King of Pawns

A new customer, stout and tanned to his bones, once asked me, “King’s Pawn, for real?” He wore a peach guayabera and a chocolate brown bowler, a combination I had never seen on anyone in Southern California or anywhere else.

“For real.Unlike your artifact, which was mass produced for export,” I said. “It’s not from the Kota people, as someone has led you to believe.” I faintly scratched the surface of his item with my fingernail. “You see how the veneer masks the lighter-colored wood? It’s a replica.” Genuine Kota figures from Gabon are fashioned with sinister expressions to ward off evil, I pointed out. This one, however, was smiling. I’d learned many things over the years. Spotting fakes of all kinds was one of them, and now my authentication skills are sharp enough to sniff out most shams in a snap. If I’m being honest, sifting the real from the rubbish motivates me to stay in a job I never wanted in the first place.

Exposing the truth of his relic had irked him, and he left without a word, but he returned the next day with a man’s gold wedding band, 18-karat, engraved with “Nick and Liz” on the inside. I asked him if he was Nick.

“Are you conducting a wedding ceremony?” he said. “Or are you taking the ring?”

I suppose I deserved that.

I told him I’d take it, and when our transaction was complete, my new customer removed his bowler to smooth his hair, which matched the black wiry coarseness living on his arms. “I hope to be back,” he said, and out the door he went, as pleased as anyone can ever be from visiting a pawnshop.

Family lore says the Kings have been in pawnshops ever since they were invented, which isn’t true, of course, because pawnbrokers existed in China three thousand years ago, a fact I unearthed through my own research after I first heard my grandfather’s story. But it’s a fine tale to tell when a single business defines generations. We’re minor royalty in the pawning world west of the Rockies. From Reno, where my great-granddad and his brothers started, King’s Pawn moved to San Francisco, Sacramento, and eventually Hollywood, where one-time movie stars came in wearing wigs and sunglasses, as if in their penniless, face-fallen years they needed any disguise. Now, here I am in Pacific Plaza, one of many strip malls in a patch of suburb between Tijuana and L.A., a place that some say isn’t a real place but a dismal pass-through along the freeways, a harsh assessment made by those who haven’t spent much time in the area. But I actually love it here and might never leave. Once I’d accepted that the business was mine—I didn’t have any other plans after dropping out of college—I figured I should keep up the tradition. The plaza itself might look desolate, like an island deserted for good reason, but it’s not the worst place to be stranded. I enjoy watching the palm trees out front wave in the breeze—whenever there is one—and we’re only a few miles from the beach. As I said to Bluff the other day while enjoying my coffee in the back room, a person can hide here and live free and lawless despite all the usual rules, unwritten or otherwise. I like talking to Bluff. With his ears always pricked, I imagine he listens to everything I say.

Bluff came to me a few months ago after an old man showed up sweating and empty-handed. He was as old as my father would be if he were still alive. Something more than the usual heartache seemed to prevent the guy from looking me in the eyes. “Can you come out to my car?” he said. “It’s right out front.” At first, I told him no, I couldn’t do that, I needed to stay and watch my store, answer the phone, and deal with customers, though it’s not like they were lining up for me as they do at the tamale shop next door. I’m lucky to have five in a day, and my days here always run long because people don’t reach their last resort on a predictable schedule.

“Please, mister?” he said. His face, like his voice, was begging me. He told me he had something special. “Special but too big to bring in myself,” he said. “I’ll make it worth your time, mister.” His chest was heaving and every breath bubbled like a whistle underwater. I saw the ragged nerves, the familiar fear, the desperation and the hope all at once, the unquantifiable human currencies which, in a pawn shop, can wield more power than any sum of money. But the desperation in particular registered differently with this man. I sensed it running through him. I could almost hear it twitching, the faint buzz of his body being kept alive for one more day. As he gripped the counter, I felt sorry for him, felt more sadness in him than in any other customer I’d come across.

“All right then,” I said. “Let’s see what you have.”

A burden in him seemed to lift. “Oh, mister, thank you,” he said. “You won’t be disappointed.” As we walked through the store, he glanced left and right at the orderly, stocked shelves. “It’s real clean in here,” he said, “and bright.” Pawnshops may be resting places for things that belonged to the dead or the dying and the destitute, but I feel obligated to keep the debris of those jumbled lives tidy and presentable. The caretaking is another aspect of my work that I enjoy. Maybe because I don’t have a family to look after, I look after the things that have held meaning for others. That trumpet allegedly belonged to Dizzy Gillespie but somehow found its way to a boy who quit the high school marching band, then stopped playing altogether. That crystal vase, once a wedding gift, is signed Cartier. The lamp? A Tiffany base with a knock-off shade, which any serious collector would discern. The fluorescent lights in the store might seem too much—too cold, too glaring—but they keep the stuff looking alive. Nothing here can hide in dimness or dust. Like the old man said, clean and bright.

Parked outside he had a station wagon from bygone days, avocado green with wood paneling along the side, wide at the back, dented and scraped, worn-down from too many rough miles but still determined to run, like the person who had driven it into the parking lot.

He took a single key from his shirt pocket and opened the back door.

“Have yourself a good look,” he said.

I bent down and poked my head into the musty car. “A stuffed coyote?” The animal’s fur was matted in a few spots, but otherwise, it seemed a fine specimen.

“It’s not a coyote,” he said, “it’s a wolf.”

I knew, of course, what it was. Long ago, I’d seen a similar wolf that dwelled in the woods where I once walked with my father. I said coyote to test whether the man’s desire to please me outweighed the truth.

“Where’d you get it?”

“It’s genuine and rare. That’s what’s important. A real wolf.”

The closer I studied it—from the substantial paws to the luminous amber eyes—the more I felt that this stunning animal might presently lunge for my neck.

The man was sweating through his faded denim shirt, dark stains of despair spreading across his chest. I suspected he was down to his last dollar, consuming chips and water for meals and sleeping in his station wagon with a dead wolf as his only protector.

“I can’t take it,” I said. “It’s against the law.”

“But it’s a wolf, a real wild wolf. See that tail?” He hobbled to the other side of the car and opened the door. “Come over here and get in closer.” I followed him and gazed into the backseat. “You see?” the old man said. It was a nice tail. As far as I could tell, pristine and snowy white with dappled silver, so soft-looking. From this angle, the wolf seemed like it would forego an attack and instead leap away in a dash toward freedom.

The man had a long, ashen beard matted in places, just like the wolf’s fur. His pants were too big, wide around his thighs, and bunched in filthy layers over his shoes. As he stared down at his own scrawny shadow, I wondered what he saw there, whether he recognized himself in the shape on the ground or if he saw something else.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“That wolf nearly killed me,” he said, looking up. “But I got him first.”

“You shot him?”

“Bow and arrow. I rarely use guns.”

In my business, I hear all kinds of stories, most of which I’m inclined to dismiss as untrue or greatly exaggerated. People often lie about stolen goods, and they lie to hide the shame they feel about their circumstances, the foibles, and the miscalculations that have landed them in my shop. Jewelry from the catastrophes of marriage, the rubble of foreclosures, random objects to make ends meet.

“Bow and arrow?” I tried to seem impressed. “That must have taken lots of practice. Wouldn’t a gun be easier, more reliable?”

“For some hunters, mister,” the old man said. “Not for me. I like a fair match, and I don’t like the shotgun blast ringing in my ears.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “For as long as I can remember.”

He stooped into the car and patted a hand on the wolf’s haunch. “I hate to get rid of him a second time.”

“A second time?”

“Putting him down like that and pawning him now in a time of need. Bluff was a handsome beast. Look at him. By God, he still is, even like that.”

“Bluff?”

“I named him when he was alive. He used to circle my cabin at night. Sometimes, I’d see him when I hunted or when I was just taking a walk in the hills. Most years he left me alone. Unless they’re rabid, wolves won’t usually attack a man. They’re afraid of us, you know—more than we’re afraid of them. This one killed a couple of my dogs but I didn’t fault him. Those dogs could be vicious. Once, I saw Bluff take down a deer like you and I would swat a fly.” He raised his right arm and let it fall against his baggy pants as if he were slapping down some unseen resentment.

“But one day,” he went on, slowly. “One day, he surprised me. I saw him while hiking over the ridge a half mile from my place. Pretty soon, I was close enough to watch his face. Suddenly, I could see he’d changed his mind about everything. He ran straight at me. I stayed calm, and I had good aim back then.”

“That’s quite a story,” I said.

“It should be worth something.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I mean, Bluff himself, being a real wild wolf and all.”

“Is there any other kind?”

“You said it, mister. There’s nothing else in the world like him.”

Although I could have told him about another wolf like this one, I did not want to diminish his story with my own.

I felt sorry for them both. Sorry for the animal who seemed nearly alive and for his killer and companion, the last of his life leaking from his armpits. They both seemed to scrutinize me for different purposes, the old man pleading and the dead wolf trying to convince me of its immortality. I had no idea what a wolf would be worth even if I could have sold it. I’d dealt with taxidermy over the years—a couple of great horned owls, an armadillo, a bobcat, more buck heads than I care to recall—but never anything like Bluff. Where had the old hunter housed the wolf, and for how long? Was any of his story true? Swells of blistering heat rose from the asphalt. We were both sweating now, the man and I.

“Mister,” he said. “I’m on my last legs. All I have is Bluff and this wagon.”

“I don’t know about your wolf,” I said. “Since I can’t sell it without breaking the law, it’s worth nothing.” Though my financial concern was earnest, I knew that if the wolf came into my possession—if King’s Pawn were its last home—he would never become a liability.

“But he needs someone to take care of him if I don’t make it.” He leaned against the car, propping his skinny frame of bones up on one elbow. “He deserves a better place than I ever had. I figure you could give him that.” Was he playing with me, plying the typical shopworn emotional angle? I hear family heirloom sagas all the time, the tears welling up as a ploy to squeeze more money from a loan. Great-great-grandma’s Victorian earrings. Pocket watches etched with the initials of pilgrim ancestors. Whether they’re true or not, I set aside such claims. Instead, I look at the inherent resale value of every item. I strive for objectivity in my appraisal because I have a business to maintain and a single livelihood to preserve, even if it has not always been gratifying. I can’t sell someone else’s story, no matter how good it is.

The midday sun was consuming me from the ground up, and suddenly, I could not think straight with the old man bent over his car in woeful patience and his animal eyeing me as if I owed both of them more than my time. I began to feel agitated, thirsty, and vaguely sick. What was to be done with a wolf who would not be spared, with memories that cannot be extinguished?

“Two hundred and fifty,” I said.

The old man looked up at me and held a hand to shield his eyes.

“Can you make it three for a poor hunter?” he said.

The truth is, there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t want Bluff, regardless of the law.

“All right, three hundred. Can you drive around the back? It’ll be easier to bring Bluff in that way.” I caught myself calling the wolf by his name.

“Will do, mister. Thank you, mister. You won’t regret it, I promise you.”

Before closing the back doors, he cupped a hand on the wolf’s snout. He really loved this thing that he had killed out of necessity—if his story was true—this being that had not loved him in return but perhaps had respected him as a lone and lonely equal, a fearless predator in his own right, a threat that had to be monitored and, if necessary, acted upon. Behind the steering wheel, the man seemed smaller, frailer, the station wagon swallowing him whole. He drove Bluff to the back of the plaza as slowly as a hearse in a funeral procession. I unlocked my shop and went inside, where the A/C was still running on high. In the cool air, I felt like I could come back to life, my head clearing of the heat and the suffocating haze that had engulfed the old man, Bluff, and me. In the back room, I downed some water and wiped my face. I did not want to keep the hunter and my wolf waiting.

Behind the plaza, one of the people who spent their days or nights there was sitting against the wall, drinking from a green bottle. Jack was a regular, and he nodded when he saw me.

The old man was already standing next to his car. He opened the side doors again and said, “I’ll push him your way. Pull him by the shoulder, not the legs.”

“Be careful with Bluff,” I said, “and don’t hurt yourself.”

The wolf was mounted on a thick wooden plank. The entire assembly, the wolf and the base, along with the hardware that secured it, was weighty. The man struggled, and so did I.

“Jack, can I get your help? Five bucks for a hand with this item?”

“Five and a sandwich?”

“I run a pawnshop, not a deli.”

The old man laughed—dare I say howled. It was the loudest he had been since he appeared.

“Seven bucks then,” Jack said.

“I’m not faring well on the business front today,” I said.

“Bluff’s a bargain,” the old man said. “Worth every penny.”

Jack looked into the car and then turned to me. “You’re taking a dog?”

“That’s right, a big, beautiful dog.”

“A wolf,” the old man said. “Bluff’s a wolf, nothing less.”

“That can’t be right, taking a dog,” Jack said.

“I’m paying for your help, not your opinion. Now please get in on the other side and lift him from behind, but easy does it, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said. As he hefted his end, he said, “Damn, this is one heavy dog.”

“It’s a wolf,” the old man said, tugging at his beard. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

“I know a dog when I see one,” Jack said. “Anyway, why would anyone want a wolf? If that’s what it is?”

“Just put him down gently,” I said.

Soon, Bluff stood upright in the parking lot, as natural as a wolf could seem if he had wandered down from the mountains and across the desert, finding himself lost and stunned in the back of a strip mall, thinking he should quickly find his way back home. Out of the car, he looked even larger—his hindquarters and shoulders packed not with a stuffing of straw and sawdust and wire but with real wolf muscle. His eyes gleamed with majestic vigilance. The taxidermist, I thought, was a genius, faithful to their art and lovingly reverent to the creatures presented to them. If there had been an arrow wound, there was no sign of it now. I was convinced now, more than ever, that Bluff could spring off his stand and sprint for the distant silhouette of hills or go on the attack and do whatever wolves do to their prey.

“Let’s get him inside, Jack,” I said. “Real easy now.”

“Yes sir, right sir, the dog who thinks he’s a wolf!” Jack had served overseas in the army in an active war zone. On the occasions when I give him a few dollars for not doing anything at all, he says, “Thank you, sir!” or “Thank you, lieutenant!” Often, he salutes. Sometimes, he jumps up from the pavement and stands at attention.

After we moved Bluff into my back room, I filled out the usual paperwork and gave the old man his money. I handed Jack his seven dollars, seven singles, so he could use them to buy things from people who might not have change for a five—food, miniature bottles of booze, cigarettes, whatever he wanted. From the paperwork, I finally learned that the old man’s name was Avery Smith. For his address, he wrote: on the road.

“Mister, take real good care of him,” he said.

“I will,” I said. “Don’t you worry, I’m the King of Pawns.”

“I’ll be back when I’ve turned a corner.” He rolled up his copy of the paperwork and shoved it into his shirt pocket.

We walked back outside through the wall of heat. Without speaking again, the old man slumped into his station wagon, his body shriveled and flattened. He peered into the empty back seat. Then he looked at me with what could have been regret or relief. As Avery Smith drove away, Jack sat in the sun and pulled his legs up to his chest. I saw him count and re-count his seven dollars before wadding up the bills under his army cap.

The old man hasn’t returned yet, and I’ve never moved Bluff to the front of the store. He stays out back where it’s safe. He’s always there waiting for me, always listening, always alert. I can’t imagine King’s Pawn without him.

As I said, like Avery Smith, I had my own wolf story.

Long ago, my father, John King—I’m John Junior—insisted I accompany him on a hunting trip up north, in the mountains near the Oregon border. I was a teenager working part-time for him at our shop in Sacramento before my mom left him for a woman and before he moved the business and the two of us to southern California. For Dad, hunting and pawning were close relatives for purely practical reasons. Guns were pawned more than any other item—masses of handguns, rifles, Rugers, Remingtons, and early model Winchesters were the darlings of collectors. Maybe this was true because people always had more guns than they needed; they could put up the excess for loans and feel like they hadn’t compromised their stockpiles. King’s Pawn always carried more rifles, pistols, automatic weapons, and all the accoutrements—bullet belts, holsters, scopes—than fine jewelry and rare coins combined. My father never needed to buy his own guns or any other hunting necessities—camouflage, camping gear, knives, bows, and arrows, if that was your preference, like Avery Smith’s—because it was all at his disposal. He called it King’s Arsenal.

Hunting never interested me. It still doesn’t. I didn’t like the musky flavor of the deer my father brought home from his weekends in the mountains. Or the sweet, coarse meat from a black bear he’d killed and skinned for a rug in our living room, which forever after stank of death. When he asked me to go with him, he said he’d be proud to watch me shoot my first deer, but what I believed was that he yearned for my own pride in watching him hunt, in seeing him as someone who was more than the owner of a pawnshop handed down to him by his father, more than a man whose wife left him for happiness with a woman.

“I don’t want to shoot a deer,” I told him. “I’m not going.”

“Son,” he said, “you’re going with me.”

He chose a Winchester bolt-action rifle for me from the shop. It looked new in a case covered with short, bristly hair, maybe a wild boar’s hide. He gave me a lesson on how to load the cartridges, four in the magazine and one in the chamber, how to set the safety catch, rest the butt on my shoulder and look squarely through the scope. After unloading the rifle, he took me into the backyard and told me to aim at the burl on the walnut tree. “Imagine it’s your enemy,” he said. Then he told me to shift the barrel toward a fist-sized rock he’d placed on the cinderblock fence. “You need to swivel faster,” he said. “If we had a picture of your mother out here, you could aim for that.” He wanted me to laugh in agreement. I declined to do so. It had been long enough since my mother left, but still, I felt the cruelty of his comment. When he ordered me to pull the trigger, I was too slow and ponderous again for his tastes. “Faster, buddy, faster,” he said. “You gotta think quick and act quicker.” My father had never called me buddy like that. I pulled the trigger again and again. Click, click, click, not unlike the snapping of my father’s fingers as he directed me to go faster. “That’s better,” he said. “Now get that,” he said, pointing to a crow perched on the telephone wires. Then a frog in the grass, another bird, the patio light, that rock, now that rock over there. Faster, faster, faster. All the while, I told myself that I would never take perfect aim and never intentionally shoot a deer. Instead, I would shoot to the side. I would feign disappointment in myself and act deeply ashamed to fail in my father’s presence. If I were forced to hunt, that was my plan.

On the drive up to the mountains, only my father talked. Maybe we’ll both get a deer, maybe twelve-point bucks. We could mount them in the shop, souvenirs for both of us. A ten-pointer wouldn’t be bad, either. I wouldn’t sneeze at another bear. Something to remind you of me when I’m long gone. You’ll see, buddy. Sooner or later, every man becomes a hunter.

In the shaded woods, we wore blaze orange, a signal to other hunters that we were human, not big game. Deer see orange as green and brown. To any deer out there, we would seem, if we stood still, as harmless as all the trees. My father had forbidden me from wearing blue because deer comprehend the color for what it is—the sky, a lake, ripe berries, and men in jeans, men who were quiet harbingers of danger. While wearing brown corduroys, as my father had ordered, I hoped that any deer roaming our way might smell my repulsion for our endeavor, my bitter fear of being told to pull the trigger against an animal who could not recognize me for what I was.

“All this fresh air is making me hungry,” my father said as we walked through the forest. “What about you?”

Hunger dignifies the hunt, the urge leading naturally to the act. But if my stomach was empty, I did not experience the emptiness as hunger. The thought of eating anything at that moment was abhorrent as we pursued my father’s death wish for the animal we had yet to see, a peculiar quest that had nothing to do with needing to stock the freezer with food, for we had plenty.

We stepped into the light of a clearing with high grasses. We sat on boulders, the stone warmer than the breeze skimming the field. From his backpack, my father took out bologna sandwiches sealed in plastic, packets of peanuts, chocolate bars, and a small thermos filled with coffee. He handed me one of the sandwiches but I did not unwrap it. He poured coffee into the plastic thermos lid and took a sip; in his thick hands, the cup seemed tiny, like a piece from a vintage doll’s house in our shop. I wondered if we were being watched by any deer or bear, or if other hunters had seen us without us seeing them, competitors in the open season.

“Eat the sandwich,” my father said. “You can’t hunt all day on fumes.”

The rifles lay in a crevice between us. After a summer without rain, the mountains were dry, the air starchy, the grass golden brown. I began to sweat down my legs, the heat from the rock searing through my trousers.

“Even some rabbits would be nice,” my father said. “Right, buddy?”

A long-winged bird flew overhead. My father picked up his rifle and ran his hand along the barrel before pointing it upward. “Pow,” he said. “Pow, pow, pow. Like that, quick and confident. No hesitation. Own the aim, buddy, own the aim.” The bird circled on a whirlpool of wind, tracking us while taking in the rest of the world, so peaceful and effortless. Before long, it glided on an updraft. I imagined that it knew we were up to no good. Or maybe it was waiting to seize the entrails of a kill—a kill by us or another hunter, human or animal, although it was impossible to say with any certainty. Any theory about its behavior was as irrelevant as the smoldering thoughts about my father, his hideous obsession with guns, his inability to dispense with his past and let go of his rancor with my mother, rid himself of the ill-conceived notion that slaughtering an animal was a suitable proxy for seeking revenge and for annihilating the love I would always have for my mother despite the hole her absence left in me. Although I hadn’t seen her in years, I intended to find her in the future, when I could cut myself loose from him, from his tyranny, from the loathing that buried the possibility of being, truly, father and son. As the rock pressed into my spine, I began to wish I was soaring up there with that regal bird, not grounded in this scene.

Maybe it was the bologna or our sweat, or maybe nothing about us at all. Suddenly, a dog appeared on the far side of the clearing, and then another. Soon, there were three. Hunting dogs, I thought at first, but deer hunters wouldn’t take dogs with them into the woods. Even I knew that just from thinking about it logically. Dogs—like blue jeans—would alert the deer and save their lives. These animals on the field’s edge belonged to no one. They were wolves.

“Look,” I said, and shouldn’t have. It was the first time I’d spoken since we sat down.

My father reached into his backpack for the binoculars, which, like the guns, had been taken from the shop. He grinned as he held them up to his eyes. “Oh yeah,” he said. “You can’t eat wolves, but that doesn’t matter. Does it, buddy?”

“We can’t shoot them,” I said. “It’s illegal.” Somehow, I knew that too.

“Who says?”

“They’re protected,” I said. “There’s no hunting season for wolves.”

“The rules don’t apply if it charges at you, right? Like an intruder in my own home. And who would say he didn’t come at me? Self-preservation is the law of the land.”

He put down the binoculars and pulled up the gun from between his legs. Sliding down from his boulder, he said, “Come on, buddy. It’s time for target practice.”

“I’m staying here,” I said. I thought he would berate me, but all he said was, “Suit yourself. Daddy has a little errand to run.” Like going to the convenience store for more bologna or pissing in the woods, that’s what his errand sounded like, and that’s when I was overcome by the urge to raise the rifle, swing it against his head hard enough to stop him but not hard enough to kill. I didn’t think once about shooting him, never that.

With his rifle held ready, he walked across the field. He walked like a cowboy in an old-time movie, with a slow, deliberate swagger, each hip steering him toward the inevitable or like a soldier keen to snuff out the enemy but indifferent to the rules of combat. He walked as one who believed that he himself could not be taken down, not by any man or machine or monster. Self-preservation was the least of it.

The wolves, which I assumed had belonged to a larger pack—I could not know that for sure—had not moved. They remained as still as the stone beneath me. While my father strutted forward, carving a path through the tall, stiffened grass, the wolves watched him as the coasting bird had watched us, with an acuity of focus that no person could fathom. In that moment, I wished the wolves could be lifted away by their own surging current. I wanted them to retreat into the woods, but instead, they held the ground that was rightfully theirs. I did not advance toward my father and whack him with my rifle—that thought had left me—but I stood up and began waving my arms and shouting, “You, get out of here, run, run!” Then, from a voice unrecognizable as mine came not a word but a keening, a sharp, feral cry that cleaved the air.

My father looked back at me, held his gun in the air and waved it back and forth, his sign for me to stop shouting, stop the nonsense, but I continued to cry out so hard that a scorching rawness occluded my throat and lungs. My father turned back to the wolves. All but one, the largest, had disappeared into the trees. The defiant member among them, I believed, was the protective mama who chose to face my warrior-father.

I called out again but only coarse guttural sounds left my body. In my mouth, I tasted iron and burnt timber on the last of my spittle. When my father fired a shot, the wolf fell back. She tried to rise again, tried to flee as instinct had instructed her, but as we observed from our secure positions, me on the boulder and my dad on his battlefield, she collapsed out of sight.

He held his rifle up high, pointing it to the sky, to the realm of the free bird, his gesture of twisted triumph. He looked back at me again, maybe to confirm that I had witnessed the spectacle of his success, the definitive proof that he could reign over another being. Maybe he now felt good about himself for demonstrating to me, his only son, that he could not be brought down, that he would not be destroyed by scorn.

He motioned to me with his rifle. “Come on,” he said. “Take a look.” I’ve never understood why he thought I’d want to see the wolf, to view what he had done to it, but perhaps the answer wasn’t so elusive—perhaps he needed me to see for myself, and in his presence, the color of his small power. I leapt off the boulder. “You killed a wolf,” I yelled. As I ran toward him, I punched the air with my pawned rifle, spearing it straight out in front of me, stabbing nothing but the empty space between us.

“One for man, zero for the animal kingdom,” my father shouted.

“A one-shot wonder, buddy. This is pure, perfect hunting in God-blessed America. Now point that rifle down like I taught you.”

I did not obey him.

“I should shoot you is what I should do, like you shot her.”

“How do you know it’s a her?” He was sneering now. He knew I would never shoot. “Anyway, if you’re right, then I guess you could say I shot the stubborn bitch. Now let’s go review the damage.”

I refused to join him. I did not want to see the wolf like that. We had no business being there in her territory with our pawnshop guns and our pawnshop camouflage. We weren’t real hunters with our own rifles, only amateur poachers. My father disliked the taste of venison more than I did. He only relished the idea of scoring antlers from some hapless deer when he already had several sets at the shop. But there’s never enough once you start collecting them. After an eight-pointer, you want a ten; after a ten, you want a twelve. Like trophies and tattoos or whatever it is you’ve amassed. You can never get enough. The craving never dwindles. The greed always grows until it dies with us. Maybe my father wanted to shoot another wolf only to say he had done it twice, to tell a stupid joke about slaying two bitches in a lifetime.

I turned around and walked back toward the boulders and our backpacks. After a few steps, I stopped and held my rifle on my shoulder—as I had been taught—and aimed the barrel at the sky. I fired a shot at nothing. There was nothing I wanted to shoot. The sound was not a pop or a ring but rather a shrill, metallic crack that splintered the world’s silence and ricocheted into my body, entering through my fingertips and my ears, through my nose and my mouth. I gasped and inhaled the entirety of the burst. My chest throbbed, my skin tingled. My father, standing over the dead wolf, looked back at me, but not for long. I pulled the trigger again and again without aiming. I had closed my eyes. I disgorged the rounds into nothingness, and when the rifle was empty, I threw it to the ground. I didn’t care whose gun it was, who had pawned it, and whether they’d ever get it back. When I reached the boulder, I fell upon it, collapsed as she had collapsed. The hot surface scraped my chin.

When my father returned from the wolf, he said, “Shoot anything good, buddy?” He did not wait for an answer. He had not expected one. “Your old man did all right, didn’t he? Straight through the heart.” Somehow, I knew this was not true, but I remained silent.

He mentioned nothing about taking the wolf or what should be done with it.

I said, “You’re just going to leave her there like that?”

“The vultures can eat her,” he said. “They’ll enjoy it. A feast, compliments of me.”

I would have taken the wolf myself if I’d been alone and strong enough to carry her down the mountain—carry her where I didn’t know—carry her and cradle her away as evidence against her killer. The urge to take her was as certain and powerful as any I’ve ever felt, but I did not know how I could have removed her on my own. I did not want my father touching the wolf. I did not want him near her. Taking her was impossible, I realized, so she was left there in the brittle brown grass of the clearing.

I could not have taken her, but I was able to take Bluff. In truth, I would have paid much more for him if Avery Smith had demanded it, regardless of any law. And although I’d felt very sorry for him, I’m happy he hasn’t returned to reclaim the wolf that once stalked him and kept him company. Perhaps he perished in the mountains alone, like the wolves, as alone as my father had been when he died drinking in the back room, leaving King’s Pawn to me.

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