The Tenderness of Wolves Read Free Page A

still manages to look purposeful–an accident of anatomy I observe with interest. There is a scuff of footprints on the dusty floor, but no strange objects, no weapon of any sort. The only clue is that awful round wound on Jammet’s head. It must have been an Indian outlaw, Knox says. Scott agrees: no white man could do something so barbaric. I picture his wife’s face last winter, when it was swollen black and blue and she claimed she had slipped on a patch of ice, although everybody knew the truth.
    The men go upstairs to the other room. I can tell where they go by the creak of their feet pressing on floorboards and the dust that falls between them and catches the light. It trickles onto Jammet’s corpse, falling softly on his cheek, like snowflakes. Little flecks land, unbearably, on his open eyes and I can’t take my gaze off them. I have an urge to go and brush it off, tell them sharply to stop disturbing things, but I don’t do either. I can’t make myself touch him.
    ‘No one has been up there for days–the dust was quite undisturbed,’ says Knox when they are down again, flickingdirt off their trousers with pocket-handkerchiefs. Knox has brought a clean sheet from upstairs, and he shakes it out, sending more dust motes whirling round the room like a swarm of sunlit bees. He places the sheet over the body on the bed.
    ‘There, that should keep the flies off,’ he says with an air of self-congratulation, though any fool can see that it will do no such thing.
    It is decided that we–or rather they–can do no more, and on leaving, Knox closes and secures the door with a length of wire and a blob of sealing wax. A detail that, though I hate to admit it, impresses me.

 
    When the weather turns cold Andrew Knox is made painfully aware of his age. Every autumn for some years now his joints have started to hurt, and go on hurting all winter no matter how many layers of flannel and wool he wraps them in. He has to walk gingerly, to accommodate the shooting pains in each hip. Each autumn the pains start a little earlier.
    But today weariness spreads through his entire soul. He tells himself that it is understandable–a violent event like murder is bound to shake anyone. But it is more than that. No one has been murdered in the history of the two villages. We came here to get away from all that, he thinks: we were supposed to leave that behind when we left the cities. And yet the strangeness of it … a brutal barbarian killing, like something that would happen in the southern States. In the past few years several people have died of old age, of course, of fever or accident, not to mention those poor girls … But no one has been slaughtered, defenceless in their stockinged feet. He is upset by the victim’s shoelessness.
    He reads through Scott’s notes after dinner, and tries not to lose his patience: ‘The stove is three feet high and one foot eight inches deep, faintly warm to the touch.’ He supposes this might be useful. Assuming the fire was going strongly at the time of death, it could take thirty-six hours to become cold. So the murder could have happened the day before. Unless the fire had already started to die down when Jammet met his end, in which case it could have happened during the night. But it is not inconceivable that it tookplace the previous night. In their search today they found little. There were no clear signs of a struggle; no blood other than on the bed, where he must have been attacked. They wondered aloud whether the place had been searched, but his belongings were scattered so haphazardly–their usual state, according to Mrs Ross–that it was impossible to be certain. Scott protested loudly that it must be a native: no white man could do something so barbaric. Knox is less sure. Some years ago Knox was called to a farm near Coppermine, after a particularly regrettable incident. There is a practice popular in some communities whereby a groom is ritually humiliated on his wedding