“Weren’t there any mice, Daddy? Or any snails?”
“No. We had travelled for days. We had discovered no spoor. Except one.”
“Was it a deer, Daddy? Did you kill the deer and eat it?”
“No. It was Man’s spoor. We were seeking an encampment of men.” He turned. Sherryl was beating eggs into a bowl and watching David Hartman on the portable television. “Sherryl, that was the strangest part. I’ve read about it, anthropologists have suggested it – a prehistoric, communal bond between man and wolf. We weren’t afraid. We sought shelter with them, food, companionship, allies in the hunt.”
Larry watched his wife. After a moment she said, “That’s nice, dear.”
David Hartman said, “Later in this half-hour we’ll be meeting Lorna Backus to discuss her new hit album, and then take an idyllic trip up the coast to scenic New Hampshire, the Garden State, as part of our “States of the Union” series. Please stay with us.”
“I’ve always wanted to live in New Hampshire,” Sherryl said.
Every day on his way home from work Larry stopped at the Fairfax branch library. Many of the books he needed he had to request through inter-library loan. He read Lopez’s Of Wolves and Men, Fox’s The Soul of the Wolf, Mech’s The Wolf: the Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, Pimlott’s The World of the Wolf, Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf, Ewer’s The Carnivores, and the pertinent articles and symposiums published in American Zoologist, American Scientist, Journal of Zoology, Journal of Mammalogy, and The Canadian Field Naturalist. Sherryl pulled the blankets off the bed one day and three books came loose, thudding onto the floor. “I’d really appreciate it, Larry, if you could start picking up after yourself. It’s bad enough with Caroline. And just look – this one’s almost a month overdue.” Larry returned them to the library that night, checked out three more, and xeroxed the “Canids” essay in Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia.
On the way out the door he noticed a three-by-five file card tacked to the Community Billboard. Spiritual Counselling, Dream Analysis, Budget Rates, Free Parking. Her name was Anita Louise. She lived on the top floor of a faded Sunset Boulevard brownstone, and claimed to be circuitously related to Tina Louise, the former star of Gilligan’s Island. Her living-room was furnished with tattered green lawn-chairs and orange-crate bookshelves. She required a personal item; Larry handed her his watch. She closed her eyes. “I can see the wolf now,” she said. Her fingers smudged the watch’s crystal face, wound the stem, tested the flexible metal band. “While he leads you through the forest of life, he warns you of the thorny paths. When the time comes, he will lead you into Paradise.”
“The wolf doesn’t guide me,” Larry said. “I am the wolf. Sometimes I am the guide, the leader of my pack.”
“The ways of the spirit world are often baffling to those unlearned in its ways,” Anita told him. “I take Visa and Mastercard. I take personal checks, but I need to see at least two pieces of ID.”
Before he left, Larry reminded her about his watch.
“I don’t know, Evelyn. I really just don’t know. I mean, I love Larry and all, but you can’t imagine how difficult life’s been around here lately – especially the last few months.” Sherryl held the telephone receiver with her left hand, a cold coffee cup with her right. She listened for a moment. “No, Evelyn, I don’t think you understand. This isn’t a hobby. It’s not as if Larry was collecting stamps, or a bowler or something. I could understand that. That would be understandable. But all Larry talks about any more is wolves. Wolves this and wolves that. Wolves at the dinner table, wolves in bed, wolves even when we’re driving to the market. Wolves are everywhere, he keeps saying. And honestly, Evelyn, sometimes I almost believe him. I start looking over my shoulder. I hear a dog bark and I make sure the door’s bolted . . . Well, of course I try to be understanding. I’m trying to tell you that. But I have to worry about Caroline too, you know . . . Well, listen for a minute and I’ll tell you what happened yesterday. We’re sitting at breakfast, you see, and Larry starts telling Caroline – a four-year-old girl, remember – how he’s off in the woods somewhere, God only knows where, and he meets this female dog and, well, I can’t go on . . . No, I simply can’t. It’s too embarrassing . . . No, Evelyn. You’ve completely missed the point. It’s mating season, get it? And Larry starts going into explicit detail . . . Well, maybe. But that’s not even the worst part . . . Hold on for one second and I’ll tell you. They, well, I don’t know how to phrase this delicately. They get stuck . . . No, Evelyn. Honestly, sometimes I don’t think you’re even listening to me. They get stuck together. Can you believe that? What am I supposed to say? Caroline’s not going to outgrow a trauma like this, though. I can promise you that.” Sherryl heard the kitchen door opening behind her. “Hold on, Evelyn,” she said, and turned.
Caroline blocked the door open with her foot. “What are you talking about?” Her hand gripped the plastic Pez dispenser. Wylie Coyote’s head was propped back by her thumb, and a small pink lozenge extruded from his throat.
“It’s Evelyn, dear. We’re just talking.”
Caroline’s lips were flushed and purple; purple stains speckled her white dress. She thought for a moment, took the candy with her teeth and chewed. Finally she said, “I think somebody may have spilled grape-juice on one of Daddy’s wolf books.”
Larry read Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris, Hesse’s Steppenwolf Rowland’s Animals With Human Faces, Pollard’s Wolves and Werewolves, Lane’s The Wild Boy of Aveyron, Malson’s Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature. Marty gave him the card of a Jungian in Topanga Canyon who sat Larry in a plush chair, said “archetype” a few times, informed him that everyone is fascinated with evil, sadism, pain (“It’s perfectly normal, perfectly human“), recommended Robert Eisler’s Man Into Wolf, charged seventy-five dollars and offered him a valium prescription with refill. “But when I’m a wolf, I never know evil,” Larry said as he was ushered out the door by a blonde receptionist. “When I’m a wolf, I know only peace.”
“I don’t know, Larry. It just gives me the creeps,” Sherryl said that night after Caroline was in bed. “It’s weird, that’s what it is. Bullying defenceless little mice and deer that never hurt anybody. Talking about killing, and blood, and ice – and particularly at breakfast.”
Larry was awake until two a.m. watching The Wolf Man on Channel Five. Claude Raines said, “There’s good and evil in every man’s soul. In this case, the evil takes the shape of a wolf.” No, Larry thought, and read Freud’s The Case of the Wolf-Man, the first chapter of Mack’s Nightmares and Human Conflict. No. Then he went to bed and dreamed of the wolves.
“The wolf-spirit has always been considered very wakan,” Hungry Bear said, his feet propped on his desk. He poked out his cigarette against the rim of the metal wastebasket, then prepared to light another. “Most tribes believe the wolf’s howl portends bad things. The Lakota say, ‘The man who dreams of the wolf is not really on his guard, but the man haughtily closes his eyes, for he is very much on his guard.’ I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I read it somewhere.” Hungry Bear refilled his dixie-cup with vin rosé. His grimy teeshirt was taut against his large stomach; a band of pale skin bordered his belt. He wore a plaid Irish derby atop his braided hair. “I try to do a good deal of reading,” he said, and fumbled in his diminished pack of Salems.
“So do I,” Larry said. “Maybe you could recommend—”
“I don’t think the wolf was ever recognized as any sort of deity, but I could be wrong.” Hungry Bear was watching the smoke unravel from his cigarette. “But still, you shouldn’t be too worried. It’s very common for animal spirits to possess a man. They use his body when he’s asleep. When he awakes, he can’t remember anything . . . oh, but wait. That’s not quite right, is it? You said you remember your dreams? Well, again, I could be wrong. I guess you could remember. Sure, I don’t see why not,” Hungry Bear said, and poured more vin rosé.
“I inhabit the body of the w
olf,” Larry said, beginning to lose interest, and glanced around the cluttered office. The venetian blinds were cracked and dusty, the floors littered with tattered men’s magazines, empty wine bottles and crumpled cigarette packs. After a moment he added, “I don’t even know what I should call you. Mister Bear?”
“No, of course not.” Hungry Bear waved away the notion, dispersing smoke. “Call me Jim. That’s my real name. Jim Prideux. I took Hungry Bear for business purposes. If you remember, Hungry Bear was the brand name of a terrific canned chili. It was discontinued after the war, though, I’m afraid.” He checked his shirt pocket. “Do you see a pack of cigarettes over there? Seems I’m running short.”
“You’re not Indian?” Larry asked.
“Sure. Of course I’m Indian. One-eighth pure Shoshone. My great-grandmother was a Shoshone princess. Well, maybe not a princess, exactly. But her father was an authentic medicine man. I’ve inherited the gift.” Jim Prideux rummaged through the papers on his desk. “Are you sure you don’t see them? I’m sure I bought a pack less than an hour ago.”
“This is very nice,” Sherryl said, and swallowed her last bite of red snapper. She touched her lips delicately with the napkin. “It’s so nice to get out of the house for a change. You wouldn’t know how much.”
“Sure I would, darling,” Andrew Prytowsky said, and poured more Chenin Blanc.
“No, I don’t think you would, Andy. Your wife, Danielle, is normal. You wouldn’t know what it’s like living with someone as . . . well, as unstable as Larry’s been acting lately.”
“I’m sure it’s been very difficult for you.”
“Marty Cabrillo, Larry’s boss at work, got Larry in touch with a doctor, a good doctor. Larry visits him once and then tells me he isn’t going any more. I say to Larry, don’t you think he can help you? And Larry says no, he can’t, he can’t help him at all. He says the doctor is stupid. Can you believe that? I say to Larry, this man has a Ph.D. I don’t think you can just call a man with a Ph.D. stupid. And so then Larry says I don’t know what I’m talking about, either. Larry thinks he knows more than a man with a Ph.D. That’s what Larry thinks.”
“Here. Why don’t you finish it?” Andrew put down the empty bottle and flagged the waiter with his upraised Mastercard.
“I’m sorry, Andy.” Sherryl dabbed her eyes with the napkin. “It’s just I’m so shook up lately. All I ever asked for was a normal life. That’s not too much, is it? A nice home, a normal husband. Someone who could give me a little help and support. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”
“Of course not.” Andrew signed the check. After the waiter left he said, “I’m glad we could do this.”
Sherryl folded her napkin and replaced it on the table. “I’m glad you called. This was very nice.”
“We’ll do it again.”
“Yes,” Sherryl said. “We should.”
Two weeks later Larry returned home from work and found the letter on the kitchen table.
Dear Larry,
I know you’re going to take this the wrong way and I only hope you realize Caroline and I still care about you but I’ve thought about this a lot and even sought professional counselling on one occasion and I think it’s the only solution right now at this moment in our lives. Especially Caroline who is at a very tender age. Please don’t try calling because I told my mother not to tell you where we are for a while. Please realize I don’t want to hurt you and this will probably be better for both of us in the long run, and I hope you make it through your difficulties and I’ll think good thoughts for you often.
Sherryl
“You can’t just keep moping around, Larry. Things’ll get better, just you wait. I sense big improvements coming in your life. But first you’ve got to start being more careful around the office.”
Marty sat on the edge of Larry’s desk. He pulled a string of magnetized paper clips in and out of a clear plastic dispenser. “Did I tell you Henderson asked about you yesterday? Asked about you by name. Now, I’m not trying to make you paranoid or anything, but if Henderson asked about you then you can bet your socks the rest of the guys in Management have been tossing your name around. And Henderson’s not a bad guy, Larry. I’m not suggesting that. But there’s been a sincere . . . a sincere concern about your performance around here lately. And don’t think I don’t understand. Really, Larry, I’m very sensitive to your position. Beatrice and I came close to breaking up a couple times ourselves – and I don’t know what I’d do without Betty and the kids. But you’ve got to keep your chin up, buddy. Plow straight ahead. And remember – I’m on your side.”
At his desk, Larry made careful, persistent marks on a sheet of graph paper. The frequency of dreams had increased over the past few weeks: the line on the graph swooped upwards. Often three, even four times a night he started awake in bed, clicked on the reading lamp and reached for a pen and notepad from the end table, quickly jotting down terrain and sub-species characteristics while the aromas of forest, desert and tundra were displaced by the close stale odors of grimy bedsheets, leftover Swanson frozen dinner entrées, and Johnson’s Chlorophyll-Scented Home Deodorizer.
“I’m really sincere about this, Larry. I can’t keep covering for you. I need some assurances, I need to start seeing some real effort on your part. You’re going to start seeing Dave Boudreau on the third floor. He’s our employee stress-counsellor – but that doesn’t mean he’s like a shrink or anything, Larry. I know how you feel about them. Dave Boudreau’s just a regular guy like you and me who happens to have a lot of experience with these sorts of problems. You and Sherryl, I mean. All right, Larry? Does that sound fair to you?”
“Sure, Marty,” Larry said, “I appreciate your help, I really do,” and peeled another sheet from the Thrifty pad. Abcissa, he thought: real time. Ordinate: dream time. At the top of the page he scribbled Pleistocene.
“I’m dreaming now more than ever,” Larry told Dave Boudreau the following Thursday. “Sometimes half-a-dozen times each night. Look, I’ve kept a record—” Larry opened a large red loose-leaf binder, flipped through a sheaf of papers, and unclamped a sheet of graph paper. “There, that’s last Friday. Six times.” He held the sheet of paper over the desk, pointing at it. “And Sunday – seven times. And that’s not even the significant part. I haven’t even got to that part yet.”
Dave Boudreau sat behind his desk and rocked slightly in a swivel chair. He glanced politely at the statistical chart. Then his abstract gaze returned to Tahitian surf in a framed travel poster. He heard the binder clamp click again.
Larry pulled up his chair until the armrests knocked the edge of the desk. “Increasingly I dream of the Pleistocene, the Ice Age. The Great Hunt, when man and wolf hunted together, bound by one pack, responsible to one community, seeking their common prey across the cold ice, beneath the cold sun. Is that something? Is that one hell of an archetype or what?”
Casually Boudreau opened the manilla folder on his desk.
CHAMBERS, LAWRENCE
SUPPLIES AND SERVICES DEPARTMENT
BORN: 3-6-45 EYES: BLUE
“And don’t get me wrong. I’m just kidding about that archetype stuff. That’s not even close, that’s not even in the same ballpark. These aren’t memories, for chrissakes. When I dream of the wolf, I am the wolf. I’ve been wolves in New York, Montana and Beirut. It’s as if time and space, dream and reality, have just opened up, joined me with everything, everything real. I’m living the one life, understand? The life of the hunter and the prey, the dream and the world, the blood and the spirit. It’s really spectacular, don’t you think? Have you ever heard anything like it?”
In the space reserved for Counsellor’s Comments Boudreau scribbled “wolf nut,” and underlined it three times.
When Larry arrived at work the following Monday the security guard took his ID card and, after consulting his log, asked him to please wait one moment. The guard picked up his phone and asked the operator for Personnel Management. “This is station six. M
r Lawrence Chambers has just arrived.” The guard listened quietly to the voice at the other end. He snapped his pencil against the desk in four-four time.
Finally he put down the phone and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll have to keep your card. Would you please follow me?”
They walked down the hall to Payroll. Larry was given his final paycheck and, in a separate envelope, another check for employee minimum compensation.
By the time Larry returned home it was still only ten a.m. He cleared the old newspapers from the stoop, unbound and opened the whitest, most recent one. He read for a few minutes, then refolded the paper and placed it with the others beside the fireplace. He picked up Harrington and Paquet’s Wolves of the World and put it down again. He got up and walked to the kitchen. Dishes piled high in the sink, four full bags of trash. The few remaining dishes in the dishwasher were swirled with white mineral deposits. In the refrigerator he found a garlic bulb with long green shoots, an empty bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, and an egg. He drank stale apple juice from the plastic green pitcher, then continued making his rounds. In the bathroom: toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, water glass, eyedrops, Mercurochrome, a stray bandage, Sherryl’s Ph-balanced Spring Mountain Shampoo, his electric razor. All the clothes and toys were gone from Caroline’s room. Over the bed the poster of a wolf gazed down at him, its eyes sharp, canny, primitively alert.
He tried to watch television. People won sailboats and trash-compacters on game shows, cheated one another and plotted financial coups on soap operas. After a while he got up again and returned to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet. Johnson’s Baby Aspirin, an old stiffened toothbrush, mouthwash, a bobby-pin. High on the top shelf he found Sherryl’s Seconal in a child-proof bottle. He took two. Then he got into bed.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 7
