effortlessly. He loved the wolf. And when he looked at the smile on his father’s face he was filled with hate. He was embarrassed by the hatred, afraid of it, sickened by it, feeling lost because of it.

“Come on, boy,” Hiram’s father said.

Hiram followed reluctantly. They rode down across the meadow and past the pond and then circled wide away from the creek and back to it. The wolf was standing in a thicket, just thirty yards away. Hiram could see his eyes, the rounded tops of his ears.

“He’s all yours, boy,” Hiram’s father said.

“I can’t do it,” Hiram said.

“Shoot him,” the man commanded. “Shoot him or you ain’t no son of mine.”

Hiram looked at his father’s unyielding eyes.

“Shoot him.”

Hiram raised the Weatherby and lined up a shot. The wolf didn’t move; his eyes were as unyielding as his father’s. He squeezed off the round and watched as the startled animal had only enough time to change the expression in his eyes. The wolf looked at Hiram and asked why, then fell over dead as the bullet caught him in the chest with a dull thump. A shockingly small amount of red showed through the fur.

Hiram turned to his still-smiling father and said, “I hate you.”

“Fine shooting.”

“You didn’t hear me,” Hiram said. “I hate you.” He stared at his father until the man looked away. Hiram turned his horse and stepped off in the direction of the pond.

“You had to do it, Hiram. That wolf was threatening our welfare, your family,” the man called after. Then, more to himself, he said, “He was killing our stock. He had to be done away with.”

Hiram rode home alone, feeling scared of what his father would do when he arrived, feeling scared by what the lost spirit of the wolf was going to do to him. Tears began to slide down his face and he wished that his father could see them.

As he rode down the steep ridge above his family’s home Hiram saw them in the pasture. Six dogs were chasing a small ewe, sliding on the wet grass as she made her sharp turns. Hiram was filled with such anger that he couldn’t breathe, his hands mindlessly raised the rifle, and he found himself drawing a bead on one dog and then another. He fired and missed badly, but the dogs went running away. He looked up the ridge and saw his father staring down at the dogs, staring down at him. Hiram gave his horse a kick and trotted home.

He didn’t speak to his mother as he stormed into the house and he felt bad because he could tell he was frightening his younger sister, sitting there at the bottom of the stairs, stroking the border collie. He marched up to his room and slammed the door. He paced from the window to the door, his hands closing and opening, closing and opening, and all he could see was the face of the wolf, indifferent and unsuspecting, the amber eyes boring into him. He wanted to scream. He heard his father’s horse outside and he looked through the window to see him tying up at the post.

“I hate you!” Hiram shouted, but his father didn’t look up. “I told you it was dogs! I told you!” Still his father did not raise his eyes to the second floor, but walked onto the porch and into the house.

Hiram could hear his mother asking what had happened as he threw open his bedroom door and stepped to the top of the stairs. “He’s what happened!” Hiram said. “He made me shoot that wolf.”

“That’s enough, Hiram,” his father said.

“No, it’s not enough. You made me kill that beautiful animal because you’re too stupid to listen to anybody.”

Hiram’s father started toward him, up the stairs. It might have been the perspective, but Hiram realized that he was larger than his father. He looked down at the man and moved to meet him on the stairs.

“Hiram,” his mother complained.

His sister was crying and that was the only sound which seemed to filter through his rage.

“I said ‘enough,’” his father said.

“Bastard.”

Hiram saw the rage in his father’s eyes and ducked his swinging fist, heard his mother’s scream. Hiram grabbed the man and felt how weak he was. He now understood that his father had been profoundly affected by the death of the animal, and felt his father’s chest heaving with sobs. Hiram fell to the floor holding his father, both crying, neither letting go.

• • •

It was true that Lewis Fife didn’t look comfortable seated in the driver’s seat of an automobile. His stomach pressed against the steering wheel, which he held with both of his fat paws, the seat belt idle beside him since it would not accommodate his girth. “Been driving for thirty-five years and not one accident,” Lewis Fife would say, taking a steep curve on two wheels. Hiram sat beside him in the monstrous mid-seventies Lincoln Town Car, squeezing his nails into the armrest, believing, as did everyone else, that Lewis Fife was long overdue for a vehicular mishap. But that night the fat man didn’t take any curves on two wheels, didn’t drive well above the limit, didn’t crowd the center line, didn’t fumble with a bag of chips set on his shelf of a stomach. Lewis drove steady and slow from Hiram’s house all the way to the village with his eyes stapled to the highway; the silence about him suggested reverence. Hiram was taken over by a similar quiet mood. All he could imagine was the large, majestic, dead face of the lion.

Lewis Fife pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store and parked in a space well away from a large huddle of people. They were standing around the bed of a black dually pickup with yellow running lights.

Lewis Fife pointed but didn’t say anything.

Hiram grabbed the handle, opened the door, and got out. He walked toward the truck, feeling the muscles in his stomach shaking as if he were freezing cold. Beyond the crowd and the truck was the market, all lit up; people inside were pushing carts and standing in the checkout lines. He looked at the people inside, trying to distract himself, trying to tell himself that there was other business in the world. He recalled the look on Carolyn’s face as he left the house and repeated to himself that he wouldn’t cause a scene.

Hiram heard someone say, “Hey, it’s Doc Finch.” And the crowd of men peeled away from the truck and watched him. He got to the bed of the big pickup and there it was. Nothing could have prepared him for the face of the animal. He was large, his head about the size of a big boxer dog’s, and the front legs were crossed in a comfortable-looking position as he lay on his side. But the face. The mouth was open, showing pink against white teeth, and the tongue hung crazily out along the metal of the truck. The ochre eyes were open and hollow and cold and held a startled expression. Hiram looked up at the faces of the surrounding men, one at a time until he saw Wilcox and his son. The two were not quite smiling.

“We got him, Doc,” Wilcox said.

Hiram swallowed. “Yep, I guess you did.” Hiram touched the fur of the lion’s neck and stroked it.

“Big one, ain’t he, Doc?” someone said.

Hiram felt Lewis Fife standing beside him. He walked away from him, circled around the open tailgate of the truck, and studied the cat. “He’s a big one, all right. I hope he’s the right one.”

“He’s the right one,” Wilcox said.

“Got him in Moss Canyon,” the Wilcox son said. “I shot him,” proudly, a little too loudly.

Hiram looked up, caught the boy’s eyes, and saw the fear in them.

The silence was then broken by a scream and the breaking of glass. Hiram turned with the others to see Marjorie Stoval a few yards away, with dropped sacks and broken bottles at her feet, looking at the lion. She screamed again and then sank to her knees, crying. Hiram went to her, as did the Wilcox boy. Hiram supported her while the boy gathered her groceries. They helped her away from the pickup and to the line of stacked wire carts in front of the store.

Hiram talked to her. “Mrs. Stoval, are you all right? Mrs. Stoval?”

The Wilcox kid backed away and rejoined his father. Hiram stood with the woman and watched the crowd disperse, watched the black dually pickup drive off down the street.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Hiram said.

Lewis Fife came over. “Is she okay?” he asked Hiram.

Hiram shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” Marjorie said, trying to stand up straight, but keeping a hand on the cart. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I know. Where’s your car?” Hiram asked. Marjorie pointed across the lot toward a small station wagon. “Listen, I’m going to drive you home.”

“I’ll follow you,” Lewis Fife said.

The headlights of the Lincoln faded and grew large, but stayed in sight the whole way. Hiram had failed to adjust the driver’s seat of Marjorie Stoval’s wagon and so he was crammed in behind the wheel; his knee raked his elbow every time he shifted. Marjorie was no longer crying, but sat stone-faced, staring ahead through the windshield.

“Are you okay?” Hiram asked.

“I’m so embarrassed,” the woman said.

“Why should you be embarrassed? I think your reaction was the only appropriate one out there. I told them not to, but they did it. They say they did it to protect their stock. They say they did it to protect their families. But none of that is true. They did it because they’re small men.” Hiram felt how tightly he was holding the steering wheel in his hands, and when he glanced into the mirror, he noticed that Lewis Fife’s headlights were white dots well off in the distance. He eased his foot off the accelerator and tried to relax.

“You’re really upset, aren’t you?” Marjorie said.

Hiram didn’t answer, but did look at her.

“That was a beautiful animal,” she said.

“Yes, it was.”

“I saw a lion near my place once.” Marjorie rolled her window part way down. “He was on the ridge about three hundred yards from my house. I couldn’t believe it. It was about nine in the morning and I had just finished my tea and there he was. Or she. I don’t know. I got my boots on as fast as I could and went hiking up there, but it was gone. I can still see the white tip of its tail.” She closed her eyes.

Hiram looked over at her face, the curve of her nose, then down at her hands, large for a woman her size, but they fit her. “They’re magnificent creatures, all right. Felis concolor.”

“I’m sorry you’re having to do this, drive me home, I mean.”

“It’s no trouble.” Hiram glanced behind them. “Besides, Lewis is here to drive me home.” He felt a cramp start in his leg and tried to stretch it out.

“You’re kind of wedged in there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Marjorie laughed.

“I like you, Dr. Finch,” she said.

Hiram nodded and smiled at her.

“I’m sorry I unloaded my baggage on you earlier.” Marjorie’s voice didn’t sound frail anymore. “I mean, about what’s-his-name.”

“Eagle Nest, eh?”

“In a trailer.” She shook her head. “Did I mention that she’s twenty-three? I saw her. Dwight and I were shopping and we ran into her. She saw him and said hello and then she saw me and they pretended not to know each other. That’s how I found out.” She sneezed out a laugh.

“That sounds awful.”

“Have you ever had an affair?”

“No.”

“Ever thought about it?”

“No. I guess I’m pretty boring, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Marjorie said. “I wouldn’t say that at all. In fact, I’d say you are anything but boring.”

“Why, thank you kindly, ma’am.”

Hiram turned off the road into Marjorie Stoval’s yard and killed the engine. They were out of the car when Lewis Fife came to a complete stop. The fat man waited in his car while Hiram helped Marjorie with her groceries. He held the ruptured sacks and stood next to her on the porch while she looked for her keys. Once inside he put the groceries on the table in the kitchen.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” Hiram said.

“I guess.”

“Good night, Mrs. Stoval.”

“Marjorie.”

“Hiram.” He smiled at her. “Good night.”

Lewis Fife was more relaxed during the drive home than he had been during the ride to see the lion. He drove faster, his fat fingers holding the bottom of the steering wheel lightly.

“Seems like a nice woman,” Lewis Fife said.

Hiram agreed.

“I never met her before tonight.”

Hiram glanced out the window at the river as they passed it. “I’ve been out to treat her animals a few times. I was out at her place treating her horse just today.”

“She live there by herself?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Not married?”

Hiram shrugged. He didn’t want to seem removed, but neither did he want to broadcast the woman’s life story all over the county. “I think there’s a Mr. Stoval, but I’ve never seen him.”

“Funny,” Lewis Fife said, “the things we assume.”

Hiram looked back out his window and his thoughts turned to the lion. “I wanted to scream just like she did,” he said. “I just don’t get people. Did you see the look on the Wilcox boy’s face?” He glanced over at the silent Lewis Fife. “He hurt that boy.”

“Takes all kinds.”

At home, Hiram found Carolyn already in bed and sound asleep. He didn’t pause for the cup of tea he wanted, just undressed and slid into bed next to her. He felt the cool sheets against his back and stared up at the ceiling. The vapor lamp over the door of the barn always threw just a little light through the window. He listened to his wife’s breathing and closed his eyes. The world was thirty inches high and full of scents, the pads of his paws struck the ground fully, completely, feeling it thoroughly, absolutely, pushing it away beneath his body with each stride and he was floating, the muscles of his haunches and shoulders replete with eager power, power resting, power tightly wound, his nerves on fire, his eyes pressed to the edge of capacity and all of it, all of it set to the quiet his presence created in the woods, the quiet and his subdued, continuous, vibrating breathing. He understood that he was in danger, that he fell centered in the crosshairs of someone’s sad and human weapon, but he could not pause to be apprehensive, could not pause to locate the enemy, but instead walked through the woods that were his, the quiet of his making, looking for life where life always was, walking on the floor that had always been his, waiting for the report to split the air. Now he was Hiram Finch and he was standing in Marjorie Stoval’s kitchen, at least he believed it was Marjorie Stoval’s kitchen, it being oddly made of wood with the bark still on it, and Marjorie was standing in front of him, her blouse open and her breasts exposed and he was attending to her nipples, large nipples, the kind he had never found appealing, but here they were and he wondered why he was in her kitchen and she was pushing her finger toward him, toward his chest that he realized was uncovered, to his sternum. Her finger landed lightly and he could feel his heart rattling in its cave, vibrating and filling his torso with that low, continuous purring and her finger dragged its nail down along the line that separated his left from his right.… Hiram awoke with a start and saw the light from the vapor lamp still on the ceiling and heard his wife breathing beside him. He pushed the top sheet off his body and tried to let the air through the window cool him. He was afraid and lonely and hungry, terribly hungry. He rolled onto his side and faced his wife’s back. He put his hand on her hair.