They Called Me an Abomination and Ordered Me Killed, So I Came Back as the Wolf They Buried novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Sundown Sunday
At the shed table Odalie tells Remy what was done to her behind the church at her Turning; he says he did not know and she says he did not ask.
I sent Bastien to the house with the dog and a bag of boudin.
He wanted to stay, so I told him a man with a truck was going to wait for me at the shed table and I'd be in soon, and he gave me a long look and went.
The twelve wolves went down to the levee road and sat in the truck bed in the afternoon sun, looking at their hands.
Remy came in and stood by the table.
It was a steel table that had held a thousand carburetors.
There was a coffeepot on it and two mugs, because I never wash both.
I poured him one without asking.
He did not sit until I did.
"He's mine," he said.
"He's mine," I said.
"Odalie."
"Don't."
He closed his mouth.
He was gray around the eyes, like the people in the truck, and he had a vein standing in his neck that I did not remember.
I poured myself coffee, and I put both hands around the mug.
"You want to know what happened," I said.
"I want to know what happened to you."
"No," I said.
"You want to know what happened to the pack's heir's best friend."
He flinched.
"I'm going to say it once," I said.
"I'm going to say it plain, at this table, in my own shed, and then it's said and I'm not saying it again.
"Then you can tell me what you're here for."
"All right."
I looked at the steel.
"I turned eighteen on a Saturday in October.
"The whole pack came to the levee and Anselme rang the bell.
"Your mother poured the Turning wine, the way she did every time, and she filled my glass first."
I heard him inhale.
"I drank it.
"I went round the back of the church to be sick, because the wine was strange and my head was going.
"Clemence was there."
I kept my voice even.
"She had a bottle in her hand and she put me against the wall of the church.
"She held me there, and she raped me.
"She was strong and I was drugged.
"I couldn't make my arms work."
Remy's hands came down on the table flat.
He did not make a sound.
"Then something broke in me," I said.
"My wolf woke up.
"It was white and it was enormous and I was not in it.
"I don't remember most of what it did.
"I remember Clemence screaming.
"I remember her arm on the ground."
I made myself look at him.
"I came to in the cane with my face in the dirt.
"I could hear the bell.
"It was ringing wrong, late and slow."
He had not moved.
"You were on the levee," I said.
"I saw you when they dragged me back.
"They'd put me in the middle of the pack, on my knees.
"Your mother said the word abomination, and the elders said the sentence.
"Death at the next new moon.
"Your mother said my mother's name.
"She said the poor Broussard woman had hidden a white wolf in her line for eighteen years and the pack had been cursed for it."
The coffee in my hands had gone cold.
"You were nineteen," I said.
"I was looking at you, Remy.
"You stood with your hands at your sides and looked at the ground."
He said my name, and I talked over it.
"You didn't say mine."
His eyes were wet.
I had never in my life seen him cry, not at his father's funeral, not on the day I left.
"I didn't know about Clemence," he said.
His voice cracked on it.
"I swear to you, I didn't know about the church wall.
"Nobody told me.
"They said you'd gone wolf and attacked her.
"I thought she'd..."
"You didn't ask," I said.
It was very quiet in the shed.
Somewhere on the bayou a boat went by, and the water slapped the levee.
He sat there for a long time.
"No," he said.
"I didn't."
I pushed his mug an inch toward him.
"Drink your coffee."
He drank it.
It was awful coffee and he drank all of it.
I stood and took the mugs to the sink.
"Say what you came to say," I said, with my back to him.
"Not the speech on the gravel.
"The real one."
I heard the chair scrape.
"Twenty-six of us are dying," he said.
"Our wolves fail one at a time.
"They start to lose the shift, and then they stop being able to heal, and then they're just people with bad lungs.
"Forty-one in the last four years.
"My father was one."
I turned the water on.
"I haven't shifted in a year," he said.
"I'm the Alpha, and I haven't been a wolf in a year."
I watched my hands under the tap.
"And you think I can fix that."
"I think the elders were afraid of you," he said.
"I think they were afraid of something I don't understand.
"I've been trying to understand it for eight years."
I turned the water off.
"I haven't looked for you," he said.
"I want you to know that.
"Not once.
"Because they said you were dead, and I believed them.
"I found out you weren't three weeks ago, from a picture on a boat-repair ad in Pierre Part, and I knew your braid."
I dried my hands on a rag.
My hands were shaking and I did not want him to see.
"Sundown Sunday," I said.
"That's what you said.
"Not tonight."
"No."
"Then you can leave my shed.
"And you can take your wolves to the church parking lot and let them sleep in the truck."
"Odalie."
"My son is seven and he's hungry," I said.
"I'm going to feed him.
"Go."
He went.
He stopped at the door and put his hand on the frame, the left one, with the knuckles scraped.
"Is his name..."
"It's Bastien," I said.
"After my grandfather."
"Bastien," Remy said, to the doorframe.
He said it the way you test a floor.
Then he went out into the gravel, and the black truck sat there in the late light with no flag on its antenna.
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