Aminatta Forna - Happiness

Spring snow, still, porcelain bowls in the hollows of the earth. Blue hour, the outlines of pine trees and houses stood against a deepening sky. The wolfer gazed upon the lights of the town. For days he had travelled, back to this place which he had once known but hadnt been near for half a life. From what he could see from the rise of the hill, he reckoned Greenhampton hadnt grown much in the years he had been gone, if anything the houses were fewer. Men had been upping sticks and leaving, hed heard tell, men had left their homes and barns, abandoned their farms, farms worked three generations. Fathers and grandfathers had cleared the rocky soil of New England, had felled trees and then hitched mules to tree stumps and heaved each stump loose, had sunk wells and built walls around their farms, laid each stone by hand, had protected their livestock from predators. Now the sons of these men were handing the land back to nature and heading west to the plains, where a man could stand in one spot and turn around and see nothing but open space in every direction, and underfoot, when he kicked a boot heel into the ground: soil, black and rich.

The farmer who had written him was not somebody the wolfer knew, but he recognised the family name and that was what had made him answer, when hed made up his mind to answer at all. Theyd been looking for him, the letter writer said, some good time. They needed a wolfer as a matter of urgency, but wolfers no longer worked these parts. Supposedly there were no more wolves left, but now something out there was taking sheep and the last of the farmers had themselves convinced it was the work of a wolf.

Snow on the ground was good. A long winter made for hungry wolves, snow made them easier to track, meant theyd be furred out still and a winter pelt was a valuable thing. The wolfer did the figures in his head. Money for pelts came on top of his fee, plus the federal bounty of $15, but to claim that hed have to haul back into town and deliver the scalp. A pelt in good condition could bring in maybe $25. His fee was $80. Winter the wolfer had spent camped out on the plains, in a small log cabin. Every day he set traps and every day his traps were full hed sold upwards often bales of wolfskins and covered the outlay on his gear in the first week. Everything from then on was money in his pocket. This job would be the closing number of a good season.

The wolfer climbed back up onto his wagon and urged his horse forward. Under the canvas in the back were half a dozen Newhouse toothed traps. Over his shoulder he carried a long gun, and slung low at his waist a skinning knife with a carved mesquite handle and a curved blade that was deep and short. He had half a pint of whiskey in the pocket of his buffalo calfskin overcoat. In one inside pocket of his wool jacket he had the letter that brought him here wrapped around three glass phials of white crystal powder.

The horse leaned its weight into the harness and dragged a hoof before finding purchase on the road. Leastways now was downhill.

At the general store, where the store owners wife seemed to expect him, the wolfer checked his route and bought a bite of tobacco. To make town in daylight is what he would have liked, to drive his hunting gear through the centre, see the people turn to watch him pass, nod to those who waved and tip his hat at those who cheered. But so be it. The wolfer drew up in front of the lighted farmhouse. He wrapped a wolf fur around his shoulders and placed a fur hat on his head, the kind of attention to detail that persuaded folks they were getting what theyd paid for.

Morning found the wolfer in the woods a mile or more above the farm. He had scoured the way for the carcasses of fallen prey, tracks, droppings, any sign at all. He found nothing. A levelling in the hillside and a small clearing in a stand of hemlock provided him with a place to make camp. Afterwards he walked two miles in each of four directions. Once he came across the carcass of a steer, which might or might not have been wolf work, it was rotted too far down to tell.

At supper the night before the wolfer had entertained his patron with stories of wolves hed trapped as far afield as Dakota and Nebraska. At first he pretended to wish not to be drawn, but after he had finished a plate of stewed oysters and cornbread he began to speak, slowly and with many pauses to allow his small audience the pleasure of urging him on. His reputation had flown ahead of him, he knew, and so he told selective stories of his battles with outlaw wolves, and some of those stories he embellished a little, and other stories he borrowed outright. The wolfer accepted a small glass of port (his hosts were not a rich family, but well-to-do enough having diversified early into tanning) and began on the story of the three-toed outlaw wolf of Harding County and the Queen Wolf of Colorado, who he had not himself trapped, but an account of whose execution he had on good authority. Roped and quartered by four horsemen riding in different directions, yes sir. Two hundred Christian folk had gathered to see the captured wolf brought in on the back of a cart.

The wolfers father had been a wolfer in this part of the land; the wolfer had been born into the town. His fathers work disappeared with the last of the wolves, but by then his father had been an old man. As a young man the wolfer headed west and in his time had done any and every kind of job there was: worked the railroads, ridden herd, fenced and mined ore all for other men. Once hed grubstaked his savings in a cinnabar claim, worked at it two years hard before he gave the whole thing up. The mercury, when it came to it, had been worth less than his time. Soon after he learned there was wolfing work around and learned too the kind of money a rancher was willing to pay a wolfer to keep his land clear. And so he bought himself a new skinning knife and took up his fathers trade right where the old man had left off.