Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  “It’s necessary,” she answered. “When we get to the reunion, we’ll need to be ready for what might happen.”

  “Like what?”

  Joyce shrugged. “Anything. If Weezer’s there, he’ll be horny, and that makes him dangerous. If Garner comes, we’re all in danger, especially Savannah.”

  Glenn tightened. “He won’t get near Savannah.”

  “No need to get worked up.”

  “I’m not worked up, I’m…” He shook his head. “What does that book of yours say about killing a werewolf?”

  “There are only two ways,” she said. “I mean, only two agreed-upon methods, ones that are practical. So we’ll exclude blowing them up with grenade launchers or dissolving them in acid.”

  Glenn waited, not bothering to conceal his impatience.

  “Cremation or decapitation,” she said.

  That’s a big help, he thought. Now they only needed to invest in some samurai swords and a truckload of napalm.

  “The efficacy of burning is obvious,” she said, as though he’d asked the question. “You reduce the body to ashes, but more importantly, you sever the link between the brain and the heart that supplies blood flow.”

  “Listen,” he began. “I think we need to take a step back—”

  “In all stories,” she went on, “decapitation is effective. With zombies, vampires… You don’t often hear about decapitation with werewolves—most fictional accounts end with a silver bullet, don’t they?—but I’m certain it’s the most expedient way. Nothing can live without a brain.”

  “Weezer did pretty well most of his life.”

  She dragged one of the soft leather chairs in front of him and sat. “Glenn,” she said, “why did you become a machinist?”

  He tensed. “I make a hell of a lot more money than you do. What do they pay you here, Joyce?”

  She continued to search his face, unabashed. “I hardly make anything. You know that. Librarians never do.”

  “Then stop criticizing.”

  “I’m not cri—” She broke off, took in a shuddering breath. “Look, I’m just asking a question, okay? There’s nothing wrong with manual labor—”

  “Damn straight.”

  “—but a person with your mind…a man who loves books and thinks about things…I just wonder why you didn’t pursue something else.”

  And gazing at her in the shadows cast by the pines and maples outside, the violet glints of twilight forming glimmering columns on her face, he almost told her everything. But when he opened his mouth, the words refused to come. Because how did you explain all the trivialities of your past, the formative events that sound ludicrous now but were so painful back then? How when you moved from a not-very-good junior high to a good middle school in the seventh grade, you went from one of the best students in your class to a kid whose skills were below average? How you shut down emotionally because you didn’t have friends and your grades were bad and you got to believing what the grades told you, that you were stupid. That everyone else understood books because they were smarter than you, so you found a friend in Weezer, who hated books and who laughed at your jokes because he was just as lonely as you were. And Short Pump was always around too, and though Short Pump did read books, he inevitably did it on the sly because he knew Weezer would mock him for it. And in the tenth grade when your class read Lord of the Flies, you liked the title and hoped you’d like the book. But on the first page they talked about walking out of a scar, and you wondered How the hell can you walk out of a scar? A scar’s on someone’s face, and a person couldn’t walk out of a face could he? So you pretended to read the book and didn’t read a damned page and failed the quizzes and barely passed English, and that was how it went in most of your classes. You had a C average, and what the hell could you do with that? Certainly not get into a good college. So you went to technical school like the other retreads and got a degree that amounted to absolutely nothing because you could have gotten that machinist’s job anyway without college. But you were good at it and after eight years you’re in the same job in the same town, and if that were all it wouldn’t be so bad. But what makes it worse is that somewhere along the line Short Pump began rubbing off on you, and you began to borrow his books, and then you bought them on your own and read them and realized you weren’t dumb after all. Just a quitter. On yourself. But life is unforgiving, especially to those who choose the wrong path when they’re thirteen years old.

  So yes, Joyce, he wanted to say. I know I could have done better. Could maybe still do better. But it’s so hard to change, you know? Even if I know I can do more, there’s still that residual doubt, that insecurity. And there’s the matter of how to do it. It’s not like I could just not work for four years in order to get a bachelor’s degree, and why would they accept me anyway? My sterling record as a machinist? And let’s say I do get in, Joyce, what then? I become the creepy older guy sitting with a roomful of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds. My clothes are different, my face is different. Hell, I probably smell different.

  She reached out, touched his knee. Glenn jerked it away.

  “Glenn?” she said. God, the sympathy in her liquid brown eyes. “Please tell me what’s wrong. Please talk to me.”

  Sure, he thought. It’s that easy, isn’t it? Just tell you everything I feel and admit how much I hate myself. Because beneath the insecurity and the embarrassment and all the other mental baggage, there’s something worse. There’s guilt, Joyce. Guilt, so thick and stultifying I can hardly stand it. Guilt over what I let myself become, but even more than that, guilt for the way I’ve treated women.

  I once dated a girl who was nice and caring but not quite cute enough for me to want to show her off around town. So I used her for a while and told myself it was okay, she was having a good time too. And one night after I’d decided it was time to let her fade from my life but hadn’t informed her of this phasing out, she asked me, via a cell phone message, to go to the bars with her. I didn’t want to, so I said I had plans. She was cool about it like she always was, but she said she’d left her ID at my house and needed to pick it up before she went out with her friends. I knew she and her friends would be going to the same bar I wanted to go to—I wanted to hook up with someone new, of course—and I didn’t want her spoiling it. So I pretended I’d never gotten her message, and she stayed home while I went out, got drunk and picked up some girl I never saw again. Really funny, right? But you know the worst part? The part that makes me want to break things and cry out to my younger self, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  The worst part is when I told my dad about what I’d done—good old Fred Kershaw, longtime city councilman and a pillar of this community—do you know what he said? After I told him of how shittily I’d treated that poor girl, he asked me if I’d gotten lucky that night. I told him I had, told him about the woman I’d picked up. He clapped me on the back and said, “Well, I guess it worked out, huh, pal?”

  “Will you talk to me?” Joyce asked.

  No, I won’t talk to you, and I won’t tell you the truth. That the only reason I’m well regarded around here is that I’ve had sex with a lot of women. Some accomplishment, huh? And the quicker I disposed of them, the more people idolized me. No one would admit it, of course, but that’s the honest truth. It’s embarrassing and shallow and sad. I’ve capitalized on the twisted values of this twisted little town. And now that I’m a murderer, I finally see how horrible I’ve been. But I’m afraid I can’t escape what I’ve become.

  “Say something,” Joyce urged.

  Glenn stared at her, knowing he couldn’t tell her these things.

  What he did say was, “I just realized.”

  Joyce leaned forward a little, her hand on his knee. “Yes?”

  He nodded. “I don’t have a date for the reunion tonight.”

  She watched him, waiting. The vulnerability in her eyes br
oke his heart.

  He went on. “But if you wouldn’t mind being seen with a blue-collar worker…”

  She colored. “Glenn.”

  “Would you go with me?”

  “I accept,” she said, removing her hand primly. “It’s a good thing you asked.”

  He smiled. “And why is that?”

  “You need me to protect you.”

  He laughed, but when she returned to the whiteboard his smile quickly faded. “From who?”

  She eyed him steadily. “Yourself.”

  “This feels frivolous,” Savannah said. She knew she was repeating herself, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to be with Jake, who was currently in the bedroom examining Barb’s collection of Golden Classics and Little Critters books. For a woman who’d never had children, Barb sure had amassed a sizable array of children’s books.

  Short Pump leaned over the kitchen island—pearlescent quartz; stylish, like the rest of Barb’s house—and fixed her with what she thought of as his earnest, pragmatic gaze. “It’s not frivolous, Savannah, it’s strategic. Jake’s better off here than anywhere else. Garner won’t know he’s here, so there’s nothing to worry about. But even if he did somehow trace us, Jake’s got his own armed guard. Where else could he have that?”

  Maybe I don’t like the idea of Jake needing an armed guard, she thought but didn’t say. Because she knew what Short Pump’s answer would be, and furthermore, that he’d be right: It might not be a pleasant concept, Savannah, but it’s the reality.

  Still…the reality sucked.

  It sucked that she had to attend her tenth reunion with a bunch of people she hardly knew anymore, sucked that she had to carry on the fiction of enjoying herself despite the fact that Lane Cartwright and his men would be monitoring the Roof while the celebrants pretended seven of their number hadn’t been slaughtered last weekend.

  “You think Weezer will show?” she heard herself asking.

  Short Pump shrugged. “Still haven’t heard from him.”

  “He’s been too busy at the drive-in.”

  A shadow seemed to pass over Short Pump’s face. “Just because he hasn’t called me back doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”

  Savannah turned, spoke to Barb, who was moving into the kitchen, a white feather duster clutched in one big hand. “Do you know Weezer?”

  Barb nodded. “Well enough.”

  “And?” Savannah said. “What do you think of him?”

  Barb laid the feather duster on the counter. “Not much,” she answered.

  Short Pump glared at Barb. “What do you have against him? You ever talked to him?”

  “Very little,” Barb allowed.

  “Then how can you—”

  “He’s a lackey, and lackeys are prone to secret cravings. He follows Glenn Kershaw around, yipping at his heels like a cartoon puppy.”

  “So?” Short Pump said. “Glenn’s better with the ladies than Weezer is. Weezer idolizes him for it. So what?”

  “There’s nothing more dangerous than a bottom feeder,” Barb said. “Weezer wants what Glenn has, but hasn’t the skill or the looks to get it.”

  Short Pump hid his hands in his pockets. “Lots of people struggle with confidence.”

  Barb chuckled without the slightest trace of warmth. “He doesn’t lack confidence. The little worm will hit on any woman with a pulse, and the pulse part might be optional.”

  Short Pump started to protest, but Savannah cut in. “It’s true, Short Pump. Weezer’s always been sort of creepy.”

  “That’s underselling it,” Barb said. “Guy might as well have his hand down his trousers, stroking his pecker while he talks to a woman.”

  Short Pump glared at Barb. “You act like he’s a sex offender.”

  “I’ve no doubt he is,” Barb answered. “Or wants to be. Now if we’re buying the notion that Dave Garner really is a shape-shifter, and we’re really buying the theory of what Garner can spread to others, and if Garner truly was at the Roof when the drive-in murders took place, that leaves a handful of suspects: Joyce, who wouldn’t hurt a mosquito if it landed on her nose and started to suck; Glenn, who’s got a couple redeeming traits even though he chooses to behave like a sex-addicted imbecile—”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Savannah said.

  “—and Weezer, the guy no one’s heard a peep from in days. That factory where he works? They fired him this morning.”

  “How do you know that?” Short Pump said.

  “I know his boss,” Barb said. “Weezer won’t answer his phone or his door. Only reason they know he’s not dead is his truck’s been seen around town a couple times.”

  Short Pump gestured feebly. “I know it was Garner at the bonfire.”

  “Maybe it was,” Barb said. “But we know it wasn’t him at the drive-in. It’s got to be Weezer.”

  “What about Melody Bridwell?” Savannah asked.

  “I didn’t forget Melody,” Barb said. “But I’m not sure what to make of her. Never have. There’s something off about that situation.” She looked like she’d tasted something sour.

  “What’s wrong?” Savannah asked.

  “You heard from her lately?” Barb asked.

  Savannah gave her a dour look. “We don’t exactly run in the same circles.”

  “Don’t be a snob.”

  “I’m not—”

  “And stop stalling,” Barb said. She glanced at her watch. “It’s after nine already. You two are the ones Garner wants. If you’re not there soon, he might come looking for you.”

  Savannah shifted from foot to foot. “What about Weezer?”

  Barb said, “He’ll be at the reunion.”

  “Not necessarily,” Savannah said.

  Barb tilted her head. “Will there be girls at the Roof?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’ll be there.”

  Short Pump said, “She’s right, Savannah. We better get over there.”

  Savannah’s gut was a tight, tingling ball. She moved toward the living room. “At least let me say goodnight to Jakers.”

  Short Pump said something, but Savannah ignored it. She hated this, dammit, hated being forced into a situation she hadn’t created. It wasn’t her fault Mike had been so careless, wasn’t her fault Garner’s daughter was dead. She considered just taking Jake and getting the hell out of Lakeview.

  To collect herself, she slipped into the half bath off the living room and shut the door. She didn’t want to cry, but she didn’t want to hold it in either. But the way she was feeling now was eerily similar to the way she’d felt six years ago when she’d learned she was pregnant.

  Her parents had been emotionally distant in the first place, her mom addicted to prescription drugs, her dad forever disappointed she wasn’t a boy. The only time he’d shown any interest in her was when she’d dated Mike, and though she hadn’t recognized it at the time, looking back it was clear that her father had viewed Mike as the son he’d never had. When Mike had dumped Savannah and fizzled out as a baseball player, what little interest her dad had shown in her dwindled to nothing. In contrast, her mom didn’t change appreciably when Mike dumped Savannah, instead remained sequestered inside her medicated cocoon, free of human emotions and entanglements.

  But her mother and father both changed when they learned of Savannah’s pregnancy. Oh, how they changed.

  Her mom was a secretary, her father a sometimes-usher at the Apostolic Christian church in downtown Lakeview. Savannah had attended the church her whole life, had considered the old brick building a safe haven.

  But when she’d announced to her parents she was pregnant, they forbade her from setting foot in the church again.

  This was after a shitstorm of shouting and condemnation, a savage tirade by her father punctuated by wildly out-of-character declarations from
her mother. Demands that she have an abortion, leave Lakeview, even that she have her last name changed so her parents wouldn’t be associated with her bastard child.

  That’s what they called Jake. The bastard. Savannah had been so taken aback by the word that she’d simply gaped at them. She’d read old novels in which the children of unmarried women were referred to by that ugly term, but she’d never considered the possibility that people in the twenty-first century would employ it too, least of all her parents.

  But use it they did, and even after Savannah began to show, they refused to associate with her. As she neared her due date, as she endured that terrible twenty-seven hours of labor, as she went through the emergency C-section…she went through all of it alone. Or mostly alone. Barb had done what she could during the ordeal. Short Pump had helped when she’d let him. A couple of her girlfriends had pitched in with meals after Jake was born. But mostly—emotionally, at least—she’d gone through it alone.

  Her parents moved away when Jake was four months old.

  They’d never met him.

  Savannah gazed up into her reflection and was surprised to note the tears hadn’t come. Maybe she was stronger than she thought.

  Or maybe she was so tired of this shit that she was beyond tears.

  Making sure the door was locked, she hitched up her blue sundress, eased down on the toilet and peed.

  She refused to give up now. She’d survived the bonfire, survived her parents’ callousness.

  She’d survive this goddamned reunion too.

  Savannah wiped, rucked up her panties and flushed. She washed her hands and went into Barb’s bedroom to see her son.

  The best thing in her life.

  Jake didn’t look up when she entered the room. He was sprawled out on top of the covers, a board book called Harry Maclary propped open on his chest.

  “How’s my boy?” she asked, easing down to face him.

  He didn’t answer, only continued to examine the book.

  She reached out, pushed his hair behind his ears. “Is that a good story?”

  “It’s about a dog,” he said without looking up. He frowned, pointed. “What’s this word?”