Songs of Love & Death

option.

I’m a walker, not a jogger, and I knew I could never keep up with him the way that Cody could. Arriving in the same clearing where Cody had parked on the day we met, I let him out of the car and told him, “Go free!” He did. But as soon as he was lost to view in the shadowy depths of the forest, I got scared and shouted for him to come back. He reappeared within seconds, clearly alarmed by my alarm, and after that unpromising start, I had a hard time convincing him to leave my side so he could get the exercise he clearly needed.

It turned out that Lobo was even more worried about losing me than I was about him. He didn’t like to let me out of his sight. If I was in the trailer, he wanted to be there, too; if I was outside, he was happy to stay out, but not on his own. Eventually we reached a compromise: if the door to the trailer was open, he knew he could reach me, and so he became more relaxed about roaming around, exploring the area. At night, he stretched out on the floor of my bedroom, blocking the door with his body: If I decided to go anywhere, he’d know about it.

Just as he had with Cody, he was happy to jump into my car at any time, and willing to wait for me when I ran errands—at least, for a few minutes. I didn’t dare test his patience, knowing that if he got anxious or bored he could destroy the interior of the car I was still paying for. That first weekend, I never left him for more than the five minutes it took me to dash into a convenience store to pick up some food for us both.

By the end of the weekend, the wolf was part of my life, and I understood what Cody had felt. There was no hardship in adapting my habits to fit in with his; I wasn’t interested in a way of life that had no room for this wolf. I didn’t think twice on Monday morning; of course I took him with me.

A ripple of excitement ran around the classroom as we walked in.

“Don’t worry,” I said calmly. “He’s had a good run this morning, so he’ll probably just lie on the floor and go to sleep while I talk. Don’t any of you guys copy him.”

That got a laugh, bigger than it deserved. I was suddenly much more interesting to my students.

“What kind of a dog is that?” one of the girls asked.

“He’s a wolf.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cody.” It just came out. All through the weekend I had called him by various terms of endearment, but hadn’t thought about changing the name Cody had given him.

But now, quite suddenly, I had done it.

The animal himself raised his head and looked at me when I spoke Cody’s name, recognizing it, and it was obvious from the caught breaths and exchange of looks among the students that they had, too. Everybody had heard the news of the death of the local drug dealer, Cody “Wolf-man” Vela, most of them in far more lurid, graphic detail than I’d picked up from local radio.

I wondered if I’d just made a huge mistake and put my job on the line. But I couldn’t have done anything else.

Luckily, the kids loved him, and weren’t going to do or say anything that would get him banned. They were more attentive in class, and although word must have spread fairly quickly around campus, even if it caused Nadia to wonder about my honesty, I didn’t get called into her office again. Maybe death had absolved me; anyway, nobody could blame an innocent animal for the sins of his master, and somebody had to look after him. I found out that my wolf wasn’t the first animal to become an accepted fixture on campus: There was a cat in the science department, some teachers had brought their dogs, and, in one case, a parrot, without causing any trouble.

Over the next few days, I learned more about Cody’s death than I really wanted to know. Probably no death by violence is easy, but his had been especially hard; it was referred to as a “punishment killing,” with talk of mutilation and torture. Some people wondered if the wolf-man’s famous pet had managed to inflict any damage on his killers—it might help the police if anyone was reported with unexplained animal bites. It was widely assumed that Cody’s wolf must now be dead, too. Such is the fearsome reputation of the wolf; few would believe that he would sooner hide, or run away, than attack armed men. I knew better, knew it was foolish to judge an animal by human values, yet even I couldn’t help feeling that Lobo had let Cody down. His response seemed shameful and cowardly. The man who had saved his life was dead, and the wolf hadn’t done a thing to stop his murder, hadn’t tried to rip his killer’s throat out.

And yet, if he had attacked armed men, he’d be dead too, and I couldn’t bear that.

Although I mourned the loss of the man I could have loved, the truth was that I’d never really known him. The wolf to whom I’d given his name was more real, and now even more important to me. Maybe it was because I now had the responsibility for another life, so I couldn’t afford to indulge in feeling sorry for myself, but the two weeks that followed Cody’s death were rich and interesting, full of life, hardly a sorrowful time at all.

At the end of October, a norther blew in, and as I felt the cold for the first time since leaving Chicago, I put on my favorite sweater and rust-colored corduroy pants, and felt my spirits rise.

Cody’s mood changed, too, that day, but not, like mine, for the better. He seemed restless, distracted, and somehow aloof from me, not his usual self at all. Despite a good, long run, he didn’t snooze through class but sat with his ears pricked, glancing at the door every now and then as if waiting for someone who never came. When a couple of students tried to pet him, he retreated under my desk. After we got home, it was worse. He didn’t want to stay in the trailer with me, but every time I let him out, I had to get up again a few minutes later to answer his anxious scratching at the door.

“Cody, make up your mind!” I told him. “It’s too cold to leave the damn door open tonight!”

A minute later, he went out again. I settled down to mark some essays, and this time I wasn’t disturbed for almost an hour, when I heard a low but terrible sound outside, a deep groan that sounded almost human.

I jumped up and flung the door open, calling his name. It was dark outside, the profound darkness of night in the country, but even deeper than usual because there was no moon. A single, low-energy bulb fixed to the right of the doorframe cast a little murky light in a small semicircle around the steps, but beyond that I was blind.

“Cody?” I called again, my voice strained and cracking with worry. “Cody, sweetheart, where are you? Come here, Cody!” I hurried down the steps.

“Katherine?” The voice came out of the darkness, a voice I’d never expected to hear again.

Then a man walked out of the darkness, and it was Cody Vela, alive, stark naked, and staring at me with a look that mingled confusion and longing. He came closer still, close enough to smell, and the scent of sweat and musk took me back to the day we’d met, and stirred the same desire.

“I thought you were dead!” I cried.

“Me, too.” He shivered convulsively, and he reached for me at the same moment I reached for him, and then we were hugging each other, and it was crazy, but I’d never wanted anyone so much in my life, and nothing else mattered. I could feel that he felt the same way, and when he started to nuzzle my neck, and his hands moved down to squeeze and caress my bottom, I almost fell onto the ground with him. But even though he was naked, I wasn’t, and the awkwardness of trying to get undressed was just enough to give me pause, and so I managed to pull him inside, where it was warm, and we could make love in the comfort of my bed.

The first time was hungry and desperate, but after that we were able to take things more slowly, indulging in sensuality and exploration, teasing and playing, until, finally, resting, we talked.

I expected an explanation, a movie-worthy plot involving doubles and disinformation, or lies and kidnapping, but there was nothing like that. He had no idea how he’d turned up naked and disoriented in the woods outside my trailer.

His last memory before that was of intense, agonizing pain. He’d been on the edge of death, horribly tortured by three men, one of whom he knew, two he’d never seen before: “But I’d know them again,” he said darkly.

The traumatic memories made him break out in a cold sweat; although he spared me the gory details, his hands went convulsively to his genitals, ears, mouth, knees, chest, seeking the remembered damage.

But he was whole, there were no wounds, not a trace of any injury, as I had already so pleasurably discovered. He’d switched on the small, pink-shaded light on the night table as we talked, and it was clear to us both that his lean, muscular body was unmarked except for the pale, curved line of a very old scar on the side of his neck, and a screaming face tattooed on his left bicep.

I thought about drugs, hypnotism, false memories, but before I could say anything he continued. “I wanted to die. After what they’d done to me, I knew I couldn’t live, but dying was so hellishly slow. But then I knew it was