Running with the Pack

Red Wolf. Endangered. Rare wolves, indeed.

They looked like dogs, lanky and brown and lolling in the shade of the underbrush at the mouth of their den—two wolves. Charles wondered just what in hell was wrong with him, coming to a zoo. He supposed the patch of woodland was their natural habitat but still, locking up intelligent animals was unfair. That was why he didn’t eat them, after all, because they were smart and felt pain and rejection and the sting of confinement, because they were just as real as he was and deserved to live for themselves instead of being locked up.

Looking down at the bored wolves Charles couldn’t believe what a kid he had been. Even if werewolves were real, which they weren’t, why would he want to be one? He didn’t even eat cheese anymore so why would he want to gnaw bones and rend flesh? Would he scare the Holten Street Clique straight, or fix the crackhead who had killed his mom? What he was doing was daydreaming about violence, no different than some fool thinking a heater or a knife would even the score or keep him safe. What did violence beget? Again, what in hell, Charles? The Vegan Werewolf sounded like a pretty dumb premise for a children’s book, not a mature plan for fixing himself and helping his community, like his mom had—

They came up behind him, braying in their exaggerated dialect, and somehow he knew, as if even then his nose were keener, his ears sharper.

“—bwah, that shit is r-tarded,” one of them hooted.

“See one fight a red-nose pit, that’d be tight,” said another, and Charles turned around and looked at the three white kids from the silver hatchback that had pelted him with garbage his first week on the Southside. There was a fat one with a kango hat, a bulky but strong looking dude, and a wiry little one in a wife beater. None of them looked older than Charles but clearly one of them had a license.

“Hey,” the smallest nodded at Charles and they moved a little way down the boardwalk.

“Nuthin here, either.” The ripped guy said. “Bunk as fuck.”

“My moms’ll go to work in another hour,” the skinny one said. “Try out that gravity B I built?”

“Go ghetto-callin later,” the fat one said in a low voice, glancing over his shoulder at Charles as they turned and went back down the walkway, away from the pen. “My cousin showed me how to get piss into a water balloon.”

Then they were gone around the bend of the wooden boardwalk, and Charles exhaled, light headed and nauseated. Looking down into the enclosure his eyes focused immediately on a small puddle, probably rainwater, and the footprints around it. What else was he going to do that summer? The chain-link fence went right up to the railing of the boardwalk and Charles went over before he chickened out.

Halfway down he realized what he was doing and froze. It took more strength than he knew he had to turn his head, knowing they must be about to pounce and drag him down to a bloody, painful death. Instead he saw the two wolves watching him lazily from their shady lookout. He scrambled the rest of the way down, painfully aware of the noise the metal fence made as he descended into the pen.

Fingers still biting into the fence, he glanced away from the wolves to the muddy earth at his feet. Dry pawprints speckled the ground but a few feet away one was filled with blackish water. Squatting down, he moved like a nervous crab over to the print, the wolves still motionless but watching. Then Charles giggled at how stupid he was being and, dropping onto all fours, stuck his mouth in the pawprint and slurped up a mouthful of muck-water. He coughed on it but stood triumphantly, which was when he saw that only one of the wolves was still lying in the shade watching him.

Charles turned back to the fence, knowing what he would see. The boy had suffered nightmares before, had seen a horror flick or two, and knew what came next. Sure enough, the red wolf stood between him and the fence, its teeth bared, its hackles raised, a low growl bubbling out of its throat. Bullshit, thought Charles, and then it lunged forward.

Charles kept his bloody hand in his pocket as he passed through the museum building and out into the parking lot, dusk creeping down from the dirty clouds. The white kids must still be on the grounds somewhere, the silver hatchback one of the only cars in the lot, and after looking around Charles took his damp shirt off and wrapped his hand in it before getting on his bike. He had only peddled halfway to the main road before he had to ditch his bike and throw up, still terrified and confused.

It knew what he wanted and was helping him, a part of Charles told himself, but the rest of him was certain the wolf had been just as scared as he was, territorial but scared, and that’s why it had fled back to its mate after nipping his hand instead of dragging him down and ripping out his throat. Charles didn’t know how he had made it up the fence afterwards, his bound hand already dying the shirt an impossibly bright red. The silver hatchback passed him as he got back on his bike but none of the kids seemed to notice him, and Charles rode as fast as he could, his stomach twisting, his head pounding, his hand itching.

The setting sun at his back, Charles peddled harder and harder, his bike whining, traffic content to cruise behind him instead of passing the crazy-looking kid flying down the road on a tiny bike. Then the bike was too slow, and in the deepening twilight he left Orange Ave and skidded his bike to a stop on a side road by one of the FAMU gardens. When the last car passed him he hurled the bike down into the gully that ran parallel to Orange and scrambled down the steep bank after it, foam flecking his lips, a fever working its heat from his spinning head down his parched throat and into a ball of fire in his belly. He fell the last few feet down the overgrown slope, kudzu tangling his legs, and lay beside his bike in the shallow, mucky stream at the mouth of the culvert that dipped under the side road. Charles guzzled the water until he vomited, and then he drank more.

The creek had to be toxic, what in hell, Charles, his skin burning and his limbs aching and his bowels pinching, and he scrambled into the wide culvert, away from the headlights shining at the top of the deep ditch. Then all of his bones broke, every single one, and Charles couldn’t even scream from the agony of it, just the sound of the splintering bones making him throw up, except instead of ditchwater a long, dripping tongue spilled out of his mouth, dangling by his chin. Charles tried to stop himself from shitting his pants, as if that were somehow the worst part about dying, as if embarrassment hurt worse than real pain, but he couldn’t even scream so holding it in was futile. Then it was real pain, it was the worst part, and he managed to make his twisting, warping arms get his pants down to relieve the pressure.

The length of spine that had split out of the skin beneath his tailbone extended further without the jeans to constrain it, and that freedom was when the pain turned to pleasure, when Charles finally let himself acknowledge and believe what was happening to him. Not bad water, not exhaustion, not craziness—he was a werewolf, a real werewolf, and he could no longer control himself. He was going to forget himself, he was going to be a deadly beast hunting the crackheads and wannabe gangbangers and ghetto-callers, he would rip them apart and he would lick and he would drink and he would drink and he would lick and when he came back to himself the next morning he would be covered in scratches and bruises and no memory of what had happened, but when he saw a human finger or some bling in the toilet bowl he would realize that it was time to reset the old vegan clock, yes indeed, and every full moon it would happen and—

Charles realized it had finished, his body trembling but again complete and static, yet he was still himself. Mentally, at least—his eyes were sharper, as were his nose and ears and, flexing his paws in the drainage pipe, his claws. Trying to get up, Charles felt the faintest tinge of disappointment that children do when things do not go exactly as they expect—he was not some hulking, half-human lupine monster who could walk on his hind-legs, he was a wolf, and not even a very large one. Nevertheless, moving on all fours felt so natural and cool that Charles laughed, a raspy, alien growl. Standing at the mouth of the pipe, he licked his chops and looked up at the full moon, wondering if it had been the water in the footprint or the bite or simply his desire. Then he tried howling, and it came as naturally as walking had, and dogs took up the cry all over Tallahassee.

Staying to the channel, Charles marveled at how stunning the night was, the smells and sounds so rich he felt like he was gobbling them up, and he only left the wild of the filthy brook when streetlights began spilling down into the dark ravine. He waited until the sounds of cars were a safe distance off and scrambled up the side, the trickiest maneuver thus far. Then he crossed Orange and headed home by way of the FAMU campus, smelling and hearing any would-be witnesses long before they caught a glimpse of him, and if anyone working late at the university saw a large dog loping across the parking lots it did not make the paper the next day.

Southside was beautiful under the full moon, Charles realized, beautiful but sad. The scarcity of streetlights in this particular urban area allowed him to walk right up the middle of the street, his nails clicking on the rough pavement, and whenever headlights rounded a corner he cut into a backyard or under a house, most of them raised shotgun houses like his with plenty of room for a beast to hide until the car passed.