The Wild (10 page)

A passing fire truck wailed. Bob, lying on his back, slowly windmilling arms and legs that no longer worked right, heard a voice from the street call out, "Artie, don't forget. . ." Then again, "They'll kill you if you do. . ." Somebody laughed. High in a window a pale star shone down.

Bob wished he could fly out into the wild emptiness between here and that star. His heart almost burst with longing and he cried aloud. A sound drowned the waltz, making Kevin cover his ears and stare with stricken eyes, making Cindy beat her fists against his chest, making Monica gather him in her arms and press her warm, soft cheek against the cold wall of teeth that half formed his new face.

The sound he made felt in his chest like flying, it was so high and rich and full. He would have thought such a voice would reach the stars, but when his breath ran out, the world was still exactly the same. Or, not quite. The little girl had gone to her knees facing the wall, and was loudly praying the Confetior.

"Bob," Monica whispered, "Bob, it's all right. I know you're still in there. I must tell you that I don't know exactly what's happening here but there must be some rational, perfectly sensible reason that explains this. I want you to know that you are not alone. I am with you. I will help you."

"Dad, can you talk?"

He wanted to talk. Very badly. He wanted to tell them to go, to leave him alone.

The world and the dark beckoned to him, the long paths and shadowy leaves, the barking of the pack, the high wind at night.

"Bob, please, if you can talk, say something."

Of course he could talk. "Lorr." No, not quite right. "Bwaorr." It was an awful moment. "Urraoo." The walls seemed to come closer. He heard his own frightened panting.

Kevin burst into open tears. Monica's drone started again, and Cindy's sobs were in waltz time, unconsciously keyed to the sway of the "Blue Danube." In the comer the Confetior had given way to the Apostles' Creed. This little girl was a full-scale Catholic.

Bob wanted to comfort his son, to take his wife in his arms. He was sad, now. His initial fear was evaporating. Beneath the sadness there was something new, an interest in the dark beyond the window. He knew that there was nothing out there but Washington Square Park, New York University's private drugstore, jammed with dealers and students. He could hear the trees, though, speaking in soft night voices, and the glittering rattle of crickets.

Clumsily, he got to his feet. There was a general outcry in the room. Even Monica shouted. "What's he wearing?" shrieked Kevin's poor playmate.

"Get her out of here," Cindy said. "Take her home, Kevin. Your dad is sick."

"He's metamorphosed. Kafka's story isn't fiction anymore. In 1990 it's a medical text."

"How can you be so supercilious! Look, Jodie, he's wearing a wolf rug we bought last year in Alaska. He's having a nervous breakdown, that's all, do you understand?"

"No."

"What do you mean no—oh, God, Monica, can't you see what this will do? This kid'll tell her parents. Before we know it, everybody at St. Anselm's will know. What will happen to our reputation?"

Bob tried once again to talk. "Mwee, mwee. Eooo." It was horrible. His mind was swarming with thoughts, with explanations, answers, above all with the reassuring notion that it had worn
off
that night in the hotel, and it would wear off again.

Then he heard the wind again. He wanted to go out and run the night.

His nose came to life. This was nothing like the hotel. He was so startled by the change that he reared back, growling involuntarily, causing a renewed outburst of woe from those around him. Smells in hundreds and thousands and millions burst alive. He was instantly overwhelmed. The floor, the remains of his clothes, Monica's sweat, Cindy's soap, Cindy's sweat, her intimate odors, Kevin's child-sourness and Jodie's child-sweetness, the hot electronics of Kevin's record player in the next room—a smell like a Formica counter-top with a hot pot on it—and the outdoor odors, the leaves, the bark of the trees, the squirrels sleeping among the branches, the brown odor of the crickets on the leaves, the chlorine-sourness of cocaine and the smoky, pungent aroma of the drug dealers, a complex of sweat and cigarettes, and the smells of marijuana and tobacco, of the concrete in the sidewalks and the rubber on the tires of passing cars, of gasoline and nitric acid from exhausts, the smell of garbage and hot food, garlic, beef, broccoli, and the faint, distinct odor of their bedroom, powder and the oils of human bodies, and a musky whiff of the spermicide Cindy used with her diaphragm.

He jerked his head back, gobbling out twisted cries, his brain overwhelmed by the sudden plunge from the universe of seeing to that of smelling. The warm room, the lights, the furniture, the people, were in an instant ripped from their moorings in sighted life and plunged into a madhouse of radiant odors.

The world, as he saw it, was mostly gray. Red he could see, and green, and shades of brown. Would the blue sky be gone forever, and what of the beautiful smooth whiteness of Cindy's breast? He experienced as deep a pang of yearning as he had ever known. He bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hands.

The moment he tried to do so he fell painfully on his chin. "He's trying to use his hands," Cindy cried. "Look at him, oh,
look at him
!"

"Cindy, we have to stitch ourselves together. Remember this. It's very, very important.
This is not a miracle!
No, not a miracle. No. Somewhere, there is some quite, quite rational, clear, and understandable scientific explanation—"

"Oh, shut up, Monica. You're repeating yourself because it
is
a miracle and you're scared. You're terrified."

"I admit I'm uneasy. This is a very unusual case and it's appropriate for me to feel uneasy."

"Oh, yeah, I'd agree with that. Uneasy."

Bob was catching and then losing the thread of words. He was so disoriented by his changed senses that he couldn't pay attention, no matter how hard he tried. It was as if his mind was going blind.

The room, he realized, stank. The odor was salty and like cold, wet hair. It was cloying, as if made of oils, and lingered in his nose. A shiver coursed through his body. He felt cool air against the skin on the back of his neck.

"Look at him now. His hair's standing on end."

"Is he mad? What's happening?"

"Bob—"

He could not speak to them, could not tell them that their own fear was infecting him, that he was helpless before the odor of emotions that they couldn't smell. Every nuance of feeling created a change in odor that shafted at once to the depths of his soul. He had no way to defend himself from this assault, and could only suffer it, the raw march of feeling among those he loved.

"May I go?" A tiny little voice coming from Jodie. She was knotting her hands.

Cindy knelt to her level. "Honey, of course you can go. Monica will take you home, there's no need to call your parents to come get you. Just as long as you understand that this is all..." Her voice whispered away, and was replaced by a keening as of stressed wire. Bob longed to embrace her: He knew the sound of Cindy in abject sorrow.

Monica took the girl by the hand and left, promising to come back as soon as she had delivered the child.

"All a game!" Cindy shrieked as they left.

Not fifteen minutes had passed before the phone rang. Cindy snatched it up. "Hello—oh, hello Mrs. O'Neill. Yes, I'm glad she had a good time. Bob? Oh, he's a little indisposed, you can't talk to him. You want to do what? Oh, sure. I guess—well, of course." She hung up. "How nice. How goddamn nice! The woman's going to bring us a covered-dish supper. She acts like we had a death in the family."

Bob wanted to say just four precious words: "It wore off before." But he could not speak and despised the sound of his own efforts too much to try again. He sat on his haunches and stared helplessly at his wife.

Not long after, Monica returned. She and Cindy and Kevin sat together on the couch. None of them spoke. Bob sank deeper and deeper into despair. The emotion he was feeling now was loneliness. He was not a wolf, but rather a profoundly deformed man. He was the victim of some odd psychophysical disorder, that must be it.

And yet, in him there was something triumphant and free. He remembered the wolf in the Central Park Zoo. What of that wolf, what was it doing right now? Was it sleeping, dreaming only of the wild?

His own childhood dream of becoming a wolf had obviously been a true experience. He had swept through the backyards as a wolf. There
were
grass stains on his pajamas. There
were
those memories, so perfect, of a wolf's movements and ways.

Shape-shifting... it was said that witches could turn themselves into owls and rats and hares. And the Indians—didn't they have legends about it, too?

Was that poor old wolf still in its cage, or had it died and the two of them somehow come to inhabit this same flesh?

It had looked at him, looked into him—yes, actually entered him with its eyes.

That was the secret, the wolf had done it, had entered him with its eyes. And it had happened before, yes, it had, back at the San Antonio Zoo in the summer of 1957, he remembered it vividly now. There had been a wolf there, a sleepy, dejected old Texas red wolf and it had
looked
at him and then . . .

Then had come his dream.

"Could I watch
M*A*S*H
?" Kevin asked.

"No! No TV." His wife's voice was so lovely, full of melodies he had never heard before. He went to her and stood before her, looking into the creamy miracle of her face, the blue, wide eyes, the dramatic, perfectly proportioned nose, the lips that seemed always to conceal, as their deepest secret, laughter.

By degrees she raised her hands. "If I touch him, will it help?"

"I can't answer that."

Kevin, sobbing softly to himself, leaned against his mother's shoulder. Cindy seemed to Bob small and weak and vulnerable. For fifteen years he had been taking this woman in his arms.

Now all he could do was to nuzzle her with his big jaw, trying to avoid letting the tongue—which felt like a mouthful of belting leather—get in the way. As he got closer her scent became stronger. It was nostalgic, familiar in ways he had never before understood.

Oh, Cindy, fifteen years. I knew you as a girl and I knew you as a woman. I'd been so looking forward to gentle old age together. Pressing his nose up against her neck, into the place under her ear he had kissed a thousand times, he inhaled.

The odor stunned him. To call it an odor, even, was to diminish it terribly. Voices, songs, high summer days, blue sky in the Catskills, the warm of winter fires, snatches of love talk, the hot and the wet of bed night, the first halting glances and the settled looks of the marriage, her body big with Kevin, so much more. He realized that every good thing that time takes from us lingers in our odors—and we have lost the sense of smell.

Her hand came up, shaking, and she pressed her palm against his cheek.

To truly find her love, he had become a prisoner from her. He lay against the touch of her hand, and heard the final establishment of the night outside, the course of the stars against the restless sky. A leaf tapped the window, dropping silently past the light.

Part Two
The Journey To The West

A man without anything, alone on the road
long after midnight,

is told by the choking street light
morning will not come.
He jams his hands in his pockets, walks on.

—Robert Duke, "In the Matter of the Night," (1983)

Chapter Seven

R
OBERT
D
UKE HAD A NEW BODY TO LEARN.
B
REATHING
through the long snout, and seeing around it, were difficult. He had lost the power of speech and what he now saw as the great privilege of hands. He was fallen from the human state, there was no other way to look at it.

His wife and son stared at him, stricken but also fascinated. Monica sat in the blue upholstered chair, watching him through quizzical eyes. "I need to do a little research," she said. "I'd better get up to the library at the hospital."

"At eight o'clock at night?" How Cindy's voice pierced! He was standing at her feet. When their eyes met, she reacted as if struck a blow, and looked away.

"The library's open till midnight. It's a teaching hospital."

Why did she need a library? Didn't she realize she could use his computer to access Medline? She could do whatever research she needed from the next room.

"I wish you didn't have to leave. I'm so scared."

"Don't be scared, Mama." The bright edge was gone from Kevin's voice. His own fear rose to a stench like acid wax when he looked at Bob. "He'll change back any minute now."

Bob's impulse was to comfort his boy. He turned his head, only to see him shrink away from eye contact. It hurt Bob, and he humiliated himself by quite involuntarily making a high keening noise.

Cindy clapped her hands over her ears. "Don't do that, please!" She looked at Monica. "He can only make animal sounds." Another wave of fear poured from her body, that strange tart-musty odor that made Bob's heart beat harder and the hair at the back of his neck thrill.

Monica came down to his level, pressing her face into his. "Can you understand?" she said in a loud voice.

He was having trouble dealing with the cascade of odors that were now pouring from their bodies. Their emotions seemed to run in waves, bursting forth for a few moments, then subsiding, then coming out again. And each time they came forth they were stronger. Their fear was rising, and soon it would break them. Inside himself Bob was in turmoil. He felt so odd that he could barely walk. It was a tremendous effort to coordinate four legs, to see through these shape-sharpened, color-dulled eyes, to sort out the smells and sounds that shoved and swarmed at him from all sides.

What's more, the presence of the night was oppressing him. The walls of the room seemed almost alive, like malevolent flesh keeping him from the freedom of the woods.

He moaned again, he couldn't help it. Cindy clapped her hands over her ears. "Bob, are you in pain?"

"Bob—" Monica took his face in her hands. "We have to communicate with you. We have to have some means of knowing how you feel and what you want. Now, please, try to listen to me. Tap the floor if you hear me."

Tap the floor. Was that all that was left to him?

"He tapped! Dad, Dad, tap once if you're in pain, twice if you're okay."

What could he do? He was not in pain. Anguish is not pain. Desperation is not pain. He tapped twice.

"He's not in pain!"

A barrage of questions followed. Bob heard the fluttering of wings outside the window. When he cocked his ears, he could also hear the alien breathing of a large bird. He was astonished to know that there were owls in the city. He could imagine the bird skimming over the buildings, searching out the dark places for mice. From the rapidity of its breath
,
its busy fluttering of feathers, it was working hard, and full of excitement. Then it flew on, after a faint scuttling sound that came from the edge of the cornice.

There was a secret world out there.

"Don't even think about it," Cindy yelled. She put her arms around his neck. "It's a six-story drop, don't you remember?"

"Close the windows. There's not much he can do but jump."

He tapped once, sharply. "Once is no," Kevin said.

"Yes, yes, we will close the windows. Bob, this is all going to be over soon. You'll get back to normal. You'll be all right. Monica's going to do some research and find out what's wrong with you and she's going to fix it, isn't that right, Monica?"

"That's right."

Didn't they realize what had happened here? A great reordering in the world had caused this. The petty ministrations of a doctor weren't going to undo something so enormous.

But if he didn't change back, what would he do? He couldn't spend the rest of his life in this apartment. Not the least reason was that they were due to be evicted. What was Cindy going to do? She was desperate for money. Now how would she get it?

The wind whispered, the wind called. It was seductive, it was insistent. And now the wind rattled the windowpanes a little bit, tapping for him to come. He saw himself running across the top of the wind, escaping from the maze of prisons that was this city.

He might have wished for wings, but thought perhaps he'd better not.

He watched Monica and Cindy frantically locking the windows. He climbed up and dragged his paws against the glass. "Down," Cindy commanded. "Down, Bob!"

How dare she talk to him like he was a dog. He wanted to tell her, to scream it out: I am a human being in here. I am a human being! All that escaped, though, was a very unpleasant snarl.

He had bared his teeth at her, he had raised his hackles. Terrified, she was backing away. "Now, now, Bob. Nice Bob." Oh, good Lord, how stupid.

Kevin came up to him. "Dad, I know you can understand everything. Look, they don't want you near the windows, okay? So let's compromise. Let's say you stay away from the windows and I'll get Mom to leave them open."

Bob tapped twice on the floor.

"Hear that, Mom? He
does
understand. Is it a deal?"

"You won't go near the windows, Bob." Again he tapped. He was a little bit in control at least.

Then Monica went to Cindy and whispered in her ear, a whisper that Bob could hear clearly. "Don't open the windows. He could be suicidal."

"How can we be sure? He's always been fascinated by wolves. Maybe he's having a good time. At least he doesn't have to get out and earn a living."

"Look, Monica, how would you feel if this— this—fantastic catastrophe happened to you?"

They both regarded Bob, Monica with a weak smile, Cindy sadly. "I want to turn on the air conditioners," she said. "It's too close in here."

Lacking voice, lacking hands, all Bob could do was watch as she defied him.

A moment later the downstairs buzzer sounded. Monica picked up the handset, spoke for a moment, then let somebody in. She turned a shocked face to the others. "It's Jodie O'Neill and her mother. They've got the covered-dish supper."

Cindy rushed to the door. "I don't believe it. We can't—" The doorbell rang. "Monica!"

"What can we do—tell them to leave it on the stoop?"

"Say anything, say he's got AIDS. No, don't say that. All hell will break loose at the school."

"Cindy, as far as this woman is concerned, Bob's been taken to the hospital. You have a big dog, that's all. It's simple enough." Monica opened the door.

The O'Neills were all there, the mother and father, the daughter, the teenage son. They came right in, bearing sweating Tupperware dishes. "Hi, Cyn," Betty O'Neill said.

"Is that him?" the son asked. So much for Monica's subterfuge. Jodie had obviously told her family everything. And why not, she had witnessed the whole transformation.

"Now, this is truly amazing," said Mr. O'Neill, a flat-faced man with a pencil moustache. "He looks every inch a wolf."

"That's no wolf," Cindy shouted. "That's our dog."

"Jodie said—"

"She was confused. The dog bit Bob. He went to St. Vincent's to get a shot and some stitches."

"I hate to be nosy, but if a dog's biting its own master, shouldn't it be destroyed?" Mrs. O'Neill's words were almost snide.

"Oh, God, no!" Cindy put her hands to her cheeks. "No."

"At least take it to a vet," Mrs. O'Neill put in.

Bob saw Monica blink. She said nothing, but he didn't care for the look that had come into her eyes.

"We brought baked beans and ham, pea soup, and broccoli with hollandaise."

"Oh, that's very kind," Cindy said. "You needn't have done it."

"No trouble. It's left over from a wake a couple of weeks ago. The only work we had to do was to turn on the microwave." She laughed. "We have a huge family, and a lot of them are old. I keep this sort of thing ready all the time."

Bob hardly heard her stupid nattering. His skin felt hot, he began to hear and smell with even greater clarity than was now his exquisite norm. His whole body tingled, his muscles became like compressed steel. His breath got long and low, and came through his throat in growls he could not control. He was furious. That nattering woman, the gaping children, the superior sneer in the father's face—he wanted to hit somebody. How dare they put ideas of vets into Monica's head! He was damned if he was going to submit to an examination by some animal doctor.

He was a human being. In here, yes, but still a human being, with the rights and lordship of a human being. They would not treat him worse than any degenerate junkie, and put him in a cage for observation, and shoot him with a tranquilizer dart, and examine him on some dirty table covered with dog hair.

"I think it would be a good idea to take him to the vet," Monica said. "We could get a full X-ray series. Find out what's going on."

Mr. O'Neill was sampling some of his wife's baked beans. "A Bud'd sure go good with this."

A Bud! The bastard, that's my last Bud in that damn fridge!

"Sure." Cindy spoke casually. Who cared anyway, Bob wouldn't be drinking any more beer, right?

He snarled when he heard the
pschtt
of the can. "Damn! That dog's skittish."

"It's not a dog," Jodie said. "It's their dad."

"Jodie, I don't want you to say that. It's too embarrassing."

"Well, it is."

Mrs. O'Neill looked at Cindy helplessly while the father swilled Bob's beer.

The clock struck nine.
"Mystery's
on Channel Thirteen," Kevin sang out.

"We don't watch that highbrow dreck," O'Neill said.

Bob growled again, harder and not by accident. He wanted to watch
Mystery,
to sit on the couch between his wife and his son, with his damned Bud in his hand, and enjoy every minute of it.

"What do you do, Mr. O'Neill?" Cindy asked smoothly. "Are you in trucking or something?" Atta girl, atta girl, needle the moron!

"No, I teach philosophy, actually, at NYU."

Which philosophers did he teach? Bob wondered. Howard Cosell? Madonna?

Cindy gave up nothing. She simply shrugged. "Bob's an entrepreneur," she said smoothly. "He teaches big companies how to use small computers."

Wonderful woman! O'Neill squirmed. "I've always wanted to have my own business," he said, a whine entering his voice.

Bob decided to get rid of the O'Neills. He trotted over to the dining-room table, where O'Neill sat, beer in one hand, fork in the other, tasting the beans right out of the pot.

But when he tried to unleash a barrage of barking, all he could manage were silent gasps.

Was barking something canines learned, like walking on their hind legs? Surely it was instinctive.

He thought with horror: I don't
have
any canine instincts. I'm not a canine. I have no idea how to bark.

"Do you brush your dog's teeth?" O'Neill asked cheerfully.

"Why, no."

"Why does his breath smell of Crest, then?"

"Uh—maybe—he likes it! Yes, he eats it every chance he gets. Kevin! You must have left the top off the toothpaste again."

"No, Dad brushed his teeth right before—"

Kevin silenced himself, thank God, but the O'Neills all looked sharply at Bob.

"Their dad turned into a wolf," Jodie said again. "That's him."

"Oh, be quiet. Sometimes I think my daughter's a little addled," Mrs. O'Neill said.

"Merely intelligent and imaginative," the father said. "Unlike Spider here. Right, Spider?"

"Right, Dad. I'm fit only for basketball and then the grave."

If Bob couldn't bark—what other routines could dogs pull? Oh, yes, he vividly remembered a damnable Irish setter back when he was a kid. He knew exactly what to do.

Sitting down on his haunches, he prepared to wait. He stared up at O'Neill. Soon the man would get up out of the chair, and then Bob would do his deed. O'Neill was wearing a white cotton sweater and a nice pair of worsted pants. So much the better. Bob waited. When O'Neill met his eyes, he wagged his tail.

"Dog's a paraplegic, or what?"

"What do you mean? He's perfectly healthy."

"I've never seen an animal that bad at wagging its tail. He shakes his rear and just sort of hopes the tail will wiggle."

Cindy put her hand on his head. "I think he does very well, and he has a magnificent tail." Bob heard the sadness in her voice, and his heart was made very full. She was a real fighter, was this Cynthia he had married.

There came a great shuffling and creaking from O'Neill. "Well, we'd better get going. Don't want to miss the ten o'clock news. Channel Five's got the best sports." He laughed. "Also, I've got some papers to grade, if the cat didn't piss on them again." Another laugh, chair pushed back, man standing.

Bob leaped up on him, planting his forepaws on his chest and dragging them down, shredding the sweater and tearing the pants in about four places.

"Oh, Bob, no!" Cindy came, grabbed him around the neck just as he was rising for another pass. "Bob, what in the world are you doing?"

O'Neill lashed out, kicking Bob hard in the chest. The blow hurt and Bob involuntarily bit at the foot that tormented him.

With all her strength Cindy pulled back.

"That dog is crazy," O'Neill snarled. "Look at my clothes—and look at this shoe. Oh, shit, I'm bleeding. Broke the skin."

"It's their dad. You made him mad. He doesn't like you."

"Shut her up, Betty! Look at what it did to my foot!"

"I'll get a Band-Aid, Mr. O'Neill."

"Band-Aid, the hell. Now I'm going over to St. Vincent's. I've got to get a stitch." He tried to walk, hobbled, nearly fell. "Two or three stitches right in the ball of my foot. Betty, where's the car?"