I stepped in, pushing the door behind me. I winced; the interior was incredibly hot and stank like old sweat. I navigated the shelves of fishing tackle, rat poison, and bubble wrapping until I got to the counter at the back. A small old man was bent over behind the counter, and it was clear even from here that he and his striped button-down were the source of the sweat smell.
“Are you here for the trucks?” The man straightened up and peered at me through square glasses. Racks of packing tape hung from the Peg-Board behind his head. I tried to breathe through my mouth.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m not here for the trucks.” I took a breath, looked slightly tragic, and proceeded to lie. “The thing is, me and my friend just had a giant fight and she made me get out of her car. I know, right? I’m sort of stranded. Is there any way I could use your phone?”
He frowned at me, and I allowed myself to wonder, briefly, if I was covered in mud and if my hair was a mess. I patted at it.
Then he said, “What, now?”
I repeated my story, making sure I kept it the same and continued to look tragic. I felt relatively tragic. It wasn’t difficult. He still looked dubious, so I added, “Phone? To call someone to pick me up?”
“Well now,” he said. “Long distance?”
Hope glimmered. I had no clue if it was a long distance call or not, so I replied, “Mercy Falls.”
“Huh,” he said, which didn’t answer my question. “Well now.”
I waited an agonizing minute. In the background, I heard someone barking sharply with laughter.
“My wife is on the phone,” he said. “But when she’s off, I suppose you can use it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Where are we at, by the way? So I can tell my boyfriend where to pick me up?”
“Well now,” he said again. I didn’t think the phrase meant anything to him — he just said it while he was thinking. “Tell him we’re two miles outside of Burntside.”
Burntside. That was almost a thirty-minute drive from Mercy Falls, all twisty two-lane road. It was unsettling to think that I’d made my way all this distance without knowing, like a sleepwalker.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I think you have some dog shit on your shoe,” he added, kindly. “I can smell it.”
I pretended to look at my shoe. “Oh, I think I do. I wondered about that.”
“She’ll be on for a while, now,” he warned me. It took me a second to realize that he meant his wife and the phone.
I got his point. I said, “I’ll look around,” and he looked relieved, as if he had felt compelled to entertain me as long as I stood by the counter. As soon as I wandered to look at a wall of lures, I heard him go back to shuffling whatever he’d been shuffling behind the counter. And his wife kept talking and laughing her weird barking laugh, and the store kept on smelling like body odor.
I looked at fishing rods, a deer head wearing a pink baseball cap, and fake owls to scare birds away from your garden. There were containers of live mealworms in the corner. While I stared at them, my stomach churning with either squeamishness or the distant promise of the shift, the door opened again, admitting a man wearing a John Deere cap. He and the sweaty old man exchanged greetings. I fingered the edge of a bright orange hunting dog collar, most of my mind on my body, trying to decide if I was really going to shift again today.
Suddenly my attention focused on what the men were talking about. The man with the John Deere cap was saying, “I mean, something ought to be done. One of them took a bag of trash off my step today. The wife thought it was a dog, but I saw the print — it was too big.”
Wolves. They were talking about the wolves.
Me.
I shrank, crouching as if I was looking at the bags of dog kibble on the lowest metal shelf.
The old man said, “Culpeper’s trying to get something together, I heard.”
John Deere guy made a noise that sort of growled out both his nostrils and mouth. “What, like last year? That didn’t do jack shit. Tickled their bellies is all it did. Is that really the price of fishing licenses this year?”
“It is,” said the old man. “That’s not what he’s talking about now. He’s trying to get them like they did in Idaho. With the helicopters and the — assassins. That’s not the word. Sharpshooters. That’s it. He’s trying to get it legal.”
My stomach turned over again. It felt like it always came back to Tom Culpeper. Shooting Sam. Then Victor. When was it going to be enough for him?
“Good luck getting that past the tree huggers,” John Deere said. “Those wolves are protected or something like that. My cousin got into a heap of trouble for hitting one a few years ago. About wrecked his damn car, too. Culpeper’s in for a climb.”
The old man waited a long time to reply; he was making some sort of crinkling noise behind the counter. “Want some? No? Well now, but he’s a big city lawyer himself. And his boy was the one that got himself killed by the wolves. He just might now, if anyone can. They killed that whole pack in Idaho. Or maybe Wyoming. Somewhere out there.”
Whole pack.
“Not for taking trash,” John Deere said.
“Sheep. I reckon it’s a lot worse, wolves killing boys, instead of sheep. So he might get it through. Who knows?” He paused. “Hey, miss? Miss? Phone’s up.”
My stomach lurched again. I stood up, arms crossed over my chest, hoping and praying that John Deere didn’t recognize the dress, but he only gave me a cursory glance before turning away. He didn’t look like the kind of guy that normally noticed the finer points of what women were wearing anyway. I edged up next to him and the old man handed me the phone.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I said. The old man didn’t even acknowledge I’d said anything, so I retreated to the corner of the store. The men continued talking, no longer about wolves.
With the phone in my hand, I realized I had three phone numbers I could call. Sam. Isabel. My parents.
I couldn’t call my parents.
Wouldn’t.
I punched in Sam’s number. For a moment, before I hit SEND, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and allowed myself to think about how desperately I wanted him to pick up the phone, more than I could let myself truly admit. My eyes pricked with tears, and I blinked fiercely.
The phone rang. Twice. Three times. Four. Six. Seven.
I had to come to grips with the idea that he might not pick up.