I took the cheeseburger out of the bag and started eating it while I walked to my car. Harold was in the parking lot. They were beating his ass again. Chuck and Dave and Brian and maybe Roger and Rick were there too. Harold crouched in the circle, his twiggy arms over his head.
Reuben, Chuck called. Give this thing a kick.
I gave him a good kick. He was like a bag of mulch with some air stuck in it.
I gave Chuck a thumb’s up and finished my burger in my car.
We had moved into the house behind Harold’s after my dad took the job at Milicalc. Our fathers worked together. Our parents had been friends, although drifted apart after Harold’s father died the year before, and his mom began to go down the tubes. My dad thought bad luck was contagious. All facts suggested it was.
I had made it home before Harold. He came along after a while. He was crying. He was so frigging lame. Even his name.
It was a clear Saturday. The workers from Trujillo Lawn and Leaf were bagging some clippings in the McGaritiys’ driveway. Mr. Rapini, who had just retired, tended his rose garden. The twins were rollerblading along the cul-de-sac. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. The postal carrier drove up in her truck opening and shutting the clinking metal mouths of the mailboxes.
I caressed my milk jug. I took a swig.
The wolves came every night now. They ran down from the hill at Saw Well Road, where the new developments were driving them out of their habitats. First one, then two. Every night there were more wolves. I told my dad. He said they were dogs. They clearly were not. Their fur was spiky.
Go to sleep, Reuben, said my mom, an apparition in the doorway.
Ma, look at this, I said. One of the wolves was in Harold’s backyard, ferally rooting around in the brush by the back fence.
It’s only a big dog, she said. Go to sleep or your father will be angry.
My parents went out that evening to see an opera with Harold’s mother to cheer her up. I had one job. To take out the trash. The rest of the time they said I could do whatever I wanted. To make it one trip and carry both cans at once, I had to leave the kitchen door open. But to make two trips bugged me. The slog to the end of the driveway wore long.
I came back. The refrigerator had been ransacked. My milk was spilled. There was a wolf in the family room. Its fur was damp with milk. It snarled at me.
Nice wolf, I said. I backed into the kitchen.
The wolf didn’t like it when I moved. It darted with its body crouched. It sniffed bossily around my Achilles tendon. Its ripe predator smell filled the room. I looked over my shoulder through the open door to the night-cloaked lane.
I would count to three and then I would run. That was my plan. One, I said in my mind.
Two, I said in my mind.
Three.
We had so much meat in the freezer. My dad loved the meat. The freezer was open. The ice on the surface of the packages was melting. I swept it to the floor as I ran past, some in my arms still burning. The wolf got distracted by the meat. I left more in the driveway.
I circled around to the front door. When the rustling inside stopped, I opened the door. The wolf was gone. I slammed the kitchen door, and kept counting to three in my mind. I called my parents. They didn’t pick up. It was probably the middle of the aria.
My parents came home later. I told them what had happened. They said it was a dog and to leave the door closed like they had told me one hundred times. Since it was the milk that had spilled, they thought maybe I had done it and there had been no dog at all. They made me take a terrifying run out to the trash cans and put the chewed-up meat in it and said I’d be paying them back for the waste out of my allowance. I mopped up the milk.
Later that night, the glass door slid open on Harold’s deck. I had never seen him out at night before. The motion-sensitive light my dad had installed went on. The light turned him white, raking his concave chest. He didn’t see the wolf at the bottom of the steps.
I tapped the glass. The wolf jerked up its wet snout. Harold noticed the wolf then, but too late. It reared on its hind legs. It revealed its largeness then, its obscene belly. Its back was a single brown wave of fur.
I had done all I could. Harold froze. The wolf lunged into his right shoulder.
The lights flickered through the top floor of Harold’s house, disturbing its grim inertia. His mother lurched out in her threadbare nightgown. Harold’s T-shirt was black with blood at the shoulder. Shaking him by the arm, she screamed and dragged him back into the house.
My dad stomped in in his white boxer shorts and white T-shirt and drew my curtain.
The world is dangerous, he said. His boilerplate answer.
You know, in the seventeenth century, humans were lucky if they lived to be sixteen, I said. I could have lived my whole life already and you would’ve told me nothing.
Enough, my mom said in the hall.
After they went to sleep, in the quiet, I opened my window. All the wind in the world had disappeared. The forsythia was in bloom. All the houses were dark. Quick patches of the night kept moving.
The next afternoon, when Harold came back from the hospital, a beige Animal Control vehicle was parked at our corner, but no one awake seemed to be inside it. We went over to his house to bring a casserole and check on him. The parents sat in the kitchen and talked about the wolf problem. The wolf had escaped. My mom sent me upstairs. I found Harold in his bedroom. His shoulder was bandaged and he looked sleepy.
Reuben! he said.
The excited way he said my name upset me. He untangled himself from the sheets. He showed me his thigh, where the long rabies needles had gone in. He yawned. He took my hand and shook it. His palm was too soft. He went to the closet.
Hi, he said. You want to see my baseball cards?
I shook my head.
That’s okay, he said. I never liked baseball cards much. My mother thought I should collect them. Want to see my stamps?
Did you like stamps? I asked him.
Not much, he said. Hey, why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?
God, I said. People in the world are dying every minute, there’s a hole in the ozone layer, and this is the only crap we can talk about?
Harold lifted up his T-shirt. Blue bruises from the morning before were flushed across the skin. They looked like an armor all made from bruises. I turned away.
From the angle of light out the window, it was clear the wolves would be coming soon, trotting in one after another.
Share this post with your friends.
