She Named Me Wolf

by Tenkara Smart

  Dad rolled the newspaper in his hand, clenching it as he slid off his stool and stood behind Wolf and Orville. “Now Lizzie, if you had a girl like you said you would,” he said, tilting his head towards Wolf and lifting his eyebrows, “we would’ve had the perfect family.” Then with the rolled-up newspaper, he whacked Wolf lightly on the head, grabbed his car keys and exited the kitchen.

  “Alright, young man, what would you like to have this morning?” his mum asked. “How about cereal like your brother?” she said, pointing at Orville who had a spoon in one hand and was flipping a page of a comic book with the other.

  “No, thanks. I’ll have toast, with Vegemite. And, oh, how about a new dad?”

  “Son, that’s disrespectful,” his mother said, inhaling loudly. “You know better than that.”

  “But why is he nice sometimes, and mean other times?” he asked as his mum dropped bread into the toaster, pressing the lever and electrifying the coils inside

  She turned and looked at Wolf with pursed lips. “Honestly, you surprise me. You know that’s not proper conversation during breakfast.”

  Just as his mum finished her sentence, Orville slid off the stool.

  “I’m done. I’ll see you after practise,” he said, grabbing his backpack.

  As Orville was leaving, Polly poked him as hard as she could on the back of his head. Orville’s hand went to the spot where she touched him, and he scratched his scalp below his straight, dark-brown hair before exiting through the kitchen door.

  “But why can’t we talk about it, Mum?” Wolf said after his brother left. “I just want to know why when Dad’s not drinking that smelly stuff, he’s not so bad. But when he…”

  “Stop it this instant, Wolf! We will not have this conversation. Your father has a lot of stress at work, and he works hard to make sure we have the things we need, like food, clothing, and a roof over our heads,” she said, the pale skin on her cheeks coloured hot pink. “He does the best he can, and I’m doing the best I can, too,” she said as she scraped Vegemite across Wolf’s toast. “Think about the good things you have and try to look on the bright side. Now, eat your breakfast,” she finished, sliding the plate of toast towards Wolf.

  His mother left the kitchen and went into the loungeroom, and while Wolf ate his toast, Polly sat in the kitchen sink, staring out the window.

  After breakfast, Wolf got dressed, double-checking his Superman backpack to make sure his gi was inside for his after-school karate training. “Mum, I’m leaving. See you later,” he yelled as Polly flew past him, her body passing directly through the wooden kitchen door.

  He opened the door and entered the backyard, then turned the corner and walked towards the front of the house with Polly gliding next to him.

  “My mum was weird at breakfast,” he said.

  “I know. She didn’t want to talk about your dad. It’s like she wants to believe everything is normal. I’ll never understand why your dad treats you like he does, and why he never bothers Orville. Maybe it helps that your brother is gone all the time.”

  “Yep.”

  “Anyway, you know what I was thinking about while I was sitting in the sink? Remember that time you tried to see if you could get the magpies to be your friends?” Polly asked, her jade eyes glowing.

  “So?”

  “So stupid,” she giggled, poking him lightly in the ribs.

  “Shut up, Polly!”

  She began skipping on the concrete, avoiding the cracks as she repeated, “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” her words as high-pitched as a squeaky toy.

  Wolf knew why she was teasing him.

  One afternoon, a few months earlier, his father was sitting in his recliner watching television as Wolf was taking an encyclopedia from the shelf in the loungeroom, planning to go back to his room and look at the pictures.

  “Come sit with me, kid. We’ll read together,” his father said, switching off the telly and taking a sip of his tea before moving from his recliner to the couch.

  Wolf turned and took small steps towards him, holding the thick encyclopedia with both hands as his heart beat fast with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. When he got to the couch, his dad patted the seat cushion next to him and Wolf sat down, placing the book in his lap.

  “So, what are we reading?” his father asked.

  “I want to le-le-learn about mag-magpies because th-th-there are a lot of them in the tr-tr- trees and they don-don’t seem very, very nice.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d describe them as nice, or not nice. Let’s have a look. First, can you find them in the book?”

  As Wolf turned the pages to get to the ‘M’ section, Polly appeared next to him on the couch, her body translucent. Wolf’s father moved closer to him, stretching his burly arm across the ridge of the sofa, and as his forearm brushed the back of Wolf’s curly hair, the tips of his fingers reached Polly’s shoulder.

  “I found it,” Wolf said.

  He turned his head towards his father and pointed down at the page.

  “Great,” his dad replied, “let’s have a look.” Wolf’s father took the book from him and adjusted the angle so he could read it. “Says here that the magpie is a part of the crow family, and that their black and white feathers are one of their prime characteristics. But, you know that already, right?” he said, the corners of his mouth bent upwards.

  “Yes, I-I-I do,” Wolf replied.

  “You probably know most of this stuff, but did you know…,” and his dad began telling him that the birds could be extremely territorial when nesting, instructing Wolf to be careful because if he got too close they would swoop down and peck him on the top of his head.

  “That mu-must be wh-why they keep f-f-flying straight at me,” Wolf said, looking up at his father.

  “Must be.”

  Fascinated, Wolf became determined to find a way to get close to the magpies during nesting time without being attacked, and days later, he came up with his plan one night during dinner when everyone was there. His family had just finished a tub of vanilla ice cream for dessert, and Wolf decided he could use the thin, plastic container like one of the helmets he had seen on the television show Hogan’s Heroes. He asked his mum to wash it for him, and when she asked why, he lied and said it was for a school art project.

  The next afternoon after he returned home from school, he grabbed the tub from his bedroom and exited the front door. He stood at the start of the cement path leading from the porch to the sidewalk and studied the banksia tree near the curb, counting six black and white magpies perched on its branches. Then he placed the bucket on his head, and the old tub of ice cream covered his lightly freckled face, allowing only the ends of his black curly hair to poke out from the edges. The thin, plastic container blurred his vision as he crept towards the tree, so he looked down at the ground, focusing on his red canvas shoes as he shuffled forward and tried to walk straight. With his view obstructed, he didn’t see a crack in the cement until it was too late, and he tripped, landing on his knees. He stood up and noticed blood spotting his pants as he returned to the house, frustrated.

  Once he was inside, he grabbed the scissors from his mum's desk, leaning on the tub with his elbow to weigh it down, and he stabbed and twisted the plastic with the sharp tip of the scissors, creating two odd-shaped holes. Then, he went back to the front yard and stood again near his porch. He put the plastic tub on his head and looked through the odd-shaped holes at the tree where the magpies nested. While he looked through the openings, he saw Polly leaning against the banksia tree, her image blending with the trunk and camouflaging her, making her almost invisible.

  Wolf hunched over like a ninja, moving cautiously towards the magpies, and when he was within metres of the birds, they spotted him and shot from the branches, cackling loudly. Wolf reversed direction and ran towards the house with the tub still on his head as several birds flew at him like fighter jets. One bird jabbed his plastic helmet with its pointed, white beak, causing him to trip, and Wol
f stuck out his hands and slid across the dirt, skinning his palms.

  “Dumb helmet!” he exclaimed, yanking the plastic bucket off his head and throwing it to the ground.

  “Dumb helmet?” Polly said, sitting on the narrow edge of the neighbor’s wooden fence, her skinny legs dangling above Wolf’s head. “Dumb kid is more like it.”

  “Shut up, stupid ghost,” he grumbled.

  Wolf stood up and brushed the dirt from his hands, returning to the house, his face puckered as though he’d just bit a lemon. He went to his room, climbed into his bunk, and sat Indian style with his chin in both hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He thought about giving up but grew more determined to be near the birds, knowing there must be a way.

  While he was deep in thought, Polly floated up until her head almost touched the ceiling. Then, she folded her legs like a pretzel and drifted back down, landing at the end of the bed.

  “Don’t say a word, Polly. I mean it.”

  She was quiet, glancing around the room until after a few minutes, she broke her silence. “What’s your plan now, Einstein?”

  Wolf sat straight up. “Well, Ms. Know-It-All, I plan to walk right back over there and stand below that tree until they are my friends.”

  “Ha-ha,” she mocked, “you’re a real smarty-boomba!”

  “Huh? What’s a smarty-boomba?”

  “I just made it up. It will either mean you’re smart, or dumb. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Wolf climbed down from his bunk and went back to the front yard. He grabbed the container from where he had left it on the dirt and put it back onto his head before straightening his spine, puffing out his chest, and returning to the banksia tree.

  For over an hour, he tried to get close, but each time the magpies dive-bombed him, prompting him to run away. Frustrated, he removed the tub from his head and held it as he went to the tree and looked up at the magpies. While he stared directly at the branches, the birds didn’t budge, only their heads and necks moving robotically, yet whenever he averted his gaze, one of them flew at him then retreated as soon as he looked at it.

  “Polly, did you see that? If I look at them, they don’t bother me, but as soon as I’m not looking, they try to attack me.”

  “Yeah. It will be easy to look at them when you walk, but what about when you ride your bike near the tree? How will you look up and ride at the same time? You’ll crash.”

  “Hum. I need to think about that,” Wolf replied. “Come on. I’ve had enough for today and it’s getting late. Let’s go to my room. I need to think of a stra…stratiger…uh, a plan for riding my bike.”

  “It’s pronounced strategy, and that’s a good word.”

  “Thanks. I need to think of a strategy. And that is a good word!”

  Wolf loved words and was thankful when Polly helped him.

  That night, Wolf lay under the covers with Polly next to him, staring quietly at the long shadows stretching across the ceiling. “I knew I could make the magpies my friends,” Wolf sighed, interrupting the silence.

  “Huh? What? I don’t think so, Wolf. As soon as you turn your back, they’ll bomb you again,” she said loudly, disturbing the quiet of the night.

  “Shush, Polly! You’ll get us in trouble.”

  “Oh, Wolf, you know they can’t hear me,” she replied, patting him on his shoulder.

  “Well, I can hear you, so try not to be so annoying,” he said as he rolled onto his side, facing the wall to sleep.

  Early the next morning, while Wolf was pulling a weed in the dimly lit backyard, he came up with a new plan. He returned to his room and moved quietly, trying not to wake Polly who was still asleep at the end of his bed. Wolf grabbed his cream-colored giggle hat from the closet and brought it to the dinged, oak desk in his room, then he used a black felt pen to draw two big, googly eyes on top of the hat, adding small dots, both off-center, making the eyes look like they were focused in different directions.

  “Polly, wake up,” he whispered in her ear. “I came up with a way to ride my bike near the tree. Let’s go and try it.”

  Polly opened her green eyes, looking at Wolf as she stretched her arms over her head and floated up, her knuckles almost touching the ceiling, before descending to the floor, hovering just above the carpet. “Okay, smarty-boomba, let’s see what you’ve come up with,” she said.

  It was Sunday, so Orville was still in a deep sleep in the bottom bunk. Wolf went to the bathroom, changed into his clothes, and stuffed his giggle hat into his back pocket before going to the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Dad. Morning, Mum,” he said to his parents who were drinking tea and reading at the breakfast bar. “I’m going ou…out…outside to ride my…my bike, okay?”

  “Sure, son,” his dad replied, sipping his tea.

  Wolf bolted outside with Polly at his side, her chestnut-coloured hair swaying near her shoulders. He grabbed his two-wheel bike and rolled it to the front yard, thinking about how much he loved his bike and how it gave him the freedom to explore.

  The bike was a present for his fifth birthday, and he remembered his mother cheerfully saying, "Happy birthday," as she rolled the used BMX into the kitchen, a white bow tied to the handlebars.

  “Cool!” Wolf exclaimed, jumping off the stool and rushing towards the bike.

  “Hope you like it, kid,” his dad said, giving him a firm pat between his shoulder blades.

  “Yeah, um, it’s uh, good,” Wolf replied hesitantly, touching the chrome handlebars with his index finger.

  “What is it?” his father asked. “Don’t you like it?”

  “Wolf, your father worked hard so we could get this for you,” his mum said sternly.

  “No, no, it…it…it’s no…no…not that. I like the bike a lot. It’s just that…”

  “Just say it, already,” Orville jeered, a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake on the plate in front of him.

  “I just wonder if it co-could be a diff-diff-different colour,” Wolf said nervously.

  “It’s British racing green. Who doesn’t like British racing green?” his father questioned.

  “I ju…ju…just th…th…think it would be bet…better if it wa…was red.”

  “Red? Why red?”

  “B…b…because red will ma…make it go even faster,” he answered slowly, trying to avoid stuttering.

  “Okay, son. If you want it red, we’ll make it red. I’ll bring home paint this weekend,” his father responded with a smile, and the following Saturday, in the driveway, Wolf and his dad painted his bike the colour red.

  So today, straddling his red bike in preparation to ride it beneath the tree where the magpies nested, he put on his giggle hat and sat on the bike seat. “Okay, Polly. I’m going to ride right below them and see if they attack me.”

  “You’re gonna’ crash if you look up,” she said.

  “Check this out. Ta-da!” he said confidently, removing the hat from his head, showing her the eyes he’d drawn on the top. “I put big eyes up here so when the magpies look down at me, they’ll think I’m looking up at them.”

  “Oh boy, this I’ve got to see.”

  Wolf pulled the giggle hat closer to his ears and then peddled towards the tree, his heart racing. When he was underneath the branches, a big grin spread across his face because there was no sound of rustling leaves or cackling birds, and nothing sharp hit him on the head. He rode up and down the sidewalk below the branches, zooming past the tree trunk, and the entire time he rode his bike with his hat firmly in place, the birds remained calm and didn’t attack him.

  Polly appeared on the handlebars, curling her long fingers around the metal. “Good job, smarty-boomba,” she told him playfully. “Looks like your silly eyes worked, but I dare you to take off the hat.”

  “Alright,” he replied hesitantly, “I’ll give it a go.” He stopped and removed his hat, tucking it into the waist of his pants. “Here goes,” he said, peddling hatless towards the tree, his eyes focused on the
road and sidewalk.

  As he got close, he heard the magpies stir and then a bird flew at him like a black arrow.

  “Wolf! Watch out,” Polly screamed.

  He slammed the brakes so hard that the bike skid to the side, and he quickly looked up at the incoming bird. When their eyes met, the bird made a sharp turn and reversed course, flying back to the banksia tree.

  “Wow, your hat really works.”

  “Told ya. I guess smarty-boomba means smart, so I’m a smarty boomba,” he replied, putting the giggle hat back onto his head. “Hold on,” he said as he peddled along the sidewalk, a smile on Polly’s face as she gripped the handlebars of his bike, her canvas shoes bouncing near the front tyre.

  Chapter Twelve

  For the last hour of school, Miss had them work on their reading skills. “Here is a big word,” she said, writing the word P-I-N-E-A-P-P-L-E on the blackboard and separating the letters with a hyphen. “Who can tell me what this word is? Remember to sound it out. And, to help you, maybe see if you can spot a word within the word that might give you a clue.”

  While the kids in the class, including Les, made different sounds, like spitting air through their lips for P, or breathing out the letter A, Wolf knew the word was pineapple.

  “Anyone got it?” Miss asked.

  The students in the class continued making sounds as they forced air through their mouths, teeth, and lips.

  “Wolf, you’re very quiet,” Wolf’s teacher said caringly. “This is a hard word, so why don’t you try to sound it out.”

  Wolf slouched in his chair and said, “Pineapple.”

  “Yes, that’s it! Very good, Wolf,” she said, erasing the word from the chalkboard.

  Miss wrote words on the board until the end of class, and the last word she wrote was H- E-R-O, which of course Wolf knew right away but didn’t raise his hand. After more than five minutes, Les raised his hand and gave the correct answer, and Miss dismissed the class.

  When Wolf arrived home twenty minutes later, his mum was in the kitchen. She had a Vegemite and cheese sandwich waiting for him on the breakfast bar, as well as sliced pears and a handful of crisps.