Free The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis Page B

in the ground.
    Wafting smell of that chili sent shivers through me.
    He nodded again. Did that a lot, I was noticing. “I don’t get many visitors.”

    “This would a’ been summer ’bout fifteen years back. Lady and her fella heading up to them gold fields.”
    Part a’ me hated giving out so much, but the part a’ me what still played my momma’s letter in my head when I was trying to sleep hoped to high heaven he’d a’ seen ’em. Least so’s maybe he could tell me what they looked like. Nana kept magazines like they was sacred but didn’t keep no photographs of her own daughter.
    Matthews leaned back in his chair and puffed out his cheeks, then he scratched at the back a’ his head. “Fifteen years. That’s a long time to remember strangers. But you say they went for gold?”
    I nodded.
    “That was the summer we finished building the church over in Martinsville. We had a few travelers pass through our doors in those months.”
    Felt a swell a’ hope in me. Martinsville was one a’ them words in the letter.
    When he spoke again he spoke slower, kept his eyes on me when before he’d been staring at the ceiling like it had all them memories stored in its rafters.
    “We had mostly men, groups of four or five friends who pooled their time and resources. Had a few on their own, idealistic, foolish. Then, yes, I do remember a couple now I think on it. Can’t remember their names, but they were looking for Halveston too. She was pretty, the wife,” then he laughed a bit and said, “That’s right. I remember her because she called it the Great YK. Never heard the old Yukon called great before.”
    More words out my momma’s letter. Must a’ been grinning ’cause Matthews shut up and stared at me.
    Then he said, in a strange flat voice. “Were they your parents?”
    Something in his tone made me not want to answer, but he must a’ read my face. He was quiet, looked at me with a mix a’ pity and pleasure. Weren’t at all sure what to make of him.

    Then he got up and went to a tall bookshelf on the other side of the room. From the gap ’tween shelf and wall, he pulled out a roll of paper and spread it on the eating table. A map of BeeCee and North and a bunch of other places I couldn’t figure. It didn’t have no scribblings on it like Nana’s.
    “We’re here,” he said, and poked his spindle finger at a black dot surrounded by a whole lot a’ nothing.
    I picked out the ridge I climbed down and the Mussa and farther south another dot I guessed was Dalston, though it could a’ been Ridgeway. On that map, I hadn’t traveled more’n a knuckle length, and when I looked at the North, big and vast and more nothing, that put the fear in me.
    “That Martinsville?” I said, pointing to a dot with a little black cross on the top.
    Another nod and smile. I wondered brief if he could do anything different with his face.
    “Your parents, they went to cash in on the second rush?”
    I said yes, sir, they did. “I heard that durin’ the Damn Stupid, them fools dropped a heap of bombs in the wrong place, cut up the land something nasty and unearthed a bunch more of that yellow metal.”
    Matthews sat back down and stroked his chin like he was stroking a cat. “That’s right. That’s a long way. That dot there, that’s Halveston.” That one was way, way up in the empty part a’ the map. “How are you going to get there by yourself? That’s a good few hundred miles.”
    I scrunched up my face. What kind of asking was that? ’Sides, that mention a’ hundreds a’ miles worried me down deep but I weren’t ’bout to let it show. Walking is walking, one mile or a hundred, it ain’t no different. Least that’s what I told myself.
    “I got two legs, ain’t I? Don’t need nothin’ more.”
    Nod, nod, nod, like a dunce watching a ball of string.

    “Except food,” he said, looking at his pot of chili, “and water.” Then he looked at the empty glass. Then he looked at me.
    I felt squirmy