When you're in trouble, it don't matter the exact location of that trouble, he supposed. Just the fact you're up to your neck in a deep mess and need to darn well fix it. Yet it still bothered him that home was a damn sight more than a hop and a jump and a skipped rock away and lookit, there were no goddamned people on this godforsaken island, apparently. Which, he had to admit, was kind of the point.
Okay, obliterated ankle and apparent blindness aside, let's back up here.
Grant was a proud Texan, lord of all he surveyed, which actually wasn't much. But hell, he was lord of it. A salvage yard and a used car lot, to be exact, just outside of Lubbock. Between the two, he and his crew brought them in lame and sent them out new, as the saying went. Or if you prefer a more Texan flavor: brought 'em in sinners, sent 'em out right with God. Well, almost new, almost right, close enough for Jesus to turn a blind eye. Small time as his little operation was, it nonetheless provided him with enough enticing glimpses of a world in which movers moved and shakers shook that he pretty much craved a piece of that world every waking minute. This hunting trip was the end product of some complex favors involving at least a couple bribes and even more meaningful nods and winks between connected associates and their high-powered acquaintances. And money. Which went without saying, was the way of the world. All so Grant could solo-stalk some private island off of the coast of British Columbia and bag himself a timber wolf or two. Or black bear or cougar, maybe. No doubt he'd owe somebody something when he got back to civilization, but still. If he brought back the head and pelt of a wild, grizzled mutt, his wan star might rise somewhat, and he was damn sick of being the one who had to constantly bow his own balding, blocky head in company.
Fucking Canada. Swell idea on paper, and he still treasured the memory of the six hundred pound grizzly he eventually took down somewhere near Jasper, Alberta, but it was always either too cold or too damned wet for regular folks—a godawful place, truth be told, filled with mosquitoes, ice, socialists, and black flies, where no one gave you eye contact and too many self-described hosers repeated sorry and thank you instead of aiming for the top, most of them drinking piss-weak beer and pretending to enjoy grown men exchanging punches on a flat rectangle of ice, so's they didn't have to think about their overall predicament—the predicament being that they're an entire country that's basically Minne-fuckin-sota.
And apparently the place was also home to attack plants. And it wasn't only the lord Jesus who turned a blind eye, no sir. Right after he'd identified his quarry—a ghostly, damn-near white sonofabitch, and big too, well over a hundred pounds—Grant had stumbled, grabbed something greenish and upright to prevent a fall, then—relieved he hadn't taken a tumble and intending to do a double take at the spirit wolf—had rubbed his eyes with his palms. Worst decision of a bad decision day. But why the hell hadn't anyone warned him there were killer plants in the neighborhood? Took him a while to make the connection, but it had to be some kind of plant. Poison ivy? Nah, he knew poison ivy. Someone had even warned him about grabbing on to devil's club, so that wasn't it, either. He vaguely remembered some tall stems topped by parasols of whitish flowers. Come to think of it, maybe one of the early briefings had mentioned them? An "invasive species"? Giant something? Guess it didn't matter what the fuckers were called or who invaded what-all—hell, he was an invasive species himself right now—what mattered was he'd done manhandled those puppies and now he couldn't see. His eyes burned something awful and his hands were tight-swole with what felt like chemical burns, and that wasn't even the whole of it; to add injury to insult, he'd hightailed partway out of the hollow in a momentary panic (which shamed him in retrospect, boy did it ever), then went and plunged his dumb ass down the same gulch or ravine or whatever they called them in this god-abandoned place. He knew it was bad when he both felt and heard the ligaments in his right ankle rupture with an audible pop that actually echoed among the trees for an appalling second or two.
And after that, silence. Lying still as a newborn after some calamitous birth, waiting for the pain in his lower leg to catch up to the fierce agony in his eyes and hands, barely able to distinguish light and dark. Disbelieving. Until he heard the twigs breaking right up close and the sounds of canine breathing. He went cold and still, reached for his rifle and went colder still. What kind of hunter drops his rifle and neglects to even notice? Worse still, as he reached he actually felt the animal's breath on his throbbing hand. He snatched it back and scrambled away, knowing he was only ruining his weirdly flaccid ankle more by moving. He didn't care. The wolf made a low sound deep in its throat. Grant felt around for his rifle, desperate. The beast was right there, its carrion breath assailing his nostrils, and Grant lashed out with his burning hand, catching its wet muzzle, eliciting a mutual yelp.
"This ain't a fair fight, ya flea-ridden heap o' mange!"
The wolf answered with a brief whine.
Then more silence. Grant's entire body was a tuned receptacle: for sound, for smells, for the briefest of movement. His skin, its fine hairs swaying like antennae, could feel the wispy fall of a single seed head, the tiny ripple of air in the wake of a lacewing's bright flutter, the soft exhale of the vast sleeping forest. Oddly, he'd never felt this alive, as he waited here in this place of solitude for his throat to be torn out, to end his days gargling his own lifeblood.
A hot rank tongue raked down his cheek and he actually screamed. But the teeth didn't follow. The animal had stepped away. It whimpered again. Stepped away further.
"You want me to foller you? You know I cain't walk, right?" Talking to the overgrown mutt only made him feel more stupid than ever, but dignity had dropped precipitously down his list of priorities at this point.
He heard the wolf scrambling in the forest detritus and for a mad moment imagined it finding his rifle and bringing it to him, and he almost laughed at that, but then he felt the damp splintered end of a branch and realized the goldarn brute had indeed brought him something: a crutch. For a moment he was amazed, must have looked like a sightless imbecile sprawled amid the needle-rich dirt and the waxy salal with his jaw hanging loose as an old-timer's drawers, but even a blinded Texan with a busted foot knows not to look a gift wolf in the general direction of its mouth, so he accepted the unlikely offering and began to pull himself to his feet.
Using the rudimentary crutch, he began to shuffle in the path of the timber wolf, who made a low chuffing sound, as if in encouragement. Then all of a sudden, Grant got wise, woke the hell up. What made him think this beast was leading him somewhere good? Who's to say it was on his side, this alien biped from a distant land? No doubt it could smell his strangeness on him. Nature's a bitch, always was since the wily old serpent made a naked chick eat an apple, and always would be until the sun went huge and red and time stretched to some kinda impossibly thin strand, and he of all people should fucking know better. This white monster was no friend of man, and somewhere in the darkest forest its dark companions waited, no doubt drooling and pacing some shadowy den. He knew coyotes did that, lured cats and small dogs away toward the waiting pack, and what was a wolf but a damn coyote on steroids? Hell if he was gonna go meek and stupid like some dumb house pet.
He recalled some latte-loving treehugger a couple days ago telling him the wolf had been unfairly "demonized" throughout history. Well fuck that with a giant fucking lumberjack dick. He sincerely begged to differ. And besides, everyone knows history's a tale told by the winners.
Grant stumbled and lurched in the opposite direction of his newfound spirit guide.
He felt a surge of elation, a sense he'd outsmarted this backward place, called the endless sly bluff of the world, until he stepped hapless into cool space and, as he fell, heard the last thing he'd ever hear on this busy green earth: a single forlorn and terrible howl desolate enough to make all the dead, faraway and near, predator and prey, shudder within their eternal sleep.