My fingers snaked to the pack beside me. I found a fruit pie from the truck stop, one of our last ones. I had no appetite. I quietly unwrapped it and tossed it to the wolf.
It was a clumsy throw. The pie landed short, about three feet away from it, and broke apart. The wolf's nose twitched. Without breaking eye contact with me, he sidled over to the pie, his belly close to the ground.
He gobbled it down and licked the grass for crumbs, reminding me of the dogs I'd owned and bred.
The wolf didn't approach me. He went back to the spot at the edge of the fire and lay down. I saw that some of the tension had drained from his muscles, and he put his head between his paws.
"All right then," I whispered. "You can help me keep watch."
***
When dawn began to flush the edge of the horizon and the stars began to burn themselves out, the wolf climbed to his feet. He padded away into the tall grass. I wondered if I'd ever see him again. But I was willing to take his visit for what it was-a bit of comfort in the darkness.
Alex woke shortly after, and I didn't mention the wolf. The fire had died down by then, and we went to poke through the ashes with sticks. Ginger's bones were still there, burned black and covered in ash.
We found a couple of flat stones and set to digging a hole. It wasn't a very respectable grave. But I needed to bury her. I set the bones inside the hole with the foot and leg bones facing east, in the Amish fashion.
Alex brought the skull, placed it on top of the burned rib cage and pelvis. I winced when I saw it. The top left portion of it had been caved in, down to the eye socket. And the mouth was slightly open. I could see the sharp teeth inside, and shuddered.
We scraped dirt back into the hole, stomped the fresh earth down to keep the scavengers out. I tied two sticks together in a cross shape with some dry grass and staked it in the top of the disturbed earth. Alex stacked rocks before it in a pillar.
We stood before the makeshift grave. I tried to memorize where it was, how many paces from the tree. Alex carefully marked the area on his map.
Plain people did not eulogize their dead. I didn't know how to begin to do that in the English fashion. So I began in Deitsch:
"Unser Vadder im Himmel,
dei Naame loss heilich sei,
Dei Reich loss komme . . ."
Alex said "Amen" with me at the end of the Lord's Prayer, and I felt a small spark of warmth, that perhaps not all his hope had been lost. He took my hand and we stared at the small grave. In a Plain service, there would be sermons. Someone would give the name of the deceased, her birth and death dates. I was ashamed that I didn't know Ginger's birth year or her middle name.
Instead, I said: "Goodbye, Ginger. We shall see you in the kingdom of heaven."
***
We traveled fast, since there were only two of us. Three, counting Horace.
Four, counting the wolf.
Alex and I rode together on the horse, wrapped in the cloak of silent mourning. We were mindful not to push Horace too hard, with our combined weight added to the poundage of our dwindling gear. But there was something reassuring to the feel of Alex's arms around me. He was not much of a horseman. I had to show him how to mount and dismount without falling off, how to guide the horse with the reins. But he was gentle with the horse, and Horace knew that.
We traveled across open farmland. Occasionally, Alex would point to where we were on the map. I felt the strength of winter coming and worried over our food supplies. We were down to one bottle of cranberry juice and a bag of potato chips, which we shared before a small fire. It was getting too cold to contemplate night without it. Our lighter fluid was gone, and I managed to start a fire with some dry pine, but I had been lucky to find it.
"We're going to have to consider carrying an ember," I said. "In pine needles or a jar or something. Some way that it can smolder and still get air. I don't know how well I can start one once it's wet." I blew on the tiny orange flame I'd started in the tangle of pine, nursing it as I would a bird fallen from its nest.
"I'll work on it." He shared the last of the juice from the bottle with me and began to carve out a hole in the side with his knife. He stuffed the inside of the bottle with pine needles and unscrewed the cap for a chimney. I could put a spark in it and it would remain live for a long time, able to breathe and smolder.
"That's perfect," I said, warming my hands over the flame. We'd set up camp in an open meadow, where we could see in all directions. This land was a bit higher than some of the flat land we had left, and I could see for miles in the daylight. Now the night was soft and total. I saw no lights. No sign of humans. Only the light of the fire and the stars.
"What are we going to do if we're the last ones?" He opened the bag of potato chips and handed them to me. I took a handful and passed the rest to him.
I shook my head. "We're not. We can't be."
But I wouldn't say that the thought hadn't occurred to me.
"What happens if, under my brilliant leadership, we get to Canada and there's nothing there?" He stared into the tiny blaze.
"Then . . ." I was going to give him a heartfelt platitude about the value of hope or Gelassenheit. But that wasn't what he wanted. And, feeling the hollowness of Ginger's death, I wasn't sure that I could say it and mean it. Instead, I said: "Then we will survive there, just as we've managed to survive here, for as long as we can."
"And why the hell are you following me, anyway?"
I blinked at him. I felt a stab of hurt. We'd all come together, and I'd assumed . . . "Where else would I go?"
"That's not what I mean. I mean . . . you just agree to submit to my authority. Is that something that you're doing just because I'm a man? Having a penis doesn't make me infallible." He rubbed his hands through his hair, and I could see his Adam's apple bob as he was trying not to cry. "I got Ginger killed. You should question me. Challenge me if I'm making the wrong call. Not follow me out of some biblical edict or cultural force of habit."
I placed my hand on his sleeve. "I'm not following you out of blind faith. Or love, for that matter. When I follow you, it's because I've thought about it and I agree that what you're doing is right."
He leaned over and kissed me. His lips were warm and he felt alive.
"Thanks, Bonnet. I just . . . I'm not cut out to be any kind of person in charge."