Matthew threw his arms up to the sky and made a noise deep inside himself. “To talk to someone who knows how I feel is incredible. It’s like a relief or something. You know?”
Stephen nodded, just the way Matthew wanted him to. Today would be warmer, Stephen could feel it already, and when the ice began to melt, the air would turn foggy and white. There was often a thaw at this time of year, and the turn in the weather could surprise some people and catch them off guard.
“You were taught,” Matthew Dixon said. “I had to learn it all by myself, step by step. And I did everything right, until the mistake at the end, when it was the wrong girl.”
The wind shifted slightly. Stephen kept his hands in his pockets; he didn’t take his eyes off Matthew.
“I can control it,” Matthew said. “I know I can. Lydia just messed things up. That won’t happen next time.”
Next time, Matthew confided, he wouldn’t leave anything to chance. He’d go get Lydia. No one would suspect someone with the courage to knock at her door. He’d ask for her help with a dog who had been hit by a car, and since she liked to pretend she was generous, she wouldn’t deny him. He would guide her to the cemetery.
“The perfect place,” he confided to Stephen.
When they arrived, and there was no dog to be seen, he would tell her it must have crawled into the bushes. It was injured, too desperate to fend for itself. And she’d call to the poor thing, and she’d whistle for it, and that was when Matthew would get her.
He came a little closer to Stephen now. “You choose who you’re going to kill carefully, don’t you? You plan it all out.”
Stephen didn’t blink. “Whatever runs,” he said. Stephen’s voice was thick, but Matthew didn’t seem to notice.
“Whatever asks to be chased.” Matthew had whispered, as if afraid that the birds might overhear. “Just the way she’s asking for it.”
There was a thin line of light at the bottom of the sky. The footprints Matthew had left as he climbed up to Old Dick’s grave were already disappearing as the ice melted. Matthew was talking softly about Lydia, how she thought she was too good for everyone, how she stared right through people and thought no one could ever tell her what to do, but Stephen was thinking about another set of footprints he’d once overlooked, tracks through the woods that were set much too close together. That’s what rabies could do, make it more and more difficult for a wolf to walk straight, because its rear legs would wobble. But it had been spring, and the tracks had been left in the damp earth, then covered with the moss that grew overnight, and Stephen hadn’t spotted them until it was too late. It hadn’t been a hard winter, and the spring had been even easier. Stephen hadn’t been hungry for a while, and he may have grown lazy, but whatever it was, he’d been careless enough not to pick up the scent of the lone wolf who had come into their territory. Or maybe the wolf had been extraordinarily silent, as if his sickness had given him the power of deceit with one hand as it stole away his life and health with the other.
Stephen was at the stream when he felt another presence. He raised his eyes, slowly, the way he’d been taught, and there was the wolf, right in front of him, a male who was all gray, except for his black muzzle, and who was already looking at something that wasn’t there. Lone wolves had come into their territory before; some they’d chased away easily, some they’d had to fight; one female had remained with them until she died of old age. Stephen stayed where he was, waiting for a sign of what was to happen next. The lone wolf’s ears were already flattened close to his head and his tail was raised. He licked at his lips, though he couldn’t have been thirsty; the stream was right in front of him, and all he needed to do to drink was lower his head. The sickness was the only thing that drove him; a wolf tied up in such agonizing knots was capable of anything. It was as if he had swallowed a bolt of lightning whole and was now electrified from mouth to tail.
The wolf began his charge slowly, through the ferns that grew alongside the stream. Stephen felt his own fear rising up through his skin, but he’d forced himself not to run, to keep his fear in check to make certain that the lone wolf wouldn’t smell it. The sick wolfs mouth was open, so wide it seemed the jaws had been forced apart by wire; his breath was hot and foul. Beneath his unsteady feet, the ferns broke in two. When he made his attack, Stephen was ready, but the lone wolf was propelled by the lightning inside him. Stephen knew that if he rammed his fist into the wolfs throat, it would be nearly impossible for him to bite down with full pressure. But the lone wolf clawed at him so savagely he cut right through to the bone; Stephen’s thigh was split open. Right then, he began to see the white light in front of his eyes.
Stephen called to his brothers with a voice he’d never used before. His fist was being crushed inside the lone wolfs jaws, and the white light was growing stronger, urging him to follow it. He didn’t hear his brothers approach; all he heard was their teeth and the sound deep in their throats, and he didn’t open his eyes until they had managed to drive the lone wolf off. That night, after Stephen had thrown himself in the cold water of the stream and washed off his own blood before it congealed, he wrapped a doe’s skin around his thigh, so that pieces of himself wouldn’t fall off. He would feel the pain from this for a long time, and it would serve to remind him of his own carelessness. His brothers licked at their own bloody legs; they circled around him, and together they listened to the sick wolfs call. He was just on the other side of the ridge, their territory still, and that wasn’t nearly far enough.
Stephen looked at his favorite brother as he listened to the lone wolfs call. The silver wolfs throat trembled; he may have wanted to answer, but he did not. That was when Stephen knew what his brothers would do, and that it couldn’t wait another night. A rabid wolf cannot remain in the same territory, not ever. They would never know when he would return, they’d be listening for him always, frightened by a breaking branch, an owl’s call, more and more edgy, perhaps even turning on each other. One day he’d come back, he’d be driven to it. Together or alone, near the spring on a morning when the air was foggy or deep in the woods where it was always night, he’d find them. Stephen’s leg was throbbing and he was feverish and hot, but he went with his brothers to the other side of the ridgetop, following behind, leaving a trail of blood. They were as silent as the stars above, the ones the lone wolf howled at as he stood high on the ridge, condemned to his aloneness.
They moved in on him so quickly that he never had the chance to bite. And as he was dying, the wolf looked at them, with the eyes he had seen through before he was rabid, before he was cast out again and again, as though grateful for his release. Then Stephen saw the lone wolf for who he was. He knelt beside the body and grieved for him, not the agonized thing they had killed that night, but that other wolf, the one who’d been lost long ago.
Men think about right and wrong, they have to debate it, discuss it, draw upon possibilities and statistics, laws and codes. Wolves have to know. They have to know in an instant, pure instinct, not thought, because they can never be wrong. If they’re wrong, the ice they walk upon cracks, and they drown, their lungs filled with cold water and crystals. If they’re wrong, their brothers and sisters starve and their pups are shot as they run. If they’re wrong, the rabid wolf comes back, and he always comes back, only this time they’re sleeping, and they can’t even put up a fight as he splits them apart.
Stephen should not have even been on the hill where Old Dick was buried, because the sky was now pearl-gray, opening into light all along the shore. In only a few hours, the trucks would be out, sanding Cemetery Road, and the men who took the train to work would kiss their children and wives good-bye and walk across the bridge to the station. Stephen had been among them too long, he was slowed down by pity, something no wolf can afford. But he hadn’t been among them long enough that it lasted.
“I wish I’d known about you from the beginning,” Matthew was saying. They had begun to walk down the hill, and Stephen paced himself; he couldn’t
go too fast with Matthew beside him. “We could have been in it together,” Matthew said.
“I stay alone,” Stephen said. “It’s better that way.”
While Matthew thought this over, he slipped on the ice. Stephen reached out to steady him. Matthew was heavy, and Stephen had to hold tight so he wouldn’t fall.
“Thanks,” Matthew said. “This damn ice.”
They were near the boxwood hedge, where rabbits liked to hide in spring.
“I’ll get her next time,” Matthew said. “You know I will, don’t you?”
Matthew was about to head for the gate when he felt Stephen grab him again. Thinking there was a patch of ice ahead, Matthew grinned, grateful for the help. It never occurred to him to defend himself. In the end he was quite certain that the birds that had been chirping, signaling the close of night, had quieted all at once, when in fact they continued to sing long after Stephen had reached Mansfield Terrace, long after he’d climbed over Robin’s fence and used the hose to wash the blood from his hands.
All that night Robin had been dreaming about him, and when he appeared in her yard at the first light of day it seemed like a miracle. She brought him inside and kissed him for as long as she could. She’d made a mistake: she told him that immediately. She’d been wrong. That she’d ever thought to doubt him now felt like a crime; every kiss begged his forgiveness. She wanted him so badly it hurt, but he moved away from her and asked for a glass of water.
He was out of breath; Robin could see that. He’d run all the way, just to see her. How selfish she was, how crazy for him. She got them both glasses of cool tap water, and Stephen gratefully took the water and drank it in one long gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at her carefully, memorizing the angles of her face and the arch of her neck.
Robin laughed. “Don’t look at me that way,” she said. He was making her nervous. He’d looked at her a thousand times before, and yet she had the urge to hide her face in her hands. “Stephen,” she said. “Don’t.”
At last he turned and went to the window. He could see the rosebushes that were always the first to bloom on the island; he could see the redwood fence that circled the yard.
Robin came to stand behind him. Somehow, what they’d had was already over, and she hadn’t even been aware of the end. This happened with roses: it was possible to take them for granted all summer as they wound along fences and gates, and then in September, when they faded, how beautiful they’d once been suddenly took hold. That was when people began to yearn for them, and all winter long they’d watch the bare branches for buds, vowing that this time they’d be grateful for all that they had.
“I did something,” Stephen said.
“Whatever happened, it doesn’t matter.” Robin knew she sounded frantic. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
As soon as he started to explain, Robin put her hands over her ears. But that didn’t stop him from telling her that Matthew Dixon hadn’t made a sound, he’d made certain of that by crushing his windpipe quickly.
“Stop it,” Robin begged him.
It was an act of mercy. He couldn’t have walked away before that moment when Matthew fell into the hedge of boxwood, where his parka caught on the branches and the low sticker brambles that grew wild all over the island.
“I had to do it,” Stephen told Robin.
“You had to! You couldn’t tell the police? Or me? Or Roy? Don’t you understand? You don’t just kill someone because you think he’s guilty.”
“He was guilty,” Stephen said.
“Because you think it!” Robin said. She had begun to cry, and that just made her feel more helpless. “And even if he was, that is not the way we do it! You can’t just kill someone. You can’t just decide that.”
This was not what Stephen had come here for. He reached for Robin, but she wrenched her arm away.
“Who are you that you could do this? Who are you?” she cried.
Stephen didn’t flinch, even though Robin raised her hand as if to strike him. But she didn’t hit him. She knew exactly who he was. She had from the very start.
“All right,” Robin said. “This is what we’ll do.” She wiped her eyes and tried to concentrate on every word, not on what she felt inside. “We’ll explain that you didn’t understand. You didn’t know the way things work, no one ever told you. We’ll tell them that.”
Stephen knew that he would change things. Later, when he remembered, her eyes would not be filled with tears, her face would not be so pale. Robin had already gone to the phone and had begun to dial Roy’s number. Stephen took the phone away from her just the way she knew he would. She didn’t have to turn to him to know he was looking at her as though he’d never see her again. He had never once said he could believe what men believed in; he’d never pretended that. She’d known him all along; she’d been locking the doors in order to keep him, praying that he could get used to the easy chair, the dinner hour, the pillows on her bed.
“You’ll leave,” Robin said. He had both arms around her now. “That’s what you’ll do, isn’t it?” He rested his cheek against the base of her neck.
Robin locked the doors one last time and took him to her bedroom. She led him up the stairs and along the hallway. She would never love anyone again, not like this, not ever again. She wanted him in her bed. She wanted to always remember this one morning, when the shades were drawn against the morning light and he told her that there would never be anyone else. She didn’t have to cry when she felt this way, that’s what she had discovered. She just had to hold on tight, because before she knew it, it would be over and she’d have to watch him reach for his clothes that had been dropped on the floor. She’d have to make up the bed so that it might look as though he’d never been there at all.
All that day the thaw continued, and by midafternoon most of the ice had melted, bringing the level of the water beneath the old bridge dangerously high. Streets flooded, forsythia was nearly tricked into budding, children who’d been forced to stay inside for weeks pulled on their rubber boots and splashed through the mud. By afternoon, it was nearly sixty degrees, a record high, yet when they went out to the truck, Stephen continued to wear his old black coat. Robin had given him the five hundred dollars Roy’s father had left on her table; she would drive him out of New York, to a bus station in New Jersey, and be home by midnight. She had her hair tied back and she wore her boots and her old work jacket, stained with mud. Stephen didn’t offer to show her the map Matthew had given him, and she didn’t ask to see it. She might have torn it in half; she might have been tempted to follow him. She had to think of everyday things: how much gas they would need for the trip, whether the truck might stall out, as it often did on damp days such as this. The truck was idling roughly, and Robin had to concentrate so that she wouldn’t flood the motor. She didn’t even realize they were being followed until the bridge was right in front of them. Stephen reached out and put a hand on her arm, then nodded to the rearview mirror. Roy’s car was behind them.
“Damn him,” Robin said.
She pulled over, and the wheels on the right side of the pickup sank into the mud.
“I’ll talk to him,” she told Stephen. “You’d better stay here.”
Robin got out and slammed her door shut. If pushed, she just might explode, but then Roy was used to that, he wouldn’t find it the least bit unusual.
“You’re fucking doing it again,” Robin said to Roy. He’d parked behind her and was now rolling down his window. “You have no right to follow me.”
She leaned down, the better to curse him, and that was when she saw that it was Connor who was behind the wheel.
“I didn’t know it was you,” Robin said, flustered. “What are you doing with your dad’s car?”
“I got my license last week,” Connor said.
As Connor got out of the car and leaned up against it, Robin could have sworn he’d gotten taller and thinner since she’d seen him last. He was wearing his leath
er jacket and jeans, and he’d had his hair cut shorter than usual, so his neck was exposed.
“Your dad doesn’t mind you driving with all the flooding that’s going on?”
“Mom,” Connor said.
“All right.” Robin backed off. “Fine.”
When Connor was a baby, Robin would count his fingers and toes, and each time she did she was counting her good fortune. He was all in one piece; he was hers. She’d never liked babies much, never begged for a closer look or asked to hold them in her arms, until she had Connor. Even Michelle had laughed at her because his whole first year she didn’t want to put him down for an instant. He’ll never learn to walk, Roy teased her. You’ll still be carrying him when he’s a grown man with a family of his own.
“Is that Stephen in there?” Connor nodded to Robin’s truck. “I’ve been wanting to talk to him.”
“He can’t talk now. We’re going to the mall,” Robin said, just a little too quickly. Connor looked at her. “He needs some clothes. Sweatshirts, things like that.”
“I should have told him right away,” Connor said. He looked much more angular, Robin saw that now, as if he’d grown up overnight. “I know he didn’t do anything to Jenny.”
“No,” Robin agreed. She kept pushing her hair away from her face, the way she always did when she was upset.
“You’re not taking him to the mall,” Connor said.
Stephen opened the door of the pickup, then stood beside it, there on the side of the road, where the mud was so thick a man could easily get stuck in it. He waved to Connor and Connor waved back.
“You’re not taking him shopping,” Connor said to his mother.
“No,” Robin said.
Connor smiled and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.” From where he stood Connor could see the bridge and the willow trees that had grown there for a hundred years, longer than anyone could remember.
“You’d better go,” he said. “You don’t want the mall to close before you get there.”