Chapter 9 #2
“And there’s the view of the river she mentioned,” Camellia said, holding up a finger to measure. “But where’s the Wile E. Coyote formation?”
They both looked around for a long moment. Wolf spotted it first and nudged her shoulder with his. “There.”
The oblong boulder that Cilla had described as being balanced on top of a stone column as if waiting for the Road Runner’s coyote to come by, lay instead beside it, one end still propped up against its former base.
“Guess the coyote was here,” Wolf said.
Camellia turned. “You think there’s anything left inside the shack?”
A strange male voice said, “Nope,” and she dang near jumped out of her skin.
Wolf
Wolf put an arm around Camellia, pulling her behind him as he stepped in front, facing the newcomer, an old man in a park ranger uniform that hung loose on his skinny frame.
His tan shorts came to mid-thigh, and his campaign hat caused a shadow to cut across his face, but not enough to hide the wrinkles.
“Officer,” Wolf said, dipping his head.
“Ranger,” he corrected. “Ranger Dan.” And he tapped his badge.
“Can we help you, Ranger Dan?”
The old man gazed at Wolf, then narrowed his eyes and took a step closer. “Are you him, then? Wolf Travail?”
The shock that rippled through him was beyond anything Wolf had felt before. “How do you—?”
“You know him?” Camellia asked, pushing out from behind him.
“Knew his grandma,” the ranger said, and his lips pulled into a smile as he said it, one he quickly hid by running his hand across his whiskered mouth. “I expect you have questions, if you’re him.”
“I’m him,” Wolf said. And he fought to calm down.
His heart was going a hundred miles an hour.
This might be nothing. And why was he excited anyway, when he didn’t even really want to find his family?
He just wanted to extend his time around Camellia in hopes he’d be in close proximity if she changed her mind about dying single.
He shook all that off and refocused on the old man. “Care to sit? We have water.”
He nodded and took a seat on a red-brown boulder that protruded from the ground amid several others.
Wolf sat on a rock to his left. Camellia offered her canteen, but Ranger Dan took his own from his belt.
As he tipped his head back to drink, he swept off his hat with his other hand, moved the canteen up, and poured water over his head, revealing sparse gray hairs combed from one side to the other, which he ruffled before replacing the hat.
“Ahh. Good water here. Sweet,” he said. “I don’t have all that much to tell you. I discovered the women squatting out here, and”—he nodded at Wolf—“the child. I was trailing a wolf that’d been menacing campers. Never did find it. It led me to the three of you, though.”
“Holy shit,” Camellia said, rubbed her arms, and shot wide eyes to Wolf.
He gave her a skeptical smirk and subtle head shake in the direction of no. He only believed in what he could see.
“Your mother went by Cilla back then,” Ranger Dan said. “She wouldn’t so much as talk to me. Took you and left in a huff whenever I came by to see Sage.” The old man’s weathered face sported a day’s growth of mostly white whiskers.
“You didn’t turn us in?” Wolf asked. He didn’t much care about finding his family, but for some reason his stomach was churning and his heart was beating too hard.
The ranger shrugged. “You weren’t hurting anybody.
Sage and I, we had a connection for a time.
I used to bring up supplies whenever I could.
Then one day, you all were just gone. You were about four years old, I believe, and I know Sage had been worried about getting you into school.
My guess was they took you someplace where that could happen. ”
Wolf nodded. “I remember starting kindergarten. We lived…in a town.” He strained his mind for more details, but none came.
“Those women took everything they owned with ’em when they left, I’ll tell you what,” the old man said.
“It if wasn’t nailed down, it was no longer there.
Lord knows I searched for any clue where you’d all gone, but…
” He lowered his head, shaking it slowly.
Then raising it again, he met Wolf’s eyes. “I hope that’s of some help to you.”
“It’s more than we knew before,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I seen you coming up here, had a feeling.”
“Oh, that was you?” Camellia asked.
“What now, Miss?”
She came up beside Wolf and spoke to the ranger. “I kept feeling like someone was on the trail behind us as we hiked up. It must’ve been you, right?”
He raised his white eyebrows and shook his head. “I was farther up, that a’way.” He pointed in the opposite direction from which they’d come. “I could see you coming up the trail from there.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What were you doing way up there?” Wolf asked. “It seems a long hike for—”
“For an old man, yeah, I know. That wolf showed up again, and I tracked him up there. Odd, I ain’t seen him once in all this time.” He added a mystical lilt to his voice on the final three words.
Wolf lowered his head to hide an amused smile and ignored the chill that went up his spine. The old ranger said, “I’m expected back. They get nervous if I’m late and pretend it’s not due to my age. You all enjoy yourselves now. Watch the drop-offs if you stay past dark, all righty?”
“Sure,” Wolf said. “And thank you."
The ranger started to turn away, then Wolf said, “Hey, you uh—you’re not gonna shoot that wolf, are you?”
Ranger Dan turned back and patted the ammo belt around his waist. It was filled with darts, not bullets. “Only a tranq so we can relocate him, and only if I have to. This is his home. We’re the invaders, so unless he’s literally eating campers, I’m not apt to do him any harm.”
He was about to turn away, but once more hesitated. “Almost forgot—had forgot, for years. I’ve been going through my daily logs, reviewing my days as a ranger before I retire in a few weeks. I have some stories to tell, I’ll tell you what!”
“Maybe you should write a memoir,” Camellia said.
He lit right up. “That’s what I’m thinking, young lady.
Anyway, I found a note I’d forgot all about, and I never made the connection till now.
It might not mean much, but a sheriff come around here looking for a lost baby.
Must’ve been a full six months before I stumbled upon you and Cilla and Sage, and I’d forgot all about him by then. ”
The words hit Wolf like a mallet between the eyes. “Did you write down what sheriff? His name, or where he was from?”
Ranger Dan shook his head slowly. “Big man, he was. Honest face. From upriver, I believe.” Then he scraped his face with his hand again, like he was feeling around in his whiskers for answers.
“That’s everything, son. Believe me, once I found that note, I hunted through everything I had.
It’s only now I’ve been putting it together myself. ”
Then he blinked slowly, looking into Wolf’s eyes. “She’s passed, hasn’t she? Sage?”
“They both have,” Wolf said. “Grandma Sage when I was sixteen, and my mother two weeks ago.”
The old man looked at the ground. “No, that’s too young,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m real sorry to hear that. Special women, Sage and Cilla both. But closed off, you know? They lived behind a wall.”
“Yeah, I know. I lived there with ’em.” When he said it, he looked at Camellia and her eyes held on until he could break his free.
“If you find anything else, or remember anything, will you let me know?” Wolf asked.
“Sure. What site you all on?”
“It’s number three one nine,” Camellia offered. Wolf had not even noticed a number on their site.
The ranger waved, then headed off in a downhill direction.
Wolf watched him move out of sight, then sank back onto his boulder. He didn’t plan to, his legs just decided not to hold him upright anymore.
Camellia came over and sank right down beside him. “You see? They did look for you,” she said.
“Yeah. I just wish we’d found a clue up here.”
“That’s a huge clue, Wolf. Somebody was looking for you. That means you have a birth family.”
“I have one large sheriff,” he said. “That’s hardly a family.”
“It’s a start.”
She squeezed his shoulder, and it felt like comfort. “Let’s stay here a while,” he said.
She said, “There’s shade over there in the shack, beside those leaning walls. And we still have snacks, and a chunk of that journal left to read. You bring it?”
He slid off his boulder. “’Course I brought it.” They were on the second volume, yellow cloth-covered cardboard with embroidered daisies. It had a tiny, useless lock, and its key was threaded through the clasp by a thin yellow ribbon.
The journal of a fifteen-year-old mother-by-choice, or maybe by fate. The opening date would have made Wolf four years old.
Cilla
September 17
Today we moved into our first real home.
It’s an apartment on the ground floor of a farmhouse that was divided into two.
And the folks upstairs don’t care if we use the dirt patch backyard to keep growing our herbs.
We doubled our herb production this year and put almost every penny away till we had enough for this place.
I stole stuff from the campground that could be sold quick and easy, too.
I came up with the idea to make herbal sachet bags like those I’d seen my mom use, stuffed with rice or beans and a pinch or two of herbs.
Just enough to smell good. Mom would heat them in the microwave and lay them over her eyes when she had one of her headaches.
So we made a pile of those and increased the revenue from our herbs by ten times more than selling them by the gram.
I feel like we could’ve stayed where we were forever and got by. But Wolf is four years old now, calling us Mamma and Grandma. We both know we have to go back to the civilized world. He’ll need to go to school. How will he make his way in this world if he doesn’t even get a basic education?