Embrace the Wolf

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “I’m not sure that’s such a hot idea, frankly,” I said around a melting mound of eggs.

  “Why?” The word was short and unexpectedly sharp.

  “Because there’s a bunch of guys out there who do not like you very much, and I think staying close to home, in a defensible spot, makes sense. At least until I can get some backup here.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I go looking for Herb Saunders.”

  “But if you can’t get help, then you need to take me with you, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” My ham and grits were no consolation.

  “So we’ll be out there at risk anyway. I may as well go out and work out. And anyway, I’m your client, right? So if I want you to protect me while I work out, that’s your job.”

  Fortunately she was smiling as she twisted my emergency room lie to her own ends.

  “What’s the big deal? So you miss a couple of days running on the beach. Do sit-ups or one of those workout shows …” One look at her and I felt like I’d called Bubba Smith a nigger.

  “The big deal is that the trials are in three weeks, and I’ve put almost four years of my life into this, and I am not going to let those bastards take that away from me too.”

  “Right. I’m sorry I took it so lightly. Now just tell me what I took so lightly?” I turned my palms up. The empty hand of peace.

  “The track and field trials for the ’84 games are only three weeks away. I have a real chance to make the team. I threw sixty-one meters at the PAC-10s.” Anger was replaced by earnestness. In a glorified way, she was asking me if she could go outside to play.

  “I’m sorry, but my code book has no entries for that last sentence. What did you throw?” I was being unnecessarily thickheaded, but I could feel myself being maneuvered into something I didn’t want to do and I wasn’t going to make it easy.

  “The javelin. I’m sure it’s going to take a sixty to sixty-five meter throw to win. I can do it. I can feel it.”

  I sipped coffee and stroked my mustache.

  “Look, you’re the one who said fighting back was important. Well, this is an important part of my life, and if I don’t go out and stay as sharp as I can because I’m afraid, then I’ll have lost even more than I already have. This may be my only chance. This may be the last Olympics. I’m sore as hell, and I probably can’t tie my shoelaces I’m so nervous, but there are some things I can still do.”

  I had the feeling the discussion was over. I sipped. I stroked. I delayed. What if she said she’d go out without me? Would I hog-tie her and lock her in her room? What if I had to go out and take her with me afterward? “All right, let’s make a deal. If I can get someone down here to be with you, you hold off the workouts until they arrive. If I can’t, then I’ll go out with you. We’ll do it this morning before Captain Boswell’s charter comes in. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough. Go make your calls.” She had a big smile on. Her first victory at the beach.

  I maneuvered the remnants of my breakfast around with my fork like a hockey player killing a penalty, then finished it with a scoop shot into my mouth. With a refill on the coffee, I went to the phone in the living room. Two brief and disappointing calls later I knew that Arnie was still in the woods, the Rev was on the streets, and I was going to track practice.

  “Okay. Let’s go. Spear chucking time.” I was still miffed.

  “Watch it. You might just catch one by accident.” Wendy laughed as she went upstairs to change. I was glad to hear that sound. As she dressed I tried to figure out how to protect her. Actually, working out in an open field wasn’t a bad place to be. I’d try to have two exits at least and control access to the area. The major danger was a long-range attack, like a 30.06 at three hundred yards. That could just as easily happen when we walked out the front door. All I could see was hazards. Somebody forgot to put fairways on this course.

  I went into the bedroom and got native: deck shoes, shorts, T-shirt, and shades. I took a hat and windbreaker along because they’re the easiest way to disguise yourself. I unpacked my binoculars, then unloaded the Remington and inserted solid slug rounds to increase its range. In the living room I wrapped it in the windbreaker and waited for Wendy.

  She came out in a Berkeley warm-up suit carrying a gold and white gym bag. “You ready?” she said.

  “Yeah. Listen to me, carefully. I’m going to go out first and check the car.”

  She interrupted, “We’ll have to take mine. My javelins are on the roof rack.”

  “Okay. Give me the keys. If everything’s all right I won’t signal you out, I’ll get in and start the engine. Come out when you’re ready. If everything’s not right, you’ll know it. Get on the phone and call Hungerford and stay away from the windows.”

  She nodded understandingly. I went up to the front window and looked out from a corner. The best location for a shot would be behind another car on the lot or from a porch on the houses facing us. Either way, they were looking into the sun. God grant me a flash on a barrel. I scanned once with my binoculars and saw nothing. I felt Wendy’s hand slip the keys into mine. I put the Remington in front of me under my jacket and gripped the trigger.

  Wendy opened the door, and I slid out down the stairs and across the lawn to the car. Nothing yet. My eyes were everywhere. I got to the car, dropped down to the ground, rolled over, and looked at its underside. Nothing was affixed there. I rolled out, got to a squat, unlocked the door, and released the hood. Still nothing. I duck-walked around to the front end, pulled the hood up between the house and me and the house across the way. Nothing that wasn’t put there in Munich. I slammed the hood and scooted around and into the driver’s seat. Unlocking a door for Wendy, I started the engine. A three count and she was out the door, down the stairs, and beside me. I backed the car out of its slot and headed out of the development. My chest hurt. I was still holding my breath. I let it out with a rush and shook my head. I flicked my eyes into the rearview mirror and saw nothing.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the high school. I passed it on my way into town. The fields will be free since school’s out. It’s straight out the main drag on the right-hand side.” She sat with her bag on her lap and periodically checked the rearview to see if we were being followed. She played incessantly with her bag’s zipper.

  Less than ten minutes later we were in front of the high school. I pulled around the main building, drove past the field house wing, and parked at the end of the football field.

  “Just sit here a minute. I want to take a look around.” I put up a restraining hand and then slid out of the car. I walked out to the football field with the pump gun still wrapped over my left shoulder. The stadium had bleachers on three sides. They looked high enough and close enough to the buildings to preclude a shot from the rooftop. I jogged over and climbed to the top to convince myself of that. A military marksman might have been able to shoot through that mesh of supporting beams and crosspieces, but I was betting these boys couldn’t. I trotted back toward the car. There was only one way in or out. I’d park myself where I could see the access road.

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “Stretches, steps, sprints, practice throws. That’s all.”

  “Okay, use the near end zone or these bleachers here for your steps and stretches. Sprint on this near side line and throw from the end zone. If anybody comes in, I’ll honk once and drive to you to pick you up. Don’t stop for anything. Javelin, gym bag, anything. Got it?”

  “Yeah. Let me leave my stuff in the car then unless I’m using it.” She got out of the car, opened the bag and dumped out videotapes marked Lillak, Schmidt, Felke, and Petranoff. There was also a book entitled Zen and the Torque Dynamics of the Javelin by some guy with a Scandinavian name. She pulled out a pair of ankle weights, slung them over her shoulder, and walked away. I started the car and backed up so as to give me a view of the roadway. With the Remington on the seat next to me, I sat and waite
d. Every few minutes I’d toss a look at Wendy. She spent a good half hour stretching: hurdler’s stretches, toe touches, trunk twists, side bends, sit-ups, things for her legs, her abdomen and back, arms and shoulders. She stepped out of her warm-up pants and pulled the shirt over her head. After a couple of loose-jointed bounces, she strapped on the ankle weights and ran up and down the bleachers. Then she jumped up the bleachers three steps at a time and ran down. After more leaps than I could do, she ran forty-yard dashes. Crouched in the end zone, she’d explode out for thirty yards and then glide the last ten. Over and over again. That whole morning she was the only person out there. After a while, she walked over to the car, opened the door, took a towel from her bag, and wiped her face.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better. Good. I feel like I was starting to get kind of numb all over. Not just emotionally, but like this wasn’t my body, it was somebody else’s. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. It was spoiled. This helps. I needed to do this. Kind of repossess myself, take over again.” She wiped her hands and reached in for a small can of powder she then put on her hands. Next she slipped a white elastic wrap over her elbow. “I’m going to just work on my steps and then make a few easy tosses, just for technique. That’ll be it.”

  “Fine.”

  She reached up and unsnapped a long cylinder from the roof. With it over her shoulder, she went back to work. I watched the curves of her calves, the sweep of her thighs, up to the broad back and shoulders. She was a strong woman. Men still reacted to that by deciding whether it was attractive to them or not. It was a look that women had been punished for before, so every new possibility reclaimed was a victory. But it was a victory not because it was an added way to be attractive, but because strength itself feels good to the wielder, audience be damned. I remembered my college sweetheart. Lushly female, she sculpted space without a single straight edge. And she moved with an implausible harmony. But she was so soft that when a breeze came up she’d bruise. That was then, this is now. I think I like now just fine.

  Wendy was working on her steps. From the goal line she counted back twenty steps. From her tube she withdrew what looked like a thick black hose with a donut of a nose weight on the end. I turned back to watch the road and saw her practice runs only in disjointed segments. Finally, she slipped out her javelin and walked to the goal line, looking off into space. She turned and began to count off her steps. I opened the car door and got out to watch her. The spear was in her upturned palm right beside her bandaged ear. I squinted into the full midday sun and made a visor of my hand. Everywhere it was still and silent. The empty bleachers, the vacant field.

  She started with a dip, rocking back on her heels, and then she was off. With each stride she accelerated, hurtling toward the goal line, building power along the way, storing it in her legs like a battery. Then quickly she changed into a crossover step like a cantering show horse, cocked her arm, took a last little hop, and planted her lead leg. The stored power rose up her legs and churned through her snapping hips. Her universal joint turned thrust into spin. Her left arm swept back a curtain of air and the energy rose. Restraint funneled it up her arched back. Her shoulder resisted then relented. But she didn’t throw. Her shoulders turned, her upper arm followed through, but the elbow declined. And still she didn’t throw. Her head swiveled up and away searching for something. In that still summer sky she saw a window, the true point that she would throw through. And then it was done.

  I looked into the sky, and the javelin was gone. I couldn’t find it. It was as if she had thrown it through a doorway into another world. Just when I began to believe that, it fell out of the sky and stabbed the earth.

  Wendy had watched and waited for it to land from the goal line. When it had, she gathered up her gear and trotted out to retrieve it. She checked her distance, pulled it from the earth’s grip, and slipped it into its sheath.

  I was checking out the roadway again when she got to the car, fastened down her javelin, and tossed her gear in the back seat.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Good. Good. Like I burned something off out there. I can feel all of myself again, my legs, back, arms. I feel real. Here. Right now. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but it sure beats feeling like a ghost in your own body. When they—” she looked around for the right word, one that was honest, but not catalytic—“hurt me, I just went numb and dead all over. Like I dove down into myself into cold water and curled up around myself, a tight ball in the dark. This morning I knew they weren’t there anymore, but I was still in the dark. All this got me back to my surface. For now at least.” She smiled and said, “Let’s go eat. I’m starved.”

  “Okay. Do you like barbecue? It’s the state food of North Carolina.”

  “Sure.”

  I checked my watch. “We’ll get some to go and then head to the docks. Boswell’s boat should be in.” Turning left out of the school’s driveway, we went back to town. On the right was a sign for the Pork Palace. Below that is said: BBQ minced and sliced, fit for a king. We pulled in and I gave Wendy some money for sandwiches minced with slaw, a bag of hush puppies at six cents a piece, and a couple of beers. Sitting on the car hood, I watched her walk away. I wished like hell I was that young again. I’d settle for problems where a sprained ego was the worst outcome.

  Then she was there in front of me. “Whatcha thinkin’? You’ve been real quiet all morning.”

  “Ah, nothing. Just tired. Slept like hell.”

  “Is that all? Even allies need to be honest with each other.”

  “Is that so? Says who?”

  “Says your ally.”

  “No. That ain’t all. I was thinkin’ about how pretty you are and how desirable and how I didn’t really want to tell you that because you need to hear about men’s desires like a hole in the head.”

  “Oh yeah? You’re the one who told me that rape had nothing to do with sex or desire. In fact, it’s nice to hear. Part of me wonders if a man would still want me after what happened. You know, if it shows or something.”

  “This guy would. You look clean and strong, young and pretty. Everything a man could want.” I didn’t tell her that I’d no more let myself get involved with a twenty-year-old girl than with a twelve-year-old. How much of their attractiveness is their youth? A chance to make a liar out of time, to recapture that golden age that never was. All thirty-five-year-olds would make great eighteen-year-olds the second time around. Get it right finally. How much I ached when I looked at her for my own youth, forever fled. No matter how tightly I’d clasp her to me I’d never get it back. How sweet the desire. But shot through with sadness. You might as well try to nail a board to the sea. I leaned forward and kissed Wendy lightly on the cheek.

  She touched her face and looked away. “I’m sorry, Wendy.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not twenty, is what. Get in the car.”

  We climbed in and drove off. I took the sandwich from her and propped the beer between my legs. We were one block off the channel, near the end of the residential area before the sport fishing docks began.

  Chapter 19

  We rode silently down to the dock, found a parking spot in the lot across the street, locked the car up, and walked over to the boats. The wind had come up, and we’d both put our jackets on. Before that though, I’d taken the Remington out of the car inside my jacket and locked it in the trunk. I didn’t want some busybody admiring the car or inspecting the javelin tubes and looking in the window, go, “Oh my gosh,” and call the police. We strolled down to the docks. Boswell’s berth was still empty. I wandered over to Captain Franklin’s boat, looked her up and down, and then wandered to the end of the dock. Wendy was tagging along, occupied with her own thoughts. Perhaps she was reviewing her practice throws.

  I got to the end of the dock and put a foot up on the top of one of the pilings and looked out at the ocean. For ten years I had fished these waters with my father, from Key West to Montau
k Point. We boated shark, marlin, giant grouper. We didn’t talk much out there. My dad didn’t talk much anywhere. We were just trying to find something to do together where we wouldn’t fight. Neither of us wanted me to make a mistake at anything, so he could never teach me anything.

  We did learn to spend time together. I learned to drink beer and I learned to fish. I acquired some patience, where I had none. After a few years of sitting side by side all day in the sun sipping beer, squinting at strike signs, we stopped pushing at each other. When my anger had dissipated like a fog, I found underneath a deep still pool of sadness. I knew how hard my dad was trying to reach me, how hard it was for him, and how hard I made it for him. Things got better after that. Then one day, fifteen miles off of Miami, it all came together. I hooked a swordfish and fought him for five hours. My dad harnessed me in the fighting chair. When I got dizzy, he tied a cool cloth around my neck. All afternoon he helped me bring him in and I let him. We were doing it together. It just happened it was my hands on the reel.

  At three o’clock that day our fish broke water fifteen feet off the stern, fixed us with that great fiat saucer of an eye he had, like he wanted to know if we were ready, and made his last run for it. The line went out so fast the reel was smoking, but we brought him back, wind after wind, pull after pull, foot after foot. At the end though, there was nothing there. The leader had been snapped off clean. I cried out of sadness and relief at losing that fish, but my dad had been everything I wanted that day. He’d been wise when the fish confused me, patient when I made mistakes, enthusiastic when I tired and thought I couldn’t go on, calm when I was scared, and just there at the end. We had rough times after that, but we’d made a certain kind of peace on that long afternoon.

  Yeah, I’d fished these waters for ten years with my dad until one night in our kitchen his heart blew a big hole in itself. We were talking, and he stood up to get another cigar when his mouth opened and he made a sound like a drain emptying. His eyes rolled, and he turned gray and fell back into the chair. He was stiff and looked halfway gone. I remember looking at him and saying, “Dad, Dad, Dad.” That’s the last thing I clearly remember, but I must’ve called an ambulance because one showed up and took him to G. W. Hospital where he pulled through. He never fished again, though, and neither have I. I just never wanted to do that with anyone else. I think maybe I do now, though I don’t know why.