The Wolf Road Read Online Free

even reset one a’ the trapper’s squirrel poles what must a’ fallen in the thunderhead.
    Sun was dipping and I was sucking on another piece of meat, knife in hand, when the trapper came back. He came in the door with a sack over his shoulder. He stared at me, jerky hanging out my mouth and blade in my hands and he didn’t say nothing. Something in his head ticked over and he stopped a beat, then dropped the sack with a sound like logs tumbling off a pile.

    “Found your nana,” he said, and hung up his coat.
    Felt a sting in me, like my fun was cut short and I’d be back to beatings and her schooling tomorrow. I set down the knife on the floor and I stared at that blade like I was giving up my favorite toy.
    “You takin’ me back tomorrow?” I said. Part a’ me wanted to see my nana, but I knew soon as she saw me she’d have me hauling planks to fix the shack or learning letters at that whiteboard a’ hers.
    Then he said, “Your nana got caught out in the thunderhead, tree fell on her.”
    “She dead?”
    Trapper nodded once and kept his eyes on me.
    Shame on me that my first thinking was: Hot-damn, I don’t got to go back to schooling. Shame on me twice that my second was: Serves her right for treating me rough. Then came the aching like my insides was full a’ river mud, thick and sucking me down, a deep place a’ sorrow I didn’t want no part of. I weren’t all that sure how to feel in them moments. Should I be crying? But I didn’t feel nothing like crying. Should I be whooping for joy? But I didn’t feel like doing that neither. I stared at that knife, chewing on that jerky, quietlike for an age. Trapper didn’t say nothing, he just watched me, waiting to see what I’d do, what kind a’ person I was.
    He shifted his foot, floorboard creaked. My eyes was locked on that blade and my head and my heart came together and told me how to feel. I reached for the knife.
    Soon as I touched that white bone handle I realized quick I chose right. I didn’t much want to go back to Nana’s shack; she never let me eat jerky and play with knives. Her ways were learning letters and sums, clean hands and clean clothes. Them ways weren’t mine and much as she’d tried to force it, they never were.
    The trapper nodded at the meat ’tween my teeth.

    “You like that?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    “You know how to use that knife?”
    I weren’t quite sure what he meant, but I nodded again.
    “You ever skinned a hare?”
    I flinched then. I had, year or two ago, but when Nana caught me she whipped my back bloody. Second time she caught me she broke my arm.
    “You ever skinned a hare, girl?” he asked again, something raw in his voice.
    “Yes, sir, I have.”
    “If you can skin a hare you can ’bout skin anything,” he said, and pointed to the sack. “Traded my furs for a pig. I already jointed it for easy carryin’. Take off the skin and fat, take off the meat, and cut it thin for smokin’. Got it?”
    I nodded and stepped forward. The trapper lifted up the sack and poured out the chunks of pig. Pink skin and pale flesh, it would work fine with applewood; I could almost taste it already. Even though I was just seven, I always knew I was born to work a knife. Took me most of the night but I did it, and all while the trapper watched over me, sipping on a flask. He didn’t once tell me to be careful. Didn’t say much ’cept “other way,” when I got to separating the knuckle.
    Come dawn we both laid the strips on racks and hung them up in the tiny smokehouse outside.
    The trapper put a hand on my shoulder then and said, “You got a gift with a blade, girlie, I’ll teach you to use it right. Names don’t mean nothing in these woods, but I got to call you something.”
    Then he looked at me, pulled at my scruffy hair.
    “Rougher’n elk’s fur, this,” he said.
    So he called me Elka, ’stead of Elk, on account of me being a girl. I stopped asking for his name after a few weeks and just called him