Wild Things: Four Tales
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Authors: Douglas Clegg
Wild Things:
Four Tales
Douglas Clegg
Author of
Isis
and
Neverland
Wild Things: Four Tales
Copyright © 2006 Douglas Clegg. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Alkemara Press.
This edition published by Alkemara Press, by arrangement with Douglas Clegg
This collection and the stories it contains are works of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover art copyright Caniglia. Used here with permission.
Contents
"The Dark Game" -- a novellette
For Caniglia, Jacqui, Caravaggio and Vivi
To the Reader:
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Foreword
1
Grandma, what great eyes you have!
The better to see you with, my dear.
Grandma, what great ears you have!
The better to hear you with, my dear.
Grandma, what sharp teeth you have!
When Red Riding Hood goes into the cottage, the wolf's deception is near-perfect. The wolf
is
her grandmother,as far as Red's concerned. Although Red notices the physical changes -- the eyes and ears and teeth -- she believes this is granny. In fact, if the wolf did not reveal itself -- by saying, "The better to eat you with, my dear!" -- Red might've sat down and brought out some cookies and milk and checked to see if granny wanted a paw rub.
What this led me to believe as a child was that, sometimes, the wolves are closer to you than you think.
More recently, I've come to understand that the problem of wolves is that they tell us who they are, and they bite us, and still...we invite them in.
The wolves come down from the mountains when they see the sheep in the pen. If the shepherd does not guard the flock, and if the sheep-dog does not stare down the wolf, then the pen is destroyed, the flock is slaughtered. How often do we leave the gate open to the wolves?
I have come to know the wolves; and the sheep whose eyes are half-closed; and the shepherds and sheep-dogs among us who must be vigilant against the wolves of life.
2
This is a mini-collection -- a chapbook, as it were -- of four stories, two of which are previously unpublished. The other two are not easily found in print. Each of these four tales, in some way, explores the wild things of life -- the predators and prey, and those who come between them as well as those who are caught in the predator's traps.
The most obvious example is my story, "The Wolf," which launches this collection. It is a fable disguised as a suspense story, wrapped up into a tale of horror. It is not about a shepherd, but about a man and a boy who go up a mountain to hunt a wolf.
In the story, "A Madness of Starlings," there are no obvious wolves, but there is the instinct of the narrator to guard against the predators of life -- to be a shepherd.
"The American" is a story about a human wolf. I set it in a cafe in Rome, recalling times in my early twenties when I spent long nights with old friends and new friends wandering the streets of Washington, D.C., Paris, New York, West Berlin or London when we were all young and callow and feckless.
On any given night, I'd be at a table with an Italian man, a French woman, a British couple, a young woman from Mexico, a South African guy, and two Canadians from opposite coasts. Often, their names got lost in a haze and swirl of conversation, cigarettes, wine, and espresso -- poisons of youth. We would go to clubs, or just sit at outdoor cafes. The night would turn to dawn before we'd go home, sleep it off and then hear about clubs or gatherings the following evening in other parts of whatever city we occupied. I miss those days because there was no future to them. There was only the "now." I did not have to be anything other than the American sitting at the table saying the things Americans say.
And then one night at a cafe in Paris, I met someone who was a wolf. How did I know this was a wolf?
We know wolves by what they say, because it's hard for a wolf to keep silent about its wolfish nature.
Finally, the novelette, "The Dark Game" is included here. This is a prequel of sorts to my novel,
The Hour Before Dark
, but is barely connected to the novel.
Of the four stories here, it is the least restrained, and the most pulpish and overtly violent of the lot. The narrator, Gordon, is disordered in his thinking, so the narrative itself becomes disordered; he's telling the story of his life to someone, although we do not know who it will be until the very end of the story.
I had some misgivings about including it here, but there's something about its narrator's complete acceptance of a savage predatory nature that I find intriguing -- at least, in fiction. The cover art by Caniglia originally went toward illustrating this story, for it is the painting that Gordon mentions at the beginning of "The Dark Game." Given the binding of the wrists, I think this painting could apply -- at least, metaphorically if not actually -- to any one of these tales.
Thank you for reading,
Douglas Clegg
The Wolf
The wolf had come down from the mountains in March and killed sheep on the ranches. After several weeks of the attacks, parties of hunters went out to kill the wolf. None returned with the prize. More sheep would be taken before summer began. None of the ranchers believed the wolf would leave in the warm weather. A rancher who had lost many sheep hired a man of some reputation with wolves to come in from another county. This rancher also hired a local boy who had sometimes worked the ranch to go with the man up into the mountains. The boy would be eighteen by summer and wanted to make something right with the rancher. The boy had won trophies for shooting and hunting. He knew how to use a rifle and how to track game, although he had never hunted wolves before.
The man preferred to hunt alone, but allowed the boy to go along with him.
The man and the boy had been tracking the wolf since sunrise, but by the time the moon came up they made camp along the ridge. "Put your rifle over there," the man told the boy, pointing to a pile of rocks covered with fern. "Always put your rifle as far from you and the fire as possible. Accidents happen when they're too close. We don't sleep with them. The wolf won't attack us. It's sheep he's after, not you. Not me."
The boy at first questioned this, because he liked to have his rifle close to him when he hunted. After a few minutes of consideration, the boy decided that the rancher had hired the man to lead, and he would let him. The boy also had done something he wished he hadn't that afternoon, by shooting at what he thought might be the wolf, but turned out to be a silver fox.
By the fire, after supper, they sat across from each other. "We might have had him at the bluffs," the man said. "He's smarter than us, I think."
"I didn't mean to shoot at it," the boy said.
"It doesn't matter."
"I thought I saw him."
"Foxes can look like wolves, sometimes. Coyotes, too."
"It was a stupid mistake."
"I don't care. You're young."
"I'm the best hunter for a hundred miles."
"I can tell."
"Mister, maybe they pay you money to hunt wolves, but when I hunt, it's for the love of the sport," the boy said. "I can take anything out fast. Once I target it, it's mine and that's the end of it."
"I'm not here to argue with you, son."
"I'm not your son."
They went silent again. After he had relieved himself in the woods, the man checked their rifles, and then felt for the small gun beneath his jacket. The man returned to the fire and saw that the boy still sat there.
"We need to get up before first light," he said.
"How many wolves you kill?" the boy asked.
"What?"
The boy glared at him in the firelight. "How many?"
"Twenty. Maybe more."
"That's not a lot."
"No," the man said. "It's not."
"When I'm your age, I bet I'll have more than twenty pelts."
"I don't keep souvenirs like scalps," the man said. "You need to sleep closer to the fire. Take your coat and anything in your pack. Cover yourself good. In a few hours, it'll be colder than you can imagine."
"I hunt a lot," the boy said. "I know how cold it gets up here."
The man did not sleep much. Just before dawn, he rose and rekindled the fire and drew an old rusty skillet from his pack. He made breakfast with the meager supplies he'd brought.
The boy awoke to the smells, and after a mug of coffee began laughing.
"You look like crap," the boy said.
They wandered off the main trails that morning. The man saw evidence of the wolf's passing through a route between narrow rocks. There was blood of fresh kill and the rotting smell of a dead animal in the air as they moved further along through the pines. He motioned for the boy to remain still. The man went up along moss-covered rock, through underbrush, and finally came to a cliff's edge overlooking the valley. He glanced out over it to see the distant lake and the dots that were the ranches below. He saw three white-tail deer in a clearing among the trees just above the rocks where he stood.
He sensed the wolf, yet did not see him.
The boy followed him up the trail. When the boy drew close to him, the man whispered, "He knows we're following him. This is a problem now. Yesterday, he didn't know."
The boy remained silent until they had made camp for the night.
"It ain't my fault."
"No one's blaming you."
"You are. You think I scared him off. When I shot my rifle."
The man continued to peel an apple as he leaned back against his pack. "You can't look for blame all the time."
"It was one mistake," the boy said. "I won three hunting trophies before I was fifteen."
The man glanced at him, nodding.
"I bet they paid you a lot of money to do this," the boy said after a minute. "I bet it's a racket you got. You set wolves free down in the valley. Then, eventually, they hire you."
The man laughed at first, but then saw that the boy meant every word. "There would be easier ways to make a living."
"I just can't figure why they'd hire a stranger when we got a lot of hunters in the valley," the boy said. "That's all I meant."
"What did you do makes you special to that town?" the man asked.