Page 11 of The Forest of Lost Souls

Lupo meets her stare. His eyes seem to offer not only depths to be explored, but also realms other than the kingdom of wolves in which he is a prince.

“What do you think, Lupo? Can this man be found?”

After tipping his head back and flaring his nostrils to test the air, he turns and pads down the porch steps.

As the cricket chorus ceases celebration of the night, Vida follows Lupo across the area that she regularly mows and then along the path to the center of the meadow, where her uncle lies beneath a granite monument. During this part of the search, the lordof the wolves keeps his nose close to the ground, like a myopic scholar with face pressed near the faded pages of an ancient volume, the better to study an account of a lost moment in history.

Lupo circles the gravestone, head raised now, surveying the moonlit meadow. With Vida following, he moves south, eventually crosses the dirt driveway, and wades into another expanse of tall grass.

The night, which seemed mild when they had been on the porch, feels colder now—as though, by an inversion of the laws of physics, the thermonuclear stars in their infinitude have begun to chill the universe. Vida shivers as the wolf moves inexorably toward what she has asked him to find.

When Lupo stops and turns and looks up at her, the crescents of ice in his eyes are reflections of the moon.

Even after eight months, there has been no subsidence of the soil, for she had been sure to compact it well. The grass has fully recovered from the excavation.

Considering how swiftly Lupo has located this interment, Vida imagines it will be even more easily found by a cadaver dog trained to smell and seek human remains. Nash Deacon, being a sheriff’s deputy, might have brought such an animal onto her property when Vida was at the alluvial field or elsewhere.

Eight months earlier, there was no enforcer of the law to whom she could turn for help or exoneration. Nor does any law now exist that serves the likes of her, other than the natural law by which she lives and by which the world is ordered and healed, if sometimes slowly, through the passage of time. Her problem is that she must live moment to moment, and her next crisis is fast approaching.

When she follows Lupo out of the unmown grass, his loyal pack of five is waiting on the unpaved driveway, their coats silvered by moonlight and their interest attested by animal eyeshine. He leads them single file toward the house, and Vida follows.

She sits in a rocking chair, and the wolves lie contentedly on the porch, with Lupo at the head of the steps, so that he can survey the meadow where crickets are in chorus again. On a few occasions, Vida has given the wolves treats other than blackberries. She has nothing to give them now, and they want only companionship. They breathe in the night and all its fragrant information. They sigh and yawn. Some snore, but they don’t all sleep at the same time, because they are by nature prudent sentinels. One sleeper sometimes whimpers or even issues a cry of distress, but the others have good dreams, which they signify only by thumping their tails on the floorboards. Vida finds their contentment comforting.

When she wakes hours later, the night is gradually retreating from the blush of dawn, and the wolves are gone.

18

THE UNDERTAKER’S DAUGHTER

The previous year, one week after the July Fourth holiday and three weeks following José Nochelobo’s death, Vida is sitting on the porch, reading Thomas Merton’sThe Seven Storey Mountain. Twilight is pending when the approaching growl of an engine causes her to look up from the page. A well-maintained vintage motorcycle, a Big Dog Bulldog Bagger, a touring bike with wide-swept fairing and large saddlebags, swings off the driveway and rolls to a stop on the lawn.

The biker puts down the kickstand, leaves her helmet on the Big Dog, and comes to the foot of the steps. She’s twentysomething, a fresh-faced blonde with eyes the purple blue of polished fluorite. Vida has seen her before, but she can’t remember when or where.

“I’m Anna Lagare. My father, Herbert, owns the funeral home. I’d have called ahead, but I don’t know of any number for you.”

“Hardly anyone does. Come on up.”

When Anna Lagare is settled in the second rocking chair, she says, “It’s beautiful here. All anyone might ever need.”

“More than enough,” Vida agrees. “It fills you up.”

The visitor looks at the palms of her hands. They appear clean, yet she wipes the left across the right, the right across the left. Shehas a fey quality, as if she’s been compelled to come here under a spell and waits now for her purpose to be revealed to her. After a hesitation, she says, “My dad prepared José Nochelobo’s body.”

“And ten years ago, he prepared my uncle’s.”

Anna Lagare is as direct as she is soft-spoken. “You didn’t come to the viewing.”

“No.”

The visitor looks up from her hands. “Later, I saw you at the cemetery service when José ... when he was lowered.”

“I could deal with the casket when it was closed.”

Anna hugs herself, hands hidden between her arms and torso. “People say he was so happy, how it was between the two of you.”

Vida puts her book aside on the small table between chairs.

Nodding as if they have just agreed about something, Anna focuses beyond the porch, on her motorcycle. The touring bike’s saddlebags must be full, because a suitcase is strapped to the back half of the saddle. “You think everything’s fine, moving along nice and comfortable, then something happens and you see the truth, and you don’t even recognize where you are.”

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