“Okay, now, I guess I’ll have to bring ya back to the cabin. My dad won’t be happy at all, but you’re gonna have some trouble walkin’ outta here, huh?” He stands over me and offers his hand. “Come on.”
I stare at his hand. I don’t especially want to go home with this kid or meet his father, but the boy is right. I seethe through my teeth, then take his arm and try to haul myself up. Somewhere about halfway to standing I pass out again.
Next thing I know, I’m sliding along on my back, watching the clouds and tree branches overhead pass by. The reek of dead animal fills my nose no matter which way I turn my head. At first I hear only the sounds of the kid huffing and puffing and the sled runners scraping over the snow. Then I hear a door slam.
“What the fuck is this?” A rough voice, followed by boots crunching through the snow. “What the fuck is this?”
“I found him in one of the traps—” The kid’s sentence is cut off by a slap.
I snarl as I try to sit up. “Don’t hit him,” I growl. I barely recognize my own voice.
The bearded man in the flannel coat turns to look at me. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He strolls over to where I’m lying on a heap of animal carcasses and grabs me by the neck. “You fucking trespass on my land, get your fool self injured, and think you’re gonna tell me what to do?” He examines me as he slowly crushes my windpipe. He takes in my secondhand clothes, the hollows in my cheeks, my dirty face. My hands are too cold and can’t pry off his grip.
He releases me and I fall back on the sled, gasping for air. “I didn’t think so.”
“W-what are we gonna do with ‘im, Dad?” the boy asks, rubbing his face.
“We’re gonna do the Christian thing and take him inside and get him cleaned up, Zeke. He don’t want our charity, too bad. When he can walk outta here on his own, he can feel free.”
* * *
The inside of the cabin is blessedly warm, heated by a woodstove that has a large stack of split wood beside it. Zeke helps me up and onto a worn brown couch next to the stove. “Thanks,” I mumble as he puts pillows under my head and covers me in a blanket.
It’s a small place, though probably bigger than it looks. The kitchen is spare and clean, except where a slab of meat lies on a cutting board, the butcher blade still stuck in. There are antlers and guns mounted on the walls, and a glass cabinet full of firing arms. I wonder about this pair living out here on their own, but not for long. The comfortable bed and warmth make me feel sleepy, and since my leg isn’t moving it doesn’t hurt so much now. I let my eyes fall shut and soon I am asleep.
I wake up to the sounds of metal clinking against metal and some movement beside me. “Get that water off the stove,” the man says to his boy. He returns to the small table he’s set up near my leg. He takes a stained blue towel and without even looking at me lifts my injured leg up and slides the towel underneath. I grit my teeth and grip the blanket in my fists. The man sees my reaction but shows no concern.
“Good, you’re awake.” He turns back to his table and then holds out a bottle to me. It is unmarked, filled with an amber liquid. “Drink this.”
I take the bottle. “What is it?”
“Whiskey, homemade.” Zeke returns with a pot of boiling water. The man gives Zeke a brown bottle and a rag. “Clean off as much of the blood as you can.”
I uncap the whiskey and sniff it, then watch the man as he threads a needle. “Shouldn’t I be going to a hospital or something?” I ask. “I mean, you’re not a doctor.”
The man looks at me. “You got health insurance?”
I shake my head.
“Money?”
“No,” I say.
“Then you can’t afford no hospital. You’ll be gettin’ the finest health care the Whittemores have to offer. Now drink up. That’s all the anesthesia I’ve got.”
Zeke touches a cloth soaked in iodine to the cut on my leg and I jerk away from the sting. When the man glares at me, I press the mouth of the bottle to my lips and take a swig.
It tastes like fire mixed with turpentine going down and I hold my fist over my mouth to keep from throwing up. Yet when Zeke attempts to clean out my leg again, I take another swallow, and a third.
At that point Mr. Whittemore takes the bottle away from me. “That’s enough of that. You don’t need to be drunk off your gourd.”
I’m not drunk but soon the fire diffuses from my chest and I feel slightly numb. I lay my head back against the pillows and watch as Mr. Whittemore starts sewing up my leg. It hurts, but I feel detached from it, like I’m watching it happen on television. I can’t feel my face and I keep rubbing my nose to reassure myself that it’s still attached.
It’s taking a while; I guess my leg’s tore up pretty bad. I get to thinking about why my wolf didn’t come out at any point. I suppose if I changed while I was still in the trap, Zeke would have shot me, thinking I was just some wild animal. Maybe my head would be on the wall. But why didn’t I change when Mr. Whittemore choked me? I was angry enough, watching him smack Zeke around like that, when nothing was even Zeke’s fault.
I wasn’t any less hungry than I was that night
(that night I killed that baby)
no weaker, unless you count my leg. Was it my leg? Would I still have the same injury if I changed into a wolf right now? Maybe that’s the reason. Mr. Whittemore should consider himself lucky then. Any other situation and I might have ripped his face off.
I consider the rugged man carefully stitching my leg back together. The resemblance to my father is minimal – they both have
(had)
beards, but Mr. Whittemore has light, reddish hair, while my father had dark, almost black hair. My father was huge – or maybe he just appeared that way to me when I was thirteen and terrified of his fists. Mr. Whittemore is burly and smaller in stature. He doesn’t even really act like my father, even if his rough way with Zeke brought up some bad memories. The way he’s sewing my leg right now is precise, almost gentle. He and Zeke work together without words, helping a stranger, a trespasser.
My father never would have done that.
-52-
I spend nearly a week on that couch, and the Whittemores never complain once that I’m taking up all their sitting space. There’s no television so I sleep a lot and pretend to sleep even more to avoid conversation with Mr. Whittemore. I wait for him to tell me to get out of his house, but he never does. He goes about his business like it’s no big deal to have a strange kid on his couch, eating his food.
I figure the Whittemores usually eat their meals at the kitchen table, like normal people, but on account of me they eat on trays in the living room. Zeke and his dad talk about their day in monosyllables or not at all. The sound of silence and chewing is comfortable, not awkward, and I find I like it. The fact that the food is hot and fresh and plentiful makes it more so.
At night Zeke and I play cards. His dad prefers to do something useful like skin animals or clean his guns, and I can tell he’d rather Zeke be hard at his schoolwork or reading one of the old leather-bound books on the shelves. Once or twice I catch a glimpse of something in his eye when he watches us talking and laughing. He’s glad Zeke has a friend. Isolated out here, I guess Zeke doesn’t have much opportunity. Neither have I these past three years.
My leg turns shades of black and green and purple. Pus seeps out under the stitches, which I clean off with the alcohol. By week’s end it feels solid enough for me to walk on it. I attempt it one morning when Zeke and his dad go out to milk their goats.
It’s wobbly at first, and I feel my muscles shaking. One testing step, hopping most of my weight onto my other leg. A twinge, not so bad. Another step, putting more weight on it.
I exhale. I’m not sure if a normal person with no wolf blood would heal this fast, but I sure am grateful. It sets my teeth on edge when I think of how that metal trap scraped my calf bone.
I hobble into the kitchen area. Mr. Whittemore already brewed coffee for hims
elf, but breakfast isn’t served until after the morning chores. For the first time, and maybe only because I’m finally wide awake after a week of dozing on the couch, I wonder what happened to Mrs. Whittemore. Mr. Whittemore usually does the cooking, and neither he nor Zeke have ever mentioned a mother. There are no photographs anywhere in the house. Just animal heads and horns and guns for decoration, some plaque award-type things that I never bothered to look at, which I assume are related to the hunting. Awards from where, I don’t know. So far as I can tell they keep to themselves. No church, no school. Mr. Whittemore doesn’t go to work. They have their animals and jars of food in the cupboards. I open and look for the first time.
Vegetables and fruits in clear mason jars, each labeled with a permanent marker in a man’s hand. Beans, pickles, tomatoes. Some essentials in boxes that were store-bought, baking soda and salt. I close my eyes and inhale. There is food stored elsewhere, in a pantry or basement, potatoes, onions, carrots, root vegetables. Grains. A small amount in the kitchen, in one of the bottom cupboards, under the sink. I take a few potatoes and onions and start peeling. I don’t throw the peels away. I know the waste is kept for compost in a bin outside. Eggs in the generator-powered fridge, and bacon.
By the time Mr. Whittemore and Zeke are finished with their morning duties, I have breakfast on the table. Mr. Whittemore is surprised but keeps his face blank, no hint of a smile. Zeke’s smile is enough. “I didn’t know you could cook, Dan,” he says, slapping me on the shoulder as he takes his seat.
“Or walk, neither,” Mr. Whittemore adds.
I limp back to my seat. “Leg’s getting better.”
I wonder if he’ll ask me to leave once the limp is entirely gone, or once spring sets in. I can only hope my ability to help out will earn me more time.
* * *
It is night and the full moon is streaming in through the living room window, right across my face. Those old legends about werewolves and the full moon can’t be true, but I feel a pull to the outside and I am there, night air cold on my skin. I should be cold. I should want to go inside. Instead I pull off my clothes, the sweatpants that belong to Mr. Whittemore, the thermal shirt that is Zeke’s.
I should be covered in goose bumps and shivering. Instead there is steam rising from my body.
That bright orb in the dark sky calls to me and I answer, the howl erupting from my very soul, and I am racing into the trees, not a man but a wolf, a creature who only wants to run and chase and fight and live and survive.
The pain in my leg is a dull throb at the back of my mind.
I run and run, stretching, moving as I haven’t in the past week. Snow flies under my feet. I dodge trees and rocks. A pressure in my brain darkens my vision momentarily – the wolf pushing for control. I push back, and my sight clears. I’ve stopped running. Suddenly my human side with its gift of reason presses to the forefront.
traps beware of traps
I stand stock still in the snow, looking around. How would I be able to tell if there was a trap? The night I got caught it had been snowing, and the trap was under a layer of snow so I couldn’t see it.
Smell. Zeke would have left a trail of scent that any animal could smell. And didn’t traps have bait? If I smelled any hunks of dead meat, that meant a trap was nearby.
I don’t smell anything like that.
What I do smell:
pine woodsmoke moss maple ice fish
Fish?
I follow my nose for a mile or two to a small lake. It comes up all of a sudden to my wolf eyes, even as the fish smell had been growing stronger this whole time. The water is frozen through, and though I see a small ice fishing hut in the middle, I don’t dare tread on the ice. The weather has been warmer this week – not really warm, but enough to set the snow to melting and dripping down from the gutters of the Whittemores’ house. Not safe.
A small movement catches my eye, the tiny scuff of a paw in the snow and I’m running through the brush
meat rabbit chase
I go black in flashes, flinching every time I resurface and see a tree flying at my face, pushing and clawing my way to the forefront of my consciousness. The blind need to
run chase kill
is overpowering. Once I emerge from the blackness and the rabbit is in my jaws, the coppery sweet taste of blood on my tongue, the blackouts stop. I drop the dead creature from my mouth. Its hot blood steams in the frosty air.
Panting, I sit on my haunches and try to reason. My fur melts away and now it’s my bare ass in the snow. The light sweat all over my body begins to freeze.
The mess in the snow bothers me. I just killed this rabbit for no other reason than to kill. I can still taste it, the blood. I feel sick.
As the flood of sour bile fills my throat I say out loud, “The wolf is an animal, not a monster.” Not a monster. Just an animal. Animals don’t have morals or ethics or whatever it is that keeps humans from going on killing sprees all the time. Most humans. Some humans do kill for pleasure (Paul the Perv springs to mind) and we call them serial killers. They are the human monsters.
“I’m not a monster,” I tell the moon. Part animal. Part killer instinct, an instinct I need to learn how to control.
My body gives a sudden shiver as it realizes that it is cold.
I could walk back to the cabin naked, risk frostbite and getting lost, and keep control of my mind. But it makes more sense to return as a wolf and practice my control.
Take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Become the Other.
With my humanness firmly in control, I scoop up the dead rabbit in my mouth and follow my nose back to the cabin. The Whittemores and I can have rabbit stew for dinner tomorrow.
-53-
There’s a calendar on the wall open to February, with an old painting of an elk as the illustration. None of the days are marked off. Is it the beginning of February, or the end? Maybe it’s March already, if the Whittemores are the types who don’t remember to change their calendars over on the first of the month.
The days grow warmer, the sun’s rays waking me in the morning. Some days go as high as forty, and Zeke will take off his coat as he splits wood in the yard. I watch from the window as he raises the axe up and brings it down again and again, taking three or four swings to split off each piece. Even though I’ve taken over the cooking, I feel useless.
At night it’s still bitter cold, but as a wolf I don’t feel it. I run and work at controlling myself. We’ve had enough rabbit stew and stuffed rabbit and roasted rabbit and braised rabbit and rabbit jerky (once it was squirrel – I didn’t tell them that). I’m getting better. It helps when I’m not hungry. It helps when nothing triggers my wolf instincts that make the wolf lunge forward, leaving me in the dark. It helps when I don’t have that weight Kayla put on my shoulders about saving and protecting and fighting. I can run, light as the wind.
Someday, someday soon, I will need to go and take up that mantle again. For now it’s good to pretend it isn’t there. Maybe I’m Mr. Whittemore’s other son, or a nephew, and we’re a family living out in the frontier on our own. I’ve lost both my parents but Mr. Whittemore took me in, and Zeke is my best friend, and this is it. Safe and alone in the wilderness.
Zeke sees me in the window and waves, then jogs over and yells through the glass, “You wanna try it?” He holds up the axe.
“Okay.” I look around. “I don’t have a coat.”
Zeke waves off my concerns. He isn’t wearing a coat, and his shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows.
I go outside, taking some care with the stairs, and cross my arms over my chest as the cool air hits me.
“You ever split wood before?”
“No.” My house when I was growing up had electric heat.
“Here.” Zeke pulls off his gloves and hands them to me. “Okay, first you put the log here like this.” He sets it on the tree stump. “Now stand like this, then swing and try to get it off to the side like this, not in the middle.” I get
into position and raise the axe. “You want ta swing as fast an’ hard as you can.”
I set my sights on the wood, and swing.
“Ho! Beginner’s luck.” Zeke grins, picking up the two pieces from the ground. He tosses the smaller piece onto the pile at the side of the house and repositions the larger piece back on the stump. I chop that piece in half on my first try as well.
“Well, don’t get too hot for yer britches yet,” Zeke says, tossing those pieces on the pile. “Dad’s the best log-splitter around. You seen those awards on the wall? I figure once I get a bit bigger I’ll be some competition for him, but for now, it looks like this is gonna be your job.” He salutes me. “I’m gonna go start my lessons.”
Splitting wood takes my mind off things. It becomes a steady rhythm, and it isn’t so hard as Zeke made it look. The smell of fresh pine takes over my sense of smell, a pleasant change from the strong scent of manure coming from the barn. Time passes along while I’m unawares, until footsteps crunch up behind me.
I whip around, axe at the ready.
My blade points at Mr. Whittemore.
Most people would jump back in surprise or fear if someone had an axe in their face. Not Mr. Whittemore. His brow lowers, his mouth tightens. “Put that down, boy,” he growls.
I know I should do what he says. He’s been kind to me thus far, and it’s not like I mean to hurt him. Yet my fingers curl tighter around the axe handle, and my muscles tense.
blinking in and out of blackness
Control it. I have to control it, that instinct rising up in me that tells me Mr. Whittemore is a threat. I cling to the axe, which seems to be keeping my hands in a human shape. Beads of sweat pop out on my forehead.
“Boy,” Mr. Whittemore warns.
nausea stomach roiling
“I–” I swallow. “I’m sorry.”
I’m apologizing for not being able to put down the axe. I’m apologizing for what to him looks like rude defiance or a threat when really I’m trying hard not to kill him. His face goes wide in surprise for a split second, then furrows into anger again, a red-face, spitting kind of anger.
“Zeke!” he roars, and I think he’s going to punish Zeke instead of me until he adds, “Zeke, get my gun!”