Wolf and Iron

by Gordon Rupert Dickson

  It had been in preparation for this that Jeebee had sandwiched several layers of plastic between alternate layer of sheets so that when the sheet became too dampened, he could clear it away down to another, dry one.

  A moment later, as he watched, the afterbirth, slippery with blood, emerged. He wrapped it in plastic and put it aside on a high, overhead shelf, to be taken out later.

  The baby stopped nursing and closed his eyes. Merry, who had been watching him, let her head loll back against the pillows with a sigh of happiness. Her baby was alternately feeding and staring about, his blue eyes flickering here and there, then closing as he seemed to doze for a short while, then waking to search for the nipple again and feed some more.

  With one of the boiled cloths dampened in warm water, he cleaned the rest of the baby and wrapped him in the warmest and softest cloth he could find. Then he wrapped both the baby and Merry in their softest blanket.

  He turned away to start to clean up. Little whimpering noises of the kind Wolf would make in certain social situations made him spin back. He had forgotten all about Wolf being there.

  To his surprise, Wolf was slowly approaching Merry and the baby in the bed, in his most submissive and ingratiating of postures. His head was held low, his ears were back, his tail wagging, wolf-style, and he was making the little whimpering sounds of reassurance and promise of the best of all possible intentions.

  Merry, totally exhausted but fully alert, snarled at him with surprising strength and intensity. The snarl was so reflexive and real that it startled Jeebee. He did not have to be a wolf himself to read it very clearly. Merry was a mother and Wolf was not going to get any closer to her baby.

  Wolf stopped immediately and Jeebee, suddenly coming to his senses, woke up and moved toward him to throw him out, bodily, if necessary.

  But Wolf was gone through the door before he had fully taken the first step toward him. This time, however, he did not leave with any show of temper, but rather with a quick self-effacement that was almost magical in its speed.

  “Take him,” Merry said, lifting the baby from her body. “Would you bring me that chamber pot? My teeth are floating.”

  Jeebee moved to take the baby from her.

  “Carefully!” Merry’s voice was almost as sharp as when she had snarled at Wolf. Jeebee felt a momentary flicker of indignation, which was gone as quickly as it came, as he moved over to accept the baby into his arms. He had handled the baby carefully enough before Merry ever held him, he thought. But the thought remained unuttered.

  “Oh,” said Merry, getting out of bed slowly and painfully. “And will you get me some food, now? I’m starving! And I want a large cup of water—and maybe five more after that.”

  The chamber pot was handy, the cup and the water were available. Merry got back under the covers and took the baby back again. He had woken when he was passed to Jeebee, and when he came back to his mother he searched once more for her breast. Then she sighed happily, again. A very, very deep sigh.

  Jeebee was busy bringing her sandwiches made by putting a slice of cold cooked beef between two slices of cheese. They had been hoarding some of the cheese against this moment. Merry bit into it voraciously.

  “Do you know, when he suckles there’s no pain at all?” She spoke with her mouth full; but that was all right. It was all right, Jeebee thought, with the world.

  CHAPTER 35

  Jeebee was exhausted, ready to take a couple of blankets, roll up on the floor, and try to catch at least some sleep.

  Merry, however, was still hungry. He built a small fire in the fireplace to heat a good-sized cooking pot of the thick soup he had prepared. It was made mainly of root vegetables, because the garden down at the ranch had not yet begun to produce much in the way of this summer’s eatables. But they still had some carrots, beets, and rutabagas, plus dried peas from the ranch’s fruit cellar, saved for important occasions.

  The root vegetables, dug the fall before from the garden there, had been kept with their tops chopped off, and buried in a box of sandy soil. They were a little dried and tough, but in soup form they became tender, and something to balance the animal protein of the cheese and meat.

  Eventually, Merry’s hunger was satisfied. A little more than three hours after the birth she dozed off, then dropped into what seemed to Jeebee like a normal-to-heavy sleep, with the baby beside her in the bed.

  Jeebee had worried before the birth about the business of her sleeping with the newborn child in the bed with her.

  “You’ll be pretty worn-out,” he had said, only a couple of days before, “and you’ll probably sleep pretty heavily. If you roll over in your sleep, you might—”

  “I’m not going to roll on my precious baby!” said Merry. “How can you even think something like that!”

  “You might not know—”

  “I’ll know!” Merry had said. “No one is going to have that baby with them but me, until I say so!”

  Jeebee had necessarily left it at that. Later on, he had remembered something in one of the wolf books and looked it up. Sure enough, there was a statement there about surrogates, people who volunteered to take care of and raise very young animals from zoos and similar places that could not keep them safely with the adults of their own species, or where the animal mother was dead or incapable.

  These humans often needed to sleep nights with the very young animals, and it was noted that they could do so safely. It had been established that as long as the human being was neither sedated nor affected by any drug or medicine, there was absolutely no danger of one of them rolling over in their sleep on the young creatures.

  Now, looking at Merry sleeping with one arm still holding the sleeping baby close to her breast, he felt reassured and happy.

  He finished cleaning up and went outside, stepping for a moment into the summer morning.

  Wolf was gone from the front room and was nowhere to be seen around the cave. Nor was he visible in the meadow outside. About Jeebee, the early day was warming as the sun rose, and he found himself thinking that he had never felt quite so happy as he did at this moment.

  In a sense, his world was complete. He felt enclosed in happiness under the straight-back pines, with the sound of a small breeze going through their branches and the two streams slipping by with other light sounds between their banks. Above him white clouds sailed demurely across the blue June sky. He felt fulfilled. In this moment, life seemed finally, utterly purposeful, and overwhelmingly satisfactory.

  He was, for the first time since Merry had called him in, conscious of his own tiredness. Merry had evidently been wired up during those hours following the birth when she had been so hungry, and apparendy he had picked up some of the wiredness from her. Now he himself wanted only to sleep.

  He went back inside, leaving the outer door open but closing the inner one and making up his own bed on the floor with his body against it, the door itself open just a tiny crack for air. To get in, Wolf or anything else would have to push him aside. And that would wake him. Merry and the baby were protected.

  He was woken for short periods at indefinite times after that by Merry wanting something more to eat or drink. Each time, he felt his way to the nearest electric light and switched it on. The second time, Merry suggested a light be put down where she could reach it herself. All the headlamps were on long cords and easy to move. He shifted the one closest to the bed; and, momentarily while awake, as long as he was up, he stepped outside again and found that Wolf had come back. He was curled up in his usual corner of the lower room. Beyond the open outer door, the day showed itself at mid-to-late afternoon.

  He went all the way outdoors, to feel again the summertime and reach for a trace of the remarkable feeling of completeness he had felt earlier. Turning back in, his eye caught something by the side of the door and he remembered that sometime after the baby was born, he had wrapped the afterbirth in plastic and put it out here, to dispose of later. It was still there. But the plastic had been neatly r
ipped away from it. It was completely exposed, but untouched.

  The ripping away of the plastic was clearly Wolf’s work. But he—who would eat anything that was eatable—had not touched the afterbirth. Jeebee’s heart gave a curious lurch in his chest. What could have made Wolf respect that, where normally anything eatable would have been snatched up and carried off by him?

  Jeebee tried to remember something in the books about wolves that he had read which could explain this. But there was nothing. Slowly the thought formed in him that he was doubtful of accepting, because it simply might be a matter of sheer wish-fulfillment. It had occurred to him that perhaps Wolf might have respected the afterbirth because he had made an association of it with as much of the birth scene as he had witnessed, and with Merry and the baby itself.

  If so, then it could have been the beginning of a recognition that the baby was part of their family, part of the pack, as Wolf would have thought of them. It was a long jump into sheer supposition. Jeebee was only too aware of how little he knew about wolves. But he wondered if perhaps Wolf’s experience with the amniotic fluid in his face, and his later shoulder-rolling in the sheet that had been stained when Merry’s water bag burst, as well as his watching of the birth—plus Merry’s warning him off—if all these things had not acted as a form of something like imprinting.

  It was pure guesswork, but maybe it was a possibility. When he went back in, he located the chain he had found at the ranch and that he had equipped earlier with a snap on one end so that it could act as a leash, as the storekeeper woman had walked with Wolf on a leash in the town where Jeebee had lost his motorized bike. He had never gotten around to trying whether Wolf would remember and accept the leash with him. Now Jeebee hung it from a nail in the frame of the inner door, where it would be close at hand. Later on, he would try out the leash.

  It seemed he had hardly closed his eyes before he was wakened by scratching at the door and Wolf whining and snuffling through the crack, it seemed right into his ear. He sat up as Merry turned the light on, having herself been woken by Wolf’s demands to enter.

  “Do you want me to let him in?” said Jeebee, putting his hand up to the chain. “I’ve got the leash here now. I can keep him on that. I really think we want to start getting him used to the baby right from the start.”

  He thought fleetingly again of the afterbirth outside with the plastic carefully peeled away from it.

  “Shall I leash him and then let him in, just close enough to see you and the baby again?” Jeebee repeated when she did not answer.

  “Yes,” said Merry, “but don’t let him get any closer than the edge of the bed.”

  Jeebee got up, holding the door shut by leaning against it with all his body weight. He unhooked the chain, and then, still holding the door shut, moved around and opened it only enough to push himself through the opening and push Wolf back. Jeebee looped the ready-held chain loosely around Wolf’s neck as he imprisoned him with his arms and snapped the snap into one of the links. It was attached to Wolf now, but it hung loosely around his neck and the snap would keep that looseness so the chain would not choke him. Wolf did not seem to object. Beyond the wide-open outer door, twilight held the sky. It was the regular time for Wolf’s evening visit.

  Still holding tight to the chain and keeping Wolf from pulling away from him, but allowing him into the room, Jeebee stepped backward one pace. Wolf strained against the chain, not fighting it, but trying to get to the inner room. Jeebee let Wolf pull him into the inner room, and only stopped him with the chain some three feet from the near edge of the bed. Merry was sitting up, eyeing Wolf narrowly, with the baby on the far side of her, lying out of sight beyond her body.

  Jeebee allowed Wolf to go a step forward; he was still about a foot and a half from the bed, whimpering now, wagging his tail and looking both agreeably and appealingly at Merry.

  Without warning, the baby cried, a thin wail, and tossed its arms in the air so that they appeared on the other side of Merry’s body. Merry turned and took the tiny figure up into her arms, laying the little head against her breast.

  Long before she had lifted the baby fully into sight, Wolf had jumped backward, and hidden behind Jeebee.

  “Will you look at that!” said Jeebee. “He’s afraid of the baby!”

  “He’s hungry,” Merry said softly, to the baby rather than to Jeebee or Wolf. “Is he hungry?”

  She had lifted the baby to her breast and it found the nipple and nursed—but just for a few moments. It was evidently not as hungry as it thought it had been. It let the nipple out of its mouth and turned its head away toward Jeebee, small blue eyes flashing about.

  A long gray muzzle sneaked around the side of Jeebee’s leg. Wolf was peering at the baby.

  The baby jerked up an arm in a sudden motion like a reflexive wave, and Wolf’s muzzle was gone behind Jeebee’s leg once more, almost before the arm had started to lift.

  The baby looked around for a moment more before deciding to find the nipple again, and went back to nursing. The gray muzzle crept out again.

  Silently, almost imperceptibly, Wolf emerged from behind Jeebee, his neck outstretched, his nose flared toward the bed, and his eyes on Merry and the baby. Merry herself was looking down, watching the baby, absorbed in the process of nursing.

  Wolf floated gradually forward until most of his body was past Jeebee. The chain, which Jeebee had kept slack, drew tight and stopped him a foot from the near bedside.

  Jeebee moved forward a little, himself, slackening his chain; Wolf started to take up the slack and suddenly froze. Jeebee looked at Merry. Merry’s eyes and attention were all on Wolf. Her face was fixed in an expression and her lips had drawn back from her teeth. It was not a welcoming face. The glitter of her teeth in the fluorescent light was like the glitter of the teeth of any carnivore mother. Wolf’s ears had flattened to his head, his head itself had lowered, and his tail had begun to wag as he moved forward. Now he stood still in his same position and began to make little appeasing whines.

  “Let him come as far as the edge of the bed?” Jeebee said.

  “As far as the edge”—Merry’s face had not changed—“but no farther!”

  Jeebee stood where he was, with a slack chain. Gradually Wolf inched forward until his nose was barely inches from the bedside.

  “That’s enough!” Merry said suddenly.

  Jeebee checked Wolf. He only twitched the chain taut for a second, but Wolf had stopped even before the words were out of Merry’s mouth. Now, Wolf backed a step and then turned to leave, out of the inner room, through the outer door and into the open air.

  Outside, Jeebee took the leash off.

  With the leash off, Wolf appeared to lose all interest in the cave’s interior. He greeted Jeebee in the usual fashion and tried to get Jeebee to play with him and chase him. Jeebee, however, was too wise in Wolf’s ways by this time to be drawn from his post in the doorway. Wolf had left the inner room on his own decision. But it was one of his oldest tricks to see if he could not get Jeebee’s attention away from something that Wolf himself wanted, and then beat Jeebee back to whatever it was. Wolf might actually have been wanting to romp and roughhouse in the usual fashion; but he could equally well have been trying merely to draw Jeebee out of position so he could slip past him and in through the door again. Perhaps he thought that Merry might let him come closer to the new pup if Jeebee was not there.

  In any case, Jeebee stood his ground, and after a while Wolf, panting agreeably, suddenly turned and pulled his usual vanishing act through the trees. Jeebee turned, himself, closing both the front and inner doors behind him as he went back inside.

  He doubted that Wolf would still try to come back for a while, or that his disappearing just now meant that he had given up trying to get in. But just to be on the safe side, Jeebee made sure the inner door was firmly latched.

  Back inside, the light was still on and Merry still sat up in bed, holding her child.

  “I hope it didn’t w
orry you to have him that close,” said Jeebee.

  “Worry me? No,” Merry answered.

  Her right hand came up from the hidden side of her where the baby had been lying. It was holding Jeebee’s revolver. “I’ll be carrying this from now on.”

  Jeebee gazed at the gun and at her and let out a deep breath. He remembered the moment coming up out of the root cellar with the cans, months before.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, I don’t really think he’ll be a danger to the baby.”

  “No,” said Merry.

  She put the revolver away, laying it back down where it hadbeen, and her mood changed as abruptly as Wolf’s had seemed to, outside.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” she said fondly, looking down at the baby.

  “Yes,” said Jeebee, wondering a little to find that he really did think the baby was beautiful. He was not used to thinking in those terms about men, boys, or even male children. But Merry was right. Their baby was beautiful.

  “We’ve got to name him,” Merry said decisively.

  There was a little lift to her voice at the end of the sentence. Not enough to make it a question, but enough to invite comment from Jeebee. Or, if not, some kind of response.

  “What do you want to name him?” Jeebee said diplomatically.

  “Paul,” she answered immediately. Her gaze clouded a little. “He’ll never know his granddaddy, but he can carry his name.”

  She looked up at Jeebee.

  “You don’t like Paul for him?” Merry asked.

  “I hadn’t even thought,” said Jeebee. “No, of course I like Paul.”

  His answer was completely truthful. He simply hadn’t thought that far ahead; and in any case, he had no objection to the baby being named after Merry’s father. The thought came to him, too late, that he might have put forward the name of his own father. But Merry had never known his father. In fact Jeebee had all but forgotten him in the years since his father’s death and his own maturing.