Wolfsong (3 page)

She was charming. The man smiled at her politely. She touched his hand, just a slight scrape of her fingernails. He ordered soup. She laughed. He asked for cream and sugar for his coffee. She said her name was Jenny. He said he would like another napkin. She left the table looking slightly disappointed.

“Meal and a show,” I muttered. The man grinned at me like he’d heard.

“Figure out what you want, kiddo?” Mom asked as she came back to the table.

“Burger.”

“You got it, handsome.”

I smiled because I adored her.

The man looked at my mom as she walked away. His nostrils flared. Looked back at me. Cocked his head. Nostrils flared again. Like he was… sniffing? Smelling?

I copied him and sniffed the air. It smelled the same to me. Like it always did.

The man laughed and shook his head. “It’s nothing bad,” he said. His voice was deep and kind. Those teeth flashed again.

“That’s good,” I said.

“I’m Mark.”

“Ox.”

An eyebrow went up. “That so?”

“Oxnard.” I shrugged. “Everyone calls me Ox.”

“Ox,” he said. “Strong name.”

“Strong like an ox?” I suggested.

He laughed. “Heard that a lot?”

“I guess.”

He looked out the window. “I like it here.” So much more was said in those words, but I couldn’t even come close to grasping any of it.

“Me too. Mom said people don’t stay here.”

He said, “You’re here,” and it felt profound.

“I am.”

“That your mom?” He nodded toward the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“She’s here, then. Maybe
they
don’t always stay here, but some do.” He looked down at his hands. “And maybe they can come back.”

“Like going home?” I asked.

That smile came back. “Yes, Ox. Like going home. That’s… it smells like that here. Home.”

“I smell bacon,” I said sheepishly.

Mark laughed. “I know you do. There’s a house. In the woods. Down off McCarthy. It’s empty now.”

“I know that house! I live right near it.”

He nodded. “I thought you might. It explains why you sme—”

Jenny came back. Brought him his soup. He was polite again, nothing more. Not like he’d been with me.

I opened my mouth to ask him something (anything) when my mom came back out. “Let him eat,” she scolded me as she placed the plate in front of me. “It’s not nice to interrupt someone’s dinner.”

“But I—”

“He’s okay,” Mark said. “I was the one being intrusive.”

Mom looked wary. “If you say so.”

Mark nodded and ate his soup.

“You stay here until I’m off,” Mom told me. “I don’t want you walking home in this. It’s only until six. Maybe we can watch a movie when we get home?”

“Okay. I promised Gordo I’d be at the shop early tomorrow.”

“No rest for us, huh?” She kissed my forehead and left me to it.

I wanted to ask Mark more questions, but I remembered my manners. I ate my burger instead. It was slightly charred, just the way I liked it.

“Gordo?” Mark asked. It was almost a question, but also like he was trying out the name on his tongue. His smile was sad now.

“My boss. He owns the body shop.”

“That right,” Mark said. “Who would have thought?”

“Thought what?”

“Make sure you hold on to her,” Mark said instead. “Your mom.”

I looked up at him. He seemed sad. “It’s just us two,” I told him quietly, as if it were some great secret.

“Even more reason. Things will change, though. I think. For you and her. For all of us.” He wiped his mouth and pulled out his wallet, pulling a folded bill out and leaving it on the table. He stood and pulled his coat back over his shoulders. Before he left, he looked down at me. “We’ll see you soon, Ox.”

“Who?”

“My family.”

“The house?”

He nodded. “I think it’s almost time to come home.”

“Can we—” I stopped myself because I was just a kid.

“What, Ox?” He looked curious.

“Can we be friends when you come home? I don’t have many of those.” I didn’t have any except for Gordo and my mom, but I didn’t want to scare him away.

His hand tightened into a fist at his side. “Not many?” he asked.

“I speak too slow,” I said, looking down at my hands. “Or I don’t speak at all. People don’t like that.” Or me, but I had already said too much.

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you speak.”

“Maybe.” If enough people said it, it had to be partially true.

“Ox, I’m going to tell you a secret. Okay?”

“Sure.” I was excited because friends shared secrets so maybe that meant we were friends.

“It’s always the ones who are the quietest who often have the greatest things to say. And yes, I think we’ll be friends.”

He left then.

I didn’t see my friend again for seventeen months.

THAT NIGHT
as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I heard a howl from deep in the woods. It rose like a song until I was sure it was all I could ever want to sing. It went on and on and all I could think of was
home, home, home
. Eventually, it fell away and so did I.

I told myself later it was just a dream.

“HERE,” GORDO
said on my fifteenth birthday. He shoved a badly wrapped package into my hands. It had snowmen on it. Other guys from the shop were there. Rico. Tanner. Chris. All young and wide-eyed and alive. Friends of Gordo’s who’d grown up with him in Green Creek. They were all grinning at me, waiting. Like they knew some big secret that I didn’t.

“It’s May,” I said.

Gordo rolled his eyes. “Open the damn thing.” He leaned back in his ratty chair behind the shop and took a deep drag on his cigarette. His tattoos looked brighter than they normally were. I wondered if he’d gotten them touched up recently.

I tore through the paper. It was loud. I wanted to savor it because I didn’t get presents often, but I couldn’t wait. It only took seconds, but it felt like forever.

“This,” I said when I saw what it was. “This is….”

It was reverence. It was grace. It was beauty. I wondered if this meant I could finally breathe. Like I had found my place in this world I didn’t understand.

Embroidered. Red. White. Blue. Two letters, stitched perfectly.

Ox
, the work shirt read.

Like I mattered. Like I meant something. Like I was important.

Men don’t cry. My daddy taught me that. Men don’t cry because they don’t have time to cry.

I must not have been a man yet because I cried. I bowed my head and cried.

Rico touched my shoulder.

Tanner rubbed a hand over my head.

Chris touched his work boot to mine.

They stood around me. Over me. Hiding me away should anyone stumble in and see the tears.

And Gordo put his forehead to mine and said, “You belong to us now.”

Something bloomed within me and I was warm. It was like the sun had burst in my chest and I felt more alive than I had in a long time.

Later, they helped me put on the shirt. It fit perfectly.

I TOOK
a smoke break with Gordo that winter. “Can I have one?”

He shrugged. “Don’t tell your ma.” He opened the box and pulled a cigarette out for me. He held up the lighter and covered the flame against the wind. I took the cig between my lips and put it toward the fire. I inhaled. It burned. I coughed. My eyes watered and gray smoke came out my nose and mouth.

The second drag was easier.

The guys laughed. I thought maybe we were friends.

SOMETIMES I
thought I was dreaming but then realized I was actually awake.

It was getting harder to wake up.

GORDO MADE
me quit smoking four months later. He told me it was for my own good.

I told him it was because he didn’t want me stealing his cigarettes anymore.

He cuffed the back of my head and told me to get to work.

I didn’t smoke after that.

We were all still friends.

I ASKED
him once about his tattoos.

The shapes. The patterns. Like there was a design. All bright colors and strange symbols that I thought should be familiar. Like it was on the tip of my tongue. I knew they went all the way up his arms. I didn’t know how far they went beyond that.

He said, “Everyone has a past, Ox.”

“Are they yours?”

He looked away. “Something like that.”

I wondered if I would ever etch my past onto my skin in swirls and colors and shapes.

TWO THINGS
happened on my sixteenth birthday.

I was officially hired at Gordo’s. Had a business card and everything. Filled out tax forms that Gordo helped me with because I didn’t understand them. I didn’t cry that time. The guys patted me on the back and joked about how they no longer worked in a sweatshop with child labor. Gordo gave me a set of keys to the shop and smeared some grease on my face. I just grinned at him. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him so happy.

I went home that afternoon and told myself I was a man now.

Then the second thing happened.

The empty house at the end of the lane was no longer empty and there was a boy on the dirt road in the woods.

tornado/soap bubbles

I WALKED
down the road toward the house.

It was warm, so I took off my work shirt. I left the white tank top on. A breeze cooled my skin.

The keys to the shop were heavy in my pocket. I pulled them out and looked at them. I’d never had that many keys before. I felt responsible for something.

I put them back in my pocket. I didn’t want to take the chance of losing them.

And then he said, “Hey! Hey there! You! Hey, guy!”

I looked up.

There was a boy standing in the dirt road, watching me. His nose was twitching and his eyes were wide. They were blue and bright. Short blond hair. Tanned skin, almost as much as mine. He was young and small and I wondered if I was dreaming again.

“Hello,” I said.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Ox.”

“Ox? Ox! Do you smell that?”

I sniffed the air. I didn’t smell anything other than the woods. “I smell trees,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s something
bigger
.”

He walked toward me, his eyes going wider. Then he was running.

He wasn’t big. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. He collided with my legs, and I barely took a step back. He started climbing me, hooking his legs around my thighs and pulling himself up until his arms were around my neck and we were face to face. “It’s you!”

I didn’t know what was going on. “What’s me?”

He was in my arms now. I didn’t want him to fall. He took my face in his hands and squished my cheeks together. “Why do you smell like that?” he demanded. “Where did you come from? Do you live in the woods? What are you? We just got here.
Finally
. Where is your house?” He put his forehead against mine and inhaled deeply. “I don’t get it!” he exclaimed. “What
is
it?” And then he was crawling up and over my shoulders, feet pressed against my chest and neck until he clambered onto my back, arms around my neck, chin hooked on my shoulder. “We have to go see my mom and dad,” he said. “They’ll know what this is. They know
everything
.”

He was a tornado of fingers and feet and words. I was caught in the storm.

His hands were in my hair, pulling my head back as he said he lived in the house at the end of the lane. That they had just arrived today. That he had moved from far away. He was sad to leave his friends behind. He was ten. He hoped to be big like me when he grew up. Did I like comic books? Did I like mashed potatoes? What was Gordo’s? Did I get to work on Ferraris? Did I ever blow up any cars? He wanted to be an astronaut. Or an archeologist. But he couldn’t be those things because one day he’d have to be a leader instead. He stopped talking for a little while after he said that.

His knees dug into my sides. His hands wrapped around my neck. The sheer weight of him was almost too much for me to take.

We came upon my house. He made me stop so he could look at it. He didn’t get down from my back. Instead, I hitched him up higher so he could see.

“Do you have your own room?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s just me and my mom now.”

He was quiet. Then, “I’m sorry.”

We’d just met. He had nothing to apologize for. “For?”

“For whatever just made you sad.” Like he knew what I was thinking. Like he knew how I felt. Like he was here and real.

“I dream,” I said. “Sometimes it feels like I’m awake. And then I’m not.”

And he said, “You’re awake now. Ox, Ox, Ox. Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

He whispered, as if saying it any louder would make it untrue, “
We live so close to each other
.”

We turned toward the house at the end of the lane.

The afternoon was waning. The shadows were stretching. We walked among the trees, and up ahead, there were lights. Bright lights. A beacon calling someone home.

Three cars. One SUV. Two trucks. All were less than a year old. All had Maine license plates. Two thirty-foot moving trucks.

And the people. All standing. Watching. Waiting. Like they knew we were coming. Like they’d heard us from far away.

Two were younger. One guy was my age. The other guy maybe a little younger. They were blond and smaller than me, but not by much. Blue eyes and curious expressions. They looked like the tornado on my back.

There was a woman. Older. The same coloring as the others. She held herself regally, and I wondered if I’d ever seen anyone more beautiful. Her eyes were kind but cautious. She was tense, like she was ready to move at any moment.

A man stood next to her. He was darker than the rest, more like me than the others. He was fierce and foreboding and all I could think was
respect, respect, respect
, though I’d never seen him before. His hand was on the woman’s back.