Wolf Story

by William McCleery

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1947 by William McCleery

  All rights reserved.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

  McCleery, William.

  Wolf story / by William McCleery ; illustrations by Warren Chappell.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A young father tells his five-year-old son humorous variations on the theme of a hen escaping the clutches of a wily wolf.

  ISBN 978-1-59017-589-7 (hardback)

  [1. Wolves—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction.

  3. Storytelling—Fiction. 4. Humorous stories.]

  I. Chappell, Warren, 1904–1991, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.M4784138Wo 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012010395

  Cover design by Louise Fili Ltd.

  Book design by Warren Chappell

  ebook ISBN 978-1-59017-704-4

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright and More Information

  Dedication

  WOLF STORY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Biographical Notes

  Chapter 1

  NCE upon a time a man was putting his five-year-old son Michael to bed and the boy asked for a story.

  “All right,” said the man. “Well, let me see. Oh yes. Well, once upon a time there was a girl with long golden hair and they called her Goldilocks.”

  “No, no,” said the boy. “A new story.”

  “A new story?” said the man. “What about?”

  “About a hen,” said the boy.

  “Good!” said the man. “I was afraid you might want another wolf story. Well, once upon a time there was a hen.” The man stopped.

  “Go on,” said the boy. “What are you waiting for?”

  “What is a good name for a hen?”

  Michael looked very thoughtful. “Make it that the hen’s name is ... Rainbow,” he said.

  “Why Rainbow?” asked the father.

  “Because,” said the boy, “he had all different colored feathers.”

  “He?” said the man.

  “She,” said the boy.

  “All right,” said the man. “But you understand that there is no such thing as a hen with all different colored feathers.” The man did not like to tell his son things that were not true.

  “I know, I know,” said the boy. “Go on.”

  And the man continued: “Once upon a time there was a hen. She was called Rainbow because her feathers were of many different colors: red and pink and purple and lavender and magenta—” The boy yawned. —“and violet and yellow and orange ...”

  “That will be enough colors,” said the boy.

  “And green and dark green and light green ...”

  “Daddy! Stop!” cried the boy. “Stop saying so many colors. You’re putting me to sleep!”

  “Why not?” said the man. “This is bedtime.”

  “But I want some story first!” said the boy. “Not just colors.”

  “All right, all right,” said the man. “Well, Rainbow lived with many other hens in a house on a farm at the edge of a deep dark forest and in the deep dark forest lived a guess what.”

  “A wolf,” said the boy, sitting up in bed.

  “No, sir!” cried the man.

  “Make it that a wolf lived in the deep dark forest,” said the boy.

  “Please,” said the man. “Anything but a wolf. A weasel, a ferret, a lion, an elephant ...”

  “A wolf,” said the boy.

  “Well, all right,” groaned the man, “but please don’t sit up in bed. Put your head on your pillow and shut your eyes.”

  “O.K.,” said the boy. He turned his pillow over so that it would be cool against his cheek.

  “So,” said the man. “In the forest lived a stupid old wolf, too tired to do any harm.”

  “No!” cried the boy, sitting up in bed again. “The wolf is fierce! Terribly terribly fierce!!”

  “Haven’t we had enough stories about terribly fierce wolves?” cried the man.

  “No!”

  “All right,” said the man. “A terribly terribly fierce wolf with red eyes and teeth as long and sharp as butcher knives.”

  “Mmmmmmm,” said the boy, putting his cheek on his pillow again and shutting his eyes.

  “I suppose you like that about the butcher knives,” said the man.

  “I love it,” said the boy. “Go on.”

  “Well, one night when it was very dark the wolf came slinking out of the forest. By the way, what is the wolf’s name?”

  “Waldo,” said the boy.

  “No, no,” said the man.

  “Yes, yes,” said the boy.

  “But Waldo was in our last story! He’s been in every story since Christmas. Can’t we ever have a new one?”

  The boy shook his head. “No, because Waldo is the fiercest wolf in all the world!”

  “Put your head on the pillow,” said the man.

  The boy put his head on the pillow. “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, this wolf named Waldo came slinking out of the forest very quietly,” whispered the man. “Very very quietly. In fact nobody could hear him.”

  “Talk a little louder,” said the boy. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Michael,” said the man. “If you open your mouth once more I will stop telling the story and go downstairs.”

  “All right,” said the boy. “But what did the wolf do when he slinked out of the forest?”

  “Slunk,” said the man.

  “Slunk,” said the boy.

  “Or maybe slank,” said the man.

  “Make it that he crawled out of the forest,” said the boy, “but go on!!”

  “Michael!” said the man. “You were not to open your mouth!”

  “I was helping,” said the boy.

  “Don’t do it again. Well, so the wolf Waldo crawled out of the forest one night when the moon was bright and crept over to the hen house. For a long time the wolf had been watching Rainbow with his big red eyes. He wanted to eat the hen and save her pretty feathers to make an Indian headdress.” The boy smiled because he knew it was a joke. A wolf would never think of making an Indian headdress. He would have laughed but he was too sleepy. “The feathers were so beautiful,” said the man. “Red and pink and purple and lavender.”

  “Oooohhh!” yawned the boy.

  “And magenta ... and ... violet ... and ... yellow ...”

  The man got up quietly from where he had been sitting on the bed beside the boy. He opened the window and pulled the blanket up around the boy’s chin and crept quietly out of the room, almost as quietly as the wolf Waldo. The boy was sound asleep.

  Chapter 2

  he next evening the boy went upstairs and got ready for bed all by himself. He took off his clothes and left them on the floor, accidentally kicking one shoe under the bed where it would be hard to find the next morning. He also accidentally dropped his underpants in the wastebasket. Then he pulled on his blue flannel pajamas, the ones with long flannel feet, and went to the head of the stairs. He called to his father who had promised to put him to bed again.

  His father came upstairs.

  “Did you brush your teeth?” he said.

  “When?�
�� said the boy.

  “Tonight.”

  “Not tonight, no,” said the boy. “Shall I?”

  “Why not?” said the man. “And what about washing your face?”

  “All right.”

  “Shall I help you?”

  “No, no, no,” said the boy, quickly. If there was anything he hated worse than washing his face it was having someone else wash it.

  “I’ll be straightening your room,” said the man.

  The boy hurried to the bathroom and climbed up on the little white steps below the wash basin. He smeared toothpaste first on his toothbrush and then on his teeth. He took a big mouthful of water, swushed it around and spit it out. That was supposed to be brushing his teeth. Then he took a damp washcloth and gently touched his face with it, being careful not to disturb the dirt inside his ears. He threw the washcloth down, dried his hands on his flannel pajamas, raced into the bedroom and leapt onto the bed. His father looked at him.

  “Some day you’ll wear out your face, washing it so hard,” he said. The boy laughed and jerked the covers down from the top. Then he crawled under the covers clear to the bottom of the bed and curled up there like a grub worm.

  “Come out of there,” said the man. “I haven’t got all night.” The boy didn’t move. “Come on. Please. Hurry up,” said the man. The boy did not move. The man reached under the covers and tickled the boy, and pulled him up to the top of the bed.

  “Tell about Rainbow,” said the boy.

  “Who?” said the man. “Rainbow? Oh yes. Well, if I’m going to tell about Rainbow I won’t have time for songs.”

  The boy did not feel like making a fuss. “Just tell about Rainbow,” he said. “But make it long.”

  So the man continued the story where he had left off the night before.

  “The wolf Waldo crept very quietly to the chicken yard. He was quiet because he did not want to wake up Mr. Tractor-wheel.”

  The boy asked in a loud voice, “Mr. WHO?”

  “Tractorwheel. Isn’t that a good name for a farmer?”

  “Very good, Daddy,” said the boy. “And make it that Mr. Tractorwheel has a son.”

  “He has several sons. And the wolf didn’t want to wake up any of them.”

  “He didn’t want to wake up the hens, either,” said the boy.

  “Because the hens would make so much noise they would wake up Mr. Tractorwheel and his sons,” said the man.

  “Yes,” said the boy, “and Mr. Tractorwheel would come running with a shotgun and shoot the wolf.”

  “Don’t you want the wolf to be shot?” said the man.

  “Yes,” said the boy, “but not yet. It has to be a long story first.”

  “I see,” said the man. “Well, when the wolf came to the chicken yard, what did he find?”

  “Rainbow!” cried the boy.

  “No,” said the man. “Rainbow is in the hen house asleep. But what is all around the chicken yard?”

  The boy sat up in bed, thinking hard. Then he said, “A fence.”

  The man was surprised.

  “A fence is right!” he said. “You’re a smart boy.” The boy smiled and lay down again, this time on his back, with his hands clasped under his head and his elbows sticking out on either side like wings.

  “The chicken yard was entirely surrounded by a fence,” said the man, “and the gate was locked. So how could Waldo the wolf get inside to capture Rainbow?”

  “Make it that there is a hole in the fence,” said the boy.

  “No,” said the man. “If there was a hole in the fence, the chickens would get out and wander into the forest, and the wolf would be so busy catching and eating them he wouldn’t have time to come after Rainbow.”

  “Could he climb over the fence?” said the boy.

  “You know a wolf couldn’t climb a fence,” said the man.

  “But this is only a story,” said the boy. “You can make anything happen in a story.”

  “He might go under the fence,” said the man.

  “Ooooohhh!” the boy yawned. “Hurry up and get him in somehow.”

  “Well, the wolf began to dig with his sharp toe-nails in the soft earth until he had dug a tunnel right under the fence. Then he crawled through the tunnel and came out in the chicken yard. Very quietly he crept over to the hen house. Very quietly. In fact very ... v-e-r-y ... v—e–––r–––y ... quietly.” The boy yawned again and turned over on his side.

  The man waited for a moment and then stood up, thinking the boy was asleep. But without opening his eyes the boy flung out one hand and caught his father’s arm.

  “Go on,” he said. “More.”

  The man sat down again.

  “In the hen house he looked around until he saw a hen with all different colored feathers. Blue and gray and scarlet and ... vermilion ... and ... cobalt ... and ... azure.”

  Now the boy was really asleep and the man turned out the light, opened the window, pulled up the covers and kissed the boy on the cheek. On his way out of the darkened room he stumbled over the tin waste-basket and made a terrible clatter, but the boy was too deep in sleep to be bothered by anything at all.

  Chapter 3

  he next day was Sunday and at breakfast the man said to the boy, “Shall we go on an excursion today?”

  “Yes!” cried the boy.

  “To Central Park,” said the man.

  “Fort Tryon Park!” cried the boy.

  “But that is so far away!” said the man.

  “And let’s take Steffy,” said the boy.

  Steffy’s real name was Stefan and he lived next door. He was a year older than Michael.

  “All right,” said the man. “We could have lunch up there. Do you mind if we have lunch in the park?” said the boy’s father to the boy’s mother. “Would you mind not having to fix lunch for us?”

  “Oh, that would be terrible,” said the boy’s mother. “If I don’t have to fix lunch for you I will be forced to go back to bed and read the Sunday papers!”

  Soon the man and the two boys were driving along the West Side Highway toward Fort Tryon Park. The boys could see freighters, tankers, ferryboats and other craft in the Hudson River. “Enemy battleships!” the boys cried, and raked them with fire from their wooden rifles. Sometimes the man had to speak sternly to the boys, saying, “Boys! Sit down! Stop waving those rifles around. Do you want to knock my front teeth out?”

  The boys were very well behaved, and every time the man spoke sternly to them they would stop waving the rifles around, for a few seconds anyway.

  When they came to Fort Tryon Park they parked the car near the entrance.

  “Let’s see if our treasure is still there!” said Michael.

  “Let’s see if my front teeth are still there,” said his father.

  “What treasure?” said Stefan.

  “Come on,” said Michael. “I’ll show you.”

  They walked down some stone steps and along a walk until they came to a broken-down fence. Beyond the fence was a very steep hill, so steep that the trees had to hold on by their bare roots to keep from slipping. In a hole at the base of one of those trees, Michael and his father had hidden a rusty old paper-punch several weeks before. They scrambled down the hill until they found the tree, and sure enough, the paper-punch was still there; a little rustier, perhaps—in fact ready to fall apart—but still there. They put it back in the same hiding place and then worked their way carefully down the hill, through a high arched tunnel and up to a big green playfield where the boys chased each other until lunch time.

  After lunch in the park restaurant they sat on a bench eating Cracker Jack. Michael was disappointed because the prize in his Cracker Jack box was just a piece of cardboard with numbers on it; a silly game of some kind; and Steffy’s prize was a beautiful bright green cardboard monkey. Michael asked for another box of Cracker Jack, hoping that next time he might get a prize like Steffy’s, but his father said no.

  “The prize you get in a Cracker Ja
ck box is a matter of luck,” said Michael’s father.

  “What’s luck?” said Michael.

  “Something that happens and you have to be satisfied with.”

  There were tears in Michael’s eyes.

  “Damn it,” he said.

  “You mean darn it,” said his father.

  “Is damn a bad word?” said Michael, rather eagerly.

  “No-o-o,” said his father, “but it is more a word for grownups. A boy your age could say darn it.”

  “Darn it,” said Michael. “Darn it, darn, darn, darn. Steffy, would you give me your monkey? I’ll be your best friend!”

  Stefan shook his head. “You’re already my best friend,” he said.

  Michael walked sadly away from the bench toward a big wire wastebasket at the edge of the walk. He looked into the waste-basket. Suddenly he shouted..

  “Daddy! Come here quick, Daddy!”

  There in the wastebasket was a beautiful bright green cardboard monkey exactly like Stefan’s. Someone had thrown it away. It was not dirty. Not folded, even. The man took it out of the basket and gave it to his son, and now both boys were happy.

  “What about taking a rest,” said the man. “You could lie down on the bench for a while.”

  “Tell a story,” said Michael. “Tell about Rainbow and the wolf.” So, after explaining to Stefan what had happened so far in the story, the man continued.

  “When Waldo the wolf saw Rainbow the hen asleep in the hen house he grabbed her in his teeth and ran out across the chicken yard and down into the tunnel and under the fence and into the forest.”

  “Tell Steffy how sharp the wolf’s teeth were,” said Michael. “Sharp as butcher knives, Steffy.”

  “And not very clean,” added Michael’s father. “Wolves do not brush their teeth.”

  “I do,” said Stefan.

  “Go on, Daddy,” said Michael.

  “Well, as the wolf carried her from the hen house, Rainbow let out a loud frightened cackle. This woke up some of the other hens and they cackled.”

  “Did it wake up Mr. Tractorwheel?” said Michael.

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “Did it?”