Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me (10 page)

Addie looks flushed and uncertain, but she answers me anyway. “When they found the animals loose, he and Will went out and it got dark. First he cut his hand on a wire gate and then his dog went missing. Kenner stayed up all night looking with his hand wrapped in a shirt. He raised that dog from a puppy.”

“I’m so sorry, Kenner.”

Kenner doesn’t look at me as he shuffles off. “Like hell you are.”

Virgil steps into the hallway behind me. “It’s too bad about his dog.”

I write a few words in my notebook. “Holy smack. It really is. And I know I need to hear his side of it. But if his dog had been nabbed by a cougar or bitten by a snake everybody would just call it bad luck.”

“I guess it’s all about the angle,” says Virgil.

 

At three past three I hide behind my locker door and go over my math quiz one more time. It says five out of five answers are correct. If I were alone I’d sing Christmas carols. Even if this wolf-stare thing is all in my head, I don’t care. Where else is something if it isn’t in your head? I’ve been possessed, and I like it.

It sounds silly, even to me. But writers, biologists, and regular people say basically the same thing. Exchanging stares at close range with a wild wolf can hook you up to something “other.” Or at least make you think so.

Aldo Leopold, the naturalist, got up next to a wolf when he was about my age. He was actually shooting at the wolf at the time, but when he rode in to inspect his dying trophy he saw its eyes had “a fierce green fire.” He never got over it. As an adult, not only did he develop the country’s wildlife management program, he gambled his career to initiate the reintroduction of wolves to the west, beginning with Yellowstone.

I look at the math quiz again. We take these quizzes nearly every day, but in two years I have never had more than three answers right at a time. Addison graded my paper. She put a smiley face at the top and wrote, “You are so smart!!!”

I studied and then I performed. No second-guessing. No panic. Just a perfect five.

I reach in my locker and start to load up my books for the walk home. I’m startled to see Mrs. B. standing behind me when I turn around.

“We need to talk.” She’s holding my paper.

“Is something wrong?” I say.

“Did Virgil’s mom write this for you?”

“She says it’s anthropomorphic.”

“How nice. I like it, too.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I guess.”

“Listen, KJ, would you like to be editor?”

I’m too surprised to answer.

She says, “I know you have a lot to do, but it’s mostly proofreading and helping me organize everything on the page. It will look good on your college application.”

I feel the stare because I am staring. Having a lupine transfiguration is one thing, but I’m dyslexic. I can barely proofread my own name. No one puts me in charge of anything. I say, “I’d love to do it.”

“You start tomorrow. Come an hour early.”

“Sure,” I say, like I have the slightest idea of what I’m getting myself into.

I watch Baby waddle away. I’m in a daze. I’m going to be the editor. The sleepless night and the good news collide. I have to sit down. I walk toward the wall heaters in the front of the school.

Dennis is already sitting there. “Made you editor, didn’t she?” he says. He looks like he’s going to cry.

“I guess so.”

Dennis says, “You can’t even spell.”

He stomps to his feet and strides away before I can think of what to say. Apparently my wolf stare isn’t useful for everything.

ONE IN EVERY FAMILY

I LOPE THROUGH the sidewalks of town. I know Dad’s taking some California moneybags for a weekend bow hunt as soon as I get to the store. Talking to Mrs. Baby has made me late.

“Dad,” I gasp as I run through the door. Three men are standing around him. They’re all camo’d out, and they have that look on their faces. They’re ready to shoot something.

“Hey,” Dad says nonchalantly.

I know it’s unprofessional but I can’t help it. “Guess what?”

Dad and his buddies all kind of lean back and watch me do this, act young and female and stupid as sticks. “I’m going to be the editor. Mrs. Brady loved my wolf article.”

It takes Dad a minute to register my words since they broke the sound barrier. “Good for you, honey. That’s great.”

“Uh-oh,” says the man with the fanciest bow. “Samuel, you got a storyteller in your family?”

The man next to him says, “Your dad tells stories, too, but they’re about the buck he got last year.” They share a man laugh.

“What kind of wolf story? Is it a fairy tale?” says Fancy Bow. He must make a lot of money. He thinks he’s hilarious.

“Well, kind of,” I say, trying to play along. “I wrote a story this week about the Cinderella wolf.”

Dad purses his lips. He wants me to do the same.

Fancy Bow is having none of it. “Does she get the prince or eat him?”

“There’s not really a prince in this story. It’s about a real wolf.”

A short man with a red complexion says, “You got a wolf lover for a daughter?” His voice tilts up like he’s kidding, but he isn’t as cheerful as Fancy Bow.

Dad gathers up a small pack filled with drinks and snacks for the front seat. “We’ll be back Sunday night, KJ. You know how to get a hold of me.”

The short man says sympathetically, “Well, there’s one in every family these days.”

Fancy Bow smiles over at Dad, “Just as long as there aren’t two, right, Samuel?”

Dad gives back an easy smile, “Let’s go get some elk, gentlemen. See you Sunday, KJ.”

“Good luck,” I say.

He nods to me and heads out the door. His face gives nothing away. If this were a fairy tale Dad would settle this conversation with these men. But he won’t. In a fairy tale he wouldn’t even have to go with them, if he didn’t want to. I wouldn’t have to sit in this dumb store alone all weekend, waiting for a handful of people to come in and not buy anything. But in the real world, we’re heading into the slow season, and we need every dollar we can get. So we both do what we have to.

Wolves and people aren’t so different
, I think.
In the real world, they both have to eat
.

 

The only way I can get through a beautiful October day caged inside the store is to spend the early morning hours outside. I pull on my jeans at six and walk through the dark to a stream that flanks the south of town. I take my fishing gear and an orange hunting vest—so no one will shoot me.

The mist is still heavy on the stream when I get there, but there is enough dawn to tie on a fly. The meadow grass is bent with dew. Mud clings to my boots. I watch the water for a minute to see what to fish with, but I’m not thinking very hard about fish. I have the feeling I’m being watched.

I could be wrong. But I still listen for twigs snapping or hunter’s voices. I look into the trees for the shadow of movement. I sing a little in case it’s a bear.

An osprey startles me with its cry. It circles twice and heads off toward the lake. I hear a branch swish. I hold my steel rod case across me like a quarter staff. I’m going to feel ridiculous if this turns out to be deer.

Then the silence is broken by a high-pitched sound and a crash. I drop to a crouch, then lose my footing. I tip halfway to the ground, just in time to see a brown blur, and roll to the left in the mud. A young moose bolts past me into the trees.

I lurch up from the freezing-wet ground and shake myself. Thankfully my case and rod aren’t broken, but I am covered in mud.

“What are you doing here?”

I nearly jump out of my wet skin at the sound of a human voice, especially Virgil’s human voice.

“What are you doing here?” I say.

“Taking a picture of that moose, at least I was trying to, before you showed up.”

“That moose nearly killed me,” I say.

He eyeballs my orange jacket and my rod case. He says, “He must have thought you had it coming.”

“Geez, Virgil,” I sputter. “I’m not hunting. I’m fishing.”

Virgil says, “Mud looks good on you.” He takes a picture.

I lift up a muddy boot and flick it. “You, too.”

He caps his lens. “Dennis said Baby put you in charge of the paper.”

“Is he still mad?”

“Let’s just say we watched every episode of Star Wars last night.”

“He’s right. I can’t even spell.”

Virgil shrugs and steps closer to me. “Sometimes greatness is thrust upon you.”

I feel a shiver. “And sometimes it’s just mud.”

We stand in awkward silence. I hear another branch snap. “What’s that?”

Virgil says, “The moose?”

I resist the urge to make fun of Virgil for being a city kid. A moose breaks a lot more than twigs when it’s on the move, but I’m the one wearing the puddle.

“Maybe it’s the mud in your ears,” he says.

I scan the trees one more time. “Or maybe it’s the sound of the birds falling out of their trees laughing at me.”

Virgil smiles. “Or that.”

 

We walk back to my house together, almost like we’re friends. I smell like the creek bed. Virgil doesn’t seem to mind. He tells me about how they filmed the first Star Wars using tiny models and paper with pinholes. He offers to hold my gear. Nobody has ever offered to hold my gear.

I refold the T-shirts to keep from losing my mind. There are no customers. My homework is done, mostly. Through the front windows of the shop I see occasional cars pass on Geyser. I couldn’t care less about what’s going on in town today. The town is nothing. I know flecks of slanted light are shimmering off the rivers. Elk are rutting. Bears are eating everything not nailed to the forest floor. The air is cool. The meadow grasses have dried the color of bone and the willows on the river’s edge have deepened to burgundy. Virgil is out there somewhere, taking pictures. And here I stand, folding.

At noon I eat a bacon, tomato, and onion sandwich.

At twelve twenty I regret the onion.

At twelve fifty I open the medicine cabinet and discover my dad buys antacids in bulk. For all my dad’s silence, I know he worries about stuff even more than I do.

At two o’clock in the afternoon I have dusted everything in the shop including the inside of my own eyelids. We have had exactly nine customers all day and two of them were twin toddlers that destroyed my water bottle pyramid and then wiped their ice-cream-covered paws on the glass case at the register. Of course their mom was “just looking,” and didn’t buy a thing.