Page 7 of God’s Country

I was almost afraid to ask, but I had to know. “What’s that?”

The look in his dark eyes was hard, his voice as cold as ever I’d heard from him when he replied, “Maybe you are the wolf.”

CHAPTER 5

Damn you, Henry! I thought to myself as I lay in bed that night.

I loved the old man deeply, but he often frustrated me no end. He hadn’t given me an answer. Once again, he’d given me a riddle: I was the wolf. What the hell did that mean? He didn’t bother to explain.

He hadn’t completely dismissed the possibility that it was all about some weakness of my heart, some lurking, underlying physical condition. But the ER doc had assured me that mild arrhythmia wasn’t a critical situation, or particularly unusual. And Henry hadn’t seemed too concerned about this possibility either. It was the “me as wolf” thing that he seemed to lean on most. As I stared up at the ceiling above the bed I share with Rainy, that’s what my unsettled mind kept picking at. I was the wolf?

“If you tell me your heart’s galloping again,” Rainy said in the dark beside me, “I’m taking you back to the emergency room.”

“It’s not my heart. It’s Henry.”

“Ah,” she said in understanding. “You are the wolf.”

“Am I? Do you have any idea what that means?”

Slowly, she slid upright, her back against our headboard, drew her knees to her chest, and hugged them. She didn’t answer immediately. She’s full-blood Anishinaabe and like her great-uncle, Henry Meloux, she often takes a good deal of time to think before responding.

I finally sat up, too. “Well?”

“You do sometimes chew on your own heart,” she eventually offered.

I stared at her. Our room was lit by the light of a waxing moon, and I could see her face clearly. She could see mine as well and that I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“Look, when I was in college,” she said gently, “I read a poem by Stephen Crane, the guy who wrote The Red Badge of Courage. The poem is about a man eating his own heart. He’s asked if it’s good, and he replies something like ‘It’s bitter, but I like it, because it’s bitter and because it is my heart.’ ”

“And that means what?”

“Well, I think it means that some folks are harder on themselves than others. They chew on themselves, their hearts, wondering if they’re good enough people.”

“And you think that’s me?”

“You do hold yourself to some pretty high standards.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“I think it can keep you from forgiving yourself.”

“I’m a Scorpio. I have trouble with forgiveness, period. That tail is always poised to strike.”

“Keep your voice down,” she cautioned. “We don’t want to wake everybody.”

I threw the covers off and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“Cork—”

“I’ll be fine. Really. Go back to sleep.”

I put on my robe, went downstairs, and into the kitchen. I stood at the counter, staring over the sink at the night outside, where everything looked coated in ice because of the silver moonlight. I closed my eyes and tried to feel my heart. I sensed nothing but the usual slow beat behind the cage of my ribs. I didn’t feel like it was being fattened so that some monstrous beast could feed on it.

I turned on the light, pulled a carton of milk from the fridge, filled a tumbler, and took a snickerdoodle from the cookie jar. I sat alone at the kitchen table. Our cookie jar is shaped in the image of Ernie from Sesame Street. We’ve had it forever. Ernie wears this enigmatic smile that, like the one on the face of the Mona Lisa, can be interpreted in many ways.