Chapter Fourteen

WOLVERINE • A BROKEN CHAIR • ULYSSES’S WRATH • THE HOLE IN THE CHIMNEY

LIONEL WOKE to an explosion of commotion. The lodge was filled with low, guttural snarls and the sound of a great collision. Ulysses paced wildly across the back of the room.

“Open the door, maybe he just wants to leave,” Beatrice said, her voice calm.

She was no longer sleeping but standing over a large, snarling wolverine, holding it back with the end of a broken broom.

Lionel scrambled to his feet and ran to open the door. The wolverine did not take them up on the invitation.

“Get that broken chair,” Beatrice instructed.

Lionel ran back, grabbing the broken pieces of a fallen chair that lay strewn across the floor. Lionel had seen wolverines before, but he had never seen one this agitated. The dog-sized animal viciously attacked the broom, sending the splintered ends flying across the room.

“The chair, Lionel,” Beatrice repeated.

Lionel held the chair out in front of him like the lion tamer from the traveling circus that had stopped by the boarding school one summer. The wolverine turned its focus to Lionel, swatting at the chair’s legs with its long claws, practically pulling it from his hand.

“Start moving him toward the door,” Beatrice said as she ran to the other side of the room, returning with a long stool.

They backed the animal slowly toward the door, Lionel using every bit of strength that he could muster to keep the wolverine from knocking the chair from his hand—or worse, getting past it.

He took his eyes from the wolverine for a moment as they pushed the snarling beast past the bundled supplies. Lionel saw their grandfather’s rifle and wondered why Beatrice didn’t use it. when he looked back from the rifle a second later, the wolverine splintered the chair and swiped at Lionel’s leg with a powerful swoop of its long claws.

Lionel felt the creature’s paw take his legs out from under him. Before he could move, Beatrice was in between the wolverine and Lionel, pushing the creature back with the stool. She stood close to the open doorway, but the wolverine refused to leave.

Lionel glanced down at his leg. Four long lines of blood appeared on the leg of his torn long underwear. He looked at the wolverine and thought that it might kill them.

Lionel grabbed his lower leg and pulled himself back toward Ulysses, who kicked and bucked wildly toward Beatrice and the wolverine. Beatrice looked over her shoulder and jumped out of the way as one of Ulysses’s kicks came dangerously close. The wolverine did the same, twisting sideways in the crooked doorframe and then flattening itself to the ground to avoid another powerful kick. Beatrice seized the opportunity, sprang to her feet, and pushed the door closed on the wolverine. She then dropped the door’s wooden latch to secure it.

The wolverine clawed and scratched at the worn wood, sending splintered pieces through the exposed cracks. Beatrice leaned on the door with all of her weight until the wolverine realized that she was not going to let it through. Lionel sat up, and through the dingy windows saw the still-snarling animal slowly waddle through the windblown drifts of snow. Lionel looked down at his leg again, and then fell back against their bundles of supplies.

“I don’t think that the wolverine liked us in his house,” Beatrice said as she knelt at Lionel’s side. “It looks like he got ya.”

“Just a bit, eh?” Lionel said, trying to be brave.

“Yeah, just a bit,” Beatrice replied, pulling up the leg of his long underwear. “I’ll get some soap and water on it, and it should be all right. we did pretty good, huh—I mean all of us?” Beatrice reached up and scratched Ulysses’s long face.

“Yeah, Beatrice, pretty good,” Lionel said, as the pain slowly drifted up his leg.

Beatrice wet the end of Lionel’s torn underwear and wiped the blood away. “The good news is that it ain’t all that deep,” she said, “and now you’re a part of that wolverine forever.”

“How do you figure?” Lionel asked.

“Well, you ain’t never gonna forget it. You’ll have yerself that scar as a reminder,” Beatrice said as she dabbed at the cuts with a torn piece of cloth.

“How did he get in here?” Lionel asked, looking anxiously around the room.

“I don’t know. I heard something. Sat up, and he was there,” Beatrice said, looking over toward the hulking pile of the chimney’s stacked rock. Then she noticed something and got up to investigate.

“Oh, I see. Look, look here. There’s a hole.”

Lionel crawled to his feet, and limped over to Beatrice at the chimney. There in the side of the crumbling pile of stone was a large crack that he hadn’t seen when he had first found the lodge.

“It must have happened when the chimney fell forward, huh?” Lionel said.

“Yeah, I guess so, and now we ruined his hiding place,” Beatrice said. “He’ll be all right, now that winter’s about over.”

Lionel looked out the grimy window at the freshly fallen snow that surrounded their new home.

“How’s the leg?” Beatrice asked.

“I think it will be all right,” Lionel answered. “You okay? You sure got sleepy.”

“I’m better now, I just get tired,” Beatrice said, and they both collapsed in a pile on the buffalo robe in front of the fire.

“I’m going to think about that wolverine,” Lionel said. “Like Grandpa told us.”

“Grandpa?” Beatrice asked.

“Yeah. I’m tryin’ to keep my eyes open and listen,” Lionel said again, more to himself this time.