After hiking for thirty minutes, trudging up the loose sand dunes every few minutes to survey inland, Roman rested on a weathered limb of driftwood at the high-tide line. At the water’s edge dozens of tiny crabs worried chunks of flesh off a decomposing fish. Roman watched while sipping from the water bottle. The ocean reflected the color of the sky, a sullen gray, and beyond the island’s shelter, the wind sheared the tops of waves into white froth. Here, though, the breeze was just a gentle but cold push.
Finding the wolves didn’t really matter, despite what he’d said to Sharon. The grant was dead; the research was over, and no one in ecological management really believed wolves could be introduced back into the wild. Only Fitzgerald had believed it, and for a bit he felt he’d found an ally in Roman, a kindred spirit. All that was left was to discover if there was some kind of change in the wolves. Roman wasn’t worried about research now; he didn’t even think he could get a decent paper out of it, but maybe he could make retribution. Whatever remained of Fitzgerald remained in the wolves.
He couldn’t say goodbye to Fitzgerald, but he could face the judgement of the pack.
He took Fitzgerald’s note out of his pocket. The edges were frayed from continuous handling; he’d read it a hundred times. It said, Dear Roman, A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf whether it knows it or not. The myth can be told different ways. Maybe the wolf wore the sheep skin to fit in. Maybe the wolf was raised by sheep and didn’t know differently. But don’t be fooled. Wolves are villains in so many of the stories because sheep wrote them. A single wolf truth vanishes in the din of the flock. But that doesn’t mean the wolf has to like it. Yours, Fitzgerald.
Rocks skittered against each other, and Roman looked up. Standing thirty yards away, a single wolf faced him, its ears up, its tail up, tongue lolling out lazily. Light gray, black chest: the alpha male. Water dripped from its head; its belly fur hung in a matted line, and water dripped steadily onto the gravel. Roman thought, it’s been swimming. Wolves don’t swim in the sea!
The wolf stood still for a minute, then lowered its head and the ears pointed forward. Roman scrunched backward on the wood. This was an attack posture. Legs bent, staying low, the wolf stepped toward him stiffly. Suddenly, it charged forward, cutting the distance in two. Roman didn’t move. He closed his eyes and waited for the teeth to take him. And he waited, but nothing happened. He opened his eyes. The wolf had stopped, its front legs lying straight on the ground, its rump in the air, tale wagging, flipping water left and right. It squeaked, a high-pitched cross between a bark and a whine. Then it dashed twenty feet away from him, up the beach, stopped, looked back and charged to the same position.
“What do you want?” Roman said. His voice sounded empty to him and small against the hiss of waves in the gravel.
The wolf cocked its head to the side and whined again. It repeated the dash up the beach and back. Roman stood. Wind pushed against him, and he glanced up. The sky was darkening, and to the east a shimmer of lightning flicked within the clouds. He shivered.
This was not wolf behavior he’d seen before. It seemed sportive, like a game of tag. The large gray waited until Roman stepped toward him, then sprinted to the top of the dune. He flopped onto his chest again, sending a spray of sand down the slope. Mystified, Roman leaned into the dune’s bank, bracing himself with his hand to follow the animal up. The wolf raced out of sight, and a second later peeked over the top again as if to see if Roman were following.
Sand slithered away beneath his feet, and it took dozens of steps to climb the few feet to the top. A wall of dwarf pine filled the gully in front of him. To both sides bare hills rose like shoulders from the sea. The wolf popped out of a narrow gap in the pine, paused until Roman moved toward it, then vanished into the vegetation. Roman got on his knees and looked through the dark arch. He’d have to crawl. He left his backpack on the ground.
It seemed a long way. The strongest sense of deja vu swept over him as he pushed through the pine. He’d been here before, following a playful wolf. The behavior seemed familiar, but he didn’t come up with the connection until the pine opened up, and he could finally stand. There, sitting on their haunches, watching him intently, was the rest of the pack. He saw Fitzgerald in all their eyes, a little bit of Fitzgerald in the tilt of their heads. Fitzgerald resided in the passion of their stares.
Then he figured it out. Not wolves. Wolves wouldn’t ambush, but coyotes would. Clever tricksters, the wolves surrounded him, and the first drops of rain spattered down.
The rain fell. Roman turned a full circle, water running across his cheeks, dripping off his nose. As he faced each wolf, it tucked its head down, dropped its ears back and lowered its tail. It was deference. When he stepped toward the big gray, it too turned slightly away, exposing its neck, showing by posture a lower rank.
The wind sliced through Roman’s wet clothes. He shook against the chill, but he stood in the middle of them until the sky darkened enough to tell him that night was near. Straight across the island, the research center was no more than a couple of miles away.
What message should he take from this? What did it mean that the wolves made him the alpha-male? Was that the lesson that Fitzgerald sent to them through the hours of broadcasting, or was it what they picked up from him directly on those nights he mingled with them? It seemed a kind of forgiveness, a kind of benediction of clemency. Roman had turned away from Fitzgerald, but all was not lost. The wolves forgave him. Roman fell to his knees in relief, and he let the rain melt the letter until the words were unreadable.
Finally, expended and bone cold, he stepped past the first wolf and headed for the shelter of the research center. The wolves that had been lying down stood, and the big gray trotted to a spot in between Roman and his goal.
Roman stopped. The wolf growled deep from the back of its throat; his teeth gleamed.
“I’ve got to go, boys,” said Roman, but the wolf blocked his path, snarling when Roman tried to walk away. Only when he moved back to the center of the pack did the gray lose interest. Roman tried twice more to slip past them, but the reaction was the same. The pack would tear him up if he tried to leave. Night gradually fell; rain continued, and the wind never stopped.
Later, much later, Roman lost track of what direction he should go if he could go. He couldn’t feel his hands anymore, and the little voice in the back of his head that stayed with him when he was drunk told him that hypothermia was setting in, but he didn’t care. Caring took too much energy, and he wasn’t afraid either. He was just tired. Below him, the sand felt soft, so he laid himself on it. He’d quit shivering long ago.
Soon a warm, wet weight pressed itself against him. Another one warmed his other side. He opened his eyes slowly, took a long time to focus, and saw on the crest of the hill looking down, a marble white figure like a naked god in the moon light. Raising his head lethargically, Roman mouthed the name, but as he studied the shape he realized it was the crescent moon. The clouds had broken, although rain still fell, and the wind hustled over him, moaning in his ear. Sand pressed gently against his cheek; he closed his eyes again, understanding the wolves were keeping him warm, and before he slipped into unconsciousness, he knew they loved him. Fitzgerald and the pack loved him. They would stay with him until it was time to jump in the ocean and start that long swim.
And they would never, never let him go.
NO SMALL CHANGE
I used to be able to kill flies.”
“What?”
“Flies, I used to be able to kill them.”