Big, Bad Wolf

by Essex, Bridget

  “Yes!” This was safe territory--we could discuss this. I took a small sip of the drink the bartender placed in front of me. It burned the whole way down.

  There was a small silence after a moment. I couldn't speak, my throat hurt. Kara was looking over the crowd, eyes open, body tense. Clyde sat on the bar stool next to me, breathing through his mouth.

  They had a jukebox, one of the old, upright ones that stood in a corner, looking sorry for itself. Kara took that moment to stand up and fish out the appropriate change from a coat pocket. Then, she was playing with buttons, and the beginning strains of “Unchained Melody” emanated from the rusty speakers. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and for some strange reason, my glass was full again, and Kara was walking towards me, extending her hand, and I knew she wanted me to dance.

  Everyone was watching. I knew it--I could feel their eyes boring into my body. “What are you doing?” I whispered, when she took my hand.

  “Dance with me,” she said, as I knew she would. I struggled out of her grasp and remained where I was, crouched on a barstool next to the bulk of Clyde who still breathed evenly, still watched both of us with unreadable eyes.

  “Who is that woman to you?” Clyde was speaking to me, now, somewhere in the distance, far removed from the muzzy reality I was currently taking part in. I was already tipsy. How many I had had? My glass was full again. I breathed out and lifted the hair out of my eyes and realized that Clyde was leaning close, that he was whispering into my ear. “Who is she?” he repeated. I couldn't place his tone.

  “Kara,” I said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world as I downed the contents in my glass in one swallow.

  “What is she to you?”

  I shook my head, staring at the drink which seemed to magically be full again.

  “Megan.” Kara was there again, and the same song was starting over again, and she was giving me her hand.

  The world was spinning as I stood, as I somehow drifted toward her. I had never been able to hold my drink.

  She took me in a gentle embrace, and guided me over the floor. No one else was dancing--everyone was watching, even though Kara found a small corner of the place, a small, dark corner where few eyes could pry. She put her arms around me, held me up, rocked me from side to side. It was not slow dancing so much as propping me up and swaying, but it worked. She held me so tightly, so sweet, that I could forget, for a moment, where we were.

  So we danced, and I moved back and forth to the rhythm and we were together in a corner when it happened.

  “What are you doing?” It was Clyde. I knew his voice, I couldn’t mistake it. Kara stopped and stiffened. I could see him over her shoulder, tall and imposing, blocking out the dingy light from the dingy bulb. I couldn’t see his face.

  Kara ignored him, and I found that I couldn’t speak. We danced a little more, and then Clyde repeated it. This time, I heard it... I understood the anger in his voice. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice gravelly, a hard edge cutting between Kara and I. I could hardly breathe, and my stomach twisted.

  “Dancing,” Kara replied curtly, not giving him the satisfaction of a glance. We were close to the jukebox, and the melody was loud and tinny--I couldn’t hear Clyde breathing, couldn’t see his face, didn’t understand what he was thinking. He stepped forward and took my arm, and I hadn’t been prepared for it. I winced.

  “The lady doesn't want to dance with you, friend,” he said levelly. I could see his face now--it was expressionless.

  “Perhaps you should let the lady decide for herself,” replied Kara, glancing into my eyes. Hers flashed such a light blue they were now almost silver. She looked so angry, and I felt so sick, and I wanted to lie down. Now.

  “Megan?” they both said. I didn’t really realize what I was doing until I was pushing away from Clyde, and I was veering my wobbly body toward Kara, to Kara, my safe harbor, my good Kara. I fell into her chest, hard, but I didn't feel it. I only felt her arms come about me, and how she didn’t waver, and how Clyde stood behind us, empty handed, fingers curling in the air.

  “She’s mine,” he said. “I should dance with her.”

  I didn’t understand. “Let's go home,” I said, voice slurred, “I’m…drunk.”

  “Megan,” he said. There was something in the word, something I couldn’t quite place. I turned and looked at him, at his bulk against the light, at his large hands. I shook my head and laid it against Kara, feeling her warmth through the thin flannel, through my cheek, into my bones. She picked me up, put her arm about my shoulder, and beneath my knees, and suddenly I was against her chest, cradled.

  “You don't know what you're doing,” said Clyde. I heard it far away, as if part of someone else's dream. And again: “she’s mine.”

  Why the hell would he say that?

  “Get out of my way,” that was Kara. She didn't sound like I remembered. Was I dreaming now?

  There was a long moment of silence, and then we were moving. We must be, for suddenly I felt the cold come around me like water, swallowing me whole, and I gasped.

  “Sh...I'm sorry.” Yes. This was Kara. She sounded so sad. I tried to reach out to her, but couldn’t move my arms.

  “This was such a mistake. I didn't know he’d be there... I'm sorry.”

  I heard nothing more.

  ---

  There is a piece of candy in my hand. A lollipop. I've been playing with it for almost an hour, twirling the plastic wrapper with small fingers as Gramma and I talk about the kittens she found in the shed. I like the gray striped one, and she's thinking I might get to keep him. I've never had a kitten. She's telling me what it was like when she was little, when they fed the barn cats out of saucers of milk, still warm from the cow. I'm trying to imagine what warm milk from the cow tastes like.

  Gramma drives much slower than other cars. This is why they always pass her. One roars up behind us now, and I pop out of my seat, trying to see who it could be. It's Clyde--he waves a large hand at me, grinning from ear to ear. His truck is so much bigger than our car, and I have to peer very far up to see him. He waves his hand in the direction of the car now, and I turn back to Gramma. “He's going to pass!” I say grandly.

  The truck passes quickly. Gramma slows down, he speeds up, and before I know it, it's over. He's ahead of us, but he's not going any quicker. He puts an arm out the window, waving us on. To follow him, I think. I suppose he wants us over for supper... we've just been down the mountain, getting supplies. But we still won't refuse a free meal. Gramma nods, following him at the turn.

  I watch the trees go by. If I concentrate, I can make out individual trunks and branches. We're not going fast enough for them to blur. I like to unfocus my eyes sometimes, see the bright wash of green as it passes, and imagine they look like that because I’m underwater.

  I turn back to say something to Gramma, but I stop. There is a color out of place here. It should all be cool, bright living trees, vibrant.

  There's red.

  A splash of it, across the back bumper of the truck. I look at it, really look at it, and wonder what it could possibly be. It's dripping out of the back of the pickup. Something's leaking in the bed of the truck. It looks like red paint, and I wonder for a small moment if Clyde is painting his back shed, and if he'll let me help. I love painting things, because I paint little scenes first, stick figures, then cover it over with the color…

  The paint drips slowly, getting lost in the blur of brown that passes beneath the truck and then under our car. We eat up the road, and I watch the drip of it, almost mesmerized. This reminds me of the time I twirled so much I became sick--I couldn’t hold myself up, but tumbled down in the driveway. I scraped my hands, and blood welled up there. “Nature's bandaid,” my grandmother had called it, shushing my whimperings with a kiss, cool water and a cookie.

  It drips.

  We pull into Clyde's driveway--it appears out of nowhere on the left. There's thick forest, and suddenly there's a break,
and there's a cabin and a spit of gravel. We pull up behind him, and turn off the car as he gets out and strides toward us, grandly.

  “I bagged myself a twelve pointer,” he says, then. I don't understand what that is, and tell him so, looking up at this great bear. He's grinning hugely, obviously proud.

  Gramma puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me, heading toward the house.

  “What's the hurry, Molly? There's no harm in showing her.”

  My grandmother protests, but he's already taking down the back of the pickup truck.

  This deer has eyes. Bright, glassy eyes that stare at me as if it's alive. But it isn't. It can't be. There's so much blood in the back of the truck that when he lets down the end of it, it spills out onto the gravel, washing into the earth.

  “It'll look so great...” he's saying. Something about a wall. Something about mounting.

  There are long jagged wounds across its body. I see the shot hole, see where the bullet sank in, but then I see the long marks of a knife raked across fur and flesh. There is a roaring sound in my ears as I think of the wolves, as I think of the deer, as I think of things dead I have seen and not seen. This looked like a wolf killed it. But there are no wolves. Only Clyde.

  I don't really hear anything. I turn, run around behind the house, and am sick against the logs.

  Creeping, crawling things move beneath my hand. Ladybugs scurry across the log, and I stare at them stupidly as they continue marching, over my fingers and nails.

  I hear Clyde's laughter. Gramma just said something, angry. I'm too far away to make it out.

  ---

  When I wake from these things, from these dreams and nightmares and memories, I feel so sick, so disgusted. So angry.

  I sat up slowly, staring at the wall, feeling the twitch in my eye. It was my bedroom wall, the same shapes and drawings and faded wallpaper I’d known my whole life.

  Kara was beside me, sprawled out with an arm over my torso, a leg over my legs. She laid on her stomach and snored a little, a tiny, comforting sound that happened when she took in her breath. There was a catch in the back of her throat that I had to listen very hard to find. I listened now. There was nothing else to hear, save for the scrape of branches against the window. It was bright outside. I supposed it was morning...or, almost.

  I crawled out of bed and sat on the floor for a moment. My world was spinning and I thought I might be sick. Sick like the little girl, leaning against the logs. I held my head and tried to forget what I thought I'd forgotten. Or remembered...or...

  Everything swirled.

  I should never drink.

  From where I sat, I could just see under the bed, just a little. Odd. I remembered I’d put something down here. I reached under the bed, listened to Kara’s long, quiet breaths in sleep. My hand felt around under the mattress, brushed against dust bunnies,, long hairs (from a cat), and pencils... until, finally, it found a crumple of paper. A large, awkward crumple. I dragged it out.

  My drawings.

  I knew it before I smoothed out the paper, before I took the thing, the trash, and made of it my masterpiece once more. It wasn't. How could it be, with its smeared sketches of girls and horses? They were mere lines, now, suggestions, really, from the badly faded pencil marks. They were nothing like I'd hoped they’d look when I first created them. But they were there. My fingers traced this one's smile, that one's ears.

  I’d wanted, so much, to make beautiful things with my life. And I’d given up on them. Like I’d almost given up on myself.

  “Megan?” it was dull and gravelly. Kara sat up in bed, her head tousled, her eyes half closed. “Megan, it's too early. Get back into bed.”

  I watched her for a long moment, watched her even breathing, watched her blink, slow and sleepy. She put up a hand and rubbed her eyes and yawned, stretching her body in a lupine curve. I followed it with muzzy eyes. I could see my breath. Gramma must have turned down the heat.

  “Bed,” Kara said. It was so soft, and she fell back against the pillow. Her breath meant she might have already started sleeping, but I knew she hadn't. She was waiting. Waiting for me.

  I left the crumpled paper, left the pencils beneath the bed. I got up to hands and knees, and then, far from graceful, crumpled my own self against Kara’s body, placing myself into her hands. She held me, comfortable, easily, and she was asleep before I'd pillowed my head on her shoulder.

  I watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall. So steady, like clockwork. I timed my own breathing to it and found my shoulders lose their tension, felt my eyelids creep closed.

  In that moment, I found that I could sleep.

  ---

  I slammed the car trunk with a satisfying “thud,” and turned back to my grandmother who held out a basket of muffins, eyebrows raised.

  “You really must take them,” she was saying. So I took them, placing them between the front seats, half listening to her parting words. Kara sat in the passenger side after she'd given a quick hug to my grandmother. I'd watched it in the rear view, thinking she looked so strong next to frailty. Kara whispered something into my grandmother’s ear and then came into the car beside me. I started the engine and waved out the window. Gramma waved until we'd reached the bend in the road, and she probably hadn't stopped for a long moment after.

  “She's a really good woman,” Kara said, glancing my way, then back at the road. What she said next, I could never have predicted: “I...was just wondering what you thought of the wolves?”

  “What wolves?” I asked, perplexed. “The ones in my dreams? The ones my grandmother thinks she sees?”

  She coughed a little and stared out the window. “Well. I suppose those. I mean, I don't really know what you think of all of it, and I'd like to know.”

  I laughed and shook my head, staring at the dry pavement in front of my spinning tires. “I hate them.”

  She was silent for a moment. “You hate that you're seeing them.”

  “No,” the word was dry on my lips. I tasted it again as I said: “No. I hate them.”

  She surprised me with her next question, it was so small: “Why?”

  “They're...” I grappled for the right words. “I see them all the time. They're destroying my grandmother. They're...taking everything from me,” I sighed out a little brokenly.

  “I'm sorry to have brought it up,” she said gently. She reached across the basket between us and placed her hand on my leg. “I'm...I'm sorry, Megan. I just wanted to know, is all.”

  “I might turn crazy like my grandmother,” I snorted and breathed out. “I hate them because they took away my grandmother, and I worry…” I breathed out, glanced sidelong at her. “I’m worried they’ll take you away from me someday, too.”

  There was silence for a moment. She still had her hand on my leg, and I could feel the warmth through my jeans. It was comforting.

  “They'll never take me from you.”

  “What?” I glanced at her.

  “Nothing could ever take me from you,” she said, then. She stared into my eyes, and the intensity in her own rushed through me. I could feel it deeply, from her expression, from her gaze, from the way her hand burned on my leg.

  “You say that. It's very nice. But who can know what will happen?” I said. It sounded hollow after her passionate declaration, but it was the truth.

  “I promise you. Unless you want me to go, nothing will ever take me from you. I swear it.” The way she spoke, the way the words spilled out of her mouth, from her lips, held me spellbound for a moment. My heart pushed against my bones, and I felt my heartbeat swell beneath her gaze.

  “Kara...”

  “I mean it.”

  I looked back at the dashboard, at my hands gripping the wheel, at her fingers against my jeans. I breathed in and out. She...meant it.

  “You fear them,” she said, and then looked up quickly when I snorted. “No, I understand it. I mean, they’re wolves. I get it…but I think you don’t really see what could be there.
”

  “What could be there, Kara?” I asked quietly.

  “We often fear what we don’t understand,” she said then, looking out the front window at the setting sun. “But did you know…? Fear and love, they’re often the same thing.”

  I sat there for a moment in silence. “The same?”

  “People say that there are only two emotions at the root of every other emotion. Fear and love. And that they’re so close together that they’re almost the same thing,” she shrugged. “What I’m trying to tell you…basically…is that maybe you could feel love for the wolves, too.”

  “Why,” I said bitterly, spitting out each word as hate rose within me, “would I ever love the wolves?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, voice quiet, soft, “but it’s really not good to hate things.”

  The way she said it made chagrin pour through me. “I’m sorry, Kara,” I said, then. “What about you? Do you like wolves?”

  She smiled. “I…happen to love wolves. Very much.”

  I looked out at the road. They were just wolves. They weren’t really demons, they weren’t evil. They were just wolves, and my own delusions and my grandmother’s—they were not something I could or should hate. And I’d never thought of it before.

  “Let's go home,” said Kara then, the power gone from her voice, words soft in the darkness.

  I dropped her off at the outskirts of the factory. The third floor was well lit, and I could hear violin music through the broken walls. Kara came around to my side of the car and bent down as I rolled down my window, suddenly shy.

  “I'll see you tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I answered her, unable to meet her eyes. She leaned forward and brought my face up, gentle hands against my skin, twining up and into my hair as she kissed me through the window. It was gentle and soft, warm and inviting. I took it in as I took her in, as I breathed. She tasted of cinnamon and wood smoke, heat and need.

  “I would ask if you'd stay...” she began, but I shook my head before she could encourage me further.