What Charlie Saw
When Charlie walks out of the Natural Resource Offices it's dusk, and the water smoke is creeping over the tall green trees like a living entity. He's just spent a frustrating hour with Janene Foster where he talked steroids misuse and she threw back accusations of paternalism with her blackberry eyes.
He's never felt so ridiculously white and male before.
Sighing, he looks across to James Island, where mysterious mounds clothed in scrub trees hunker under the weight of storm clouds. He jangles the keys to the cruiser, thinks of the early start in the morning, then pockets them and starts to walk along the beach.
It's drizzling and the wind ripping raw against his skin, so even with his navy jacket zipped up tight and the collar up like James Dean, he feels as bleached out and stripped bare as the silvered driftwood that dots the empty beach.
He just can't get Bella's reaction that evening out of his head.
He pauses at the first of the weathered pre-fab res homes with their corrugated iron roofs. Notes a stray dog sniffing around the shell of an old rusted car.
Maybe he'll head over to Billy's, chew his ear off for a while.
Charlie is walking down River Drive, the rain worsening so that it's dripping off his forehead and down his nose and chin when he sees two huge fuck-off wolves run across right in front of him. They are going so damn fast that by the time he's ground to a halt and blinked, they have disappeared into the evening gloom.
Wolves? In this part of the state?
Charlie's mind whirrs. Not a grey wolf. That was much, much bigger. One russet coloured – the other coal black. But definitely wolves.
He thinks back now to when Wishaw Wilkie called in a few months back claiming to have seen a giant wolf over by Forks Highway. How they'd laughed at the station - Damn Wilkie. Can't tell the difference between a German Shepherd mutt and a Coyote, he's so short sighted.
Nothing wrong with Charlie Swan's eyesight, though.
He briefly contemplates going back for his gun in the locked box of the cruiser. But by that time…
Charlie shivers, but it's not from the rain and cold.
He's feeling that tingle, the one that happens right before something big goes down. There's electricity in the air all over the res. A too-quiet feeling as if the whole place is collectively holding its breath.
He takes off in the direction the wolves went, and after some considerable crashing about like a fool, finds a well traveled trail through the brush that comes out at Sam Uley's place.
The house is lit up like Christmas.
The porch lights cast out from a pretty veranda filled with pots and knick-knacks, fairy lights twinkling.
At his feet, Charlie sees wolf paw prints in the mud, merging with what looks to be the outlines of large bare human soles.
Huh.
He climbs the porch and put his ear to the door – can hear a buzz of conversation mingling with howls of laughter. Then a commanding voice, and everything goes silent, as if listening.
Charlie raises his eyebrows.
He doesn't even need to knock on the door, suddenly Sam Uley is there, oddly bare chested on such a cold night. Hair wet like he's just had a shower, his face alert and then with a smile plastered under those wary eyes when he sees who is at the door.
"Hey Charlie. What brings you to this neck of the woods?"
"Oh, just happened to be passing by. You got a few minutes?" Charlie nods to the interior of the house in the familiar way he has when he wants to gain casual entry to a premises.
"Uh…sure…sure."
As Charlie enters and removes his sopping wet jacket, he can hear the house begin to come alive again, as if whoever is here has decided to 'act normal.'
When he enters the kitchen, Sam's girlfriend Emily is serving out cookies to a bunch of tribal men who have obviously all just put their tops on. Buttoned up wrong. Labels sticking out of ragged tees. The kitchen is hot, more from collective body heat than the open oven door.
"Charlie!" Jacob Black leaps to his feet. "Hey, is everything okay?"
"Hey Jake." Charlie nods to a well muscled man who has just vacated his chair for him – who he realises after the fact is young Embry Call. "Bella's fine."
Paul Lahote gives a smirk, shuffles a deck of cards in front of him.
Charlie smooths his moustache and looks around. Sam and Jacob look back at him expectantly, but the others don't meet his eye. Interesting.
"Looks like you fellas might have a bit of a problem on the res," he begins. "You seen any wolves running wild out here?"
Every head whips up. Every pair of eyes glances at him for a split second, then look pointedly away.
Only Sam Uley laughs, takes a cookie that Emily is offering round.
"Wolves, huh?" Sam's smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.
"Yeah, you know. What you folks are all supposed to be descended from." Charlie says drily. "Now I know this aint my jurisdiction, but it became mine as soon as my daughter started hanging around up here." At this he shoots a look at Jacob, who is frowning at him.
"Maybe it's some joke to you, keeping wolves up here as some sort of emblem of the tribe or something. But these are wild animals, and whatever thing this is that's being bred and kept up here, it's not fit to be around humans. So maybe you could save me a lot of time having to report this by just tellin me what you know."
At this Paul Lahote starts choking on his beer. It takes Charlie a moment to realise that he's being laughed at. It's like a ripple in the room. Then Quil, Embry, Jared, Sam and even Emily are wiping tears of mirth from their eyes.
It's then Charlie realises that he must have read this whole things wrong. They don't even believe him.
"Did, ah Billy put you up to this?" Sam asks, through the laughter. "Cos that was pretty funny, Charlie. The whole 'Cop' speech too. Awesome."
"Yeah man," Embry slaps him on the back.
Jared throws back him head and gives a false howl.
Charlie feels his face getting redder. Turns to the only person in the room who is not cracking up.
"Hey Jake. How about taking a walk?"
Jacob looks like he wants the floor to swallow him up.
"Ooh. Now you're in trouble," Embry mutters under his breath.
"Don't forget the cuffs!" Quil calls after them as Charlie makes his way to the front door.
As they stand outside on the porch, Charlie can see once more the outline of paw prints on the ground.
"You see that?" He points.
"Yeah. Dog prints."
"Big dog." Charlie narrows his eyes as he studies his best friend's son.
Jacob awkwardly scratches the back of his head, nervously taps his fingers on the porch railings.
"Jacob, I don't know what the hell is going on up here. But you should know that there is nothing more important to me than Bella."
Jacob squares his shoulders then, meets Charlie's gaze with a look of total honesty.
"Then that's something we have in common."
Charlie looks Jacob over, then up, and up some more - all the way to about 6"7 or so. The kid has the physique of a pro basketball player.
"You don't act sixteen. And you don't look sixteen," he mutters. "None of you do."
"Maybe that's because I just turned seventeen" Jacob grins, flashing white teeth.
Charlie shakes his head.
"Like I said." His voice, trademark sardonic.
Then Charlie nods curtly and makes his way into the darkness of the res, with no friendly streetlamps to guide the way, feeling ever so much like Little Red Riding Hood on her way through the forest to meet Grandma.
Blame his imagination for playing fairy tales with him, but he could swear that as he retreats from the Uley house he hears the unmistakable sound of a wolf howl rending the cold night air.