One in Every Crowd by Ivan E. Coyote Read Free Book Online Page A

and pull the truck around. And get her a blanket, she’s going to emergency. Pat, are you okay to drive?”
    A weird silence took over the house after they left. I fell asleep in my clothes on the spare bed and barely woke up when my dad carried me out to the truck hours later.
    “Did Cathy live?” I whispered into his ear. He smelled like scotch and shampoo and his new sweater.
    “She’s fine. She’s asleep. She’s got a cast and a bottle of painkillers. You can call her in the morning.”
    I told my friend Valerie all about it the next day, bragging like it was me. “I tried to save us, but my sister is too little to steer. Cathy’s bone was poking right out of her leg, and she never cried once. There was even blood. Now she has a little rubber thing on the bottom of her cast so she can walk a bit, plus she has crutches.”
    “My dad cut the tip of his finger off with a saw once. They sewed it back on,” she reminded me.
    “Yeah, but you weren’t even born yet. Besides, a leg is way bigger than a finger. Hurts more.”
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    Later that winter the wolves got hungry because the government sold too many moose-hunting licenses, and dogs and cats started to disappear. Cathy phoned me one Sunday morning and told me that they had found what was left of Little Chief at the bottom of the mountain the day before.
    “I didn’t tell you yesterday because your mom told me you had a hockey game. I know you’re sad, but horses and wolves are animals, and they follow different rules than we do. He had a good horse life, and now the wolves will make it until spring. You were too big to ride him any more anyway, and your little heart will get better in time. Wolves are wolves and men are just people.”
    She was tough like that.
    When she left John, she was tough too. She took her horse and one duffle bag, and most of his savings to cover her half of the house. She never even cried. Or that’s how I saw her leaving in my mind. Dry-eyed in her pick-up, with the radio on and a cloud of dirt-road dust from the Yukon straight back to Alberta.
    Bet she never looked back, I thought.
    My uncle started to date one of the other cooks from the lodge. She had a university degree so everyone called her the professor.
    My little sister grew up and moved to Calgary. She, like myself, inherited our family loyalty, and looked Cathy up.
    My mom and I went to visit my sister at Christmas, and she told me Cathy would love it if I could make it out to visit her in Bragg Creek. But we got snowed in, so I called her the day before we left.
    Cathy’s voice sounded the same as I remembered, except more tired. “I can’t believe you’re almost thirty years old. I remember you as just a little girl with that white hair and filthy hands, little chicken legs. You had such big eyes. My God, you were cute. Just let me grab my smokes.”
    I could hear dogs barking and a man cursing at them to shut the hell up. A television droned in the background.
    She sounded out of breath when she got back on the phone. “Here I am. Hard dragging myself around since my accident. Did Carrie tell you about my legs?”
    She had broken both of her femurs straight through a couple of years ago, and had pins in her knees. She still had to walk on two canes and couldn’t work any more.
    “I lost the trailer,” she explained. “Couldn’t get worker’s comp because it happened on a weekend, and the unemployment ran out a year ago. Had to move in with Edward and lie about being common-law even to get welfare.”
    “What are you saying about me?” I heard the man’s voice again in the background. “Who you talking to anyway?”
    “My niece. Turn down the TV for chrissakes.”
    “You don’t have any nieces. You don’t even have any brothers or sisters.”
    I presumed this was Edward. He obviously didn’t understand family loyalty the way we did. Blood and marriage were only part of it.
    “’Member that time you broke your ankle on the sled? You didn’t