Effigy Page 2

  It wouldn’t be worth it. The last time—the briefest of visits—earned him a month cut off from Thankful’s favours. Quiet as he might be, he can be certain his third wife would lay her ear to the wall.

  A left turn would lead him down the corridor to the large corner room, where his first wife lies alone in the tall brass bed. It’s an idea he mustn’t dwell on if he’s to know any peace. Ursula’s never actually barred him from their chamber, but years of trying have taught him there’s no cold akin to that which her body gives off in their bed.

  Erastus turns right. He runs the tips of his fingers silently along the wall, keeping low to avoid upsetting Ursula’s framed mottoes, until he reaches the depression that signifies Thankful’s door.

  Maybe she’ll have on that black feather ruff—the one that makes her look like a vulture would if it were a woman. Mouth red, eyes glistening. Erastus grins in the darkness. If he’s lucky, he’ll get the bounce on her, catch her off guard.

  At the periphery of the Hammer ranch, the Tracker lies prone in his brush hut. His roof stands open above him, the night sky visible through a tangle of upthrust poles and, beyond them, the boughs of a scraggly oak.

  The wolf den had not been new to him. He’d discovered the modest pack some five springs previous, the mother leading him there. He tracked her splayed toes back from a torn-open fawn, watched from a downwind distance as that year’s brood spilled from the den to meet her. Ears flat, crouched and wagging, they chewed at her throat, licked and nuzzled about her lips. The Tracker watched her sides heave in response, saw her bring up a fair portion of kill. She sat back on her haunches as they fell upon the glistening pile.

  He stayed on long after they’d finished every scrap, letting his belly join rock, his back lift off into sky. He witnessed the lolling aftermath of the feed and, some time later, the return of the silver-maned father. The white wolf roused herself to greet him, skipping forward with a pleasure so keen it cut the Tracker to his solitary heart. He took his leave of them then, but found himself passing that way every year at whelping time to see if they’d returned.

  So it was that when Hammer spoke his latest wish aloud, the Tracker knew where to lead him. Not directly. He took a roundabout route—roundabout by days—his misgivings bypassing heart and mind to settle in the soles of his feet.

  The killing itself took little time. The mother he picked off with a lone shot through the skull. She made it easy for him, so bright in the gloaming, sitting guard over her babies, sitting still. The pups melted away when she dropped, vanishing into the den. He had foreseen such an eventuality, had brought with him the necessary tool.

  He was down the slope in a heartbeat, Hammer hedging behind him, not trusting the grade. Leaving the white man to stand guard against any pack member drawn by the shot, the Tracker dropped to his knees and wriggled face-first into the wolf-scented dark.

  When he was in up to his ankles, he felt the gape of a side tunnel at his cheek. From its mouth came a waft of collective, meaty breath. They were down there, keeping quiet, scenting him back. The willow stick with its square-nail tooth was designed for fishing out rabbits, but it sunk just as readily into the plush of a six-week-old wolf. A yelp, a twist to anchor the nail, and he dragged the first pup from the whelping chamber. Clamping a hand over the snoutful of needle-sharp teeth, he backed out into the falling night.

  He thought Hammer might want to get in on the clubbing, but the white man held his nervous post, blinking and squinting into the brush. The stream sang quietly below as the Tracker killed the first of the three pups. It might as well have been Hammer doing it, for all the sensation it invoked.

  He took care not to splinter the thin skull, unwound the rabbit hook without tearing the pelt. One, then another dreamlike repetition—crawl, jab, drag, club—and the job was done. Four bodies lay at their feet, three of which would have fit nicely inside the skin of the fourth. The Tracker took up his Henry repeater from the crag where he’d propped it. The rifle was a gift given in welcome not long after he and Hammer first met, the white man having traded horseflesh for two of the fine weapons with a Mericat soldier passing through.

  Hammer spoke then. “Pity we didn’t get the daddy.”

  As though summoned, the shape of a big male rose up from the outcropping behind the white man’s head. The upswing of the Henry’s muzzle nearly caught Hammer in the chin. There was just enough light to make plain the terror in his eyes. Seven years’ service and still the white man imagined himself betrayed.

  Leaping, the male was all chest, so that was where the ball caught him—the heart a hidden mouth, stopped and opened in one. He was already dying when he landed on Hammer, knocking him face-first to the ground. The Tracker took a step back and lowered his barrel, watching the white man wrestle madly with the shaggy corpse.

  It took Hammer an age to catch on, roll out from beneath the lifeless animal and stand. He said nothing at first, marshalling his breath, avoiding the Tracker’s eye. Then, after nudging the wolf’s rump with his boot, he squatted down to feel beneath the long brush of tail. He showed a happy flash of teeth.

  “Ask and ye shall receive.”

  He was wrong, of course. Even as it hurtled toward him through the gloom, the Tracker had recognized the yearling. He was the only pup kept on from last year’s litter, the others turned loose in the world. A babysitter. Aid to his mother, companion on the hunt.

  The yearling had reached full height and length, but Hammer had to be blind not to notice the young-dog stretch of his limbs, the lack of years about his throat and face. And the white man wasn’t blind. Not entirely.

  Hammer rose, staring at the dead male, dusting off his hands. Beside him, the Tracker held his tongue. It was a comfort to him, keeping something from the white man, holding a piece of the story for his own.

  The kill was unlike any he had made before. His aim was as keen as ever—a hair keener, perhaps—yet he felt no pride. Nothing of pride’s dark reflection either, much as he knew a wolf wasn’t just any animal. Even seven years’ fealty to a white man couldn’t wipe that understanding from his mind.

  The shame came later. After they’d led Hammer’s black giant and her companion down from where they’d tethered them in the trees. After they’d piled the male and the three pups onto the pack horse and slung the white mother flush against Hammer’s backside. One small blessing—with such a load, the white man couldn’t insist the Tracker ride.

  The feeling, when it came, registered not in the Tracker’s guilty arm, not even in his chest, but in the string of bones at his back. A chilling presence pressed up against his spine. In his thoughts he welcomed his poor dead wife.

  In the past, he might have snapped his head round to try to catch a glimpse of the slender whirlwind that was her spirit, but he’d learned such disrespect would only drive her away. So it was that he continued to trot along in the gap between horses, his gaze pinned to the white wolf’s dangling paw.

  Disgrace, the whirlwind wife breathed coldly down the back of his neck.

  In defence he spoke sternly to her in his mind. A skilful hunter is to be prized by the People. He is one whom the spirits have blessed.

  He received no reply, Hammer’s voice cutting between them, sending her spinning away.

  “Your people got any wolf stories, Tracker?”

  The Tracker hung his head. He should have been used to Hammer’s bald questions by now, the depth of the white man’s unknowing. Imagine never having heard tell of the Father, Coyote’s wise and provident elder brother. More than that, imagine thinking any man might recount those sacred tales, that they might be uttered, not by winter firelight, but out there in the open, on a warm spring night. Like as not a snake would hear, rear up and bite the teller.

  “No stories.” The simplest answer a lie.

  On his back now, alone, the Tracker recalls the whirlwind wife’s chill. He could light a fire to soothe himself, but that would require rising, separating the clay of his body from t
hat of the hard-packed ground. Instead, he frees a hand from the knot of his arms and reaches down to unbuckle his belt.

  His trousers aren’t a bad fit—he’s worn them and other hand-me-downs of Hammer’s for as long as he’s lived on the ranch. Before that, a series of anonymous castoffs. An Indian in white man’s clothing is still an Indian, but the rags work like scraps of their unwieldy language, allowing him to move among them. There are times, though, when he can still feel the ghosts of his own bare legs in the air, the skin of the double apron flapping, the breechcloth snug and soft.

  Inside the right trouser leg, the picture book lies curved against him, lashed to his thigh with a leather thong. Its cover has long since ceased to chafe, having formed itself to his contours like a familiar palm. He lays his own hand over it now, just resting, leaving the knot be. To untie it now would be senseless. He hasn’t the strength to turn the whispering pages, let alone gather brush and summon up the light to see.

  — 2 —

  SOMEHOW IT’S DAWN, red light filtering through her cloudy windows by the time Dorrie lifts her thin knife and stands poised over the largest of the wolves. She’ll have no choice now but to deny her nocturnal tendencies and work through the day.

  The bodies are neatly arrayed—both adults on the long workbench, their pups nearby, lined up on a bale. Hammer and the Tracker laid them out according to her wishes before they left. She saw them to the door, where Hammer sucked deep, grateful breaths of open air. Partway to the ranch house, he pinched the bridge of his nose and shot a glimmering stream of mucus into the dust. The Tracker went the opposite way. By the time Dorrie turned her head after him, he was a smudge of deeper darkness against the field.

  She lingered at the door long after both men had disappeared. When she finally returned to her workbench, she took her time over the finer measurements—those which Hammer had no use for, but which were essential to her. Girth front of hind legs, girth back of forelegs, girth at neck behind ears. The mother wolf was far thinner than her mate, all muzzle and legs. Older, too.

  Once Dorrie had set down the numbers, she went on to make five detailed sketches, noting the placement of every ridge and hollow—anywhere the inner workings showed through. When she could fuss over the drawings no more, she busied herself with the arrangement of materials and tools. Her skinning knife and scissors, the razor-fine scalpel, the toothy saw. These she laid out within easy reach, along with a pot of arsenical soap, a stiff-bristled paintbrush and a tall, battered tin of finely ground salt.

  As a rule she dispensed with these necessary preparations in a fevered rush, impatient with anything that stood between her and the primary cut. Tonight she moved as though ploughing through silt. Even when all lay in readiness, she stalled by taking down Major Greene’s Collection and Preservation: A Taxidermist’s Guide. Paging through the section on large mammals, she found nothing she didn’t know by heart. After that she pored over the specimen itself, her eyes tracing the big male’s particulars—the dark saddle mark over the haunches, the blunt, bluish snout.

  By rights she should begin with the mother, get the blood out of that snowy ruff before she does anything else. She’ll have to rub the stain with a wad of benzoline-soaked cotton, dust the damp shadow with plaster, beat out the chalk powder once it’s dried. She knows this, just as she knows she’ll skin the white wolf last.

  She rolls the male onto his back. His legs are sufficiently pliable, hours having passed since the initial stiffening. She presses them apart. Using the blue muzzle as a lever, she turns his head to one side and parts the fur midway between the forelegs with her finger and thumb. The skin beneath it she parts with her blade.

  One long, clean cut brings her to the anus. Next, a steady incision across the chest and up the inside of the right foreleg. Gaining speed, she skins all four limbs down to the last joint, dislocating and folding them free of their skin. The paws she leaves entire, suddenly huge on empty lengths of fur. Her fingers are in charge now, and she begins to feel something of the familiar delight in their skill.

  Having peeled the tail and skinned out the back and neck, she slows a little around the ears. These turn inside out as though it’s a trick the animal knows, skin giving up cartilage with so little fight she need use no tool beyond her own chipped and brittle nails. She burrows down to just above the left eye, stretching the brow taut until the eyelid reveals itself in a thin white line. Guiding her scalpel along this delicate limit, she leaves the lid intact. She does the same on the right side, then presses on to negotiate the whisker roots, the black fringes of lip and, finally, the dark apex of the nose.

  A body oozes when it’s flayed, a fact Dorrie has been unconsciously addressing from the first incision, scattering handfuls of sawdust on and around the pelt. Rolling the raw wolf onto its flank, she works the skin out from beneath it, bunching it up to one side. Forelegs come free with a cut at the shoulder joint, hind legs at the hip. She strips every scrap of muscle before setting the heavy bones aside.

  She feels almost entirely herself now. Only a ghost of unease remains, and then only when her gaze slips sideways to touch on the female’s creamy paw.

  There remains but one task to be performed before she can roll the male’s carcass to the edge of the workbench and let it fall. Closing her fingers around the handle of the saw, Dorrie drags it toward her over the bloodied bench. After a moment’s pause, she draws it softly across the back of the wolf’s skull, marking out the cut. A burst of effort and the brain will show. It never ceases to amaze her, the power of those fine metallic teeth when married to her own thin arm.

  Standing alone in the little silkhouse, Ruth inhales deeply, closing her eyes. The place smells of forest. Resin seeps from the rough log walls, and from the planks beneath her feet. A green perfume lingers over the worm beds, mulberry leaves still verdant, still refreshing to the nose. The lavender she threw down yesterday heightens the atmosphere discreetly, like harebells at the foot of an oak. The silkworms themselves supply the odour of life—a gentle funk somehow evocative of insect, animal and bird.

  In their feeding, the worms make a low music of water upon leaves. At two weeks old, they mimic a gentle rain. As they grow, so too will the force of their downpour.

  Ruth opens her eyes. A shaft of daylight, thinned by the trees beyond the window, shows up a whirl of motes. She contemplates her own hand against a bed of juvenile worms. Fifteen days ago they emerged from vein-coloured eggs too tiny to handle; today they’re half the length of her forefinger. A fortnight more and they’ll be the finger’s equal. It will be all she can do to keep them fed in those final days—she’ll be run ragged. Such good little eaters. It’s tempting to pick one up and raise it to her lips, bestow the reward of a kiss. Instead, she nestles a fingertip in among them. They accept its presence, continue feeding without cease.

  Dorrie takes special care in sewing up the mother wolf’s bullet hole. It’s a tricky turn, just there, behind the ear. The male was no trouble—a clean shot through the chest where the fur stood thick and dark. The hole fit nicely into her ventral cut. The pups were even easier. Two of the skulls showed cracks, but none was dented, let alone crushed. The small pelts came away whole.

  The salted skin eats at her finger pads, but fine work such as this doesn’t allow for gloves. In any case she’s accustomed to working through pain. Pushing her needle into the bullet hole’s verge, she draws the silk thread taut, a lone stitch already minimizing the tear. Her sister-wife’s product is both strong and fine.

  You let me know if that’s a good weight.

  Ruth delivered the first of many spools to the old barn not long after Dorrie came to live at the ranch. It took months for the second wife to beg a favour in return. Or not beg. In fact, Dorrie’s fairly certain the request was never spoken aloud. She can recall only Ruth’s hand reaching into her apron pocket, producing a fat caterpillar gone still.

  “He wouldn’t like it,” Dorrie said after a moment.

  Ruth treated her t
o a soft smile. “I should think it would be a challenge, a pleasure to you.”

  Dorrie felt a jabbing sensation in her chest. The thrill of having one’s nature even partly understood. A challenge. A pleasure. She held out an upturned hand.

  Major Greene clearly held the preservation of insects to be a lesser art. He also held, however, that the true professional must be able to handle any specimen he is presented with, and so he had included a slim chapter on the subject toward the back pages of his invaluable treatise—between “Collection and Preparation of Eggs, Bird and Reptile” and “Essential Materials and Tools.”

  The bulk of the section dealt with mounting winged specimens, but at length Dorrie came upon a paragraph headed “Caterpillars and Worms.” She was to squeeze the innards out through the tail end—an act requiring considerable delicacy and, more often than not, practice. But Dorrie’s were not just any hands. Ruth had brought her one specimen only, and that was the specimen she would mount.

  The silkworm was cool, smooth along its back, bumpy with leg-nubs below. It gave up its insides grudgingly, but Dorrie was patient, beginning again and again at the head, kneading gently, easing its substance along. In the end, skin and innards came apart, the one a flaccid slip, the other a slippery clot. Next, through the exit of the tail-end hole, she entered with a length of hollow straw. It was really that simple. Nothing to measure, nothing to construct. She would blow the shape into it, breathe back its living form.

  As per the Major’s instructions, she held the caterpillar over a lamp’s soft heat while she did so, rotating the straw in her lips so the skin might harden on all sides. One could either remove the straw or cut it off short. Dorrie chose the former, judging it to be the more difficult, and therefore the more professional, choice. Caterpillars marked with vivid designs often required retouching with paint—not a consideration in this case, as her sister-wife’s worm was grey.