4

 

“Oh, no, boy, it’s OK.” Beth covered her own fright to reassure the wolf. She had both man and beast in profile.

Aiden froze.

The wolf stood in a stiff-legged stance, motionless with head lower than shoulders, staring Aiden down.

“Tell me what to do, Aiden. Divert his attention? I don’t think he’ll hurt you.”

“You think I have experience? I’ve never been this close to such a beast. ’Bout the only thing that comes to mind is Canis lupus. Have to admit he’s impressive.”

“That’s his Latin name? OK, let’s try this. I’ll just talk to you. For starters, you scared the life out of me.” She kept an eye on the wolf, who fixed his eyes on Aiden with disconcerting focus. Beth kept talking as calmly as she could, while she circled the wolf, giving him wide berth. “Why did you choose to study cold-blooded creatures instead of furry four-legged ones?”

“I may have startled you, but he’s scaring me. How can you act like this is normal? Maybe you should be the one working with furbearing,” he said, with a hint of teasing.

“You obviously have something against animals with fur.” She suppressed a smile at the idea of this hunk of a wildlife expert almost shaking in his boots. “We’re sharing the woods, so we need to come up with some kind of signal as we approach one another. A bird call, or a whistle maybe. That way we won’t startle one another. I might come close to your tent, you know. I wouldn’t want you to shoot me. And you park here at the cabin. Now, what do you think of my shoe tree?”

“You want to know what I think of your out-there yard-art when I wonder if a wolf is going to tear out my throat?”

“Come on, Aiden, this wolf is so handsome.” Interesting that he hadn’t answered her question about his choice of biology.

Addressing the wolf, she said, “Look, boy, Aiden is my friend. It’s OK with me that he’s around. But thanks for showing up. And shame on you for chewing up a shoe from my collection.”

The wolf turned unblinking eyes on her. The unwavering golden gaze peered into Beth’s soul on some intrinsic level. She was about to say, “Speak!” when the wolf broke their connection to shoot Aiden another penetrating stare.

“It’s about faith, I think. Faith is about believing in things that we can't see, can't explain. I don’t know how to say it any other way. I have faith that this wolf won’t harm me.”

“Woman, that is the very opposite of truth.”

That confession told her exactly where the man stood with the Lord. She wondered what he did believe in. And also remembered it wasn’t that long ago when she had a black void in her life. Before Christ had entered.

“Maybe if I talk without inflection the way you have been,” Aiden said. He lowered his chin a notch, gave the wolf a tentative smile. He spoke with a forced lightness in his tone. “Boyo, what shall we call you? Listen to me, talking to a wolf.” His pale face went from oyster to gray. “OK. Here goes. Talk about nothing... I don’t have an opinion on your shoe tree. I’d like to see the inside of the cabin, what kind of work you’re doing. Oh look, his ears are pointed higher. He lowered his tail a smidgeon. Can you whistle, Beth? What tune shall we agree on for walking up to each other? Do you think I should touch you?”

She released a gust of pent-up air. No explanation for it—she was more nervous of Aiden’s reaction than the wolf’s; maybe because the man was the one shaking. So even big guys have to face their fears.

She trusted the wolf not to do any harm to Aiden as long as she was in their presence. “I can’t whistle a note. How about singing ‘Amazing Grace’ when we come near?”

“Only know the first few words, but guess it’s as good as any other song.”

“OK, then. Let’s touch. But how about reaching at the same time?” She took her eyes off the wolf and raised her hand. The zing she felt when their fingertips met was reflected in Aiden’s wide-eyed gaze. Their fingers barely connected, but Beth felt it to her toes.

They shared a fleeting grin when she slid her hand into his. She didn’t want to take notice of the way crinkles around his eyes softened his countenance. The light hit the silver at his temples as Beth stood next to Aiden. She rested her hand on his shoulder and felt the shaking come to a stop.

The wolf sat and continued to study them in turn.

Relief swept through her. “Wow, mighty tense there for a minute. We can all relax. But I don’t believe this wolf was any real threat to you. He only wanted to make sure you weren’t a threat to me. I think that’s really sweet. He’s so curious and smart.”

“Sweet? Curious? Smart? Are you off your rocker? And please explain why you are so relaxed around the wolf.”

“Down, boy.” Beth wanted to laugh, but had the sense Aiden wouldn’t think the situation humorous. She patted his bicep instead. “I don’t know why I’m comfortable. Something inside, an inner sense maybe, says he won’t hurt me.”

Aiden tensed. No wonder he worked with cold-blooded animals. It was clear this wolf drama was not to Aiden’s liking. In an effort to get his mind on something other than his distaste for the wolf, she searched for another topic, keeping the animal in sight.

If she were a betting person, she’d venture a guess that Aiden would rather be anywhere else than in these woods. His inexperience, not knowing what to do, was probably a better way of thinking he could be frightened. But, this was his job, wasn’t it?

“When I came home from town earlier, I found bits of a shoe left on the porch. I didn’t want the poor wolf to eat any more shoes and get sick, so an idea came to me this afternoon while I was scraping the last of the glue off the front-room floor. I could hang my single shoes on the dead pine tree, create crazy art. And now I have a place to put all those single shoes that I compulsively pick up. Have you ever wondered why kids, it has to be kids, don’t you think, throw them around that way?”

“Wanna tell me why you’re chattering away like a magpie?”

She was chattering. A wolf on the scene was nothing compared to why she felt so nervous over that contact with Aiden’s warmth. Who wouldn’t ramble a bit without feeling winded?

She dove back to the topic at hand. “When I discovered those bits of a barely-worn sneaker chewed to strips of rubber and shredded fabric, it kicked in my creativity. Seeing what was left of one lone, male athletic shoe made me decide I had to do something to keep the wolf from eating another. So I picked up one and tossed it close to my truck. It got caught by a naked pine branch. That’s when I got the idea to hang all the others on the tree.”

They held hands. The simple act of physical touch had made her so nervous she’d gone into that diatribe about her crazy compulsion to pick up single shoes. She dropped his hand and stepped towards the wolf.

The wolf yawned, then shot her what appeared to be a grin. Then he rose, glanced at Aiden, and high-tailed it out of the clearing.

“Dint like that one bit.”

She felt as much as heard Aiden’s deep gush of air.

Beth suspected his speech became more Minnesotan when he was stressed. She wouldn’t tease him about it. Yet. “It’ll be dark soon. Did you come by for a reason?”

“I did. Got a call from the home office. The furbearing expert will be out for extended leave. That means I’ll be your neighbor for a time.” He jangled the keys in his pocket.

“What all will you be doing?”

“First off, find a connection where I can get on my computer. Then study up on wolves some. Try to keep track of the wolf’s movements out here. Make sure he’s alone. If there’s a pack, it means big trouble.”

She felt her forehead furrow. And she took two steps back.

“Where he finds his prey,” Aiden continued. “In other words, his eating and sleeping habits. We’ll need to tag him. Then our office, or U.S. Fish and Wildlife, will need to decide what to do with him.”

Things had been going well between them. Until Aiden’s clinical talk. As long as the wolf had enough to eat and didn’t bother the farmers, couldn’t they live free of the government’s interference?

 

****

 

Beth took a walk the following morning. Soon, she ran into the woods, carefree and laughing. She kept on the lookout for Aiden, not wanting to interfere by crossing his path while he hunted for wolf sign.

As though she’d sent a message on the breeze, she caught a glimpse of the wolf gliding through the trees in front of her. She varied her pace. The wolf sprinted along with her, his fluid body expressing freedom of movement as though he shared Beth’s joyfulness.

When she stopped, the wolf took a teasing step her way. Once he saw that she still followed, the wolf then leaped ahead.

“I love You, Lord, and I worship You,” Beth sang out, full of the joy of being alive.

Another voice joined hers on the chorus. She stopped moving. The howl sent chills up every vertebra of Beth’s spine. She choked on the next words, knowing she couldn’t vocalize them. She closed her eyes and absorbed the music of the wolf. Beauty above description.

The wolf sang such a diverse vocalization. Two notes, the same repeated with a lower accent. Words from the books she read in rehab ran through her mind as she listened. From low and glottal, to an operatic soprano, he sang out.

“Owooo-ee-oop,” Beth tried to match his howl. She ended up laughing. “Sorry, boy.”

The wolf rose from his haunches, gave what could only be described as a smile. Then he directed a playful lunge her way. She crouched to invite him closer, but he turned and disappeared.

“Thank You, Lord, for letting this wolf wander into my life. He’s far from the beast I thought at first. Help me know what to call him. He is a friend that helped lighten and change my heart. His is a courage that strengthens me. And by becoming his advocate, I no longer focus so much on myself. You’ve shown me the way and I praise You as much as I am humbled.”

Beth meandered at a brisk pace after the wolf, in the opposite direction from where she was familiar, further away from the bend in the river bluff. All of a sudden, the wolf stood frozen in her path.

The wolf studied Beth, then turned away to lower his tail and head. He stared at the broad whitened trunk of a fallen cottonwood, stripped of bark. Beth searched for what held his gaze. She was surprised and shaken to find a little girl resting against the huge tree trunk. A branch on the log was holding the girl upright.

Beth drew closer. The girl’s eyes were glazed. She appeared to be closed in on her thoughts, unaware of the vicinity around her. Beth considered the girl too old to be sucking her thumb. Her dishwater-brown hair was a matted mess. Dried tears stained her cheeks.

The girl gazed at the wolf, with a look in her eyes beyond her age. She showed no fear of the wolf, as though reconciling his being there as part of the surrounding woods.

A connection sparked within Beth as she perceived something recognizably off with this little girl. Beth compared this girl to her cousin’s young daughter. Little Emily would have presented joyful innocence at the sight of the wolf. Instead, this girl stared through the animal as though he was one of the bushes.

Beth guessed the little girl to be around seven. She finally blinked, swiped a hand across her cheek, and looked Beth’s way. Then the girl slid a glance over her shoulder.

The wolf was gone.

The only sound between them was the girl working noisily on her thumb, eyes round and wary, never leaving Beth’s face. At least, she saw Beth instead of looking through her. Beth took a step closer.

The girl didn’t move.

“May I join you? That fallen tree looks like the perfect place to take a break.”

“It’s my secret place,” the girl said, thumb half out of her mouth. Then she slurped her thumb into her mouth and resumed sucking.

“I agree it’s a great place to hide. No one could see you except from where I walked up. My name is Beth, what’s yours?”

“Grace.”

Beth took that as an open invitation, so she joined the girl against the log, turning towards her with one leg drawn up.

“Is that your dog? I don’t have a dog anymore,” Grace ventured.

“No. Actually, he’s a wolf. We’ve become friends.”

“He’s my friend, too. He kind of scared me the first time I saw him watching me. I wondered if he’s a wolf. He’s huge. He keeps me company when I come to my special place. I even named him.”

“You did? Wow, that’s brave. What do you call the wolf, Grace?”

“Lakota. I saw in a movie once that word means friend.”

“What a wonderful name. May I call him that, too? Do you live nearby? I didn’t know anyone lived close to where I’m staying.” Beth pointed over a shoulder. “I live in the cabin the church owns off in that direction.”

The girl followed the end of Beth’s finger, but didn’t respond by saying where she lived.

An angry, slurred male voice boomed through the quiet. “Grace! Get back home. Now!”

The girl’s mouth dropped open and her thumb fell out. She stood up, bottom lip quivering.

“Grace, if you’re in trouble, I’d like to be your friend.” Beth felt tears pool in her eyes. She made no move to keep them off her cheeks.

Grace fumbled for her lightweight pink jacket. In a little girl way, she twisted to put only the hood of the jacket on her head rather than slipping her arms through the sleeves.

Beth watched Grace shuffle away, as though everything below her waist hurt.

And Beth’s heart wrenched at the sight of Grace’s stained jeans. She called out to the Lord, hoping the girl had only wet her pants. A sick certainty sank into her head. Beth knew that wasn’t the case.

She covered her mouth with both hands to prevent Grace from hearing the scream that built up in her mind. She kept Grace’s small form in sight until she disappeared. Thoughts traveled back to Beth’s girlhood. And beyond.

She felt as though the past rose up and slapped her in the face.

When it came to men, excluding her first husband Eric, Beth believed she used to carry around an invisible sign on her back that read, “Abuse me.”

At least she’d had a few more years than little Grace when Beth experienced abuse at the hands of her stepfather.

Was the girl’s mother part of her life? If Grace had gone to her mother, was she turned away as an ugly little liar, the way Beth had been turned away by her own mother?

Who does one go to if one’s mother doesn’t listen?

In these troubled times, with people losing their jobs, and some ending up unable to put food on the table, people often resorted to drink. That turned some of them mean, and put the defenseless at risk. Maybe the little girl was a victim of such a situation.

The way Beth had been.

There is no excuse for brutish behavior.

She leaned forward on the log, elbows on knees. Holding her face in her hands, she cried out to the Lord for guidance and strength.

Now she wanted to strike the responsible bully down. Beth hoped if she ever faced the man who had done this to Grace, she could act like Jesus and not lash out as a woman reminded of her own abuse.

But who did Grace have to come to her defense?

Beth’s mind whirled. Her muscles grew stiff, sitting there as the woods darkened around her. The sight of Grace had been like looking at Beth, herself, at an older age. God had to have a reason. People didn’t come into one’s life because of coincidence.

She caught sight of a lean robin pulling a worm from moldy leaf cover. In a couple months all the robins would be big-breasted and well-fed.

“Oh, Lord. You go before us in life. You care for us all, from bird, to beast, to me. You make no mistakes. Please reveal Your reason for bringing Grace in my path.”

She sat tall, soaking in the scent of the woods—the earthy aromas of dirt, leaves, and freshness, absorbed by the nature that surrounded her. The texture of the stump beneath her felt as smooth as any wooden chair. The wind in the treetops turned mighty. A barred owl screed nearby, jerking her eyes upward. She scowled at disc-shaped toad stools that looked like ladder rungs climbing an ash tree trunk.

Goose flesh rose over her neck and down her arms. The temperature must have dropped fifteen to twenty degrees.

Lakota, her wolf friend, was long gone.

But Beth was not alone.

A voice whispered in her soul. With Me, love is all you find. And I will never leave you, nor forsake you.

Beth sighed and stood, turning in the direction of the cabin. She rubbed her arms for warmth, while keeping her balance as she hurried over the uneven forest floor.

“You found me, Lord. Are You leading me to the calling You have outlined for me?”

She hurried along, her mind leapfrogging between the dark incidents of her past and possibilities of how the Lord could use her for service in the future. She’d been searching for her purpose in life for months, now. There was no such thing as happenstance when it came to God. Was he telling her to help Grace?

“Show me what I can do for You, Lord. Do You want me to help Grace survive the dirty secrets I’m guessing she is forced to hide?”

Instead of an answer from the Almighty, a familiar voice broke into her reverie. Aiden called her name again. “Beth, can you hear me?”

She turned towards the welcome sound of his voice. Wondering what happened to the song they agreed on, she called, “Coming, Aiden.”

But then, why sing? They were in the woods, instead of near the safety of either dwelling place. No matter how temporary those places were.

Another calm voice of peace spoke to her soul. Aiden was here in the woods with her, as part of God’s preordained plan.

Aiden approached between two huge cottonwood trees, carrying her heavy hooded red coat. “I hope you don’t mind that I grabbed this off the sawhorse,” he said by way of greeting.

“Not at all. That was so kind of you. Thanks.” She shimmied into the coat. The first giant splats of moisture dripped through the branches. She flipped up the hood—had a flash of Grace doing the same—wrapped it around her head. And marveled at the way God orchestrated reality and spirituality. Her fingers were so cold they felt like icy, over-cooked string beans. “What’s going on with the weather?”

“Sudden spring blizzard, according to my Jeep radio. Which I didn’t need to hear. I saw the signs in the sky, and the craziest thing when I drove back from across the river.” He laughed, slowed down to match his stride with Beth’s. “Hope you’re warming up. I all but ran in the ditch when I saw a row of exotic animals. They laid with their butts against a plum thicket for protection from the north wind.”

They shared a good laugh.

“Those mismatched animals belong to the Whitneys,” Beth said. “There are an alpaca mother and baby, two Shetland ponies, and a miniature donkey. And, would you believe, fainting goats?”

“Right. You can tell me about that later. Now I need to get my tent down. Do you have enough cut wood for your wood burner?”

“I have plenty of chopped wood.”

“That wolf better be keeping its distance from those animals.”

Beth didn’t like the threat she detected in his voice. “Come on. Don’t you think Lakota has hunkered down to wait out the storm?”

“What’d you call it?”

“Lakota.”

“You actually named a wolf. You’re right; he’ll wait out the storm. For some reason when I saw those animals and heard the forecast, I thought of you, as well as the wolf. Will you be warm enough if you stay in the cabin, or do you have a place to stay in Platteville? Do you have enough to eat? We’d probably get to town, but I doubt we could drive back without getting stuck.”

“We’ll be fine, Aiden. You get your tent down, and I’ll have the cabin toasty by the time you return.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the forecast is a blizzard, anything can happen. I don’t want you to get caught driving during white-out conditions. You know how fast the weather can change. Once the wind dies down, you should be able to leave. In the meantime, we’ll wait out the storm together.”

The last time a female had extended such an invitation, it ended in trouble. But he’d been a teen. This time, he’d control the situation.

 

****

 

“’Fraidy-cat. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Beth’s heart pounded like drums during a native dance at the sound of Barton’s voice.

Was he here? He couldn’t be.

On some level she knew he wasn’t present, but his voice in her mind was as clear as though he was in the room with her. Would his taunting voice haunt her forever?

Disoriented, Beth tried to focus on where she was.

She’d fallen asleep in the camp chair. As she woke, she struggled to get her bearings. She ran her gaze over the bare plank floor. Her mind still groggy from the short nap, a renewed pounding took up residence in her head.

A mental headshake got rid of the memory of hunkering amongst winter coats, trembling in the back of the closet where Barton’s words had last tormented her. Instead, the wood stove and a pair of camp chairs gave her adequate room.

Barton’s voice was imprinted in her mind. He always said he wouldn’t hurt her. Yet he had, too many times to count. What was wrong with her that she invited that kind of treatment? She’d been marked before Barton had the chance to mistreat her, so she must carry some kind of gene that drew men to tromp all over her.

“Lord, Lord, please give me clarity. And, could I have peace from the past, as well? It’s just a dream,” she reassured herself out loud. Her thoughts had been tumultuous ever since she met Grace in the woods.

Once she knew she was indeed a child of the King, she’d forgiven her stepfather, her mother, and Barton. But what they had done to her impacted her life, changed her in ways she couldn’t forget.

Aiden had been concerned about her having adequate heat in the cabin. After being so chilled, she’d fallen asleep due to the natural wood heat. The cabin was now too hot.

Where was Aiden?

Lightning flashed. Thunder followed. And it was snowing outside. Giant clusters of wet snow slid down the windows. The world was white beyond the glass.

God controlled the weather. Even in Nebraska. He was here. Who would believe lightning and thunder and snow chasing one another?

And with that thought of the Almighty, courage replaced the fear that had awakened her. Beth shook her head. She heard the clunking of wood being stacked on the porch. Then, boots pounding off snow, followed by a knock on her door.

“Beth, I’m back,” Aiden called.

She liked his voice the more she heard it. Maybe she wasn’t growing as comfortable in the woods by herself as she had imagined.