Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 35

Jeebee was exhausted, ready to take a couple of blankets, roll up on the floor, and try to catch at least some sleep.

Merry, however, was still hungry. He built a small fire in the fireplace to heat a good-sized cooking pot of the thick soup he had prepared. It was made mainly of root vegetables, because the garden down at the ranch had not yet begun to produce much in the way of this summer’s eatables. But they still had some carrots, beets, and rutabagas, plus dried peas from the ranch’s fruit cellar, saved for important occasions.

The root vegetables, dug the fall before from the garden there, had been kept with their tops chopped off, and buried in a box of sandy soil. They were a little dried and tough, but in soup form they became tender, and something to balance the animal protein of the cheese and meat.

Eventually, Merry’s hunger was satisfied. A little more than three hours after the birth she dozed off, then dropped into what seemed to Jeebee like a normal-to-heavy sleep, with the baby beside her in the bed.

Jeebee had worried before the birth about the business of her sleeping with the newborn child in the bed with her.

“You’ll be pretty worn-out,” he had said, only a couple of days before, “and you’ll probably sleep pretty heavily. If you roll over in your sleep, you might—”

“I’m not going to roll on my precious baby!” said Merry. “How can you even think something like that!”

“You might not know—”

“I’ll know!” Merry had said. “No one is going to have that baby with them but me, until I say so!”

Jeebee had necessarily left it at that. Later on, he had remembered something in one of the wolf books and looked it up. Sure enough, there was a statement there about surrogates, people who volunteered to take care of and raise very young animals from zoos and similar places that could not keep them safely with the adults of their own species, or where the animal mother was dead or incapable.

These humans often needed to sleep nights with the very young animals, and it was noted that they could do so safely. It had been established that as long as the human being was neither sedated nor affected by any drug or medicine, there was absolutely no danger of one of them rolling over in their sleep on the young creatures.

Now, looking at Merry sleeping with one arm still holding the sleeping baby close to her breast, he felt reassured and happy.

He finished cleaning up and went outside, stepping for a moment into the summer morning.

Wolf was gone from the front room and was nowhere to be seen around the cave. Nor was he visible in the meadow outside. About Jeebee, the early day was warming as the sun rose, and he found himself thinking that he had never felt quite so happy as he did at this moment.

In a sense, his world was complete. He felt enclosed in happiness under the straight-back pines, with the sound of a small breeze going through their branches and the two streams slipping by with other light sounds between their banks. Above him white clouds sailed demurely across the blue June sky. He felt fulfilled. In this moment, life seemed finally, utterly purposeful, and overwhelmingly satisfactory.

He was, for the first time since Merry had called him in, conscious of his own tiredness. Merry had evidently been wired up during those hours following the birth when she had been so hungry, and apparendy he had picked up some of the wiredness from her. Now he himself wanted only to sleep.

He went back inside, leaving the outer door open but closing the inner one and making up his own bed on the floor with his body against it, the door itself open just a tiny crack for air. To get in, Wolf or anything else would have to push him aside. And that would wake him. Merry and the baby were protected.

He was woken for short periods at indefinite times after that by Merry wanting something more to eat or drink. Each time, he felt his way to the nearest electric light and switched it on. The second time, Merry suggested a light be put down where she could reach it herself. All the headlamps were on long cords and easy to move. He shifted the one closest to the bed; and, momentarily while awake, as long as he was up, he stepped outside again and found that Wolf had come back. He was curled up in his usual corner of the lower room. Beyond the open outer door, the day showed itself at mid-to-late afternoon.

He went all the way outdoors, to feel again the summertime and reach for a trace of the remarkable feeling of completeness he had felt earlier. Turning back in, his eye caught something by the side of the door and he remembered that sometime after the baby was born, he had wrapped the afterbirth in plastic and put it out here, to dispose of later. It was still there. But the plastic had been neatly ripped away from it. It was completely exposed, but untouched.

The ripping away of the plastic was clearly Wolf’s work. But he—who would eat anything that was eatable—had not touched the afterbirth. Jeebee’s heart gave a curious lurch in his chest. What could have made Wolf respect that, where normally anything eatable would have been snatched up and carried off by him?

Jeebee tried to remember something in the books about wolves that he had read which could explain this. But there was nothing. Slowly the thought formed in him that he was doubtful of accepting, because it simply might be a matter of sheer wish-fulfillment. It had occurred to him that perhaps Wolf might have respected the afterbirth because he had made an association of it with as much of the birth scene as he had witnessed, and with Merry and the baby itself.

If so, then it could have been the beginning of a recognition that the baby was part of their family, part of the pack, as Wolf would have thought of them. It was a long jump into sheer supposition. Jeebee was only too aware of how little he knew about wolves. But he wondered if perhaps Wolf’s experience with the amniotic fluid in his face, and his later shoulder-rolling in the sheet that had been stained when Merry’s water bag burst, as well as his watching of the birth—plus Merry’s warning him off—if all these things had not acted as a form of something like imprinting.

It was pure guesswork, but maybe it was a possibility. When he went back in, he located the chain he had found at the ranch and that he had equipped earlier with a snap on one end so that it could act as a leash, as the storekeeper woman had walked with Wolf on a leash in the town where Jeebee had lost his motorized bike. He had never gotten around to trying whether Wolf would remember and accept the leash with him. Now Jeebee hung it from a nail in the frame of the inner door, where it would be close at hand. Later on, he would try out the leash.

It seemed he had hardly closed his eyes before he was wakened by scratching at the door and Wolf whining and snuffling through the crack, it seemed right into his ear. He sat up as Merry turned the light on, having herself been woken by Wolf’s demands to enter.

“Do you want me to let him in?” said Jeebee, putting his hand up to the chain. “I’ve got the leash here now. I can keep him on that. I really think we want to start getting him used to the baby right from the start.”

He thought fleetingly again of the afterbirth outside with the plastic carefully peeled away from it.

“Shall I leash him and then let him in, just close enough to see you and the baby again?” Jeebee repeated when she did not answer.

“Yes,” said Merry, “but don’t let him get any closer than the edge of the bed.”

Jeebee got up, holding the door shut by leaning against it with all his body weight. He unhooked the chain, and then, still holding the door shut, moved around and opened it only enough to push himself through the opening and push Wolf back. Jeebee looped the ready-held chain loosely around Wolf’s neck as he imprisoned him with his arms and snapped the snap into one of the links. It was attached to Wolf now, but it hung loosely around his neck and the snap would keep that looseness so the chain would not choke him. Wolf did not seem to object. Beyond the wide-open outer door, twilight held the sky. It was the regular time for Wolf’s evening visit.

Still holding tight to the chain and keeping Wolf from pulling away from him, but allowing him into the room, Jeebee stepped backward one pace. Wolf strained against the chain, not fighting it, but trying to get to the inner room. Jeebee let Wolf pull him into the inner room, and only stopped him with the chain some three feet from the near edge of the bed. Merry was sitting up, eyeing Wolf narrowly, with the baby on the far side of her, lying out of sight beyond her body.

Jeebee allowed Wolf to go a step forward; he was still about a foot and a half from the bed, whimpering now, wagging his tail and looking both agreeably and appealingly at Merry.

Without warning, the baby cried, a thin wail, and tossed its arms in the air so that they appeared on the other side of Merry’s body. Merry turned and took the tiny figure up into her arms, laying the little head against her breast.

Long before she had lifted the baby fully into sight, Wolf had jumped backward, and hidden behind Jeebee.

“Will you look at that!” said Jeebee. “He’s afraid of the baby!”

“He’s hungry,” Merry said softly, to the baby rather than to Jeebee or Wolf. “Is he hungry?”

She had lifted the baby to her breast and it found the nipple and nursed—but just for a few moments. It was evidently not as hungry as it thought it had been. It let the nipple out of its mouth and turned its head away toward Jeebee, small blue eyes flashing about.

A long gray muzzle sneaked around the side of Jeebee’s leg. Wolf was peering at the baby.

The baby jerked up an arm in a sudden motion like a reflexive wave, and Wolf’s muzzle was gone behind Jeebee’s leg once more, almost before the arm had started to lift.

The baby looked around for a moment more before deciding to find the nipple again, and went back to nursing. The gray muzzle crept out again.

Silently, almost imperceptibly, Wolf emerged from behind Jeebee, his neck outstretched, his nose flared toward the bed, and his eyes on Merry and the baby. Merry herself was looking down, watching the baby, absorbed in the process of nursing.

Wolf floated gradually forward until most of his body was past Jeebee. The chain, which Jeebee had kept slack, drew tight and stopped him a foot from the near bedside.

Jeebee moved forward a little, himself, slackening his chain; Wolf started to take up the slack and suddenly froze. Jeebee looked at Merry. Merry’s eyes and attention were all on Wolf. Her face was fixed in an expression and her lips had drawn back from her teeth. It was not a welcoming face. The glitter of her teeth in the fluorescent light was like the glitter of the teeth of any carnivore mother. Wolf’s ears had flattened to his head, his head itself had lowered, and his tail had begun to wag as he moved forward. Now he stood still in his same position and began to make little appeasing whines.

“Let him come as far as the edge of the bed?” Jeebee said.

“As far as the edge”—Merry’s face had not changed—“but no farther!”

Jeebee stood where he was, with a slack chain. Gradually Wolf inched forward until his nose was barely inches from the bedside.

“That’s enough!” Merry said suddenly.

Jeebee checked Wolf. He only twitched the chain taut for a second, but Wolf had stopped even before the words were out of Merry’s mouth. Now, Wolf backed a step and then turned to leave, out of the inner room, through the outer door and into the open air.

Outside, Jeebee took the leash off.

With the leash off, Wolf appeared to lose all interest in the cave’s interior. He greeted Jeebee in the usual fashion and tried to get Jeebee to play with him and chase him. Jeebee, however, was too wise in Wolf’s ways by this time to be drawn from his post in the doorway. Wolf had left the inner room on his own decision. But it was one of his oldest tricks to see if he could not get Jeebee’s attention away from something that Wolf himself wanted, and then beat Jeebee back to whatever it was. Wolf might actually have been wanting to romp and roughhouse in the usual fashion; but he could equally well have been trying merely to draw Jeebee out of position so he could slip past him and in through the door again. Perhaps he thought that Merry might let him come closer to the new pup if Jeebee was not there.

In any case, Jeebee stood his ground, and after a while Wolf, panting agreeably, suddenly turned and pulled his usual vanishing act through the trees. Jeebee turned, himself, closing both the front and inner doors behind him as he went back inside.

He doubted that Wolf would still try to come back for a while, or that his disappearing just now meant that he had given up trying to get in. But just to be on the safe side, Jeebee made sure the inner door was firmly latched.

Back inside, the light was still on and Merry still sat up in bed, holding her child.

“I hope it didn’t worry you to have him that close,” said Jeebee.

“Worry me? No,” Merry answered.

Her right hand came up from the hidden side of her where the baby had been lying. It was holding Jeebee’s revolver. “I’ll be carrying this from now on.”

Jeebee gazed at the gun and at her and let out a deep breath. He remembered the moment coming up out of the root cellar with the cans, months before.

“Yes,” he said. “Well, I don’t really think he’ll be a danger to the baby.”

“No,” said Merry.

She put the revolver away, laying it back down where it hadbeen, and her mood changed as abruptly as Wolf’s had seemed to, outside.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” she said fondly, looking down at the baby.

“Yes,” said Jeebee, wondering a little to find that he really did think the baby was beautiful. He was not used to thinking in those terms about men, boys, or even male children. But Merry was right. Their baby was beautiful.

“We’ve got to name him,” Merry said decisively.

There was a little lift to her voice at the end of the sentence. Not enough to make it a question, but enough to invite comment from Jeebee. Or, if not, some kind of response.

“What do you want to name him?” Jeebee said diplomatically.

“Paul,” she answered immediately. Her gaze clouded a little. “He’ll never know his granddaddy, but he can carry his name.”

She looked up at Jeebee.

“You don’t like Paul for him?” Merry asked.

“I hadn’t even thought,” said Jeebee. “No, of course I like Paul.”

His answer was completely truthful. He simply hadn’t thought that far ahead; and in any case, he had no objection to the baby being named after Merry’s father. The thought came to him, too late, that he might have put forward the name of his own father. But Merry had never known his father. In fact Jeebee had all but forgotten him in the years since his father’s death and his own maturing.

Paul, he thought now; Paul was a name he probably would have picked himself, given time to think about it.

“Turn out the light,” Merry said sleepily, settling down with the baby in her arms and closing her eyes. “Leave the doors open a little, though.”

Jeebee did as she had said and went outside again. If Merry was not concerned about Wolf returning, then it was foolish for him to worry about it.

The evening was warm. He looked around at a meadow in the full stride of a northern summer. The pines stood up, straight and dark-needled around a green meadow in which the two streams ran down the natural slope from their point of divergence. The waters were deep blue under a sky that was darkening steadily, enormously high, with a few large clouds at a distance from each other, high to still be bathed in the light of the sun, and moving steadily together like a fleet of treasury galleons sailing eagerly before a westering wind to the lands of gold and promise.

All about him he could feel the world turning forward through time, out of the darkness that had brought him here toward a brighter future.

The warmth, the soft air, the scent of the summer day now ending, filled him, enlarging him as if he was a balloon. He drew it deep into his lungs, feeling as if he grew with the inhalation. He must tell Merry about this moment, later on when she was rested and there was time. In fact, there would be a great deal for them to tell each other about this tremendous achievement at the height and best of the year. He drew the air deep into his lungs for another enormous breath. He was ready to build the cave behind him into a palace. He was ready to rebuild the world. He felt like a giant.

He let the air out, checking on a sudden thought. One other thing he had not talked about with Merry was his original plan of going on after the baby was born to finish finding his brother’s ranch. That whole part of their future had been pushed into the back of his mind as the birth of the baby came close, and he had almost forgotten it himself.

The truth was, he had never really faced the problems of traveling with the new baby. Now that the child was actually born, he could fully realize what would be involved in that. He, Merry, and infant Paul would necessarily be wandering about the higher plains, possibly to be shot at on sight by local ranchers, and living as people on the move had to do. It was suddenly clear how foolish the idea had been.

There could be no moving from here until next summer, at least, when Paul would be a good deal stronger and bigger, even if still young for travel, even carried in a basket of sorts, hung on back or chest, as the Indians had carried their youngest children. Merry must have simply taken it for granted he would eventually realize this. It must have been so obvious to her that he would eventually see this for himself that she had not bothered to point out the impossibility of it. She was very like her father in that.

Consciously, he had not confronted these facts. Unconsciously, he realized now, with all his plans of building the forge and adding on to the cave, he had come to terms with it long since. Jeebee looked around him again. The evening was glorious. He still felt like a giant. It was ridiculous for him to feel so, he thought suddenly. It had all been Merry’s accomplishment, not his. But that was the way he felt, nonetheless. Also, he abruptly recognized, he was hungry.

He went back in, turned on one of the interior lights that was farthest from the bed, and cut some meat and cheese for himself. He made his bed again on the floor against the door and turned the light out. In no time whatsoever, he, with the other two, was sleeping the sleep of the successful and the just.