Kiss of the Wolf

by Jim Shepard

  There was a finger-sized area of blood, discreet, near his head.

  This broke her paralysis. She crossed to him and crouched.

  He was facedown. A hand and at least a leg were broken; she could see that much already. She didn’t want to turn him over. She placed a palm on his back. This seemed to her the best moment for the miracle.

  “Is he all right?” Todd called from the car in a small, terrified voice.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. She moved her hand from the back and put it along the side of the neck, below an ear. She didn’t know how to tell if someone was alive. She didn’t feel anything. She couldn’t hear anything. He didn’t look that hurt, but there was the blood from his head. It was very dark. She couldn’t see where the blood was coming from.

  She leaned back in her crouch, her forehead cooling in panic. She shouldn’t move him, but she shouldn’t leave him here. The car: she’d have to bring the car around, block the road, put her emergency blinkers on.

  She looked closer at his head and neck. It welled up inside her like a confirmation of her worst sense of herself: he was dead. There was more blood, under his chest. She could see the edge of the jacket soaking it up like a spill.

  Something cracked in the forest off the side of the road. She got up and walked fast, the little girl turning her back to the haunted house, walked back to the car. Todd was crouched inside, his head low and his knees up. One of the presents, the board game, had flown onto his lap. He clawed it away from him with some alarm.

  She moved along the front of the car. The hood was sprung, but otherwise looked no worse than it usually did. She shut it and it stayed down. The bumper had a gentle dent under the right headlight. It did not stand out. The body was pushed in a little, too. She imagined people in the woods. She got in the car. She started it. She was in a new world.

  She edged the gas, and they pulled free of the bushes with a bump and rocked onto the road. Leaves were caught under the windshield wipers. She turned right. She was thinking, I can go for help instead of waiting here. She was thinking the first gas station or cop car. Todd didn’t say anything.

  Something scraped and dragged beneath the car and then fell away. In slow motion, she pulled onto the ramp for the Merritt Parkway. She thumped up onto the shoulder and straightened the car out.

  Todd shifted around in his seat. He peered over the side of his door. “Where’re we going?” he asked.

  Where were they going? “We’re gonna call,” she said. She didn’t know where.

  They were going too slow. They were crossing the bridge. She could hear the whine of the bridge metal beneath them. A car rushed by her, swerved, and honked. She turned on her lights.

  “That was a phone booth down there,” Todd said, meaning farther along 110. “There’s no phone booths up here.”

  “We could call from home,” she said, and knew it was wrong when she said it. She looked over at Todd. He was looking at her piercingly.

  Was she crazy? This was possible. She saw exit signs ahead. She slowed down and took the exit.

  “Now where’re we going?” Todd said. “What’re you doing?” He sounded a little hysterical.

  At the stop sign, she looked both ways. She turned left. She turtled forward under the highway, and stopped, and looked both ways again. The road, whatever it was, was dark and quiet. She turned left again.

  “I’m going back,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  Heading back toward the body, she thought of her life changed: she saw newspapers, flashbulbs, and jury trials, all images from movies. The triviality and theatricality of her imagination were appalling. You killed someone, she thought. But even that was theatrical and lacked weight, as if she were a scold.

  The tires drummed back onto the bridge. A police car appeared from behind them and surged by, and its siren bolted on as it passed. As she came over the crest of the arc she saw the lights, yellow and blue, flashing around the scene of the accident. There were red taillights glowing, too: two or three cars. Her heart seized up. The police car that had passed her slowed as much as it could and careened off onto 110. She sailed frozenly by the exit.

  “What’re we doin’?” Todd cried. “What’re you doin’?”

  “Shut up,” she said, and he gave off a wail, and put his head in his hands, and left it at that.

  God forgive me, God forgive me, she said to herself.

  That meant she had to turn around again and go back. The car handled like a truck. The wheel lurched and jerked at her hands. Once again: under the highway, up the entrance ramp. It was nightmarish. She was becoming something comic. They could see the scene yet again. Various people were illuminated in red, posed kneeling and crouching around the central figure of the body. It reminded her of a Christmas crèche, and she was amazed at her blasphemy and detachment. She couldn’t conceive of herself as part of that group now: driving up, approaching the cops standing around their cars, and saying, I did this.

  They were back on the bridge. Todd looked out the window at the river, his head against the headrest in despair.

  You can call from home, she thought. She had to go back, she understood. But leaving had made it impossible to return: she was twice as criminal. Three times as criminal.

  “I’m trying to think,” she said. Todd didn’t answer.

  The car was making ominous, rhythmic scraping noises, and she thought, not even sure what she meant, Not this, too.

  She passed the exit where she’d turned around the first time. She had the feeling she was coming to moral turning points, one after the other, and failing each one. She kept putting a hand to her cheek, as if to cool it.

  When she slowed for their exit, Todd said, “It’s hit-and-run. It’s hit-and-run if you leave him and don’t say anything.”

  Joanie took an audibly deep breath and let it out, as if she were blowing smoke. She recognized it as what she did to signal Todd during debates that things were a lot more complicated in the adult world than he realized; that sometimes she wished he only knew how patient she could be. She let the fraudulence of her response stand. Todd didn’t seem much affected by it, anyway.

  “If you leave him—” Todd said.

  “I know,” she said, trying to control her voice. She swung into a turn so that he slid into the door on his side. “I know all of this,” she said.

  From that point to the turn into their street, she ran through variations on Why me? and Why does this have to happen now?

  The garage door was open, though the light was out. She sailed right up the driveway and braked only at the last minute. Lucky he had put his bike away this time, she thought grimly. The front bumper clanked the junk against the wall. She turned the engine off and hung forward on the wheel.

  Nested bicycle fenders and a hubcab Gary’d hung on a nail were still making noise. The streetlight penetrated only as far as the back bumper, so she could just about see her hands.

  “You were going too fast,” Todd said.

  “Was it my fault?” Joanie said. “Did he just come out of nowhere at us, or not?”

  “You were going too fast,” Todd said.

  “I was not going too fast,” Joanie said. “I was not going that fast.”

  Todd shifted around on the seat next to her. It was possible he’d refuse to get out of the car. Decide to go next door and call the police.

  “How could I have seen him in time?” she said. “What could anybody have done?”

  Her ears were ringing, like she’d been shouting. She sat back against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d been going too fast.

  The engine was ticking as it cooled, the way it did after the accident. Todd noticed it, too, and got out of the car and slammed the door. When she got to the front door, he was standing there with his head down, like a dog waiting to be let in.

  “I’m going to call,” she said as she wrestled with the key. She swung the door inward, and he slipped by her and through the front hall.
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  “How ’bout some lights?” she said. He went directly to the back door.

  She hit the lights and put her bag down and stood near the phone. Her chest felt the way she did at the beach when she’d breathed in too much water, too much mist.

  “Audrey’s back,” Todd said. He opened the door, and the dog pitter-pattered in across the tile.

  He closed it behind her and relocked it and crossed to the kitchen table. He sat in one of the chairs. Audrey checked her dish and then walked over to him and put her head beside his knee. He played with her ears. He was waiting for Joanie to call.

  She had her hand on the phone. It was a wall phone, white. It reminded her of hours ago at her mother’s. She let it go and pulled open the junk drawer beneath it. She pulled out the phone book and searched the municipal section at the front. Pages slapped back and forth.

  “You could just dial nine-one-one,” Todd said.

  She ignored him.

  She found the precinct number and dialed. Todd was looking at the dog. She had her hand on the phone, for support. It was ringing at the other end. Her index finger swung over into the cradle and pressed the switch hook. She took her hand away before he could see. Look what you’re doing, she thought, as horrified as she’d been at any other point that night. She pressed the earpiece tighter to her head. He’d hear the dial tone, she thought.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’d like to report—Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She stopped. The dial tone was deafening. She thought of the story she’d read in junior high, the murdered man’s heart you could hear under the floor.

  She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “They got me on hold,” she said.

  Todd was still contemplating Audrey, testing the floppiness of her ears.

  Minutes went by. Joanie didn’t know what to do. Her mashed ear was sore. She wanted Todd to leave, to take some pressure off the second part of her performance.

  “Get ready for bed,” she said. “I’ll be right up.”

  He looked up at her with surprise, and she had the terrified premonition she’d blown it. “They’re gonna want to interview us and stuff,” he said. “I can’t go to bed.”

  “They’re gonna want to interview me,” she said. “They’re not gonna want to interview you. Why would they want to interview you?”

  “I’m going with you,” he said stubbornly. “They’d want to interview me.”

  She felt a rush of shame, his loyalty juxtaposed to her weakness, her ongoing lying.

  She was still standing there with the phone.

  “Try nine-one-one,” he said.

  She hung up.

  “I’ll call them tomorrow,” she said, but his face when she said that made her turn back to the phone, and, exasperated, as if he’d been relentlessly asking they stop for ice cream, she dialed 911. What she’d do now she didn’t know. Try the hang-up thing again?

  When the busy signal came on, she angrily held the receiver out for Todd to hear.

  When she hung up again, he started to cry. She crossed the kitchen and knelt beside him and hugged him. She was crying, too. The dog walked around them in circles.

  She checked him again to make sure he was okay. She took him upstairs. He got undressed and into bed. She went into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, her arms spread apart and holding her weight. She used the Pond’s to take off what little eye makeup she had on and washed her face.

  It was hot but breezy. Her bedroom windows were open. She maneuvered around her room in the dark and got on the bed, still in her clothes, and lay on her back. Downstairs, the dog was making the rounds, her license tag clinking on the metal water dish. Todd was crying quietly in his room.

  She slapped at herself, spread her fingers over her face and pulled at it. She had to talk to people, her father maybe. She thought of Bruno, what he would say.

  What frightened her most was her inability to picture the terrible things ahead. It seemed like the best evidence of how inadequate she was.

  She imagined a generalized scandal, everyone’s understanding of her changed. Maybe Todd taken away from her.

  You killed somebody, she thought. Someone’s dead because of you, and this is what you think about, this is what you’re worried about.

  He could’ve had a family, she thought.

  What was he doing in the road? What was he doing there in the road?

  At some point she heard Todd get up, the bed springs, the floorboards. He was going downstairs.

  She got up, too, still dressed. It was late. She was chilly and walked with her arms folded.

  She found him in the kitchen. He was eating M&M’s in the dark. He’d put them in a little bowl. The bowl caused her a pang: he always got neat when he was scared.

  She was going to pull a chair over next to his but suddenly was too tired even for that. She sat on the floor beside him, her head on his thigh. He didn’t say anything.

  She half dozed. She had the impression he was alert, awake, the whole time. The kitchen floor, the walls, were getting lighter. Through the doorway to the living room, she could make out shapes of chairs and a small table. Did she own these things? She remembered Todd that morning at breakfast, smiling speechlessly. She remembered nodding to herself as she drove, as if consenting to her life.

  “We’re not going to tell anyone, are we, Mom?” he said above her. His voice was so pitiful and despairing that it hurt too much to answer him. The M&M’s rolled and clicked together in the bowl like abacus beads. He put his hand on her head, tentatively. He came down to the floor with her and brought the bowl.

  Outside, some garbage cans clanked. On the floor, his legs stuck straight out and his shoes were run over at the heels.

  He finally fell asleep. His mouth was open against her shoulder. She listened to morning birds with cries like the workings of scissors. She sat there with her son and waited for the next thing.

  BRUNO

  I was going to give Joanie a ride to her mother’s for her kid’s confirmation party, I couldn’t, I had to show this Korean every single fucking thing about a Dodge Dart we had on the lot, a trade-in from 1901. He wants to see all the paperwork, he wants to climb underneath it, he wants to go through the buyer’s manual like he’s prepping for a space shot. The manual’s so old it’s coming apart in our hands. It’s six-forty-five and he’s not buying today, we can see that, but he’s not going anywhere, either.

  This is a Buick dealership. I’m wearing a Buick pin. We’re surrounded by Buicks. Showroom floor is wall to wall with them. The guy goes, Do you sell Buicks here? I go, No, we give ’em away. That’s how we stay in business: giving away free Buicks.

  This guy couldn’t decide on a shitbox Dodge Dart, there’s no chance in the world he’s going to spring for a full-ticket Buick.

  He goes, Are they dependable cars?

  I go, Look, Boulder Dam shut down a few times last year. You want me to guarantee a lousy six-thousand-dollar car?

  He’s taking all this in, giving it some hard thought. The minute hand’s going around. He wants to know, Do they come with automatic transmission and air at no extra charge? I tell him, You bet they do. Not only that, but we throw in a free dinner and tickets to a Broadway show. What’s he think we’re running here, a raffle?

  We’re standing around talking afterwards in the office, and Cifulo’s giving me this look, and I’m watching the clock while this guy sips his coffee and stares into space. The missus is sitting there with him and clearly has veto power but doesn’t say boo. I’m making conversation, so I ask him if he’s Japanese. Big mistake: turns out he’s Korean. The missus is miffed.

  Afterward Cifulo gives me grief about it, so I tell him, What, that’s better? Far as I’m concerned, they’re boat people with an attitude. They got here earlier, they’re better? I say no. They run dink grocery stores, three dollars for a banana. There’s one guy on Barnum Avenue, I still don’t know his name, SHIMSI, the sign says. What is that? Two names? His name? BUY OUR FOOD? One thing’s for s
ure: you want to get some service, don’t ask Kato behind the counter.

  Cifulo tells me afterward I was rude to them. This imbecile moving two units a month, if he’s lucky and his family comes in, is telling me how to run my business. I told him, What are you talking to me for? You watch Steven Seagal movies. Out for Violence, Revenge Is Mine—whatever they’re called. I told him, Steven Seagal? The man wears a ponytail? Is this the Revolution? And Sea-gal: what is that? The guy’s not a Jew anymore? And what are you, what are you, Bishop Sheehan? Mother Teresa?

  So it turns out I couldn’t give Joanie this ride.

  They talk about ups and downs in the car business, but we been down a while. I’m always high man for monthly sales, but what is that? Every day we stand around the showroom like CYO kids waiting for the party to begin.

  Now on toppa that I gotta worry about this Monteleone thing.

  Things are gonna go wrong. It’s not like things are always gonna go right. The key is how we deal with it. How do we act? I say, I can’t control everything. But I have to deal with it.

  Joanie, for example. I coulda pushed it the other night, after that kiss. I wanted to push it. But it’s not right.

  You got to have a little class, a little understanding of the way to do things. In Italy, the old gentlemen, they cultivate tratto, you know, a elegance, a way you handle yourself, conduct your affairs.

  She’s coming around. She doesn’t know it, her mother doesn’t know it, nobody probably knows it. But she’s coming around.

  There will be setbacks. I understand that. Remember: if it isn’t one thing, it will surely be another. What’s important? Your attitude.

  NINA

  The church was very big for my mother. She came over when she must’ve been thirty-one, thirty-two, four kids in tow and one on the way. I think the Church was a big help. It was a place she could trust, she had the priest she could talk to. Plus it was a big connection to Strangolagalli, to what she knew. Right before we came over, one of my little brothers died; he was just a baby. Our priest there, Father Picarazzi, was a big help. She was still sad when she got here, so naturally she went to the priest here, too.