Kristen Chandler
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - SUMMER SCHOOL
Chapter 2 - THE FIRST DAY OF THE END OF MY LIFE
Chapter 3 - HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGITY JIG
Chapter 4 - BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER
Chapter 5 - JUST GOOD TO GET OUT
Chapter 6 - GOLDILOCKS AND THE BEAR’S DEN
Chapter 7 - TAKING INVENTORY
Chapter 8 - NO MORE MR. NICE GUY
Chapter 9 - CINDERELLA WOLF
Chapter 10 - ANTHROPOMORPHISMS
Chapter 11 - ONE IN EVERY FAMILY
Chapter 12 - DEAR ADDIE
Chapter 13 - PRETTY IS AS PRETTY DOES
Chapter 14 - THE LEADER OF THE PACK
Chapter 15 - THE PERSONALS
Chapter 16 - MAN OF MYSTERY
Chapter 17 - THE CHRISTMAS STROLL
Chapter 18 - SIDE EFFECTS
Chapter 19 - GIFTS
Chapter 20 - INVERSIONS
Chapter 21 - REPERCUSSIONS
Chapter 22 - SILHOUETTES
Chapter 23 - THE BUCK STOPS HERE
Chapter 24 - COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
Chapter 25 - A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN TONIGHT
Chapter 26 - THE QUIET GAME
Chapter 27 - CAN’T LIVE WITH ’EM. CAN’T SHOOT ’EM.
Chapter 28 - OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS
Chapter 29 - THE RUINS
Chapter 30 - CAMP DAYS
Chapter 31 - HUMAN INTERESTS
Chapter 32 - COWBOY SONGS
Chapter 33 - CRYING WOLF
Chapter 34 - COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Chapter 35 - SEEING IN THE DARK
Chapter 36 - RIGHTS OF SPRING
Chapter 37 - THE BIG BAD WOLF
Chapter 38 - GOING TO HEAVEN
Chapter 39 - NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS
Chapter 40 - WOLF DREAMS
Epilogue
VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the U.S.A. by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2010
a cognizant original v5 release october 23 2010
Copyright © Kristen Chandler, 2010
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Chandler, Kristen.
Wolves, boys, and other things that might kill me / by Kristen Chandler.
p. cm.
Summary: Two teenagers become close as the citizens of their town fight over the
packs of wolves that have been reintroduced into the nearby Yellowstone National Park.
eISBN : 978-1-101-40458-4
[1. Wolves—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Yellowstone
National Park—Fiction. 5. National parks and reserves—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C359625Wo 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009030179
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Brent and Gayle Chandler,
who taught me to treasure
what I can’t tame
1
SUMMER SCHOOL
WOLVES DON’T ACTUALLY howl at the moon. Mostly they howl at each other. I’m a girl, so I get that.
When I hear the first howl, I’m standing knee-deep in Yellowstone meadow grass, loaded up like a packhorse, being assaulted by the first shards of an August hailstorm, listening to the couple we are guiding argue. Over the rumbling clouds and upperclass bickering I hear the wolf’s howl. It is low and kind of whiny. The call of the bothered. I get that, too.
I’m out in front of our foursome. My dad calls from the back, “KJ, go left, to the trees.” I take a few steps and then hear him call loudly, “Your other left.”
I stop walking and let the couple pass me. Dad holds out his hand as he walks past. “How’s that left doing? Maybe you should tie a string around your finger.” This might be funny if I hadn’t been hearing it my whole life. The man and his stuck-up wife turn and hear my dad’s big joke. The woman looks down her pointy nose at me. I turn away and look out into Hayden Valley. I search the weather-bent grass. If I get to see a wolf today I can put up with some harassment.
I hear more howling. Competing wails. Then barks. The tourists, both doctors with advanced degrees in know-it-all-ness, freeze in their tracks.
“I heard something,” says the woman.
“No kidding,” says her husband.
“I thought these things only howled at night.”
My dad clears his throat. “Canids howl when they need to. This sounds like a discussion about territory.”
The afternoon sky has gone dark in that sullen, angry way it does in the Yellowstone caldera. The hail and the heavy sky make it difficult to see. But poor visibility usually means more wildlife. I don’t use my binoculars so I can scan for movement.
After a moment I make out two coyotes. Then I see the wolf. The hail lessens and I see the wolf is three times the size of the coyotes, light gray to their tan and orange outlines. We are less than a hundred yards away. I whip out my binoculars and focus until they look like they are practically at my feet.
“What is it? Is it a wolf?” the woman says. Her two-hundred-dollar hat is soaked. She waves her manicured hand at me. “Get out the scope.”
“Where do you see it?” her husband says, lifting his binoculars into the freezing hail. I stop watching the wolf so I can put up their scope. That is what I’m here for, after all. To be the Girly Sherpa. The maid in hiking boots.
The woman explained to me before
we left the shop that she was “outdoorsy” and that she could handle her own equipment. Apparently her idea of outdoorsy means she takes a guided fishing trip once a year, and her idea of handling her own equipment is having my dad and me carry the cameras, the scope, the tackle, and the lunches so she can carry her featherweight, collapsible graphite rod without messing up her hair. The woman grabs her scope and starts swinging it around trying to sight the wolf.
Dad knows more about the wildlife in this country than most people know about their own children, but he says nothing.
We stand there like that for a minute and then the yapping of the coyotes fills the valley. I blow into my hands, listening, trying to keep warm. The sounds come from two places, one in the meadow and one higher up in the trees.
Finally Dad says, “They have a den.”
I say, “But it’s so late in the year.”
“Yep,” he says.
“Where?” the woman says, salivating. “Wolves or coyotes? I can’t see a thing in this hail.”
“If you’d be quiet maybe Samuel would tell us,” her husband says.
“I’ll be quiet when I want to be quiet.”
“Let me know when that happens.”
The wolf moves in and out of the coyotes’ nips. I think for sure the wolf will tear into one of the little runts, but it doesn’t. Instead the wolf spins and runs, reaching back with its teeth to defend itself, but not chasing the coyotes off.
I say, “How come it doesn’t go after them?”
The woman snaps at me. “I’d like to know where the hell you’re even looking.”
Dad raises his eyebrows and then points for the woman. She goes obediently back to her scope.
The man follows Dad’s finger with his binoculars. “Oh. Oh,” he says. “He’s huge. Can’t you see him, honey? He’s right there. And the coyotes are biting him. This is very exciting.”
I guess doctors miss blood when they’re away from the office.
The woman swings her scope more violently. “I still can’t see them.”
Dad’s voice is low. “That’s because you need to calm down.”
Why can’t my dad act like the rest of the guides and just suck up to his clients? His tip is in the toilet now for sure.
“I’m perfectly calm.” Her head shakes when she says this.
Her husband looks like Dad just slapped his wife. “I think she can manage.”
“Good,” says Dad. “Now how about I line up that lens so you can both get a good look?”
I go back to watching the wolf and coyotes. My eyes strain to catch every detail of the animals. Through the spattering hail I see the coyotes working the tag team defense. The pups go silent, but their parents keep up the bursts of barking. I can’t believe we’re seeing this. People think it’s so easy to see a wild wolf now that they’ve been back in the park a few years, like they’re big fat grazing buffalo or something. But just because you can buy a T-shirt with a wolf on it doesn’t mean I’ve seen many of them.
Then things happen fast. The hail stops, like someone has flipped a switch. The air seems to freeze and everything goes silent. Five other wolves appear out of the grass, like they just grew there. Without two seconds passing, the coyotes disappear into the trees, leaving the solitary wolf alone with the new pack. It seems to me that the wolves have saved their friend from harassment; maybe they have even come to help him kill the coyotes and rout the den. But that is not what happens.
The biggest wolf, black with huge feet, leads out to the solitary wolf. He stands out front for a few seconds without moving. I think they are locking into each other somehow, and then the solitary wolf steps backward and drops down on its back. The man whispers to his wife, “It’s submitting to them. I’ve seen that on television.”
I hear Dad breathe funny, and I know something bad is about to happen.
The man starts to say something else, and my dad holds up his hand and shhs him. The woman doesn’t say anything for a change. The four other wolves step behind the big black. The big black lunges at the wolf lying down. I can’t see what is happening except that the wolves swarm and make tearing sounds that I feel down in my stomach muscles. The wolf being killed yelps four times. In the emptiness left by the storm I can hear everything. I don’t know how to describe the sound, except it’s sharp and pitiful. We just stand there, staring. I think I’m going to throw up, but I don’t.
Then the hail comes back like a wave, pelting us and the ground and the wolves. The pack stands erect in the weather, heads up. Then they just circle the dead wolf once in a line and trot off.
The woman grabs her husband’s arm. “Oh, I can’t believe it.”
Her husband says, “That was disgusting.”
I whirl around. “Dad, they killed him.”
Dad’s face is hard and flat. “Yes, they sure did. And don’t you forget it.”
Don’t you forget it? I let that boil for about ten seconds.
I say, “Gee thanks, Dad. I’ll just put some more string around my finger.”
He eyeballs me. This look probably scares some people. “That’s not what I meant, KJ. The minute that wolf backed down it was all over.”
Classic Samuel Manning Carson. It was the wolf’s fault for being outnumbered, ambushed, and then ripped to Alpo. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, little missy, and you better get used to it. Lessons from Life. Spare me.
We scowl at each other and then look away. The couple stays silent on the way back to the van. Dad needs to report the wolf death since Fish and Wildlife are out counting noses all the time. The hail has ruined the fishing for today. So what, I think. My tip was in the toilet anyway.
WELCOLE BACK , WEST END WOLVES!
It’s time for another school year to begin, and we look forward to seeing all two hundred and thirteen students, with their friends and family,* at the Meet and Greet Bonfire Friday at sun-down to kick off the school year!
You’ve worked hard all summer, so come have some fun before the school year starts. Bring your blankets and marshmallows. See you there!
*Chuck Daniels saw a sow grizzly and a cub walking on the field last week, so we’re asking everybody to keep tabs on their kids during the event.
2
THE FIRST DAY OF THE END OF MY LIFE
IT TAKES ME twenty minutes to walk to school from our cabinesque house. Last week I read in the West End News that the average commute in town is six minutes. I guess they didn’t survey anyone without a car. The paper said the town’s year-round population is 947 strong, but I find this statistic hard to believe. Sometimes it feels like I could fit the whole town inside my head. Ever since kindergarten, it’s been the same school, same kids, same me.
I guess I’m not exactly the same me. After sixteen years, I finally started to look like a girl this summer. Not a big deal. I had to buy a real bra and I grew my hair out. But Dad acts like it’s a big deal, like I’m a felon until proven otherwise. All I know is that if he says I’ve “bloomed” one more time I’m going run away from home and become a shrub.
I pass the Brandin’ Iron Motel and then the Pony Express RV Park. The summer tourist season is still in full swing. At the RV park, a mom in yellow overalls yells at her pint-size son, “Get in the car, before I leave you.”
The little boy wails. I hear car doors slamming. The air smells of diesel from motor homes lining up to get into the park.
I pass the High Country Fly Shop and Touring Company. Dad’s inside, tying flies with Ruben, one of the guides. I’m not sure where the other three guys are this morning, probably out with clients. I am not a guide, I’m a flunky. But at least I stay around all year. They’ll be gone before the snow sticks, leaving me and Dad to run the store, just like every year. I wave to Dad, but he doesn’t see me.
A police truck passes me in the street. Officer Smith waves and yells, “Lookin’ good, KJ.”
The ornery half of the West End police force is right behind him in his truck going two miles an hour.
Officer Farley yells, “Nice shirt, KJ.”
Must be a big police meeting at the Quickie Mart.
I hurry along, picking at my stupid new shirt. Why did I think salmon would be a good color on me, and why is it suddenly so tight in all the wrong places? One of the many disadvantages of not having my mother around is that there is no one to tell me not to wear things like this shirt. There is no one to say, “Was the light off in the bathroom when you put on that makeup?” Most girls think they would love it if their mothers left them alone, but that’s because they never had their dad do their hair on the first day of kindergarten.
I see my reflection in the bakery window. It still startles me. Mrs. Williams waves from behind the counter inside. She makes the worst doughnuts in three counties. I wave back and keep walking.
I guess it sounds superficial to complain about my clothes and hair when I’m talking about my mom being gone. Fashion advice isn’t what I miss most about having a mom. It just sucks having to wear my momlessness every day.
Maybe one of the worst big things about having my mom gone is that it’s like she never existed. She died in a car wreck when I was three. It happened about a year after my parents moved to West End. My mom’s sister, Diane, told me that my mom and I were driving to Bozeman to stock up on groceries, and she hit some ice. We smashed into a telephone pole so hard it snapped in half. Diane said they found me tucked in my car seat, sucking my thumb. She didn’t say what happened to my mom. I’ve just guessed about that part.
My dad doesn’t talk about my mom, and I don’t ask him to.
I walk through the door of the school just as the first bell rings. I am going to be late, as usual. I don’t remember my schedule so I have to pull it out and read it for the fiftieth time: period 1—journalism.
This class will probably be a joke, since the journalism teacher is really the home economics teacher, Mrs. Brady, aka Mrs. Baby. She has had a baby every year for the last four years she has lived in West End. Everyone says she only teaches for the maternity benefits, but I think she comes to school to get away from all her crying kids.