It lacked a kickstand and he had to peddle backwards to brake but the feel of the wind on his face was a welcome one. Leaning the bike against a handicapped parking sign, Charles walked up the cracked concrete walkway and pushed open the tinted glass doors. He felt like he had jumped into the neighborhood pool back home, the AC burning his sweaty skin. Taking off his glasses and wiping them on his shirt, Charles realized at once why his gramma spent so much time there.
“Charlie!” she cried, and putting his glasses back on he saw he had walked in on an impressively stereotypical game of bingo. His gramma waved him over and he moved between the tables crowded with old men and women, most of whom seemed put out by the distraction. The tables were obviously from a school cafeteria, and his gramma scooted down the bench to make room for him, the older gentleman beside her smiling at Charles as he squeezed between them.
“This is Charlie,” she said proudly.
“E-nine,” announced the portly man at the front of the room, causing a flurry of groans, mutterings, and laughter. “E-nine.”
“Charlie, that’s Mr. Johnson next to you, and this is Ms. Hattie, and she’s Mrs. Leacraft, and—” a half-dozen more introductions were made, to the consternation of those who actually treated the game with the severity it deserved. Finally Charles’s gramma finished up and seemed ready to turn her attention back to the game but Charles realized he had hit the jackpot and acted quickly before the attentions of the seniors could return to their bingo cards.
“Ma’am, I came here to ask you something,” said Charles, pleased to see Mr. Johnson and a few of the others were watching him curiously.
“Well go on then,” she said, her eyes flitting back to the front of the room where the announcer sifted out the next ball.
“Is there anyone around here who knows about voodoo and cursing people and all that?” Charles asked.
“What?” His gramma frowned at him, her voice nearly drowned out by the laughter of some of her neighbors and the disapproving voices of others.
“We’re Christians, boy.”
“Don’t go messin with rootwork.”
“You think you’re funny?”
“Charlie’s dad’s been showin him movies bout, whatsit, werewolfs,” his gramma said defensively, though she had every intention of bawling him out once they were alone. “He’s just got himself curious.”
“Ware woofs?” Ms. Hattie said, peering at Charles. “Takem on ta the juneya moosam, they got ware woofs there.”
“They do?” Charles couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Red’uns,” Ms. Hattie nodded, the thick patch of hair on her neck making Charles wonder if a bite from her would be sufficient. “Ma Davie liked’um.”
“Don’t you get her started on her boy,” Charles’s gramma hissed. “Go on home and don’t come back in here less you behave, Charlie. I swear—”
Charles didn’t wait to see what she swore, instead thanking Ms. Hattie and booking it. Back at the house he dug through the phonebook, and in five minutes he had directions to the Tallahassee “Junior” Museum. He considered asking them about werewolves but it wasn’t like he had a lot else to do if Ms. Hattie was as crazy as she sounded, and so he set off down Orange Avenue.
The neighborhoods thinned out as he peddled and it took him over an hour before he even reached the turn-off. Regular as locker searches at Rickards High School the afternoon rain came down and soaked him as he rode, but finally he hit the hilly stretch of gravelly road. He was out in the woods now, poison ivy and brambles filling in the gaps between the scrub pines, the sounds of the highway he had foolishly ridden on fading as he rolled into the parking lot. The wooden building looked awfully small and wanting in spooky architecture for a place purported to hold some variety of werewolf but in he went, drenched from sneaker to snout.
The Junior Museum was more or less a zoo for local animals. Beyond the building lay a re-creation of an old farm, and trails wound through the woods and over long boardwalks near a lake. There were supposedly alligators and a panther but they must have been hiding in their large enclosures, everything green palmettos and brown leaves and reddish cypress and gray oak. There were hardly any other people on the grounds as he wound through the maze of paths and walkways, and then he arrived. Charles grinned, the plaque on the raised boardwalk overlooking the pen clarifying Ms. Hattie’s rambling.
Red Wolf. Endangered. Rare wolves, indeed.
They looked like dogs, lanky and brown and lolling in the shade of the underbrush at the mouth of their den—two wolves. Charles wondered just what in hell was wrong with him, coming to a zoo. He supposed the patch of woodland was their natural habitat but still, locking up intelligent animals was unfair. That was why he didn’t eat them, after all, because they were smart and felt pain and rejection and the sting of confinement, because they were just as real as he was and deserved to live for themselves instead of being locked up.
Looking down at the bored wolves Charles couldn’t believe what a kid he had been. Even if werewolves were real, which they weren’t, why would he want to be one? He didn’t even eat cheese anymore so why would he want to gnaw bones and rend flesh? Would he scare the Holten Street Clique straight, or fix the crackhead who had killed his mom? What he was doing was daydreaming about violence, no different than some fool thinking a heater or a knife would even the score or keep him safe. What did violence beget? Again, what in hell, Charles? The Vegan Werewolf sounded like a pretty dumb premise for a children’s book, not a mature plan for fixing himself and helping his community, like his mom had—
They came up behind him, braying in their exaggerated dialect, and somehow he knew, as if even then his nose were keener, his ears sharper.
“—bwah, that shit is r-tarded,” one of them hooted.
“See one fight a red-nose pit, that’d be tight,” said another, and Charles turned around and looked at the three white kids from the silver hatchback that had pelted him with garbage his first week on the Southside. There was a fat one with a kango hat, a bulky but strong looking dude, and a wiry little one in a wife beater. None of them looked older than Charles but clearly one of them had a license.
“Hey,” the smallest nodded at Charles and they moved a little way down the boardwalk.
“Nuthin here, either.” The ripped guy said. “Bunk as fuck.”
“My moms’ll go to work in another hour,” the skinny one said. “Try out that gravity B I built?”
“Go ghetto-callin later,” the fat one said in a low voice, glancing over his shoulder at Charles as they turned and went back down the walkway, away from the pen. “My cousin showed me how to get piss into a water balloon.”
Then they were gone around the bend of the wooden boardwalk, and Charles exhaled, light headed and nauseated. Looking down into the enclosure his eyes focused immediately on a small puddle, probably rainwater, and the footprints around it. What else was he going to do that summer? The chain-link fence went right up to the railing of the boardwalk and Charles went over before he chickened out.
Halfway down he realized what he was doing and froze. It took more strength than he knew he had to turn his head, knowing they must be about to pounce and drag him down to a bloody, painful death. Instead he saw the two wolves watching him lazily from their shady lookout. He scrambled the rest of the way down, painfully aware of the noise the metal fence made as he descended into the pen.
Fingers still biting into the fence, he glanced away from the wolves to the muddy earth at his feet. Dry pawprints speckled the ground but a few feet away one was filled with blackish water. Squatting down, he moved like a nervous crab over to the print, the wolves still motionless but watching. Then Charles giggled at how stupid he was being and, dropping onto all fours, stuck his mouth in the pawprint and slurped up a mouthful of muck-water. He coughed on it but stood triumphantly, which was when he saw that only one of the wolves was still lying in the shade watching him.