Wild Things: Four Tales (2 page)

The boy wouldn't tell him. He shook his head and said, "I just hunt. That's all. I can hunt and trap and shoot. I win a lot of trophies at the fairground. I can shoot just about anything. Could since I was a boy. First kill was a rabbit when I was ten."

"Jack rabbit?"

"Peter Cottontail," the boy said.

The man said, "What's the last thing you killed?"

The boy didn't answer.

The man said, "First thing I ever killed was a wolf. I was younger than you. You kill a wolf, you start to understand it."

After that, there wasn't much talk around the fire, and the man chuckled to himself when he rolled over to sleep. They had to sleep close beside each other for warmth. The boy's breathing kept him awake for another two hours.

The next day, they went off toward Needle Heights, the bony points of the mountain that crossed into the mountain range leading up north.

The boy asked him what he smelled in the air, and what signs of the wolf he followed, for the boy could not track as well as the man and knew it. At twilight, the man told him, "I learned from the old mountain men, when I was a boy. There are ways to track wolves. Different from tracking other animals. There was a mountain man, half-Cherokee half Scot. He was an old man, and he took me out to hunt wolves back in the days when we all hunted wolves. He told me that a wolf who got a taste for sheep would draw other wolves down to the ranches. You have to kill them before they can get back up to their pack. Usually, it's the young males. You see it with them first. Old wolves, they know not to go in the valleys, to the ranches. The young ones just see sheep and want them. We tracked this wolf for nine days, and when we finally cornered him, he didn't seem like a wolf anymore. He seemed like a man. I felt as if I knew him, just like I know you. I saw his eyes and I could almost tell what he was thinking. He wanted what you might want. Yes, you. What a lot of men want. He wanted a bite of it. A piece of it. He had wiles and instinct. He knew that if he found a pen full of sheep he might eat better than if he spent his time chasing deer or rabbit."

"Wolves are like rabid dogs," the boy said.

"You just never met one yet," the man said. "They're smart. When they feel threatened, they attack. When you hunt a wolf, you don't let him know he's being hunted until you absolutely have to do it. You wait. You have patience.

You let him think you're just part of the scenery. Just another wolf, maybe. This wolf.

He's just looking for the sheep and then a place to hide. When he finds the prize sheep, that's the one he wants. He doesn't want the sickly or the scrawny. He wants the best."

"It's funny we kill 'em, then," the boy said. "'Cause that's the way some people are. Some people I could name. Where I live."

"Wolves know each other," the man said. "When I had that wolf cornered, when I was younger than you, that wolf looked at me and knew I was a wolf, too. He'd met his match. Only I wasn't a wolf until that day. I didn't want to take a bite of anything until that day. You think you're a wolf, son?"

"A wolf? No."

"Some people are sheep. Maybe most people. And a few people in a thousand may be the vigilant dog that guards the sheep. Now and then, there's even a shepherd. But whenever a group of sheep are together, a wolf always comes 'round. You can count on it. That's why I get work. I'm an expert at wolf killing. They know it in towns in this region.

Somebody talks to somebody, and they call me in and pay my fee," the man said. "And I track the wolf. I don't make errors. I don't let the wolf know he's being tracked. I usually work alone. I make sure the wolf I kill is the wolf that's causing distress for people. I don't just kill wolves because I can. I find the right wolf and I do my business."

"I think all of them should just be killed. Every wolf. They all eventually will come down to the sheep. That's what I think," the boy said.

"That would be wrong," the man said, looking the boy in the eye. "What if a man killed another man? Should all men be killed because that one man did wrong? Of course not."

"We're talking wolves, not men."

"Some men are wolves," the man said.

When they had crossed into the deep forest, the man thought for sure the wolf was near. He motioned for the boy to remain silent and at the ready. The man pointed toward the ramble up ahead, overgrown with dead vines.

He gave the signal for the boy to step ahead of him.

The boy raised his rifle up. He stepped slowly between the rocks and trees.

Breaking the silence, the man said, "I was wrong. It's not him."

The boy glanced back at him. His face gleamed bright red with sweat. "How do you know?"

"It's a bitch," the man said. "Heavy with cubs. I don't hunt like that."

The boy moved forward. The man raised his rifle and shot it into the air above the boy's head.

Birds flew out from the underbrush, and the boy turned around in anger.

At camp that night, the boy said, "You did that to scare me."

The man nodded. "We are after one wolf only. We don't shoot any others."

"How do you know she wasn't the wolf?"

"I know the wolf is male. I know its size. I know the color of its coat. And I know its track. This was not the wolf."

"I say kill them all," the boy said.

"You're not a hunter if that's how you feel," the man said. "You may win a hundred trophies, son, but a hunter does not wish to kill them all."

"I hate wolves," the boy said. "I'm tired. I want to go home. The food is awful. Your coffee's awful. I want to be in my bed. At home."

"I know you do," the man said. "You shouldn't have come with me. But here you are. Make the best of it. We'll have him soon." After a moment, the man asked, "Why did you come?"

"I owe it to him. The rancher."

"What do you owe him?"

"I made a mistake once, on his ranch. With him. I need to make it right."

"Mistakes can be forgiven," the man said. "But it's not good to make them."

The boy's lip turned up into a snarl. "That was a mistake. What you did today. Shooting like that. Warning the wolf. He was probably nearby."

"Everyone makes mistakes."

"I bet when they hired you..."

"They?" the man asked.

"The people in town. The ranchers. I bet when they hired you they thought you'd have this done fast. They sent me to learn from you, I bet. Learn. What I learned so far is you worry about wolves too much."

"I wasn't hired by people. I was hired by a person."

The boy thought about this for a moment, and seemed to chew on it. "The rancher was good to me once, but that changed. Maybe it was the wolf attacking his stock. Maybe it was something else."

"You see him as a rancher. I know him as a man who lost his only daughter."

The boy went silent for several minutes. The man watched him.

Then, the boy said, "Not my fault, either."

"I believe you," the man said.

"I didn't do that to her," the boy said.

"I believe you," the man said. "But he hired me to track this wolf. You came along because he wanted you to know what it meant to track a wolf. That's all."

"She was a good girl," the boy said. "We would've been married if...it doesn't matter. It was an accident."

"I know nothing about her or you," the man said. "I just know I was hired to track the wolf. You are the local boy who has all the hunting trophies. So you came with me."

"I wanted to help him. Her father. To make up for it," the boy said.

"If it was an accident," the man said, "then there was nothing to make up for."

The man glanced over at the rifles, placed well-beyond the fire, in a ditch between rocks and a rotting log.

The boy began to get up as if he, too, thought about the rifles.

The man drew out the gun tucked under his coat, and pointed it at the boy. "Stay where you are, son," he said.

"You're not tracking the wolf," the boy said.

The man stood up and moved closer to the boy. He whispered to the boy that he should not be afraid.

The boy looked as if he might turn and run at any minute, but the man's whispers were calming. The man spoke about how everything would be all right.

"I didn't kill her," the boy said. "Her father is crazy. I didn't kill her. She decided to do what she did. I had no part of it. I was hunting with my uncles. She thought I had abandoned her. I would've married her. I would've come back. If I had known. I would have. She was good. She was a wonderful girl. I knew I wanted a girl like that. Any man would. You would've if you had known her. She was like an angel to people. I saw it the minute I laid eyes on her. She was one of the good ones. Not all people are good, are they? But she was. She was a good one."

The man aimed the gun to the side of the boy's head. "Most people are sheep," the man said. "A few are the dogs that guard the sheep. Now and then there is a shepherd, but they are rare. But there are always wolves. A wolf wants to find the best of the sheep and devour it. That is all a wolf wants to do when it finds sheep. That is all it can do."

After the man bound the boy's hands and legs, he went to get his rifle. He stood several feet back from the boy, estimating where best to make the killing shot.

A Madness of Starlings

1

What possessed me to retrieve the little fledgling, I can’t say for sure. I rescued the baby bird from the jaws of the tiger-striped tomcat that had been stalking it. I wanted to show my boys that the smallest of life sometimes needed protection from the predators.

I brought it into the house, hoping to wait out the cat’s bloodlust. My two boys came out to look at it. I warned them not to touch the bird just then. “The less contact it has with people, the better.”

After an hour, I took the bird outside again. My kids watched from the living room window.

It hopped in the tall summer grass that I had not gotten to with the mower. Its mouth opened wide, up to the skies, expecting its mother to come with food.

I stepped back onto the porch and scanned the area to make sure no cat returned. I hoped that the bird’s mother would return and feed it so that the balance of nature could be restored and I’d have no more responsibility.

An hour later, the fledgling continued to hop and squawk and open its mouth to heaven. No mother arrived. I had lost my own mother when young, and did not like remembering this when I saw the bird I came to call Fledge. Loss was the bad thing in life. I hated it, and didn’t wish it on a baby bird.

I took the little guy in, and my wife, Jeanette, and the boys (little William and tall Rufus) helped me build a cage for it as part of our “Saturday Family Project.” At first, Fledge would not eat from my hand – or from a straw. But we picked up some mealworms and crickets from the pet store in town, and soon enough, the little guy hunted them up on the floor of his cage. Devouring fifty worms a day and perhaps ten crickets, Fledge grew fast. Within five days, the little guy had full feathers and the boys and I took him into the rec room from flight training. He flew from Rufus’ fingers to the bookcase.

I had to put a stepladder up to rescue him from the highest shelf.

“We have to let him go,” I told the boys. “He’s ready to fly. He’s eaten a lot and knows how to catch crickets and peck for worms on his own.”

“Isn’t he a pet?” William pleaded. “He’s ours now.”

Rufus, the elder at nine, added, “He can’t survive out there, Dad. He can’t. He’s too used to us.”

“It’s only been a week,” I said. “He belongs out there.”

“I heard birds only live a couple of years out there,” Rufus said. “I bet in his cage, he’d live a long time.”

“He’s a wild bird, he’s meant to be out there. Besides, when we go to Florida in February, who’s going to take care of him?

Will you clean the cage for the next twelve years if he lives that long? Every day that cage needs cleaning,” I said.

Rufus looked very sad, and William’s eyes glistened with the easy tears of a little boy who won’t accept loss. “But Daddy,” he said. “Daddy, I love Fledge.”

“I know,” I said. “But don’t you want Fledge to be happy?”

William nodded. “I want him safe.”

“He’s happy here,” Rufus said. “Now. He won’t be happy when a cat gets him. Or when an eagle gets him.”

“We don’t have eagles around here.”

“Or when he gets some disease and nobody takes him to the vet.”

“I’m going to miss him,” William said. “Bye-bye Fledge.”

“Look, he’ll be around the yard. He’s a starling. They’re always here. He’ll probably fly around and make a nest under your bedroom window.”

William’s eyes brightened. A smile crept across his face.

Noticing that I had turned the corner on William’s emotional rollercoaster and now things were heading upward, I said, “And whenever you see him hurt, you can run out and bring him in and we’ll take him to the bird doctor, if you want.”

Rufus had begun to scowl. “I saw a dead bird out by the curb. That’s what’s going to happen to him if we let him go.”

“Roof,” I said. “Roof, look. When you grow up, we’re going to let you go. You’re going to fly away. And as much as I’d like to put you in a cage here so I can always see you, I know that’s going to be wrong.”

Of course, he didn’t understand this. My kid felt he’d never leave the house nor

his parents nor this protected world of childhood. But I knew he would.

I knew the bird needed to get out and live just like my kids would one day need to get out and spread their wings. Even when the tomcats of life got them.

The shelter of childhood was temporary, at best.

The boys put up more protests, with Rufus cataloguing the bleak prospects of a bird in our suburban world. I countered his arguments with tales of birds flying over the treetops, or Mother Nature, or how Fledge saw us as giant monsters that were not like his parents or brothers and sisters. “Starlings have to fly twenty miles a day to really enjoy life.”

Finally, I let the discussion die down. When the boys were out playing with friends, I took Fledge onto my fingers, and leaned out the second-story window of our house.