This Is Not a Werewolf Story (30 page)

Along the right cheek of the cougar is a hairless pink scar. The sight of it infuriates me, and I lunge at him.

I hear White Wolf warn me. My teeth pierce his skin, and I taste blood.

That's for the scrape in White Wolf's side,
I rumble.

I shake my head as I bite down harder, ripping his hide.
That's for Bobo's leg.

His huge paw comes up, claws stretched, and he bats me away.

The blow knocks me off balance. I stagger and fall against White Wolf. Before I can get back up, he's
racing off ahead of us through the woods. We give chase, but everyone knows you can't catch a cougar. When we stop running, we are miles from the moon-dappled forest floor. Small lights illuminate the cement walls and rusty ladders of Fort Casey. The cougar has fled to his den.

A burning pain hits my haunch. Did I get shot? I didn't hear the rifle. But maybe the cougar led us here so Tuffman could shoot us.

I look at White Wolf.
Help,
I want to say.

She's dragging herself toward me, making sounds that mean
I'm coming. I'll help you.
Then her eyes cloud over and close.

Oh no, she got hit too. Oh no. Maybe we're dying. My head is dizzy and my haunch stings like something—a bullet? a thin sharp stick?—is stuck into me.

Then I see a ranger. I recognize the uniform. I stumble and fall to the ground beside White Wolf, trying to cover her with my body.

The man leans over me. His face is so kind and familiar. I feel safe.

“We got you, boy,” the ranger says.

I can feel sleep pushing my eyes shut, but I struggle to stay awake. Who is he? What has he done to me?

“That's only a little tranquilizer shot,” he says, stroking my side. “You two will be all right in the morning. We've been looking for you for a long time.”

It's the most peaceful thought I've ever had. I was lost and now I've been found.

More voices join in. “Did you get the cougar?” one asks.

“No, but we got the wolves,” says my man. “We can tag these two and release them up north.” I'm glad he keeps talking. His voice is so familiar. I've been wanting to hear it for so long.

I can feel him looking me over; his fingers are deep in my coat. “I wonder what brought them all the way over here tonight. You think they got in a tangle with that cougar?”

Whoever he is, the clearest thought-in-words I've had in a long time comes to me as the strength in my wolf body fades.
I need to show him who I am.
It's the Raul me saying this. I fight the numbness that makes every muscle in my body feel like hot chocolate.

“My goodness!” the ranger says. He's surprised by what I do, but he doesn't move his hand away. “Can you believe it?” he calls to the others. “Look at this gray one here. He's licking my hand. Tame as a puppy.”

I keep licking. He tastes like roast beef and cheddar cheese.

Feet surround me. Black shoes, polished. Hiking boots, expensive. Tennis shoes, very well used.

“Well, I'll be,” someone says.

I lick the ranger's hand some more and then slowly
place my front paw on his hand. His face is familiar, his voice is familiar, and so is the feel of his hand in mine. What is happening? The hair on the back of my neck stands up, but not from fear. From wonder. The magic must be working again.

“Now, that's a new one. I never seen that before,” says a woman. “That wolf is trying to tell you something, I think.”

I do my best to nod my head and wag my tail.

I must have done a pretty good job, because they all stop talking.

“Did you see that?” the woman in the hiking boots finally asks. Good style
and
good brains. I reach over with my front paw and pat the toe of her boot very gently.

“I've got goose bumps,” someone says. “That animal is trying to say something to us.”

“I've never seen the likes of it.” The woman sounds amazed. “Not in thirty years working these woods. He's thanking me for noticing. You realize that, don't you? That wolf's not just tame. He's downright civilized.”

The ranger gets down low to study me; he must be crouching on all fours. He looks into my eyes. I bark a happy bark. I
do
know him. That's my dad.

In the distance a shot rings out.

“Got him!” a voice cries. “We got the cougar!”

Budget. That's the word I keep hearing my dad say on his phone as he paces between a trailer and the kennel where White Wolf and I wake up.

To my dad, it's a bad word. He says a lot of real bad words when he's talking about the budget—worse even than the ones Mean Jack used to use. Sometimes he slams the trailer's screen door shut when he gets off the phone.

To me, “budget” is a good word. It's the reason why White Wolf and I are still here with him. The “budget” doesn't have the money to transport two wild wolves from an island in Puget Sound all the way to Montana and “integrate” them into a new environment. There's a red wolf exhibit at the Point Defiance Zoo, but they don't want us. Thank goodness.

The cougar went straight to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, where he has a cage all to himself. Since he tried to attack me and Sparrow, they consider him too dangerous to release back into the wild.
Ha.
Tuffman's
too wild for the wilderness. They got that right, even if they don't know the half of it. Lock him up, boys, lock him up and throw away the key.

The trailer where we're staying is located at the ranger station on the far end of White Deer Woods. At first my dad keeps us out back in a big cage. It's a huge square of chain-link fence with a cement floor and a wooden roof.

Whenever my dad's not at work or yelling at someone on the phone about the importance of saving the wild wolf population of this country, I do what I can to show him that I'm not a wolf like any other.

When I see him, I sit on my hind legs with my front paws stretched out in front of me. Sort of like I'm bowing to him.

When he greets me with a “Hey, gray wolf,” I yip in return.

One day, instead of stretching out in a bow, I sit up and offer him my paw. He blinks at me for a long time. Then he says, “Well, I'll be,” and takes my hand and shakes it.

It doesn't take long to train him. He's a smart man. By the end of the week he opens the cage door and leads us into the trailer.

“Don't tell anyone,” he says to us. “I'll lose my job if they catch me with wild animals for roommates.”

I don't know who exactly he thinks I'm going to
tell. The blue jay who hangs out near the kennel? Yeah, he's a real chatterbox.

My dad lives in the trailer. It's his home.

In the last year he must have moved away from Seattle. He must have gotten a job as a ranger in the White Deer Woods.

But if he was living so close to the school, then why didn't he ever come see me?

Once we're inside, I realize he's been seeing me all the time.

There are pictures of us everywhere. Pictures of the three of us at the Woodland Park Zoo with the penguins. Me in a little kiddie car on the sidewalk in front of our apartment. Me and mom standing by the sound sculpture at Magnuson Park. Me trying to eat a pinecone at Green Lake. Man, I was a dumb baby!

I sit down in the middle of the room and look at the pictures.

The ranger kneels next to me. He puts a hand on my back. “My family,” he says, and his voice sounds squeezed—like there's a lump in it that won't let the words past. “See,” he says as White Wolf walks up and sits on the other side of him, “you two are lucky. You still have each other. I'm gonna make sure it stays that way too.”

I learn things when he talks on the phone. I learn he took the ranger job so that he can live here next to my school. Sometimes he talks to the photos of us on
the wall. He asks the picture of me why I didn't want to see him anymore, why I wrote him all those letters and told him to stay away. He says that if he hadn't listened to me, then none of this would have happened and he and I would still be together. He says he moved out here to be as near to me as he could be, until I was ready to see him again.

I never wrote him a letter. I don't know what he is talking about. Did someone play a trick on us? Was it Tuffman?

I sit close to him then. His sadness is the same as mine. We can't say what we want to say to each other. I guess I was wrong. I guess sometimes words matter.

One afternoon he has to go to town to get some supplies. He opens the trailer door and White Wolf and I walk straight into the cage.

“You two must really like it here,” my dad says.

When he comes back, I hear voices.

“The wolves are out here,” I hear my dad saying.

The back door opens. I smell him before I see him. Mean Jack.

Do you know what is strange? I'm happy to see him. I push my nose through the wire, and before my dad can tell him not to, Mean Jack has his hand right in front of my mouth. I lick him all over. Beef jerky and lemonade. This is my kind of kid.

“Never,” my dad says sternly as he comes out the door, “
never
do that with a wild animal. Promise me you'll never do that again.”

Mean Jack freezes and then yanks his hand back. “I'm sorry, Mr. Ranger. Please don't tell Dean Swift.”

My dad puffs his cheeks up and blows the air out. “I won't tell him if you won't! I promised him I'd let you guys take a look, not get your hands bitten off.”

Mean Jack nods. It's crazy how respectful he is with my dad. Maybe it's the ranger uniform. Or maybe Mean Jack is a nicer kid than I thought.

“Anyway, there's no real danger with this gray wolf, but he's somewhat of an anomaly,” my dad says. “You know what that is? An anomaly is something unusual. And this gray wolf loves people.”

“Anomaly comes from the Greek,” I hear another voice say. “ ‘An' is a prefix meaning ‘not,' and the middle part, ‘oma,' is a shortened form of
homos,
meaning ‘the same' or ‘equal.' So anomaly means ‘not the same.' ”

Mary Anne. The prettiest dictionary walking God's green earth.

I'm even happier to see her. I don't mind how mad she was at me the last time I saw her. Vincent had us both fooled.

“If this wolf is not the same as any other, then why
shouldn't
I do this?” she asks, and sticks her hand into the cage. Dean Swift always says she is too impertinent.

But I rush over and lick her hand like crazy. Wolf me is not shy, not one little bit. Sigh. Honey and blackberries.

My dad stares at her, but he doesn't chew her out. That's the power of Mary Anne. She can get away with anything. Words and beauty—a killing combination.

“I'm conducting research,” she explains, even though nobody asked. “I'm penning a novel about a wolf family. I need to experience the precise texture of a wolf's tongue.” She reaches through the fence and strokes my fur. “And its coat. Coarse.” She pulls out a notebook and takes the cap off her pen with her teeth. “And a little . . . sebaceous.” She lifts her hand and sniffs it, then makes a face. “
Sacre bleu!
For such a civilized specimen of
canis lupus
, he would do well to consider a bath.”

After a minute my dad glances up to the trailer. “Where's the other one?” he asks.

Mary Anne shouts, “Come on, I thought you wanted to see them in the flesh.”

“Is it safe?” I hear a worried voice ask.

The smell of him makes my nose twitch and my lip curl up. Vincent.

Then I see him in the doorway, chicken as usual, only this time he's got a really good reason to be.

“Of course,” my dad says. “Dean Swift says you've been asking about these wolves since the day we caught them.”

“If you nourish even the slightest hope of illustrating my story, then you had better come feast your eyes,” Mary Anne says. “These animals are
magnificent
.”

Yeah, Vincent, come on. Let me illustrate something for you with my teeth.

The growl starts low in my throat. Mean Jack hears it first. He steps away from the kennel. But Mary Anne stands her ground, watching me with her lips moving slightly.

Take a mental note, Mary Anne, because this is what a wolf looks like right before he attacks.

My hair stands on end. My muscles tense, but I stay perfectly still. Then the growl in my chest explodes into a round of barks so loud every other noise disappears. Even the trees stop talking to the wind.

I leap up against the fence. I'm taller than Vincent now, stretched long against the wire links, 155 pounds of rage. The cage rattles with the weight of me. I push my paws and chest against the metal and shake it so that it clangs and bangs.

Vincent screams and falls to the ground like a bird that has flown into a closed window. As he falls, his arm scrapes against the cage and my outstretched claws. A strip of his shirt rips away, and a thin line of red appears on his skin.