I had a fenced in yard, blankets to spare, and a large faux-wooden playset that my son Luke had outgrown. Spirit spent his nights sheltered beneath it. When Gavin returned and tried to bully the “little lady” I laughed in his face. Then I showed him the pictures I’d taken of Spirit before and asked him if he really wanted to argue that the beautiful beast growling at him from behind me was the same animal, because I’d happily see him in court for abuse. He decided that neither of us was worth the trouble.
Spirit had been worth all the trouble. And then some. One rescue had grown into two. Message boards, training, more rescue work. The need to move to a larger facility.
Three years later, the Wolf Rescue and Rehabilitation Center was going strong.
Only Spirit hadn’t made an appearance today. He was keeping to the edges of his spacious enclosure, hiding from visitors, and I was worried.
He was one of our ambassadors. He loved to greet people. He was the first to join in the group howls. Was he nursing a wound? Had someone thrown something dangerous into his enclosure or, worse, tried to cut through it?
No matter how much we educated people, some still didn’t understand. We didn’t put up fences to imprison our wolves and wolf-dogs, coy-wolves, coyotes, and foxes, as some suggested rather virulently, but rather the fences were there to protect them. Some had gotten too comfortable wandering into towns or feeding off livestock and were likely to be killed or weren’t fit to live in the wild for one reason or another. Others were only being held pending release once laws and preparations were in place.
Wolves were endangered and were, even now, mostly allowed to be hunted where they did exist in the wild. It didn’t help that they had such bad PR, that we were taught to see them as evil from the cradle, from Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs up through The Wolfman and American Werewolf in London. Farmers shot and killed them on sight for fear of losing livestock with no thought given to how much natural predators were needed as part of an ecosystem.
“Spirit,” I called again, that line of thought spurring me on.
Finally, I heard a whimper.
“Lacey,” Thompson said and pointed in the same direction I’d already turned.
Wordlessly, we headed that way. We’d worked together for five years, and could do silence as easily as words now, and while there were one or two times when more might have been said, when I might have invited him to stay after hours for a drink or conversation, there was always Luke, my nearing-twenty-year-old still living at home.
It would have been awkward. Or maybe that was just my excuse. I was bad with change. Bad with people. Good with animals. I could have suggested we go out, yet I never did. My house was on the grounds; it was important to stay in every night, in case the animals needed me or someone who thought we weren’t doing enough, or were doing too much, tried to start something. Besides, I was Thompson’s boss. Maybe that was why he never asked me either.
Spirit looked over his shoulder at us as we skirted a bush left in the enclosure to give the wolves privacy. His golden eyes met mine, full of meaning, as though he could convey it to me mind to mind, then he gazed back out into the darkening evening. I looked where he looked but couldn’t see a thing.
“What’s the matter, hon? What do you see?”
His body language was stiff, tail out like a flag behind him, hair raised, but not to full-on alert. More like concern.
Something was out there. Not an immediate threat, maybe, but he didn’t like it. Didn’t want to look away. In case… In case what?
I approached slowly, knowing I didn’t want to box him in and limit his options.
“Everything’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe. Where’s Frost?”
Spirit backed away from the fence. One step, then two. Backed up to where he was beside me, then finally looked away and bumped me with his head, almost knocking me down as I’d started to go to one knee but hadn’t yet settled.
Wolves were big, far bigger than people realized unless they’d seen them in person. Even wolf-dogs, as Spirit was— eighty two percent timber wolf, eighteen percent husky. We’d had him tested. But he looked all gray wolf— varying shades of gray and white with black detailing, especially around the tips of his ears and around his eyes, as though someone had ringed them with kohl. He had tan in there too, lower on his sides. Standing, he came to the low/midpoint of my ribcage, and I was no tiny tot.
I caught my balance and ran my fingers through Spirit’s ruff, scratching just so and muttering nothings until he calmed. Until he turned and licked my face, his big tongue taking up my whole cheek. It was magical the way my tension melted away.
Seeing Spirit stand down, Frost came out of the trees at the back of the enclosure to nudge Thompson’s hand with her nose, much like our German shepherd, Beau, did with Luke and me at home. Thompson dropped to a knee, like I had, to scratch her behind the ears. She rolled to give him her belly, winter white like the rest of her. I’d seen her do it before, but only for Thompson. He seemed to have a special gift. The wolves had chosen their humans. And as much as my knees were starting to ache, I didn’t dare shift and ruin the moment.
The wolves were fine, and whatever lurked in the deepening night must have moved on.
I was exhausted by the time I got home. I’d finished off the last slice of cold pizza—all my son had left me—while standing at the kitchen counter, and had poured myself a glass of merlot when the phone rang. I seriously considered letting it go to voicemail, but it was forwarded from the office line and might be an emergency, and so I answered with the name of our rescue.
“Lacey?” My best friend, Sarah, sounded…odd. It didn’t make sense for her to call the office line at this time of night. Not when…I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear and patted myself down for my cell before cursing internally. I’d done it again—pulled it out of my jeans pocket when it impeded mobility, set it down somewhere and forgot all about it. It could be anywhere from my office to an enclosure. Sarah knew that if she couldn’t reach me on my cell, she had only to call the rescue. As a former volunteer, she probably had the place on speed dial, especially with as many times as she’d had to call out to take care of her husband during his cancer treatments, and then afterward.
“Guilty,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I really don’t want to bother you, but I didn’t know what else to do, and… Tell me if you think I’m just crazy and I should check it out on my own.”
“Check what out?”
“Okay, first you have to know that my mother just sent me an article about all the ways predators use to target people, particularly women—looking up obituaries to see who’s newly widowed, playing sick or injured like Ted Bundy did, faking car trouble or lost pets, playing recordings of crying babies or women in distress to lure someone out of their home…”
I took a sip of my wine, swallowing it too quickly when I realized she wasn’t going to continue without encouragement. “And?” I choked out. “Not crazy so far.”
“And…I keep hearing a crying baby outside.”
I set my wine down. “I’ll be right over.”
“You don’t think I should check it out?”
“You live on two and a half acres on your own.” Since Joe’s death, which had recently been in the obituaries. “Where would the baby have come from?”
“Someone could have abandoned it. It could be scared. Or hurt. The crying… It’s breaking my heart. And we do have coyotes in the area, even some feral dogs…”