City Wolves Read online

“It’s what they would be called in England. Momma said so.”

  “But that’s not where we live, is it? If we called our brothers by such long-handled names, we’d be laughed out of the schoolyard. And so would they.” Meg hoisted herself up onto the edge of the lower barn door and called out, “Hey Stew! Dave! You in there? One of you has to come with us. We’re going into the woods, for fiddleheads.”

  “We’re busy,” Dave shouted back. “Go get Joe or Andy. They’re plowing near the woods.”

  “Busy, my eye!” Meg landed back on the ground. “They’re pipe smoking in there. Can smell it a mile away.”

  Dave came to the barn door, wielding a pitch fork. “Take your big nose elsewhere, little sister.” He jabbed the pitch fork towards her. “Or I’ll turn you into fish bait.”

  “That’ll be the day!” Meg turned her back on him, pulling Alice by the hand in the direction of the grain fields. “Don’t forget to put Dad’s pipe back in his desk before he gets home, lads.”

  “Scrapper!” Stew appeared at the door and called out as Meg led Alice away, running. “How be we tell the parents what a scrapper you are? Eh!”

  “They wouldn’t, would they?” said Alice anxiously when they slowed down. She stomped her foot and whined. “I hate the way everyone makes fun of me.”

  “Of you!” Meg took her hand and made her continue on. “It’s me who gets called the Scrapper. Just because I gave that Choyce boy a fat lip.”

  “But it was because he called me ‘Fatty, Fatty, two by four, couldn’t get through the kitchen door.’ And I can! I’m not a fatty. At all!”

  “Of course you’re not. That’s why I gave him a fat lip.”

  “You shouldn’t have. It’s very … unbecoming … to fight like boys.”

  “Guess that’s why they also call me Tomboy. I don’t mind. ‘Sticks and stones may break your bones. But names will never hurt you.’”

  Alice considered for several moments. “I think they’re very hurtful. I don’t like anyone calling me anything but Alice.”

  Joe and Andy were plowing behind two oxen in the field nearest the woods. “Can’t stop now,” they said. “We’ve only a few rows to go. We’ll keep an eye on you from here. Don’t go far in. There’s plenty of fiddleheads in the damp parts near the edge. Just holler if you need us.”

  Meg helped Alice fill half the pail with ripe green fiddleheads and entangled weeds. Then she was bored. “I’ll just climb this tree and be on the lookout for wolves, bears, and Indians,” she said. “You pick a few more and then we’re done.”

  “There aren’t any Indians around here any more,” said Alice.

  “That’s what you think.”

  “That’s what Dad told Momma. They’ve ‘gone the way of the buffalo.’ That’s what he said.”

  “You don’t even know what that means … ‘gone the way of the buffalo.’” Meg was now on the first big branch of the maple tree.

  “Oh yes I do.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “You tell me.”

  Meg laughed. “Pick a dozen more fiddleheads and I’ll tell you.”

  “There are no more buffalo.”

  “Right.” Meg was now as high as she wanted to go. She peered through the branches.

  “Dad says it’s a cryin’ shame.”

  Meg did not answer. She was looking a short distance away, behind big rocks, at three wolves tearing voraciously at the bleeding flesh of a freshly killed deer. She could see their large fangs as they looked up intermittently, snarling warningly at one another to keep to their own section. They looked fleetingly in the direction of the human voices, but kept on devouring the deer meat.

  “Meggie. Why don’t you answer me?”

  Meg got down from the tree as fast as she could. She grabbed the pail in one hand, Alice’s hand in the other. “Let’s go. Or we’ll be in trouble,” she hissed.

  Alice ran as fast as she could to keep up with Meg, twigs snapping loudly beneath their feet. At the edge of the plowed field, Meg stopped and looked behind into the woods. She could see nothing but trees.

  “What was it?” said Alice. “What did you see?”

  Andy was running towards them. Andy, the avid hunter and best marksman in the family, was carrying the rifle he kept with him in the fields. “What’s up, kids? What are you running from?”

  Meg knew that Andy was itching to shoot a wolf. He said they interfered with the deer supply. “Nothing,” she said, stalling for time. “Nothing dangerous. Just a dead deer. All eaten apart. It was … It was horrid.”

  In early autumn, the crops were harvested and stored, the apples picked and sold or laid away in barrels. The woods had turned orange and scarlet. Emma was indoors with Alice, stirring a kettle of relish to be preserved in jars and stored on the shelves alongside the preserved tomatoes, green beans, and berries. Two crocks of pickled cucumbers stood on the floor below. Nearly nine years old, Alice was good at preserving, baking, cooking, could knit almost as fast as her mother, and had learned to sew straight seams with the new hand-turned sewing machine. She was her mother’s companion and protégé.

  “You will make a good wife,” Emma said to Alice, fingering the curls so becoming on her daughter’s forehead. “You must save yourself for a good man.”

  “Save myself?” said Alice. “What does that mean?” Was she to be preserved, pickled for future use?

  “You’ll understand, soon enough.”

  “What about Meg? Will she make a good wife?”

  “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” Emma smiled. She tried not to show favouritism to Alice, but she was so much easier to share sentiments with, particularly this sense of Meg being a “difficult girl.”Alice smiled. It was satisfying to have her mother’s preference, though there was something strangely unsettling about it at times.

  Meg, now twelve, was glad to be outside in the sunshine, gathering up pumpkins, pushing them along in a wheelbarrow towards the shed. Then she heard the agonized cry of a cat. She ran to find their young black cat, Nightie, lying in the grass, bleeding at the mouth. Meg yelled for help. She could see it was choking on something.

  “Open your mouth. Open your mouth, Nightie!” If I had gloves, thought Meg, so she won’t bite through my fingers. If I had something to prop her mouth open …

  The cat rolled over onto her side, her eyes bulging. Meg saw the small sharp edge of a snapped chicken bone, piercing through the cat’s neck fur. Meg yelled again for help. Suppressing her own fear, Meg grabbed the cat’s upper and lower jaw, prying open its mouth. She could see the bone stuck in the cat’s throat. But she couldn’t figure out how to hold the mouth open while trying to pull out the bone. Then she pressed on the lower jaw with her left hand and reached in with her right hand. Her finger hooked the bone just as the cat went rigid and lifeless. Meg pulled her hand out of the cat’s mouth and fell back onto the grass. She had extracted only part of the bone.

  Emma and Alice came running from the house, Dave from the barn.

  “Too late,” said Meg. “Nightie is dead.”

  I might have saved her, Meg concluded when she went over and over the scene in her mind, if I’d had the right tools. Some tongs or tweezers. If I had more practice, I could do like the horse doctor who tends big animals. Meg resolved to get that practice at every opportunity.

  Ice and snow were melting from the fields. The creek, suddenly overflowing, was rushing in torrents loud enough to be heard at the house. Meg liked to go to sleep and wake up hearing the sound of it. One night something woke her before dawn. She got quietly out of bed, Alice still sleeping beneath the quilts. Meg grabbed her jacket and went to look out the window, left open just a little to let in fresh air. Farther up the creek, she saw the three wolves. They had been drinking from the edge, one lying down, the others standing on either side. The two standing looked warily around.

  Meg observed the wolves for what seemed a long time. There was something wrong with the prostrate wolf. The other two lifted their he
ads and howled. Meg’s brothers stirred in their beds on the other side of the loft. Meg crept over to Stew and tapped his shoulder. She planned to ask him to go out with her to see what was wrong with that wolf.

  “What the … !” Stew woke with a start.

  “Shush up,” said Meg. “I need you to go out to the outhouse with me. I’m scared and I got to go …”

  “Use the dang pot,” he whispered. “What’s the matter with you!”

  “I’m sick. Just come with me.”

  “What’s up?” Dave spoke without moving.

  “Would everybody shut up!” Joe whacked his pillow and sat up angrily. “Settle down, would you, Meg!”

  The parents’ bedroom door was flung open. “What in Tarnation is going on! Your mother needs her sleep. You lads …”

  Meg came down the ladder. “Dad, please. It’s me. Something’s wrong with the wolves. Can you please come with me? Please.”

  When she went outside, with her father and Stew each carrying guns, the two standing wolves lowered their heads, ready to take on whatever came. Then the third wolf pulled herself up. Stew fired his gun in the air.

  “Don’t!” Meg tried to wrestle the gun from him. He held it above her head.

  The wolves were running towards the woods. The third wolf staggered and fell to the ground. The other two stopped, crouched, and came back to sniff the fallen wolf. Meg, Herbert, and Stew watched, still and silent, from the other side of the creek. The wolves circled the fallen one, sat sentinel beside her, watched in the direction of Meg and company. They sniffed the fallen one again, then turning to the woods, they trotted then ran until they were hidden in the trees. But the sound of their howling in lament and decoy, rose loud and clear.

  Meg ran to the fallen wolf, her father and brother behind her with guns, telling her to stop. They stood sentinel, ready to aim at the wolves in the woods while Meg bent down to examine the wolf. Her front paw had been severed. She was unconscious. Meg noticed her teats were prominent, her belly enlarged.

  “Looks like she got caught in a trap,” said Stew.

  Meg hesitated then cautiously moved her hand to touch and stroke the wolf ’s side.

  “Don’t,” said her father. “She might come to.”

  Meg continued to stroke the soft fur of her belly. “We have to help her. She’s …” Meg stumbled with her Victorian vocabulary. “She’s, you know, like our mare … in foal. If we stop the bleeding, maybe she’ll live. Dad, please …” she looked up at him. “Tell Stew to go get clean rags, a basin, hot water. Let’s do what the horse doctor did when Nellie got that cut. Put a turn-key on it.”

  “This is a wild animal,” said Herbert, feeling he was making a speech he didn’t fully believe in. “She should be put out of her misery.”

  “Stew, give me your handkerchief,” said Meg.

  “What?”

  “Your snot rag. Now!” Meg got up to grab it from his pocket.

  “I’ll do it,” said Herbert. He drew out his own handkerchief and considered how he might approach the wolf to tie it on her bleeding leg.

  “Let me!” Meg held her hand out. “Dad, please. We have to be quick.”

  He gave her the handkerchief and took up the more manly position of holding his gun to the wolf’s head in case she revived and attacked his daughter. Stew did likewise from the other side of the wolf. Meg slid the cloth under the bleeding leg, formed a knot and tied it tight as she could. Then she did another one. “More rags. Hot water,” she commanded Stew.

  Stew stood stubbornly sentinel.

  “Go, lad,” said Herbert. “I’ve got the wolf covered.” The muzzle of his gun was at the wolf’s neck.

  “Give me your hanky first.” Meg held out her hand. “Hurry!”

  “Bossy brat!” said Stew, but he ran to the house.

  Meg examined the wolf as she lay unconscious, her mouth partly open. Not a young wolf. Her teeth were brown with tartar, two of the fangs broken. She had scars on her snout. Her fur was matted on her hind quarters, ready to be shed in the warmer season. There were burrs from previous autumns still lodged in the fur at the base of her neck where she couldn’t reach to pull them out.

  “Cold,” said Herbert, speaking in hushed tone, lest the wolf be wakened. “It’s cold you want to put on a bleeding wound. To numb it like. Gather some snow, Meggie, and cover the poor leg in it.”

  “You’re right, Dad,” Meg concluded. “It’s hot water for birthing, isn’t it?”

  “You’ll make a good midwife, Meggie.”

  “I’d like to be a doctor,” said Meg, stroking the wolf, “of animals.”

  All the Wilkinsons were in attendance when the unconscious wolf was transported by wagon to be laid on a bed of straw in a corner of the drive shed. The buggy was moved outside where Emma hastily climbed into it demanding Alice sit beside her and the horse be hitched up, should the wolf wake up and escape. Meg set a pail of water near to the wolf, then was ordered out of the shed, the shed door locked. She and her brothers watched through cracks and knot holes in the board walls. They saw the wolf open her eyes and attempt to stand then sink down as her body began to contract. Meg flinched in empathy. Her father and brothers stood in watchful silence.

  “What’s happening?” Alice yelled.

  “Quiet lass!” Herbert rushed to the wagon shaking his finger at her. “The wolf is birthing.”

  “I want to see!” She started to get out of the wagon as Emma tried to hold her back. “If Meg can, I can.”

  “Hush then!” Emma grabbed Alice’s shoulder and climbed out of the wagon after her.

  All had their hands and faces pressed up against the shed walls when the first pup was delivered by the mother wolf. She licked the glistening birth sack off the pup then chewed through the cord with her back teeth so it didn’t bleed. Then she slurped up and swallowed the placenta before licking the pup again, encouraging it to nuzzle against her. She lay back briefly before a second pup and then a third were similarly born and taken care of, the placenta consumed.

  It was at the swallowing of the placenta that Alice fled the scene, clamping her mouth as vomit arose. She didn’t want to see any more births. Meg had to be wrenched away from the scene to come to dinner. She didn’t want to leave the sight of this wounded wolf and the three suckling pups, ever.

  “It’s so icky!” Alice exclaimed, wrinkling her nose in the kitchen. “I hope it’s not at all like that for humans.”

  “That wolf is a good mother.” Emma was amazed at what she had seen the female endure. “But you must remember, Alice, animals are inferior to humans and birthing is natural and simple for them.”

  Inferior? Meg couldn’t see anything inferior about this mother who gave birth to three, quietly, all on her own, having wakened in a nightmare place, with her leg severed. But Meg was taught not to oppose her mother. She kept her views away from her.

  Ma Wolf, as Meg called her, accepted her confinement for a month. She had no real choice, since she couldn’t dig her way out with no front leg. And when she attempted to gnaw her way through the shed boards, sheets of tin were nailed over the holes. Meg understood that Ma Wolf was terrorized by this strange imprisonment and by having a severed leg, though it was healing well enough and she was learning to hobble on three legs. Meg didn’t want to add to the terror or endanger herself by entering into Ma Wolf ’s imposed cavernous den. She placed Ma Wolf ’s food and water in pails just inside the door, withdrawing fast, before the wolves made a move. She locked the door with new strong bolts. Gradually, Meg showed more of herself and talked to the wolves, but when Ma growled and bared her teeth, Meg got the message to back out of range.

  All the Wilkinsons took an interest in the development of the mother and pups but it was Meg who observed and tended them every moment she was allowed, racing home from school, racing through all chores, in order to do so. She reported when Ma Wolf first cautiously tasted the meat in the pail, when she began to “wolf ” it down and when she first fed chewed morsels
to the pups.

  “That means,” said Herbert, looking down the table at Meg, “that soon you must release your wolves back into the wild.”

  “As soon as they can fend for themselves,” said Emma, as she often had, pointing her finger at Meg. “That was the promise made. It’s what’s best for them.”

  “I know.” Meg clenched her fists and bowed her head, holding back tears.

  “Then maybe we won’t be wakened every night with Ma Wolf howling for her pack,” said Alice. “And them all howling back from the woods.”

  “And circling our house, ready to gobble up ’fraidy cats,” big brother Andy scowled across the table at her.

  “That’s enough, Andrew,” said Emma. “Alice is not unduly afraid of wolves. Nor, I must say, am I.”

  Everyone stared at Emma.

  “Why do you all look so surprised? Haven’t all of you seen the courage, the fortitude, the steadfast nature of Ma Wolf? And the faith of her pups? Are you so blind to virtue?” Emma stood up and went to the oven. “But that doesn’t mean,” she concluded, donning oven mitts, “that they aren’t wild animals and must therefore be returned to the woods.”

  This was the first clear memory Meg had of her mother coming round to any of her views.

  On a Saturday, right after breakfast, Herbert and his sons took up their hunting rifles and marched out of the house like a small army, leading Meg to release her wolves. Emma and Alice watched from the garden gate. The pups were leaping up and scratching at the door as they did whenever Meg brought food, though they scattered and drew back when Ma Wolf growled and the door bolts were pulled back.

  “Andy and Joe,” Herbert commanded, “you lads guard the barn yard in case the pups take off in the wrong direction. Stew and Dave … either side of the shed door. Meg and I will open it wide. Keep us covered.”

  “Little pups and a three legged mother against five armed men!” Meg scowled.

  “You never know,” said Herbert, “if someone gets between a pup and its mother …” He kept Meg behind him as he unlocked and opened the doors, flinging one for Dave to catch as he held the other at an angle that let him and Meg stand behind it.