WOLF STORY (fiction)

(PREVIOUS:  Changed away from first person.)

When her agent called to make a pitch for a deal to illustrate a book by a semi-famous writer, she didn't want to do it.  She hated commissions like that.  They killed any creative desire she had, but she could always use the money.  She had her expenses minimized, which meant living in a little old log cabin up near the top of a ridge near Starr School.  It wasn't high enough to be hit by the high winds, which is probably the only reason it was still there, but it was high enough that her cell phone worked.  Mostly. 

So -- reluctantly -- she agreed.  In preparation she got her good friend Max to put up her tipi near the cabin.  It wasn't big and she hadn't gotten around to painting it yet, though she had some designs sketched.  She didn't want it to be tribal -- since she was white, already trespassing to be living on the rez.

Scribblescribble, as she called the writer, would fly in, using a pilot since the small plane would have to go back to the county seat to be safe.  Anyone who uses this little Starr School airport will soon be surrounded by kids and then the old pickups will begin to gather.  Maybe a few older kids on horseback.  Not a good idea to leave an airplane out there overnight.

Her phone rang.  It was the sheriff saying that he'd just gotten radio contact from the pilot bringing the scribbler.  She should go to the airport, even got there soon enough to run off a half-dozen cattle.  The landing was without incident.  The guy only had one bag and even as he hiked over the grass to meet her, the pilot left again.  Maybe the flier was a little spooked and anxious to get back to the county seat where there was a motel and a decent bar.  There are neither in Starr School.  The only amenity is a Pentecostal church.

Scribblescribble wore a classic blue-striped shirt with jeans and carried a jacket that wasn't black leather.  She was surprised: he himself was Black.  Though he stretched out his hand in greeting, his own eyes were going up and down her in equal surprise.  She was old, female, and white.  Had he expect someone indigeous?  So?  If he wanted to call it off, the plane would have to come back.  He'd best take the chance this would work.

(End of PREVIOUS)

"Scribblescribble" -- as she thought of the writer who had come for these few days to discuss her illustrating his book -- was about to throw his bag into the back of her small pickup, but he hesitated when her dog, riding there, came over to inspect it first.  It was a typical rez dog, a big shepherd mix.

"Not a biter," the old woman reassured him.  "Just my house wolf. Likes to supervise."  As soon as he was mostly in the cab, she slowly pulled out of the circle of kids and curious who had come to see what was happening.  "I don't live far away."  He settled the shoulder case that held his laptop safely on his knees.  He had stored a print-out and a thumb version of his wolf manuscript at home, but it was good to be careful.  He valued his work.

They side-eyed each other, the old woman painter who had not dressed up for the occasion and the elegant Black man who was not certain what he was getting into.  Through the windshield were gentle tawny hills up close; dull purple horizon jagged with mountains, not so distant.  No sign of wolves, just the dog treading back and forth in the bed of the truck as they raised dust on the little two-track road, hit highway, then again turned onto a two-track up to a cabin at the edge of a tree line.  No people were around, but there was a tipi in the yard, white because it was unpainted.

"Do I stay in the tipi?"  He was hopeful.  He'd never been in one but always loved the way they looked.

"Nope."  No explanation.

His bag went into the only bedroom in a lean-to at the back of the cabin.  Then they settled on the front porch.  The artist gave him a sandwich and a mug of milk, which he sipped cautiously since he hadn't drunk milk for many years.  It was pretty good after all.  Agnes, the artist, had set up her easel at the other end of the porch, turned so he couldn't see what she was doing, which she resumed.  In a while he lay back flat on the porch floor, replete and loosened after the tension of the sequence of airliner and then small plane.

When he woke up, the dog was sitting against him, watching his face as it moved in his dreaming.  She didn't lick him until his eyes opened and then she went to work on neck, ears, head -- pausing for only a moment at his unfamiliar close-cropped fuzzy hair -- then going on as though he were her pup.  He couldn't help giggling but he didn't try to stop her.  The artist tried to pretend she didn't notice so she could hide her smile.

By this time Agnes was ready to clean brushes and put away the canvas for the night.  She made quick work of supper and coffee.  He was not allowed to dry dishes.  She preferred to leave them upside down to air dry in the rack.

They settled in two old armchairs with bright slipcovers.  She had been sent his manuscript through the computers and had read it.  "Wolves," she said.  "Full of clichés and psychotherapy, to say nothing of Hollywood."

"Are wolves here?" he asked.  "It surely looks like a place with wolves."

"They were probably watching us on the porch."  Hearing the word "wolves," the dog rose from her favorite thick throw rug and came to sit upright beside them.  "In fact, the last batch of puppies were probably half-wolf.  We're more likely to see deer come out onto the meadow in the dusk."

"But they do call that the wolf hour."

Scrib looked quickly at the dog as if he could tell whether she mated with wolves, but she innocently gazed back.  "Well, the point of my book is to explore all the ways to think about wolves to see what they can tell us.  Science with its DNA studies and investigations of pack dynamics; humanities with its ideas about culture informed by wolves; religion with its projections of good and evil; mythology of wolves raising humans . . ."

"Yes, I get all that. What point of view do you claim as your own?  Or do you wander among them?"  Clearly she didn't recommend wandering in any circumstance.

But it was one of his most cherished theories of thought, that persons should deliberately wander among the alternatives without getting locked into one idea.  This didn't seem the time to defend that.  "I guess that because you are a realistic painter, the point of view here should be sensory and concrete: the deep fur, the alert ears, the strong jaws, the . . .

She cut him off.  "Right.  Well, what are talking here?  Cover, frontispiece, color insertions, marginal sketches?"  They went back and forth for an hour, then separated for sleep.  In her tipi was an old carpet, a foam slab and her sleeping bag, a familiar set-up.  She lay for a while looking up through the tops of the poles at the stars.  Then it seemed a wolf was talking to her -- until there was an explosion.  She opened her eyes to see stars through a hole in the tipi skin a few feet above her head.  Clearly a bullet hole.  The rifle was firing again.  Her dog was going crazy, then went silent.  A truck motor was roaring.

Men had come to illegally spotlight deer along the forest when the animals came out to graze.  It had happened before.  Recklessly she leapt up, realizing her own rifle was in the cabin and running for the open door, only to smash into Scrib in boxers who was too dark to see by starlight.  Pushing past him, grabbing her rifle, she rushed out to the edge of the porch with the gun to her shoulder, ready to fire.  He fell back against the wall to stay out of the way.  He knew gunfire both as a army veteran and as a city-dweller.

The hunters, confident they were out of range, turned off their spotlight and roared away.  She fired after them, hoping for a lucky hit.  There was no dead deer.  Then the two of them got flashlights and looked closer.  There was a dark heap not far away.  Their throats clenched.  They had suspected.

The hunters had shot the dog.  "Oh, nooooo," wailed Scrib and ran to the dog, wanting to hold her even if she was dead, but then pulling back because this was not his dog.

The old woman never wailed.  She had met death many times, always with a stiff spine and braced shoulders, quietly.  Kneeling beside the dark mound, she talked gently to her partner, not quite praying but something more like telling the dog her life of worthiness.  That's when the wolves began to howl, not far away, singing the melody and yipping the chorus.

Much later, all thoughts of books swept aside and the dog wrapped and buried in a special place, Scrib asked the old woman whether she would get another dog.  She smiled, "I thought I would look to find her half-wolf pups now.  Maybe I could get back one of them."

A fine book was assured now.  They had formed an attachment to each other, rather the way wolves do.  Direct experience, intense and uninterpreted, joined them together for the rest of their lives.