Hitchhikers (18 page)

I don’t smell anything like that.

What I do smell:

pine woodsmoke moss maple ice fish

Fish?

I follow my nose for a mile or two to a small
lake. It comes up all of a sudden to my wolf eyes, even as the fish
smell had been growing stronger this whole time. The water is
frozen through, and though I see a small ice fishing hut in the
middle, I don’t dare tread on the ice. The weather has been warmer
this week – not really warm, but enough to set the snow to melting
and dripping down from the gutters of the Whittemores’ house. Not
safe.

A small movement catches my eye, the tiny
scuff of a paw in the snow and I’m running through the brush

meat rabbit chase

I go black in flashes, flinching every time I
resurface and see a tree flying at my face, pushing and clawing my
way to the forefront of my consciousness. The blind need to

run chase kill

is overpowering. Once I emerge from the
blackness and the rabbit is in my jaws, the coppery sweet taste of
blood on my tongue, the blackouts stop. I drop the dead creature
from my mouth. Its hot blood steams in the frosty air.

Panting, I sit on my haunches and try to
reason. My fur melts away and now it’s my bare ass in the snow. The
light sweat all over my body begins to freeze.

The mess in the snow bothers me. I just
killed this rabbit for no other reason than to kill. I can still
taste it, the blood. I feel sick.

As the flood of sour bile fills my throat I
say out loud, “The wolf is an animal, not a monster.” Not a
monster. Just an animal. Animals don’t have morals or ethics or
whatever it is that keeps humans from going on killing sprees all
the time. Most humans. Some humans do kill for pleasure (Paul the
Perv springs to mind) and we call them serial killers. They are the
human monsters.

“I’m not a monster,” I tell the moon. Part
animal. Part killer instinct, an instinct I need to learn how to
control.

My body gives a sudden shiver as it realizes
that it is cold.

I could walk back to the cabin naked, risk
frostbite and getting lost, and keep control of my mind. But it
makes more sense to return as a wolf and practice my control.

Take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Become the
Other.

With my humanness firmly in control, I scoop
up the dead rabbit in my mouth and follow my nose back to the
cabin. The Whittemores and I can have rabbit stew for dinner
tomorrow.

There’s a calendar on the wall open to
February, with an old painting of an elk as the illustration. None
of the days are marked off. Is it the beginning of February, or the
end? Maybe it’s March already, if the Whittemores are the types who
don’t remember to change their calendars over on the first of the
month.

The days grow warmer, the sun’s rays waking
me in the morning. Some days go as high as forty, and Zeke will
take off his coat as he splits wood in the yard. I watch from the
window as he raises the axe up and brings it down again and again,
taking three or four swings to split off each piece. Even though
I’ve taken over the cooking, I feel useless.

At night it’s still bitter cold, but as a
wolf I don’t feel it. I run and work at controlling myself. We’ve
had enough rabbit stew and stuffed rabbit and roasted rabbit and
braised rabbit and rabbit jerky (once it was squirrel – I didn’t
tell them that). I’m getting better. It helps when I’m not hungry.
It helps when nothing triggers my wolf instincts that make the wolf
lunge forward, leaving me in the dark. It helps when I don’t have
that weight Kayla put on my shoulders about saving and protecting
and fighting. I can run, light as the wind.

Someday, someday soon, I will need to go and
take up that mantle again. For now it’s good to pretend it isn’t
there. Maybe I’m Mr. Whittemore’s other son, or a nephew, and we’re
a family living out in the frontier on our own. I’ve lost both my
parents but Mr. Whittemore took me in, and Zeke is my best friend,
and this is it. Safe and alone in the wilderness.

Zeke sees me in the window and waves, then
jogs over and yells through the glass, “You wanna try it?” He holds
up the axe.

“Okay.” I look around. “I don’t have a
coat.”

Zeke waves off my concerns. He isn’t wearing
a coat, and his shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows.

I go outside, taking some care with the
stairs, and cross my arms over my chest as the cool air hits
me.

“You ever split wood before?”

“No.” My house when I was growing up had
electric heat.

“Here.” Zeke pulls off his gloves and hands
them to me. “Okay, first you put the log here like this.” He sets
it on the tree stump. “Now stand like this, then swing and try to
get it off to the side like this, not in the middle.” I get into
position and raise the axe. “You want ta swing as fast an’ hard as
you can.”

I set my sights on the wood, and swing.

“Ho! Beginner’s luck.” Zeke grins, picking up
the two pieces from the ground. He tosses the smaller piece onto
the pile at the side of the house and repositions the larger piece
back on the stump. I chop that piece in half on my first try as
well.

“Well, don’t get too hot for yer britches
yet,” Zeke says, tossing those pieces on the pile. “Dad’s the best
log-splitter around. You seen those awards on the wall? I figure
once I get a bit bigger I’ll be some competition for him, but for
now, it looks like this is gonna be your job.” He salutes me. “I’m
gonna go start my lessons.”

Splitting wood takes my mind off things. It
becomes a steady rhythm, and it isn’t so hard as Zeke made it look.
The smell of fresh pine takes over my sense of smell, a pleasant
change from the strong scent of manure coming from the barn. Time
passes along while I’m unawares, until footsteps crunch up behind
me.

I whip around, axe at the ready.

My blade points at Mr. Whittemore.

Most people would jump back in surprise or
fear if someone had an axe in their face. Not Mr. Whittemore. His
brow lowers, his mouth tightens. “Put that down, boy,” he
growls.

I know I should do what he says. He’s been
kind to me thus far, and it’s not like I mean to hurt him. Yet my
fingers curl tighter around the axe handle, and my muscles
tense.

blinking in and out of blackness

Control it. I have to control it, that
instinct rising up in me that tells me Mr. Whittemore is a threat.
I cling to the axe, which seems to be keeping my hands in a human
shape. Beads of sweat pop out on my forehead.

“Boy,” Mr. Whittemore warns.

nausea stomach roiling

“I–” I swallow. “I’m sorry.”

I’m apologizing for not being able to put
down the axe. I’m apologizing for what to him looks like rude
defiance or a threat when really I’m trying hard not to kill him.
His face goes wide in surprise for a split second, then furrows
into anger again, a red-face, spitting kind of anger.

“Zeke!” he roars, and I think he’s going to
punish Zeke instead of me until he adds, “Zeke, get my gun!”

The spots of blackness in my vision make it
hard to know how much time has passed. It feels like only a second
before Zeke runs out with his pa’s rifle in hand.

“Dan, what are you doing?” Zeke cries out,
skidding to a stop.

“Shoot him, Zeke.” Mr. Whittemore stares me
down between the blackouts, until black is all I see.

“What?”

“Do as I say, boy!”

I hear Zeke placing the rifle against his
shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I plead.

“Come on, Danny, just put down the axe,” Zeke
says. I hear the tears in his voice even if he isn’t actually
crying. “You don’t have to hurt anyone.”

“Zeke, you best mind me.”

I drop the axe to the ground at the same
moment the gun goes off. The bullet rips into my bad leg.

I fall to the ground, on top of the axe.

“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Zeke repeats over and
over.

“Give me that.” Mr. Whittemore snatches the
rifle from his son, and then sticks the barrel in my face.

The axe blade is in my side, making every
breath like a stabbing knife, sharp pain that almost makes me
forget about the bright throbbing in my thigh. My hands are sticky
with blood but I can’t get up for that round black hole that
consumes my vision.

“What the fuck you doing out here, huh?”

“I was just helping Zeke split the wood,
sir,” I manage to say. My mouth is slick with blood. “I was just
trying to help.”

“You want to kill me? Is that what you were
doing?”

“No…” I cough, there’s a tickle in my lungs.
“No, sir.”

“I’ll ask you again, boy. Do you want to kill
me?”

I shake my head.

The rifle disappears from my view, not that I
can see it very well at this point anyway.

“There’s a lot of blood,” Zeke whispers.

“Get that wheelbarrow. He can stay in the
barn.”

Are they going to help me? I’m going to die,
I’m suddenly sure of it.

When Zeke and his father pick me up by my
armpits and my legs to heft me into the wheelbarrow, the axe slides
from my side and I vomit all over myself. I feel something come
loose in my leg, the muscle tearing again and I pass out.

A brief moment of consciousness as the
wheelbarrow trundles over the yard, causing my head to bang against
the metal rim, then black again.

I gasp awake in the darkness, and keep
gasping. My side is gaping open, and little sticks are poking into
me. Hay. In the barn, in a stall. The floor under me smells like
old cow shit and sawdust.

It hurts like hell to sit up, and I black out
a couple of times in the process, but I have to get up. I have to
get to a hospital or something. I’m actually a little surprised I’m
not dead yet. The coppery scent of blood thickens the air.

My eyes adjust quickly to the darkness, maybe
a wolf thing, maybe not. There are wooden walls around me, some of
them halfway up wood, then metal bars. I’m in a stall. The door is
closed. I assume it’s locked too. But everything I need is
here.

Whether the first aid kit on the floor beside
me is Zeke’s doing or Mr. Whittemore’s I don’t know. I imagine Mr.
Whittemore leaving me here to die, and Zeke sneaking in with the
medical supplies while his father was in the outhouse. Maybe Zeke
was prepared to fix me up himself, and Mr. Whittemore found him and
beat him and forced him back inside. “You ain’t helpin’ no
murderous trespasser,” he might have said. I can’t imagine they’d
expect me to fix myself, yet there it is. No whiskey this time. The
gauze, iodine, needle and thread are all there, laid out waiting
for me.

I’ve got to get my side stitched up first; I
can feel the damp of blood all down the side of my body. I peel up
my shirt, throat working to keep the vomit down. The fabric comes
up with a slick, sticky sound and pulls off whatever clot had been
forming there. With slippery, shaking fingers I try to thread the
needle with only the moonlight to go by. A few failed attempts
later, I roll completely onto my good side and rest.

At least the need to cough is gone, although
breathing continues to hurt. It feels like the axe blade is still
stuck in there.

Lying there, I finally get the needle
threaded, after about twenty tries. I knot the thread, then
twist

black black black

Breathe, and take the washcloth. Dip it into
the bucket of water some farm animal probably drank out of. Wash
away a bit of the blood, enough to see where the cut it.

Oh God, it’s deep. Blood wells up out of it.
It looks like a terrible mouth in my ribcage, puking up black
blood.

I swallow. This is gonna suck without the
whiskey.

My hands shake more, trying to hold them at
the weird angle. I pinch the edges of the skin together with my
fingers, and punch the needle through. Bile rises in my throat. My
fingers slip in the blood and the wound gapes open again. The
sewing focuses my concentration and takes my mind off the pain
somewhat. It’s slow going, though, and by the time I finish I
collapse back into the hay. Finally the shaking stops enough for me
to clean it with the iodine and tape some gauze over it.

Now for my leg.

After all that, I can’t sleep. I can’t pass
out. I’m wide awake, sitting up in the dark, my bare back against
the rough boards of the wall. I’ve propped myself up in such a way
that it doesn’t hurt so much to breathe.

I’m so stupid. If I could’ve just put down
that axe, everything would be okay. I don’t know what it was that
put my brain in panic mode, maybe the way Mr. Whittemore sneaked up
behind me the way no one has that I can remember. I always know
when someone’s coming, unless I’m dead asleep. My own fault, for
getting so carried away with splitting wood. I lost control. Maybe
if Mr. Whittemore was a gentle man like old Bobby I wouldn’t have
freaked. But the first thing I ever saw Mr. Whittemore do was hit
his kid, for no good reason.

I hope Zeke is okay, and not paying for
hesitating when his father told him to shoot me. Not getting beat
because he didn’t kill me with his shot.

I need to leave. It’s back to like it was
before, where no one is safe around me. Why I ever listened to some
crazy dog-dream Kayla sent to me, I don’t know. It’s all crazy. Who
the hell am I going to help? Around me, everybody is in danger.

baby bones crunching between my teeth

I squeeze my eyes shut, dig the heels of my
palms into my eye sockets but still

blood and bones and a little purple
barrette

I throw up again. I manage to lean over when
I do so I don’t get any more vomit on my clothes. Shivering.

Of course, the Whittemores didn’t leave me a
knife or scissors or anything. Nothing to kill myself with. Do they
hope I’ll bleed to death out here? What’s the purpose of keeping
me? I suppose so I don’t run off and tell the police or something.
A laugh bubbles up out of my throat. It echoes in the barn, and
there’s a shuffling and the quiet bleat of a goat in response. I’m
not going anywhere fast. I’d have died out in the wilderness.