Lone Wolf

days.

“He yanked the plug out of the wall,” I repeat, “and he yelled, ‘Die, you bastard!’”

At that, one of the jurors covers her mouth with her hand, as if she was the one who said it.

“Someone tackled him,” I continue. “And the nurse plugged in the ventilator again. The doctors are still figuring out how much damage was done while my father was without oxygen.”

“Is it fair to say that your brother and father had a very contentious relationship?”

“Totally,” I say.

“Do you know why, Cara?”

I shake my head. “I know they had a huge fight when I was eleven. It was bad enough to make Edward pack up and leave and never talk to him again.”

“When your brother called your father a bastard, he was angry, wasn’t he?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“There’s no question in your mind that he intended to kill your father, is there?” Danny asks.

I glance directly at him. “No. And there’s no question in my mind that if he has the chance, he’ll do it all over again.”

LUKE

In captivity, a wolf might live for eleven or twelve years, although I’ve heard of some living even longer than that. In the wild, though, a wolf would be lucky to make it to age six. The level of experience and knowledge in a wolf is irreplaceable, which is why the alpha will stay in the den near the young most of the time, sending other pack members out to do patrols, to hunt, to safeguard. This is also why, when an alpha gets taken down, so many packs fall apart. It is as if the central nervous system has suddenly lost its brain.

So what happens when an alpha is killed?

You might think that there is promoting from within-that maybe the beta, the number two man, will fill his former boss’s shoes. But in the wolf world, that’s not how it happens. In the wild, recruiting would start. A call would go out to lone wolves, letting them know there is a vacancy in the pack. The candidates would be challenged to make sure that the one chosen is the smartest, surest, and most capable of protecting the family.

In captivity, of course, recruiting like that can’t happen. Instead, a mid- or low-ranking animal that is by nature suspicious and shy finds itself in the decision-making role. Which is a disaster.

From time to time you’ll see documentaries about low-ranked wolves who somehow rise to the top of the pack-an omega that earns a position as an alpha. Frankly, I don’t buy it. I think that, in actuality, those documentary makers have misidentified the wolf in the first place. For example, an alpha personality, to the man on the street, is usually considered bold and take-charge and forceful. In the wolf world, though, that describes the beta rank. Likewise, an omega wolf-a bottom-ranking, timid, nervous animal-can often be confused with a wolf who hangs behind the others, wary, protecting himself, trying to figure out the Big Picture.

Or in other words: There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along.

EDWARD

When I come into the kitchen, where Joe is standing at the counter eating a bowl of cereal and flipping through the high school sports section of the newspaper, he glances up at me. “Is that what you were planning on wearing?” he says, in the tone of someone who had something completely different in mind.

I’ve never really paid much attention to clothes; I’m not the stereotypical gay man in that respect. I’m perfectly happy wearing the jeans I’ve had since high school and a sweatshirt so old that it’s threadbare in the elbows. Of course, I had starched shirts and ties for my teaching assignments, but they are somewhere between here and Chiang Mai in a box, I imagine. Given that I flew to New Hampshire on a moment’s notice, with only a small carry- on bag, my sartorial choices are pretty limited. “Sorry,” I say. “When I was packing, I didn’t realize I’d need a good courtroom look.”

“Do you at least have a collared shirt?”

I nod. “But it’s denim.”

Joe sighs. “Come with me.”

He puts down his bowl and walks out of the kitchen, heading upstairs to my father’s bedroom. I realize too late what his intention is. “Don’t bother,” I say, as Joe begins to rustle through my father’s closet. “He didn’t even own a tie when I was growing up.”

But Joe reaches into the bowels of the closet and pulls out a white dress shirt, pressed and still hanging in its plastic dry cleaning bag. “Put this on,” he orders. “You can borrow one of my ties. I keep an extra in the trunk of my car.”

“It’s going to be huge on me. My dad’s built like the Hulk.”

Joe flinches almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, I’d noticed.”

He leaves me so that he can go get the tie. I sit down on the bed, trying to keep myself from giving this moment more symbolism than it is due. As a boy I never felt like I measured up to my father-who was larger than life, literally and figuratively. Putting on his shirt will be like a little kid playing dress-up, pretending to fill shoes that are too big for me.

I rip open the plastic and begin to unbutton the shirt. When did my father start wearing stuff like this, anyway? I cannot remember a moment in my life when he wasn’t wearing flannel, thermals, coveralls, battered boots. You don’t dress for success when you’re spending 24/7 in a wolf pen; you wear whatever will give you protection against nips and scratches and mud and rain. Had he changed in the time I’d been away, enough to be able to acclimate himself to the world of people as seamlessly as he blended into the company of wolves? Did he go to wine bars, to poetry slams, to theater?

Is the father I kept imagining in my mind, on an endless home-video loop, now someone different?

And if he is, can I really be sure that what he said to me over a shot of whisky when I was fifteen was still what he believed?

Yes, I tell myself. It has to be, because I can’t let myself face the alternative.

I pull my sweatshirt over my head and shrug into my father’s shirt. The cotton is cool on my skin, wings settling over my back. I button the placket and then slip my hand into the starched breast pocket, peeling open the starched skin of the fabric.

When I was really tiny, my father had a red and black buffalo check wool jacket that he used to wear to work. It had two breast pockets, and whenever he came home, he’d tell me to choose a pocket. If I picked the right one and reached inside, I’d find a piece of penny candy. It took me years to realize there were no right and wrong pockets. They both had candy; I couldn’t help but be a winner.

I turn around on impulse and look in my father’s closet to find that jacket. At first I think it’s not there, and then I find it hanging behind a pair of ripped Carhartt coveralls.

I notice my reflection in the mirror that is glued to the back of the closet door. To my surprise, the shirt isn’t big on me at all. I fill out the shoulders, and the arms are exactly the length I’d choose if I were buying this for myself. With a start I realize that, now, I could easily pass for my father, with my features and my height.

I reach for the buffalo plaid jacket and put it on, too.

“It’s a statement,” Joe argues, the same argument he’s made since I walked downstairs wearing my father’s coat. “And in court, you don’t want to do anything to get a judge riled up.”

“It’s a coat, not a statement,” I say. “It’s freaking fifteen degrees out. And this is New Hampshire. You can’t tell me every defendant wears Armani.”