Pack

by Mike Bockoven

  Dilly had spent the first part of the evening, while the “men folk” worked on the food, sitting on top of one of the picnic tables staring out into the seemingly endless field of grass and weeds that exist only in rural areas, where you can see for miles and track the wind as it rushes across the flat plains toward a tree line. Josie desperately wanted to go to him. She went to Dave instead.

  “You should go say something,” she said.

  “We will. This is the worst part. Trust me.”

  “Then go tell him that. He’s suffering over there.”

  The boy had sheepishly told his dad that he wanted to “go out with the boys” the afternoon after they had had their uncomfortable talk. He had tried hard not to seem overly enthusiastic but Dave knew his boy and knew there would be little to no holding him back for much longer. After a short conversation, Josie had given up as well, so here he was.

  Dave was about to tell her that Dilly’s behavior was perfectly normal, but before he had the chance a blue truck that could have easily been mistaken as missing a muffler pulled up. The stink the truck brought with it, that acrid bouquet topped with a chemical sweetness, lingered as it always did. Willie was late. Willie was usually late. Everyone was OK with Willie being late. As Carl politely observed after one particularly spirited evening, a little bit of Willie went a long way.

  William “Willie” Rhodes, all 6’4 of him, seldom did anything quiet. Any subject needing an opinion, Willie would let his be known first, loudest and most often least informed, which, given he had very little by way of a social filter in his old age, often made for uncomfortable moments. Among the boys, the pause in the conversation that frequently accompanied something loud and obnoxious out of Willie’s mouth had become known as a “Willie Pause.”

  Willie and Josie got along like oil and more oil lit on fire and poured onto a pile of gasoline-soaked rags. Things had been particularly rough lately and Dave was hoping his father would suck it up for his grandson. Dave tried to give Josie a smile, but it was too thin and they both knew it.

  “Where’s Lacy?” Dave asked.

  Willie dismissed his son with a wave and laser-focused on Dilly.

  “What the hell you mopin’ over there for, boy?” Willie said. “Get over here and hug your grandpa.”

  Dilly obliged as the two had always had a soft spot for each other and were soon embroiled in a conversation about this year’s basketball team. Before any tension could manifest, low and behold, the food finished cooking and everyone jammed some in their mouths. Beers were cracked and before long a nice, easy mood settled over the camp as the conversation turned to the most important topic in the world.

  “You know what I say,” Willie started after wolfing down his trout. “If you gotta get rid of a coach, they couldn’t have done it any better. And if that new guy who used to play quarterback knows what’s good for him he’ll start kicking ass early and often. I remember what that “N” on the side of our helmets used to mean something.”

  “You gotta give him some time,” Dave said. “Let’s see what type of team he can put together. Talk to me after in a few years when it’s all his guys.”

  “Actually,” Carl jumped in. “He brought over some coaches and recruits so some of them are his guys. Not that you don’t have a point, plus he had a great recruiting class.”

  “He better have a good recruiting class!” Kenny said. “Goddamn Michigan’s got that pro coach, the damn … what are they … Ohio State, their guy is the best recruiter in the damn game. We’re screwed worse than a …”

  Josie shot him a look.

  “Worse than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest,” Kenny said, making a grand gesture of toning it down.

  “He’s supposed to be a defensive genius,” Ron said, throwing his bulk back against the chair. “If he’s a defensive genius I’m Jabba the Hutt.”

  “Jabba the … what the hell are you talking about?” Willie said.

  “He’s from Star Wars, Grandpa. He’s a giant slug thing,” Dilly said.

  “Fine, if he’s a defensive genius I’m Marilyn Monroe. That more up your alley, Willie?” Ron said to a few chuckles. Tipping the scales at 240, Ron had played football in college but his physique was now more biker than athlete, with the long beard to match.

  “I’m gonna stick my foot up your alley if you’re not careful,” Willie said, followed by a Willie Pause.

  The talk continued, drifting from football to gossip to business then back to football and before anyone had time to really get going about anything. The occasion called for camaraderie so no one talked politics. The occasion called for good feelings so no one got up on horses, high or otherwise. The sun had gotten low and it was time. They had gotten to this point without talking about Byron or any of the unprecedented, bloody business of the past few weeks. There was time for that later. The moment felt right and it would be wrong to waste it.

  By now, they all knew how this worked. Step two. You go back to nature.

  Dave put his arm around Dilly as they walked from the clearing into the woods with the rest of the men. The boy was hot and was trembling slightly. Before they got too far out, he snuck a look back at his mother. She was standing, her hands folded palm to palm in a nervous stance. She didn’t make any motion but was wearing her anxiety like an ugly hat.

  “Don’t worry quite yet,” Dave said. “This part isn’t anything scary. You’re going to lay in the grass, you’re going to clear your head and just, listen.”

  “You’ve told me what I’m supposed to be listening for but I don’t know that I get it,” Dilly said. “There’s nothing out here.”

  “That isn’t true at all,” Dave said. “It’s so noisy you almost hear too much. You’ll hear when we get there. You’re not listening for any one thing, kid. What you’re doing is taking in all the sounds and once you get the sounds, then you’ll start taking in what makes the sounds and the smells and how everything feels.”

  “Yeah, but what happens if I don’t?” Dilly said.

  “Then don’t freak out. Relax, breathe and everything will make sense once we’re out there. Then it will be time.”

  They walked far out into the field until the women and the food and the cars and trucks parked along the way were dots on the huge sky horizon. They kept walking into a thick growth of trees until Dave moved to the front of the group, and said “here.”

  First Willie, then Ron, then Carl, then Kenny Kirk stretched out on the forest floor. Dilly looked at his father hesitantly, but the time for words passed. Dave nodded, which he hoped conveyed to his son that all was well, and Dilly took his spot, stretched out his long frame and folded his hands. Finally, Dave laid down to the loud crunching of grass and leaves.

  Once your head is near the dirt, the sounds of the forest become magnified. The wind is as loud as a train, the scuttling of bugs and small animals immediately apparent. As Dilly lay on the cold ground, his dad’s prediction came true and suddenly the scent of the Earth underneath him was as strong as coffee in the morning, the prickly feel of the dead leaves under his arms now a persistent poke. The waning sunlight through the trees was getting less and less but somehow seemed more and more and before long, Dilly’s head was buzzing with dirt and wind and scents and moss and bark and sweat.

  Dilly was also acutely aware of the others as well, particularly their breathing and their scents. His father’s scent he knew from home and his grandfather’s from when he used to sleep over when he was a kid, but the smells of the other men—oil for Kenny, musk for Ron, a sickly sweet for Carl—suddenly filled his nostrils. The question “what do I smell like?” floated through his head, temporarily dethroning the anxiety that had set up shop there a few weeks earlier.

  Then, he caught another scent all together. It was a softer scent, but also a grittier one. It evoked fur and sweet grass tinged with something else. Something that had really grabbed Dilly’s attention. He noticed Carl was standing up and soon Willie joined him.

&nb
sp; The second Dilly got to his feet, Dave was behind him.

  “Don’t turn around,” he said in a lower voice than normal. “Keep that scent in your head. Feel it, then add to it.”

  Dilly knew what Dave meant. They had spoken at length about how the transition works and what thoughts and feelings he could use to get there. He knew the thought had to be his own and that he shouldn’t share it. Dave had told him sometimes it takes a while to find the one that does it, but once you know what your trigger is, it becomes your best friend and your worst enemy. Dilly had three thoughts to pick from that he had chosen after careful consideration—a time when he was a seven-year-old and got lost at the mall down in Grand Island, the first time he took an elbow to the face during a basketball game and then Allie, that feeling of moist pressure from her mouth on his as they kissed. He had no stronger memories in his entire head than those three and his anxiety rose again, hoping they would do the trick. If they didn’t, he was in serious trouble.

  The other men had started taking off their clothes, starting with their shirts, their torsos a variety of the rural Caucasian experience. Willie’s expansive belly was huge and covered in fine white hair the color of his beard, Kenny Kirk was stick thin with a bit of a sink in his chest. Their smells became much stronger once they lost their clothes and Dilly registered they were all facing the same direction, into the woods. The men were naked in a short period of time, all of them in front of Dilly facing the thick overgrowth except his father, who was behind him.

  By now, they all knew how this worked. Step three. You scratched.

  Dilly’s brain was swimming with smells and sensations, but he was still lucid enough to remember, vividly, that Ron was the one who jerked forward first, as if he had been hit hard in the small of the back. His stomach pitched forward, his face jerking upward, then his body jerked the opposite direction as Kenny Kirk started flailing as well. Carl’s arms flew around his body as though unconnected. Willie stood there and it was on his grandfather that Dilly kept his fleeting focus.

  Willie was growing hair. He was a hairy dude to start with but his hair was elongating, growing noticeably thicker and shaggier, taking on a different consistency. As Carl, Ron, and Kenny Kirk flailed and jerked around him, Willie stood, his feet planted as his hair, and then his body, began to grow.

  At that moment Dilly heard his father’s voice, lower than he had ever heard it, whisper and growl.

  “Breathe deep. Use your thought. Do it now.”

  The deep breath in brought all the smells of the men, the forest, the camp and the strange new one which he somehow knew was blood all flooding into his head, each fighting for space, battling to be the predominant scent. As he exhaled, the substantial anxiety Dilly had been carrying for years flooded out of his nostrils and in its place was desire to howl and to run and to get into the fucking forest already. There was only one thing stopping him and he was still conscious enough to know it. He had to use his thought.

  He tried thinking of the fear of being alone and helpless. Nothing happened. He jumped around and thought of Allie and her softness, her smells and moans as their tongues intertwined. Nothing happened.

  Well, this must be the one, Dilly thought to himself.

  The moment was as vivid as any memory he possessed. He was in the middle of a junior varsity game and a player on the Castleville Coyotes had been on his ass from the opening whistle. They had locked horns on a couple of defensive plays and Dilly had still managed to use his height and his arm length to get around the guy and score. He had 12 points and hadn’t seen halftime yet when the elbow came, fast and hard and square in the soft part of his nose. If it had been to the side or gotten some of his eye in the shot, Dilly could have been persuaded that it was an accident, but the elbow was square and sharp and Dilly knew, even before he opened his eyes, that there would be blood all down his face.

  When Dilly was able to look and shake out the stars that filled his vision, he was the Coyote with a shit-eating grin. I hit you the grin said. And you ain’t doing shit about it.

  That night, Dilly had done something about it. He had scored 35 more points for a school record. He had played his heart out and his teammates, sensing the energy, had fed him the ball and every time Dilly had it, he took it straight to the Coyote, knocking him down, drawing foul after foul, and winning the game almost singlehandedly. His mother had said she’d never been so proud. His father had said he’d never seen such guts. Dilly knew better. He knew he wanted blood and in this case, blood was humiliating your opponent. Dilly knew who he was that night. He was the guy who got up after you knocked him down while serving you a nice big shitburger in the process. He was a soldier that way. He was merciless. He could bleed and he could make you bleed.

  The memory was so fierce that Dilly tasted blood and smelled the leather on the ball and then the first spasm hit. It hurt. Dilly felt his spine shift in ways it never had before, not even close, and the pain that came with it was white hot and unrelenting, only subsiding when pain in his arms and legs took its place. It felt like his back was twisting and pulling muscle and cartilage with it in a sick, unnatural dance. He tried to scream but couldn’t as his throat had taken an odd shape and the taste of blood, once in his head, was now very real and tangy as it flowed down his throat. He squeezed tears out of his eyes as his conscious mind shut down and his thoughts and memories left him, his last alert sensation being a strange stretching and tearing sensation accompanied by terrible popping sounds.

  Dilly’s body continued to spasm and pull and stretch and break. If the boy had been conscious, he would have had to witness his back arch and seemingly gain mass and sprout hair, his nose pull away from his face, his teeth sharpen to razors, his nails grow to claws. The other men around him underwent the same transformation, scratching at the dirt with all their strength, leaving fresh, damp grooves in the floor of the forest but none of them made sounds like the boy, his screams a reflex, his considerable blood loss, a product of his first transformation. By the time the screaming stopped and it was done, steam poured from small pools of blood around where the boy had been.

  The Young Wolf emerged from the dirt. Not a wolf, exactly, but long and hairy and lean and hungry, covered in hair and drooling, a creature unfamiliar by man but thousands of years old. The Young Wolf was big yet slightly fragile in his coiled and aggressive stance. Had the wolf stood on its hind legs it would be seven feet of children’s nightmare, drooling and snarling and dripping blood.

  The new wolf opened its eyes which were yellow and sharp, and scanned the ground for the thing he needed.

  Pack. My pack.

  From their spots in the grass, the other wolves emerged. One white and big, one thin and fast, one small and straight, one large and ready. The new creature turned around and saw his father, the biggest of the pack. His chest between his front paws was large and heaving, his eyes sharp and his teeth bared. Bigger than any wolf in the wild, or any man, the Lead Wolf, the new wolf’s father, reared up his head and started to howl. The other wolves followed and the new wolf heard a sound escape his throat that was perfect and right and carried with it one uncompromising message from the pack.

  We are here.

  By now, they all knew how this worked. Step four. You run.

  The Lead Wolf took off with a speed and dexterity that shocked the Young Wolf. The others followed, fast and hard and soon the new wolf was running as fast as his new body would allow and was having trouble keeping up. He dug in and soon passed the White Wolf and the Thin Wolf and was in line with the Large Wolf when the new smell hit his nose and penetrated all the way down to his heart.

  Blood. That way.

  This is what they were chasing, why they were here and the Young Wolf suddenly had a purpose. At breakneck speed, he made a long circle, turning to his left and losing ground to the Large Wolf, whose turn was sharp and direct. He almost lost his balance but his back legs were strong and the dirt was thick and supported him. The forest seemed to help
as he found a root under his paw that helped him push his weight in a new direction and two trees leading to a clearing seemed to lead him exactly where he wanted to go. The smell was pungent and thick and an unparalleled desire grabbed the new wolf and shook him. He had to have this smell. He was merciless. He could make you bleed.

  The Lead Wolf had slowed and was moving in a manner that was curious to the new wolf, not using his unnaturally long, curved nails to dig into the dirt, but pulling them up and using his pads, changing the way his hulking frame moved. The White Wolf, who had snuck up on him, rammed the length of his body into the new wolf, prompting him.

  Shhhhhh

  Understanding, the Young Wolf began slowing, eventually moving to a crawl with the others. The scent was farther away now, harder to find. His long snout searched the air as did the others, but the Lead Wolf snorted at them and they all fell silent. They had come upon a small clearing and a stream, swollen with water from a late, muddy early fall. The creature giving off the scent, whatever it was, had gone through the stream and the scent had intermingled with moss, very strong moss, and fishy scents and hearty buzzing flies and water. The Young Wolf fixed his new wolf eyes across the river, searching for any sign of movement. It was dark and there was none.

  The rest of the pack had begun to turn around when the Young Wolf spotted it, far, far away. A low branch of a tree, with leaves starting to die and turn yellow and smelling sweet in their death, had a branch that was swinging opposite the wind. He saw this small, telltale sign of life and took off running. He was over the river in a second and to the tree branch with the pack behind him, howling in disapproval. He blew past the tree and the second he got to the other side, the scent returned and strengthened and the Young Wolf saw red around the edges of his vision whenever he breathed it in. He then heard the sound of hooves, frantically clopping and could hear the deer, darting around in fits of panic trying to milk every last second of speed from its coiled, tight muscles.

  The Young Wolf was aware of his pack behind him when his eyes set upon the deer. She was young, two winters or so, and after running for just a moment the Young Wolf could make out her tail bobbing in between thick patches of leaves and bark. Zeroing in on the movement, focused on nothing else on the planet, he gained ground, plowing through underbrush and causing enough noise to alert every animal in the forest. The deer was already at top speed and losing ground. The Young Wolf was gaining with the pack close behind him when his back paw hit a patch of mud disguised as solid ground and he slipped. His large, long body pitched to one side and crashed into the trunk of a tree, and he let out a yelp as the thundering of the pack ran close by his head.