III. The Empty House

I suspected he was watching me, so I started keeping tabs on him in return. I knew when he'd been near--he may have been a quiet woodsman, but he still left a good trail. And I knew when he left to go into town on whatever business he attended to. The thrum of his jeep could be heard for miles, telling every animal who listened that he was gone--buying food, picking up mail, visiting friends and family. The normal things that normal people do with their normal lives.

He didn't keep his doors locked. Why should he? There was no one in this lonely stretch of land to worry about--except me. I suppose he hadn't known about me long enough to change his careless habits. First, I watched for a while from a tree-lined bluff not far from his house, noting when he left, how long he spent away. Keeping tabs of the length of time between each trip. He usually spent most of one afternoon a week away from his house--not having a calendar, I suspected the usual day he spent out was either a Saturday or a Sunday.

Once I'd figured out the man's schedule, I simply waited till I saw his ridiculously purple jeep trundle down the long, earthen driveway toward the gravel road half a mile away, which led out to the highway. After sitting tight a few minutes longer, just to make sure he didn't decide he'd forgotten something, I made my way carefully down the bluff.

There's so much, I discovered, that you can tell about someone's life by what's in their house.

I peered in through the doors and windows first: a sizeable entertainment center in the den; yellow curtains framing a kitchen piled with dirty dishes; a tiny cubicle for a shower and toilet; a comfortable-looking bedroom complete with unmade bed and dirty clothes strewn everywhere. I smiled to myself and decided I wouldn't have to worry about anyone else in the house--I hadn't thought a man living way out here in the woods would be married, but you never know.

I went in through a sliding glass door leading into the den. The floor was carpeted in a comfortable beige, the kind that years of muddy footprints and spilled sodas just blend into. On one side was the entertainment center, surrounded by an enormous supply of movies. Made sense for someone living like this.

A sudden sense of disorientation struck me--how the hell could I tell what was normal for anyone anymore? I'd been living in woods and sewers for the past five years! I sat down on the couch. Leather. It smelled homey.

I went into the bathroom. The toilet seat was up. I put it down, then sat down and peed just for the luxury of civilized plumbing. When I was done, I decided to put the toilet seat up again before wandering back into the den.

There was a pair of bookshelves side by side on the opposite wall, across from the entertainment center. A picture set on one shelf caught my eye: A man and a woman, obviously related, the former being the fellow who'd startled me. He had red hair, freckles, and an overbite, and his ears and nose were a little too big for the rest of his face. The woman had the same ears and nose, but her teeth were better, her red hair had been highlighted, and whatever freckles she may have had were covered with makeup. I thought she might be his sister.

Lining the shelves were thick hardback books on all sorts of animals--white tail deer, moose, screech owls, black bears, wolves. Wolves. There were more books on wolves than on any other creature. And where there weren't books, there were notebooks with seemingly random numbers, letters, and dates scrawled on the spines.

Picking one notebook out, I flipped it open. At the front was a full-page color photograph of an albino wolf--a real albino, with red eyes and a pink nose. I remembered seeing a white wolf around a few times. It liked to run alone a lot. "Luna" was written at the bottom of the photo: she, then, not it. The rest of the pages were filled with messy notes on dates, locations, and behaviors.

Suddenly the pieces fit together. I'd seen enough of my fellow predators to have an idea of their regular habits. And I knew--or I'd known, before I went on the run--that attempts were being made by ecologists to reintroduce large predators back into the American wilderness. I thought about the wolves, about all these books on wildlife, thought about the antenna the man had been carrying when I'd seen him that first time. He must have been some sort of ecologist or ranger, and one of those wolves was probably wearing a radio collar--so this pristine stretch of land I thought just happened to have been left untouched must have been a wildlife preserve.

A mental "Of course, you idiot!" rang in my head. Wolves weren't likely to stay alive for long anywhere else. It had been so long since I'd thought about ecology in a wider sense that the only immediate impact those animals had on me was territorial.

Shaking my head at myself, I went to the north side of the room, where there was a short hallway-foyer to the front door. A narrow table, on which was carelessly piled a stack of junk mail, abutted one wall close to the door.

Teetering atop the pile was a small cardboard box that had been opened. I picked it up. The address label on the box read "Robert Bruce." There was a book inside. Maybe Robert Bruce lived too far away from any library to bother with borrowing. Or maybe, I thought as I read the title, this was one book he thought he really had to own.

The Mutation of Society, by Mary Elizabeth Morgan. My mother. Tears stung my eyes, and I set the book down before those tears could damage it.

This man--this Robert Bruce--had obviously ordered the book not long after encountering me. What did he think about me? Would he call out the law to find me and take me away from his precious wolf land? So what are your feelings on the newest denizen of your forest, Ranger Robert?

My quills rose and fell anxiously, and I decided I'd been in this human's house long enough. I stuck my head into each remaining room, a quick satisfaction of curiosity, but I stopped in the kitchen. Plastic grocery bags hung on the knob of one cabinet door. I grabbed one, opened the fridge, and started filling the bag. A loaf of bread. A block of cheese. There was a roast in the freezer, which I also took. Another bag. This one I filled with cans of vegetables, and I remembered to grab the can opener lying on the counter beside a pile of silverware.

Then my conscious cleared its annoying little throat, and I thought about what I was taking. It wasn't like Ranger Robert couldn't make an extra trip into town for groceries. It wasn't like I was stealing something valuable, like his stereo. The mental image of me lugging speakers into my cave, then trying to find an outlet, made me snort.

On the last patch of clean counter there was a notepad and a pen. I dropped the bags onto the floor, picked up the pen, and wrote, "Thanks for the food, ranger man. Oh--and your Luna likes to visit the gully a day's walk west of the highway."

Then I left. With the food, of course.