The wolf realized his teeth were bared. He had never in his life tasted human blood. The wolf tried to imagine where he would take the baby, what would happen to it since he was not going to eat it, and of course its
unavoidable end was to be ripped asunder by buzzards whose profession was hunger and who didn't distinguish a human baby from a roadside possum. The wolf put his belly to the ground. He was trying to outrace fate but he was going in circles. He had known it all before and forgotten it all before. He could remember being healthy and somehow could remember being even more ill. The baby would not help nor hurt the wolf. The baby was beside the point. The reason to take it was the same as to not take it. The wolf was playing gamesâtaking pets, subsisting on flying insects, waiting around for fixes of music. Making vows. It was not the wolf's job to protect anything. The wolf was afraid he might push the mailbox over. The mother was still inside, feeling secure on a whim as humans always did, and she was right this time; the wolf was not going to harm the baby. The wolf wanted to believe that every last hope for peace had not expired in him. He pushed himself back from the mailbox as if dragging a loaded sled and then raced, stumbling, into the borderless abyss that had to be his true home.
Whether she wanted coffee or not, each morning she put on a kettle of water. As she ran water in the kettle she got to look out the back kitchen window and see her chickens getting about their business, and early in the morning was the only time she enjoyed them anymore. She got to stand near the warming stove. The kettle was something to wait on, a ritual. And when the kettle started whimpering she would wait still, until the sound grew urgent.
This morning she pushed close to the window and saw no movement, heard no impatient clucking. The ground outside was blanketed white. The rest of the desert was correct, but in Cecelia's mother's fenced enclosure the ground was a downy carpet. The feathers were spread evenly, as if a giant had fixed up a place to sleep for the night. Cecelia's mother pulled the door open but she could only make it down the first step. She didn't want to tread on the feathers. She was marooned on the steps. It was like looking at art, or something more important than art.
By now everyone knew the wolf wasn't killing out of hunger. He was killing to settle a score Cecelia's mother could not fathom. Cecelia's mother had begun to believe that the wolf had passed her over, like in the Bible when all those people painted their doors with blood. Cecelia's mother knew that the chickens had been working against her. She had secretly begun to hate them. If her chickens were tender for some ancient, animal debt, she wasn't going to begrudge the transaction. Some chickens became nuggets; hers had been raised to a higher calling. She wanted to laugh at these thoughts, standing alone on the steps, because they were stark and even silly, but she had no laughter to give.
Something was wrong with Cecelia's mother, but at least she knew it and at least she was working her way out. She wasn't crazy. She missed the chickens. She'd let go of them weeks ago in her heart. She hadn't tossed and turned last night, which was unusual. She'd had dreams, and they'd been empty. Her dreams had been hollow eggs. She hadn't heard a ruckus out back of the house and she hadn't heard Cecelia leave this morning. She remembered the day she'd bought the chickens, one of the last times she'd walked to Lofte's little downtown to go grocery shopping. She'd had her backpack with her, and was planning to grill steaks and panfry something green. On her way she'd passed the little Redding property and had not felt like cooking but had definitely felt lonely and the chickens were in the front pen for ten dollars each and Cecelia's mother had made a bad decision because she had the right to. She'd saved the chickens' lives. The Reddings were getting out of the hobby and Cecelia's mother got in. She could have company like everyone else. She could have something going on. She could do something Cecelia wouldn't approve of. She'd come home with live chickens she meant to keep alive rather than dead steaks she meant to put over a fire. She'd never had a pet in her life, probably another reason she'd bought them. It wasn't nuts to have some chickens. It was only nuts to have chickens if you were nuts anyway, without the chickens.
Cecelia's mother looked at the fence from one end to the other, still standing on the back step with the kitchen door wide open, and she saw
no breach. The fence was perfect. She realized that there was no blood, not a drop anywhere. The sky in the distance, above the peaks, was stained red. That's where the blood had goneâfar off, high above. Cecelia's mother stood there wondering whether she would rake the feathers up. That seemed disrespectful somehow, to rake them up like leaves. Maybe she could pick them all up with her fingers and drop them in a big sack. She could leave them alone, let the wind carry them off a clutch at a time. She didn't know if she wanted anyone else to see this. This was hers, not Cecelia's or the neighbors' or her brother-in-law's. She stood there, her kettle starting to make its noise.
There was an open lot not far from the clinic where hot-air balloons launched. The sky was clearer than it had been. Soren's father watched several balloons take shape and cling to the ground until they no longer could and then float out over the flatlands, and now he watched the crew struggling with a lavender vessel that must've had a leak. They could get it only so full before it listed and collapsed.
The nurses had not been permitted to throw out Soren's father's mail, but they'd kept it from him in a canvas laundry bag. They said he had to be the one to empty the bag down the trash chute. There hadn't been near as much mail since the nurses had been stewarding it as back when Soren had first fallen into his coma. The mail didn't nearly fill the bag, but was only something in the bottom that caused the bag to swing when Soren's father carried it to the end of the hall. He watched the envelopes tumbling into the dark, glimpsing return addresses in New Hampshire, Utah, other places.
He returned to his son's room and stood at the window. His eyes traveled from the lavender balloon, which had been cleared off and was being examined by young men with ponytails, to his own reflection. His face was inches away. He was wearing a sweater he didn't recognize. It was the color of hazel eyes. Gee had told him he wasn't brave, as if anyone was as brave
as she was. He wasn't a coward, but he knew what she'd meant. He wasn't kind and he had no friends. He wasn't kind or trusting and the worst thing about other people was they were those things. He'd seen the same folks every day at the factories and warehouses, knew their orders by heart, but he'd never known one thing beyond what they liked to eat. He'd had customers and a couple employees and a wife who'd gotten to know
him
but whom he hadn't truly known, a wife he'd never had a fight with, that he'd never cried in front of. Soren had come along and made all that moot. That's what Gee had meant about using Soren as an excuse. Soren's father was worse now. The warmth in his life was frozen and sitting still was his business. He had a space to be alone and he'd defended it against the nurses and doctors and against Gee and he'd even been cold to Soren's piano teacher, the poor woman. There'd been a cousin Soren's father had been close with as a child who'd died when they were both in their twenties. Soren's father didn't know why he was thinking of him now. He couldn't remember if that cousin had been a genuine friend or just a family member about the same age whom he happened to get along with. He couldn't remember why they didn't stay close once they weren't children anymore. Soren's father had been sitting in this room for a long time and he saw that he hadn't been hoping properly, not with a live heart, not in a way that meant anything.
Soren's father took a step back from the window. He was still holding the canvas bag. He thought of the people who had sat and taken time to write the letters he'd sent down the trash. They were better than Soren's father because they could admit they were desperate and try to do something about it. Soren's father folded the bag like a big pillowcase. He couldn't get it to look neat. He rested the bag on the dresser and went over next to Soren and kneeled beside him. He pulled Soren's stiff crossed arms off his chest with a gentle effort and put his ear to Soren's body.
She went out with her guitar and muted the TV and played for her mother, an old Arizona mining ditty that was one of her mother's favorites. It had
been months and months since she'd played a song that wasn't Reggie's. She watched her mother's expression soften during the first verse and her posture improve during the second. It was like back when Cecelia was first learning guitar, back when she and her mother were proud of each other. Her mother wanted to know that Cecelia didn't despise or resent her, and Cecelia was letting her know she did not. The song was a peace offering that could open the door for other offerings. The two of them hadn't had it out. Cecelia hadn't said anything mean to her mother, had never raised her voice. They'd both stood their ground long enough that the ground had become worthless.
Later, while Cecelia's mother made them sandwiches, sandwiches that would constitute the first meal they'd shared in way too long, Cecelia went over to the Waller lady's house and bought her mother a bird, a tiny inside bird that lived in a cage. She felt a pure physical relief at buying her mother a gift, as if she'd escaped a building that was caving in. Driving home with the well-mannered bird in her passenger seat, she felt no dread at the thought of arriving back at the house, and she realized in a way she hadn't before how terrible that was, to not want to walk into your own house. There wasn't going to be a tearful reconciliation, but a restoration was in progress, and that was enough for now.
Once home, Cecelia presented her mother with the new pet and they found a spot for it and admired its stately habits. Cecelia promised her mother she'd always be home in the mornings, and she convinced her mother to donate the wheelchair, to make an effort to eat proper dinners. They were both giving in, that was the important thing.
Cecelia offered to clean up the feathers in the backyard and her mother said she wanted them to stay. Cecelia remembered the chickens being dingy, but the feathers were bright as snow. Cecelia didn't tell her mother about getting fired. She certainly didn't tell her about Reggie's songs. For now she was only going to treat her mother like a respectable adult who had a right to her own business, and she could treat herself the same.
Cecelia had no clue whether the new bird was supposed to be able to
speak, but she and her mother talked to it anyway. They asked it who the yellowest bird in the whole desert was. They asked it who had the best little birdie manners.
Ran was in New Mexico and wanted to meet. No decision yet, but he wanted to meet. He didn't know Mayor Cabrera wasn't the mayor anymore. Mayor Cabrera didn't want to invite him to Lofte and have people wonder who he was and start busy-bodying around, so he suggested a bar out east, out where the old mining concerns used to operate.
It was a good afternoon for driving. The landscape appeared painted in oil, and Mayor Cabrera was putting himself into the painting. To be nervous for this meeting with Ran was the sensible emotion, but Mayor Cabrera mostly felt distracted. He saw that the situation was not urgent, whether he was the mayor or just a citizen. It wasn't urgent in the big picture. Lofte would fail, of course. It would fail in a couple short years or it would find a way to hang on for several decades, and it didn't matter which. Lofte's story was going to end sadly, whether pretty soon or very soon. People were going to have to find another place to live now or find another place when they were older and had less energy. They were going to have to find another place to get attached to, and what exactly were they attached to about Lofte? Most of the folks Mayor Cabrera knew could use a change. A big one. Mayor Cabrera was one of them.
The bar looked like a log cabin. There was one person inside and this was indeed Ran. Mayor Cabrera sat down at his table. Ran had a soft-looking spike haircut. His hands were pudgy.
“There's a sign up there that says the bartender stepped out for a bit,” Ran said. “I've thought it over and I'm going back there and mixing us a round of drinks.”
Mayor Cabrera peered back toward the kitchen.
“Stay put.” Ran smirked. “I don't want you getting involved in this.” Ran went and found what he needed and mixed the drinks, humming
as he worked. He brought the drinks to the table on a tray. They were tan in color, each with a twist of lemon on the rim.
“I don't know why I picked this place,” Mayor Cabrera said. “Maybe I felt like a drive.”
“I always feel like a drive,” Ran said.
“I could've shown you around town. That would've been the smart thing.”
“I've been to Lofte plenty,” Ran said. He sipped his drink, judging the flavor. “There's no bar in Lofte. Not really. Not one I'd want to go to.”
“Is that a positive for your church?” Mayor Cabrera asked. “Not having bars around?”
“There are a lot of positives. Plenty of positives. I've observed you in secret and I like your style. The town takes on the personality of the mayor, in my experience.”
“You observed me?”
“That's how these things are done. I wasn't observing
you
in particular.”