Runt

by Marion Dane Bauer

  Still ... Runt was hungry. "May I?" He took a step toward the food.

  "Why should I share my kill with the likes of you?" Bider growled again. "You'll only go back to him when your belly's full."

  Would he? "No," Runt said. "Never."

  Bider made no reply, just tore off another hunk of meat and gulped it down. Runt was almost certain he was smiling, though. Whether with something like affection or merely satisfaction at seeing the pack break up he couldn't tell.

  "I could help you hunt," Runt offered.

  "Help me hunt? Do you think I need help from—"

  Runt knew what Bider was going to say. "Do you think I need help from a runt like you?" But the white wolf left the sentence unfinished. In fact, he stopped eating entirely and suddenly sat back, perfectly still, his head twisted at an odd angle. He looked surprised, though Runt couldn't tell why.

  Runt took a few steps closer. Maybe Bider had eaten his fill and was ready now to share.

  "No! Don't! You mustn't!" a hoarse voice shouted.

  Runt glanced over to see Raven perched on the fence. What was that annoying bird doing here now? And what was he worried about, anyway? That two wolves feasting on this huge carcass wouldn't leave enough scraps for one bird? Runt decided to ignore him.

  "I know I'm not very big," he said to Bider. "And I know 1 have a lot to learn. But I will grow bigger, and you can teach me." He licked one of the cow's hind hooves. It had been too long since he had eaten.

  "No!" Raven screamed again. And this time he landed directly in front of Runt.

  The black pup stepped back, away from the bird, but he was rigid with impatience. "Why shouldn't I eat," he demanded to know, "if Bider is willing to share?"

  "Can't you see? This meat has been touched by them!"

  There it was again. Such ignorance. Humans contaminate all they touch. Well, Runt knew better. He stepped around Raven.

  But before he could take his first mouthful, Bider gave a sudden jerk. He lifted his front paws to his face, pulling at his muzzle. His eyes, still on Runt, looked bewildered.

  Raven flapped his wings and rose into the air only to drop again to the ground at Runt's side. "Look around you!" he screamed. "Just look! Can't you see?"

  For the first time since he had arrived at the pasture, Runt looked. Not only was Bider behaving strangely, trying to vomit now but unable to bring anything up, but other animals lay on the ground. A jay. A wolverine. A score of mice and velvet shrews. Even a bald eagle lay still and dead, just a few feet from the meat he had been eating.

  "Poison!" Raven croaked. "The humans have poisoned the meat."

  Even as Raven spoke, Bider struggled to his feet. He stumbled toward Raven as though attacking him would change the truth of what had been said. But before he could reach the black bird, his front legs gave out, he lurched forward, and his jaw struck the ground. Saliva bubbled from his lips.

  Runt went still, the sweet-smelling meat just inches from his nose. He stared at the white wolf and at the rest of the animals lying on the ground, dead before the feast.

  Runt had seen death before, of course, but never in so terrible a way as this.

  Bider struggled to rise, fell forward, did not get up again. His yellow eyes remained open. Haunted.

  And that was when the sun broke free of the trees and shone down on the carnage below. Runt looked at the white wolf, utterly still, his face contorted in pain. He looked at the other poor poisoned creatures. Then he looked beyond them all to the brilliant day.

  He sat back on his haunches, trembling. "I—I," he said to Raven, "I thank you."

  Raven bowed his head modestly, drew a horny claw through his beak.

  Runt looked for a long time at the dead animals scattered in the dewy grass. "Is it true?" he asked at last. "Do humans really contaminate all they touch?"

  "Not all," Raven replied. "But enough."

  Runt thought about that. "Tell me," he asked finally, "what should I do? Where should I go?"

  "Home," Raven replied. "Your father is waiting for you. Go home."

  Runt shook his head. "My father named me," he said. There seemed to be nothing more to say.

  "Your father loves you. Perhaps more than all the rest."

  "Puh!" Runt let out an explosion of disbelieving breath.

  "King watches you." Raven spoke gently. "He worries about you. He wants desperately for you to survive. If that's not love, I don't know what is."

  But Runt could only shake his head again.

  22

  After Raven flew away, Runt sat for a long time, surrounded by the carnage. When several crows, a skunk, and a young badger showed up to feed, he warned them of the poison. Badger, apparently certain that Runt was trying to keep the entire feast to himself, moved off only as far as the underbrush on the other side of the fence and squatted there belligerently, waiting for the wolf pup to go away.

  Runt did finally, leaving stubborn Badger to his fate. He lowered his head and plodded away without taking note of the direction he chose. Since he had no place to go, the direction hardly mattered.

  He couldn't return to his family bearing no gift except news of Bider's death. And that was hardly a gift. Letting them know that he himself had faced death and survived, as Raven said his father had always hoped, wasn't enough of a gift, either. Merely surviving gave nothing to his family.

  He could, of course, go back and tell his father, "You were right. Humans mean death." But somehow that didn't seem to be the point. Not the whole one, anyway. It remained equally true that humans had helped him and that they would have helped Thinker, too, if he had stumbled upon them as Runt had. Perhaps the truth was that humans were a mixture, aggressive and kind, greedy and generous. Like wolves.

  Runt wove his way beneath the birch trees, their leaves as gold as a wolf's eyes. He pushed through a stand of pine, heavy with cones. He plodded, without paying particular attention to what lay before him, into a small bower created by overhanging limbs. And there he found the moose.

  It was the old bull his family and Bider had pursued, the one they had wounded.

  The colossal animal lunged to his feet and stood before Runt, swaying like a tree in a strong wind.

  Take me, the beast's eyes said. My time has come. You may take me.

  Runt's heart pounded; his breath came in ragged bursts. Was he really brave enough to take this huge animal and bring the good meat home to his family? It was as though this moose were the gift he had been waiting for, for so long. And here the old bull stood, practically giving himself to Runt.

  The wolf pup began to dance, first to one side, then to the other. But if the moose was ready to die, he clearly wasn't going to do it without a fight. Whichever side Runt chose, the bull lowered his head and swung his enormous antlers in Runt's direction. The antlers were at least six feet across, and after a few futile attempts to get close, Runt backed away.

  He considered leaping up and grabbing the beast's nostrils, the way Helper had done, but he remembered what had come of Helper's grabbing on there. And he remembered, too, what it felt like to fly off the fellow's hind leg.

  There seemed to be no way ... unless size could be an advantage. Not being big, but being small. Small and young and quick.

  The beast snorted and pawed the ground.

  Moose were notorious for their bad eyesight. And this fellow had clearly lost blood from the wounds left by his first encounter with the pack. He was growing weak and wouldn't be able to do anything very quickly. So if a small pup moved in fast and low to the ground, then leapt for his throat—

  Wouldn't King be—What would he be? Disappointed once more, probably. Disappointed that his son had no more sense than to try to take on this mammoth creature by himself. Disappointed that Runt didn't understand that the main strength of a pack was that they worked together in all they did.

  The old moose stood there, teetering on his long legs, and peered muzzily in Runt's direction. Clearly, he was waiting to see what the wolf pup
was going to do.

  And that was when Runt decided. For weeks now he had been keeping his voice still, but he had a voice, a voice and a story to tell. About Bider. About the poisoned meat. His family must know about the poisoned meat. And about the bull moose, about the moose waiting to die, waiting to give strength to his family. His family must know about all of it.

  And so the small black pup lifted his face to the soft blue sky and howled, loud and clear. "Come," he sang. "You must come. I have found Moose."

  His voice rose and rose on the sunlit air, then slid back down and rose again. He sang until an answer came floating back through the crisp fall day.

  "Moose?" It was King. "Who calls my family to feast?"

  "It is I," the pup answered, and he was going to add his name, Runt, but he couldn't make himself say it. So he said again only, "It is I. The one who wears your black fur and white star."

  At first, Runt heard no response. Only silence followed his father's question, his answer. And then the song came again, eerie and beautiful, ringing through the forest.

  "My son," his mother howled in her high and tender voice.

  "Brother!" sang Hunter and the pups.

  And then his father's voice boomed out again, more powerful than all the rest despite the wounds he had just endured in battle. "Singer. My son Singer," he howled. "Wait for us there. We come."

  So ... he was no longer Runt. His father had given him a new name. At last. The small black pup turned the name over and over to test the feel of it.

  Singer. He would be Singer. And surely he did have a song to sing, a unique and sad and beautiful song, given especially to him.

  He could sing about death. He could sing about longing. He could sing about loving. About loving his family and the sweet world that gave them all life.

  He could sing about an aging and injured moose, awaiting his fate.

  Singer lifted his face again to the pale morning sky and howled once more. "Come, my dear ones!" he sang. "Come. The feast waits."

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  Afterword

  Wolves are complex and varied creatures. Human response to wolves has been complex and varied, too. For centuries white settlers on the North American continent called wolves evil, cowards, murderers. They brought this attitude with them from Europe where both rabies and dog-wolf interbreeding sometimes made wolves dangerous to humans. The fear created by such encounters still colors many of the stories we tell very young children, stories such as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Three Little Pigs."

  Native populations on this continent, mostly hunters themselves, had a much different attitude toward wolves. They admired them for their family spirit and their hunting skill, for their power and intelligence and the close relationship they had with their world. Unfortunately, the attitudes of the Europeans prevailed, and from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries wolves were almost eradicated in North America. They were killed for money, for sport, for vengeance. They were shot from airplanes and caught in traps and poisoned, taking other equally innocent creatures with them into death. It was only in the late twentieth century that we began to question the assumptions that justified this slaughter.

  Runt and his pack are, of course, entirely fictional. And yet most of what they do in this story—except for talking—is based on observations made by wolf biologists studying these fascinating creatures. Wolves have been observed rejoicing over the birth of their young, burying dead pups, playing jokes on one another and on the creatures around them, baby-sitting, interacting with ravens, nurturing and disciplining and teaching their young, caring for the elderly and the ill, marking their territory, jockeying for power, and bobtailing cows.

  And they do, occasionally, slay animals such as cows that humans prefer to reserve for their own killing. In northern Minnesota, where wolves have made enough of a comeback for their status to be reduced from endangered to threatened, it is understandable that some farmers object strenuously to their presence. Occasionally, someone attempts to eradicate the animal by illegally poisoning the carcasses of wolf-killed cattle. One of the ironic results of this poisoning has been to teach those packs inclined to do their hunting from human-owned herds to make new kills each time. However, biologists who have studied the situation say that in Minnesota only one wolf in ninety ever actually chooses domestic livestock for its prey.

  There is much we still don't understand about wolves, and what we do understand changes each year. But we know that a pack is usually made up of a single breeding pair and their offspring, especially the young ones who are still dependent and the yearlings not yet ready to go off on their own. We know that other adults can be adopted into a pack, that bider wolves exist, constantly challenging the lead, or alpha, male or female for power. We know that no wolf is exactly the same as any other wolf, that they are as different from one another as you and I.

  While wolves don't use words to think and speak, they communicate, in ways that are probably far more complex than we yet understand, using body posture, facial expressions, and vocalization. One biologist even maintains that wolves will not step on flowers and that, prior to their making a kill, an understanding passes between them and their wild prey, a kind of death contract. In any case, these animals are fascinating and intelligent, and if we allow them to continue to live among us, we will be learning from and about them for many years to come.

  Wolves are exclusive creatures. I have never seen one in the wild. Few people have. But I have heard them howl, I have seen their droppings and the remains of their kills, and I have felt the thrill of knowing that, however tenuously, they still inhabit this world I live in. If this story increases the reader's empathy for the wolf, I will be glad. If it helps bolster our willingness to protect the wilderness wolves must have to survive, it will have served its subject well.

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  Bibliography

  Written for, or of special interest to, young readers

  FICTION

  George, Jean Craighead. Julie. Illustrated by Wendell Minor. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

  ———. Julie of the Wolves. Illustrated by John Schoenherr. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

  ———. Julie's Wolf Pack. Illustrated by Wendell Minor. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

  ———. Look to the North: A Wolf Pup Diary. Illustrated by Lucia Washburn. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

  ———. The Moon of the Grey Wolves. Illustrated by Sal Catalano. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

  Murphy, Jim. Call of the Wolves. Illustrated by Mark Alan Weatherby. New York: Scholastic, 1989.

  NONFICTION

  Johnson, Sylvia A., and Alic Aamodt. Wolf Pack: Tracking Wolves in the Wild. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1985.

  The Language and Music of the Wolves, including "The Wolf You Never Knew," narrated by Robert Redford, an audio tape.

  Swinburne, Stephen R. Once a Wolf: How Biologists Fought to Bring Back the Grey Wolf. Photographs by Jim Brandenburg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

  Written for adults

  Bomford, Liz. The Complete Wolf. New York: St. Martin's, 1993.

  Busch, Robert H. The Wolf Almanac. New York: Lyons, 1995.

  Caras, Roger. The Custer Wolf: Biography of an American Renegade. Illustrated by Charles Frace. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966.

  Grooms, Steve. The Return of the Wolf. Minocqua, Wis.: NorthWord, 1993.

  Lawrence, R. D. In Praise of Wolves. New York: Holt, 1986.

  Lopez, Barry H. Of Wolves and Men. Photographs by John Baugness. New York: Scribner's, 1978.

  Mech, L. David. The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

  ———, ed. The Wolves of Minnesota: Howl in the Heartland. Stillwater, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 2000.

  Steinhart, Peter. The Company of Wolves. New York: Knopf, 1995.

  Turbak, Gary. Twilight Hunters: Wolves, Coyotes, and Foxes. Photographs by Alan Carey. Flagstaff, Ariz.: Northland, 198
7.

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