Weda moans in distress and asks Naomi if she can make the wolf boy well. She touches her chest and breathes with a rasp, demonstrating what ails the child. But Wolfe is not coughing or wheezing now. He lies feverish, hardly breathing, and Naomi gathers him close, her lips trembling.
“He’s been sick for three days, but he would still feed, and he would smile. He did not cry. But now he will not wake,” Biagwi says, his face tight.
Hanabi urges Biagwi and Weda to sit by the fire and take off their robes, but they are anxious and weary, and though they shrug off their robes, they remain standing, Biagwi with his arms folded in defiance, Weda rocking back and forth as though she still holds the babe. It reminds me of Winifred. Winifred used to sway like that.
Washakie returns, the medicine man in tow. He takes his time, clearing the air with sage and repeating a string of sounds that I don’t understand. He puts something on Wolfe’s temples and on his chest and shakes his rattles over him to drive out the sickness in his body, then moans and meanders around the wickiup before circling back again to shake the rattle above Wolfe some more. Naomi’s eyes never leave Wolfe’s face, but Biagwi is angry with the old ways and tells Washakie that the medicine man in Pocatello’s camp did much the same for three days, and the boy has only grown worse.
“He wants all the daipo to die. He wants the tua to die. He does not use his real medicine,” Biagwi growls.
Naomi looks up at me for translation. “Biagwi says the medicine men do not like the whites. He doesn’t think they are trying to heal him,” I murmur.
Washakie tells the medicine man to leave, waving him away with a weary shake of his head. The medicine man is insulted, but in the face of disbelief and Biagwi’s rage, he gathers his things and goes. Hanabi leaves too, her daughter in her arms, afraid of the illness that plagues Wolfe. She urges us to stay, saying she will be near in her father’s wickiup.
Lost Woman leads Naomi to the fire and urges her to sit. She doesn’t make her release the boy or lay him down, and I am grateful. Naomi needs to hold Wolfe. Lost Woman presses a thick, pungent poultice onto the boy’s chest, promising it will help him breathe and make his body release the fever. The vapors are strong, and Naomi’s face begins to bead with sweat. Weda sinks down beside her, her back bent and her head bowed. I doubt she’s slept in days. Biagwi paces like a caged mountain lion, and Washakie stands at my side.
At one point, Wolfe emits a little cry, and Naomi lifts him to her shoulder, rubbing his back, trying to clear his throat. No one breathes, hopeful, but he doesn’t cry again, and we all sink back into our vigil.
Weda tries to make him nurse, clutching him to her breast, her chest wet with perspiration, her damp hair clinging to her face, but Wolfe does not latch, and he does not wake. Weda does not give the boy back, and Naomi doesn’t insist. They sit side by side, their eyes heavy, and watch him hour after hour. Lost Woman changes the poultice and makes us all drink. The heat is stifling, and Biagwi stumbles for the door, unable to bear a moment more.
Wolfe opens his eyes near dawn, and Weda exclaims, jumping to her feet and calling for Biagwi, who comes running. We all gather around, staring down at the small boy, hopeful that the dawn will bring new life. Lost Woman holds back, watching.
“Let her say goodbye,” she says to Weda. “Let Face Woman hold her brother so she can say goodbye.”
Naomi does not understand what’s been said, and she does not lift her gaze from Wolfe’s staring eyes. Weda argues, tightening her arms and scolding Lost Woman in weary protest. She has new hope, the babe is revived, and she doesn’t want to relinquish him, but Biagwi takes the boy from her arms and hands him to Naomi. She takes him, her eyes shining with gratitude, and looks down into her brother’s face.
“Hello, Wolfe,” she whispers. “Hello, sweet boy. I have missed you.”
Wolfe’s eyes fix on her face, and his rosebud lips turn up in a hint of a smile. Then his lids close, his breath rattles, and he softly slips away.
NAOMI
The scarlet fades from his cheeks, and the warmth leaves his limbs, and I know that he is gone. Weda screams, and Biagwi moans in shock, and Wolfe is snatched from my arms. Weda falls to the ground, wailing in denial and despair, Wolfe clutched to her chest. I feel her anguish echo in my belly and kneel beside her, but she scrambles away, screaming at me, at Lost Woman, at Biagwi and John. At Washakie, who watches her with silent compassion.
She stands near the door, her eyes wild and streaming, staring as though we’ve all betrayed her. Then, with one last look at Wolfe, she sets him gently on the ground the way she did when Biagwi first laid him in her arms, a son to replace the one she’d lost. And she walks out into the snow.
JOHN
The air is cold and clean, and when I pull it into my nose, it eases the ache in my chest and the grief in my throat. I stand silently, my eyes raised upward, and I ask my mother and Winifred May to look down on me. I talk to them in Pawnee, though I know Winifred won’t understand. It is the language of my mother, and I need my mother.
The dusting of snow has left the morning new and untouched. Tracks lead from Washakie’s door to the cluster of hoofprints where Biagwi and Weda hobbled their horses. Weda ran away without her robes, riding in dazed exhaustion back toward her village. Biagwi followed, her robes slung across his horse, his back bent beneath his burdens.
Their grief is a comfort. It’s like Jennie said. It isn’t love unless it hurts, and their pain tells me Wolfe was cherished, he was loved, and he is mourned, and at the end of life, no matter how short, that is all there is.
They left Wolfe’s body behind. It is a gift, a mercy to Naomi, and she is with him now. She washed him and wrapped him in a small wool blanket with a stripe of every color. Washakie gave it to her, and Naomi said it reminded her of her mother’s coat, the coat of many colors, like Joseph sold into Egypt. I gave her a moment—gave myself a moment—to mourn alone. She is composed. Serene even. But the grief will come. We will bury him here, and the grief will come.
“There are tracks in the snow,” Lost Woman says behind me.
I nod, but Lost Woman isn’t looking at the trail left by Biagwi and Weda. She pulls at my arm, bidding me follow. The snow is deep, almost up to our knees, and we sink as we go, stepping and falling, stepping and falling, kicking up the new powder.
“See?” Lost Woman points down at the tracks leading from the rear of Washakie’s wickiup in a long straight line into nowhere. No other tracks mar the new snow.
I hunch down to see them better, and Lost Woman crouches beside me.
Footprints, too small to be a man’s, too large to be a child’s, sit on the surface of the snow. Beside the footprints, the toes clearly delineated, is a small set of paw prints, scampering away toward the trees. A woman and a wolf. I follow them, bemused, until they suddenly disappear.
“The mother came for her son,” Lost Woman says.
I stare, not understanding, and Lost Woman explains.
“Sometimes the spirits leave tracks in the snow. The tracks can guide us. Sometimes they comfort us. Other times, they lead us home. I saw tracks after my sons died and again the morning after my granddaughter was born. Different tracks . . . but always . . . the same.”