Sheila and the Wolf - part 1

      It was snow... crested to the rafters again, and Sheila wanted no part of it. Her eyes darted angrily up at the bitter Montana sky. Small and fragile as they were, they shone in utter defiance of the pitiless and frozen heavens. The stars, impossibly beautiful, winked down at her mockingly, as she kicked the back of the old, stuck Ford pickup truck.
    “No way out,” she said to herself. The screen door banged itself shut in the bitter wind, but nary a cat nor a mouse nor anything else stirred. The cows were locked in the barn, as were the horses. No news came now, from anywhere, since the car battery, which powered the car radio, which was the only working radio at present, had died. The phone line was out as well, so she would hear no word from her husband Tim either.
    Tim was a trucker, interstate of course, and there was no tellin’ how he was farin’ in all this. Then again, truckers usually made out OK, if they had any sense at all. Still, that was small comfort, since Sheila was essentially cut off from any possible aid, should she need it.
    Back in the house, an ample supply of wood for the old stove was indeed comforting, for it was bad-assed weather to be choppin’ any. She kept the fire roaring, and sat down at the little wooden kitchen table, near the only window. Her eyes still flashed in anger at the limitless, limiting sky. She placed a quilt over her legs, and opened a book of photos, a scrapbook.
    There, before her dark eyes, was all the history she would ever need. Her first child, William, now halfway through Harvard, and hardly ever came back. And Sandy, Sandra Dee Cummings, much like her mother, a farm wife, but several hundred miles away, across the Rockies. With no phone working, and in this wild weather, there would be no word from her, either.
    There they were, baby pictures right on through school and marriage. Two cute kids grown big and independent. And Tim, well... his independence was a given. Don’t let any man fool you, she thought; driving a truck is for those who can’t settle down.
    This would have made Sheila a farm wife without a farmer, except it wasn’t really a farm. They didn’t grow anything, just kept a few head of livestock, and tried occasionally to grow wheat or corn to feed them, but there was never anyone around to harvest it, so the crop usually died, if it got planted at all.
    The wind was really howling now, and Sheila pulled back the thick curtains to peer out. Snow whipped up in banshee spirals, and everything that could move was in motion. Her eyes showed something other than defiance now, there was a hint of fear. She stared out for a long time, and occasionally it seemed like there was another howling, hidden within the wind.
    “Hore-shit!” she said aloud, “No wolves around here, not a one!” But she peered further out into the snow-covered landscape, scanning the horizon for something she knew was impossible. After a while, she closed the curtain and got up to brew some coffee, muttering to herself. Only in a God-forsaken place like this would a 37 year old woman be seen talking to herself.
    The leader of the wolf-pack was a solid grey color, with eyes intense and beautiful, fixed intently on the light in the window of the farmhouse a mile or so below. There were eight others, almost in formation upon the Eastern ridge overlooking the valley below. They had quit howling now, and instead sat quietly in the cold, watching the farmhouse, waiting for a sign from the Old Grey One.
    He moved casually forward and down the mild slope coming off the ridge. He never took his eyes off the light in the window, and he paid no heed whatsoever to the rest of the pack, yet they followed him, none daring to step out ahead.
    Sheila went to the radio with her coffee, and tried it futily, knowing full well it would not work. It didn’t. She went back to the chair and tried to read something she was not that fond of. Now the wind seemed to be reaching some kind of climax, the highest of pitches. Things rattled and shook, things that needed and should have had repairs. Thank God the house itself was secure, she thought.
    There was another sound now, a scraping and scuffling, a snuffling too. Just outside it was, barely audible, yet somehow she knew... she knew exactly what it was. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she stood up to face the only door. It wasn’t a dog, or a bear... it couldn’t possibly be wolves, but it was... it really was. And Sheila felt very much alone, and very very frightened. Yet it never occurred to her to get Jim’s gun from off the wall.
    She fell asleep with the gas lantern near the bed, fearing the dire wolves more than the danger of fire. In the night, she dreamt of a dark, dark man, with burning coals for eyes. He glared at her without pity, and in the end, he came for her, and she submitted, knowing full well there was no escape.
    The morning was clear and cold, the stars flickered and died like tinsel in a fire. The wolves had gone, but there was a single set of large canine tracks leading away from the door to the ridge. One had stayed all night, she realized, and all the other tracks had been covered by the blowing snow. Her mind moved forward like gears in a clock. The man in her dream, and the wolf, were one and the same. He had come for her, and he was no ordinary wolf. Now the fear she still felt was mixed with excitement, with fascination, and other things. That night she watched the moon rise crystal clear over the barn, and even dared to step outside. There was no sign of them. For three more nights she kept watch, almost yearning for the chilling howls she knew would bring them back, bring him back. But they did not return.
    The night’s wall crumbled inward as the talcum sky raced forward into another day. The bright lovely blue sky rained little wispy white clouds sideways across the Nebraska landscape. Tim was headin’ home. The storm had blown over, and the roads were plowed off pretty good. He had spent two nights in a motel waiting for it to clear up, ‘cause it just didn’t pay to drive in such weather. Stretches of the Interstate had shut down anyway, so he had no choice. Now, however, he was anxious to get back and check on Sheila. She was stranded, he knew, because he had tried to call her, and the News as well as the CB both had described Montana as an ice box, clamped down and cut off.
    Tim knew Sheila had plenty of supplies at the “farm”, but that didn’t set him much at ease. A woman cut off alone in a blizzard is not a good thing, as far as he was concerned. And he had a good eight hours of driving ahead, even pushing the limit most of the way, which he would, if the roads were clear enough. So Tim barreled the big semi back toward the Montana line as the afternoon sun glared across the snow-drifted country. It was quite a wonderland, all right. And a deadly one to get caught out in, thought Tim. It was still only ten degrees, that much hadn’t changed. Bone-chillin’ Midwest fuckin’ weather. The wind had eased off for now, bringing the chill factor possibly above zero. Tim tried not to feel nervous about Sheila, but he did anyway. He eased the truck up to eighty, the fastest he dared go with patches of ice and packed snow still on the highway. He pushed it hard all afternoon, even slidin’ a little a couple of times. You start slidin’ in a semi, an empty one at that, he thought, and oftentimes you kept on slidin’, until you hit sumthin’.
    Tim hit Montana about four PM, and the sun was already setting. Late November it was, and the first big storm of the season. There was more snow here; it blew across the highway and forced him to slow to seventy, and even that was high. It was an eerie, snowbound wilderness, but Tim had seen it like this many times. If you didn’t want this kinda stuff, you didn’t have to live up here, he always said. Actually, everyone says that in Montana, and in five or six neighboring states as well. It could be rough on a family, though. He was glad Sandy was out of the storm’s path, and William... he was settin’ in some brew-pub with his cronies, sippin’ expensive ales. Tim was proud of William.
    “Better than this fuckin’ life,” he muttered. Still... he liked the freedom.
    Tim was less than an hour from home now, and he felt an excitement. Sort of like nervous, but different. He threw her into a lower gear as the semi crested a little hill and the road veered to the right. Over this hill he’d be able to see the flat country where he and Sheila lived, although he wouldn’t see the farm for another twenty minutes or so.
    Something darted out into the road from the right. It looked like a large grey dog. Tim swerved and hit the brake at the same time. He was a dog-lover. The semi slid in the dry snow that blanketed the highway, and he knew he’d lost it. It’s not hard to know if you’ve been drivin’ a while, which he had. Damage control was the name of the game at this point. He tried to straighten the rig out, to aim it somewhere soft, but it went straight off the embankment, jack-knifing and then rolling over on it’s side. The cab was crushed against the road, and so was Tim. His last image, before he blacked out, was of a large grey animal, running off across the snow. Tim never woke up. He died quickly, and without much pain... alone.

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copyright 1997-2004
Penrose (W.S.Rose)