Wolver's Rescue (26 page)

“
I’ll do my
best.”

The smile faltered and then it was back and
she nodded. “Because you are coming home.”

“
Damn right I
am.”

“
You’d better.”

“
Not going to let me have
the last word, are you, spitfire?”

“
Nope.”

~*~

“
Ah, good, you’re here,”
Cora greeted her as she entered the bus. “You can pass that stuff
out there to me and I’ll put it away.”

Tommie could see what Cora meant by the hotel
front desk. Bags of clothing, everything from canvas duffels to
paper sacks, were piled on the seats and spilled into the aisles.
Cardboard boxes and plastic tubs were dispersed in, around, and on
top of them.

The bus was divided into three sections. At
the front, were seven sets of original seats. Behind them was a
section for storage with deep shelves blocking the windows on
either side. The third section was walled off with a heavy blue
curtain. This was Cora and Samuel’s private quarters. They earned
this privilege not by age, or by leadership, but because the couple
had the largest stake in the vehicle’s purchase and Samuel kept the
old wreck running.

Tommie passed and Cora stacked and slowly
chaos became order. Under a stack of shopping bags, Tommie found a
plastic tote that had lost its lid and spilled its contents to the
floor.

“
Planning to redecorate?”
Tommie asked with a smile and eyebrows raised. The box was filled
with brand new items; shower curtains, toothbrush holders, cups,
tissue boxes, and a wastebasket.

“
Yeah, we thought the
outhouse needed sprucing up,” Cora laughed and pointed to a space
on the shelves opposite her. “That goes in that space right
there.”

“
They fell off a truck,
didn’t they?”

The term was another new addition to Tommie’s
vocabulary. She first heard it when one of the men showed her the
compound bow he used for hunting. Boris’s expensive looking and
immaculately kept set of knives fell off a truck, too, as did the
new looking media player the teenaged cubs shared. Slowly, she
began to realize that while many of the wolver’s few possessions
were scavenged, others were stolen.

“
They did,” Cora admitted
with a nod. Like the men, she showed no hesitancy or
shame.

Tommie loaded the box into an empty space.
“Does it ever bother you? That these things, um, fell off the
trucks I mean.”

Cora shrugged. “We gotta eat. Meat isn’t
cheap and hunting isn’t always good. We were raised with it. It’s
what we do. It’s how we survive.” She tucked a stack of towels onto
one of the shelves. “We’ve all got our talents.”

She jutted her chin toward the others who
were clearing out the campsite. “Samuel’s a beggar by trade. So is
Boris when he’s not cooking. Folks have pity for a one eyed man and
a cripple. Shorty is a pickpocket and he can pick a lock quicker
than that.” Cora snapped her fingers. “Stretch hangs around ATMs.
He’s tall enough that the cameras don’t catch his face when he
looks over folk’s shoulders to get their numbers. Most folks don’t
miss what little he takes and he never goes to the same machine
twice. Louise is the best shop lifter we got. Not sure what Bogie
does. In case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t say much.”

“
And you approve of this?”
Tommie asked.

“
It ain’t a matter of
approval. It’s a matter of survival. In our old pack, you don’t
bring in your share, you don’t eat. Your cubs don’t get
shoes.”

“
But you’re not with your
old pack. This is a new pack.”

“
What would you like us to
do?” The older woman gave her an impatient look that said she
wasn’t impressed with Tommie’s intelligence. “It’s all we know. We
don’t stay in one place long enough to find steady work, and when
we do, the work don’t pay much or last long.” She pushed past
Tommie to grab another two bags. “You might as well know the worst
of us. The sooner you decide to leave, the easier it’ll be on
us.”

When her stomach dropped, Tommie froze with
another tote mid-lift. “You want me to leave?”

“
Didn’t say that, but I
heard what you were saying out there and it sounded to me like you
were planning to stay. It’s only fair for you to know that most
wolvers don’t live like us.”

“
How do they
live?”

“
Not quite sure, but it’s
not like us. They’re not tramps and thieves. They earn real money
working at real jobs. Their cubs sleep in real beds in rooms they
can call their own. I heard one time of some rich ones, but I don’t
know if that’s true. That’s not to say some of the wolvers in our
old pack didn’t live good. They did. Wouldn’t find them living in
the back of a forty year old school bus. Some of those recreational
vehicles cost more than a house.”

Cora busied herself repacking a section of
the shelf that was already perfectly packed. “The others won’t like
it, but I don’t want you thinking this is all your life can be.
You’re clean. You know how to speak proper. Molly said you have to
have a fancy education to be working at that Harbor House. Liking
us don’t mean you have to live with us. There are plenty better
places out there for the likes of you. I’ll bet that man of yours
could find you one of those places. He’d take good care of you. I
can tell.”

“
What if I don’t want to be
taken care of, Cora? What if I want to stay here and take care of
you while you take care of me? What if I believe we can find a
place where you and Samuel can have your own bedroom, if not your
own house?”

“
You’re dreaming, girl, and
dreams are for fools. I learned that a long time ago. We are what
we are and there’s no changing that.”

Cora’s words were bitter, but Tommie saw a
spark of something in the woman’s eyes, so she pressed on.

“
What if we could get the
pups papers? What if the cubs could go to school? What if we got
those honest jobs no matter how little they pay? We could pool our
money and together decide how it should be spent. I know the
system, Cora. That’s why I got that fancy education. I can get
help, but you’d have to stay in one place.”

The older woman turned on her so quickly,
Tommie let go of the tote and sat heavily on the floor.

“
Don’t say it. Don’t tell me
anything more,” Cora said harshly. “Don’t give me hope where there
ain’t none. Don’t give me your sweet dreams on a night like tonight
when there may be nothing left of it in the morning. You save those
dreams and tell me about them tomorrow and if I’m not here, you
promise me you’ll tell them to those cubs. You make them see what I
can’t.” Her voice had lowered to a desperate hiss. “You give them
your dreams. You keep them safe tonight and you make those dreams
theirs. Promise me that. Promise.”

The old woman’s chin was quivering by the
time she finished. When Tommie reached for her, Tommie was
trembling, too. The sight of this strong, no nonsense woman laying
her heart bare moved her deeply.

“
I promise, Cora. I promise
it with all my heart.”

They stood there in the aisle of an old and
battered school bus, clinging to each other and holding each other
up, giving each other strength. They were two very different women
who should have nothing in common, yet at the core, they were very
much the same. They had the same hopes, the same dreams, and the
same fears for tomorrow. They were wolver. They were pack.

They were partying. Bull shook his head in
disbelief. The battle of their lives loomed ahead, just hours away,
and they were partying. The fire was blazing. They were singing at
the top of their lungs and swilling beer between choruses. The
radio was blaring old time rock and roll. They’d been dancing to it
on and off for the last hour.

The beer didn’t bother him. With their high
metabolisms, it would take them a lot more than a case or two to
get them drunk, but this was no way to prepare for what was coming.
They needed to save their strength. They needed to get their heads
in the game.

He distinctly remembered saying pretend. They
had to pretend to celebrate their victory. He shook his head. He’d
found himself doing that more and more lately. God save him from
fools and crazy-assed wolvers.

He heard Tommie walking toward him from
behind. He smiled and shook his head again. For such a lightweight,
she made a lot of noise. No one had ever taught her how to walk
softly on wolf’s paws. When she reached his side, he looked
down.

“
Look at them. They have no
idea what’s at stake,” he said and sighed. “We’re doomed. I should
have made Samuel shoot me when I had the chance.”

She raised her hands over her head and swung
her hips, bumping his thigh in time to the music. “And wouldn’t
that have been a real party pooper,” she laughed. “From what I’ve
heard, they haven’t had many chances to party. Let them have
this.”

That’s what he was doing, wasn’t it? He tried
to smile at her, but the memory of a long ago party erased the
smile before it reached his lips.

Tommie bumped his hip again and he saw that
she held something sticky looking in her hand.

“
Damn, spitfire, I don’t
know where you put it. What the hell are you eating
now?”

It sure wasn’t clinging to her hips or
thighs, though her breasts had filled out a bit. He was growing to
like those little round peaches now that he’d seen them up close
and personal, so to speak. They were a creamy golden color with
small, sweet looking brown nipples. Like the rest of her body, now
that she’d lost the dirt and prison pallor, they looked kissed by
the warm sun of summer. Come the real summer, she would darken to a
rich golden brown. He looked down at her flat stomach and
smirked.

“
That belly’s not big enough
to hold what you pack away.”

Boris had gone all out. There were steaks all
around, thick, juicy ones and apple pies that the cubs cooked over
the open fire in heavy iron contraptions that folded over and
pressed the dough and fruit into half circles of sweetness. Tommie
had matched him bite for bite and he was stuffed. She obviously
wasn’t.

“
S’mores,” she said and
grinned at his what-the-hell look. “You know, graham crackers,
marshmallow, and chocolate. Want some?” She held the half eaten
square of gooeyness out to him.

“
No thanks,” he said,
wrinkling his nose. He wiped the smear of chocolate from the corner
of her mouth with his finger. He held it out for her to lick it and
held her eyes as she sucked his finger into her mouth more deeply
than she needed to. The warm glow in those big brown eyes said she
liked him as much as she liked chocolate.

When she released his finger, he replaced it
with his lips. It was short and sweet and it made her smile.

“
Chocolate, always
chocolate,” he murmured against them. The taste of it combined with
the taste of her, always made him feel warm inside. The song on the
radio changed and everyone laughed at the antics of the pups as
they danced to the music. The three older cubs stood to the side,
noses in the air, trying to look too manly for such immature
antics. Bull gave them the he-wolf nod of approval and they’d
reacted with proud and goofy grins like the boys they
were.

Tommie leaned her shoulder into his. “You
like them, don’t you?”

“
Those three? I do. They’ve
got potential.” His normal reserve about his past slipped. “They
remind me of when I was that age, the good times, the good
feelings, before my world turned to shit.” He nodded toward them
again, this time for her. “You can rely on them tonight. Treat them
as men and they’ll treat you like a queen,” he said, and then he
laughed. “Don’t let it go to your head, though. Cubs that age will
treat any woman like a queen if she treats them like men. Their
mothers still treat them like cubs.”

The woman standing beside him didn’t laugh.
Her sticky fingered hand slipped into his.

“
What do you mean turned to
shit?”

Bull gave her hand a squeeze. “I’ve been on
my own since my fifteenth birthday. It’s a long story.”

“
I’ll be listening when
you’re ready to tell it.”

And there it was again, no pushing, no
prodding, no insistence that he share, just another hand squeeze to
let him know she was there.

Bull scanned the starlit sky and felt the
pull of the soon to rise full moon. “It’s almost time.”

Tommie nodded and released his hand. “I’ll go
get Molly.”

He nodded back. “Be careful.”

“
You know me,” Tommie
sang.

“
That’s what worries me,” he
deadpanned, but he knew she would and she wasn’t going
far.

When the festivities first began, Molly had
wandered away into the woods. They saw her go and Bull wanted to
call her back, but Tommie wouldn’t let him.

“
She needs the time alone,
Bull. It’s hard for her, watching the others laugh and sing. I know
they haven’t forgotten Eli, but she probably feels like they
have.”

“
Life goes on.”

“
Stop pretending to be a
tough guy, Bull, you’re not very good at it. It’s only been a few
days and she loves him. She’s still hoping he’ll come
back.”

He’d opened his mouth to tell her what he
thought of that, but she’d stopped him.

“
Leave her the hope. It’s
all she’s got. If it’s not to be, let the hope die a natural death.
Eli’s alive and right now, that’s all that matters.”