Hitchhikers (17 page)

When consciousness returns to me, before I
open my eyes, I can feel the cool shadow of someone standing over
me. They have a gun; I can smell the gunpowder and the steel. I
play dead and wait for their move, all the while trying to unravel
the clues my nose is giving me.

A male. He smells of clean sweat and wood and
smoke. Because he isn’t moving I can’t tell his size or age. But
male, and not a small child. Presumably he was the one who set this
trap. I imagine the trap is to catch animals for food, and he must
be perplexed to have caught a human, unless the trap is meant to
catch trespassers. I am ready to assume the former when he pokes me
with the muzzle of the gun.

I roll over and snap at his leg with my
teeth. He steps back, although he was out of my reach anyway. I
glare up at him and growl. He is a much younger man than I
expected. A teenager. He has acne along his jaw line and shaggy
blond hair under his red and black checked hunter’s cap. It’s hard
to tell looking up at him, but we might be the same height. Only
his eyes, wide with fear, make me think he’s younger than I am,
maybe fourteen.

“Hey, calm down,” he stutters, holding up his
hands and point the gun at the sky. “I’m not gonna shoot ya. I
thought you was dead, is all.”

The pain, or the hunger, must be triggering
my temper. All I want to do is maul this kid. I suck a deep breath
through my clenched teeth.

“Um… my dad is back at the cabin… um, well,
let me try to do this.” The boy leans the gun against a tree trunk
and hunkers over the steel trap. “This thing got you good,
huh?”

I growl.

“All right, then.” He grasps the two halves
of the steel jaw and pries them apart. “Don’t move now, don’t wanna
slip here. Usually I kill the animals afore I open the traps. Hey,
watcha doin’ out here, anyhow? There’s no trespassin’ signs all
over. My dad hates trespassers.”

I wait until the trap is open and then use
both hands to lift my leg out. The steel teeth stick in the muscle
of my leg and the boy looks worried as I work myself out. It
doesn’t help that black spots keep dancing in front of my vision.
Once my leg is free and clear he lets down and the trap snaps shut
with a metal clang.

“Okay, now, I guess I’ll have to bring ya
back to the cabin. My dad won’t be happy at all, but you’re gonna
have some trouble walkin’ outta here, huh?” He stands over me and
offers his hand. “Come on.”

I stare at his hand. I don’t especially want
to go home with this kid or meet his father, but the boy is right.
I seethe through my teeth, then take his arm and try to haul myself
up. Somewhere about halfway to standing I pass out again.

Next thing I know, I’m sliding along on my
back, watching the clouds and tree branches overhead pass by. The
reek of dead animal fills my nose no matter which way I turn my
head. At first I hear only the sounds of the kid huffing and
puffing and the sled runners scraping over the snow. Then I hear a
door slam.

“What the fuck is this?” A rough voice,
followed by boots crunching through the snow. “What the fuck is
this?”

“I found him in one of the traps—” The kid’s
sentence is cut off my a slap.

I snarl as I try to sit up. “Don’t hit him,”
I growl. I barely recognize my own voice.

The bearded man in the flannel coat turns to
look at me. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He strolls over to where
I’m lying on a heap of animal carcasses and grabs me by the neck.
“You fucking trespass on my land, get your fool self injured, and
think you’re gonna tell me what to do?” He examines me as he slowly
crushes my windpipe. He takes in my secondhand clothes, the hollows
in my cheeks, my dirty face. My hands are too cold and can’t pry
off his grip.

He releases me and I fall back on the sled,
gasping for air. “I didn’t think so.”

“W-what are we gonna do with ‘im, Dad?” the
boy asks, rubbing his face.

“We’re gonna do the Christian thing and take
him inside and get him cleaned up, Zeke. He don’t want our charity,
too bad. When he can walk outta here on his own, he can feel
free.”

The inside of the cabin is blessedly warm,
heated by a woodstove that has a large stack of split wood beside
it. Zeke helps me up and onto a worn brown couch next to the stove.
“Thanks,” I mumble as he puts pillows under my head and covers me
in a blanket.

It’s a small place, though probably bigger
than it looks. The kitchen is spare and clean, except where a slab
of meat lies on a cutting board, the butcher blade still stuck in.
There are antlers and guns mounted on the walls, and a glass
cabinet full of firing arms. I wonder about this pair living out
here on their own, but not for long. The comfortable bed and warmth
make me feel sleepy, and since my leg isn’t moving it doesn’t hurt
so much now. I let my eyes fall shut and soon I am asleep.

I wake up to the sounds of metal clinking
against metal and some movement beside me. “Get that water off the
stove,” the man says to his boy. He returns to the small table he’s
set up near my leg. He takes a stained blue towel and without even
looking at me lifts my injured leg up and slides the towel
underneath. I grit my teeth and grip the blanket in my fists. The
man sees my reaction but shows no concern.

“Good, you’re awake.” He turns back to his
table and then holds out a bottle to me. It is unmarked, filled
with an amber liquid. “Drink this.”

I take the bottle. “What is it?”

“Whiskey, homemade.” Zeke returns with a pot
of boiling water. The man gives Zeke a brown bottle and a rag.
“Clean off as much of the blood as you can.”

I uncap the whiskey and sniff it, then watch
the man as he threads a needle. “Shouldn’t I be going to a hospital
or something?” I ask. “I mean, you’re not a doctor.”

The man looks at me. “You got health
insurance?”

I shake my head.

“Money?”

“No,” I say.

“Then you can’t afford no hospital. You’ll be
gettin’ the finest health care the Whittemores have to offer. Now
drink up. That’s all the anesthesia I’ve got.”

Zeke touches a cloth soaked in iodine to the
cut on my leg and I jerk away from the sting. When the man glares
at me, I press the mouth of the bottle to my lips and take a
swig.

It tastes like fire mixed with turpentine
going down and I hold my fist over my mouth to keep from throwing
up. Yet when Zeke attempts to clean out my leg again, I take
another swallow, and a third.

At that point Mr. Whittemore takes the bottle
away from me. “That’s enough of that. You don’t need to be drunk
off your gourd.”

I’m not drunk but soon the fire diffuses from
my chest and I feel slightly numb. I lay my head back against the
pillows and watch as Mr. Whittemore starts sewing up my leg. It
hurts, but I feel detached from it, like I’m watching it happen on
television. I can’t feel my face and I keep rubbing my nose to
reassure myself that it’s still attached.

It’s taking a while; I guess my leg’s tore up
pretty bad. I get to thinking about why my wolf didn’t come out at
any point. I suppose if I changed while I was still in the trap,
Zeke would have shot me, thinking I was just some wild animal.
Maybe my head would be on the wall. But why didn’t I change when
Mr. Whittemore choked me? I was angry enough, watching him smack
Zeke around like that, when nothing was even Zeke’s fault.

I wasn’t any less hungry than I was that
night

(that night I killed that baby)

no weaker, unless you count my leg. Was it my
leg? Would I still have the same injury if I changed into a wolf
right now? Maybe that’s the reason. Mr. Whittemore should consider
himself lucky then. Any other situation and I might have ripped his
face off.

I consider the rugged man carefully stitching
my leg back together. The resemblance to my father is minimal –
they both have

(had)

beards, but Mr. Whittemore has light, reddish
hair, while my father had dark, almost black hair. My father was
huge – or maybe he just appeared that way to me when I was thirteen
and terrified of his fists. Mr. Whittemore is burly and smaller in
stature. He doesn’t even really act like my father, even if his
rough way with Zeke brought up some bad memories. The way he’s
sewing my leg right now is precise, almost gentle. He and Zeke work
together without words, helping a stranger, a trespasser.

My father never would have done that.

I spend nearly a week on that couch, and the
Whittemores never complain once that I’m taking up all their
sitting space. There’s no television so I sleep a lot and pretend
to sleep even more to avoid conversation with Mr. Whittemore. I
wait for him to tell me to get out of his house, but he never does.
He goes about his business like it’s no big deal to have a strange
kid on his couch, eating his food.

I figure the Whittemores usually eat their
meals at the kitchen table, like normal people, but on account of
me they eat on trays in the living room. Zeke and his dad talk
about their day in monosyllables or not at all. The sound of
silence and chewing is comfortable, not awkward, and I find I like
it. The fact that the food is hot and fresh and plentiful makes it
more so.

At night Zeke and I play cards. His dad
prefers to do something useful like skin animals or clean his guns,
and I can tell he’d rather Zeke be hard at his schoolwork or
reading one of the old leather-bound books on the shelves. Once or
twice I catch a glimpse of something in his eye when he watches us
talking and laughing. He’s glad Zeke has a friend. Isolated out
here, I guess Zeke doesn’t have much opportunity. Neither have I
these past three years.

My leg turns shades of black and green and
purple. Pus seeps out under the stitches, which I clean off with
the alcohol. By week’s end it feels solid enough for me to walk on
it. I attempt it one morning when Zeke and his dad go out to milk
their goats.

It’s wobbly at first, and I feel my muscles
shaking. One testing step, hopping most of my weight onto my other
leg. A twinge, not so bad. Another step, putting more weight on
it.

I exhale. I’m not sure if a normal person
with no wolf blood would heal this fast, but I sure am grateful. It
sets my teeth on edge when I think of how that metal trap scraped
my calf bone.

I hobble into the kitchen area. Mr.
Whittemore already brewed coffee for himself, but breakfast isn’t
served until after the morning chores. For the first time, and
maybe only because I’m finally wide awake after a week of dozing on
the couch, I wonder what happened to Mrs. Whittemore. Mr.
Whittemore usually does the cooking, and neither he nor Zeke have
ever mentioned a mother. There are no photographs anywhere in the
house. Just animal heads and horns and guns for decoration, some
plaque award-type things that I never bothered to look at, which I
assume are related to the hunting. Awards from where, I don’t know.
So far as I can tell they keep to themselves. No church, no school.
Mr. Whittemore doesn’t go to work. They have their animals and jars
of food in the cupboards. I open and look for the first time.

Vegetables and fruits in clear mason jars,
each labeled with a permanent marker in a man’s hand. Beans,
pickles, tomatoes. Some essentials in boxes that were store-bought,
baking soda and salt. I close my eyes and inhale. There is food
stored elsewhere, in a pantry or basement, potatoes, onions,
carrots, root vegetables. Grains. A small amount in the kitchen, in
one of the bottom cupboards, under the sink. I take a few potatoes
and onions and start peeling. I don’t throw the peels away. I know
the waste is kept for compost in a bin outside. Eggs in the
generator-powered fridge, and bacon.

By the time Mr. Whittemore and Zeke are
finished with their morning duties, I have breakfast on the table.
Mr. Whittemore is surprised but keeps his face blank, no hint of a
smile. Zeke’s smile is enough. “I didn’t know you could cook, Dan,”
he says, slapping me on the shoulder as he takes his seat.

“Or walk, neither,” Mr. Whittemore adds.

I limp back to my seat. “Leg’s getting
better.”

I wonder if he’ll ask me to leave once the
limp is entirely gone, or once spring sets in. I can only hope my
ability to help out will earn me more time.

It is night and the full moon is streaming in
through the living room window, right across my face. Those old
legends about werewolves and the full moon can’t be true, but I
feel a pull to the outside and I am there, night air cold on my
skin. I should be cold. I should want to go inside. Instead I pull
off my clothes, the sweatpants that belong to Mr. Whittemore, the
thermal shirt that is Zeke’s.

I should be covered in goose bumps and
shivering. Instead there is steam rising from my body.

That bright orb in the dark sky calls to me
and I answer, the howl erupting from my very soul, and I am racing
into the trees, not a man but a wolf, a creature who only wants to
run and chase and fight and live and survive.

The pain in my leg is a dull throb at the
back of my mind.

I run and run, stretching, moving as I
haven’t in the past week. Snow flies under my feet. I dodge trees
and rocks. A pressure in my brain darkens my vision momentarily –
the wolf pushing for control. I push back, and my sight clears.
I’ve stopped running. Suddenly my human side with its gift of
reason presses to the forefront.

traps beware of traps

I stand stock still in the snow, looking
around. How would I be able to tell if there was a trap? The night
I got caught it had been snowing, and the trap was under a layer of
snow so I couldn’t see it.

Smell. Zeke would have left a trail of scent
that any animal could smell. And didn’t traps have bait? If I
smelled any hunks of dead meat, that meant a trap was nearby.