“Hello? Is anyone there?” No response. Whoever it was, was probably gathering more firewood or relieving himself behind a tree, something totally ordinary, not the things my brain was telling me he was doing, like putting the finishing touches on his booby trap.
Then I heard something my brain had not prepared me for: a low growl. I turned slowly toward the sound and met the eyes of a terrifyingly beautiful gray wolf. Her ears were back, and her fur formed a serrated crest along her spine. Her fangs were long, and her claws were sharp. I’m sure she had many other worthy qualities, but the dangerous ones were all I could concentrate on at that moment. I closed my eyes and pictured my mother making bacon for me in her new kitchen.
“Ma! No!”
I snapped out of my daydream to find a boy, a human boy about my age, jumping between the wolf and me.
“It’s okay, Ma. I invited her here. She’s brought us breakfast.” He gestured toward the icebox. The wolf snorted and shot me a warning glance before lazily collapsing next to the fire.
“Sorry ’bout that,” he said as he turned his attention to me. He had a silly smile. The kind you paint on a clown, wide and red. “She’s not used to people. ’Cept me.”
He was filthy from head to toe with a wild crop of brown hair and silvery-gray eyes. His clothes were damp and smelled like wet dog. I desperately wanted to throw them in the dryer with a cinnamon stick or three.
“You’re W.?”
“Yeah. I know it’s far, but we bought out all the other butchers.”
“You live here?”
“Yep. That’s my mom.”
The wolf grunted.
“Well, not my real mom. She’s dead. My dad, too.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged. “Yep.”
After a few seconds of awkward silence, I said, “I’ll get your order.”
I started unloading the meat from the trailer. The boy insisted on helping and gave me a quarter for my trouble. How he got the quarter and how he had been able to pay my father for thirty pounds of meat I didn’t ask, but something else was bugging me. “So, why do you have to buy meat at all? Can’t your … mom just hunt her own food?”
The boy looked troubled. “Not anymore. Our pack can’t steal livestock ’cause the ranchers will shoot if they hear so much as a moo. I lost two cousins that way.”
“What about deer?”
“Deer have moved out. Don’t know where they went, but they’re not here. We kill rabbits and squirrels, which are fine for me, but for my family, they’re not more than a snack.”
The wolf groaned.
“Comin’, Ma!” The boy grabbed a raw steak and tossed it to her. She gobbled it up in a matter of seconds and flopped back on the ground, pleased.
“What’s your name?” he asked. “I love hearing what different people are called. Someday, I’d like to meet someone by every single name.”
“My name’s Mary.”
“That’s a good one.”
“I guess.” If it hadn’t been my mother’s name, I wouldn’t have thought so. Most people think she named me after her, but I was actually named after Mary Tyler Moore, her favorite actress.
“I’m Weylyn, which I like okay. I think it’ll look good on a business card.”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?”
“Eleven … today.”
“Today is your birthday?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t mean to say it, but maybe I was just tired of pretending it wasn’t true.
“Happy birthday! You have to stay for breakfast. Unless you have other plans?”
I pretended to think about it and said my other plans could wait.
* * *
Most girls celebrate their eleventh birthdays with a few of their friends from school. They eat cake and ice cream off paper plates and sit and gossip about the girls who couldn’t make it. They talk about articles they read in magazines stolen from their older sisters, using phrases like second base and frenching without actually understanding their meaning.
I spent my birthday with a pack of wolves.
They were very welcoming, allowing me the best spot next to the fire and licking my face clean after I had eaten. Even Weylyn’s mother warmed up to me after a while, inviting me to scratch her belly and ears.
Weylyn also proved to be better company than I had had in a long time. He told stories about life in the pack: stories about friendship, long winters, the hunt, and being hunted. He even told me about his parents (the human ones).
“Our house backed up onto the woods,” he said, gazing over my shoulder as if the house were right behind me. I nearly turned to look, but stopped myself.
“It had a fire pit where me and my parents would roast hot dogs and marshmallows and stuff. One night, this wolf came sniffing around,” he said, nodding at Ma, who was curled up by his feet. “I was scared at first, but my mom told me it was okay. She said the wolf was just hungry and threw her a hot dog. After that, Ma would show up every time we lit a fire. At first, it was just ’cause she wanted hot dogs, but then I think she liked being around us.” Weylyn ran his fingers through the scruff of Ma’s neck. The wolf sighed contentedly.
“There’s a picture somewhere of Ma and me on a trampoline, but I don’t know where it is,” he continued. “It’s probably with the rest of the stuff I left behind when my parents died. It was a snowstorm, you know.”
“What was a snowstorm?”
“That’s how they died. In a car accident. That’s what the lady from the government told me, anyway, when she came to get me.”
I wasn’t used to talking about death. My dad and I avoided the topic as much as humanly possible. During my mom’s funeral, he mostly just sat in the corner of the room, humming to himself. When people offered their condolences, he asked them why, as if he hadn’t yet heard the news. It made some of the mourners second-guess whether they were attending the right funeral.
“So … how’d you end up out here?” I asked awkwardly. “In the woods.”
“I just ran away,” he said, shrugging, as if it were that easy. “My parents kept emergency money under their mattress, so I grabbed that and some other things that were important to me and snuck out through my bedroom window. Ma must’ve known something was wrong ’cause she was waiting for me at the edge of the woods.”
“Do you ever miss them? Your parents?” I asked.
“Yeah. I do,” he said, his bottom lip quivering slightly.
“I know how you feel. I lost my mom.”
Weylyn’s expression shifted gears. I could tell, even before he spoke, that he had drained his mind of his own sadness and replaced it with empathy for mine. “I’m really sorry,” he said, and meant it.
* * *
It was almost noon. The fire was dying, and the wolves were all napping in the sun. Weylyn and I licked the last of our meal off our fingers and were ready for a nap ourselves. “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had,” I said with a full belly and a full heart.
“It’s not over yet. You can’t have a birthday without a gift.” Weylyn jumped up and ran into the cave. I heard him rummaging around; then he came back out with both of his hands behind his back.
“Close your eyes,” he said, giddy.
I closed them, and he placed something in my hands.
“Now open.”
It was a postcard. On it was a picture of the ocean during sunset, fiery orange and pink with text over it that read: WISH YOU WERE HERE.
“I took my dad’s collection of postcards with me when I left, dozens of them from all the places he’d been. This one’s my favorite. I don’t know where it is, but it’s pretty. I thought maybe you’d find it pretty, too.”
I did. When I got home, I placed it on my nightstand. It was the first thing I saw when I woke the next morning.
2
NELSON PENLORE
It was Sunday afternoon, usually my busiest time of the week, but today, I was fishing. I closed my doors at ten t
hat morning because my freezer was completely empty. I’d never had an empty freezer in over twenty years. Even on Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, there was something left: gizzards, necks, feet—the parts that weren’t festive-looking enough for a holiday table—but this W. guy had ordered everything, down to the bucket of entrails I keep by the slop sink. I stuck a note to it warning that it might make him sick, but what he did with his own guts was his business.
The fish weren’t really biting, probably because there were no fish left. My disgruntled customers occupied every square inch of the bank.
“Margaret was planning on making pork chops tonight,” grumbled Fred Toomey. “I love pork chops.”
“Then give me a pig, Fred, and I’ll chop it up for you. Otherwise, you’re just gonna have to wait until Tuesday when I get my next shipment.”
Fred muttered something under his breath, packed up his gear, and left.
I caught two small trout, enough for Mary and me. I didn’t usually cook, but it was Mary’s birthday, and her mom always used to cook something nice on her birthday. She also used to make big meals on Sundays right after church because, as she said, “praying made me hungry.” I’m not sure what she prayed about. In fact, she never once talked about her beliefs during our marriage. During service, she sat studiously, both hands in her lap, listening to the sermon and nodding occasionally. I was able to piece together a few of the things she thought were important from the timing of those nods: first, she cared about the poor; second, she seemed to be behind the notion of forgiveness; and third, that yes, she would like to join the rest of the congregation for cookies and punch in the activity room. She would also nod once or twice on her way to the car, as if putting check marks next to her list of lessons learned for the week. I admired the personal nature of her spirituality, even if I only kind of understood what it was.
The mosquitoes were nipping at my ankles, a sign that it was getting late. I packed up my kit and took a shortcut home—I wanted to beat Mary there so she wouldn’t make herself a sandwich before I got the fish going. We didn’t eat together much, partially because neither of us liked to cook. Didn’t talk much, either, but I never talked much to anyone, including my customers. It only got worse after MaryAnn died. My wife once said she’d had a better conversation with a donkey, but she agreed to marry me, anyway, because I was a good listener and was slightly better looking.
It’s true. I could probably tell you every word my wife ever said. Mary, too. Most people remember their child’s first word, but I remember her first twelve: Ma, Da, yes, no, me, you, now, Cheerios (pronounced “chee-momos”), ball, bear, kiss, and love. But the more words I stuffed into my brain, the less room I had for other information. I’m pretty sure the lyrics to every song I’ve ever heard now occupy the part of my brain that once controlled speech. Maybe that’s why MaryAnn got so mad whenever I was late because my first instinct was to sing “Time Is on My Side” by the Rolling Stones.
It was nine o’clock by the time Mary came home. “Oh. Did you make dinner?” she said as she looked at the two plates of food on the table. One was nothing but bones and a crushed wedge of lemon. The other was covered in tinfoil.
What I wanted to say was, I went fishing so I could make you a nice dinner like Mom used to. But instead, I just said, “Yeah. Trout.”
“Thanks, Dad, but I already ate,” she said and put her plate in the fridge.
I opened my mouth to wish her Happy birthday, but ended up mumbling The Crests’ “16 Candles” too quietly for her to even hear.
3
MARY PENLORE
Weylyn became my father’s best customer. Every Sunday, he’d clean out his entire stock, down to the last gizzard. My father even had to turn away some of his regular customers. “Maybe come by on Saturday next week,” he’d tell them.
“Who says I’ll be coming back at all?” was a common response before they stomped home to their Sunday tables dressed with potatoes and no meat.
This didn’t bother my father. He was the only butcher in town, so unless the whole village decided to go vegetarian, he wasn’t going to lose any business over it. In fact, business was booming. My dad must have chopped up every piece of livestock in the county. He was so busy that I had to help with the butchering, a task that I hated even more than mopping up the blood.
Every time I started on a new animal, I laid a dish towel over its face so I wouldn’t have to look it in the eye. “It’s not going to haunt you, ya know,” my father would say in his usual droll tone, then punctuate the end of his sentence with a loud chop.
I let him believe I was scared. It was better than admitting that the dish towel was the only thing stopping me from crying.
I loved Sundays. I loved waking up with the birds, smelling the cool air, and riding the forty minutes to Twelve Pines. Most of all, I loved being greeted by a warm fire and a hot meal courtesy of Weylyn.
On this particular Sunday, Weylyn had made warm berry syrup to top the sponge cake I had brought. “I think I remember liking cake,” he said the week before, “but it’s been so long, I can’t be sure.”
“This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!” he said, his chin stained pink with berry juice. “Mary, you’re the best cake-maker in the whole world!”
My cheeks, chest, and arms broke out in hot, pink patches—my mom had called it my shy rash. As Weylyn gobbled up the last of the crumbs, I picked up my cake tin to leave.
“You’re leaving already?” Weylyn looked disappointed, his face covered in berry juice.
“Oh. Well…” I’d told my dad I’d help with chores that day. “I don’t know. Am I?”
“It kind of looks like it.”
I stared at the cake tin in my hands, wishing I had a table or a counter to set it on so I didn’t have to keep awkwardly holding it.
“You wanna hang out?” He looked up at me eagerly.
“Yeah.”
“So, why’re you still holding that tin?”
I chucked the tin into the bushes.
Weylyn grinned mischievously. “You ever ridden a horse before?”
* * *
“This is way more fun than any horse,” Weylyn assured me as he helped me onto the back of a large gray wolf called Arrow. He must have seen the terror in my eyes because he said, “Don’t worry. He’s only ever thrown me off twice.”
Before I had a chance to back out, Arrow jolted forward. I screamed and grabbed hold of his fur as he shot through the trees. I could hear Weylyn laughing behind me.
“First one to the hill wins!” he hollered and shot past me on Moon, a white she-wolf.
Arrow sped up, and I buried my face in the fold of his neck.
A few bumpy minutes later, I was brave enough to lift my eyes from Arrow’s fur and feel the breeze on my face. Trees raced past us at an astonishing speed, but Arrow’s breath was calm and even. Moon was right alongside us, Weylyn perched confidently on her back, his long hair whipping itself into plaits. He looked over at me. “There you are! How’s it goin’?”
“Good.” I was grimacing.
“Just good? Then you’re not going fast enough!” He let out a howl, and the wolves went faster. I hunkered down into the safety of Arrow’s shoulder blades.
We stopped at the crest of a hill. Weylyn pried my stiff fingers out of Arrow’s fur and helped me off his back. I willingly crumpled to the ground and waited as my muscles unlocked themselves.
“You’re missing the view.” Weylyn sat on the edge of a cliff, facing the sun. I crawled over to join him. Twelve Pines sprawled out beneath our feet, the treetops gilded by late afternoon light.
“This is where I come when I’m sad … or happy. It’s where I come to feel is what I mean.”
I was still trying to regain feeling in my face.
“You know, you’re the first girl I’ve seen in a long time. I’d almost forgotten what a girl looks like, then I met this hunter in the woods, and he told me that girls are prettier than boys, which, I’m n
ot gonna lie, kind of hurt my feelings. Then he showed me a picture of this pretty lady in a magazine, and I understood what he meant.”
I scrunched up my nose and felt it tingle. “We’re not all lucky enough to look like the girls in those magazines.”
“You must be lucky, then. You look just like her.”
Some people have a knack for accepting compliments. I get defensive. “No, I don’t!” I pictured my body in my head. There was either too much or too little of every piece of me, like I had been molded by an amateur artist in a beginning pottery class. “I’m sorry the first real girl you’ve seen in five years had to look like me.” I was always doing that, apologizing for the way I looked as if the world were somehow suffering from it.
Weylyn looked at me like I was crazy. “If you’re the only girl I ever see, Mary, I can’t say I’d be sorry for it.”
Mary. It felt nice to have a boy call me something other than a pronoun. My shy rash burned.
We sat there for a long time, watching the sun sink into the valley like butter melting on toast, or at least, that’s what it looked like at first. The longer I stared at it, the more it looked like the tree line was reaching up into the sun, not the other way around. “Do you see that?” I asked.
“See what?”
“The trees look like they’re growing.”
“They are growing.”
“No, I mean, faster than normal.”
Weylyn squinted into the sun, then shrugged. “They look normal to me.”
I looked again. The sun had set, and the trees stood perfectly still, like trees are supposed to do.
“I have to tell you something,” Weylyn said, his expression suddenly grave.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m out of money. I used up the last of my parents’ emergency money on meat, and now I have nothing left.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“We have to find new hunting grounds. We have to leave.”
Moon and Arrow howled. Then Weylyn. Then me.
4
NELSON PENLORE
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance Page 2