Pack of Dorks

by Beth Vrabel

  The two pups rolled over each other, sending up a little dust cloud. One yipped, scooted to his legs, and dashed toward us. The other followed. The gray wolf rolled back onto her legs and watched.

  “They were going to be put down at the shelter,” Aunt Shelley said, “until Adam took them in. Had to drive across three states to get them.”

  “Put down?” I asked.

  “It means killed,” Sam said.

  Aunt Shelley nodded. “Wolf-dogs are always killed at shelters. They don’t have a chance. And we probably wouldn’t have been able to take them if they weren’t pups.”

  The gray wolf—named Luna—was also a wolf-dog. Aunt Shelley told us about half of the sanctuary’s population were actually wolf-dogs and not full wolves. She said a few years earlier, Luna’s owners drove to the sanctuary and begged Adam and Marcia to take her. She had attacked the neighbor’s dog and had to go. If the sanctuary wouldn’t take her, she’d be killed.

  “Luna fit in right away and joined a pack with Antonia and Winter. They’re two of our oldest wolves. Were two of our oldest.” Her voice caught on “were.”

  “They passed away?” Mrs. Righter asked softly.

  “Yeah,” Aunt Shelley grunted. “Winter got sick. Cancer. Died about six months ago. Antonia stopped eating. Tried everything to get her to bounce back. Even Luna would drop food by her muzzle. Nothing worked. Died four months later.”

  “That’s so sad,” I said.

  Aunt Shelley shrugged. “Animals die. People die. That’s the way it works.” But the way she crossed her arms like she was holding herself together made me think it wasn’t the way Aunt Shelley wanted it to work. “Anyway, we thought Luna would be next. Stopped eating. Stopped playing. Just laid around. Then we got these pups. Took a chance Luna would be maternal. And she is.”

  By now, Luna was up and trotting toward the pups. I guess they were getting too close to us for her liking. She circled around them and then took off running. The pups chased her, yipping and bouncing like it was the best game ever.

  “That’s the thing about wolves,” Aunt Shelley added. “No matter how much they’re messed up from people or other wolves, they always take care of pups. No wolf I’ve ever met has rejected one.”

  “What if there is something wrong with a pup?” I whispered.

  “What could be wrong with a pup?” Aunt Shelley asked, then turned and went back to the cart. Sam bumped his shoulder gently into mine as he turned, and I knew he did it purpose.

  The sad howl we had heard earlier rang out again. Once again, no other wolves joined in. Aunt Shelley stopped walking and listened.

  “Let’s go meet Sascha,” she said.

  We wound around more dirt paths to another fenced-in enclosure. Marcia and Adam were already there, holding walkie-talkies to their mouths and staring at the reddish brown wolf pacing a few yards in from the fence.

  “Sascha,” Aunt Shelley said as if she were introducing us. At the sound of her name, the wolf stopped pacing for a moment and stared at us. Her head tilted upward slightly and her tail rose a little, too.

  “She’s striking her alpha pose,” Aunt Shelley murmured. Another wide smile tugged her leathery cheeks.

  “You like this wolf,” I said.

  Aunt Shelley nodded. “I do.”

  Marcia moved a little closer. “Shelley’s one of the few humans Sascha seems to trust. She came here a few months ago, too mean for the owner’s new wife and too skinny to be healthy. She hasn’t felt a heck of a lot of love in her life.”

  “How old is she?” asked Sam, walking a bit closer to the enclosure as Sascha circled slowly toward us. Mrs. Righter grabbed the back of Sam’s T-shirt and pulled him back a few inches.

  “She’s about two years old,” Marcia said. “Now that she’s closer, check out that bald patch around her neck.” I nodded as I glimpsed the bare, raw looking skin around her furry neck. “She was chained up, barely given enough length to stand, for most of the day.”

  “Except when she figured out how to dig up the spike holding her,” Adam said. “Then she’d rip through the neighborhood with the chain dangling behind her, terrorizing lap dogs and demolishing trash cans.”

  Marcia didn’t smile. She bit her lip hard and shook her head. “Despite getting beat every time her owners caught her, despite being trapped and starved as punishment all over again, she misses them.”

  Adam put a hand on Marcia’s shoulder. It was obvious they both really loved this wolf. “And despite her loneliness, Sascha has refused to join any of our packs.”

  “What do you mean refused?” I asked. Sascha, almost like she understood me, growled softly with teeth bared as I stepped closer to the fence.

  “I guess she’s got trust issues,” Marcia laughed. “She attacks any wolf that we’ve tried to get her to bond with. She’s lonely without a pack, but not willing to trust the other animals, either. Especially since the other packs already have alphas—or leaders—and Sascha seems to think of herself as top dog. We try to let the animals react naturally, solve issues the way they would in the wild. But we also have a responsibility to keep them safe. We couldn’t let her keep on attacking and being attacked. It was getting dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” I asked.

  Marcia opened her mouth to answer, but Aunt Shelley beat her to it. “A wolf without a pack, it gets odd acting.”

  “Sort of like people who live all by themselves,” I said. And then I realized that Aunt Shelley lives all by herself. And she was sort of odd, too. My face flamed, and Sam stared at his sneakers. Luckily, Aunt Shelley hadn’t picked up on what I had said.

  Marcia smiled into the distance. “Exactly.”

  Adam stepped aside to talk on his radio to another sanctuary worker. A few minutes later, he crunched across the dirt path toward us. He seemed like the kind of person who manages to make a lot of noise doing something other people can do soundlessly. He clapped his hands together and bounced on the balls of his feet. “Hank’s bringing Ralph over now. You kids are in for a treat. Or a disaster. One or the other.”

  “Oh, Adam!” Marcia laughed again, but it sounded strained. Hank, she then told us, was another sanctuary volunteer. Ralph was a new resident.

  “Ralph?” I asked.

  Marcia’s teeth squeaked as she ground them together. “Some workers here believe we’ve gotten a bit too flowery in our naming of the animals.”

  Adam turned slightly from Marcia. “We have Luna, Sascha, Balthasar, Sebastian, Cathness, Juno, and Arturo. And then someone goes ahead and names those pups Timon and Alcibiades.”

  “I was an English major, okay!” Marcia turned on Adam with a shriek. Mrs. Righter pulled both Sam and I back by the shoulders. “Those names are noble. They have meaning.”

  “So does Ralph,” Aunt Shelley said.

  “My dad says ralph instead of puke.” Darn it. I did the speaking-out-loud thing again.

  Marcia, Adam, and Aunt Shelley stared at me for a moment.

  “Is that Hank?” asked Mrs. Righter, her grip not at all loosening on my shoulder. A man drove the beat-up looking red pickup truck we had seen earlier at the center building. A huge dog crate was in the truck bed.

  “Kids, into the golf cart, please,” motioned Adam, not paying any attention at all when Sam and I grumbled. Mrs. Righter all but pushed us into the cart.

  “I seriously doubt being in this golf cart will save us if Ralph goes crazy,” Sam pointed out. “I mean, it doesn’t even have doors.”

  It felt a bit refreshing to have someone else state the obvious for a change.

  Hank jumped out of the truck, spilling splotches of coffee across his already dirty sanctuary T-shirt. “We’re here! We’re here! Didn’t want to get in the cage, but he did! Now we’re here!”

  This guy I could totally picture being April’s relative. He gulped down some more coffee, then went to the back of the truck. A short bark came from the cage, and I glimpsed dark, almost black fur. Sascha stopped pacing and stared,
her tail high and the fur standing almost straight up around her face.

  “So, what’s Ralph’s story?” Sam called out.

  I thought everyone would ignore us, but Aunt Shelley came right over. She was as bouncy as Hank, and I guessed some of his energy was more nerves than caffeine. Aunt Shelley told us Ralph had gotten to the sanctuary less than a month earlier. He got loose on a farm where they were breeding wolf-dogs. “Only we think they were more wolf than dog,” she said.

  Ralph, who was about a year old, was one of the ones the farmers were keeping to breed. Like almost all the animals on the farm, Ralph had been really sick, practically starved and chained up.

  “He’s got the same bald ring around his neck, only Ralph’s collar had never been changed since he was a pup. Our vets had to surgically remove it,” Aunt Shelley said.

  By now Hank had bounced over toward us. He stood really close to Aunt Shelley, but she kept backing away. Hank didn’t seem to notice, just moved closer to her again. Eventually, Aunt Shelley was trapped against the cart.

  “Poor Ralph was caught by animal control,” Hank said.

  “Animal control?” I asked.

  “Folks who catch animals and take them to shelters,” Aunt Shelley said. “Except wolves. They’re euthanized.”

  “That’s horrible!” said Mrs. Righter, who covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Hey, you’re starting to like wolves!” I cheered.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she blurted. “No offense,” she nodded toward Hank and Aunt Shelley, “but I certainly don’t like the idea of systemically killing them.”

  “Neither do the animal control workers,” Aunt Shelley said. “Not all of them, anyway. One gave Adam the heads up that they had collected the animals from the wolf-dog breeding mill. He headed over right away.”

  “Ralph was at the end of the line,” Hank said. “I mean, for real. All these cages were lined up in two rows. The animal control workers held Ralph in a cage at the end. These animal control folks were putting them down, one by one.”

  “Ralph had to watch every other member of his family be killed,” Aunt Shelley said, her chin shaking a little.

  “Adam got there in time to save Ralph. Loaded him up and brought him here. Wouldn’t talk about what he saw for days,” Hank said.

  By now, Adam and Marcia had lowered Ralph’s cage to the ground. The huge wolf whimpered as they shifted him. As he turned in circles within the enclosure, I saw the angry red slash of skin where his collar had been. I could see his hip bones, too, and indents where his ribs were. I wiped a tear from my cheeks. When I glanced at Sam, I saw his eyes were wet, too.

  “Now, listen,” Aunt Shelley whispered. “If Adam and Marcia remember you’re here, I’m going to have to take you back to the building and miss this. I don’t want to miss this. So pretend to be invisible.”

  Good thing we’ve got a lot of practice at that lately.

  Mrs. Righter, Sam, and I barely breathed as Hank unlocked the enclosure around Sascha’s territory. The female wolf dashed backward, scrambled to the top of a boulder about a half-acre away, and kept watch as Aunt Shelley opened the gate. Marcia stood by the gate, her hand on her hip, hovering over a tranquilizer gun. Hank and Adam lifted Ralph’s cage—with him still in it—to the opening. Adam crooned nonstop to Ralph: “It’s going to be okay, buddy. It’s going to be just fine.”

  Hank counted to three and then flipped open the latches on the cage. Aunt Shelley, Adam, and Hank backed out of the enclosure and Hank quickly locked the gate shut.

  Sascha stood guard, not moving so much as her ears as she watched the cage. Ralph didn’t move, either.

  We all stayed still, silent and barely able to breathe, for what felt like an hour. Really, it might’ve been fifteen minutes. Slowly, Ralph’s front paw stepped out of the cage. Then his second paw touched the dirt. Sascha stayed put, but I noticed her ears flicked around like they were dials on a radio tuning in to a particular station.

  So very slowly, Ralph rose and came out of the cage. He stood, his legs quivering, right inside the enclosure. His huge head twisted over toward us. His eyes were the same grayish blue as Molly’s. I gasped and the noise seemed to push his head toward Sascha. He made a soft yipping sound and moved toward the bigger reddish wolf.

  Sascha leapt from the boulder, her body moving like water as she rushed toward Ralph. Marcia let out a shaky breath and her hand drifted toward her hip again.

  “Give ’em a minute,” Aunt Shelley murmured.

  Sascha circled Ralph, making grunting sounds as she did. Ralph stayed perfectly still, barely moving. Suddenly, Sascha rushed the black wolf. He lowered onto his front paws, his bony rump in the air, his ears flat against his head, and his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Sascha, tail high, stood over him. Her tail swished once, and Ralph’s tail sent up clouds of dust as he wagged it slowly across the dirt.

  Sascha darted forward and then turned and bounced a foot or two away. Then she turned back and rushed Ralph again. Ralph scooted forward, tail still slowly moving like a pendulum, and then rose to stand. Sascha, her muzzle wide open and tongue rolled out, yipped again and darted away. Ralph followed her this time.

  Like a popped balloon, everyone’s chests seemed to deflate in unison.

  “It worked!” Hank whooped.

  “Yes!” Aunt Shelley jumped on the balls of her feet and clapped like a little girl.

  Marcia brushed tears from her cheeks and wrapped her arms around Adam, who twirled her around.

  “You’ve just witnessed a new pack being made,” Adam called over to us, like he suddenly remembered we were there. “Two animals everyone gave up on found a place with each other.”

  Somehow a whole day had passed, and as we stood there, listening to the sanctuary workers cheer, the sun began to sink behind the trees.

  Sascha, back on her boulder, threw back her head and howled. Ralph, standing just below her, joined in. Soon howls echoed from all directions.

  And it was beautiful.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mrs. Righter dropped me off at Grandma’s house to spend the night after we got back from the sanctuary. I knew Grandma wanted to hear all about our adventure, but I just couldn’t put into words what it had been like. First to see Luna with the pups she adopted as her own, and then to see Ralph and Sascha—two rejects—find each other. It was . . . I don’t know what it was.

  So we spent a quiet evening, me watching SpongeBob and Grandma reading another smoochy book on the couch. The next morning, when Grandma took me home, she had to park in the street. Our driveway was jammed with cars, most of them—judging by stick figure family stickers, soccer bumper stickers, and stuffed animals peeking out of backseats—mom vans.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Grandma.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said as she moved the gear stick to park. “Your mom told me about this. It’s a moms’ club.”

  “Moms have clubs?” I asked. “Why?”

  Grandma shrugged. “To make friends and stuff. This one is for moms who have kids with . . . issues.”

  My hands felt clammy and my eyes suddenly felt like sweat was dripping into them. “Issues?” I whispered. “Ms. Drake called home once. It was one yelling incident. I don’t have issues.”

  Grandma rolled her eyes. “Oh, you have issues,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. This is a group for moms whose children have developmental problems.”

  “Like Down’s?” I asked. Grandma nodded. Whew, this wasn’t about me. It was about Molly. “Can I go in?”

  “Well, you live here, don’t you?” Grandma laughed. But I noticed she didn’t take the key out of the ignition. She just sat there, waiting for me to get out.

  “You’re not coming in?” I asked.

  “Nope, lots to do today. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

  I slouched toward the house, dragging my overnight bag. Suddenly, I felt tired. I didn’t feel up to facing a bunch of moms with issue children. I wished I wer
e still hanging out with my best friend, watching wolf packs being created.

  Then I realized—and it was enough to make me jerk to a stop—I just had called Sam my best friend. Best friend. So long, Becky. Nice not knowing you. I smiled and sort of skipped the rest of the way to the front porch.

  I eased open the screen door, not wanting to disturb what I thought would be a super sad get-together. About a half-dozen moms sat on the floor of the living room, their talking, laughing, and clapping louder than the toddlers and babies wandering around the house. None of them noticed me come in. They were all so happy and chatty. Mom was right in the middle, sitting crisscross-applesauce. She was wearing lip gloss. I haven’t seen her lips shiny in months. And she was smiling. Then she was laughing. And it wasn’t an I’ve-made-a-decision-to-laugh type laugh. This was a real one, with one hand against her chest and her body folding over her legs. Molly squirmed in her other arm.

  “Mom?” I gasped.

  She looked up at me with a start. “Hey, Lucy!” she said, still chuckling. She handed Molly to the mom who had made her laugh and stood up. “We have some snacks in the kitchen if you’re hungry. How was Grandma’s? And the sanctuary?”

  “Fine,” I mumbled, feeling a little confused. The kitchen table was covered with plastic trays of food—cheese curls, brownies, chips, pretzels, cheese cubes, juice boxes, and soda cans. Talk about a snack jackpot! “Where did this come from?”

  For weeks, the snacks in our house had been crackers and stale pretzels. Mom kept “meaning to go to the store” and then “running out of time.” (Even though when I left for school in the morning, she was in sweatpants on the couch holding Molly and when I came back at the end of the day, she was in sweatpants on the couch holding Molly.)

  “The other moms brought them,” Mom said.

  This moms’ club thing was amazing! Mom was laughing, and I was eating good stuff. I grinned at her, and she grinned back. I started to fill a plate with goodies. That’s when I noticed the little kids.