image, Alf closed his eyes.
He tried to find the space that he retreated to whenever kids called him Alf the Calf. Instead, the room blurred and he fell into a kind of half sleep, lulled by the ping pong cadence of voices. The room he was in fell away behind his lids, and he suddenly found himself in another place.
For a dream, the detail around him was crisp and vibrant. He was standing in a brightly lit yard in front of a log cabin. He looked away from it and could see, far away, the jagged tips of mountains.
The splintered door was already opened, but he nudged it open wider and found a large muscular man asleep in a rocking chair, head back and mouth hanging open, his denim-clad legs sprawled. Below him a dark four-legged beast was chewing on something that looked like a chicken thigh.
The dog gazed up at him curiously, meat hanging from the corners of its mouth. Its eyes were an eerie red color. Alf began to back away and knocked over a fire poke leaning against the wall. He exited the room quickly, consoling himself that the dog already had what he wanted: the meat-covered bone.
Still, Alf was shaking as he fled across the yard. Hard to do since he had no idea where he was going. He fled toward the forest that lay in the shadow of the mountains, where it was dark and cool and mossy.
But as he went forward, he found himself blocked. It was the dog. No, not a dog; it was too big and feral-looking. A wolf. Alf could only stare at the creature, at its dull black fur and red eyes. The wolf was high enough to meet Alf at eye level.
Alf was too fascinated to do anything but stare at the beast and the red intensity of its eyes. “You were afraid of me,” the wolf said. “May I ask why?”
Alf stumbled back a little. “I thought you might want to eat me.”
“Would that have been so bad? You look so unhappy. Would I not have been doing you a favor?”
Alf seriously considered the question. Yes, sometimes he had wanted to die. He had. But right now he was too curious. “I want to live,” Alf said. “I just wish I could be someone else. I want to have a normal nose. And straight legs. But I can’t, so I want to be extraordinary. I want to be…a genius.”
“A genius? What is a genius?”
“Well, you take a test with puzzles in it. And if you solve enough of them in a certain time, it means you are a genius. Everyone is impressed with you. And if you have any terrible flaws, they stop mattering.”
“Ah,” the wolf said. “I know nothing of this test. But solving problems for a reward: that I understand. Perhaps what you mean is cunning.”
“Cunning? Well, I suppose.”
“Wolves have a lot of that. We have to. Cunning is the reason I waited until the man was asleep to steal his food. Sometimes we use it to corner our prey. Of course, cunning is not enough to make a wolf what it is.”
“No,” Alf said. “You have tails, pointed ears, and four legs.”
“No, more than that. Far more. A wolf must have courage.” The wolf turned to the side and Alf could see a patch of singed fur, with raw pink skin beneath. Alf stepped hesitantly forward, but the wolf emboldened Alf with a nod.
Alf reached out tremulously and ran his fingers along the rough scar. The wolf spoke again. “The first time I robbed the man you saw he burned me with a fire poke. I should have bitten him and grabbed the food. Instead I yowled and limped away. Two of my cubs starved. That day I was a coward. It was only much later that I returned, because I had to.”
“But I thought you said wolves were always courageous.”
“Wolves are lots of things, beyond cunning. We are vicious and kind. We eat and are eaten. We fight and retreat. The challenge for a wolf is to be a wolf, with all that it means. To know struggle and survive. For all that cunning is useful, but not enough to make a wolf a wolf, and especially not an extraordinary one.”
The wolf stared at Alf with dangerous eyes. “We corner. We persuade. We intimidate. And sometimes we are cowards, because sometimes we have to be. We are wolves. If you want to be extraordinary, if you want to be a genius, then stop trying. Instead, be human. Be human with all that it means, and never flinch from it. Be human, be cowardly, and be brave. Then be honest. As honest as you can possibly be. If you can do that, your kind will see you as a genius. And in every way that matters, you will be.”
Alf stood speechless, looking into the glare of earnest red eyes. Alf felt a burning flush, yet a shiver rippled through him from his neck to his spine. “Thank you,” Alf said. “I will try.”
“What will you try?” the wolf prompted.
At first Alf was confused, until he realized the wolf was testing him like his teachers did sometimes to make sure he understood. “I will be human. Always human. And then honest. But…tell me more. Help me understand.”
“You can start by looking out the window.”
“Huh? What window?”
“Behind you.”
Alf turned around and saw none of the grass and no mountains – only the large office picture window with its cracked mini-blinds and the sun winking through them. He turned back around and could see the round clock mounted to the wall, and hear the voices.
He wiped the bleary confusion from his eyes with his fists. The door cracked open a bit so he could make out what the woman said, though she was whispering. “Bear in mind, Mr. Tyler, I am not a licensed psychologist. It was only one test. The discrepancy tells me something else was going on with him. Please. Even if he is only an overachiever, you have every right be proud of him.”
Though the woman was defending him, the words that struck Alf the most was the phrase “only an overachiever,” confirming his impression that it was not what you did that defined you, but who the world said you were.
When his father emerged, Alf desperately searched his face for any vestige of the pride and approval he had seen the last few weeks. But his father kept his head down. His face was drawn and pale above the starched collar of his shirt, his tie askew.
His sudden pallor made the network of lines around his mouth look deeper. There was a look of pain in his blue eyes.
He looked so old and tired, Alf wanted to comfort, to hug, and reassure him. “I can take the test again,” Alf said, but his voice broke up on the last two words.
His father sighed wearily and shook his head. “Get your coat, Alf.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can do better. Please, let me try again.”
“What did you do with the bags?”
“Huh?” Alf thought his father meant book bags, but Alf only had one of them, which was slung across his shoulder.
“The bags. The ones all your new brain toys came in, the ones I bought you. I need the receipts. All of them.”
The words burned like a fire poke inside Alf. They scorched and scraped his heart raw. And he thought about the dream wolf and the red power of its eyes, containing all the courage and cowardice of every wolf who had ever lived.
Alf remembered the jagged scar scorched into its flesh as if it were his own and felt again the rough warmth of furless skin against his fingertips.
And he remembered what the wolf had said. Be human.
Alf knew right then that the test was wrong; that the world behind his eyes went far and deep beyond what any test could ever tell. He imagined the fire poke sinking low and hot into his skin, the fire-heat burning away everything inside him that could be burned and illuminating everything he was or ever could be.
Never in his life had he felt so brilliantly burned; so raw and so defeated; so determined; so cowardly; and so courageous.
He had never felt so human.
Becoming the Story
All her life she had heard stories.
Most of them she loved; the fairy tales with happy endings; the ones about people who had struggled and triumphed. She loved epic poems full of heroes.
But some stories she hated. Her least favorite stories were not the ones in books, but the ones that life had told her. Usually these stories of life drifted down to her from oth
er people.
She could see pieces of a story in a glare of contempt or a roll of the eyes. Those story features followed her into her dreams and played themselves out in blurs of imagery and shame. Life whispered stories to her even as she slept. And she believed them.
The story life had given her was that she was not pretty; her hair was a mass of brittle curls, and her features too angular. Her eyes were nice, some had said, even beautiful, but that hardly made up for the rest.
Her mother had often made it clear to her that she was the product of an unplanned pregnancy, and that if she had not come along when she did, her parents would not have to struggle so much to put food on the table.
She sometimes felt remorse for having “come along.” If she had had a choice, knowing what was in store for her, she might have opted out. She had not meant to come along.
Since her parents offered so little love, sometimes at school she would smile at a boy to let him know she liked him. In every case, her smile was met with a glower, so she stopped smiling at boys. In fact, she stopped smiling at all.
Her one escape was the stories, but she had stopped believing in the fairy tales. In them, princes never glowered at the princesses, so the fairy tales must be untrue.
Instead, she focused on the tales of struggle, but the heroes always seemed too courageous and too strong for her to identify with them. They rushed into danger with brave words and swords, and no self-doubts, ever. They were mostly men, all brawn and bravado.
Since the stories she had
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