The Wild (26 page)

Of course they were keeping chickens. On the first morning of the south wind, Bob heard them clearly. He smelled melt, too. For three weeks he had eaten exactly two rats. Some of the wolves had eaten nothing at all.

He cocked his ears, he got up, shook himself. Despite the obvious danger, even the foolhardiness, of going into a human place, Bob trotted off south. He had to eat, they all did. It was especially important for the alpha female. Shortly after her encounter with Bob she had gone out of heat. The sexual intensity of the pack had immediately disappeared and they had become a band of companions, flawless in its balance and organization. Day by day Bob watched the nipples grow on her thin body, and when the days were longer and the sun returning from the south, he saw a round-ness to her belly.

He was going to hunt down the town's chickens and goats, and damn the consequences. The pack could always escape across the St. Lawrence if they had to. Canada was far more empty. These wolves had come from there, after all. Only the presence of the town kept them from moving even farther south in search of game.

Well, with him in the pack they could confront the town. He understood towns. Maybe that was why all this had happened, why he was here. Suddenly there was a wolf pack that could survive in close proximity to human beings—indeed, could control its whole relationship to mankind. He glimpsed the edges of a magnificent design here, perhaps even another step in the process of evolution.

Wary but eager—no, desperate, for the pack was starving—he set out toward the town and all its dangers, and its chickens.

The first trip in was a great success. Bob ate two perfectly delicious Rhode Island Reds and took one back to the alpha female. She gobbled it down, leaving only feathers for the other wolves to lick.

When Bob returned to the town a week later, two of the other wolves came with him.

Again they were successful, although only Bob would return with food in his mouth. That was not a wolf tradition, and they could not be made to do it.

Through the last months of winter, the pack gradually moved to within striking distance of the town. They took goats, dogs, more chickens. Sometimes they got rats, once an opossum.

Through the lengthening days the alpha female grew heavy with her burden of cubs. Bob's cubs. He remembered Cindy when she was big with child. They were happy then.

Oh, Cindy, I am so lost.

One night, when the snow was grown soft and the breeze was again in the south, the alpha female gave birth to four magnificent cubs, and one small one. The birthing was abrupt and simple. She expelled the little bundles of fur one by one. Then the afterbirth folded out. She ate it, along with the cub that was too small.

There was happiness among the wolves. Everybody was awake, yapping and sniffing the babies. Bob and the two alphas licked them clean. Bob thought they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen, so soft and tiny, mewing and shaking their heads. They nursed their mother, who lay on her side in a kind of rapture.

It was a good time, with spring coming and plenty of chicken. The cubs grew quickly. Soon it would be time for the thaw. That night all the wolves howled together, and the strongest of the new cubs yapped.

Bob wondered about his cubs. What would they be like as they matured? They had wide heads and quick eyes, and they gazed at him sometimes with the love eyes of children. He began to want to be across the St. Lawrence and away with them.

They loved their mother, nuzzling her, playing in the warm enclosure made by her reclining body. He had thought at first that the cement of a wolf pack was sex, but that had been true only during the time of heat. Now things were more settled and more simple. These creatures were together because they were friends and blood relations, and because they loved one another. The pack was a band of lovers, adoring, gentle, accepting, full of fun and play.

Bob was totally involved now, a bottom wolf still, but he accepted that. He had gained the highest of rights, to impregnate the heated female, and his cubs were his cubs. They crawled all over him when he was still. One little female liked to chew ears, and the sensation was so tickling that Bob could barely stand it.

He would lie very still, until she had crawled up on his muzzle. Then he would snort and jerk his head and she would go tumbling off with a great deal of mewing and snapping. They would lie face-to-face. When they were sleepy, he would lick his cubs, tasting their sweet taste.

One day he found a roach for them to play with, and it was a fine morning. What joy they took in the chase, what merry pleasure!

The presence of the roach should have warned him.

The danger it represented never crossed his mind, though. On a moonless evening, he made his way again to the town. There was a good coop of chickens as yet undisturbed, and he planned on raiding the garbage behind the diner.

No other wolves were with him. Raiding the town was not like hunting. They tended to do it alone or in small groups. Since Bob brought food back, the alpha female never went at all, but relied on him to feed her and the cubs.

Bob was standing just at the edge of town when he realized that everything had changed. He'd always assumed that people would notice the missing livestock, but he felt sure that they would attribute the losses to feral dogs, an annoying problem in any isolated community, but the sort of thing they would put off doing anything about until spring made it easy.

The evening air was soft and almost warm when Bob reached the outskirts of town.

What he smelled stopped him right in the middle of the street. He stood there, paralyzed by deep emotions. The aroma brought crowds of memories: voices, dreams, sunny days. A woman's smell, rich and strong and familiar. That and the scent of a little boy. He knew them, and when the scents reached his heart, he was filled with longing.

Cindy and Kevin were here.

Bob's second mistake was to stand there, staring down the dark street, trying to see into the past. He lingered a moment too long.

Chapter Twenty-Two

T
HE TOTALLY UNEXPECTED PRESENCE OF HIS HUMAN
family froze him.

—Sunday mornings with the
Times.

—
Watching
Mystery
with Kevin and Cindy.

—Reading Kafka, the
Metamorphosis.

—
A good cup of coffee. A good play. Laughing, singing, listening to music. Music, talk: pastries in the afternoon, discussing poetry with Cindy.

—Cindy in the night, Kevin's face when he slept. The life of the family, intimate, infinitely private, gentle.

—Rooms, heat, beds, food on demand.

—Privacy. Being alone. Being naked. Bathing. Being touched by Cindy, touching her. Sharing secret knowledge. The richness of human life.

It all came back, assailing him, sweeping him away on a tide of longing. He had become, truly, a lover: he loved the wolves, the cubs, but he also loved Cindy and Kevin.

The old wolf seduced you with his eyes.

Bob was torn, his heart ached, and when a wolf's heart aches, he is as inspired as when he is joyful or lonely, and he howls, forming with his throat and tongue and lips the music of the wild.

The howl swept down across the town, chilling the March twilight. Men, shining with eagerness, loaded rifles and fueled up snowmobiles. This was an event: wolves in Olana for the first time in living memory. What horror, what fun!

All winter there had been livestock thefts. At first they had attributed it to dogs left behind by summer people. But then they had realized it was wolves. Right there at the end of Ontario Street where the Tucker property began, stood a big, black timber wolf. No doubt about it, they'd come down from Canada because the winter'd been so hard.

Bob stood in confusion as Cindy started to run toward him. His skin quivered—he was repelled by the odd human odors, but also attracted to her, loving her again, that creature from the bright improbable past.

"Run, Bob, run!"

What was she saying? It had been a long time since he had heard words. She was speaking too quickly.

"Bob, run, run for your life!"

Her fear communicated what the words could not. They were simply too fast. In fact the whole town was fast, engines roaring, a siren blaring, people darting about.

He skittered away a little. Had he been seen? He'd come here so many times, he'd gotten used to not being seen.

He had gotten careless.

He knew it for certain when a phalanx of snowmobiles came screaming around the comer, jammed with men and guns.

Oh, God.

He turned and ran, leaving his wife and son and a large part of his heart behind. They had reawakened the man in him, a man who had gone peacefully off to sleep. He loped, choosing a wide, easy stride, the kind that was best for long runs. He could do forty miles like this if he had to. Initially, he wasn't afraid.

His plan was to head straight up the ridge behind the town, then cut through the dense forest just beyond. The snowmobiles wouldn't be able to follow him there. He would get back to the pack and draw them north toward the St. Lawrence. The ice might be getting loose. It was time and past time for them to return to Canada. They could not afford to be caught on this side of the seaway. There just wasn't room in New York for wolves, not even in these relatively empty regions.

The climb up the ridge was hard. He was moving a lot faster than usual, and he felt his wind coming quicker and quicker as he struggled through the sticky snow. If only it hadn't suddenly turned warm!

Behind him the snowmobiles never slowed down. They growled and screamed on the ridge, but they did not slow down.

It was horrible, being chased by such relentless machines. Once a shot rang out, but he wasn't worried about that—nobody was going to hit a moving wolf from a moving snowmobile.

The next shot, though, smacked into the snow not a tail's length from his head. He redoubled his efforts, bounding along, increasingly desperate.

Voices now mixed with the scream of the engines. Men were calling back and forth, their voices gone high with eagerness. "Two hundred pounds," somebody shouted.

"Two-ten," came the cheerful reply.

At the top of the ridge Bob began to be able to go faster, but the snowmobiles also broke out. They raced along behind him. The woods were not a hundred yards away, but he knew they were going to close the gap before he was safe.

He was frantic, running with all the force he could muster, the wind sweeping past, his fur flying, his paws grabbing the ground with practiced efficiency.

The snowmobiles were on him in a matter of a few minutes.

A rifle butt slammed down across his back. He yelped and snapped at it, but he did not stop moving. There were snowmobiles on both sides of him now, and rifles were weaving in the air.

A shot rang out.

Bob, by a miracle, had been missed. Then he saw why: the shot had not come from the snowmobiles, it had come from a man standing off to the left.

"Leave that wolf alone," the man thundered, "in the name of the Mohawk Nation!"

An Indian, by God, and where had he come from? Another gun butt hit Bob, making him roll once in the snow.

Then the Indian fired again, and one of the snowmobiles peeled off, rattling horribly, its occupants diving off into the drifts. It turned over and burst into flames just as Bob reached the edge of the woods.

"You goddamn fool," a voice screamed behind him, "what the hell's the matter with you, that's a damn
wolf!"

"I am not a fool. My name is Joe Running Fox and I'm the last of the goddamn Mohicans. That wolf is sacred to my people."

As Bob twisted and turned among the hemlocks and the pines the voices dwindled behind him. He could have listened but he wasn't interested. The Indian might stop those men for a few hours or even a few days, but they would be back. The pack was in immediate danger of being killed.

The cubs would die.

He raced on, his breath coming in hurting gasps, his blood thundering in his temples.

An hour later he reached the pack in a state of happy relaxation. The cubs were playing with the big alpha male and the little female with the bent tail, still Bob's immediate superior. Better, the middle wolves had taken a raccoon, which lay where it had been hunted down, a deliciously bloody ruin.

Bob's fear caused a little restlessness. The alpha female wagged her tail inquiringly. Others watched him, looking for some signal that would explain his distress.

Their language did not allow for explanations, though. They would have to hear the snowmobiles and smell the men before they would run. Bob dashed north a distance, barking frantically. Some of the younger wolves yapped, infected by his state. The alpha male, who had obviously eaten his fill of raccoon, stretched out on a bare patch of ground and went to sleep.

Night fell. The wolves were happy, and they howled together. Bob felt sure that the hunters were close enough to hear them, and he yapped helpless protest. The howl was so good though, so charming with its racing highs and soaring, laughing combinations of voices that he joined it, too, and when it was over, he almost wanted to leap for the rising moon, he was so full of the gladness that is being a wolf among wolves.

His beloved daughter cub curled up with him this night. He lay with her softness under his chin, listening and sniffing. Although he smelled smoke and may once have heard a faint murmur of voices, the men did not appear.

Next morning Bob arose before dawn, to the protests of the little cub. He nuzzled her and she licked his face, making complicated little noises of love in her throat.

Especially when he was with his cubs, Bob thought he could sense the loving force that was behind the change in him. He sensed it now, and he sensed that it was both uneasy and excited.

His mind went to Cindy and Kevin and he thought,
if only.

But surely it was impossible. No, he was alone in this. People don't change into animals.

He stood, then ran a distance into the deeper woods. He did not like the fact that the thickest forest was to the south. Northward there was a daylong run to the seaway, through mostly scrub woods, over ridge after ridge. The climbing would quickly exhaust the wolves.

From the middle of the woods Bob heard them. The Indian had not been able to turn them back. Now they roared, now they snarled, at least a dozen of them, each carrying one or two armed men.

The wolves had no chance.

He barked furiously, and there was such fear in his voice that every adult wolf in the pack leaped to his feet also barking. In the quiet that followed, Bob heard the snowmobiles again, this time muttering in the far side of the woods. They were tracking him, moving slowly because of the trees.

He took his daughter cub in his mouth and started trotting north. Behind him a few wolves yapped, but the alphas soon heard the snowmobiles also and took flight, each carrying a cub. The scraggly female carried the fourth, a scrappy little male who had once made a neat line of twigs, nosing them through the snow.

The wolves trotted steadily along, the alphas in the lead, then the middle wolves, then the female, and at the end Bob with his daughter, who had obediently fallen asleep.

The snowmobiles came screaming out of the woods not a mile behind them, and fanned out across the wider field they had just left, sending up silver plumes of snow in the dawn light. Bob could not make out the words, but he could hear the delight in the voices. The men must be almost beside themselves, seeing the whole pack. Probably these were the first wolves any of them had seen in the wild.

Shots sounded, snowmobiles shrieked and bounded across the land, eating up the distance. The wolves moved steadily along, going from a trot to a lope, the alphas conserving their strength.

It was a hopeless flight. Before another hour had passed the snowmobiles were flanking the wolves. A shot rang out and the little female ahead of Bob, whom he had faithfully obeyed since they met, whom he loved, to whom he often rolled, exploded in a splash of blood and bone. The cub flew out of her mouth. She lunged, grabbed it, and started trying to pull herself along with her front paws. Then her head was blown apart. The cub was hurled screaming into the air. No sooner had it landed than one of the middle wolves grabbed it.

There was no longer any question of conserving strength. The alphas were running hard now, desperate for anything that could be called shelter.

It was slaughter. They were still miles from the seaway and there was nobody to help them. Again the shots rang out, and this time a middle wolf collapsed, dead of a bullet through his heart. Bob closed the line, slinking low, his daughter cub in his mouth, running as hard as he could. He was thinking little, just following the alphas, hoping he wouldn't get shot.

Another middle wolf was hit. She screamed, blood spurting from her side. The cub she was carrying was picked up by another. She lay down in the snow, panting. Like the others Bob went around her. Her eyes were on the wolves, and he knew why. In her dying there was nothing else she cared to see but the long gray line with its waving tails.

"Don't shoot the fuckin' heads!"

She screamed. Then again, louder. She was dying in agony.

"Don't shoot again! You'll mess up the pelt. It'll die in a minute."

Her agony, though, lasted longer than a minute. In her tortured end she gave the others a little time. But they were terribly tired, so it was time not for more flight but time for rest. They trotted until they heard the snowmobiles grinding gears and starting off again. Then they began to. run.

Bob was right behind the alpha female now. The middle wolves remaining were behind him. Pack order was in confusion. Even if the killing stopped now, it would take days for them to sort themselves out again.

Bob could smell her beautiful musk. God, he loved her. He loved her more than he ever had Cindy—or at least differently. His love for her was without equivocation. It was adoring, plentiful, unashamed. But it was not exclusive: it included the whole pack, male and female alike. Only in time of heat did sexual differences really become important.

The snowmobiles were back. The wolves had fanned out, though, in a hunting spread, and so they could not so easily be flanked. A few shots were fired, all misses.

Then there was some luck: one of the snowmobiles hit a tree and its driver fell off and started screaming. He was holding his head when Bob looked, dark blood coming out between his fingers. The wolves kept running.

As he ran Bob cursed himself. Despite his place at the rear of the pack, he had been subtly leading it just as certainly as if he had been at the front. The wolves did not have his intelligence. Pinned into a wolf suit, he was as deadly to them as if he had been a normal human being. It was he who had roamed too far south, who had discovered the town, who had started the chicken raids. Now the wolves were paying the full penalty for his lack of caution.

The cub in Bob's mouth was beginning to squirm and mew. It must be painful, bouncing along as she was. Then Bob heard the mad buzzing of the snowmobiles again. The other wolves put on a burst of speed but it wasn't long before the hunters were back, firing at the remaining wolves.

Another male went down, crying as he fell, his body pierced in the anus. With a whoop one of the hunters leaped from his snowmobile and began to follow the struggling, dying wolf on foot. Bob knew it had been a good shot; no doubt the only damage to the pelt would be a wound under the tail. The wolf dragged himself along. Bob remembered him playing with the cubs through long, happy hours, letting them climb up his back and then shaking them off amid squeals of cub delight. The dying wolf had not had a cub with him now, which was fortunate because there would be no saving it.

He gurgled and gasped. Looking back, Bob saw his lips twisted back, his legs digging at the snow. Then he went down. Once he barked, and then he was too far behind to watch without slowing down.

A bullet whistled past Bob's skull. He dodged and ran on, slinking to get between some close trees. Another shot cracked and there was a heart-breaking shriek. It was her, she was hurt! Carefully, his mind washed with great clarity, Bob put down his cub and ran for all he was worth to help her. She had a grave wound in her belly. A terrible realization came over Bob when he saw her blue guts dragging in the snow. She fell to her side, gabbling pain. The cub she had been carrying dropped from her mouth.