Lone Wolf

The second is from Walter, who lives at Redmond’s Trading Post. Six years ago he was the caretaker for the wolves if my dad wasn’t around-the one who sawed up the calves that came in from the abattoir for food, and who called my dad in the middle of the night if there was a medical problem and my dad happened to be home with us, instead of in the trailer on-site. I guess he’s still the caretaker, because his message is asking a question about medication for one of the wolves.

It’s been two days now that my father hasn’t turned up at Redmond’s. What if no one has told Walter what’s happened?

I push all the buttons on the phone, but I can’t figure out how to call the last incoming number. Well, there’s got to be an address book somewhere around here, or maybe his contact information is on a computer.

My father’s office.

It was what I called it back then, even though my father, as far as I knew, had never stepped foot in it. Technically it was the guest bedroom in our house, but it had a filing cabinet and a desk and the family computer, and we never had guests. It was where, twice a week, I sat down to pay family bills-my chore, just like Cara’s, was loading and unloading the dishwasher. We all had to pitch in when my father left for Canada to join the wild pack. I’m sure he expected my mother to be in charge of our finances, but she wasn’t good with deadlines, and after having the heat turned off twice because of bills past due, we decided that I’d take over. So even at fifteen, I knew how much money it took to run a household. I learned about interest rates through credit card debt. I balanced the checkbook. And once my father came home, it was simply assumed that I’d continue. His mind was always a million different places, but none of them happened to be that office desk, paying bills.

You probably think it’s strange that a teenager would be put in charge of the family finances, that this is bad parenting. I’d argue that taking your kids into wolf enclosures ranks right up there, too. But no one blinked when Cara, at age twelve, became my father’s photogenic costar on his Animal Planet series. My father excelled at making even the greatest naysayers believe that he was entirely in control.

The office chair is the same-one of those ergonomic jobs with pulleys and levers that adjust everything so your back won’t hurt. My mom found it at a garage sale for ten bucks. But the computer is no longer a desktop-it’s a sleek little MacBook Pro with a screen saver of a wolf staring out with so much wisdom in his yellow eyes that, for a moment, I can’t look away. I pull open the file drawers and find one overflowing with envelopes-some marked PAST DUE. As if I’m being drawn by a magnet, I find myself sifting through them. I reach into the drawer on the right to find a checkbook, a pen, stamps. From the size of this stack of envelopes, you’d think no one had paid a bill since I left.

Which, frankly, wouldn’t surprise me.

I have already forgotten what brought me to this office. Instead, I begin automatically sorting the mail, writing out checks, forging my father’s signature. Every time I open an envelope, my heart skips a beat, and I know it’s because I expect to see the same letterhead from six years ago, the bill that left me speechless. The one I wanted to wave in his face, and dare him to lie to me again.

But there is nothing like that. Just utilities, and credit cards that are maxed out, and warnings from collection agencies. I have to stop after the phone bill, the electric bill, and the oil delivery receipt, because the checkbook balance swings into the negative digits.

Where the hell has the money gone?

If I had to guess, I’d say to Redmond’s. My father has five wolf enclosures now-five separate packs that he has to support. And a daughter, too. Shaking my head, I open the top drawer and begin to stuff the unpaid bills back in. This isn’t my problem. I’m not his accountant. I’m not anything to him, anymore.

It’s when I try to jam the envelopes into a drawer too small to contain them that I notice it-the yellowed, wrinkled piece of paper caught on the metal runner of the file drawer. I reach far into the back, trying to tug it free. The corner rips, but I manage to extract the page, and smooth it down beside the laptop.

And just like that, I’m fifteen again.

It was the night before my father was leaving, and Cara and I were hiding.

All day, there had been yelling. My mother would scream, and then my father would shout, and then my mother would burst into tears. If you do this, she said, don’t bother coming back.

You don’t mean that, he said.

Cara looked up at me. She was chewing on a pigtail, and it dropped out of her mouth, wet like a paintbrush. Does she mean it? Cara asked.

I shrugged. The only thing I knew about love was that it was always one-sided. Levon Jacobs, who sat in front of me in algebra, had skin the color of hot chocolate and knew the stats for every player on the Boston Bruins, but the only time he had ever spoken to me was when he needed to borrow a pencil, and besides, like every other guy in my class, he liked girls. My mother loved my father, but he could only think about his stupid wolves. My father loved the wolves, but even he would tell you that they didn’t love him back, that thinking they might was attributing human emotion to a wild animal.

It’s crazy, my mother yelled. This is not how you act when you have a family, Luke. This is not how you act when you’re an adult.

You make it sound like I’m doing this to hurt you, my father replied. This is science, Georgie. This is my life.

Exactly, my mother said. Your life.

Cara pressed her back against mine. She was thin, and I could feel the ridges of her vertebrae. I don’t want him to die.

My father was going to live in the forest without shelter, food, or any protection beyond a pair of heavy canvas coveralls. He planned to stake out one of the natural Canadian corridors for wolf migration and integrate himself into a pack, like he had before with captive groups. If he did, he’d certainly be the first person to really understand how a wild pack functioned.

That is, if he was still alive to talk about it when he was done.

My father’s voice grew softer, like felt. Georgie, he said. Don’t be like this. Not on my last night here.

There was a silence.

Daddy promised me he’d come back, Cara whispered. He said, when I’m older, I can go there with him.

Whatever you do, I said, don’t tell that to Mom.

I couldn’t hear them anymore. Maybe they had made up. There had been arguments like this for the past six months, ever since my father had announced his intention to go to Quebec. I wished he’d just leave, already, because at least that meant they’d stop fighting.

We heard a slam, and a few seconds later, there was a knock at my bedroom door. I motioned for my sister to stay put, and then opened it. My father stood on the other side of the threshold. Edward, he said, we need to talk.

When I opened the door, though, he shook his head and motioned for me to follow him. With a quick glance back at Cara to stay put, I trailed my father into the room we called the office, which was really just a collection of boxes, a desk, and a pile of mail no one bothered to sort through. My father cleared a stack of books off a folding chair so I could sit, and then he rummaged in one of the desk drawers and pulled out two shot glasses and a bottle of Scots whisky.

Full disclosure: I knew the bottle was there. I had even had a few swigs. My dad hardly ever drank because the wolves could smell it in his system, so it wasn’t like he’d notice the level of the liquor inside slowly going down. I was fifteen, after all, and I could also tell you that buried in a stack of old Life magazines in the attic were two Playboys-December 1983 and March 1987-which I had read multiple times in the hope that I would finally feel a spark of arousal at the sight of a naked girl. But having my father offer me a drink was not something I’d anticipated, at least not till I turned twenty-one.

My father and I could not have been more different if we’d actively attempted to be. It wasn’t that I was gay- I’d never seen or heard him act homophobic. It was because, while he was the modern version of a mountain man-all brawn and muscle and visceral instinct-I was more inclined to read Melville and Hawthorne. One Christmas, as a gift, I’d written him an epic poem (I was going through a Milton phase). He’d oohed and aahed and skimmed it, and then later, I overheard him asking my mother what the hell it meant. I know he respected the thirst I had for