The Wild
Page 20
He stood there, his head lolling, his mouth open. The revulsion that crawled through his body made him turn up his lips and snarl. When he exhaled, he smelled essence of rat, the freshness of the meat as well as the hollow rot of the filthy fur and whatever horrors had been in the stomach.
He gagged. But he did not bring up what he had eaten. On the contrary, it was perfectly acceptable to his stomach, which was comfortably digesting it.
Good God. He had done something truly unspeakable and yet lived. He was so sensitive, such a careful eater. As a child he had been amenable only to hamburgers and carrots. Over the years his repertoire of foods had expanded, but slowly. Not until he moved to New York had he acquired a taste for real exotica. Now he relished everything from snails to raw abalone.
A great, low booming distracted him from his thoughts. He looked out at the river, and there was the QE2 flanked by tugs, her white superstructure shining in the morning sun. His heart almost stopped to see her and behind her the jeweled towers, Manhattan in a splendor of glass and spires. He could see people on the decks of the Queen, a man in a blue blazer with white trousers, a woman beside him wearing a hat, her mink shining darkly. She raised one hand and held her hat against the wind.
For him it was a bitter sight. The comer of life he had entered was a place of adventure in the deepest sense of the word, where every step was a step into the unknown, where all of his human intelligence and his animal instinct would be required to see him along the way.
His muzzle raised itself to the blue sky and he made a long, high tone he found quite fine. He did it again, this time adding a tremble at the end by relaxing his throat. Again he did it, throwing all of his feelings into the note, his loneliness, his despair, his disgust. These were the feelings that he put into it, but something very different came out. He heard in his howl the voice of a deeper freedom than he had ever imagined, and the sky seemed more blue, and the smells of autumn more poignant, and the booming of the liner more grand. He stopped, excited, his tail waving. The wild was in him, the very wild, the unchained, the innocent, the terrible wild. He knew it from the farthest reach of his human heart, it was the old, old truth come forth in him, resurrection, Eucharist, a new world being born.
He realized with the force of cold water on morning skin that he was feeling a primitive emotion that was essentially and totally human. The ancient human wildness had reemerged in him, cohabitant with the wildness of the wolf.
To have been human at the beginning of the species must have been like this. His first impulse was to run and tell people, to tell anybody he could find, that the wild is waiting for us.
Obeying both sense and instinct, he trotted off up the road, seeking a way to the top of the palisade. Somewhere out there across the human land lay the forest, constricted perhaps, but still the forest. He wanted to race this body against the closure of the suburbs, to seek the quick eye and the savage tooth. As it mingled with his own blood the blood of the rat taught him the morality of the carnivore. Every act is a poem, sniffing the scent-touched leaf, disemboweling the faun.
He was filled with so much energy that it seemed almost like magic. The rat had been just the good food his body had wanted. His instincts had been right. His tail high, his head thrust smartly forward, he moved up and up, making his way among the stones. It was easy to keep to the path: all he had to do was follow the scent of men and fish. This was where they came down, this collection of crevices and rough-hewn stones. Here was a Welch's grape drink bottle, there a Trident gum wrapper. And over it all was the smell of fish and the smell of men, many men, some young and sharp and fresh, others old and covered in sodden wool.
When he reached the top of the palisade, he found himself in a park he hadn't even known existed, a dramatic park overlooking the Statue of Liberty and the harbor. People stood at the edge of the balustrade just above him, some of them leaning into ten-cent binoculars and looking at the Queen, which had reached the center of the harbor and was just dispensing with its tugs. Farther east a Staten Island Ferry left its slip. It was rush hour, and a traffic helicopter sped up the Hudson, a green and white bug spewing noise. He looked over this great vista and picked out his old neighborhood. He couldn't see their building, but he could just see the top of the structure that hid it.
He blinked his eyes. His vision was not as good as he would have liked. The colors were muted, the details obscure. But when he cocked his ears, he heard a wonder of sounds. The world's noise was no longer an aural fog. Rather he now heard all the detail of it, the pulsing deep in the Queen's engines, the excited voices of the people on her decks, someone hammering in the scaffolding on the Statue of Liberty, somebody else scraping, the engines of the ferry and the splashing of her thick bow, the suspiration of wind around the towers of the World Trade Center, the click of a sea gull's wings, and the hiss of fish rushing in the harbor.
He was a generous man, and at that moment his heart burst with one wish, that all human beings everywhere could just for one instant experience the old world in this new way. He had not known it was like this, had never dreamed what a difference really powerful senses could make. Human eyes were strong, but not so strong as wolf ears, nor nearly so discriminating as a wolf's nose.
A smell startled him, the familiar odor of human fear. When he realized where it was coming from, his heart almost stopped. One of the ten-cent binoculars was pointing directly at him. Two froglike eyes swam in the dark lenses. For an instant he captured them with his own eyes.
He saw deep into them, into the empty soul behind them. He could push, he could twist, he could alter!
He could make her into a wolf with his eyes!
But the pupils dilated and then drew back. He saw a pale mask of a face peer past the shiny aluminum housing of the binoculars. The face was rapt, closed, the lips tight, the eyebrows knitted. Bob was in too awkward a position to cringe, to cower to this young mask of a woman in her vaguely red sweater and wind-rushing skirt. If only he could make people see him as the inoffensive being he was.
Behind him was the tumbling palisade. He dared not go down, because he knew there was no escape down there. Unless he was willing to try another swim, that was nothing but a trap. Too bad he couldn't fly.
The young woman had darted away from her binoculars without uttering a word. He struggled up the final thirty yards and scrambled over the balustrade. Here was a cobbled esplanade backed by a road, and beyond it a stand of trees. There were perhaps a dozen people on the esplanade, some of them sitting on benches, others strolling, others at the binoculars. Simultaneous with his appearance, there came a cry across the quiet scene. The young woman shouted in a clear, stem tone, her smooth hands cupped around her soft lips: "It's the wolf! The wolf!"
The whole scene froze. People stopped walking. Those on the benches turned their heads. A man rose up from behind a pair of binoculars and began to hurry across the esplanade, his shoes clicking in the silence.
There was nothing to do but race across the pavement. He ran as fast as he could. This particular movement aggravated last night's thigh injury, sending hooks of pain deep into his leg. But he was still fast. He shot along close to the pavement, his nose down, the cobblestones speeding past. It was only a moment before he was in the trees and racing between their thick-grown branches toward the far end of the park.
Then he was through the park and finding shelter in some reeds. A police car screamed past.
Ahead was the invincible barrier of the New Jersey Turnpike, eight lanes of certain death. He trotted along, trying to see a way across. But there was no way across. The turnpike stretched for miles. From his vantage point low to the ground he could not see a single break in its featureless expanse. He had to cross, and at once. He'd never seen so much traffic, never realized just how fast cars could go, never understood the barrier of the road. Not far away lay the stinking body of an opossum, skinless, torn, its jaw gone. The school bus, his dog screaming, the shotgun in the gentle afternoon.
He stepped onto the shoulder of the road. Cars roared past. Then he encountered a terrible and unexpected phenomenon. One of them swerved onto the shoulder, aiming directly at him. He could see the driver hunched over his wheel, a young man with a green smile. Beside him another man had just raised his head and was beginning to laugh.
Bob leaped back, catching a blast of hot exhaust fumes and the angry wail of a horn.
They hated his freedom, or perhaps it was their own helplessness that made them do it. Crushed, oppressed, miserable men—killing something granted them power. That they could take life pushed back the fear that they themselves had lost their value.
A hole appeared in the traffic. He darted out into the road, one lane, two. Then he felt the pavement trembling like a hot pan. Bearing down on him was a huge thirty-two-wheeler, its grille a wall of steel. Its driver sat impassive over his wheel. Bob was transfixed by the face, the slow, steady chewing, the plug of tobacco bulging in the jaw, the aerodynamic sunglasses. Beside him a woman smoothed her hair with her hands, looking down, a smile on her face of almost ineffable purity, her lips slightly parted, the sunlight shining on her fresh skin. Then the truck was upon him. There was no escape. He crouched, pressing his body against the pavement as it screamed over him, blasting off down the road, its slipstream almost lifting him into the air. Behind it a Buick was coming up fast. Seeing him, the driver swerved away.
Bob wasn't hit, but he had lost the lane he had gained. Another space between cars, perhaps three seconds to a VW Sirocco. He dashed forward, his tail slapping against the car as it passed him. The impact sent a shock wave through his body that made him yelp. Then he was at the median, crouching flat along it as the traffic billowed by in both directions. He raised himself, leaning against the steel fence that separated the lanes, found purchase, and drew himself to the foot-wide space between the beams.
He was tempted to trust luck and just dash out into the traffic on the far side of the median. He felt trapped here, and the rushing of the cars confused his eyes. It was easy for him to observe details up close, or to follow a single, moving object against a still background, but this was just a blur.
Under these circumstances his nose and ears were useless. To function in the world of man requires a sharpness of eye most other land animals do not possess. This place was as dangerous as poison to a creature such as himself. Even his instincts fought him. Being trapped here was like being cornered. He wanted to lash out at the cars, to run wildly.
He fought himself, begging the wolf to listen to the man this time. Standing where he was, he could see another opening in the traffic, this one also in front of a big truck. They tended to be slower than cars. Ahead of them the road was often clear. Behind them, though, there would be a glut of traffic.
The wolf did not listen to him. He was just tensing himself to jump when he popped off the median like a spring. It was too early. He landed in front of a van, which tried to miss him. Desperate, he rolled. The van passed as hot wind. Now he felt nothing. He was on his back against the concrete base of the median. There was no more than an inch between him and the tires of the cars. He couldn't even turn over without risking his paws being smashed.
He was a creature at war with himself. The instinctual part was not in touch with the intellectual. It seemed unaware even of the existence of reason. Out here in the middle of the turnpike, though, either reason was going to win or instinct was going to get him killed.
Thanks to instinct he was lying on his back, his tail curled over his stomach, his paws clenched against his body. He could no longer see the cars. Now he had to go by the vibrations of the road and the sound of the traffic. The trouble was that there was so much noise that his ears didn't work right. What would in a human ear have been an ebb and flow of sound as each vehicle passed was to his wolf ear a continuous roar.
Because there was no other way to deal with the situation, he finally did the only thing he could and rolled over. Cars were whipping by so close he could feel heat pulsing up from the road. He managed to get to his feet. Leaning against the barrier, he waited. The cars continued. Twice people swerved toward him, but they missed because they were afraid of scraping the barrier.
Then an ancient van came rattling along, much slower than the rest of the traffic. Its lights were on, it hung askew on its frame, and it was being driven by an old woman who looked as if she was dressed in handkerchiefs. She slammed on her brakes. He would have gone to her but he simply could not trust human beings. Probably she stopped out of kindness, but it might be out of fear, because she realized that he was the terrible wolf. Maybe there was a bounty on his head and she was fumbling for a tire iron. Unlikely, but he could not know. He ran in front of the stopped van and, using it as a barrier, managed to cross to another lane. Now he could see clearly, and his progress to the far side of the turnpike was smooth.
Before him was a sea of reeds interrupted far to the north by the tall bulk of the People's Gas and Electric power station, and to the south by the rusty hump of the Pulaski Skyway. He stepped into the marsh. At once he sank to his knees, but fortunately no further. He took a step, then another. Like an envelope closing, the world of the marsh embraced him. It might be in the middle of a brutal traffic pattern, it might be viciously polluted, but it was alive, and as long as it lived it spread its magic over all who entered it.
The roar of the highway was replaced by the click of insects and the busy fluttering of birds. Driving along, he'd always thought of this as an empty world, reeds, muck, that was it. He now found rich life pouring into his ears and nose.
The smell of the man's world dwindled fast. For the first time since he had entered this new life he did not smell a single human presence.
He sloshed along, thinking that he might soon scare up a rabbit or another rat. Given how the last rat had gone down, he no longer found this a particularly unpleasant notion, although he did hope to find a cleaner victim.
Soon he was moving through shallower water. Then he came to a bald place. The sun was high, the day warm for autumn, and it occurred to him that he was free to lie down. He curled up in the reeds, drawing his tail almost to his nose.
It was peaceful here, but he knew that these marshes did not extend very far. Beyond them were suburbs full of peril, then the Poconos and beyond them the Catskills. He would have to go far to the north before he found the forest that his wolf soul and wolf blood sought.
Lying still, he could hear the traffic's faint wail, a hungry ghost half a mile away. When he slept he dreamed that a helicopter was nosing about in the reeds, looking for him. Then his dream changed, and in it he was matching the turns of a rabbit, delighting in the prospect of a meal.
He awoke sometime past sunset. The western sky was deep orange, and the evening star hung on the edge of the horizon.
For a long moment he considered the young woman on the palisades. Had he really been able to turn her into a wolf? No, surely not.
But it had happened to him.
When as a young man he would lie on the ground in the deep country and look at the stars, he would think that their light must have been purified by its journey. So also souls are purified by journeys, and it was time for him to move on.
He set out to cross the marsh, moving toward the jeopardy of the lights, and the dark promise of the hills beyond.
Chapter Sixteen
IT MIGHT BE TWO O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING BUT HE WAS a fool to be standing on a street corner in Morristown, New Jersey, peering at a newspaper through the wire of a
rack. He was aware of a car cruising slowly up the street, but he was so fascinated and horrified by his picture in the paper that he didn't retreat. It was remarkable to see himself like this. He really was a wolf, a perfect wolf. His mind had conjured a more muscular, vaguely human shape for him—a sort of man on all fours with the head of a wolf. He wasn't like that. There was nothing at all human about him.
Below the picture he could see the first few words of the accompanying news story. "After critically injuring one man, the animal escaped across the Hudson . . ."
The words froze his blood. He stared, stupefied, as his shadow defined itself beside him. Even the gentle rumbling of the car's engine did not break his attention. He had injured somebody, hurt them bad. But who? Maybe the man he fell on in the alley. It had all happened so fast, he wasn't sure.
The poor man.
When Bob looked up, it was into a flaring explosion of brilliance. These eyes were wonderful in the dark, but he discovered that they did not work at all well under an assault like this. He was staring into a glaring, impenetrable curtain, behind which he could hear an engine idling, doors opening, and the shuttle of weapons from holsters to hands.
He shrank back, one ear cocked toward the clicking of the pistol.
A shot seemed to explode in his face. He reeled, twisted, scrabbled wildly to the middle of the street. Then there was another shot and the slap of wind against his head.
He ran for all he was worth. Up the street he raced, past an Italian restaurant with a full garbage bin waiting for dawn, past a hobby shop, a drugstore.
Then he stopped, panting. Behind him there were pattering footsteps. He crouched behind some trash cans. What was in them? They smelled like heaven. Then another police car swept past, its lights flashing. There was no siren, not in this suburb of high executives and broad, quiet lawns. Nixon had once lived around here.