Part 4 (1/2)

As Ted told the story, they'd been camping in the mountains, spending the days taking pictures and the nights in a small but remarkably warm tent. They went to bed side by side in thermal sleeping bags one night, but when Ted woke up the next morning, Marjorie was gone.

Ted had a painful lump on his head, a deep gash in his cheek, and several nasty-looking bites. The tent was torn open on one side and the camp was demolished. He couldn't remember anything from the night before.

Marjorie's sleeping bag had been ripped open from top to bottom. Some kind of animal tracks led down the mountainside, toward a bank of cliffs too steep and smooth to climb. Ted followed the tracks as far as he could, then hiked to the nearest village for help. As he arrived, a blizzard rolled over the campsite, obliterating it. In the days that followed, searchers were unable to find even a single tent pole. There was nothing to back up Ted's story.

The authorities suspected Ted of foul play. They had no proof whatsoever, but the very absence of proof - and the absence of a reasonable explanation - made them suspicious.

They were willing to believe in the yeti when some tourist claimed to have seen one, but not when a tourist claimed it ran off with his girlfriend.

They grilled him for two days - without a lawyer, without Miranda rights, and without results. And when, under pressure from the American Emba.s.sy, they finally let him go, they made it clear that he was no longer welcome in Nepal.

He returned to America, to a cabin he owned in the Cascade mountain range in Was.h.i.+ngton State, where he'd once lived with Marjorie before the trip to Nepal. He'd never been terribly fond of civilization before, but after losing Marjorie, he became a full-fledged hermit, living completely alone in the house he'd shared with her.

He'd been like that for almost a year, and Janet was afraid he would never come out of his funk if he didn't start working again, and soon. She called him on a regular basis, but his mood never improved.

”I'll call him tomorrow,” Janet whispered. Tom was nibbling her neck with unbearable delicacy. He'd slipped his free hand under her waist, and his fingers danced teasingly in the triangle of hair between her legs. She felt his erection pus.h.i.+ng into the cleft of her b.u.t.tocks, and was eager to wrap up the discussion without disrupting the mood. ”We'll go visit him on Sat.u.r.day,” she breathed.

”Mm-hm,” Tom murmured.

Janet reached around and pulled her nightie up until it was around her waist, then took hold of his hardness and guided him inside her.

Chapter 5.

Sat.u.r.day came, as Sat.u.r.days always did.

The kids watched cartoons while Dad sat with them in the living room, reading the newspaper from front to back. Mom sat at the kitchen table talking to the phone, calling it Uncle Ted.

Thor lay on the kitchen floor, listening to Mom's conversation. Almost everything she said was coaxing - ”Are you sure?” ”Oh, come on,” ”Why not?” ”Please?” - but she was up against heavy resistance. The phone opposed her from the start, but Mom hung in there, and toward the end she wore it down. She got the phone to agree to a visit, then immediately ended the conversation and hung up. She didn't want to give it a chance to change its mind.

”It's all set!” Mom called to Dad as soon as the receiver was on the hook. Thor was delighted.

No one ever had to tell Thor that Uncle Ted was Mom's brother. When he went on his first visit with Uncle Ted, Dad hadn't even stopped the car before Thor spotted the resemblance between Mom and the man sitting on the front steps of the strange, pointy house. His posture and bone structure were the first clues. The man stood up as the car pulled to a stop, and as he strode toward the Pack, Thor immediately saw the similarity between Mom's walk and his. The man spoke, and though his voice was much deeper than Mom's, the cadences of his sentences, the way he put words together, the places where he paused to collect his thoughts, the words he emphasized - all were identical to Mom's speech patterns. By the time Thor got out of the car to sniff him, there was no question in his mind that the man belonged to the same pack that Mom had been born into.

But smelling is knowing. For Thor to decline to smell a new acquaintance would be like declining to open his eyes in the morning. Thor checked his scent, and sure enough, the man was Mom's sibling.

The two quickly became fast friends, and ultimately Thor came to feel closer to Uncle Ted than to any other nonmember of the Pack. He and Uncle Ted seemed to share a secret understanding, and Uncle Ted's touch was exceptional. Uncle Ted seemed to know just where to scratch, where to rub, how hard and how soft, as if he were scratching himself. Thor wholeheartedly endorsed all visits to Uncle Ted. He could barely contain his excitement.

Thor hung his head out the car window, feeling the stiff breeze brush his fur and whip through his open mouth, cooling his tongue so fast that he didn't have to pant, despite the heat of the day.

The landscape rus.h.i.+ng by was all hills and trees, with hardly a building in sight. The hills kept getting higher and higher as they went, and the buildings fewer and farther between. A dazzling variety of trees flashed past the SUV, offering an equally dazzling variety of aromas, both floral and faunal. Thor was tantalized by the prospect of the animals he would find hiding behind the dense wall of leaves and pine needles that blanketed the hills. The thrill of discovery electrified him, and his hind legs and tail twitched with antic.i.p.ation. The woods around Uncle Ted's house were denser and wilder than those behind the Pack's house; they were as exciting as any place Thor had ever visited, and the vague possibility of danger lurking among the trees made the woods even more attractive.

Thor knew he was a feared animal, among the most feared animals in any environment. But he also know there were animals out there that he would be wise to fear, and not all of them were bigger or stronger than he. As a young dog, he'd learned a painful lesson when he met his first porcupine. Now when he smelled porcupine tracks, he sniffed them out of curiosity only, and never hurried to catch up with their owner.

But caution didn't diminish his love of discovery. In fact, it heightened it. He couldn't wait to get out of the car and roam the woods around Uncle Ted's house, as free as any wild animal.

Which was another thing he liked about Uncle Ted. His house was all by itself, with no other humans around for miles, so there was virtually no need for Thor to think about Pack security. There were no restrictions on Thor's wandering when the Pack visited Uncle Ted.

The trip seemed to take forever as the car snaked through the valley to Uncle Ted's house. It was strange, about the car. Humans did everything slowly; they walked slowly, they ran slowly, they ate slowly and they played slowly. The only thing they did fast was drive. And yet, no matter how fast they drove, it always took the car a long time to get where it was going. As if it, too, were going slowly.

Fortunately, the trip itself was fairly exciting. The smell and sight of the dense forest stirred something deep in his genes. The Pack had made this trip many times (although not lately) and Thor know the route well. The sight of ”almost there” landmarks encouraged a gentle flow of adrenalin that tingled his legs and chest.

The car turned off the two-lane blacktop and onto a gravel road, where it started its long uphill climb. There were five mailboxes at the mouth of the gravel road; some of their owners had to drive more than a mile from their homes to check the mail. Nothing else on the landscape indicated the presence of humans.

As they got closer to Uncle Ted's house, one of Thor's front paws kept stepping through the window involuntarily, as if he were about to jump out and run ahead. Brett kept grabbing his paw and pulling in back inside, which embarra.s.sed Thor. He wasn't planning to jump, and wished he could control his paw's reflex action.

The car wound up a steep grade, high above the valley floor. The trees began to thin out somewhat, and eventually almost all of them were pines of one kind or another, with just a few leafy trees here and there. The hillside was cooler and darker than the valley, but the trees weren't dense enough to cut off the sunlight, and there were lots of bushes and scrub on the ground.

Then the road leveled off and followed the side of the hill. Eventually, they reached Uncle Ted's driveway and turned downhill. Finally an angular wood and gla.s.s structure appeared, and the car pulled to a stop. Uncle Ted's ”cabin” was actually an airy, luxuriant, redwood A-frame, perched near the top of the hill, surrounded by redwood forest on three sides, and sky on the other. His nearest neighbor was two miles away. Above his house, a little-used hiking trail ran along the ridgeline of the hills for miles.

”Go for it, Thor!” Dad called over his shoulder as he stopped the car. Thor leaped through the window before the words were out of Dad's mouth. Mom punched Dad on the shoulder for encouraging rowdy behavior.

Thor hit the ground running, torn between his urge to sniff out the grounds and his desire to see Uncle Ted. Uncle Ted was nowhere in sight, so the urge to sniff won. His nose guided him to the edge of the pathway that led to Uncle Ted's house. He drew in a series of short sniffs of the ivy-like foliage that carpeted the ground and shrouded the earth beneath its low-lying leaves. He sniffed aimlessly at first, both to familiarize himself with the smells of the area, and to overwhelm his nose with the ever-present odors of fresh and rotting pine needles, so their scents would fade into the background and allow fainter, subtler smells to be detected, categorized, and filed away.

The trees were different from the ones behind the Pack's house, and wildlife was everywhere. Scents of different soil types mingled with a kaleidoscope of animal smells - traces of fur, feathers, rotting carca.s.ses, and waste products flashed through his nose and excited his imagination.

Thor's sense of smell wasn't just more sensitive than the Pack's; it was also more specialized. While he could detect any scent more easily than the Pack, he smelled some things better than others. Important things, like the fatty acids secreted by the skin of mammals, which tag each individual with a distinct and unforgettable signature. When it came to detecting and discriminating between these highly individual scents, his nose was supreme. He could find and follow a three day old scent trail, and identify it based on less than a millionth of the smallest amount detectable by humans.

The experience of smelling was also different. The wet end of his nose was extremely sensitive to temperature changes; it could determine the speed and direction of the slightest breeze with pinpoint accuracy. Thor's brain processed wind-direction information along with the odors in such a way that he smelled things where they were, outside his nose, the same way humans hear sounds where they are, instead of inside their ears, where the hearing is actually taking place.

Thor was deep in the ocean of aromas, finding and filing away new floral odors, acrid waste products from birds, insects, and small mammals, and the pungent, heavy mulch perfumes of the soil, when the front door of Uncle Ted's house opened, and he looked up.

Uncle Ted!

Thor forgot his explorations and ran to Uncle Ted with his head down, his ears flat against his head, his tail between his legs in respectful submission, wagging uncontrollably. He just couldn't get to Uncle Ted fast enough.

Uncle Ted smiled down at him just as Thor leaped up like a dolphin, lightly touching the bottom of Uncle Ted's chin with his nose and licking it with the tip of his tongue. He leaped twice and kissed him twice before Uncle Ted raised his hands to fend off the affectionate attack, then hunkered down to greet his old friend.

Unable to fully express his joy by wagging his tail, Thor's whole body wriggled and danced in delight at the touch of Uncle Ted's hands. Uncle Ted hugged him warmly, patting Thor's rump and stroking his head and neck to calm his twitching, squirming torso. Thor managed to control himself a little and politely kissed Uncle Ted's hands, in deference to Uncle Ted's wish not to be kissed on the face.

Then Uncle Ted spoke, and everything changed.

”Hi, Thor.”

Something was wrong with his tone of voice. Uncle Ted was not happy.

Thor's concern overrode his sense of protocol, and he looked directly at Uncle Ted's face. He was sorry to see that his impression was correct. Uncle Ted was terribly unhappy. Thor kissed Uncle Ted's hands gently, tenderly, as he would kiss an injury. His kisses were intended to show his sympathy, to console Uncle Ted that whatever was wrong, he was still loved. The purpose of his kisses was more urgent than mere greetings, and he didn't let himself be put off by Uncle Ted's upraised hands. He easily pushed past them and kissed Uncle Ted's chin, then watched for some sign that his affection might have helped heal Uncle Ted's unseen wound.

It hadn't.

”Hi, Uncle Ted!” Brett and Debbie sang at almost exactly the same time. Uncle Ted stood up, a little relieved to escape Thor's emotional first aid. Brett and Debbie ran to him with outstretched arms, while Teddy leaned against the car, too cool for this scene. Thor let Brett and Debbie squeeze him out of the action, and soon the whole Pack was walking together up the stairs to Uncle Ted's house.

Thor muscled his way past the Pack (as always) and ran inside to sniff things out. He bounded into the house, looking for the scent of Uncle Ted's mate, Marjorie.

There were cardboard boxes on the living room floor, some filled with Uncle Ted's belongings, most empty. What was going on here?