Wolf

  At the Grill I exchanged pleasantries with a bartender who hated the “frigging” students and commuted from Somerville where he lived with his mother. He gave me daily unasked-for tips on the horses. Back across the river in my local Allston bar there were five pay phones for those timely calls. Sharkskin suits drinking “Cutty” and ginger ale. Or scotch and cream. Social mobility I suppose but now the upper classes drink cheap bourbon with tap water and a sprig of ragweed. The poor are always fooled. Even when they become rich. I had my first two ales and ordered scrod with parsley butter and mashed potatoes that inevitably came with chicken or beef gravy in most places, ham or fish notwithstanding. Two girls entered and took a seat in the booth behind me. I swiveled and took a look; one was painfully thin and would remain so until her light casket was lowered, the other smiled at me attractively with bucky beaver teeth like my own. A pendulum of gold around her neck which banker dad gave her for being good. Could she cover those teeth at important moments? I smiled back and approved of her with all of my weak, starved heart—her knee-high boots could support me for two weeks. The meal came and I covered the plate with catsup which is very nutritional besides being a family habit. I cleaned my plate quickly merging the fish with the caramel corn. I swiveled again and flashed another harmless smile at beaver girl but she had turned and was putting on her coat having finished her crème de menthe frappé. The making of the drink had sent my friend the bartender into a fit of spite; I told him to put bitters in it and next time she would order something civilized. Out the door. Will we meet again preferably down by the riverside. A tea-head friend entered and ordered sandwich and pop. He was halfway up in the air and needed no alcohol. He called me baby and invited me to a party to be held that night. I said that I'd come, then broke my promises and slid my single hidden five out of my billfold and had three double bourbons in quick succession. Then I walked down Boylston, crossed Memorial Drive and fell woozily asleep in the dirty grass near the crew boathouse.

  I woke up in time to catch dinner at my brother's, Cornish game hens basted with peach brandy. Goody. He is a librarian and has repressed his lowlife instincts for a good marriage, reading, fine food and hard work. I admire him without reservation and never forget that back home he had been an Eagle Scout whereas I had been ousted from the troop as a chronic malcontent. He'd been kind to take me in for a while on various past occasions so I could keep my head above water and look for a job, loaning me a suit for imaginary interviews and other niceties I didn't deserve. Such grief I've caused everyone with nervous breakdowns during three successive Februaries. I simply can't get through the month without a brush with the booby hatch; I'm sure it's climatic, seasonal. The ice is breaking up so I can live again. Meanwhile a litter of weeping wife and mom and all of that which I don't take callously. Then I'd be driven to the bus station, given a pittance in addition to the ticket and urged in family conferences to try to make my way at something. My brother though enjoys hearing stories that I tell about the subterranean layers of drugs and sodomy that exist in his adopted city. Instance: I was offered the chance for five dollars to watch two lesbians couple. The bar was closing and a wizened little Greek had thus far collected an audience of five sailors. I was curious but didn't have five dollars. However I tell my brother I went and watched two rather frail girls on a couch while the sailors cheered them on which they no doubt did. And the secret Radcliffe rooming house for ultrarich girls where they have five Dobermans and a housemother who wears patent leather hip boots.

  Near the edge of the marsh among the cattails there was a flock of redwing blackbirds: the vermilion cusp under their wings brilliant against the green whenever they flew from stalk to stalk. I want to be decorated, a ridge along my back with fur on it, hackle of orange under my ears, long pointed molars, rooster comb of aquamarine down the center of my head and the whole body feathered in burnt sienna. That would show them, the frightening toast of the nation.

  I stopped after encircling half the marsh and found with another compass reading that I was heading radically left from my mark. I turned in a march right and sighted on the tip of a dead tree perhaps a mile away then sat down and ate some raisins and dried beef and a swig from my canteen. The water was warmish, tasting of tin. The canteen had no doubt been left out in the sun at Guadalcanal or Bataan and perhaps a baby viper had nested in it when it was left capless. Or a family of spiders that specialized in eating insects off cobras’ backs. My calculations were leaving me two hours behind, at least four by the time I reached the car; the sun looked high noon and heated my scalp around which flies buzzed landing momentarily until I would brush them off. There is a local miniscule bug wittily called “no-see-ums” which also tormented me with small red dots on my flesh. I itched everything until I had counted the night before in fire-light one hundred thirty-three scabs, large and small, both actively suppurating and lightly irritating. I felt at the time that nature should build me a sidewalk to the car and a pair of moderately expensive roller skates should appear by my side and a beautiful girl to lace them up tightly. I would say how about the next dance and we would Skater's Waltz to the car where even though hot and tired I would bang at her unmercifully in the back seat. One of her legs would be draped over the front seat with the rollers continuing to roll and the music going on as if she had a stereo cassette in the crack of her ass.

  I got up painfully. O lord how long? Around the tree and in serpentine curl in the distance the green was a bit darker. Perhaps the creek I was looking for. The map anyway was inaccurate and I planned a stop at the conservation head-quarters where I had gotten the map: This is a piece of inaccurate shit, I would say, balling it up and throwing it in his face. There would be no retaliation—the forty pounds of chromium steel flamethrower would be so clearly visible on my back. I wanted a polite “we're sorry sir” then a promise for a massive effort to rectify the inaccuracies no matter the cost. I'll ship you lazy assholes a helicopter f.o.b. so you can look at your territory. Get your boots muddy, son, your hands are bleached and have paper burns. Then I would tear the patch off the shoulder of his uniform, kiss his neck and slide off into the dark leaving behind a changed officer.

  I finally reached the tree and as I had suspected a small creek did burble by it; I walked along its bank, thrashing through the brush with an eye out for wolf tracks on any sand bars. There were supposedly a dozen or so in the area and I wanted to see one desperately. I met a hunter in Ishpeming who had once heard a wolf howling in the area, and an answering howl from another hill. But this was on the Yellow Dog plains some twenty miles to my east. There are only three or four hundred native wolves left in the United States. They are rarely heard and even more rarely seen, except in unnatural circumstances as on Isle Royale during the winter from a plane. I felt that if I could see one all my luck would change. Maybe I would track it until it stopped and greeted me and we would embrace and I would become a wolf.

  I estimated that it was nearly five o'clock when I stumbled onto the rutted log road and saw my car blue and innocent sitting under the tree. Ten hours to walk seven miles. An ignorant maze path through the woods. I would have to sleep in the car rather than chancing the walk back before dark.

  I got to the party very late having napped again after dinner. My sister-in-law is a light feeder so I had two game hens to myself, and even though they weren't cooked quite long enough for my taste I ate them down to their little pink bones and gristle. Even chewing the “pope's nose” which was what we always called the knobby bung bud. The walk to the party was close to fifty blocks of sweet drowsiness, my head just drunken enough to not quite perceive my feet. A half gallon of cheap rosé. A polite glass for the others then a ten-ounce water glass for me. Many of them. How well rosé goes with the spring, I had quipped, drenching my third napkin with sauce and fowl fat, my mustache stiff with it. Smelling of peach brandy now as I walked crushing fallen maple buds. So happy I could kiss a fireplug if there were no dogs on earth. A mustache enables one on waking t
o scent last night's sins. On a dark corner near the Cambridge-Somerville line I pissed on a fireplug. Will puzzle the neighborhood dogs for weeks no doubt. They'll transmit questions through Morse code type barks and whines. Where is this new creature?

  The party was obviously descending from its apex when I arrived. Dozens of people sprawled on the floor or sat limply. Absolutely stoned. Who wrote about the frangipanic clock? An eager undergraduate type said to me, I'm Bob who are you? I'm Swanson, prince d'Allston. OK. A bookish vulgar type he was with Bass Weejuns customized to allow a Kennedy half dollar. Air very heavy with cannabis. I found my friend sitting in a bedroom with eyes so dull and rheumy they looked like they were painted with snot. His right hand held a bomber which I lifted and lit, inhaling three enormous drags and choking. A girl sitting at a dresser said that there was hash in there too. Good for me, I'll catch up I thought. She was a little too round-faced to be attractive and talked out of the corner of her mouth, a characteristic the eastern upper class shares with gangsters and pimps.

  —A lovely night, I said.

  —Is it? she replied smartly.

  —It would be if you stuck your fat face out the window.

  I cased the living room for female probabilities. None. Either soiled, ugly or taken. I returned to the bedroom changing my tune and exchanged pleasantries with moon-face. She had evidently forgotten I had been with her a few minutes before.

  —You guys must have had a wonderful time, I said over the deafening sound of the Beatles singing “Michelle.” I bet your name is Michelle.

  —I wish it was. She looked down at her very distant feet tapping and swinging.

  I suggested a little walk for fresh air and she followed me listlessly down the back stairs and out the door. No grass of any kind here. An alley with seventy-seven garbage cans stretched out. Hash now in my eyeballs. Better get to work. We necked and I looked around for a comfortable spot but there wasn't any. Boobies bare to street lamp at alley's end. I turned her around and lifted her skirt, no panties only the nest. I reached down to see if my prick was there. The drug made my zipper sound like a machine gun. My prick was there but further away than usual. I bent her over and entered working in a tireless slow motion. She said wow once or twice and hummed a little. Smack smack. When I came I stumbled backwards falling on my ass and felt no pain. She turned and looked at me idly, straightened her skirt and went back up to the party. I got up slowly nearly tripping on my pants which were strangling my ankles. The corrugated edges of a bottle cap stuck in the cheek of my ass. I pulled up my pants very dizzily and then walked out the alley and turned toward Harvard Square.

  The inside of the car was very hot and stale-smelling. There was a choice of keeping the windows closed and dying of asphyxiation or opening them and being bitten to death. Bugs are God's creatures too, only less so than we are we have to assume if we have any sense. I opened a tin of Vienna sausages, teeny weenies in a brackish warm sauce. Flies buzzed in the open door and one malevolent wasp with a howtizer stinger hanging from its tail. I walked down to the creek which was wider in this location having been fed by springs in smaller creeks in the higher country. There was a small waterfall and a deep pool where the water plunged with a fine steady roar. Nice to sleep to. No night noises, the bear or leviathan to slide its paw in the car window. I rinsed out a piece of cheesecloth I had used to wipe the windshield and intended to wrap around my head as a bug protector. Then I quickly shed my clothes and dove into the eddy, swimming under the turbulent water of the falls. I opened my eyes in the white oxygenated icy water and then let its force carry me downstream a hundred feet or so. Numb, I'll float to the ocean. Lake Superior first, though. But snags, deadfalls would catch me, or a slippery boulder would receive my head and put the lights out. Floater dies in downward trip to sea. Remains were not found by anyone. No one was looking except a single angry kingfisher. I got out and walked back upstream on a bed of pine needles, cold to the bones. I stood naked on the log road for a moment lighting a cigarette in the sun. Still four hours or so before absolute dark which falls up here at about ten o'clock. I would go to sleep early and leave at dawn for my camp.

  Curled at twilight in the back seat of the car and trying to breathe through the musty cheesecloth. Smell of lint and cleaning fluid, chalk dust, Spanish rice in high schools throughout the nation. Siss boom bah siss boom bahhh they yell at basketball games. Walking way out Boylston in Boston until it turned into Route 9. A right at Chestnut Hill Road and watching a beautiful tanned girl at Longwood Cricket Club bounce a tennis ball off the far cement wall. Hair drawn back to keep it out of her eyes during the up-coming match with Bryce Porker, depraved but handsome coupon clipper. Sing of injustice all ober dis land, especially here where I am behind the fence watching her long smooth brown legs and how they aim upwards to her ass. Sleeveless blouse and graceful arms. Fairly tall and high-waisted with a startling face. Like Lauren Hutton's the Vogue model. I read Seventeen in drugstores a little furtively. She glanced at me and scowled. Private club with a waiting list of 66,333. I have twelve cents exactly and will buy you a lemon Coke. I held on to the fence with my fingers, a prisoner of war and poverty, and, of course, hunger. She turned again with a cool stare, not thirty-three feet away then walked toward the distant clubhouse without a backward glance. I flopped in the car seat nose pointed downward to the seat back, a single mosquito now inside the cloth searching for my eyeball. She doesn't evidently want my wordless lemon Coke. Come back Bonnie. Right now. I wouldn't stare, I'll look up in the sky at no birds. Probably is a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence and is interested in the urban crisis. Fucks a fifty-five-year-old political science professor, dodo Mr. Chips with a gray goatee and he plied her at afternoon coffee with a vial of cantharides. In the future I'll meet her by accident at a party in New York. I'll shun her. Maybe slap her face with just the tips of my fingers. She'll ask for forgiveness and say I wish I had had that lemon Coke now that I know you're famous. Precisely. After a week of discipline and endless strategic caresses I'd give her to a barnstorming soccer team from Africa. Or maybe to the Harlem Globetrotters. She had her chance and didn't blow it. Walking through Chestnut Hill, gardeners eyed me suspiciously and mastiffs were released to chase me back to my own pitiful neighborhood. Dear girl if you read this you'll recognize yourself. Remember me and how I pressed my face against the Cyclone fence until it was covered with red trapezoids. Remember? I wish you a colostomy, piles, pyuria, and a short-peckered lisping husband. May you rot between Dover and Dedham. May you fall off your horse. Don't try to approach me. I have an unlisted number and no phone and it's much, much too late.

  I couldn't sleep in the car. I sat up and lit a cigarette blowing smoke at the nearest mosquitoes. I got out of the car and walked up the road until I was out of reach of the pounding sound of the waterfall. A full moon, wolfbane blooms tonight. I imagined, or was the figure real, that I saw a large dog cross the road in the distance. A coyote or a wolf. But my scent had to drive wolves away. No dogs here. A coyote or a hallucination. The wolf to count had to be seen clearly in daylight.

  At dawn I packed the food and filled the canteen in the creek after only an hour's restless sleep. My tracks on the log road were covered here and there by those of a small bear. Smelled the food. I locked the car and set out for my tent and made the site before noon, less than half the time it had taken me to find the car. My shoulders were sore from the straps of my cheap pack and my body dead from the night's nightmarish lack of sleep.

  Boston. The night before I intended to leave I got horribly drunk at Jake Wirth's and ate a half dozen frankfurters and a blue cheese and Bermuda onion sandwich on dark bread. That in addition to twelve double Jim Beams and a few steins of beer put quite a dent in my savings. But there were nutritional benefits I'm sure. I slept on the floor of my room having arrived there by the grace of some strange power; perhaps it was . . . but no it couldn't be. Sometime before dawn I awoke suddenly, thinking someone was in the room with me. The door was open.
I felt that either something horrible was happening to me or would happen that day. I got up from the floor and slammed the door shut and then tried to sleep again. But I couldn't sleep so I sat naked before the open window facing the roofs of the apartments across the street. Perhaps this meant that I was going to die today—the bus would carom across the median and roll over. But I quickly forgot about death. I've had hundreds of intuitions of death and none of them, fortunately, were accurate.

  A sea breeze began. The room had been stuffy and damp but the breeze was stiff, cool and strong in the darkness and flooded me with fresh air. I heard a crow and saw it dimly against the sky which owned a thin pale line of red in the east. Then the other birds started but the crow's cawing was first. I remembered that when you see a single crow he is a scout but then none followed. A lone crow.

  I got up from the chair and walked to the stove, stepping over my suitcase. I had inherited the suitcase from my dad and it was fake leather with many cracks showing the cardboard beneath. Linoleum cracks and shows the black pitch beneath where crows are born and dwell. I wanted some coffee and when I lit the gas my belly and genitals and thighs turned blue. What color are the dead? A blue crow now with the price of a ticket to New York. A bus ticket. No tribe or fellow crows. Then I turned on the lamp out of fright and looked at my arms, the veins in the forearms thick and knotted and blue. Blood ready to clot without warning. A blue lump will float upward and around the shoulder to the heart's bull's-eye. Biliously drank the instant coffee and put on my clothes. The sun was now an orange oblong of light on the far wall. Rattle of milk bottles below. I was way back in my youth hiding in the reeds and lily pads with only my scalp and nose and eyes above the water line. My friend, the girl in the next cabin, was entering the water hesitantly. She was twelve, nearly hairless below the neck, plump, pink, very pretty with long black hair in pigtails. We greeted each other underwater and when we came up for air holding each other there were crows above the swamp across the lake.