He wasn't sure how he remembered where his father's house was, just that he did. Evan steered the truck carefully off the state route signs and onto an unmarked gravel and dirt road. He was able to relax now, windows rolled down, cool autumn air blowing into his face. He enjoyed his mountainous surroundings. The trees were starting to change and covering the foothills and mountains in a spectacular motely of red, gold and orange.
FUCK! He slammed his right hand hard on the plastic steering wheel. The truck almost skidded off the gravel road. He pulled his hand back and glanced at it. Still trembling. Why did those country ass redneck fucks have to push his buttons? They should have just sold him the truck for a few hundred bucks' cash and left it at that. He had been dealing with his bad temper his entire life. It had started when he lived here and was in elementary school. A coal miner's son stole the cherry pie he bought from the cafeteria vending machine. He had saved for that for a week with any spare change he could find. He had been planning to make it his lunch that day. So Evan smashed the boy's metal lunch box over his face till his eye bled. Another time three boys were calling him names in class when the teachers back was turned. He hit them all in head with his desk chair. The best part of all of this was when the teachers had no idea what to do with him. He would be sitting in his usual spot in the principal's office and hear them. "I tried calling his mother, no answer." "Oh, she's probably passed out drunk somewhere." "What about his father?" "Oh that crazy Indian lives up in the mountains. He doesn't even have a phone."
His grandmother came and scooped him up one day out of the blue. She just picked him up at school. They didn't even go back to his mother's trailer to get any clothes or what he had that might have passed for a toy. She had something about "no grandson of hers would be in foster care" and that was that. She put him in the front seat of her faded blue Chevy Caprice, handed him a ham sandwich and started the drive to her home in upstate New York. The first time he lost his temper at the new school in New York she picked him up at the office, gave him a huge and took him home. When they walked in the front door of the house she turned him around, grabbed him by his shoulders so he couldn't run and squatted so her face was level with his. He could still remember her blue eyes and careworn expression beating more guilt into him than he had ever known.
"You have to learn control." She pointed at his stomach. "You can't let that beast get the better of you every time." She taught him to breathe a certain way to calm down the burning fury in his gut. How to close his eyes and go to a different place in his mind. A place where his rage, fury and anger weren't allowed. A place of calm.
Using what she had taught him, he made it longer and longer without an outburst. Finally there was some normalcy in Evans life. He had lunches to take to school. Hot dinner every night. Friends. Trips with the boy scouts. Laughter. Girls when he hit the right age. A part time job and a car he paid for with his own earnings. He used what she taught him to make it through Army Basic training with ease. Same for the first time he jumped out of a plane in Airborne school. Then his grandmother passed. Massive heart attack. Ever since he had been to her funeral and watched her casket lowered into the ground it was harder and harder to control that beast clawing his way up from his gut.
As the truck cleared the hill Evan looked down on his father's place in the small valley. Trees had been cleared out of the tiny valley to make room for the myriad buildings. The main structure was the house. It had started as a one room affair with fireplace and chimney in the middle. It had been expanded to a two storey house with wood siding made from the local trees and windows with shutters. What looked to be the newest addition of solar panels seemed out of place on the wood shingled roof. There were a few other out buildings in the valley: a barn, a storage shed for tools, a small sawmill and a shed with a stream running through it that came from the high hills. All were obviously made with only hand tools and skill. Two neatly plowed fields with dark black dirt were on the backside of the house.
Evan parked the truck at the end of the gravel road and stepped out. He took a moment to take it all in. He looked up to the sky, arms spread, letting the sun's rays hit his face. He breathed deep. Sweet, clean mountain air filled his nostrils. For some reason this place almost felt more home to him than anywhere he had been before.
When he looked down from the sky he noticed them. Not really sure how he didn't before. A small group of wolves was at the edge of his father's land, right near the tree line. Five of them were grey, like the Timberwolves he had always read about growing up. Strange, he thought he read about all the wolves being pushed out of this area long ago. There was one of the wolves that was different. It had fur that was so black it looked red in the sun. All six were looking right at him. Evan smiled. The five grey wolves turned their heads and loped off back into the surrounding woods. The black one stayed just a bit longer, his yellow eyes directly meeting Evan's gaze. Finally the black one turned and trotted off to meet up with the rest of the pack.
Evan shook his head to himself as he stepped up to the shed with the stream running through it. Opening the shed door he found the stream running through a large machine that looked kind of like a generator he saw in the army. He threw a few switches, not really know what the hell he was doing. He turned around to see the lights in the main house coming on. Satisfied, he closed the shed door behind him, grabbed his duffel from his new truck and walked toward the main house.
The front door of the house was unlocked. Evan let himself in. The house was well kept and well furnished with handmade wooden furniture. The kitchen was small but functional with both a wood stove and a gas. Evan opened a cupboard here and there then the fridge. Seemed the place was still pretty well stocked. He headed through the kitchen and through another door going down to the basement. The wooden steps creaked on his way down. The basement still had creaky wooden floor and the only source of light was a naked bulb hanging from the basement ceiling.
The walls of the cellar were full of wooden shelves that were lined with various home canned goods. Carrots, tomatoes, corn, green beans were all neatly in rows on their own separate shelves. The cans were all labeled in his father's tight script. Some were labeled as recently as last week. There was a chest freezer in the corner that was quietly humming along. Inside Evan found pounds and pounds of venison, turkey, duck and bear, all in vacuum sealed bags, all neatly labeled and organized. Evan shut the light off and headed upstairs.
The top level of the house was pretty unremarkable. Two bedrooms, bathroom, everything organized, clean and in its place. His father's bed was certainly only big enough for one man and covered in a beautiful handmade quilt. There was a double barreled break-action shotgun leaning against his father's nightstand. Evan picked it up, checked the breech, noted it was loaded and carried it back downstairs with him.
As he walked back down to the main level of the house he went to lean the shotgun to the side of the door he noticed something peculiar. He wasn't sure how he missed it before. There were large glyphs carved into the wooden logs of the house that made up the door frame. The glyphs looked primal and savage, as if it was the language of a very primitive tribe. The glyphs were too large to be carved by any kind of animal but the work didn't look to Evan like it had been done with a knife or tool. It looked as though the writing had been carved into the wood by some ancient, huge animal. Evan touched one with his forefinger, feeling the rough grooves and bent in for a closer look. Something was tugging on the edges of his brain and he couldn't place it. Like the glyphs were notes to a song he had heard forever ago and the melody was starting to play.
He shook his head and stood back up. Glancing out the window he noticed dusk was starting to set in. He grabbed a couple of logs from the pile by the wood stove and started a fire in the cast iron belly of the beast. After the fire was going he grabbed a fat venison steak from the freezer down stairs and set it to thaw out in the sink. He brewed up some sweet tea in an old mason jar, picked up some tomatoes, corn and beans from the root cellar and got an old cast iron pan heating up on the wood stove. He seared the venison chop hard on both sides and barely medium-rare in the middle. He threw the steak, probably enough for two people, on a plate with the vegetables and went to sit outside on his father's front porch.
He sat in an old, creaky wooden chair and enjoyed his venison, listening to the sounds of the mountains he left so long ago. His mind drifted to wondering how things were back at Bragg. It was a Friday night so the boys in his platoon were probably out at some shitty dive bar chasing North Carolinas finest trailer trash. Joining the Army after his grandmother's death was the best choice he could have made. His grades in high school were ok but not great enough to get him into any fancy college. Not like he had the money for that kind of thing anyway. What the hell would he have gone to college for? None of that garbage they taught him really interested him enough that he wanted to do four more years of it. No, the Army had been the place for him. Things were FAIR. If someone got new boots, he got new boots and that was that. If once guy screwed up and lost out on dinner chow, they all lost out on dinner chow. That suited Evan just fine.
The sounds of the mountains and the woods were starting to come back to Evan. The crickets, the owls, the woodpeckers were all playing their own songs. He heard a wolf howl in the far hills and another reply a few seconds later on the other side of his cove. This continued for a few more minutes, as if they were talking with each other across the hills and valleys that his father had always called home. He felt like he began to lose himself in their conversation.
Evan got up from the chair. He wasn't really sure how long he had been sitting on the porch but the moon was now high overhead. Its full shape was illuminating everything in the valley and casting strange shadows. He headed back in the house and threw his dishes in the sink. He grabbed a poncho liner from his green duffel. Affectionately known as a "woobie" in infantryman parlance it was essentially a large space blanket that many viewed as possible the warmest and lightest ever. He curled up underneath the warmth of the wood stove and fell fast asleep.
Evan woke up the next morning to someone pounding on the front door. He got up, wrapping the woobie around him against the cool chill in the cabin and opened the door. On the porch was a short man, vaguely plump and round. His face was small and round with friendly eyes and a beard that was trying to fully grow in but couldn't. He wore jeans, a white cotton t-shirt to conceal the beginnings of his beer belly, black plastic framed glasses and a mesh trucker hat that read "West Virginia is for Lovers". His arms were full of crates containing foodstuffs and he had been kicking on the log door with his worn work boots.
"Well aren't you your father's son," He began after eyeing Evan over. He stepped in to the house and made way to the kitchen with his arms full. "You and your father have the same build, and the same face. Not the same eyes though. Thems something different."
"Um, can I help you with something? "Evan asked, very uncertain of who the hell this guy was who just invited himself in.
"Oh gosh, yes. I'm sorry." He set the crates of food down on the kitchen counter. "I'm Sean. Sean Husk. I run the grocery down the way in town." He extended his hand. Evan shook it. "Your father was a good friend o' mine and a regular customer. He wasn't much for heading down in to town so I would deliver some odds and ends to him out here 'bout once a week or so." He patted the worn wooden crates behind him. "Got some bread my wife made, some milk from the Sutter's cows, eggs from the Smith's chickens for ya. Even some o' my grand pappys shine." Sean held up a mason jar full of clear liquid. He shook it hard. "Oooooweee! You see that bead there?" He pointed to the buddle pattern in the glass jar. "That's how you know you got the good stuff."
Evan held up a hand. "Thanks but I don't drink. Evil white man fire water doesn't mix too well with the Cherokee in me." Sean shrugged and set the jar back in the crate. "So you knew my father pretty well then?" Evan asked.
"Sure did. Like I'd said, come up here 'bout once a week or so. I'd drop off some groceries, we'd shoot the shit for a little while. Sometimes I'd give him a quick hand with things around the land here and I'd head back in."
Evan's face grew a little more concerned. "So there was no indication that he was sick in anyway? That he wasn't feeling well? That something was wrong?"
Sean's smiled disappeared and a sad look crept across his face. "I was the one that found him." Sean shook his head and removed his hat. "It was so strange. Usually he would already be up and about outside, takin' care o' this or that. As I came over the ridge I didn't see him out front so I walked on in the house. Found 'im still upstairs, still in his bed. He was so cold to the touch." Sean shivered at the thought. "The coroner said 'twas his heart jus' gave out in his sleep."
"Yeah, you know what's funny is how I feel when I look around this place." Evan ditched the blanket and grabbed a white cotton shirt from his duffel. He shrugged it on. "I mean, I'm certainly no detective but I don't think a man whose heart was about to give out would have been hunting and canning just a few days before he died."
Sean glanced down at the floor and his hat in his hands. "My grand mammy always told me stories 'bout evil spirits that come in the middle of the night. Banshee wailers like. Suck the life right out o' a man. I never paid such tales no mind but you never know. Strange things have always happened up in these here hills."
"Well Sean, it's been good to meet you. Thanks for taking care of my father," Evan extended his hand again. They shook. "I'll see you next week?"
Sean nodded. "Yeah, that sounds good." Evan opened the door and they stepped out into the sunshine of a new day. Evan could already hear a woodpecker going in the distance.
Another car was already making its way down the ridge and long dirt driveway. It was a black Crown Vic, just like the cops used but with rust spots forming on the front panels. The cop insignia on the sides had been covered with black spray paint. It was being driven by a Native American woman with long, straight, black hair.
"Seems I'll have plenty of visitors this morning," Evan said.
"That there's Nola Oakheart. She's a Cherokee from that small rez a ways over. Don't know too much about her. Those Cherokee pretty much try'n keep to themselves like yer pappy did here." Sean got in the cab of his truck and kept talking to Evan through the open window. "Oh! 'For I forget. Those two yokels you tooled up in town? One o' em is the Sherriff's nephew an' the other is his Great-Uncle or some shit. Either way, Sheriff is pretty pissed that they both ended up in the county hospital lookin' like they did. Don't be surprised if he makes his way up here to ya."
Evan smiled. "I have no idea what you are referring to Sean but thanks for the friendly advice."
Sean chuckled and started his truck. As he drove back up the drive he extended a friendly wave to the rusted ex-cop car. The wave was not returned. The driver got out of the car. She was tall for a woman and had a pretty thin frame. She wore brown leather cowboy boots with tight jeans tucked into the top. She wore a leather belt that looked handmade and a black shirt. She wore a white bone choker on her neck that made her hair look even blacker. Beneath the worn leather jacket she was wearing Evan could make out part of a shoulder holster. One side looked to be holding a pistol. On the other side he saw a massive bowie knife with an antler handle. For some reason the knife made him more uneasy than the pistol. She stood there for a minute, fist resting on a cocked hip and took a long, hard stare at Evan. Her face was a study in severity. She had very attractive facial features but they were hardened by the furrow in her eyebrows, the clenched jaw and the anger in her eyes.
Evan decided to break the ice. "So, let me guess. Your Native American name is….Resting-bitch-face."
Her scowl deepened. "No Raven. You know who I am." Her reply was terse. Full of indignation.
"Well Sean told me your name was Nola Oakheart or some other shit like that but that's about all I know. Also, you didn't wave at him. That's sure not very neighborly."
"No white man in these hills will ever be my neighbor. They stole this," She gestured around at the trees and the sky, "from us. I will never treat them as friends, only trespassers."
"You know, the rez back there in the hills I remember was poor on many things; blind hate wasn't one of them. Seems they still have plenty of it left." Evan turned around to head back into the house. The more he pushed her buttons and the more upset he got her the quicker he would find out what she was really about.
"Your father was a great man. He was an important part of our tribe. He was an elder. His voice was respected around the council fire. It seems his son is, well, how do you whites put it? An apple that has fallen far from the tree."
Evan laughed loudly, the sound echoing off of the hills around him. "Oh you mean the man that was so great that he was never around? The man that was so great he let my alcoholic, abusive mother raise me in a shitty trailer on your shitty rez? The great elder that let me go to school and beat on kids till they bled? Yeah, sounds like a real winner. Great guy. How about you spare me the noble savage, red pride, evil white man bullshit and tell me why you are trespassing on what is now MY land."
Nola let out a deep, guttural groan, much deeper than Evan expected from someone her size. She clenched her fists, turned around and opened the car door. She paused and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. She slammed the car door shut and turned back around to face Evan. "Don't you want to know why your father died? Don't you want to know what killed him?"
Evan turned and started to walk back to the house without saying a word. About three steps in he did a quick about face and held up one finger and opened his mouth as if to say something. Instead of running his wise mouth for once in his life he just got in the car.
The rusty old cop car cruised down the backwoods road, the struts creaking sharply with each bump or rock. The first five minutes of the ride had been spent in silence. Evan was the first to break it.
"You always walk around carrying like that?" Evan nodded toward her pistol and Bowie knife.
She growled quietly. "You always ask such dumb questions?"
Evan shifted in his seat, moving a little closer to the door. "No big deal lady. It's just when people are walking around looking like they are ready for the zombie apocalypse a guy is going to ask a few questions."
She actually laughed a little. "Strange things happen up in the mountains some times. You have to be ready for what might come your way. Especially when you are a young Cherokee lady."
"Ha!" Evan laughed loudly. "I bet no one has dared to call you a lady in a long time."
She laughed a little again. "So you really don't remember me at all?"
Evan shook his head. "Nah. There's not a lot I remember from those days. Mainly the bad shit and how awful my mother was." Evan shrugged. "Not a whole lot that I remember from that time makes me want to go digging in my head for the rest."
A smile crept on the corners of her mouth as she guided the car around another switchback. "I was playing with my dolls in the dirt underneath a tree you were climbing. Jacob Morningkill came over and ripped the heads off of two of them. When I started to cry you jumped down from the tree and punched him." She chuckled. "He had such a bad black eye. He ran off and wouldn't tell anyone what happened because he didn't want anyone to know that you beat him up."
"Sounds like something I would have done at the time. If that's the main thing you remember about me why the thousand yard stare back at the house?"
"Sometimes when people like us leave the ancestral lands of our people, our home, for a long time it really changes them. And not in a good way. I wasn't sure what kind of man I was going to be looking at when I pulled in."
"Well leaving this place worked out for me." Evan lightly scoffed. "Worked out to three solid meals a day, a bed to sleep in, and clothes on my back. Someone that cared about me was an added bonus."
A twinge of sorrow showed in the corner of Nola's eyes. "I think your father cared a lot more about you than you realize. A lot of us were concerned when your grandmother just picked you up like that and took you away from here. Your mother's reputation was pretty well known around these parts. People were worried that her mother was pretty much the same."
"My mother is who he is because she's bent on being that way. That's just how it is. Her mother doesn't have much to do with it." Evan paused. "I'm glad my grandmother got tipped off from an old friend in town. Said I was one incident away from being put in foster care. Judging by how things are around here that doesn't say too much for how what my future would have been. She said picking me up like that had something to do with the crooked court system here and some other legal shit." Evan looked out the dirty car window. "With how great she was to me I pretty much have to believe her. She was an amazing woman. I miss her every day."
"Well, it seems like she did an ok job so far."
"Pfft. Gee, thanks."
"A ten minute conversation isn't going to tell me everything I need to know about you Raven. It's going to take a bit more than that to really judge you."
They drove on the dirt road for about five more minutes then turned on to a two lane paved road. The car hummed along the small state road for about ten more miles and Nola turned onto another unmarked road that seemed to wind its way through the trees to the top of another ridgeline.
"How the hell do you people know where you are going around here? There isn't a damn street sign or marker anywhere? Evan asked.
"You are such a city boy." Nola laughed at him. "I've been running through these hills since I was a teenager. I know them like I the back of my hand." She stopped the car and the top of the ridge and put it in park. She grabbed a pair of binoculars from the glove box and got out. As Evan did the same he made his way around to her side of the car. "This is why your father is dead." She motioned to the area directly in front of her and down the ridge and handed him the binoculars.
All around Evan he could see the tops of the trees and the craggy peaks of the hills and mountains. The fall colors of the changing trees stretched all the way to the horizon. Except for the spot at the bottom which Nola had pointed to. Here the trees had been felled and cleared. There was a gaping hole that had been carved in the rock that led down to the depths beneath what was once pristine wilderness. The hole looked like a gaping, jagged wound that had been carved with nothing but a dull knife. Men and machines were everywhere in the clearing, the sound of them drowning out the songs of nature. The workers below busied themselves driving mini-ATVs back and forth from the mine shaft with some carrying carts full of stone. Some were operating massive drills that were plunging into the mountain side. Other men were busy loading tractors trailers with carts of stone or drums that were simply labeled "HAZARDOUS MATERIAL" in big, bold letters. There was a trailer set up as an office with two men on the front steps wearing hard hats talking about things around the job site, pointing and yelling instructions. The trailer had a logo painted on the side that read "Endron" in bright green letters. Evan also counted ten men armed with shotguns. Two were stationed at the main road into the site and the rest on patrol around the wood line. The whole scene filled Evan with a sense of anger, pain, hurt and confusion that he hadn't felt his entire life. It was as if someone reached down and pulled up every slight, every injury, every feeling of hurt and despair he ever had and smacked him across the face with them. He turned, bent to his knee and threw up. Nola didn't seem surprised.
"Stings doesn't it?" She let him catch his breath then offered him a hand. She helped pull him to his feet. "In the city hall meetings they told the townsfolk, the white people, that this," She gestured to the abomination at her feet, "Would bring jobs and prosperity to their town. There are no extra jobs. There is no extra money. All the white people are too drunk, too high or too meth'd out to care. There is just their corporate bonuses, another gaping hole in our Great Mother, and an extra zero on their bottom line at the end of the year."
Evan coughed and tried to catch his breath. His heart was still racing and his head pounding. He shook his head trying to clear it. "Can we get out of here, please?"
Nola was still looking down below with a terribly sad look on her face. It was as if someone had taken her dolls again and just kept tearing their little heads off over and over again. She wiped the corner of her cheek. Evan wasn't sure if she was wiping away a tear or not. "Yeah. Let's go."
The first part of their drive back was quiet and still. It was like they were leaving the wake of a friend who was killed in a car accident last week. They were numb. In pain. The full force of the thing hadn't set in yet.
"What was that back there?" Evan asked. "Why did I react like that? Have you seen that before?"
"Yeah. From time to time. I think you are just a little more in tune with Gaia than you think you are. I think for a moment she was reaching out to you. I think you felt a little bit of her pain," Nola replied. Evan could tell the place weighed heavy on her soul as well.
"Easy with the metaphysical shamanism my noble Cherokee," Evan said. "I'm just a city boy that went to public school. What did any of this have to do with my father's death? Pretty sure he didn't vomit himself to death."
Anger flashed across her face. She didn't like that bit of humor. "So you joke about everything? Is nothing sacred to you?"
"Only to keep from crying," Evan said, straight-faced. "So what happened with my pops?"
"He was at the forefront of getting rid of those Endron assholes. We would sneak down there at night and sabotage their equipment. Stage protests down at city hall. Anything he could to get them out of here. He was working with another friend of ours in the next county over trying to get things done from the legal end. I thought we were actually making some serious progress. The last time I saw him he mentioned a couple of corporate goons in suits had happened by his place. He kicked them out, scared them off. Two days later that grocery guy found him dead in his bed."
Evan frowned. "I see what you mean. It would have to be some pretty slick corporate work to kill a man in his bed two days after you were there."
"Stop. It's all connected. Can't you see it? There are other things at work here. Other forces. Things that are just a little beyond the sight of a half-white city boy who left his home land way too young."
Evan huffed. The car pulled back down into his fathers' cove. "Well this half-white city boy has had enough for today." He got out of the car and started walking toward the house.
"How long are you staying?" She yelled toward him through an open car window.
"Long enough to bury my father. Then I'm getting the hell out of here," He said back not even turning around.
"God, you really are an asshole," She yelled and hit the gas on the cop car. In a spray of dirt and rocks she was gone.
Evan found a long, pine coffin sitting on the cabins front porch. A manila envelope was attached to the front that contained his father's death certificate. "Well pops," Evan said a loud. "Looks like they dropped you off without ceremony. Good thing because you probably didn't want one."
Evan walked over to the tool shed and grabbed a shovel. He found a decent spot behind the house that was under an old oak tree. He dragged his father's coffin around to the side of the tree and started digging.
"You know Dad, it really wasn't that easy growing up around these parts and I kind of wonder why you were kind of a no-show. Grandma said once that I never lived with you because of some weird, sick, child custody shit in the courts. I can buy that. At least you could have stayed in touch with me though, you know? Maybe a phone call once a month? Maybe a card at Christmas or on my birthday?" Evan stopped digging for a second and looked at the pine coffin. "But no, you were out here in west bumblefuck playing a cross of hippie, noble savage and Captain Planet." Evan started digging again. "I wish I could tell you I was really sore about it but I'm not. My life wasn't that bad in upstate New York. I was away from this crazy place and things were pretty ok.
"Just being out here makes me feel like I have this whole part of me that I haven't even discovered yet though." Evan was digging pretty quickly and dirt was flying from the hole. He had the army to thank for that. "To be honest, I'm not entirely comfortable with it. Everything I know about the Cherokee part of me I learned from books, movies and the internet. Those aren't exactly the best sources, you know? I spend a day and a half out here and it's like the scales are falling off my eyes a little bit. Like I'm seeing into parts of myself that I don't' really know yet." Evan shook his head. A few hours with Nola he was spewing off spiritual world bullshit too. He was waist deep in the hole now. Evan turned toward his father and leaned on the shovel. "I wish I could stick around. I wish I had more time." Evan paused. "I wish I had known you when you were alive." The digging started again. "But I've got army shit to do back in army land. I don't know much about you but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want me getting in trouble for being AWOL."
Then he saw them again. There were more this time. Four grey timber wolves were at the edge of the wood line. The large black one with yellow eyes was back. The black one was flanked by one Evan hadn't seen before. This wolf was just as large as the black one but its fur was completely white just like freshly fallen snow. Evan gave them a friendly wave and a smiled back. He didn't care that a pack of wolves was sitting about fifty meters off in the trees. He couldn't remember ever hearing about a pack of wolves attacking and killing a man just for digging a hole. He mentally shrugged it off. He couldn't explain it but the pack of wolves didn't make him feel uneasy.
Once he finished digging he found some old pulleys and rope in the tool shed. He lashed up the coffin with the rope and rigged the pulleys and rope up through the old oak. He pulled and maneuvered the rope gently lowering the coffin into the freshly dug grave. He bowed his head, had a moment of silence then started topping off the grave with dirt. When he was finished he put the tools back in the shed. He headed back into the cabin, put away the groceries Sean had dropped off earlier and got the wood stove going. Evan wasn't sure why he told Sean he'd see him next week. He planned to leave tomorrow. He'd just stop at his shop on the way out of town and let him know.
Evan cooked himself some dinner and ate on the porch again. The wolves were out in the hills again that night once the moon was full overhead. Their howls tonight seemed echoed back and forth through the mountains and ravines. They had a sad, mournful tone that reminded Evan of they played amazing grace on the bagpipes back at Bragg. He grabbed his dishes and headed inside. He tossed the dishes in the sink, grabbed his woobie and curled up on the floor in the same spot as the night before. He was fast asleep in minutes.