The Wolf Border

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It’s not often she dreams about them. During the day they are elusive, keeping to the tall grass of the Reservation, disappearing from the den site. They are fleet or lazy, moving through their own tawny colourscape and sleeping under logs — missable either way. Their vanishing acts have been perfected. At night they come back. The cameras pick them up, red-eyed, muzzles darkened, returning from a hunt. Or she hears them howling along the buffer zone, a long harmonic. One leading, then many. At night there is no need to imagine, no need to dream. They reign outside the mind.

Now there is snow over Chief Joseph, an early fall. The pines are bending tolerantly; the rivers see white. In backcountry cabins venison stocks and pipes are beginning to freeze. Millionaires’ ranches lie empty: their thermostats set, their gates locked. The roads are open but there are few visitors. The summer conferences and powwows are long over. Only the casinos do business with tourists, with stag parties and addict crones, in neon reparation. Soon the pack will be gone, too — north, after the caribou — the centre will close for winter, and she is flying home to England. Her first visit in six years. The last ended badly, with an argument, a family riven. She is being called upon to entertain a rich man’s whimsy, a man who owns almost a fifth of her home county. And her mother is dying. Neither duty is urgent; both players will wait, with varying degrees of patience. Meanwhile, snow. The Chief Joseph wolves are scenting hoof prints, making forays from the den. The pups have grown big and ready, any day now they will start their journey. The tribal councils are meeting in Lapwai to discuss scholarships, road maintenance, the governor’s hunting quota, and protection of the pack.

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