“That’s what I was thinking.” He stopped. “It can’t be 2006, Willa, can it? I mean, the
twenty-first century?”
Before she could reply, they heard the click-click-click of toenails on asphalt. This
time more than just one set; this time there were four wolves behind them on the
highway. The biggest, standing in front of the others, was the one that had come up
behind David on his walk toward Crowheart Springs. He would have known that
shaggy black pelt anywhere. Its eyes were brighter now. A half-moon floated in each
like a drowned lamp.
“They see us!” Willa cried in a kind of ecstasy. “David, they see us!” She dropped to
one knee on a white dash of the broken passing line and held out her right hand. She
made a clucking noise and said, “Here, boy! Come on!”
“Willa, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
She paid no attention, a very Willa thing to do. Willa had her own ideas about things.
It was she who had wanted to go from Chicago to San Francisco by rail—because, she
said, she wanted to know what it felt like to fuck on a train. Especially one that was
going fast and rocking a little.
“Come on, big boy, come to your mama!”
it stretched its muzzle (and all those shining teeth) toward the slim outstretched hand, the moon filled its eyes perfectly for a moment, turning them silver. Then, just before its long snout could touch her skin, the wolf uttered a series of piercing yips and flung itself backward so sharply that for a moment it rose on its rear legs, front paws boxing the air and the white plush on its belly exposed. The others scattered. The big lobo
executed a midair twist and ran into the scrubland to the right of the road, still yipping, with his tail tucked. The rest followed.
Willa rose and looked at David with an expression of hard grief that was too much to
bear. He dropped his eyes to his feet instead. “Is this why you brought me out into the dark when I was listening to music?” she asked. “To show me what I am now? As if I
didn’t know!”
“Willa, I’m sorry.”
“Not yet, but you will be.” She took his hand again. “Come on, David.”
Now he risked a glance. “You’re not mad at me?”
“Oh, a little—but you’re all I’ve got now, and I’m not letting you go.”
Shortly after seeing the wolves, David spied a Budweiser can lying on the shoulder of
the road. He was almost positive it was the one he had kicked along ahead of him
until he’d kicked it crooked, out into the sage. Here it was again, in its original
Willa had said, but perception and expectation together? Put them together and you
had a Reese’s peanut butter cup of the mind.
He kicked the can out into the scrubland, and when they were past that spot, he looked
back and there it lay, right where it had been since some cowboy—maybe on his way
to 26—had chucked it from the window of his pickup truck. He remembered that on
Hee Haw—that old show starring Buck Owens and Roy Clark—they used to call
pickup trucks cowboy Cadillacs.
“What are you smiling about?” Willa asked him.
“Tell you later. Looks like we’re going to have plenty of time.”
They stood outside the Crowheart Springs railway station, holding hands in the moonlight like Hansel and Gretel outside the candy house. To David the long
building’s green paint looked ashy gray in the moonlight, and although he knew
WYOMING and “THE EQUALITY STATE” were printed in red, white, and blue,
they could have been any colors at all. He noticed a sheet of paper, protected from the elements by plastic, stapled to one of the posts flanking the wide steps leading up to
the double doors. Phil Palmer still leaned there.
“Hey, mutt!” Palmer called down. “Got a butt?”
“Sorry, Mr. Palmer,” David said.
“Thought you were going to bring me back a pack.”
“I didn’t pass a store,” David said.
“They didn’t sell cigarettes where you were, doll?” Palmer asked. He was the kind of