“Dad, don’t be gross.”
Dave’s hand found Dilly’s shoulder in the dark.
“The truth of the matter is we don’t know what sort of wolf you’re going to be yet, or what sort of man you’re going to be. But we’ll figure it out together, like we always do.”
The sounds of camp, gentle as they were, filled their sensitive ears. Dave stopped them.
“Your mom and I knew this was coming. Don’t worry that you’re going to hurt our feelings.”
Dilly hung his head a bit, exhausted.
“Come on. We’ve got miles to go.”
“You say that too much.”
“Yeah, well.”
They found their clothes right where they had left them and started putting them on.
“Why doesn’t Mom ever come out with us?”
“Because she doesn’t have any fun. That’s why.”
•••
The unofficial “step 5” in the rules of the scratch is you crash hard for at least ten hours and then wake up and go over what went down the night before. By this point Josie and Kenny Kirk’s girlfriend JoAnn were used to these sorts of mornings, and had cooked up pancakes and bacon, carbs, and protein. Karen, Ron’s (second) wife had shown up after her shift ended and had helped on and off so when the boys started stirring around noon, breakfast was rolling.
The men had all thrown on pants, at the very least, before passing out the night before, and hurriedly went about finding their shirts and other clothing before presenting themselves, all except Willie, who honestly couldn’t care less and wore his gut not with pride, exactly, but with something very close to it. He strode up to the women, throwing red suspenders attached to his jeans over his hairy shoulders. For some reason, Josie felt he was giving off a Santa Claus–style vibe.
“Thanks,” he grunted, barely audible.
“Rough night, gramps,” Josie said.
“You cook these?”
“You know I did, Willie.”
“You can’t cook for shit.”
“Then maybe you should invite Lacy out to cook for you.”
Clearly bested and clearly hungry, Willie muttered something and turned toward the picnic table. Lacy, Willie’s long-standing, long-suffering girlfriend, did not know about Willie’s woodland adventures and was sincerely not bright enough to ask. It was a sore spot with Willie and the group as they had been together for upwards of five years. She should know, but Willie was not going to tell her and Willie was going to do what Willie was going to do. Carl was next in line for late breakfast and was remarkably clean and alert given what he had been up to.
“How about you, Carl Atkins? Rough night?”
“No ma’am, I feel great,” Carl said. “That boy of yours sure is fast, though. Drew first blood and everything.”
Josie gave a knowing smile. She snuck a look at Dilly who was sitting on top of one of the tables, his long legs pulled up to his chest, his back to the camp. It was impossible to know where he was emotionally, but Josie knew enough to let the boy sit. He’d come over when he got hungry.
“Don’t let him threaten you,” she said. “You’ve got experience on your side.”
“Oh no, it’s not like that,” Carl said. “It was nice to have someone who was faster than me. Makes me try harder, right?”
“Suppose so,” Josie said, spreading the bacon to the side of the pancakes.
“Thank you, Josie,” he said.
Kenny Kirk had cut in line and was trying to wrap his arms around JoAnn, who was fighting it. Not that anyone smelled great after a night of camping and/or transforming into wolves and running through the woods, but Kenny had found some brand-new nasty smell and had made friends with it.
“Come on, baby, it’s not that bad,” he said as she spun out of his two-armed hug.
“You smell like a big shit took a little shit that grew up to be a bigger shit,” JoAnn said. “Get off me you giant freak.”
“You like the way I freak,” Kenny said, moving closer to her.
“Take some pancakes, you smelly ass,” JoAnn said, grabbing the plate Josie held at the ready. “Eat it down wind.”
“I’ll eat you up later and you’ll love it,” Kenny said, the lure of the food finally getting the better of him. He straddled one of the picnic table seats, put his food in front of him on the seat and dug in with his fingers.
“I don’t know how you keep your hands off that,” Josie said. “He’s too much man for me.”
Kenny shot both girls a quick middle finger, his mouth full.
Ron was shambling up, a little slower than the others. Usually when one of the boys hurt themselves as a wolf, they were able to shake it off when they changed back, but Ron was clearly limping, his broad shoulders drooped as he winced every time his thick left leg struck the ground.
“What’s with your hitch, there?” Josie asked, handing him a plate.
“That kid of yours, he blew past me out there. Knocked me into a tree. I’m still feeling it.”
To demonstrate, Ron shook his leg and rolled his ankle. He winced when the roll reached the top.
“I’ll talk to him. Sorry about that.”
“He’ll hear from me,” Ron said. “Newbie or not.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I’m already not like that. I’m calm as a fuckin’ cucumber, Josie, but I can’t let it stand without saying anything. If Willie had done it I’d still be knocking the teeth out of his idiot head. Point is, he’ll hear from me and that will be that.”
“That will be that,” Josie repeated, squeezing syrup out of the bottle a little too vigorously. “He’s a good kid and he doesn’t know his own strength, Ron. Never has.”
“Doesn’t change nothin’,” Ron said. “My leg still hurts. Besides, how else is he going to learn?”
Ron limped off and before long, Dave trudged up by himself to the table. Josie had always kind of loved the way Dave looked the morning after a scratch. His hair found ways of shooting off in different directions and his eyes were stubborn and refused to open all the way. After being married for twenty years she had seen her husband get up and out of bed literally thousands of times and in dozens of conditions—tired, rested, hung over, mad, thrilled, horny, sick—but he never looked the same way he did after a night out with the boys. It was a unique look for him and only she knew what it looked like.
It didn’t hurt that Dave had aged remarkably well. He was an athlete in high school and never lost the habit of running and watching his diet, so even at the ripe old age of forty-two he was lean and toned. For some reason he disliked going without a shirt, something that no doubt tied back to living in a house with Willie for eighteen years, but when he did she still found herself tracing the veins from his arms to his shoulder, then following the hair down his chest to his navel and beyond.
“Morning, pretty girl,” he said, using a line he’d used longer than he cared to admit. “Make mine to go, I’ve got a wife to get home to.”
Josie ignored his good mood and got straight to it.
“Dilly bumped Ron last night and Ron’s gunning for him.”
“It’s worse than that,” Dave said. “Willie wants to bring up Byron. Wants to hash it all out over pancakes.”
“But Dilly …”
“Yep.”
“We have to …”
“Do what? What happens if we run him home now? Do you think Willie won’t bring it up on the way to the car?”
“Dave, I don’t want him to know that yet.”
“I know.”
“He’s just gone through it for the first time. He’s a beginner. He doesn’t need to deal with this. Not yet.”
“Try telling that to Willie.”
“I just … I will.”
“You’d get further trying to get that rock over there to buy you a beer.”
He was right, of course. Once Willie’s mind was made up, he would stick to his guns and would stick to them harder if you gave him a good re
ason why he was being a jackass. When Dilly was a boy, Willie decided he was too old to believe in Santa Claus and proudly told Dave he intended to relieve the boy of his childhood belief. Dave told Josie and the two of them caught Willie before he’d had the chance. What resulted was a knock down drag out fight where the phrases “you have no right,” “this is not your job,” and “we’re his fucking parents” were all but screamed, eventually waking Dilly from his nap. All of these were excellent, rational points but, sure enough, Willie walked right into Dilly’s room, sat on the corner of his grandson’s bed, explained to him that Santa was “bullshit” and “a lie” and then asked what was for dinner as if the fight had never happened. This was not a matter of being cruel. It was a matter of Willie knowing better than anyone else on the planet.
After the Santa Incident, Dave and Josie kept him away from Willie for two months, a huge feat in a town the size of Cherry but, eventually, he showed up little by little and by March things were more or less back to normal. Willie never apologized. Now, Willie had made up his mind that it was time to air some of the family’s dirty laundry, no matter how inappropriate, damaging or confusing this information might be and nothing short of the Voice of God was going to change his mind. Maybe not even that.
“Can you get to him before Willie brings it up?” Josie said, her eyes blazing.
“Maybe,” Dave said between bites of pancake. “My guess is we have a little time. He wouldn’t start some shit until everyone had a chance to eat, right?”
“All right, listen up!” Willie yelled loud enough for the camp to hear. “We need to hash this Byron thing out if things are going to get back to normal.”
Cries of “aw Jesus,” “we’re still eating,” and general groans met the old man, but he plowed on, undeterred.
“No, no, I get that this is touchy for all you ladies, but we did something serious a few days ago and we got to reckon for it.”
The combination of words had broken through whatever haze Dilly was in and he turned around to join the group.
“Knock it off you old fart. I still got syrup on my fingers,” Kenny Kirk shouted back.
“Then talk about this with sticky fingers,” Willie said. “We got to get this out in the open.”
“What part of this isn’t out in the open?” Dave piped up. Josie was glad to hear it. When Willie got rolling it was easy to look for an escape hatch and let him rant and it wasn’t unheard of for Dave to turn back into a little boy and cower before his father. But Dave was running at him head-on, not raising his voice but not backing down either.
“Byron made his choices and we made ours. We talked about it for a while and it weighed on all of us, Willie. Don’t you remember all that talking we did?”
“I remember you running your damn mouth all night, I remember that.”
“Fuck you,” Dave said, escalating quickly. “If you don’t remember that meeting where everyone said their piece …”
“Not everyone …” Willie stammered, shocked at being knocked back.
“Where EVERYONE said their piece, you included, if you don’t remember that then you’ve come down with Alzheimer’s or some shit because we did that together. We did that as a pack.”
“That’s how you remember it?”
“That’s how it was, Willie.”
“That’s how it was,” Willie repeated, chewing the words. “Cause I remember you going on and on about how he was ‘threatening this whole thing’ and how ‘something had to be done.’ I remember you pushing for it cause you never liked Byron. Not since you caught him and Josie …”
“You shut your fucking mouth old man,” Dave said, moving fast toward Willie. “You shut your fu …”
Before he could get there, Ron had grabbed one arm and clamped down hard, pulling Dave back. Both father and son had cut loose now and were screaming at each other, producing a large garbled ball of hate. Ron gave one hard pull and Dave spun around, running his punching hand through his spiked hair.
“What’s everyone talking about?”
Josie closed her eyes. If Dilly hadn’t brought it up they could have gotten him home, gotten their version of events into his head first, told him the history he needed to know and left out the history he didn’t. Now they had to do it in front of the camp with Willie barking behind them. Dilly had hopped off the table, still bare chested, walking to stand between Dave and Willie.
“Dad, don’t say F-you to grandpa. What’s going on?”
Willie shot Dave a look ten times worse than anything he could have said.
“He’s my boy. I’ll talk to him.”
“He’s in our pack. Tell him now,” Willie said.
Dave plopped down on a bench and reckoned with the tightness in his chest and the low, deep hurt in the pit of his stomach.
“You all see it that way?” he asked.
“Of course they do, don’t be an idiot,” Willie barked.
Dave stood up and got very close to Willie.
“I will tell him but you will keep your fool mouth shut while I do. Anything you got to add, you do so when I’m done, is that clear?”
“What you gonna do if I don’t,” Willie asked. “You gonna yell more curse words at me?”
“I’ll do more than that,” Dave said, sitting back down.
“Dad, I feel really left out here,” Dilly said, smiling awkwardly. He was trying to crack a joke to relieve the obvious tension in the camp, but hadn’t bothered to say anything funny.
Dave snuck one more look at Josie, who was already choking back tears, and launched in.
“Well, Dilly, your Uncle Byron was not a very nice man.”
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 2
Of course, the rumors of creatures in the woods exist through the history of Cherry township. Since the community was founded in 1873, the farmers and ranchers had whispered of strange sounds coming from the woods with the occasional sighting of a hairy blur here or a disembowled animal there. But after a while, it faded into the background and became part of the scenery, something you knew about that made you a local, that gave your town some flavor.
The only officially recorded case of an “unusual sighting” came in the spring of 1922 by Mr. RJ Meyer and his family. They were on a nature hike, which was a popular activity for children of the time, and reported to the local weekly paper they had seen a “devilish creature” that was easily eight feet tall and was clearly of the devil. The Meyers implored the local churches of the area to organize a posse, to come to the woods and help rid the community of this demonic influence. The family even co-signed a Letter To The Editor of the Barter County Buck calling for righteous men to take up arms and protect their community. Nothing came of it.
It should be said the Meyers were not well respected in the community and after the community leaders paid them a kindly visit, they promptly dropped their alarmist calls. In particular, it was the influence of Mrs. Erma K. Rhodes, the wife of Pastor Kane F. Rhodes, that apparently changed the mind of the Meyer clan. Later, they recanted, saying their youngest, Samuel, had made up the story and was so convincing that the family had believed him. Plus, good Christians must be on the lookout for demonic influences, wherever they may appear.
To pour through the official history of Cherry, the Meyer incident, as it was known, was not only the only mention of “the W word” in the record, but was likely the most exciting thing to happen to Cherry in a hundred years. Yes, there was the tornado of 1981 that destroyed a grain silo and took the roof off several houses. Yes, there was a high-speed chase in 1992 that involved the Nebraska State Patrol and ended with the suspect running into a cornfield. And, yes, there was the time in 1997 when young Mr. Cronk bedded the new science teacher in town and the scandal lasted well past the school year. But you would be hard-pressed to find a quieter place to live in the whole of the United States.
Roswell had aliens. Loch Ness had Nessie. Boggy Creek had the mighty Sasquatch.
Cherry did not have
werewolves.
That didn’t, however, stop the Nebraska State Historical Society from putting up a historical marker just outside of town in the early 1960s commemorating the Meyers and their claim. The historical marker, made of granite and buried deep, gets the occasional traveler off the Interstate and into town but, like most historic markers, you’ve got to be looking for it if you want to see it at all.
PART 3 - NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Stuart Dietz wasn’t a broken man.
Sure, his girlfriend had left him a couple of months ago without as much as a raised voice or a shattered dish. Sure, he had been dismissed from the Detroit Police Department after all but being laughed off the force. Sure, as the subject of a viral video he had been both publicly and privately shamed and couldn’t get a goddamn drink in a bar without having someone point and laugh or, worse, point and whisper. Sure, he had devolved from a man hanging on week to week, month to month, into a man who had procured the bitter stank of failure and desperation, a man whose very existence was an apology.
But Stuart Dietz wasn’t a broken man. At this point, he wasn’t much of anything.
After seven years on the Detroit Police Department, Stu had run into what fellow officers affectionately called a “very bad day.” It started with a drug bust gone wrong where a suspected drugs dealer had removed the “suspected” part of his title by throwing his stash in the air after Stu had tried to arrest him. The stash became airborne and Stu, being a human who breathed, had started the day unexpectedly high, his gums numb and heart racing. His partner, a sensible spark plug of a woman named Officer Regan Anson, but “Regs” to her friends, had tried to send him home but Stu was having none of it. He would power through. It was the sort of cop he was.
A domestic dispute later that morning ended with a drunk man vomiting on Stu, which ended up being a nice appetizer for the main course of his “very bad day.” They rolled up on a grade-school-age child who was standing in the middle of the road with a very real gun, waving it around. The boy had screamed about his mother taking away his iPad, and Stu had done his best to calm him, which gave onlookers time to gather and fire up their smart phones. Footage of the incident existed from multiple angles and they all showed Stu trying to calm the kid down but failing as the kid continued to scream and gesture with the gun. By the time the kid shot himself in the chest, there were more than a dozen cameras trained on the boy and then on the cop who tried, desperately, to perform CPR and bring the boy back.
Pack Page 6