Wolfsong (4 page)

And next to them was… oh.

“Mark?” I said. He looked exactly the same.

Mark grinned. “Ox. How lovely to see you again. I see you’ve made a new friend.” He looked pleased.

The boy on my back wriggled his way down. I let his legs go and he dropped behind me. He grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the beautiful people like I had a right to be there.

He started spinning his storm again, voice rising up and down, words forcefully punctuated without pattern. “Mom!
Mom
. You have to
smell
him! It’s like…
like
… I don’t even know what it’s like! I was walking in the woods to scope out our territory so I could be like Dad and then it was like…
whoa
. And then he was all standing there and he didn’t see me at first because I’m getting
so
good at hunting. I was all like
rawr
and
grr
but then I
smelled
it again and it was
him
and it was all
kaboom
! I don’t even know! I don’t even know! You gotta
smell
him and then tell me why it’s all candy canes and pinecones and epic and
awesome
.”

They all stared at him as if they’d come across something unexpected. Mark had a secret smile on his face, hidden by his hand.

“Is that so?” the woman finally said. Her voice wavered like it was a fragile thing. “
Rawr
and
grr
and
kaboom
?”

“And the
smells
!” he cried.

“Can’t forget about those,” the man next to her said faintly. “Candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mark said to them. “Ox is… different.”

I had no idea what was going on. But that wasn’t anything new. I wondered if I’d done something wrong. I felt bad.

I tried to pull my hand away, but the kid wouldn’t let go. “Hey,” I said to him.

He looked back at me, blue eyes wide. “Ox,” he said. “Ox, I have
got
to show you stuff!”

“What stuff?”

“Like… I don’t….” He was sputtering. “Like
everything
.”

“You just got here,” I said. I felt out of place. “Don’t you need to…?” I didn’t know what I was trying to say. My words were failing me. This is why I didn’t talk. It was easier.

“Joe,” the man said. “Give Ox a moment, okay?”

“But
Dad
—”

“Joseph.” It almost sounded like a growl.

The boy (
Joe
, I thought,
Joseph
) sighed and dropped my hand. I took a step back. “I’m sorry,” I said. “He was just
there
and I didn’t mean anything.”

“It’s okay, Ox,” Mark said, taking a step down from the porch. “These things can be a bit… much.”

“What things?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Life.”

“You said we could be friends.”

“I did. It took us a bit longer to come back than I thought it would.” Behind him, the woman bowed her head and the man looked away. Joe’s hand slowly slid back into mine, and it was then I knew they’d lost something, though I didn’t know what. Or even how I knew.

“That’s Joe,” Mark said, pushing through. “But I think you know that already.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Didn’t get his name. He was talking too much.”

Everyone looked at me again.

“I wasn’t talking too much,” Joe grumbled. “
You
talk too much. With your face.” But he didn’t leave my side. He kicked the dirt with his sneakers. One of his shoes was about to become untied. There was a ladybug on a dandelion, red and black and yellow. A breeze came and it flew away.

“Joe,” I said, trying out the name.

He grinned as he looked up at me. “Hi, Ox. Ox! There’s something I—” He cut himself off, sneaking a glance up at his father before he sighed again. “Fine,” he said, and I didn’t know who he was talking to.

“Those are his brothers,” Mark said. “Carter.” The one my age. He grinned at me and waved. “Kelly.” The younger of the two. Somewhere between Carter and Joe. He nodded at me, looking a little bored.

That left two others. They didn’t scare me, but it felt like they should. I waited for Mark, but he kept quiet. Eventually, the woman said, “You’re an odd one, Ox.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, because my mom taught me respect.

She laughed. I thought it beautiful. “I’m Elizabeth Bennett. This is my husband, Thomas. You already know his brother, Mark. It looks as if we’re to be neighbors.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said, because my mom taught me manners.

“What about
my
acquaintance?” Joe asked me, pulling on my hand.

I looked down at him. “Yours too.”

That smile returned.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” Thomas asked, watching me carefully.

I thought
yes
and
no
at the same time. It made my head hurt. “Mom’s coming home soon. We’re eating dinner together tonight because it’s my birthday.” I winced. I hadn’t meant to say that.

Joe gasped. “
What
? Why didn’t you tell me! Mom! It’s his
birthday
!”

She sounded amused when she said, “I’m standing right here, Joe. I heard. Happy birthday, Ox. How old are you now?”

“Sixteen.” They were all still staring at me. There was sweat on the back of my neck. The air was hot.

“Cool,” Carter said. “Me too.”

Joe glared at him, baring his teeth. “I found him first.” He stood in front of me, as if blocking Carter from me.

“That’s enough,” his father said, his voice a bit deeper.

“But…
but
—”

“Hey,” I said to Joe.

He looked up at me with frustrated eyes.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Listen to your dad.”

He sighed and nodded, squeezing my hand again. His shoelace came untied as he kicked the dandelion.

“I’m ten,” he muttered finally. “And I know you’re old, but I found you first so you have to be my friend first. Sorry, Dad.”

And then he said, “I just want to get you a present,” so I said, “You already did,” and I didn’t think I’d ever seen a smile as bright as his at that moment.

I said good-bye then and I knew they watched me as I walked away.

“PEOPLE MOVED
in?” Mom asked me when she got home.

“Yeah. The Bennetts.”

“You met them?” She sounded surprised. She knew I didn’t talk to people if I could get away with it.

“Yeah.”

She waited. “Well?”

I looked up from my history book. Finals were next week and I had tests I wasn’t ready for. “Well?”

She rolled her eyes. “Are they
nice
?”

“I think so. They have….” I thought on what they had.

“What?”

“Kids. One’s my age. The others are younger.”

“What’s that smile for?”

“A tornado,” I said without meaning to.

She kissed my hair. “And here I thought you being older would mean you’d make more sense. Happy birthday, Ox.”

We ate dinner that night. Meatloaf. My favorite, just for me. We laughed together. It was something we hadn’t done in a while.

She gave me a present wrapped in Sunday comics from the newspaper. A 1940 Buick shop manual, old and worn. The cover was orange. It was musty and wonderful. She said she saw it at Goodwill and thought of me.

There were some new pants for work. My others were starting to fall apart.

There was a card too. A wolf on the front, howling at the moon. Inside, a joke.
What do you call a lost wolf? A where-wolf!
Underneath she’d written seven words:
This year will be better. Love, Mom.
She drew hearts around the word
love
, little wispy things that I thought could float away if they but caught on my breath.

We washed the dishes as her old radio played from the open window above the sink. She sang along quietly as she splashed me with water, and I wondered why I smelled like candy canes and pinecones. Of awesome and epic.

There was a soap bubble on her nose.

She said I had one on my ear.

I took her by the hand and spun her in a circle as the music picked up. Her eyes were bright and she said, “You’re going to make someone very happy someday. And I can’t wait to see it happen.”

I went to bed and saw the lights on in the house at the end of the lane through my window. I wondered about them. The Bennetts.

Someone
, my mother had said.
Make
someone
very happy.

Not a
her
. But
someone
.

I closed my eyes and slept. I dreamt of tornadoes.

wolf of stone/dinah shore

RICO SAID,
“Looking good, papi,” when I came to work the next day. “What’s got you going with that spring in your step?”

It was Sunday, the Lord’s Day as I was taught, but I figured the Lord was okay with me coming to this house of worship instead of one of his. I’d learned my faith at Gordo’s.

“Must be some pretty girl,” Tanner called from where he was bent over some ridiculous SUV that could be turned on by the sound of your voice. “He’s a real man, now. You get some sixteen-year-old strange last night?”

I was used to the crude. They meant no harm. That didn’t stop me from flushing furiously. “No,” I said. “No, it’s not like that.”

“Oh,” Rico said, slinking over to me, hips rolling so obscenely. “Look at that
blush
.” He ran his hand through my hair, his thumb against my ear. “She pretty, papi?”

“There’s no girl.”

“Oh? A boy, then? We don’t discriminate here at the Casa de Gordo.”

I pushed him off and he laughed and laughed.

“Chris?” I asked.

“Seeing the moms,” Tanner said. “Stomach thing again.”

“She okay?”

Rico shrugged. “Maybe. Don’t know yet.”

“Ox!” Gordo shouted from the office. “Get your ass in here!”

“
Oye
,” Rico said with a small smile. “Careful there, papi. Someone’s in a mood today.”

And he sounded like it. Voice strained and harsh. I worried. Not for me. For him.

“He’s just pissed off because Ox needs the next week off for school,” Tanner muttered. “You know how he gets when Ox isn’t here.”

I felt awful. “Maybe I could—”

“You hush that mouth of yours,” Rico said, pressing his fingers against my lips. I could taste oil. “You need to focus on school and Gordo can just deal with it. Education is more important than his little bitch-fests. We clear?”

I nodded and he dropped his fingers.

“We’ll be fine,” Tanner said. “Just get through your tests and we’ll have the whole summer, okay?”

“Ox!”

Rico muttered something in Spanish that sounded like he was calling Gordo a fucking dickhead dictator. I’d learned I was adept at picking up curses in Spanish.

I walked to the back of the shop, where Gordo was sitting in his office. His brow was lined as he did his one-finger typing thing. Tanner called it his hunt-and-pecker. Gordo didn’t think that was funny.

“Close the door,” he said, without looking up at me.

I did and sat in the empty seat on the other side of his desk.

He didn’t say anything, so I figured it was up to me to start. Gordo was like that sometimes. “You okay?”

He scowled at the computer screen. “I’m fine.”

“Awfully twitchy for fine.”

“You’re not funny, Ox.”

I shrugged. That was okay. I knew that about myself.

He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Okay.”

He finally looked up at me. “I don’t want you here next week.”

I tried keeping the hurt from my face, but I don’t think I did very well. “Okay.”

He looked stricken. “Oh Jesus. Ox, not like that. You have your finals next week.”

“I know.”

“And you know part of the deal with your ma is that your grades don’t suffer or else you can’t work here.”

“I
know
.” I was annoyed and it showed.

“I don’t want… just….” He groaned and sat back in the chair. “I suck at this.”

“What?”

He motioned between the two of us. “This whole
thing
.”

“You do okay,” I said quietly. This
thing
. My brother or father. We didn’t say it. We didn’t have to. We both knew what it was. It was just easier to be awkward about it. Because we were men.

He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How are the grades?”

“Bs. One C.”

“History?”

“Yeah. Fucking Stonewall Jackson.”

He laughed, long and loud. Gordo always did laugh big, rare as it was. “Don’t let your ma hear you say that.”

“Never in your life.”

“Full-time this summer?”

I grinned at him. I couldn’t wait for the long days. “Yeah. Sure, Gordo.”

“I’m gonna work your ass off, Ox.” The lines on his forehead smoothed out.

“Can I… can I still stop by next week?” I asked. “I won’t… I just….” Words. Words were my enemy. How to say that here was where I felt the safest. Here was where I felt most at home. Here was where I wouldn’t be judged. I wasn’t a fucking retard here. I wasn’t a waste of space or time. I wanted to say so much,
too
much, and found I couldn’t really say anything at all.

But it was Gordo, so I didn’t have to. He looked relieved, though he kept his voice stern for appearances. “No working in the shop. You come in here and you study. No dicking around. I mean it, Ox. Chris or Tanner can help you with fucking Stonewall Jackson. They know that shit better than me. Don’t ask Rico. You won’t get anything done.”

The tightness loosened in my chest. “Thanks, Gordo.”

He rolled his eyes. “Get out of here. You have work to do.”

I saluted him, which I knew he hated.

And since I was in such a good mood, I pretended not to hear him when he muttered, “I’m proud of you, kiddo.”

Later I’d remember I forgot to tell him about the Bennetts.

I WALKED
home. The sunlight filtered through the trees, little shadows of leaves on my skin. I wondered how old the forest here was. I thought it ancient.