“Good morning,” said Mum.
“Go-good morning. Can I hav-have some mi-milk please?”
“Sure, get it yourself,” his dad answered, his eyes focused on the paper.
Next to his father’s teacup, Wolf noticed a bottle of brandy and he could smell the pungent, sweet smell of the spirit coming from his tea. Wolf finished his glass of milk and asked, “Can I go play in the yard?”
“Yep,” his father mumbled.
As Wolf left the kitchen, he noticed his mum looking at his dad, her eyebrows pulled together. Outside, he walked to where Aaron lived in the space below his room, feeling relieved that he hadn’t gotten in trouble. Wolf assumed that either his mother hadn’t told his father that he sneaked into his secret room, or that his dad wasn’t as mad as they thought he would be.
“Aaron, you there? Come out,” Wolf whispered as he kneeled in the dirt.
After several minutes with no response, Wolf assumed Aaron must already be at work somewhere in the yard. Just as Wolf stood up, he heard his father yell from near the kitchen door, “Wolf, get over here!”
His heart sank. He stood up, brushed dry dirt from the knees of his pants, and shuffled towards the kitchen door, dragging his feet like heavy weights. When he turned the corner, he was surprised to see his father’s bright yellow Ford GT351, his car with a fat, black stripe along each side, in the driveway. This car spent most of its days parked under a cover at the side of the shed, and his father only drove it on days that he considered to be special events, occasions which happened only one or two times a year and in which only his father participated.
“Get in. We’re taking a ride,” his dad said, expressionless.
Wolf walked towards him with slumped shoulders and his head bent, his black curls dangling near his eyes, and opened the passenger door, sliding onto the leather bucket seat. He could hardly breathe as he sat with his hands folded in his lap, his skin cold and tingly even though the bright sun was shining directly on him through the window. As he waited for his father’s next move, he heard the boot pop open. Looking at the side mirror, Wolf watched as his father entered the shed then returned to the car carrying something long and thin wrapped in a jungle-green blanket. When his dad was at the boot, Wolf could no longer see him and could only hear him moving objects around in the car trunk. Next, Wolf heard a thud as the boot slammed shut, and his dad got into the driver’s seat. His father ignited the engine and revved it several times before slowly releasing the clutch, pressing the gas, and driving them away from the house.
As they drove, his father switched off the radio and rolled down his window, resting his elbow on the ledge. He maintained the speed limit as he stared out the front windshield, not speaking a word as Wolf sat quietly next to him, his breathing shallow.
When they were in the hills away from town, the sky surrounding them grew darker with dense foliage and trees growing so close together that daylight struggled to force its way through. Over an hour later, as Wolf listened to the hyper-beating of his heart, his father finally turned off the main road and drove down an unpaved path lined with gum trees. Gravel and dirt spit from the tyres of the Ford as they drove slowly, and then his father stopped the car in front of a large eucalyptus tree and killed the engine.
As his dad stared out the front window, he said, “Get out, go stand with your back to that tree, and don’t move.”
Wolf exited the car, stepping onto the dry, crackly leaves that carpeted the ground. His mouth was dry as he walked towards the tree. He looked around, searching for Polly, but he couldn’t see or smell her. When he arrived at the tree, he turned and backed his body up against the trunk until his shoulder blades touched the bark.
When Wolf had his back to the tree, his dad got out of the car and opened the boot, and Wolf could hear him moving things around as he whistled. Suddenly, Wolf realised what his father had put in the boot earlier. Wolf knew that the long, narrow item wrapped in the blanket was one of his dad’s rifles. He swallowed hard as his eyes filled with tears and his body trembled, and his full bladder pressed on his abdomen as he waited for his father to take aim and shoot him dead.
After more than fifteen minutes of standing with his back to the tree, listening to his dad fumbling at the back of the car, his father finally closed the boot and returned to the driver’s seat, empty-handed. “Back in the car,” he said matter-of-factly.
Wolf wiped away the tears now streaming down his cheeks, his legs so stiff that he couldn’t move, and his dad began honking the horn, pushing it repeatedly. Wolf scurried back to the car and got inside as his dad started the engine then pulled a U- turn, heading back towards home.
Wolf was silent for the entire ride home, his saliva glands barely able to wet his dry mouth. When they finally reached home, Wolf’s mother came running out of the kitchen door. She threw open the passenger door and offered her hand to her son, but Wolf ignored her gesture and slipped past her, running towards the house.
Before he reached the kitchen door, his father said loudly, “And remember, kid, stay out of my shed. If I find out you’ve been in there again, I’ll take you back out to the hills, and this time, you won’t come back.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Wolf woke the next morning to cottony grey clouds blanketing the sky, hiding the sun underneath. While he lay on his back in his bed, looking up at the ceiling, he thought about the man in his dream. He had seen the man before during meditations, but for the first time last night, they had a conversation. Wolf learned that he was British and that his name was Bartholomew.
During the dream, Bartholomew listened to what Wolf wanted to do, giving him instructions on how to do it, and the whole time they were together, Wolf felt the same familiarity with Bartholomew that he felt with Junsaku. In his dream, he could clearly see that Bartholomew was a giant at almost seven feet tall. He was dressed in a black tunic, black pants, and he had a black, cloth mask draped over his head with holes cut in the fabric that revealed blue eyes, a bulbous nose, and wavy lips underneath.
After a few minutes of recalling the details of his dream, Wolf sat up in his bed and felt dizzy, a headache throbbing and pressing down on the crown of his head. He searched for Polly in his room, but she wasn’t there. He stepped down his bunk bed ladder, dressed in charcoal corduroys and a mustard t-shirt, and left his room.
“Good morning,” his mum said when he entered the kitchen. “Your dad and Orville had egg and bacon sandwiches for brekkie before they left for Orville’s cricket game, so I’ve run out of bacon. I still have eggs, though. Want eggs and toast?”
Wolf’s mind was in such a strange place that his mother’s words sounded muffled like she was speaking to him from metres below sea level. “I’m not hungry,” he answered dazedly.
Wolf stared at his mum, his head tilted to the left, and wondered why she let him go in the car with his dad the day before, feeling certain that she knew his dad had put a gun in the boot. Again, he looked for Polly, but he couldn’t see her or smell her familiar fragrance of sunshine and morning dew. “I’m going outside,” he sighed.
“Okay,” his mum replied, placing dry dishes into the cupboard. “I’ll be sewing in my bedroom if you need me.”
Wolf walked into the yard and couldn’t hear the sound of his shoes as they hit the ground, or the crackle of the dry grass as he stepped, or even the sound of the breeze that blew lightly through his curls. As he walked to the aviary, he spotted a weed and plucked it from the earth, shoving it into his pocket.
“Hi Cecelia,” he said to the crimson rosella when he arrived at the birdhouse.
Cecelia stood with her feet curled and locked on her perch. Wolf expected a response from her, but she kept her beak tightly clenched, not talking or even chirping. Wolf noticed that he couldn’t hear noises from any of the birds except Gary who faced the wire wall, opening and closing his beak repeatedly and making a clicking sound.
“I came to say goodbye, Cecelia,” Wolf stated loudly, figuring
she must be napping even though her eyes were open.
The crimson rosella remained silent on her perch.
“Fine. Be that way,” he choked, tears beginning to sting his eyes.
He left the birdhouse and again thought of Polly, his breathing shallow and stifled. He felt uneasy, not only with his decision, but also because the only person that he thought actually cared for him wasn’t there, and her absence now made him wonder if she was ever really there at all.
He walked to the back of the yard and headed towards the gum tree near the fence where Korey spent most of his days. When he arrived, the koala was on a high branch with a mouthful of eucalyptus leaves. “I’m leaving, Korey,” he yelled, looking up. The koala didn’t look down and just stared at the horizon with eucalyptus leaves poking out of the edges of his mouth. “Do you want to say goodbye or something, you dumb koala?” Wolf pleaded. Korey didn’t budge and continued to chew slowly, staring off into the distance.
Wolf shrugged his shoulders and turned to go back to the house. As he walked, he saw the backside of Buford, the blue-tongue skink, slithering away, his fat tail disappearing between blades of tall grass before his thoughts returned to his mother. He wondered why she was never there when he was being punished, and he felt a hollowness in the center of his chest as he questioned why she never helped him, or why she never came to rescue him from the box, a box she called her hope chest. He thought of how Polly was the only one who was ever there for him, and how she always tried her best to comfort and protect him, but now even she had left him. In his whole life, he never felt so alone.
He walked to Carla’s kennel and the dog sauntered out, her backside swaying gently. As he petted her head, he realised he couldn’t hear her speaking. “You okay, girl?” he asked concernedly. She licked the back of his hand and returned to the inside of her kennel, laying down and closing her eyes.
Wolf noticed something moving in the yard and felt relieved that Polly was back. He looked up, but instead of seeing Polly, he saw Koji waving at him from the garden. Wolf wasn’t in the mood for the Japanese ghost today and ignored him, walking in the opposite direction towards Aaron’s house below his room.
When he arrived, he leaned down and put his mouth close to the boards that blocked the space between the dirt and the floor of the house. “Aaron? Aaron,” Wolf said, “you there?”
Aaron ran out from behind a slat of wood wearing nothing, not even his red cricket cap. “What is it?” the ant asked, “I’m really busy right now.”
“I came to say goodbye,” Wolf whispered.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Okay. Well, have a good trip. I’ve gotta get back to work now,” Aaron said, crawling back into the darkness below the house, leaving Wolf alone in the yard.
“Goodbye, Aaron.”
He turned and walked to the shed, and when he arrived, the roller door was open so he entered, went to his dad’s workbench, and dragged his forearm across its surface, knocking his father’s tools to the floor. Next, he walked right up to the rolling cart that hid the secret door and moved it to the side, staring with squinted eyes at the door latch tied with fishline. “He needs to know this is his fault,” Wolf said aloud. Grabbing the handle of the bolt, Wolf slid it to the right, snapping the transparent string as he mumbled, “When he finds me dead, then maybe he’ll regret what he’s done to me.”
Before entering the secret room, he grabbed a coiled rope hanging on the wall of the shed and took it inside the small room. Wolf went to the desk and opened the drawer that he remembered held a pistol in a box, and he removed the gun and placed it on the seat of his dad’s brick red chair for effect. He pulled books and magazines off of the shelves, letting them tumble to the floor, knowing that when his father saw his stuff strewn all over, he’d become angry that he’d lost control.
With the rope in his hand, Wolf recalled the instructions from Bartholomew and he got to work on the knot. First, he lay the rope on the floor and shaped a portion of it into a big letter U. With the same section of rope, he moved it again, curving it into the letter S. With the portion of rope shaped like an S, he pinched and wrapped it seven times to complete the hangman’s knot. He tested the knot by pulling on the long end of the rope, and when he yanked it, the loop closed up and became smaller, exactly what he needed for when the rope was around his neck.
He stretched the loop open and slipped it over his head, letting the rope rest on his shoulders, then pulled on the long end, tightening the rough rope against the skin of his neck. He took the other end of the rope and clamped it into the jaws of a vise attached to the corner of his dad’s old desk, and he twisted the handle on the vise until the rope was secure.
He remembered the Englishman in his dream also told him that when he got far enough away from where he'd secured the rope, all he needed to do was drop to his knees and the noose would tighten. Wolf walked away from the vise, the noose tightening around his neck, and lowered himself to his knees. The rope around his neck grew tight, making him gag, and Wolf was confident it would work. On his knees, Wolf moved further away from the vise, leaning slightly forward, and the rope dug into the soft skin of his neck, the combined suspension and tightness of the rope constricting Wolf's airway, making him feel faint as he closed his eyes and allowed himself to be strangled.
While Wolf was trying to kill himself, he felt a poking sensation in the center of his forehead. He ignored the feeling and continued with his strangulation, and then felt another forceful tap in the same spot.
“Smarty boomba, what do you think you’re doing?” he heard Polly say.
Wolf opened his eyes and saw the ghost kneeling in front of him. He tried to talk, but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t make words.
“This is so stupid,” she said, her arms folded across her chest. “Get up.”
He closed his eyes again, the rope still cutting into his neck, and could feel Polly’s hands under his armpits trying to lift him, but he didn’t want her help; he wanted to die.
Suddenly, his body jolted, and he unconsciously put his left foot on the floor and his right leg behind him, and with his hands on his left knee, he pushed himself upright, relieving some of the tension around his neck. He began to cough as he put his fingers under the rope looped around his neck, loosening it until it fell limp on his shoulders.
Polly stared at him intensely as he walked to the desk and twisted the lever on the vise, releasing the long end of the rope. He stood in place with the rope still attached at his neck and the long end hanging next to him like a dog lead. “Why are you here now? Where have you been?” Wolf asked bitterly.
“Really? You’re trying to kill yourself?” Polly said, her upcurved eyes shining like bottle green glass.
“No one here cares about me; not even you.”
“Don’t be a sook,” she replied. “So, are you done trying to end your life?”
“I want him to find me dead and then maybe he’ll feel bad about how he treats me. I’m going to die and go to Junsaku.”
“Do you think a samurai would do this? Do you think Junsaku would agree with your decision?” she asked.
Wolf whimpered, “Polly, I’m scared all the time. I live every minute wondering what he’ll do to me next. And, to make things worse, my mum doesn’t help me, I don’t get along with Orville, and I don’t have any real friends except you, and you’re powerless. What choice do I have? I’d rather just try and find a way back to my life when I was Junsaku, or go on to the next life,” he sniffled, using his flattened palms to wipe away the tears that were flowing down his cheeks.
As if his teacher was in the room, Wolf heard Master Kelly say, “You always have a choice, Kohai.”
“Wolf, listen to me,” Polly said, “a samurai takes his life by seppuku, or cutting his belly, for honour. If they lose a fight or a battle, it’s better to pass to the other world by taking their own life than be in the hands of the enemy. But, have you lost the fight
, or the battle? Have you even begun to fight?”
“I can’t fight him, Polly,” he bellowed. “You know I can’t win. He’s bigger than me!”
Polly floated in front of Wolf and enveloped him in her arms, sending a surge of warmth into his chest. “Wolf, you’re getting bigger and stronger. Keep fighting. Don’t give up.”
“Alright, I’ll stay…and I’ll fight,” he whispered, removing the rope from his neck.
He exited his father’s room, stepping over the threshold with the rope still in hand, and turned, expecting to see Polly, but she wasn’t there. He hung his head and looked down at the concrete floor. “Please don’t desert me,” he moaned.
Polly appeared in front of him, standing with her hands on her hips.
Wolf inhaled loudly. “There you are,” he sighed. “Don’t leave me again, Polly. Please. Stay with me, okay? Let’s just go to my room.”
“After we clean up. If you leave the shed like this, he will kill you,” she stated, gesturing at the items strewn on the ground.
His heart sank because he knew he had created chaos with his dad’s things, upsetting the balance, and now he had to figure out exactly how to put everything back so that it looked identical to before, including reattaching the fish wire on the latch. The immensity of the task made him feel like he was going to vomit.
“Calm down, Wolf,” Polly said, noticing that he was growing anxious. “I’ve been in here so many times, I know exactly where to put things and also how to tie the latch. You’ve just got to listen to me and do exactly as I say.”
Wolf inhaled deeply through his nose. “Okay,” he replied, exhaling.
“First, that came from the wall, right?” Polly asked, pointing at the rope still in his grip.
She Named Me Wolf Page 18