Children of the Wolf (3 page)

Chunarem led us less than three miles from the village. His people pick a sal leaf and watch it turn brittle and in this way measure distances. It is not terribly accurate. Mr. Welles greatly preferred his pocket watch, and I agree. But the three miles Chunarem promised were foreshortened by the sal leaf. We went into the forest proper, past thick brakes of rattan and bamboo.

At last we came to a small clearing dominated by an ancient mohua tree, and Chunarem signaled us to stop. It was in that tree, its trunk crisscrossed with the marks of many bear claws, that the
machan
had been built at a height of fifteen feet. Mr. Welles rested his smoothbore against the tree and nodded silently, looking around. To one side of the clearing, near a stand of blackthorn, was a large termite mound. In that mound, according to the trembling Chunarem, lived the
manush-bagha
. It came out only at dusk and had been seen many times. He had seen it himself. Twice.

Though it was midmorning, still I feared going close to the mound, but on a sign from Mr. Welles, I joined him and Rama at its foot. Even with my heart beating wildly and tremors sliding up and down the insides of my legs, I did not dare disobey his direct command.

“Tell me what you see, Rama,” Mr. Welles said.

Rama shrugged. “A white ant mound,” he said. Then he smiled. It was a perfectly good answer, and he knew it, though he used no more words than were necessary.

“And you, Mohandas?”

Let loose by his command, my tongue clattered away. “A temple of dirt, sir, with a hollow door leading down,” I said. Then, seeing the remains of a smaller, similar mound nearby, obviously destroyed by last year’s rains, its secret, twisting passageways laid open to the sky, I added, “A central mound that is perhaps surrounded by smaller mounds that are like hallways between rooms.”

“Good, keen observation. You should do likewise, Rama,” Mr. Welles said.

Rama was not shamed by this. He smiled more broadly and shrugged, as if to say he had seen the same and not thought it worth mentioning.

Mr. Welles continued. “Do either of you think a ghost could—or would—inhabit such a place?”

Chunarem answered quickly, “But it does,
sahib
. I have seen it.”

“You have seen something,” agreed Mr. Welles. Then he turned and looked directly at me. “Mohandas?”

My wide-open eyes were my only answer.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Welles. “We will see at dusk what this ghost of Godamuri really is.”

“You will shoot it,
sahib
?” asked Chunarem, gesturing toward the smoothbore leaning against the fig tree. “You will kill it?”

Mr. Welles pulled out his pipe, lit it, and laughed. “If it is a ghost,” he said, “then I doubt a gun could kill it, for it is not alive. But anything else will fall to my shot.”

“But it
is
a ghost,” Chunarem argued.

Mr. Welles laughed again and pointed at the ground around the mound with his walking stick. “A ghost with wolf feet,” he said, “is no ghost that I recognize. But certainly one I might shoot.” He reached out and patted Chunarem on the shoulder. “Do not worry. By tonight this ghost will be explained.”

I did not understand that exchange at all, but was thankful at last when we were allowed to leave the mound and make our way to the other side of the clearing, under the mantle of the fig. There we spread a cloth and ate our luncheon in silence. I kept my back against the tree, having checked it first for snakes.

Frequently Mr. Welles stood up and walked back to look around the clearing, poking at things with a stick and leaving a trail of pipe smoke to mark his passage. Chunarem began a long, pointless story about a village festival, which Rama and the carters seemed to enjoy. I drew pictures in my book of Mr. Welles’ smoke as it hovered over the mound. In the drawing the smoke looked like a ghost. I surrounded the picture with a border of crosses.

Above us in a tree a colony of tangurs, their tails curved above their backs like question marks, scolded and warned of intruders. Then at last, wearying of their inattentive audience, they moved off, leaping from branch to branch until they disappeared into the jungle canopy.

Long before the sun started down, we climbed the rope ladder on the blind side of the mohua tree up to the
machan
. I pulled the ladder up after us. Chunarem recited the
Pujas
before going back to the village, rather thankful to quit the place, and our two carters went with him to feed the bullock. It was just the three of us in the tree. Mr. Welles put his pipe away and cocked his gun. We waited.

Almost an hour went by. Shadows began to creep into the clearing. A slight breeze stirred the leaves. We did not move, not even to slap away the mosquitoes. I was lulled into a half sleep by the cicada hum and the infrequent low call of the green fruit pigeons as they settled down for the night.

Then, all of a sudden, out of the main entrance to the mound, which was partially hidden by a plum bush, came a full-grown wolf, its ears back, head up, sniffing. It was soon followed by another, and then a third close on its heels. They came drawn out together in a graceful motion, sniffing in unison. After them came two small cubs. They were all a kind of indistinct gray-brown, with white stomachs and the sloping hindquarters of a jackal. The first wolf turned, and the others half lay down before her, wagging their tails, cowed by her great pale yellow eyes.

And then the ghost emerged.

Hand and foot, it was like a human being, just as Chunarem had said. Its enormous head was covered with hair as alive as a nest of snakes, and a sharp, pointed light-brown muzzle of a face peered out of the nest. It looked around once, twice, then ran on all fours with a quick, crablike gait and lay down next to the mother wolf.

The
manush-bagha
was clearly not itself a wolf, for it had a covering of that horrible hair only from its head to halfway down its body. It had no tail, and its legs were long with jointed knees. It ran more like a scuffling squirrel than with the long, eager lopings of a wolf. Once it raised its head up toward the
machan
, and I held my breath in fear that it would notice me. I could see its bright eyes. They were dark, piercing, and inhuman.

Suddenly a second ghost, exactly like the first, only much smaller, came out of the hole. It rubbed against the mother wolf and against the other ghost, then it reached out for the wolf’s ear with one grubby paw.

“Shoot!” croaked Rama.

Mr. Welles raised the gun, then lowered it slowly and shook his head.

I looked down to see what it was he saw.

At Rama’s voice, the wolves and the
manush-baghas
had disappeared into the ever-darkening forest. The clearing was full of shadows and nothing more.

We climbed down from the
machan
and, without speaking, returned to Godamuri. I looked only at the path beneath my feet the entire way, afraid and yet strangely thankful that we had not shot the ghosts, but more thankful still that we arrived safely in that ugly little village alive enough to drink cup after cup of their famous rice beer and to beat the drums that marked the meeting of the missionary and the
manush-bagha
.

I
N THE MORNING MY
head felt swollen, and throat ached, and I swore that I would never again drink rice beer. I remembered little of the night, but Mr. Welles greeted me with the same stern courtesy he always gave to Rama, not the gentler inviting tones he normally used with me. It was as if he placed me in a different category now that I had gone out carousing with the village men. I did not like it and wondered if I had said or done something foolish in his hearing, but surely Rama would have commented on it.

It was only after I splashed water on my face that I recalled our mission for the day. We were to capture the
manush-baghas
, bringing one or both back.

The plan, as Mr. Welles had explained it, was quite simple.

“We will take my twenty-bore, our camp kit, the great winding sheets the Santals called
gelaps
, and my field glasses,” he said. “The carters will each have a rifle, and you boys each a shovel. The village men will accompany us and beat the bushes, raising a shout from afar. They are too terrified, poor heathen, to come closer.” He looked straight at Rama. “We must show them how brave a Christian can be.”

Rama could not meet his eyes, and I recalled Rama’s frightened shout.

But whether or not Rama was still frightened, I was infected with fear as great as or greater than that of any heathen. My body was rashed with it. I shuffled my feet.

Rama looked over and smiled for the first time that day, as if my fear excused his.

“We will be brave, sir,” he said, placing an elbow expertly in my ribs.

I coughed. “Unlike the Santals, sir,” I added.

“Good boys,” Mr. Welles said.

At first Rama and I walked with the beaters, tramping so loudly through the bushes that the noise drove both animals and fear before us. The
sakwa
sounded every so often, and at each horn blow we raised a shout anew.

Several small hares started at our feet. I pretended my fear was fastened to the shoulder of one particular hare whose left ear was splashed with white. As it dashed into the undergrowth, I could almost feel my terror disappear with it.

But then an older man, speaking to Chunarem, who was reluctantly with us, said, “I have faced unarmed the charge of a tiger and lived. I would do that again rather than face this ghost.”

At his words the hare loosed my fear, and it bounded back to me, seeming to stay in my throat. I could hardly swallow. So I went back from the line of beaters to walk by Mr. Welles’ side, comforted by his presence and the big twenty-bore gun he carried.

Up ahead of us the scattered line of men kept walking between the trees. Their white loincloths were stray patches of light in the shadowy jungle. It was like some kind of ritual dance, with the
sakwa
accompaniment. I was both part of it and apart from it, concentrating on my own steps. The three miles that day were every bit as long as the withering leaf foretold, yet we came at last to the clearing.

The villagers did not proceed in but waited in a ragged circle some fifty yards back. Mr. Welles plunged through them, and I, drawn to his side by my thread of fear, followed. So we were the first to reach the mound. Then came Rama and, last, the two carters, their guns already on their shoulders.

“Dig,” said Mr. Welles, nodding his head toward the ant mound.

Rama began. After a long moment I put my shovel into the dirt.

The mound was packed hard by the last rains, and it did not crumble easily. We had to attack it fiercely, and it continued to resist us. I dug steadily near the bush, filling in the hole as much as hollowing it out. Rama hacked away at the other entrance. Mr. Welles, with his rifle on his shoulder, stood guard.

For a time the only sound in the clearing was the smack of shovel against dirt and the intake of breath on each upswing.

Suddenly two of the wolves exploded out of a hidden side entrance, close to the spot where the beaters waited warily. The line of men broke apart, and the wolves ran past them, disappearing quickly into the brush.

I was watching the confusion when something hairy brushed past my arm. I tried to cry out and could not. Fearfully I looked down. It was the mother wolf, her ears flattened and her teeth bared, growling. She ran straight toward the carters. One of them shot at her but in his haste aimed wide and nearly hit me. The second carter shot with care and struck her once high on the shoulder, and after she fell, a second time in the chest. She screamed, a cry so like that of a human that it pierced my heart.

She died slowly, crying and shuddering every so often and then finally guttering out like a candle.

We watched her agonies silently, unable to do anything for her. Mr. Welles knelt down by her head and touched her gently. The carters congratulated one another with nods and grins, and the villagers kept back, once again in a line.

And still there was no sign of the
manush-bagha
.

Mr. Welles stood up. “Dig!” he said, his voice breaking slightly.

Rama and I began to dig, quickly now. Rama attacked the main door, which crumbled at last in such a way that the central cave was laid open to the sky.

Inside the hollow we saw the strangest sight. The two cubs and two hideous creatures—the
manush-baghas
—were huddled together in a monkey ball. Their arms and legs were clutched around each other, and it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. They would not look up, and the ball shook as if they were horribly afraid. All of a sudden my own fear melted away, and all I felt was a profound sadness, like an empty place, in my chest.

Mr. Welles put his rifle down and leaned over the mound. “Come,” he called. “We must bring them up separately.” He put his hand into the monkey ball, using the other hand to prize them apart.

“Damnation!” he cried suddenly, the greatest oath I had ever heard him mutter. He stood up and showed us his hand. The smaller ghost had bitten him, ripping the tender skin between his thumb and forefinger. He held the hand against his shirt to stanch the wound.

“Rama, get me the four
gelaps
,” he said.

Rama threw the shovel to one side and went to the line of villagers to collect the big sheets. I took the time to lean over the mound.

“Why,” I said, my voice returning to me, though only in a whisper, “they are not ghosts but human beings.”

Mr. Welles put his hand to his chin, musing. “Children, Mohandas, probably outcasts from a village, raised by wolves. And we have just killed the only mother they remember.” He turned to look for Rama, who was taking a very long time collecting the sheets.

I thought about that for a moment. Children of the wolf. They were orphans, just as I was, alone and afraid. Into the hollow I whispered, “I am your brother.”

One cub looked up at me, but the wolf-children did not. They clutched their litter mates and howled, the sound of an animal in deep distress.