A Million Heavens Read Online Free PDF Page B

fears and their gratitude on the rocks. The young bird, the wolf knew, was likely the victim of young humans of the current century practicing at fun, young humans who were not afraid of nor grateful for anything. The wolf was stuck. He was trying to hear his instincts but if his instincts had been working he wouldn’t have to try to hear them. Normally he would’ve passed the bird without a thought, but he found himself considering the suffering of the little creature, found himself considering that the bird was young and proud and quiet. The wolf had to kill the bird. He wasn’t going to eat it because it would be a choke of feathers and brittle bones, but he had to kill it. The wolf gave himself a shake as if after a rain had caught him out in the open. There was no wind so the scent of the bird was gathering. The wolf looked up at the moon and it was even smaller. The bird’s eyes were set on the wolf. It had never seen a wolf and was never meant to see one. This bird was none of the wolf’s business. Its beak was a vivid yet translucent orange. Its feet looked disposable, not like they were meant to last a whole lifetime. They had, though—the bird’slife was at a close. The bird finally looked away. It was smaller than the wolf’s paw. The wolf realized suddenly that the bird, though tiny, was not young. The bird was fully grown and had survived a lot and that’s why it was proud. The bird was old like the wolf.
    The wolf moved away a stride at a time, staring ahead at the silhouettes of the broken hills that marked the edge of the park, waiting for a new scent, and he even began to trot before he slowed and stopped again. He’d moved his body away but some other part of him was still standing over the bird. He turned, backtracking. He never backtracked. But he did now. He returned to the bird and without looking at the tiny animal he crushed the life out of it with his paw and shoved the carcass under a rock and fled.
    The wolf darted through several clusters of half-built houses and then to make up time he cut through a vast shopping complex that had been built in the northern part of Albuquerque. He swiftly passed a bank of loading docks and then an area where plants were kept in pots and then a bunch of dumpsters that smelled like nothing, that smelled of steel and cardboard. There was a shop that reeked of cut hair and then the wolf rounded a restaurant and as he passed the back of it he noticed a radio sitting on an overturned crate. There were a bunch of other overturned crates and an ashtray that was empty because of the wind. The wolf smelled the humans inside the building. He smelled singular harsh liquids. The wolf did not know this area well and should not have been loitering. He sidled up to the dormant radio and tried to make sense of it. It was plugged into the wall and was producing only static. The back door of the restaurant was propped open and the wolf could see down a long, empty hall. He began nosing the big flat buttons on the radio and he found the one that changed the numbers on the screen. He was changing the station. The radio smelled like grease, which to the wolf was a clean smell. He changed the station and changed it again, trying to be gentle because each time he nudged the front of the radio it teetered. He heard voices and deeper voices and he heard human laughter. He heard music but it was drowned in static. He heard an organ, and a woman singing softly, and blocks ofwood being tonked together. The static came in waves. The wolf didn’t understand enough about the radio. He looked behind him, into the open, and saw the parking lot give way to a pebbly field of nothing and he knew that beyond what he could see from this vantage the pebbly field gave way to a low road that led to the great, raised road. The wolf was far behind schedule. The business with the bird and now this radio. If the wolf was stopping here it should’ve been because he