The Loop Page 24

  Neither did Luke.

  Helen had looked in vain for his face in the crowd before the meeting got going. She hadn’t seen him since the day they caught the wolf. He hadn’t come to the cabin or been around when she’d visited the ranch to be harangued by his father about the missing calves. She’d worried about him and been surprised by how much she missed his company.

  She was getting toward the end of her speech now and hoped she reached it before the end of her tether. She’d gone through what was known so far about the wolves, which wasn’t much, except that there were nine of them and that early DNA tests on the samples she’d taken showed no relation to any of the wolves released in Yellowstone or Idaho. Then she’d said a few words about the Defenders of Wildlife scheme that compensated ranchers for any verified wolf-kill. When she’d finished, they were going to take questions.

  ‘So, just to recap, we’ve got two of these wolves collared now and we’re going to be keeping real close tabs on them. Any proven killers of livestock will be removed or destroyed. That’s absolutely clear.’ She glanced at Dan, who nodded. ‘I understand how strongly some of you are feeling right now. All we’d ask is that you give it a little time and—’

  ‘What more proof do you need? Wolves kill cattle, period.’

  ‘Well, sir, with respect, there’s a fair amount of evidence, both from my own research in Minnesota and here in Montana too, in the Ninemile Valley, north of Missoula, that wolves can live in close proximity with livestock and not bother them—’

  ‘Hey, even the goddamn wolves are liberals in Missoula!’

  There was a roar of laughter and Helen waited for it to pass, trying to keep her smile in place. It felt more like a grimace.

  ‘Well, maybe. But a biologist there did some pretty interesting research. He fitted radio collars not just on wolves but on cattle as well and he found that the wolves mingled with herds the whole time without—’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Why the hell don’t you just let her speak?’ shouted one of the WOE group.

  ‘Why the hell don’t you go back where you belong and mind your own goddamn business?’

  Buck Calder stood up and raised his hands.

  ‘Our city friend back there is right. We asked Miss Ross along tonight and we should do her the courtesy of hearing her out.’

  Helen nodded at him. ‘Thank you. The fact seems to be that wolves prefer to prey on wild rather than domestic ungulates. Over a period of six years in the Ninemile, they killed just three steers and one calf—’

  ‘So how come they killed forty-three here in a couple of months?’ Ethan Harding called out. There was a loud murmur of support.

  ‘Well, we’re trying to get verification on precisely how many of those losses were in fact caused by wolves.’

  ‘You calling us liars?’

  ‘No, I certainly am not.’

  Buck Calder leaned forward in his chair. ‘Maybe you could tell us, Helen, how many of these calves you have “verified” as wolf-kills so far?’

  Helen hesitated. It was the question she’d dreaded. Of the forty-three alleged losses, only five carcasses had been found and not one of them was recent enough for the cause of death to be established.

  ‘Miss Ross?’

  ‘We’ve still got some work to do on that. As you know, the evidence is a little thin on the ground—’

  ‘But, so far, how many can you say for sure were killed by wolves?’

  Helen turned to Dan for help. He cleared his throat and was about to speak when Calder cut in:

  ‘I think we should hear this from Miss Ross. How many?’

  ‘Well, as I say, sir, we still have to—’

  ‘So far, though?’

  The whole room went quiet, waiting for her answer. Helen swallowed.

  ‘Well, so far. None.’

  There was uproar. Everyone started shouting at the same time. Some of those with seats were getting to their feet. Behind them, the fiercest WOE woman was nose to nose with Ethan Harding.

  ‘The wolf’s an endangered species, you bozo!’ she yelled.

  ‘No, lady, you’re the endangered species!’

  Calder held up his hands and called for quiet. But it had little effect. Helen shook her head and picked up a glass of water. As she drank she looked at Dan and he shrugged, guiltily. Bill Rimmer was craning his neck, peering toward the back of the hall. Something was going on back there. The TV cameraman had turned right around and was clambering up on a chair to get a better shot.

  Helen could see a truck had pulled up outside with its headlights pointing directly into the hall. Someone had climbed out of it and was walking toward the entrance, the lit rain sheeting down behind him. He pushed his way through the crowd out in the lobby and slowly it parted to let him through. He was in the hall now, elbowing his way through the hecklers, and as they saw him, they stopped their shouting and stepped aside.

  It was Abe Harding.

  He was carrying something, a bundle of some kind, over his shoulder. Helen glanced at Dan and they both frowned.

  ‘What the hell’s he got there?’

  ‘Looks like a rug or something.’

  Harding was clear of the hecklers now and heading down the aisle between the seats where most people had risen to their feet to get a better look at him. He was wearing a long yellow slicker that glistened with rain and made a swishing sound as he walked. He wasn’t wearing a hat and his grizzled hair was all bedraggled.

  Everyone was silent now and every pair of eyes upon him. He was wearing spurs which clinked with every footstep as he made his way toward the rostrum. He was staring at Helen with a kind of crazed intensity that would have been comical if it hadn’t been so scary. Helen hoped Dan’s two special agents had their guns handy.

  It wasn’t until Harding reached the rostrum and stopped right in front of her that Helen noticed the blood rivering down his slicker and realized at last what the bundle of black fur on his shoulder was.

  ‘Here’s your goddamn verification,’ Harding said.

  And he swung the dead wolf from his shoulder and dumped it on the table.

  By the time Helen and Bill Rimmer managed to get out of the community hall, Main Street looked like a war zone. It was blocked by four police cars and a fifth was blasting its siren as it tried to push its way through the crowd. Flashing red lights bounced and prismed in the store windows and made the great puddles of rain look like blood. It was coming down like a monsoon. Helen was soaked to the skin within seconds.

  A cop with a megaphone was asking people to move off and most were complying, negotiating a route through the puddles to their cars. Across the street now she caught sight of Dan. He and the two special agents were arguing with one of the cops who had arrested Abe Harding.

  She could see Harding now, still in his yellow slicker with his hands cuffed behind his back, being ushered into the back of one of the police cars. His sons were yelling at two other cops who were stopping them from getting to him. A little farther along the street, in the sheltered doorway of Iverson’s grocery store, Buck Calder was giving an interview to the woman from the TV station.

  ‘You okay?’ Bill Rimmer was looking down at her.

  ‘I think so.’

  The moment after Harding had dumped the wolf, all hell had broken loose. One of the WOE men had gotten into a fight with the two loggers, but it had been broken up before anyone was hurt. In the ensuing chaos Helen had been shoved against a wall and a large rancher had stepped, accidentally, on her foot. That aside, she was just a little shaken.

  ‘Dan looks like he’s got himself a problem over there,’ Rimmer said. He hunched his shoulders against the rain and headed across the street and Helen followed.

  ‘You don’t have to do this!’ Dan was saying to the cop.

  ‘The man assaulted a police officer. Listen, it was you who asked for police backup in the first place.’

  ‘Yeah, but why take him away? He’s not going anyplace. All this’
ll do is make a martyr of him. That’s what he wants, for Godsake.’

  It was too late anyway. The car Abe had been bundled into was already moving off, sounding its siren to get through the dispersing crowd.

  In its lights, Helen suddenly caught sight of Luke. He was coming down the street bur hadn’t seen her. He seemed to be looking for someone.

  ‘Luke!’

  He turned and saw her. He was wearing a brown waxed slicker, with the collar turned up. He looked very pale and very sad. When he came up to her, he tried to smile and gave a little nod that set the water streaming from the brim of his hat.

  ‘I w-w-was looking for you.’

  ‘Me too. I mean, in there. Did you see what happened?’

  He nodded. He glanced over to where his father was being interviewed.

  ‘I c-c-can’t stay.’ He fished something from his coat pocket and handed it to her. ‘I f-found this. By the side of the road.’

  Helen took it and looked at it. It was a letter. The envelope was mudstained and the ink had run. But she could still recognize the handwriting as Joel’s. Her heart gave a little flutter.

  ‘I’d better g-go now.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Thank you.’

  He nodded and turned and walked away.

  ‘Luke?’ she called.

  He turned and looked back at her and she suddenly realized how he must feel about what had happened to the wolf.

  ‘Will you come and see me?’

  He shook his head. ‘I c-can’t.’

  And he walked away in the rain and was lost in the crowd.

  21

  Mwanda Hospital,

  Kagambali

  16 Sept.

  My dear Helen,

  So did you catch them yet? No? Okay, well here’s what you do: get a metal pail - only BIG, right? About six feet deep and eight feet wide should do the trick. Next, you rig a pole across the top with a revolving oil drum on it, onto which you then strap: ONE DEAD MOOSE. This method has the Latimer seal of approval and has been used in North Carolina for centuries, which explains why there are so few wolves there. Let me know how it goes, okay?

  The cabin sounds cool. My grandmother’s old place had a root cellar just like that, full of spiders and things. I used to hide in it and spring out like a jack-in-the-box to scare my sisters (yeah, sorry, that was the kind of kid I was. You’d never guess, would you?)

  Helen laughed out loud. She was sitting in bed, reading it by the light of her headlamp. After Luke had given it to her, as soon as she could, she had left Dan and Bill and the mayhem of Main Street and driven back to the cabin with her heart singing. He had written, at last.

  She had delayed opening it for a long time, relishing the anticipation, like a child surveying presents under a Christmas tree. She’d laid it on her pillow and gone about her bedtime routine. She shoved Buzz out for a reluctant pee in the rain, cleaned her teeth, then made some tea. Then she’d undressed, pulled on the big T-shirt she slept in, turned out the lanterns and gone to bed with letter, tea and headlamp. She had briefly considered putting on one of Joel’s opera CDs, Tosca perhaps, but decided not to push her luck.

  She reached for the mug of tea now and took a sip, tilting the headlamp beam to find Buzz who was curled up by the stove, already asleep. Cocooned in her sleeping bag, her back pillowed against the cabin wall and the letter propped on her knees, Helen sat for a moment, listening to the rain beating on the roof and feeling something close to bliss.

  Things are pretty crazy here and look like getting crazier. The ACL have started a new round of ethnic cleansing about eighty miles north of here and every day we’re getting over a thousand new refugees, all of them in pretty bad shape. There’s typhoid, malaria and just about every other variety of tropical horror you ever heard of - though, mercifully, as yet, no cholera.

  And, of course, there’s nothing like enough medicine or food to go around. Some of the kids that get here (hundreds, maybe even thousands, don’t make it) haven’t eaten for weeks. They’re covered in flies and their arms and legs are just sticks. It’s pitiful. The amazing thing is, some of them still know how to smile.

  Last night there was high drama in the old hospital gardens where most of the aid group volunteers live. The accommodation is, to put it generously, pretty damn basic, i.e., shacks with no doors or windows, camp beds and a mosquito net with (if you’re lucky) only a few holes. Anyway, this young German guy, Hans-Herbert, was feeling tired and turned in early, right after supper. When his roommates went to bed a couple of hours later they saw he’d fallen asleep with one arm hanging over the side of his bed and (I hope you’re ready for this, Helen) a twelve-foot boa constrictor had started to swallow it. It had gotten up beyond the elbow, with poor old Hans-Herbert still sleeping like a baby!!

  They tried to wake him gently, but, of course, he freaked out pretty badly. They gave him - and the snake! - a shot of sedative and, incredibly, managed to ease it off his arm. The digestive juices had already gotten to work on his hand and fingers and he may have to have some skin grafts, but basically he’s okay. The snake less so. They released it (no tags or radio collar, I’m afraid) down by the river but some kids from one of the camps caught it and cooked it this morning for breakfast.

  Does that beat the python under that old Georgia couple’s house for Best Snake Story? I think so.

  A lot of the food (and medicine) that’s supposedly being flown in to us doesn’t get here. It either gets stolen by corrupt government officers at the airstrip or the trucks get hijacked by the ACL on route to us. Mainly they keep it for themselves, but sometimes they try to sell it back to us and we have no choice but to go along with it.

  The last group that came to negotiate were no more than kids, twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, all dressed up in their combat gear and ammo belts. One of them, a tiny kid, who couldn’t have been more than ten, was carrying this M16 machine-gun and was almost buckling at the knees with the weight of it. The worst thing is their eyes. You wonder what terrible things they must have seen or done to make their eyes go like that.

  So, hey! We’re having a ball out here!

  Actually, it’s not all bad. Mainly because of the incredible people I’m working with. And Helen, that’s really the main purpose of writing this letter. It isn’t going to be easy to say . . .

  Helen felt something turn inside her chest. She was still holding the tea and for fear of spilling it, put the mug down on the floor. Oh, Joel, she begged in her head. Don’t. Please don’t say it. Her heart was beating hard and her hands trembled as she forced herself to read on.

  Marie-Christine has been out here six months. She’s Belgian but lives in Paris. By training, she’s a pediatrician, though out here, you kind of have to do everything. We didn’t meet right away because . . .

  Helen threw the letter onto the floor. Why should she have to read this shit? How dare he think he could tell her all this, give her a blow-by-blow account - oh yeah, no doubt cute little Marie-Christine was terrific in that department too, sex-goddess and Mother Teresa all wrapped up in one chic little Parisian bundle - how dare he?

  She sat there for a moment, staring along the beam of her headlamp at the circle of light it made by the door. Her breathing made it rise and fall ridiculously. Then she reached for the letter - she couldn’t help herself - and read on.

  ... because she was taking a few days’ break somewhere. But when we did meet - oh God, Helen, this is so hard to tell you - but it was like we already knew each other.

  That sounded familiar, Helen thought. She scanned ahead, searching for any reference to ‘soul mates’, but couldn’t see it, which was just as well, for she would probably have screamed and broken a fist against the wall.

  Anyway, we ended up working together, running this mobile unit that made daily rounds of all the refugee camps and I got to see how amazing she was with these kids. They just all adore her. Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this, but I want to and feel I can, Helen, because of our being so
close and sharing so many good times.

  The bottom line is, in two weeks’ time, Marie-Christine and I ...

  ‘No,’ Helen sobbed. ‘Don’t, Joel. Don’t say that.’

  ... are getting married.

  Helen scrunched the letter up and threw it across the room.

  ‘You fucking bastard!’

  She kicked off the sleeping bag and stood up, holding her hands over her face. Buzz was on his feet too. He started barking.

  ‘Shut up, you stupid animal!’

  She ripped off her headlamp and threw it at him and he whimpered and slunk away somewhere while she stumbled in the darkness to the cabin door and fumbled for the catch. She found it and banged the door open and ran blindly out into the rain.

  Her bare feet slipped on the mud and she fell heavily and lay there for awhile with her face pressed into the wet earth, panting and cursing him and herself and the day she was ever born.

  And then she sat up and hunched herself and held her muddied hands to her face while the rain streamed down her, and wept.

  All in all, Buck reflected, it had been a fine night’s work. He was relieving himself in the restroom of The Last Resort, with a cigar between his teeth and propping himself against the wall, where he saw some brave historian had already scrawled Abe Harding for President.

  For the last hour Buck had been holding court at the bar, where everyone had adjourned when the fun outside was over. He’d never seen the place so packed or lively. Even the deer heads on the wall seemed to be having a good time.

  The meeting had gone better than he could ever have dreamed. It made him nostalgic for the days when he was a state legislator. He hadn’t expected those greeno hippies to turn up, but they’d made such damn fools of themselves that in the end he was glad they had.