Sometimes the Wolf (33 page)

The man didn’t stop. It was more like he slowed. One foot in front of the other, his pace slackening like an old coal train shifting away its power. The man standing there, backpack over his shoulders, sweat showing now on the back of his neck. The beginnings of a mane of hair grown in around the edges of his scalp. And Drake knew it before the man turned around. It was his father. And he knew, too, what had been in the red toolbox and what his father had meant when he’d written Morgan to take care of
his
half.

Drake knew it all now.

He held the rifle, sweat beading on his forehead and creating paths down his skin, waiting for his father to turn around. And then when he did, Drake felt his finger tighten on the trigger. He felt the tension there. The way the trigger yearned for release.

Patrick stood looking back at him. A hundred yards away. And then he raised a hand and waved. He didn’t say anything, he just stood there looking back at Drake, white hair grown in around his face and at the sides of his head. And Drake watched—he watched the hand go up high over his father’s head. He watched the palm open, the fingers extend, and it was like his father was saying hello, or saying good-bye, only Drake didn’t know.

The hand stayed that way for a long time, outstretched above Patrick’s head until it, too, fell away and Patrick turned downslope.

For a few seconds more Drake watched as his father moved away over the open landscape. The rifle still clutched into the meat of Drake’s chest. The crosshairs following his father, Drake knowing for the first time in a long time that whatever this was—sighting his father through the scope of a rifle—it simply wasn’t his job anymore.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The first wolf pack to be documented in Washington State in sixty years occurred in 2008. As of March 2014, there are thirteen established wolf packs in the state. Under Washington’s wolf management plan, a pack of wolves is defined as two individual wolves traveling together. Three of the thirteen packs now roam the eastern slopes of the North Cascades. And one additional pack can be found just outside the U.S. border at the end of the North Cascade range in Canada.

I am in no way an expert on wolves. But like many in the state of Washington I have watched their population grow, wondering what will happen to the wolves as their territory meets that of the ranchers, farmers, and others who now populate lands once inhabited by wolves and other large predators. In 2012 the deaths of seven calves and one sheep in the northeastern part of the state, along with many injuries to livestock in the area, were attributed to wolves. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife ultimately killed seven members of the Wedge Pack in northern Stevens County.

The return of wolves to Washington State remains part of a critical debate.

FOR OPENING THEIR
mountain home to me I want to thank Alan and Susan Rogers. You gave me much needed time not only to begin this novel, but also to finish a draft a year later. To James Scott and Taylor Rogers Scott, thank you for making me feel like family. I owe you both more than I can ever say.

To my agent, Nat Sobel, I am extremely grateful you found my work in a small literary journal out of Virginia. It’s been an amazing five years. Thank you also to Judith Weber, who, along with Nat, read multiple drafts of this novel. Without the two of you
Sometimes the Wolf
wouldn’t have become anything close to what it is today.

To David Highfill at William Morrow, this is a dream. Thank you so much for continuing to support artists like me. And (along with Cormac) thank you for one kick-ass title! I owe a great deal to Jessica Williams, who has been there at every step of the process. To Laura Cherkas, thank you for once again doing a fine job of copyediting. To Adam Johnson, who designed the cover for this novel as well as for
The Carrion Birds,
I have you to thank for another beautiful cover. Thank you to everyone at William Morrow/HarperCollins for helping this novel along. I hope you are as proud of it as I am.

I owe a huge debt to Simon & Schuster UK. Ian Chapman, you are a champion of the publishing industry and I’m so grateful we’ve now had the chance to work on three novels together. I hope there are many more. To Clare Hey, you published my first story in the UK and now you’re my editor. It couldn’t have worked out any better. Thank you so much for your keen eye.

I want to thank the friends who read drafts of this novel, inspired me, or simply offered sound advice. There are many of you, but the few to whom I owe the greatest thanks are Zachary Watterson, Debra DiDomenico, Dan Coxon, Chip Cheek, Lizzie Stark, Carter Sickels, and Jennine Capó Crucet. To Marc Divina, thank you for ridin’ dirty and going crabbing in the middle of the day. To Drew Nicklas, thanks for all the crazy Montana stories. Who knew bears liked alcohol so much? And to Adrian Johnson, keep on keeping on, you feel me?!

A huge thank-you goes out to all my foreign publishers and agents. I really couldn’t do any of this without you. To Joel Gotler, thank you for opening the door to a world I never dreamed of. And to the filmmakers who picked up my first couple novels, Mark Tonderai and Andrew Lauren, I want to say thank you. Just knowing you’re out there keeps me working all that much harder.

Finally, I wouldn’t be here without my parents, who once upon a time saw fit to ground me for half the summer, part of the punishment being an eighty-mile hike through the North Cascades coupled with the assignment of reading ten books and then giving reports on them. Still not sure whether the punishment fit the crime, but I’m grateful all the same.

This novel and the novel before are dedicated to my parents, but all of them are always, always, for my wife, Karen. I couldn’t do any of this without you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

URBAN WAITE
is the author of the critically acclaimed novels
The
Carrion Birds
and
The Terror of Living,
which was named one of
Esquire
’s Ten Best Books of 2011. His work has been a finalist for the New Mexico and Arizona Book Awards, has been translated in nine languages, and is sold worldwide. He lives in Seattle with his wife.

www.UrbanWaite.com

DISCOVER GREAT AUTHORS, EXCLUSIVE OFFERS, AND MORE AT
HC.COM.

ALSO BY URBAN WAITE

The Carrion Birds

The Terror of Living

CREDITS

Cover design by Adam Johnson

Cover photograph © by Stephen Alvarez/National Geographic/Getty Images

Author photograph © by Sean Hunter

COPYRIGHT

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SOMETIMES THE WOLF
. Copyright © 2014 by Arizona State University. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-221691-5

EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN:9780062216939

14  15  16  17  18   
OV
/
RRD
   10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1