Ordinary Wolves Read Online Free Page B

teeth. Maybe in my huge future I would have to shoot a whole team of my own dogs. The thought of the years ahead flooded hot in my chest. I raced up to our igloo, to my brother and sister and father, there eating paniqtuq and seal oil and red jam. Food that would make me Eskimo.

TWO
    WHEN I WAS TEN, on a night shortly after the sun returned, a pack of wolves raided our peoplefood pile. Along the bank to the east, beyond our pole cache, the wolves worked over it all except one frozen caribou—a skinny carcass that we too were leaving till last. Our dogs howled and barked in the dark. By first light at ten o’clock the pack had vanished, leaving a pawed circle of meat dust and cracked bone chips in the reddened snow, and tracks leading in too many directions onto the windblown tundra.
    The faint scent of clean dog hung in the clawed holes. Abe hunched down, kneading his yellow beard, happier than if he’d discovered gold in the gravel at the bottom of our water hole. Snow clung behind his knees to the creases of his overpants. He examined a wolf turd, long and gray with twisted caribou hair. In his hand the shit looked as capable of magic as a tube of Van Gogh Basic White.
    â€œShould have come out to check the barking,” he muttered. “Like
to have the scene in my mind.” He stood and stared off north, spraying a square of his powerful imagination against the sky. He often leaned against trees, absorbed in the pastel glow of evening. “Been years since the wolves took much from us. Usually too wary. Hope we don’t get people-company next couple days.”
    A raven flew overhead, heading north. We eyed it.
    â€œWe’re low on meat.” Jerry melted his cheek with a bare hand. Black hairs were sprouting on his jaw. I itched with distress when his hand wandered to the icicles on his downy mustache. “Wolves’re always coming by. Why’s it a big deal?”
    I kicked the snow ground, embarrassed for both of them. I was ten years old, behind schedule on shooting my first wolf. “Let’s go after ’em.”
    Abe didn’t hear.
    For the next two weeks Abe read on his bed. Suddenly his book would drop and he’d rise, practically walking through us to his easel. He worked in oil. The turpentine fumes left us breathless and lightheaded. Tubes of his paint had frosted to the wall under his workbench, and he swore. He glared over his shoulder at the dim light, paced, peered, his mouth puckered. At night he tossed on his qaatchiaq, lit candles, rose to sigh at his work, and one night he tore the canvas free and stuffed it in the stove.
    The second painting became a staked dog team, witnessing a pack of wolves borrowing caribou. Each dog’s face held a different expression. Some merely whined, sitting, suffering the thievery patiently. Others stood on their sinewy back legs, lunging against their chains. Their mouths were outraged barks. None of the dogs were of our team—they lived in Abe’s past or in his imagination. A black dog closest to the wolves jumped so hard his chain flipped him upside down, and Abe painted his curled claws, hinted at the wiry gray hair between his toes. Nine wolves leaned over the meat, cracking bones in their triangle molars. The painting had a dark silvery feel, a feeling that the wolves were friends, with each other, and with the night. I thought Abe’s paintings of wolves were better than his other paintings.
    During those weeks the fire in the barrel stove often burnt down to ashes. The cold waiting beyond the door and walls hurried in. Our last caribou shrank to a backbone, neck, and one shoulder. We peeled the back
sinew—for thread for sewing—and made frymeat out of the backstraps before boiling the backbones. Abe didn’t care what was for dinner. He sipped his tea and answered some of our questions, not all of them. We asked few. He was in a place for artists; we didn’t know the language. We kids