Summer of the Wolves

by Polly Carlson-Voiles

  Nika followed quickly, with Zeus and Khan falling into line.

  And Pearl did. She had dealt with this problem many times over the years. She made a mixture of peroxide, baking soda, and dog shampoo and carried it up to the hill pen.

  “Better let me do this.” She put Khan between her legs with his back end sticking forward, dumped the solution on the smelliest spot, and rubbed it in. “Okay, Nika, look how he loves to grab the water coming out of the hose. Keep spraying him, let him play, then spray him some more, aiming at his backside. If we need to, we’ll do it again.”

  Two hours later the smell was mostly gone, but a trace shadowed Khan, hovering where he rested like a swarm of gnats.

  Pearl returned to the house to start dinner. During the whole process she had not asked one word about why Khan had encountered the skunk. While Khan rolled in the dirt and dug in his cooling spot, Thomas and Nika sat across the pen from him, side by side, swatting at mosquitoes.

  “Thanks, Thomas,” Nika said. Thomas was her first new friend in forever. In some ways she had always felt more comfortable with boys as friends. Olivia felt that way, too. It was one thing they had in common. Boys were more matter of fact, not always thinking about other people’s business. And it was nice how they didn’t need to talk every minute.

  “Thanks for helping,” she repeated, tearing up some weeds.

  Then as if the idea had dropped from the sky, she said, “Do you think I could ever keep Khan, you know, as a pet, sort of? “ It was a question she hadn’t dared ask anyone.

  “Well, if I were you, I’d want to, for sure. But I don’t know—wolves are kind of different, you know. They’re cool, but they aren’t like dogs. You can’t have them in the house or they’ll eat your couch. I read that somewhere.”

  He looked carefully at Nika, then went on. “I wrote a report last year in school about how dogs came from wolves. It’s pretty neat.” He told her how over a hundred thousand years ago, wolves, scavenging from human camps, began to alert people to other dangers. Humans watched wolves hunt and learned. Wolves ate what people wasted.

  “Cool,” she said. “They cooperated and sort of tamed each other.”

  “Those wolves became the first dogs.” He’d read that humans had come to North America with dogs. And that dogs and humans maybe even changed each other’s brains. He said from those first wolf-dogs, humans bred every kind of dog, to hunt, to work, to be our companions.

  “Even Chihuahuas and Great Danes?” Nika couldn’t believe all those sizes and shapes of dogs came from those long-ago wolf genes.

  “Yup. All of them.”

  Nika was impressed. Thomas knew a lot. And he seemed to be thinking about her problem with Khan. At least he didn’t say flat out “No way.”

  “Next time we go to the Big Island,” Nika asked Thomas, “will you come with me? You can take pictures, too.”

  Thomas stood up, shoved his hands into his pockets, and grinned. “As long as you don’t howl the whole time, and we stay away from skunks. Anyway, I’ll keep your secret, not that it probably is one, anymore.”

  There was a slap of the screen door on Pearl’s porch, then two female voices. Probably Elinor and a volunteer were on their way up to the pen. “This should be interesting,” Nika said to Thomas.

  The wolf made daily visits to the fish piles. Eagles and turkey vultures circled. Last in line, gulls bobbed offshore. When the wolf arrived, she chased them all away.

  One morning after eating from the fish remains, the wolf looked down the shore. She saw a human with a silver box held to his eyes. She circled to watch him from a distance. Later that day several whole fish appeared upon a rock. The wolf ate. Later she found a pink featherless dead bird. Finally the pain in the wolf’s stomach did not drive her to pace continuously. She caught a hare. She watched for the human. She watched for the piles of fish.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Tuesday Ian was expected home from St. Paul. When Nika came down from her loft on Monday, she heard Elinor talking with a man at the big table. Nika quickly dodged under the log steps into the kitchen.

  At the counter, Pearl was holding out to Nika what she called a “walking breakfast.” Today it was homemade sausage wrapped in a biscuit.

  “Thanks, Pearl. I just thought I should hurry because Thomas and I are going to town so I can do research for that report I’m writing. I don’t want to make him wait.” She glanced toward the living room. “Who’s here?”

  “Dr. Dave, talking with Elinor. They checked Khan after his wild encounter yesterday, to make sure he didn’t get nipped anywhere. Luckily, he’d had his shots.”

  Nika stood stone still and felt her shoulders tighten.

  “Don’t worry, he’s fine. No breaks in the skin.”

  She hugged Pearl, holding on for a moment, then grabbed an orange from the counter. She wondered if they would tell Ian, and if they did, what would happen.

  “I should be back by dinner.”

  Nika chose not to visit Khan on her way to Thomas’s. She hated missing their morning greeting, but today she didn’t want to risk meeting Elinor or Dr. Dave on the path. Last night after Elinor pried details out of her about the skunk, Nika had faked a headache and gone to bed. Then she’d listened from the loft as Elinor and the new volunteer took their sleeping bags up to the hill pen for the night. In the middle of the night she heard Khan howl his new lower, stronger howl. Nika wondered if he was howling for her.

  The trek over to Big Island felt funny without Khan. She was used to him lacing a black streak through the trees, always looping back to nudge her hand or brush by her on the path.

  Thomas was waiting on the dock when she came across the clearing by the cabins. She waved, then jogged up to the boys’ cabin to look for Randall. She opened the screen door to find him on the floor with a game spread out. Gideon and Jasper grinned and said hi. Randall looked up for a minute, then down again, giving her a slight backhanded wave.

  “We’re going fishing with Jake,” he said. “We’re going in the big boat all the way to the dam. Ian told me he’d come get me tomorrow and I could sleep over.” Randall shifted, turning his back. He was still mad that she and Thomas had become friends.

  “Okay, little brother. See you tomorrow then.” Nika waited for a moment in the doorway to see if he had anything else to say. She heard the smaller boys both say bye in unison.

  At the dock, she and Thomas buckled their life jackets, loosened the ropes, and pushed off. Before starting the motor, Thomas said, “I’ve got a big surprise, later, after the library.” Before she could ask anything, he pulled the starter cord. The engine rattled, then droned loudly as Thomas eased the boat into a circle out into the lake and made a straight line for town.

  After picking up the mail and sending letters she had written to Olivia and Zack, Nika and Thomas went over one block to the library. The library in Red Pine took up several rooms of a gloomy brick building with polished stone floors. In the biggest room, two computers sat across from each other on a desk.

  Nika gathered several books about wolf reproduction and pups. She hoped to take the books home to study, but she didn’t have a library card. Since she wasn’t going to be here long, it seemed pointless to get one. She walked over to where Thomas was bent over one of the computers.

  Reading her mind as usual, Thomas said, “You can take them out on my card. Hang on, though, I have some stuff to do first. Won’t be long.”

  Nika sat down at the second computer to wait, then decided to do a search online. She plugged in three words. Wolf as pet. And waited. Soon the screen filled up with possibilities. Some of them didn’t have anything to do with real wolves. She finally found one called, “So You’ve Always Wanted a Pet Wolf ?” That sounded promising. She double-clicked on the link.

  Wolves can eat 2–5 pounds of good meat a day over a lifetime of approximately 15 years. A diet of dog food is not good for them.

  A wolf pup must not fully imprint on humans but needs some
canine contact or else all of its social behavior, including natural aggression, will be directed toward humans.

  A pup must spend limited time with other canines, but it must spend 24 hours a day with humans in its first months.

  Pups should have contact with both male and female humans.

  Don’t punish wolf pups. Stop them from biting or chewing, gently and firmly, distracting when possible.

  They need a pen that is half an acre at least with an 8-to-10-foot overhung fence, preferably buried 3 feet in the ground.

  They cannot live in houses. They will tear apart couches and furniture out of curiosity and boredom.

  Socialized wolves can still be predatory.

  If you own a wolf, it should be for some educational reason, such as benefiting wolves by teaching about them.

  Nika quickly did some math. Eighty pounds of meat a month. Looking up a grocery ad on the computer, she guessed that if meat cost three dollars a pound, it would cost at least $240 a month just for meat, maybe more. Over $2,800 a year just for food, and $44,800 for food for one wolf in its lifetime, if it lived to be sixteen. That was a lot of dog-walking money.

  At least they were raising Khan right, twenty-four hours a day with humans at first, having both males and females handle him. And they’d been right about having Zeus around, but if he weren’t around, would Khan be aggressive toward her? Somehow she couldn’t imagine Khan ever being dangerous. Why couldn’t he just stay a pup?

  This article worried her. She wondered if Thomas had read it, if that was where he’d learned that a wolf might eat your couch. This was not the information she had hoped for. She could imagine taking Khan to schools and community centers to teach about wolves. But an eight-to-ten-foot-high buried fence was not an average backyard. Why were wolves so different from dogs? Nika felt her whole world slide sideways.

  She wondered about releasing him back to the wild. She didn’t want to let him go, but maybe it would be better for him. There were other wolves out there. He could join a pack. She felt a little better with this thought, but not much. She pushed the print button so she could take the article home and read it again.

  She looked up two more articles about wolves and wolf-hybrids as pets and skimmed them. They were even more discouraging.

  Thomas stood up from his computer across from her. She liked his shy way of moving, certain and smooth.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Nika handed her books to him. She wanted to tell him about what she had read, but the words were still circling in her mind.

  As they checked out the books, she overheard the librarian say, “I thought you’d already read these, Thomas?”

  He shrugged and smiled, then took the books.

  So Thomas had been reading about wolves, too.

  “You’ve read these?” Nika asked him as they stopped on the steps outside the library building. “You didn’t say before.”

  “Most of them,” he said, then started to run, shouting back, “Beat you to the Busy Bee!”

  It wasn’t much of a race. Nika dropped her books twice, and by the time she slid into the booth in across from him, he was casually studying the menu.

  “Want to split a giant bacon cheeseburger plate with onion rings?” Thomas put his pocket change on the table.

  “Sure. With sour cream.”

  After lunch, they walked down the street toward the docks. “I’ve got one more thing to do in town,” Thomas said. “I’m picking up some stuff at the First Street Market, okay? Just a block over.”

  When he came out with a half-full grocery bag and they started down to the dock, he said, “Now. Time for the surprise.”

  There was hardly a ripple on the still lake as Thomas backed the fishing boat away from the dock. He glanced at the overcast sky. “Maybe rain later.” Instead of going toward home, he headed left, toward the far point of Eagle Island.

  “I knew it! You got some food for the eagles!” shouted Nika over the motor noise.

  But Thomas just kept his eyes on the water ahead.

  Instead of pulling in beneath the eagle’s nest, Thomas only slowed and pointed.

  “Forgot my binoculars, but look!” Two brown heads poked up from the nest. They were much bigger now. He kept on going around the point and behind the island. They passed a skirt of rock and were hit by the stench of dead fish. They both held their noses. Halfway down the far side of the island was a little cove where two logs sat half in the water and half out, looking like someone had placed them there. Thomas drove straight toward them and cut the engine. The boat drifted silently between the two logs and came to a halt. He tipped the engine up, scrambled forward, and hopped over the side to pull the boat up.

  “Could you hand me the bag?” he asked.

  Peeking into the bag, Nika saw pale-colored meat wrapped in plastic. Bag in hand, she climbed over the side and picked her way from rock to rock.

  Thomas took the bag in one hand and led her up the ledge to a spot behind some bushy junipers, where he crouched down.

  “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Nika watched Thomas move carefully and slowly up until he was at the edge of a dense stand of balsam and spruce trees. There on a level spot at the top of a large rock shelf, he upended his bag. A shrink-wrapped raw turkey fell out. He knelt down to unwrap it, carefully putting the plastic back into the paper bag, which he tucked under his arm. He looked around briefly, then skittered down the rock to sit next to Nika.

  “We may have to wait for a while. Here, I brought a pop to share.” He pulled a can of root beer from his backpack, snapped it open, and handed it to Nika.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she said, taking a drink.

  “Nope.” He smiled and settled down with his back against a rock.

  Nika moved to sit on an oddly twisted white pine trunk, growing out, then up, making a perfect bench with a backrest, like a chair.

  “Is it a bear?”

  “They like blueberries, not turkey really. Well, I suppose they would, but no. You get three guesses. Two more”

  “Is it wild?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “It’s both?”

  “That’s three, you’re done. By the way, be very quiet.”

  It seemed at least an hour that they waited. A loon skidded to a landing behind them, splitting the water into wings of glass. Nika heard the one birdcall that she could identify for sure: the flutelike call of the white-throated sparrow that Pearl taught her that first day. Up note, next note, then dah dada, dah dada, dah. It called from different spots across the island. A painted turtle splashed into the water near the boat and sank like a submarine. Leaves rustled in the tiny breezes weaving through. In the distance they could hear boats coming and going from the town docks. Finally, in the bushes above the rock shelf, there was a whisper of leaves, a crunch of stones.

  “Okay. Quiet,” said Thomas. Nika hadn’t said a thing. She followed the direction of Thomas’s eyes.

  At first she couldn’t see anything, but then she saw two fiery eyes framed in a light shadow among the low bushes where Thomas had dumped the turkey. The shadow floated in front of scraggly trunks of balsam and spruce. The shape of a triangular tawny head emerged slowly. Tall pointed ears. Nika felt the force of the tan wolf”s golden eyes as its body pulled slowly from the trees, as smoothly as a dancer. The wolf was so long legged, so tall, so thin. Nika was used to Khan’s pup-size body. It stood for a moment, then lightly trotted across the rock to Thomas’s gift. It settled with the turkey between its paws and began to eat, bones and all.

  “Luna, meet Nika. Nika, meet Luna,” whispered Thomas.

  “She has a name?” Nika whispered back, trying to restrain her excitement so as not to scare the wolf.

  “I named her Luna because she is so pale colored, like the moon. She’s the one that ran away from Bristo’s, I’m sure of it. She’s got a collar. You can barely see it, but it’s there. You can see where it has worn away some fu
r. And she’s hungry. She always looks like she wants to come down here, but she never does.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “Remember after we released Bristo’s animals, we were sitting in the boat looking at the eagles and I said I saw something? Later I came back with my camera, and I saw her at the fish pile. I wanted to take photos of her, so I followed with my boat till I found this place where she seems to hang out.”

  “Is she dangerous?”

  “I don’t think so. Scared, maybe. She always looks curious, like she knows me. I’m beginning to wonder if she belonged to someone before Bristo. Because of the collar. Somehow I can’t see her allowing Bristo to put a collar on her.”

  They watched the wolf eat for a few minutes.

  “I suppose she could be a wolf that had been in a study. But the collar isn’t fat with a box, like a radio collar.”

  “They stick out,” Nika said. She remembered the collar on the dead wolf.

  “I’m worried she can’t make it through winter on this island. People dump fish guts, but only in the summer. And once the ice forms, she might go into town looking for food and get into trouble. Or worse, if she goes to town, Bristo might shoot her.”

  Nika told Thomas about seeing the man in the boat. She was sure it was Bristo now. And Thomas agreed Bristo had probably been looking for Luna. That had been weeks ago.

  They were silent for a long time, just watching the wolf eat. When she was mostly finished, she took a chunk of meat up to the edge of the forest, where she dug a hole and shoved dirt with her nose.

  “Caching,” Thomas said.

  “Just like Khan.”

  On the way home, Thomas drove slowly. He pulled up into a fishing cove, turned off the motor, and anchored. At first they didn’t speak.

  In a quiet, sad voice, Nika finally said, “I don’t think I can keep Khan.”

  “I know. You must be disappointed.”