Shownotes
[18+] Early fall, a werewolf pack, in mourning, on the highway. From campground to crossroad, they chase not just their grief, but a question.
Today’s story is “The Last Journey Of Theodore Vulcek, Leader, Beloved Husband, and Pack Brother” by Rob MacWolf, and you can find more of his writing and bad jokes on his Pillowfort page.
Read for you by the author himself.
Transcripts
Today I'm reading an adult story for mature listeners.
Speaker:If that's not your cup of tea,
Speaker:or if there are youngsters listening,
Speaker:you can skip this one and
Speaker:I'll have a new story for you next time.
Speaker:You’re listening to The Voice of Dog. I’m Khaki,
Speaker:your faithful fireside companion,
Speaker:and Today’s story is
Speaker:“The Last Journey Of Theodore Vulcek,
Speaker:Leader, Beloved Husband,
Speaker:and Pack Brother”
Speaker:by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:and you can find more of his writing
Speaker:and bad jokes on his Pillowfort page. Please enjoy“The Last
Speaker:Journey Of Theodore
Speaker:Vulcek,
Speaker:Leader, Beloved Husband,
Speaker:and Pack Brother”
Speaker:written and by
Speaker:Rob MacWolf
Speaker:“What turned you?” Miles asked, over the noise of idling engines while they waited for Harve to check them all in.
Speaker:They had been riding before sunrise, and it was just past sunset now.
Speaker:The hours of the Upper Peninsula,
Speaker:of Wisconsin, of Minnesota,
Speaker:staying on backroads and US highways and off the interstate,
Speaker:only stopping for gas and handful-sized bags of jerky or peanuts or string cheese
Speaker:—it all seemed a fever delirium of swooping powerlines,
Speaker:cornfields littered with harvest scrap,
Speaker:forests full of withering crimson raspberry leaves,
Speaker:and signs for every different county’s upcoming harvest festival.
Speaker:Dan would have said, if he’d been asked,
Speaker:that he felt like any second he was going to wake up back in the lodge in the Lake Superior woods,
Speaker:which is why he was glad
Speaker:that that wasn’t what he’d been asked.
Speaker:But he also didn’t want to answer the question he had been asked, either, so he pretended he hadn’t heard over the sound of the engines and asked,
Speaker:himself, “You think there’s gonna be a shower here?”
Speaker:Miles sighed through his nose.
Speaker:“Who knows? Given the choice I’d rather have a place with some privacy, blow off some steam,
Speaker:but I don’t care much for the chances of either, here.”
Speaker:The campground was almost empty.
Speaker:It was too late for vacations,
Speaker:too early for hunting season.
Speaker:Bikes were lined up, bedrolls laid out.
Speaker:Harve brought back bags of hamburgers from some place that nobody had ever heard of
Speaker:but had clearly been a Dairy Queen when it had been built.
Speaker:Dan wound up sharing Miles’s sleeping bag.
Speaker:Miles tasted tired and sweaty and dull with sorrow,
Speaker:and there was a moment Dan couldn’t tell if he was feeling his own grief or Miles’s,
Speaker:then he came needy and desperate and almost without moving.
Speaker:Afterward they clung to eachother like dogs hiding from fireworks.
Speaker:Miles ran his fingers through Dan’s hair.
Speaker:Dan felt claws, and looked up from his chest,
Speaker:but Miles was staring at the moon.
Speaker:He’d shifted, quietly, probably while Dan was distracted,
Speaker:and now that he wasn’t wearing his human mask bereavement was unmistakably legible in his eyes.
Speaker:“That wasn’t the kind of steam I was talking about blowing off,”
Speaker:Miles said. “I know.”
Speaker:“I still needed that,
Speaker:thank you.” Dan almost protested that he needed it just as much,
Speaker:but the words failed when he realized that he didn’t know which kind of steam
Speaker:he wanted to blow off.
Speaker:He hadn’t shifted since Ted died,
Speaker:but he didn’t think he could do it as quietly or smoothly as Miles had.
Speaker:“Don’t worry, pup.” Miles hugged him,
Speaker:answering the question he hadn’t asked.
Speaker:“There’ll be less populated places along the way.
Speaker:You’ll have time to wolf out and go for a run.”
Speaker:“Where are we, again?”
Speaker:“Iowa. Think Greg said the closest place was called Orange City.”
Speaker:“I expected the stars to look different.”
Speaker:“We’re not THAT far from Michigan, pup.”
Speaker:Dan caught himself just in time.
Speaker:He’d been about to say, no, I meant I thought they’d look different after Ted was gone.
Speaker:Getting loopy. He must have really underguessed how tired he was.
Speaker:He slept all night in Miles’s arms.
Speaker:If he dreamed, he didn’t remember his dreams.
Speaker:Miles didn’t ask again in the morning how Dan had been turned.
Speaker:Luckily. Maybe that was understandable.
Speaker:Nobody would feel much like talking the first night.
Speaker:“Oh, well, ok. I thought it was the usual way,”
Speaker:said Ryan, when Miles asked him.
Speaker:They were in a rundown diner somewhere between Omaha and Lincoln.
Speaker:Dan was suspicious of the steak and fried egg sandwich he’d been served,
Speaker:but not worried. There wasn’t much that a werewolf could manage to eat that was capable of upsetting werewolf digestion.
Speaker:“But actually it was a whole other thing. See,
Speaker:I was jogging out at the edge of the reservoir, way early in the morning.
Speaker:And what I thought was a big dog
Speaker:came out of nowhere and bit me!
Speaker:I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor,
Speaker:so I just put some disinfectant, some bandaids on it… and a month later I had rabies.”
Speaker:“That’s fatal for humans,”
Speaker:said Greg through a mouthful of hashbrowns.
Speaker:“Once symptoms show up anyway.”
Speaker:“Yeah, but since I’m still here,
Speaker:figures that the bite must have also been from a werewolf, right?
Speaker:I caught both off the same bite,
Speaker:the rabies started first,
Speaker:then the lycanthropy came up behind it and knocked it out, right?”
Speaker:The whole pack sat for a moment unsure if that was a rhetorical question.
Speaker:“Nope!” He pounded the table.
Speaker:Harve winced. “Werewolves can’t even CARRY rabies!
Speaker:I just got bit by an actual dog.
Speaker:Luckily the ER I staggered into
Speaker:had a doctor that knew a werewolf AND knew it was the only thing that would save me
Speaker:AND knew to put on the official papers that I just had a fever!”
Speaker:“Wait, so who was the werewolf?”
Speaker:Owen asked. “I dunno, I had a fever.” Ryan stole
Speaker:one of Harve’s fries, having long finished his own meal.
Speaker:“By the time I came down enough to have
Speaker:any idea what was going on, they were long gone.”
Speaker:“Harve,” Dan interrupted,
Speaker:“what are we doing when we get to Wichita? We don’t all have to...
Speaker:go in, do we?” “No.” Harve smacked Ryan’s hand away from his plate.
Speaker:“I’ll go to the Bureau to…”
Speaker:He stopped, searching in the air for words, and everyone settled into awkward silence.
Speaker:“To collect him. I was legal spouse,
Speaker:so I’m the only one they’ll let sign whatever the hell papers it’ll be.
Speaker:Y’all have to wait, and they probably won’t let you do it in the parking lot or anything like that. We’re probably looking at spending two nights in the town, or close enough to it,
Speaker:so maybe let’s keep an eye out for a state park or something with some room?”
Speaker:His composure came back like a watered plant.
Speaker:If there was anything that made Harve comfortable, it was plans for making the best of a bad situation.
Speaker:Dan stared at himself in the restroom mirror.
Speaker:He was hot, sweaty,
Speaker:badly needed to shave,
Speaker:and the gritty yet also somehow greasy dust that always hovers invisibly over any highway
Speaker:had managed to find its way to every inch of him.
Speaker:Plans for making the best of a bad situation didn’t make him more comfortable,
Speaker:they just made it harder
Speaker:to not think about the bad situation.
Speaker:He regretted asking.
Speaker:He jumped when Ryan walked in right behind him.
Speaker:“Woah, you…” Ryan closed the door,
Speaker:quietly, which was the first thing he’d done quietly all day.
Speaker:“You ok? Looking a bit rough there.”
Speaker:Ryan’s arms wrapped around him from behind.
Speaker:Dan tensed for a moment,
Speaker:then relaxed. “I’m…
Speaker:I’m fine. I just… I keep not being sure who I am, without him.
Speaker:Like any second someone’s gonna accuse me of not being the real me.
Speaker:I keep coming around corners and catching myself expecting him to be there, and then
Speaker:getting angry at myself for forgetting he’s gone,
Speaker:and I want something to distract me from thinking about it but that just means by the time I get to the next corner I’ve forgotten again and I’m expecting him again and-”
Speaker:“Hey, hey, I get it,
Speaker:it’s ok.” Ryan’s face rested against the back of his head,
Speaker:his breath when he spoke was warm.
Speaker:“You don’t gotta be all right all at once.
Speaker:We’ve all lost our footing now he’s not there. Like,
Speaker:being loud and fast and hard,
Speaker:just going on being the old me, HIS me, as hard as I can, that’s
Speaker:working for me. At least for now.
Speaker:But it doesn’t got to work for you, ok?”
Speaker:“Yeah, ok.” “I gotta hear you say it.”
Speaker:“Ryan, c’mon!” “Say it!
Speaker:I’m keepin you prisoner in this stinky bathroom till you do.” “Ugh,
Speaker:fine! It’s ok if I don’t know how I’m handling it yet!”
Speaker:“Good!” The embrace got tighter.
Speaker:“We’re all tryin to figure out who we are without him.
Speaker:That’s what this trip’s for.”
Speaker:Ryan kissed the side of his neck,
Speaker:with just a hint of wolfish lick to it
Speaker:that made Dan feel his tail try to wag,
Speaker:even if he didn’t have one at the moment.
Speaker:“Now c’mon. Sounds like Wichita’s gonna be a drag, so the sooner we get there, the sooner we get it over with.”
Speaker:As they were crossing the parking lot, something occurred to Dan.
Speaker:“Wait,” Ryan paused, about to throw one leg over his bike.
Speaker:“So how did you end up with us, then?
Speaker:You left the story off where you’d just gotten turned to cure rabies?”
Speaker:“Oh, well, someone, maybe it was the doctor, maybe it was
Speaker:whoever bit me, dunno,
Speaker:they left a note in my pocket.
Speaker:Said I was a werewolf now, that things were gonna be
Speaker:really different,
Speaker:and I’d need help putting my new life together, so call this number.
Speaker:And that number was Ted.
Speaker:We talked a long time. He talked me through thinking my life was over, said, well maybe, but not as over as it could have been.
Speaker:Then about, like, where it’d be safe for me to live, out of the way places, wolves I should meet, packs I might join.
Speaker:But I ended up liking his pack better than any other options.”
Speaker:He started his bike and revved the motor.
Speaker:“Still do, for what it’s worth.
Speaker:worth.” “I’m not 100% sure, to be honest.” Owen said.
Speaker:“I know the version I was told.
Speaker:Dunno if I believe it.”
Speaker:He sat in a circle of streetlamp light,
Speaker:some ways east of Wichita, not far from a lake
Speaker:—artificial, Martin had sneered, you can tell by the smell,
Speaker:to which Greg had said you don’t need to,
Speaker:you can tell by the fact that it’s got one big flat side that’s clearly
Speaker:the dam—with Miles beside him and Dan at his feet.
Speaker:Never mind that there wasn’t a street, the only thing it illuminated was a corner of the campsite, the only thing you could call the lamp here was a streetlamp.
Speaker:It looked like it belonged over a freeway.
Speaker:Over his shoulder, Ryan was covering the bikes and Martin was laying out the bedrolls.
Speaker:“Tell us,” Miles said,
Speaker:“and I’ll tell you what I think.”
Speaker:“Ok.” Owen took a deep breath.
Speaker:“Back in olden times, like really olden.
Speaker:Year 11, or whatever.
Speaker:There’s this Saint called Natalis of Donegal,
Speaker:and he comes across this family who had converted to being Catholic from… Zeus
Speaker:-ism, whatever they were before.
Speaker:But then they got excommunicated.”
Speaker:“What’s that?” Dan asked.
Speaker:“That’s when they kick you out of the Catholics.”
Speaker:“They do that?” “Well,” started Miles, “they used to according to the legend-”
Speaker:“Oh, they still do.”
Speaker:Owen said, confidently.
Speaker:“Anyway, the story doesn’t say why they got excommunicated for,
Speaker:but apparently Saint Natalis thought it was worth cursing them and turning them into wolves with his Saint Powers.”
Speaker:“For being excommunicated?!”
Speaker:“I guess. Or for whatever they’d already gotten excommunicated for.
Speaker:Anyway, the story kinda stops there,
Speaker:but the moral was, when Grampa told it,
Speaker:that being a werewolf was a original sin we’d inherited.” Miles and
Speaker:Dan looked at him, mouths hanging open.
Speaker:Somewhere in the background,
Speaker:Ryan could be heard complaining that the streetlamp had better not stay on all night,
Speaker:because if it did how was anybody supposed to get any sleep?
Speaker:“Wait, wait, so… being a werewolf was a sin? You were supposed to just…”
Speaker:Dan waved his hands in the air like the answer was swooping around his head and he needed to grab it “...
Speaker:“...not be one?” “Well, technically no.
Speaker:Being a werewolf wasn’t a sin, cause Grampa was one, Mom was, both my sisters were too.
Speaker:Have to assume Mom passed it to Dad at some point.
Speaker:But that was fine just so long as you never actually shifted.
Speaker:THAT was when it counted as a sin.”
Speaker:Owen shrugged. “Or at least that’s what Grampa said.
Speaker:I dunno if I even believe him about anybody but me really being a wolf, anymore,
Speaker:cause how could anyone get as old as Grampa was without ever once shifting?
Speaker:I can’t even go a week!”
Speaker:Everyone took turns with the shower,
Speaker:which it did turn out that there was,
Speaker:even if it wasn’t very good.
Speaker:Dan wound up sharing with Owen.
Speaker:Any pretense of scrubbing eachother’s backs washed away with the road dust and left them in eachother’s arms.
Speaker:Dan laid his head on Owen’s chest, Owen rested his chin on Dan’s head.
Speaker:When Dan knelt to take the other man in his mouth, still dripping with sandy-tasting water,
Speaker:leaning back against the wooden partition,
Speaker:he felt Owen shift, muffling a yelp through a bitten lip.
Speaker:After a time, Owen pulled Dan back to his feet and squeezed him,
Speaker:wet fur rippling as it disappeared and he shifted back.
Speaker:Dan opened his mouth to ask if he was all right, but Owen laid two fingers on it and hushed him.
Speaker:He held Dan tight as the water slowly fogged off their bodies
Speaker:and out the open top of the shower stall. “They’re
Speaker:gonna be wondering what’s taking us so
Speaker:long,” Owen finally sighed.
Speaker:“I think they’ll be able to guess.”
Speaker:Dan said. “Don’t you want me to finish the job?”
Speaker:“Mattered more that you started.
Speaker:Let me feel wanted.
Speaker:Thanks.” “Do you… need someone with you tonight?”
Speaker:“That’s nice, but I’m with Harve tonight.”
Speaker:Owen stepped out of the shower and passed Dan a towel.
Speaker:“If there’s anybody who shouldn’t sleep alone, it’s him.
Speaker:Thanks for offering, though.”
Speaker:The open night was cool as Dan dried himself and pulled his clothes on.
Speaker:“So, you’re not still hearing from your old family, right?”
Speaker:“Nope. Like the story says, excommunicated.”
Speaker:“You miss them?” “Nope.
Speaker:Got all the family I need here.”
Speaker:“Do you think they miss you?”
Speaker:Owen stopped, facing away into the night.
Speaker:“I dunno. I used to wonder,
Speaker:but… haven’t I got enough to worry about with my real family?”
Speaker:He touched Dan’s cheek and lifted his chin, gently rubbed under his beard with his thumb.
Speaker:“Grieving for Ted’s work enough without having to grieve for people
Speaker:who for all they’ve let me know wouldn’t give a shit if it was my ashes we were picking up tomorrow.”
Speaker:At some point not long after midnight,
Speaker:Ryan decided that yeah,
Speaker:the streetlamp was probably going to stay on all night,
Speaker:and clawed at the aluminum side till it crumpled and tore like a beer can,
Speaker:the wires inside snapped,
Speaker:and it went dark.
Speaker:“It’s a little complicated.”
Speaker:Greg answered. He leaned against Harve’s bike.
Speaker:Dan and Miles squatted within arms’s reach, because that was how close
Speaker:they needed to stand
Speaker:to stay in the shadow of the sign that said United States Bureau of Extrahuman Populace Management
Speaker:Midwest Branch, which was the only shade in the asphalt wasteland that was the parking lot,
Speaker:and despite the lateness of the year it was like parking on a griddle.
Speaker:Harve had intended to go alone.
Speaker:Miles had disagreed, and said he had to take at least someone else with him.
Speaker:What if at the last minute they say, oh,
Speaker:you need these other signatures, or you need to get this stamped at this other office,
Speaker:or you need to go make copies.
Speaker:BUT ALSO this other rule says you can’t leave since you started filling out forms.
Speaker:That’d be like them, saying something like that.
Speaker:There needs to be someone else, with another bike,
Speaker:in case you need an emergency errand run.
Speaker:To which Harve had replied that by that logic the whole pack should come with
Speaker:Yeah, said Miles, we should, said Miles,
Speaker:what the fuck else did we all come along for?
Speaker:There was no way they were going to allow that, answered Harve,
Speaker:it might be their job dealing with us but that doesn’t mean they’re not still just human and you know how skittish they get.
Speaker:They’d argued back and forth,
Speaker:and eventually compromised on four.
Speaker:Harve because he had to sign the papers,
Speaker:Miles because it was his idea and for some reason he didn’t explain he was immovably insistent,
Speaker:Dan because he felt bad about missing a chance to be part of what they were doing for Ted,
Speaker:and Greg because he was the only one, besides Harve, whose bike had a passenger seat behind.
Speaker:It had turned out to be irrelevant.
Speaker:The Bureau wouldn’t let anyone but Harve inside anyway.
Speaker:So the three of them hid in the scrap of shade,
Speaker:and sweltered, and worried.
Speaker:“Supposedly, my great great great…”
Speaker:Greg paused, fingers running over an imaginary calculator,
Speaker:“uh… great grandmother was Jeanette Dubroise,
Speaker:who if you don’t know who that was,
Speaker:she was an infamous Loup Garou from folklore in Quebec. From like…
Speaker:not yet the civil war times?
Speaker:And I grew up in Ontario, so that was plausible.
Speaker:According to the legends she was a
Speaker:‘deal with a devil, doing Baba Yaga curses on the farmlands,’ type,
Speaker:like more a witch with a wolf theme than a ‘person who turns into a wolf’ style, you know?
Speaker:Not that anyone told me the legends were true, that’s just tall tales, but she did really exist.
Speaker:Or at least a woman named that did exist, and apparently claimed
Speaker:to be a Loup Garou.
Speaker:Or someone claimed that.
Speaker:I know cause when I dispersed from Mom and Dad,
Speaker:I went and looked up the genealogy.”
Speaker:He chuckled. “And found out I wasn’t related to her
Speaker:at all. My parents had the same last name as some of her descendants, but spelled different,
Speaker:and as far as like… the
Speaker:genealogy forum guys were able to find,
Speaker:we actually came from Denmark?
Speaker:So my current theory
Speaker:is someone back there
Speaker:was the kind of werewolf where some viking gets naked and drunk and puts on a wolfskin cape.” “So why’d
Speaker:they tell you it was the witch lady, then?”
Speaker:Miles asked, eyes fixed on the doorway at the other end of the lot.
Speaker:Greg shrugged. “I betcha probably every Canadian wolf east of Saskatchewan gets told they're a descendant of Jeanette Dubroise at some point.
Speaker:point." “That was way more than a little complicated.
Speaker:And you didn’t even answer the question!”
Speaker:Dan objected, “How does that add up to you turning, though?”
Speaker:“Look.” Miles interrupted and pointed.
Speaker:If Greg had an answer he didn’t get to give it.
Speaker:“Harve’s done.” It was a ways off, but Harve was standing at the door,
Speaker:talking to someone in a suit.
Speaker:He shook their hand, reluctantly,
Speaker:then set off walking toward them.
Speaker:He was holding a package under one arm.
Speaker:They crossed the lot to pick him up.
Speaker:Miles was the first to ask. ‘How’d
Speaker:it go? They give you much trouble?”
Speaker:Harve wore a mildly stunned look.
Speaker:“It was fine, they had all the papers there ready to go.
Speaker:They didn’t give me a hard time. They didn’t make trouble, they didn’t
Speaker:care.” He was holding the package like he was worried someone was about to try to take it away.
Speaker:“I kinda feel like it would’ve been easier if they had given me trouble.
Speaker:Least it would’ve felt like they cared. Least
Speaker:I’d know what I was angry about…”
Speaker:“Well, you’ll have time to figure it out on the road.”
Speaker:Miles said, after they all shared an awkward pause.
Speaker:“Yeah,” said Harve. “Sure,”
Speaker:said Harve. “Lets get him back to the pack.”
Speaker:They turned north again, still heading west, up into Nebraska now,
Speaker:cornfields flashing by, the perspective down the rows of mounded dirt an eternal standing wave in Dan’s peripheral vision.
Speaker:Crossroads implying impossibly wide worlds to get lost in
Speaker:—and he knew very well how lost it was possible to get
Speaker:—every time his bike flashed through them,
Speaker:if he’d only turn down this one.
Speaker:Or the next. Or the next.
Speaker:He might end up anywhere.
Speaker:“I know you’ve been thinking about it, pup”
Speaker:Miles had said. They’d spent the second night in the campground by Wichita together again.
Speaker:Miles curled against Dan’s chest, this time,
Speaker:needing more to be held than to hold for a change,
Speaker:as if standing up to Harve, supporting Harve, going with as close to the border that what they were doing shared with despair as it was in his power to go, had all depleted
Speaker:his strength. Perhaps not.
Speaker:He was still the one pressing the question,
Speaker:and Dan was still the one unsure why he didn’t want to answer.
Speaker:“Even if I didn’t know that you only pretended not to hear me ask, you heard me ask Owen and Ryan and Greg.
Speaker:Everyone’s thinking on how they’re gonna answer when it’s their turn.”
Speaker:Dan pulled up beside Martin and Owen,
Speaker:stopped at the crossroads to check a map.
Speaker:There were clouds on the horizon, to the west,
Speaker:but he didn’t smell rain coming and paid them no mind.
Speaker:The only ones watching the youngest and smallest of the pack, idling his bike’s motor while they chose between US highways 36 and 183,
Speaker:were a little brown bird with a long forked tail sitting on the powerline beside the road,
Speaker:and Miles. “Why are you asking, anyway?”
Speaker:he had asked, naked in the chill midnight breeze, too heated from each other for the sleeping bag, just yet.
Speaker:Miles had unburied his face from Dan’s chest and looked up at him.
Speaker:“Fair question. I don’t really have an answer, I guess. I just feel like it’s
Speaker:something I need to know.”
Speaker:A highway was chosen. The engines revved.
Speaker:The pack was moving again.
Speaker:Dan fought the urge to stay as close as possible to Harve,
Speaker:to what his bike’s saddlebag, the left one,
Speaker:the side nearer the heart, bore.
Speaker:“Tell you what,” Dan had said,
Speaker:as they finally cooled and Miles pulled the sleeping bag over both of them.
Speaker:“I’ll answer your question when you answer mine.”
Speaker:He pressed his forehead to Miles’s, as if to breathe his words into the other werewolf’s mouth.
Speaker:“Promise.” “Ok, pup.”
Speaker:Miles had said. So Dan followed his pack north,
Speaker:and thought, and wondered why he didn’t know what his answer was going to be.
Speaker:“I turned myself, deliberately.”
Speaker:said Pete. This was only the second time Dan had ever met Pete.
Speaker:“Wasn’t what I thought I was doing at the time, but that makes little difference.”
Speaker:They’d pulled in to the ranch north of Ogallala
Speaker:—the wrought iron gate said it was called ‘After Math’
Speaker:but Pete explained that had been for the previous owner, a retired math teacher,
Speaker:and instead nodded at the stolen speed limit sign, nailed to the barn door,
Speaker:on which a crude snarling wolfshead had been spray painted
Speaker:—and parked in the wide gravel drive that slowly faded
Speaker:into a grass lawn barely clinging to life under a huge gnarled locust tree.
Speaker:A woman came to the door, drying her hands on a flannel shirt,
Speaker:and Martin called her Julie and they hugged,
Speaker:and Martin asked her where the wolf dumb enough to marry her was,
Speaker:and she smacked him and said, this is a funeral, you ass, behave.
Speaker:And then Martin had introduced his sister, Julie, to Miles and Dan, who were the only ones who hadn’t met her before.
Speaker:She told them to make themselves comfortable on the porch, bathroom’s first left through the kitchen screen door but take your boots off if you go inside,
Speaker:and then she went to the edge of the yard and howled.
Speaker:A few minutes later Pete had pulled up in a rusty blue pickup,
Speaker:with a sullen looking kid in faded jeans in the passenger seat.
Speaker:He perked up when he noticed the bikes under the tree.
Speaker:Harve had come slowly down the porch steps, and they’d looked at eachother for a long time without speaking.
Speaker:Well, Pete had finally said,
Speaker:here y’all are then.
Speaker:Where’s-? Harve had jerked a thumb at his bike’s saddlebag,
Speaker:and Pete had nodded. Just the two of us left.
Speaker:Pete had said. Harve had growled something, low and hurt,
Speaker:and Pete had turned away,
Speaker:and then they’d been silent again.
Speaker:Julie’d stepped in to break the tension.
Speaker:I suppose, she’d said,
Speaker:you’re all hungry.
Speaker:So now they were standing around a picnic table and the most beat up grill Dan had ever seen,
Speaker:while Pete cooked ground mutton patties.
Speaker:He shot a sharp glance through Dan at Miles and said
Speaker:“You two don’t really know the history between me and Harve and Ted, do you?”
Speaker:“Supposing we didn’t,”
Speaker:Miles seemed to be a touch resentful, of something, maybe on Harve’s behalf,
Speaker:“what would you tell us it was?”
Speaker:Pete poked one of the mutton burgers with the spatula and decided not to flip it.
Speaker:“We knew eachother as kids.
Speaker:Ted and Harve were like eachother’s shadows, and I was the third wheel.
Speaker:Late in high school, they’re clearly together—they always had thought the sun rose and set on eachother, but that was the first I noticed it was romantical
Speaker:—and I got pissy at being left behind.
Speaker:So when Ted told us he was a werewolf, I thought, aha.
Speaker:Now I can prove he’s crazy
Speaker:and this whole gay nonsense they’re up to’ll be over with and things can go back to the way they’re supposed to
Speaker:be.” Pete returned the look Dan and Miles were giving him, blankly,
Speaker:unsurprised. “I’m not making excuses.
Speaker:It was a long time ago, and I was literally a different person.
Speaker:Point is I set out to prove there was no such thing as werewolves.
Speaker:werewolves." Beyond the picnic table, Julie was demanding that Martin get Paul,
Speaker:the sullen boy, off the motorcycle before he broke something,
Speaker:and that Paul go upstairs and put on a shirt,
Speaker:the heck had he been doing running around the south pasture without one?
Speaker:"Herding." Pete answered his wife's question, though not to her.
Speaker:"Kid's faster than a sheepdog, shifted,
Speaker:and doesn't need to be told what to do.
Speaker:I can't keep up with him like I used to.
Speaker:I get worried about how down he gets everytime he's gotta put the wolf under wraps, though.
Speaker:Can't imagine he finishes high school at this rate.
Speaker:rate." He lifted a patty from the grill. "Hand
Speaker:me the plate of buns wouldja?"
Speaker:Dan did. The rest of the pack, sensing food, huddled close.
Speaker:"One at a time!" Harve barked at them.
Speaker:"It's just mutton, not like you haven't had it before!"
Speaker:"Why is it mutton, anyway?"
Speaker:Ryan piled pickles and potato salad between the halves of his bun.
Speaker:"Why not beef?" "Don't keep cows.
Speaker:cows." Pete said, "cows are too smart, and they can smell you're a wolf underneath no matter how much you look like people.
Speaker:They get spooked, panic and stampede,
Speaker:or turn violent and try to trample you.
Speaker:But sheep are stupid all the way through.
Speaker:through." There were slices of Velveeta and spicy ketchup and paper plates and those demanded all of everyone’s attention.
Speaker:When Paul came back and Pete handed him a plate he raised his shoulders and looked away.
Speaker:“I can take care of myself, Dad.”
Speaker:Which was the first Dan had heard him talk.
Speaker:“You don’t want it, then?”
Speaker:Paul kicked the dirt and took the plate and went to eat on the porch swing.
Speaker:The effort it was taking him not to shift was visible like heat mirage coming off a desert highway.
Speaker:Pete shook his head and continued.
Speaker:“Anyway. Harve and Ted.
Speaker:So I looked up the most ridiculous way to become a werewolf I could find, cause it wasn’t like I was interested in doing
Speaker:this test fair or nothing.
Speaker:And this was before the internet, had to go to the library and everything.
Speaker:And then when I thought I’d found a method that’d prove Ted was nuts, I did it.
Speaker:It was almost summer solstice,
Speaker:and that was gonna be a Friday, and a full moon,
Speaker:and so I went out and went to sleep in the backyard
Speaker:with the light of the full moon on my face.”
Speaker:There was the general murmur, from the rest of the pack,
Speaker:of an audience who’ve heard the story before, in more than one version.
Speaker:“The plan was,” Pete slid the last patty into a bun and chewed thoughtfully,
Speaker:“I’d get up in the morning, go brag about what I did to Ted and Harve,
Speaker:and then I dunno what I thought was gonna happen after that.
Speaker:Instead I woke up about midnight, heart racing, halfway through my first transformation and no idea what was happening to me.
Speaker:Made a ruckus, howling, barking, knocking things over, had to run from the sheriff somebody called.
Speaker:I wound up hiding in a culvert in the levee most of the night.
Speaker:Parents probably would have called the police, except Ted sniffed me out and talked me down enough to shift back and go home.”
Speaker:“And that’s how your pack started,” Julie said,
Speaker:wiping a blot of ketchup from the corner of Pete’s mouth with a paper napkin.
Speaker:“Me and Marty were in another pack, some infighting there, so we split off together,
Speaker:and Ted took us in for a couple months, and by the time I was ready to move on,
Speaker:so was Pete." She waved a hand, absently, in a way that took in the ranch, the house, the barn,
Speaker:the twisted locust tree, her mate,
Speaker:their son. "I guess the rest is obvious.”
Speaker:“You coming the rest of the way with us?”
Speaker:Harve asked, when Julie went inside to start the coffee pot.
Speaker:“We got room, and it’d feel right having you there at the end.”
Speaker:Pete shook his head.
Speaker:“My wanderin’s done with,
Speaker:and I’m not part of Ted’s pack or its business anymore.
Speaker:I said goodbye when I dispersed, and I don’t guess I need to go all the way back to Washington to say it again.”
Speaker:He glanced at Harve’s bike, and his mouth tightened.
Speaker:“Uh, but if I could get a
Speaker:minute or two just to,
Speaker:I dunno, see.”
Speaker:“Yeah, sure,” Harve stood up, clearing his throat awkwardly,
Speaker:“Martin, can you maybe go see about finding a spot for everyone to bed down for the night?"
Speaker:Amid discussion of who got the one guest room—Harve, obviously
Speaker:—and whether the rest of them should bed out in the yard on in the barn,
Speaker:Dan's eyes followed Pete to the saddlebag,
Speaker:watched Harve open it,
Speaker:watched Pete reach a hand toward the urn like a worshiper holding out a palm to receive a sacrament
Speaker:before pulling back,
Speaker:his face stricken
Speaker:with the kind of longing
Speaker:that knows its object is lost beyond all possibility of return.
Speaker:“Hey,” whispered a voice,
Speaker:“Hey.” Dan had never slept on hay before.
Speaker:Old cartoons had made him expect it to be a lot softer than it was.
Speaker:Less scratchy. And they’d done nothing to warn him about the overpowering smell.
Speaker:Not that it was bad, but it was so strong it blinded his nose to everything else,
Speaker:it had even permeated his dreams. He wandered a labyrinth of Michigan dirt roads, unable to find his way to the lodge,
Speaker:in a forest that reeked of hay.
Speaker:“Hey! You awake?” He was now.
Speaker:Dan looked around the inside of the barn.
Speaker:Over in the opposite corner, Greg lay between Ryan’s legs,
Speaker:so either they’d just finished with eachother or had been just about to start.
Speaker:They were the only others awake.
Speaker:“Did you say that?”
Speaker:Ryan whispered at Dan.
Speaker:“No.” “Did you hear that?”
Speaker:Greg said, pulling his clothes back on. “Yeah.” The barn door
Speaker:slowly slid open, partway,
Speaker:and Paul’s scrawny hunch-shoulder silhouette showed against the blue moonlight.
Speaker:He turned his head, fully shifted,
Speaker:ears and fur bristling,
Speaker:gestured for them to follow then silently slipped to the side.
Speaker:The open door stood vacant, inviting, and a little ominous.
Speaker:“What do we do?” Ryan had his jeans back on, didn’t bother with his shirt.
Speaker:“I think we go after him.”
Speaker:Greg whispered. “You think he’s in trouble?”
Speaker:Dan said. “Should we get Pete and Julie?”
Speaker:“What if they’re part of the trouble?
Speaker:At least let’s hear what he has to say first.”
Speaker:The moon made the yard look flatter and smaller, and it gave everything a gloss of miniature unreality,
Speaker:like the world had an edge only a few hundred yards out beyond which nothing existed.
Speaker:Paul was nowhere to be seen, but outside the barn the smell of hay was less overpowering.
Speaker:Even in his human mask, Dan could smell that he’d gone southwest,
Speaker:toward the pastures.
Speaker:Ryan nudged his shoulder
Speaker:“What’re you waiting for? Let’s get after him.”
Speaker:He and Greg, in fur and fangs, pushed past him.
Speaker:Dan had no time to say he hadn’t shifted since Ted died, that he wasn’t sure why it felt wrong, because he was being left behind suddenly
Speaker:and that felt worse.
Speaker:He swallowed what felt like a sour clenched fist around his throat, took a deep breath, then like throwing himself from the high dive he closed his human eyes and opened other eyes.
Speaker:His real eyes. Ryan and Greg were out of sight,
Speaker:but not out of scent,
Speaker:and he didn’t need to try to find their trail,
Speaker:following it was as natural as walking and happened as automatically.
Speaker:He loped over the prairie, vaulted fences, shook at the hay dust sliding through his fur, and god it was too much, it was too sweet,
Speaker:it all dragged him back to before, to being taught to shift, to smell, to howl,
Speaker:to run through the forest on paws instead of feet.
Speaker:By Ted. He clenched his eyes shut,
Speaker:squeezed gritty tears from the corners,
Speaker:and only realized, by smell,
Speaker:that he was about to run into Greg just in time to skid to a halt.
Speaker:"I heard stories,"
Speaker:Paul was saying, a little whine in his voice.
Speaker:"I wanted to ask what it was really like.
Speaker:like." He sat on a small rise of land, indistinguishable from the grassy pasture around him,
Speaker:save that from it one could see the farmhouse.
Speaker:"Ask what what was really like?"
Speaker:Greg moved to take a seat beside the young wolf, but the moment he started to approach Paul was squatting on his haunches
Speaker:and had darted a good ten paces further away.
Speaker:"Living like in your pack.
Speaker:In a pack. Like we really are.
Speaker:are." Paul scratched the back of his neck.
Speaker:"Mom and Dad,
Speaker:they talk about how I should get to have a normal life. Like normal people do.
Speaker:I don't get why they'd think I want that.
Speaker:I'm not a normal person. I shouldn't have to pretend to be one."
Speaker:"What do you want to do?"
Speaker:Ryan said, doing his best to wag in a way that would look trustworthy and not threatening. "I want
Speaker:to be free. I want to
Speaker:wake up and know I can take myself
Speaker:anywhere I please
Speaker:and handle anything I find. I want to soak my paws in the ocean.
Speaker:I want to find out what meat tastes like when I killed it with my own teeth. I want
Speaker:to not care who sees me in my real shape."
Speaker:"Well," said Dan, "none of that's really exactly what we do, either."
Speaker:"I wanna find that out for myself.
Speaker:myself." Paul huffed, sullenly.
Speaker:"You will, someday,"
Speaker:Greg said, "you're a little too young to disperse, but not by much."
Speaker:"How long you been sneaking out at night to wolf out and run?"
Speaker:Ryan asked. "A while."
Speaker:"What happens when your folks find out?"
Speaker:"You think they don't know?"
Speaker:barked Paul. "They don't wanna admit it cause they don't want to think what it means if I don't wanna be stuck
Speaker:playing sheepdog all my damn life!
Speaker:But by god, they know damn well!" “You
Speaker:asked what it’s like.”
Speaker:Dan finally found his voice.
Speaker:"It's not like what you think.
Speaker:I was on my own, free,
Speaker:the open road and nothing holding me back,
Speaker:and I'd rather die than be back there again.
Speaker:Don't throw away what you've got here.
Speaker:You don't know how much you'll need it once you do.
Speaker:do." He hadn't known what he was going to say till he was saying it.
Speaker:“You don’t know how much you need your pack till you lose-”
Speaker:He trailed off. He felt drunk.
Speaker:"I was gonna ask you to let me come with.
Speaker:with." Paul whined. "Can't let you do that," said Greg.
Speaker:"Journeying on Pack business, that means Pack only.
Speaker:And that doesn't include you."
Speaker:"Maybe someday," Ryan said,
Speaker:"but not yet." Paul didn't shift back, but he still looked every inch the sullen kid.
Speaker:He kicked the dust and growled and the growl turned into a whimper.
Speaker:"What we can do is run with you for a while, if that's what you need.
Speaker:You're not the only one who needs it.
Speaker:it." Dan watched the three other werewolves chase eachother over the moonlit hills, sometimes on two legs, sometimes four.
Speaker:Joining in would have been too much,
Speaker:it was almost too much to hold on to the wolf shape.
Speaker:He could smell the colors that moonlight bleached to blueish silver,
Speaker:he could feel his whiskers quivering in the wind,
Speaker:he could hear the distant train whistle and the howl that he wanted to send to answer it. Every sensation was a reminder of Ted,
Speaker:was something Ted had given him,
Speaker:and he hadn't had the slightest idea how to say that and knew it wouldn't have mattered to Paul if he had said it.
Speaker:That was the real reason he couldn't come with.
Speaker:Dan waited till his eyes ached to close, and finally Paul took his abrupt leave,
Speaker:the opposite direction from the ranchhouse,
Speaker:and the three of them loped back to the barn.
Speaker:Not that Dan couldn't have made it back alone,
Speaker:but alone was the last thing he wanted to be, even for a moment.
Speaker:He lay between Ryan and Greg, and fell asleep.
Speaker:He was tired enough that he no longer minded the hay.
Speaker:"You'll want to turn north onto 385,"
Speaker:Pete told them in the morning.
Speaker:"Get into South Dakota before you turn West. Otherwise you'll wind up routed through Yellowstone,
Speaker:and that place has a damn 15 mile speed limit even if it weren't packed bumper to bumper with tourists."
Speaker:"When the time comes for you to disperse, and you still want to know what it's like,"
Speaker:Greg told Paul, who'd shown up clearly sleepless but still resentfully awake,
Speaker:"your folks'll know how to get in touch with us."
Speaker:Paul had glowered, but had stayed at the gate to watch till they were down the road and out of sight.
Speaker:They crossed the tiny corner of Wyoming like the finish line of a race and barreled into Montana,
Speaker:because the clouds on the west horizon were back, and this time the smell of oncoming rain was impossible to ignore:
Speaker:cold, wet, stuffing Dan’s nose like cotton with geosmin and petrichor and ozone.
Speaker:Any hope of camping, or riding through the storm, dwindled as the pack and cloud wall rushed toward eachother.
Speaker:It was a rampart of black himalayas, anvil crowned, cumulus mounds lit like jack o lanterns sheet lightning.
Speaker:The light turned strangely green when the uppermost fingers of the storm reached around the sun.
Speaker:But there was nothing in sight from the highway to the horizon.
Speaker:Not so much as a tractor shed.
Speaker:They raced the storm for an hour and a half. Three times Dan thought they’d lost, but three times it proved
Speaker:to be only a thin rainband, a vanguard, and they punched through it,
Speaker:dampened but undefeated,
Speaker:like it was curtain beaded with drops of water.
Speaker:They reached the motel just in time.
Speaker:The rain came like a wall, if a wall moved toward you faster than you could run.
Speaker:Dan had about three seconds to notice that the parking lot was bone dry before the rain swept over it and pounded on the corrugated metal roof,
Speaker:barely large enough for all of them,
Speaker:that stood in front of the motel door, and then he couldn’t see the parking lot anymore.
Speaker:But if he had to guess he would have said
Speaker:it probably was not still dry.
Speaker:Lightning flashed.
Speaker:The thunder was inaudible over the pounding of the rain on the metal overhead.
Speaker:If they’d still been on the road, shit,
Speaker:visibility would be nothing,
Speaker:and it’d be impossible to turn.
Speaker:Dan couldn’t hear what Miles and Greg and Harve were saying any more than he could hear the thunder,
Speaker:but he could guess they were concluding they needed to wait out the storm here.
Speaker:Mostly because he couldn’t imagine how anyone could ride through this.
Speaker:But when half an hour passed and nothing changed,
Speaker:the pack started to get antsy.
Speaker:Ryan pressed his face to the glass door.
Speaker:He turned, opened his mouth,
Speaker:thought better of it,
Speaker:then pointed at the TV inside.
Speaker:Dan was too far away to read it, but he could see the map with the serrated blue line and the red and orange boxes underneath.
Speaker:Harve and Ryan knocked.
Speaker:A shocked-looking woman with grey hair and heavy boots and heavier glasses came to the door,
Speaker:looked them all over,
Speaker:then unlocked it and they both disappeared inside.
Speaker:She locked it again behind them.
Speaker:The rest of them waited.
Speaker:Dan wasn’t out in the rain, but it was splashing enough that he was cold and damp and very unhappy anyway.
Speaker:The thought of how much colder and damper he would be if they hadn’t found shelter proved to do nothing to warm or dry him.
Speaker:When a hand clapped on his shoulder he was surprised enough to yelp. “Aah houa uh? Uhooh ehahmeh!”
Speaker:Miles’ mouth was moving but Dan couldn’t make out any of the words under the rain roar.
Speaker:Miles leaned closer,
Speaker:shouted, “Are you ok pup?
Speaker:You look real shaken!”
Speaker:Dan swallowed and nodded.
Speaker:“I’ll be better when I find out if she’s gonna let us stay!”
Speaker:It felt strange shouting about feeling unsure, but he didn’t have a lot of other options.
Speaker:Miles turned to the entrance again.
Speaker:The yellowish light through the glass door stood out on the darkness of the storm and scattered across the spreading puddles around their feet.
Speaker:His fist clenched,
Speaker:and furred up, very smoothly,
Speaker:and when he opened his mouth to answer
Speaker:Dan saw his teeth had gone pointed.
Speaker:But then the door opened and Ryan leaned out, shouting for them to cover the bikes and leave them under the carport,
Speaker:then follow him. They had rooms.
Speaker:“It’s not as weird or interesting as everyone else’s, as far as I’ve heard.”
Speaker:Martin said. “I was born in Argentina,
Speaker:but we left before I could get baptized by the President.”
Speaker:Miles sniffed at him.
Speaker:“What?!” They had two rooms, with a
Speaker:set of double doors in between that were supposed to be both lockable from either room,
Speaker:but the deadbolts were missing.
Speaker:Not broken, they’d been cleanly removed leaving a neatly cut hole of bare wood.
Speaker:The rooms smelled of old wallpaper, old carpet,
Speaker:industrial cleaning chemicals, and the long ago-ghosts of cigarettes
Speaker:from before these had been non-smoking rooms.
Speaker:There were four beds to split among the seven of them,
Speaker:which in practice turned out to be three beds to split among the seven of them,
Speaker:because everyone’s clothes were wet and there was nowhere else to lay them out to dry.
Speaker:They had stripped awkwardly,
Speaker:half taking turns, half stumbling around eachother at the same time,
Speaker:trying to avoid getting water on the beds they needed.
Speaker:Harve had sighed that he’d try to go find some place to get food, and Greg told him firmly, no,
Speaker:nobody’s going anywhere in this, but they all had emergency protein bars and jerky or
Speaker:something in their backpacks or pockets, right?
Speaker:Which was how Greg discovered that he was the only one who had that,
Speaker:and how the rest of the pack discovered that Greg
Speaker:did enough of that
Speaker:for everyone to get a couple mouthfuls, at least.
Speaker:The less-wet room,
Speaker:without the clothes drying on the bed,
Speaker:had a TV, and Owen flipped through channels till they found the weather report that had been playing in the
Speaker:office. They sprawled naked on the beds, some in their fur for warmth,
Speaker:and listened to the explanation of how, no, this wasn’t a tornadic system,
Speaker:but creekbeds and low lying areas should be aware of the danger of flash floods.
Speaker:Now, let’s take a look at how the jet stream brought the moisture into contact with cold air from Canada…
Speaker:Oh sure, explain how it started,
Speaker:Ryan had growled,
Speaker:that’s the info we need! Who wants to hear nonsense like when it’s gonna stop?
Speaker:He’ll get to it, Be patient.
Speaker:Owen had gently but firmly pulled Ryan back into the hollow between his arm and his flank.
Speaker:You’re not going anywhere till it does end, and what’ll knowing when it’ll end matter in the
Speaker:meantime? Harve’s stare had fixed on the animated grey arrow that traced the course of the jet stream, over Montana, over Idaho, over Washington,
Speaker:to the ocean. It’s not that far, is it?
Speaker:he’d said, to nobody in particular.
Speaker:I just hope the storm doesn’t knock out- Martin was halfway through the sentence when the storm knocked out the power.
Speaker:So now Dan lay between Martin and Miles, in the bed across from the one where the wet clothes lay.
Speaker:The smell of wet fur was less powerful in this room,
Speaker:but the smell of wet leather and denim was just as pervasive.
Speaker:The bedspread had been thin, strangely rigid,
Speaker:and felt more like upholstery than a blanket, and they’d kicked it off
Speaker:and instead Miles and Martin had shifted
Speaker:and cuddled close on either side of him.
Speaker:He could feel the comforting heat of their bodies, through the softness of their pelts,
Speaker:and the heat rising in his own body in response, but for now
Speaker:he was still too cold and too tired to act on it.
Speaker:There’d be time. The storm outside pounded as heavy as ever.
Speaker:“Are you making fun of me?”
Speaker:Miles said, mock-hurt, and mock-regretting his habitual question about each packmate’s turning.
Speaker:“How does Presidential Baptism make you a werewolf?”
Speaker:“No,” said Martin, “Presidential Baptism would’ve
Speaker:KEPT me from turning,
Speaker:if I’d gotten it.
Speaker:It’s called being a Lobizon. You’ve seriously never heard of this?”
Speaker:“I’ve never heard of this,” Dan said.
Speaker:“Seriously,” Miles added,
Speaker:almost at the same time.
Speaker:“In Argentina,” Martin said, like someone who had to explain that water is wet,
Speaker:“If you’re the seventh child
Speaker:you turn into a werewolf
Speaker:unless the President comes and performs your Baptism.
Speaker:If they do you get a scholarship and like a plaque that your family hangs on the wall,
Speaker:and you never turn into a wolf.”
Speaker:“I’ve got so many questions, but I’m gonna boil them down to ‘Why Argentina?’ and ‘why the President!’”
Speaker:“I dunno, they never explained it to me!
Speaker:It took years of asking questions to even find out,
Speaker:so if you have a problem with-!” “Hey,
Speaker:hey, it’s ok!” Dan stroked Martin’s head and chest till he began to calm.
Speaker:“If you don’t want to explain, you don’t have to.”
Speaker:“Sorry,” Martin whined.
Speaker:He rested his chin on Dan’s shoulder and nuzzled Miles’ cheek.
Speaker:“It was one of the reasons my last pack fell apart, actually.
Speaker:They didn’t like how I was always running off, trying to dig up info.”
Speaker:“Was that the infighting,” Dan asked “that
Speaker:Julie talked about?”
Speaker:“Yeah.” Martin buried his face against Dan’s chest.
Speaker:“Every time he’d tell me off for it, the alpha’d say it’d be my fault if the pack fell apart.
Speaker:Said I shouldn’t care more about myself than about the pack.”
Speaker:“If he was calling himself an
Speaker:‘Alpha,’” the disgust in Miles’ voice was unmistakable,
Speaker:“then that pack was gonna fall apart no matter what you did.
Speaker:So, what info did you dig up?”
Speaker:Dan could feel in his fur that Miles’s hackles were raised, and hoped Martin didn’t notice.
Speaker:“My birth mother was in Argentina for a job.
Speaker:Some of the records I found
Speaker:said she was working for some mining company,
Speaker:some said it was some kinda diplomacy job.
Speaker:Whichever it was, she apparently had an affair.
Speaker:With my father, I guess. I mean it’d have to be, seeing as I’m here.
Speaker:Never found any info about
Speaker:who he was, but I guess he made a habit of one night stands,
Speaker:because I must have been the seventh.”
Speaker:He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, and Dan winced when cool air flooded his skin,
Speaker:fought the urge to pull Martin back into place,
Speaker:pulled back deeper against Miles instead.
Speaker:“Mom didn’t know about the whole Lobizon thing,
Speaker:I guess. Wouldn’t have occurred to her to write to whatever
Speaker:Office of President Baptizing or whatever they have.
Speaker:She didn’t find out I was a werewolf till she got back to the states.”
Speaker:Martin’s shoulders were hunched, arms crossed across his chest,
Speaker:ears laid flat. “At which point she left me.
Speaker:I don’t remember much about her.
Speaker:I used to tell the last pack that she did her best but she just didn’t know how to handle a wolf kid,
Speaker:but I don’t actually know if that’s true,
Speaker:or just something I’d made up to feel better about being abandoned.
Speaker:I was in custody of the Bureau of Extrahuman Not Giving a Shit for a couple years,
Speaker:till they passed me to the pack I grew up in.
Speaker:That’s where I met Julie.
Speaker:And that’s all I know.”
Speaker:Lightning lit up the curtains and reflected in the depths of Martin’s eyes.
Speaker:“It’s kinda pathetic.
Speaker:I was 19 when that pack broke up,
Speaker:and 20 when I met Ted and Harve.
Speaker:But they were the closest thing to parents I ever had.”
Speaker:Now Dan did pull him back into the hug.
Speaker:Miles did too. They were still lying like that when Greg and Owen poked their noses in to say that the storm had finally passed,
Speaker:the map said there was a 24-hour convenience store nearby,
Speaker:and yeah it was after midnight but everyone was starving, so did anyone want to come?
Speaker:Dan almost said no, but his stomach was complaining, and their clothes were reasonably dry.
Speaker:The gas station still had power.
Speaker:They were the only ones there, apart from the single employee mopping up around a bucket that had been placed under a leak in the roof.
Speaker:He watched Miles and Martin sort through the far-too-numerous selections of mixed nuts on the shelves.
Speaker:Martin seemed tired,
Speaker:which made him unsure,
Speaker:but Miles kept nudging him forward again every time he stalled.
Speaker:Dan felt forlorn in a way he couldn’t explain, so he took his own choices to the counter
Speaker:and stared into the midnight black still-starless highway outside the tiny island of light
Speaker:that the gas station emanated,
Speaker:and the infinite oceanic silence of prairie beyond.
Speaker:“I get it,” Harve said.
Speaker:The moon overhead was waning,
Speaker:the stars thick and bright.
Speaker:“I know why you’re asking.”
Speaker:“That’s more than I know,”
Speaker:Miles answered. Harve stroked Dan’s ears and the scruff down the back of his neck to between his shoulder blades.
Speaker:“I’m not sure if I believe that.”
Speaker:The road and the world around it had still been soaked when they rode away from the motel.
Speaker:The dawn wouldn’t stay behind them,
Speaker:it reflected all around off every glistening wet surface as if they had been coated with mirrors,
Speaker:and even before the sun had risen
Speaker:the highway, the fields, powerlines were lit with diffused cold light.
Speaker:The salmon color filling the sky had tinted all the shadows blue.
Speaker:Dan had expected to be sad.
Speaker:It had taken him off guard that he was something else as well.
Speaker:Not happy, certainly,
Speaker:it was in the same direction
Speaker:as sad, as if it were something that harmonized with sorrow.
Speaker:He didn’t have a word for the feeling, but it was like being excited for summer vacation
Speaker:while saying goodbye to friends he’d never see again,
Speaker:it was like seeing unexpectedly a picture of a childhood home
Speaker:to which you could never return,
Speaker:it was like watching the hero walk away alone at the end of the movie victorious but banished,
Speaker:if it was like a desire then he didn’t know what it was for
Speaker:but he desired to keep desiring it,
Speaker:and if it was a sorrow it was one he wanted to keep feeling forever and knew he wouldn’t be able to.
Speaker:Maybe it was getting out of the plains and into the mountains.
Speaker:Maybe the long weary night of the storm had wrung the grief out of him.
Speaker:Maybe he’d just gotten so tired of grieving for Ted that his emotions were on strike
Speaker:and demanding to feel anything else,
Speaker:even if it made no sense.
Speaker:Maybe this was what the journey was supposed to do.
Speaker:“It was Ted, of course.”
Speaker:Harve said. “I didn’t know I loved him yet.
Speaker:We were dumb kids, we didn’t understand anything.
Speaker:We didn’t know what we were doing was love. I wouldn’t have guessed I was going to say what I did, and I didn’t know why I was saying it,
Speaker:but the second he was done telling me he was a werewolf I was asking him to turn me into one too.”
Speaker:Harve relaxed on his back, belly fur exposed to the stars,
Speaker:Dan and Miles on either side,
Speaker:chins and cheeks resting on his chest and stomach,
Speaker:fur soaking up sweet grass-scented dew.
Speaker:Dan kissed Miles, lazily,
Speaker:and Miles’ mouth tasted like Harve
Speaker:—skin, sweat, and seed
Speaker:—and if someone had told him that the rest of his life, humanity and homelessness, Michigan and the highway,
Speaker:Ted’s dying, had all been a nightmare he’d just woken up from, he would have believed them.
Speaker:“What did he say?” Miles asked.
Speaker:Harve said, “He refused.”
Speaker:The heat of the rising day had found them approaching the mountains,
Speaker:and it turned all the water on the road and fields into rising skeins of cool mist.
Speaker:The bikes ahead of him had torn it like speedboats through water and left him riding through turbulent wakes of fog.
Speaker:A pack of wolves in travel
Speaker:will put the oldest or most senior member at the front,
Speaker:to set the pace so that younger more energetic members don’t run ahead,
Speaker:and the leader will usually be at the rear to keep all of them herded together
Speaker:and prevent any from straying.
Speaker:Dan hadn’t known why he was remembering that now,
Speaker:as a freight train cleared the crossing where the railroad and US highway came together to share the mountain pass
Speaker:and they started their bikes again,
Speaker:but it was something Ted had told him.
Speaker:He felt Miles’s eyes on him from behind as they pulled into the foothills.
Speaker:Harve stopped talking to listen to the howls echoing over the grassy slope.
Speaker:Greg and Martin, joined shortly by Owen,
Speaker:then by Ryan. “I think he thought I was rushing into it.”
Speaker:Harve said, soaking in the echoing howls of his pack—entirely his, now he was leader alone
Speaker:—like they were a warm bath,
Speaker:“To be fair, he was right.
Speaker:I was. He could have said he was doing anything,
Speaker:running away, joining the army, hunting bigfoot,
Speaker:building a boat and sailing to Fiji,
Speaker:and I would have said take me with you before he could finish.”
Speaker:The entrance to Tomas Falls Pass State Park
Speaker:had been across a strange saddle of land, crossed by the road, where two valleys came together.
Speaker:It was as if, knowing the traveller faced hours of winding canyon between narrow cliffs,
Speaker:it had been lying in wait
Speaker:to reveal itself as dramatically as possible.
Speaker:The sun had been behind the mountains ever since they’d reached them,
Speaker:but here where the canyons crossed it had still been sunset.
Speaker:The park as they’d pulled in had been long smooth curves, cleanly scooped out of the mountains by glaciers as if from ice cream,
Speaker:now coated in short grass and heather,
Speaker:crisscrossed by rows of spruce.
Speaker:It didn’t look real.
Speaker:If someone had designed a place, specifically intended
Speaker:for shaking off grief with your clothes,
Speaker:for starting to run as you shifted,
Speaker:for feeling the cold evening air ripple over your skin as it changed to fur,
Speaker:for stumbling at the sudden intoxicating rush of smells,
Speaker:for barking and howling and chasing the echoes up the slopes toward the distant pines,
Speaker:for chasing eachother around the rocks drunk on adrenaline, for finally letting yourself be yourself
Speaker:and feel all the things you’d been choking back,
Speaker:it would have looked like this.
Speaker:It had been all Dan could do to wait till Harve gave the all clear to shift.
Speaker:“But you persuaded him.
Speaker:Obviously.” Miles said.
Speaker:“He persuaded himself.”
Speaker:Harve contradicted.
Speaker:“I just waited. Didn’t wait long.
Speaker:He didn’t want to live without me any more than I wanted to live without him,
Speaker:he…” He trailed off.
Speaker:“Fuck. But now I’m the one who has to.”
Speaker:Dan pushed himself up onto his paws.
Speaker:“If you want us to go for a bit,
Speaker:and you can be-” “God no,”
Speaker:Harve grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
Speaker:“Alone is the last thing I want.”
Speaker:“Why don’t you call the others back, pup?”
Speaker:Miles said, so Dan hopped to the top of the mossy rock
Speaker:and threw back his head and howled,
Speaker:and it didn’t matter he must have done it fifty times since they got here and found the park empty, it felt so good.
Speaker:It bubbled up from the depths of his grief and filled his lungs like magma in a volcano and erupted in a sound that said ‘come back,
Speaker:I need you, I don’t want to be alone’
Speaker:much more simply and honestly
Speaker:than words could have.
Speaker:In a perfect world he would have been outlined from behind
Speaker:with a huge full moon.
Speaker:The moon tonight was waning, and anyway it was behind the mountains right now.
Speaker:Dan got back in time to hear Harve ask
Speaker:“Why do you call him that?”
Speaker:“What,” Miles said, “Pup?”
Speaker:“Yeah. You’re less than a year older than him.”
Speaker:Miles stared into the night.
Speaker:He opened his mouth,
Speaker:but then there was the sound of paws crashing through dry bracken, and he only had time to say
Speaker:“I’ll explain it later,”
Speaker:before the rest of the pack was back.
Speaker:“Something wrong?” Owen was foremost.
Speaker:“No,” Harve said, “Well,
Speaker:not that we all didn’t know already. I just didn’t want to be alone right now.”
Speaker:They sat and laid against eachother all night,
Speaker:dozing intermittently,
Speaker:till the sun came up
Speaker:and it was time to shift back,
Speaker:reclaim their clothes,
Speaker:and get back on the road.
Speaker:“I’ll tell you mine if it’ll help.”
Speaker:Miles said. Dan stared down into the churning salt water.
Speaker:“I dunno. It’s not that I don’t want you to know,
Speaker:it feels like saying it would be giving him up.
Speaker:As long as I keep it a secret only I know, that’s
Speaker:a piece of him I’ve still got.”
Speaker:“Of him?” “Of Ted.” Miles looked hard at Dan,
Speaker:who kept his eyes fixed on the water being devoured by the progress of the ferry.
Speaker:“Ted turned you, didn’t he?”
Speaker:The brief sliver of Idaho had flashed past almost before the sun was up,
Speaker:and Washington had been eerily reminiscent of Michigan.
Speaker:Not the mountains, those were different, but the forests smelled disturbingly similar.
Speaker:They’d stayed north of the sprawl of Seattle.
Speaker:Unless you knew the one you were in very well, big cities made for nervous,
Speaker:irritable werewolves.
Speaker:That was the main reason for taking the ferry across the sound,
Speaker:the other option was a slog
Speaker:all the way around and that would have meant nearly the longest route possible through the metropolis.
Speaker:On the other side of the sea, though, was the real forest.
Speaker:Dan could smell it from here.
Speaker:“Ted turned me.” He said,
Speaker:quietly. “Everything I am I owe to him, and if I let go of that I don’t know-”
Speaker:“It’s ok.” Miles said.
Speaker:No comfort in his voice, which was comforting.
Speaker:It made it something stable and firm to hold on to.
Speaker:“You don’t have to let go of it yet.
Speaker:I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
Speaker:Dan felt his breathing slow again, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed it speed up.
Speaker:“Just…” Miles stuck his hands in his jacket pockets
Speaker:and stared at the same spot where the dark green water sucked under the boat.
Speaker:“Don’t forget, letting go of Ted is what we’re out here to do.
Speaker:It’s ok if you’re not ready to do it yet.
Speaker:We’re not at the destination yet.
Speaker:But once we get there,
Speaker:we’re gonna do our best to leave him behind.”
Speaker:That last thought hurt, almost physically.
Speaker:“How can you talk about it that way?”
Speaker:“Because it’s true,
Speaker:pup, and because somebody has to.”
Speaker:Miles didn’t react to Dan shrinking away.
Speaker:“Comfort’s fine. You need it,
Speaker:I need it, God knows Harve needs it,
Speaker:we all need it and will again, but it isn’t gonna get us to the end of the journey,
Speaker:and it isn’t gonna get us back home.
Speaker:Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on the destination.
Speaker:Somebody’s got to keep us all moving.
Speaker:Even if it hurts.” “Hurts
Speaker:who,” Dan tried not to growl, and failed,
Speaker:“me, or you?” “What’re you two talking about?”
Speaker:Harve’s boots rang on the metal steps up from the car deck where all their bikes were waiting.
Speaker:Miles caught Dan’s eyes and there was a less-than-a-heartbeat flicker of desperate weariness in them.
Speaker:“Just remembering that we never answered your question last night,”
Speaker:Dan said, “About why he calls me pup.”
Speaker:“Yeah,” Miles said, making room for Harve to join them.
Speaker:“It’s… hard, because it’s to do with him.
Speaker:And telling it feels like giving up a part of him.”
Speaker:“But that’s what we’re on this trip to do,”
Speaker:Dan continued, “I guess.”
Speaker:Had to admire, even if it was a little unfair,
Speaker:how Miles could herd him like that.
Speaker:“It was what Ted called us both,”
Speaker:Miles said, “since we joined the pack about the same time, stuck together so much. Maybe he would’ve stopped using the nickname if there’d been another new member, moved it along to them, but that
Speaker:didn’t happen.” Harve harrumphed, deliberately derailing that last sentence.
Speaker:“So, you call eachother pup then? Cause that’s what Ted called you?”
Speaker:“No,” Dan said, “just
Speaker:he calls me that.”
Speaker:“Why?” “I dunno,”
Speaker:Miles said. “I’m older?”
Speaker:“Not by much!” “I dunno either,”
Speaker:Dan said, “but it seems weird trying to think of calling him that name.
Speaker:Doesn’t fit.” “Well,”
Speaker:Harve said, “I could try?”
Speaker:They both stared at him.
Speaker:“I bet I can call you
Speaker:pup… pups…?” By the time they stopped laughing at him the ferry was nearing the other side
Speaker:and it was time to get back on the bikes.
Speaker:“I was in Utah. I used to go on these mountaineering hikes, alone.
Speaker:Not a good idea, for the record. Not safe, at least,
Speaker:not for humans. Even if you know what you’re doing, if you get lost, if you’re alone, if nobody knows where to look for you or that they should look for you. That’s how people
Speaker:go missing and never get seen again.”
Speaker:Miles tossed a smooth rock into the grey ocean beneath the rest stop parking overlook.
Speaker:“I was almost one of them.”
Speaker:They were somewhere on the corner of the outer peninsula of Washington,
Speaker:where the olympic highway following the coastline turned from going north along the sound
Speaker:to striking west toward the open ocean.
Speaker:The road had been, and according to Harve would continue to be,
Speaker:a morse code of chunks of forest broken by stretches of rocky beach and sea.
Speaker:They’d pulled into the rest stop because the sign said there were restrooms,
Speaker:and found them out of order.
Speaker:Rather than take chances on finding another, they took turns just disappearing into the woods.
Speaker:Dan had stepped back out to find Miles sitting on the guard rail next to his bike.
Speaker:Before he could ask what Miles wanted,
Speaker:he’d started talking.
Speaker:“I was dehydrated and disoriented.
Speaker:I’d been out there lost two days longer than I’d meant to be.
Speaker:I was desperate for water when I stumbled into a gully.
Speaker:There was a tiny puddle at the bottom,
Speaker:I guess from the last time it had rained, which
Speaker:who knows when that was.”
Speaker:“Is that sort of thing safe to drink?”
Speaker:“Well, for us now, sure.”
Speaker:Miles shrugged, eyes still fixed on the Utah wilderness of the past.
Speaker:“For me back then,
Speaker:probably not. Better than dying of thirst though.
Speaker:I slurped up what I could before I just got mud, and as long as I live I’m never going to be able to get the memory of the taste out of my mind.
Speaker:Or be ok with the fact that at the time, I didn’t care about the taste.
Speaker:But the important part was
Speaker:that right under the surface of the water,
Speaker:in the mud at the bottom,
Speaker:was a wolf’s footprint.” “Wait,
Speaker:you drank from a wolf’s footprint?”
Speaker:Ryan emerged from the woods, zipping himself up.
Speaker:“That one WORKS?” “Well,” Miles shot Dan a look that said that this had been meant to be a story only for him,
Speaker:but don’t tell Ryan that, or now Greg either because here he comes as well,
Speaker:guess they get it too,
Speaker:“I haven’t exactly had a chance to test it a second time.
Speaker:I spent that night feverish and shaking, wondering what had been in the water.
Speaker:I remember looking up at the stars,
Speaker:sure they were gonna be the last thing I saw,
Speaker:and then suddenly noticing that I could
Speaker:smell and hear and even see
Speaker:much better. I did my first shift without even noticing.”
Speaker:“The wolf got me out of that desert alive.
Speaker:The wolf could find food where I was starving, could
Speaker:smell where water was,
Speaker:knew how to find shade and sleep in the day and how to travel fast at night.
Speaker:And all the long way out of the desert,
Speaker:there I was, thinking that I might as well have died.
Speaker:That I was going to be a
Speaker:prisoner inside the body of a monster forever.”
Speaker:“Family turned you away when you got back?”
Speaker:Greg said. “Didn’t give them the chance,”
Speaker:Miles said. “I got back to the highway and just
Speaker:kept going. Eating from dumpsters,
Speaker:sneaking across roads between headlights.
Speaker:It took some doing, when he ran into me,
Speaker:for Ted to convince me that
Speaker:there wasn’t any monster,
Speaker:it was just a new version of me.”
Speaker:“Ted did that?” Ryan said.
Speaker:“I never heard that story before.”
Speaker:“Well, you won’t today either.”
Speaker:Miles said, nodding at the other end of the line of bikes where Harve and Martin had just gotten back.
Speaker:“Time to get back on the road.”
Speaker:Dan waited beside Miles, motors idling, as the others further ahead in the line took off, one by one, back onto the highway.
Speaker:“So,” he ventured, “your old family might have been alright?
Speaker:They might not have-”
Speaker:“Oh no, they wouldn’t have taken me back.”
Speaker:Miles shook his head.
Speaker:“I called them, you know.
Speaker:Not too long ago.
Speaker:You know what they said?”
Speaker:It was going to be Dan’s turn to ride any second.
Speaker:“What?” “They said their son died out in the desert.”
Speaker:And then he was back on the road, and the only thing there was to hear was the wind and the roaring engine.
Speaker:“I loved him.” Harve said, to the sunset and the waves.
Speaker:“I love all my pack, of course,
Speaker:but he taught me to do that.
Speaker:I loved them because they were his.
Speaker:I gave away who and what I was and what my life was supposed to be
Speaker:in exchange for a life that had him in it, and I never once looked back.
Speaker:I’d do it again, if I could.”
Speaker:He stopped and from his face Dan would have said he was going to say more,
Speaker:but he let the sound of the waves have the floor.
Speaker:They had pulled up at a place called Cape Flattery,
Speaker:which Owen showed him on the map was the furthest tip of the whole peninsula.
Speaker:From here it had looked like just a little parking lot in a forested hollow.
Speaker:But Dan had been able to hear the waves, and smell the sea.
Speaker:He didn't know if a human could have, but he could.
Speaker:Owen stepped up beside Harve at the edge of the rocky shore.
Speaker:He put one hand on the urn Harve held.
Speaker:“I was taught I was a sin,
Speaker:and even when I got away from the people who taught me that, I still believed it.
Speaker:I thought there was no point
Speaker:fighting my sin, but I still hated it.
Speaker:He was the one that taught me otherwise.
Speaker:That showed me a way to live where
Speaker:I didn’t have to think I was a sin.
Speaker:That gave me a place to live that life.” They’d
Speaker:all shifted for the walk down to the shore.
Speaker:Maybe they’d be seen,
Speaker:but Ted deserved them as their real selves.
Speaker:Greg said “He was the best of us. Of all of us.
Speaker:The rest of my life,
Speaker:I’ll remember waking up,
Speaker:on the couch in the front room,
Speaker:looking at the dark ceiling
Speaker:by the light of the big fireplace.
Speaker:I’d fallen asleep
Speaker:with my head on his lap,
Speaker:and he’d stayed there,
Speaker:just stroking my ears,
Speaker:rather than get up and disturb me.
Speaker:And I’ll never get to fall asleep against him again.”
Speaker:Greg choked up, pulled away,
Speaker:stood behind Miles like an abandoned puppy.
Speaker:The trail down wasn’t long.
Speaker:Dirt and gravel was replaced by wood planks.
Speaker:Forest gave way to rows of slender silver-barked pines,
Speaker:through which the ocean came closer and closer.
Speaker:None of them spoke on the way down.
Speaker:They followed Harvey,
Speaker:carrying the ashes,
Speaker:single file. Dan could feel the color of late afternoon sun reflecting off the water on the underside of the pine needles,
Speaker:the sound of birdsong and waves,
Speaker:the smell of salt water and sap and the pack around him,
Speaker:the feeling of moving in the slow dreamlike procession,
Speaker:all etching themselves in his memory.
Speaker:That was a relief.
Speaker:He wasn’t sure he would have known how to make himself memorize this
Speaker:if it hadn’t automatically.
Speaker:“I spent my whole life looking for home and family, even when I didn’t think I’d ever find them,”
Speaker:Martin barely raised his eyes from the shoreline.
Speaker:“He was those, to me.”
Speaker:The trees had come right up to the edge of the land.
Speaker:Below the ocean was wine bottle green except where the setting sun skated over the top.
Speaker:It sloshed through the broken cliffs and grottos
Speaker:and slid around the stony islands it had stolen from the land.
Speaker:Once they stepped down the few jagged shelves of rock to the stony beach,
Speaker:there had been nothing between them
Speaker:and the setting sun
Speaker:but water and horizon.
Speaker:“I used to live my life like it was something I was just watching happen to me,”
Speaker:Ryan said, shoulders hunched, hands thrust in his pockets.
Speaker:“When the changes came, I didn’t
Speaker:think what I should do about them, I just
Speaker:assumed I’d either live through them,
Speaker:or I wouldn’t. Ted was-”
Speaker:he broke off. “I dunno if I can do this,” he whined.
Speaker:“It’s ok, man.” Harve put one arm around his shoulders.
Speaker:The urn rested between his chest and Ryan’s.
Speaker:“I’ve got you.” Ryan drew a long shuddering breath.
Speaker:“Ted made me think about who I wanted to be.
Speaker:What I wanted to be.
Speaker:I couldn’t choose whether I’d be the wolf, but I could choose to like it.
Speaker:The version of me I am now, the version I like, the version that’s the one I decided to be?
Speaker:That’s his me.” He shut his eyes and turned away,
Speaker:leaned into Miles’ arms
Speaker:for support. “That’s who I’ll always be:
Speaker:His.” They had stood right where they could smell the high tide line.
Speaker:Owen said it was already starting to rise.
Speaker:And then Harve had taken the urn and stepped forward to where the water could lap at his boots.
Speaker:And that was where he was now.
Speaker:And now was what it was now, and Dan could feel Miles looking at him,
Speaker:and if there was ever a time to say it, it was
Speaker:now. He stepped up to Harve’s side, and put his hand on the urn.
Speaker:It was warmer than he expected.
Speaker:“Ted turned me.” he said.
Speaker:“I was homeless and hopeless, and just by chance my path crossed his.
Speaker:I was just hoping for a handout, maybe a ride to the next town.
Speaker:But he asked who I was.
Speaker:And I told him. And then he told me who he was.”
Speaker:“I don’t know why he offered to turn me.
Speaker:I should have asked him, but I was always afraid the answer would be…
Speaker:I don’t know what I thought it could have been that was worth being afraid of but I was afraid
Speaker:and I didn’t ask and now I’ll never know.
Speaker:What matters is he said that if he turned me, I could be part of his pack,
Speaker:and it’d been so long since I’d been part of
Speaker:anything that I said yes.”
Speaker:“That could have gone really badly for me,
Speaker:if he hadn’t been a good man.
Speaker:Good wolf. Whatever.
Speaker:But he was.” “I asked if he was going to bite me,
Speaker:and he said only if you want me to,
Speaker:and laughed. He didn’t. There’s
Speaker:gentler ways to turn someone.
Speaker:He held me in his arms when I got scared at my first shift.
Speaker:He called me pup.
Speaker:And then he brought me home to all of you.”
Speaker:“Which is where I belong,”
Speaker:Dan strained to keep his voice from breaking,
Speaker:“I barely recognize the person I remember being, or the things that were killing him,
Speaker:the hunger, the weariness,
Speaker:the pointlessness of living another day.
Speaker:I’ve got a life I want to live.
Speaker:Thanks to Ted.” Dan looked at Miles as he stepped back into the group,
Speaker:but his eyes were fixed on the last sliver of sun setting over the sea.
Speaker:“We all owe our lives to him,
Speaker:one way or another,”
Speaker:Miles said, “And that’s what I’d thank him for, if he were here.
Speaker:I’d thank him for all of you.
Speaker:For bringing you together,
Speaker:for making you a pack,
Speaker:because when I needed a home and a family he had one for me.
Speaker:I know how to thank him for loving me,
Speaker:for letting me love him.
Speaker:But how do you thank someone for loving everyone else?”
Speaker:Harve laid the urn in the inch or so of rising tide that was swirling around his boots.
Speaker:They pulled back to the trees at the top of the rocks,
Speaker:and huddled together
Speaker:to watch the sea rise,
Speaker:claim it, and covered it.
Speaker:The sun was down,
Speaker:and not even wolf eyes could tell whether the urn had been washed away.
Speaker:They howled last goodbyes,
Speaker:low and lonely and not particularly loud.
Speaker:Their grieving pooled together, leaving them no longer with each their own grief,
Speaker:but all in only one grief together.
Speaker:Dan couldn’t have said whose it was.
Speaker:It was his, it was Harve’s, it was Miles’s,
Speaker:it was Ryan’s and Owen’s and Greg’s and Martin’s.
Speaker:It was the pack’s.
Speaker:It was Ted’s. “Well?”
Speaker:Dan said to Miles,
Speaker:back in the parking lot at the top of the trail.
Speaker:“Well what?” “You said if I answered your question, you’d answer mine.”
Speaker:“Actually,” Miles answered,
Speaker:“you said that. But I agreed.”
Speaker:Miles looked around. Martin and Owen were closest, but they were holding eachother in tears and oblivious.
Speaker:“C’mon.” Dan said,
Speaker:“please. Why ask how everyone turned?”
Speaker:“Because someone should know,”
Speaker:Miles said. “Ted knew, I’m sure.
Speaker:Ted knew all of us better than we’ll ever know ourselves,
Speaker:and somebody has to do that for him now he can’t anymore.
Speaker:I don’t know if that’s me,
Speaker:and I don’t know if I can but…
Speaker:somebody has to try.”
Speaker:“Harve said he thought he knew why. Did he?”
Speaker:“It’d make sense if he did.”
Speaker:Miles said. “It’s the sort of thing that’d occur to him.”
Speaker:The night had begun in earnest now.
Speaker:Most of the forest around them was invisible,
Speaker:only knowable by sound and scent.
Speaker:Dan had expected the answer to make sense,
Speaker:but in a way that made everything else make sense too, and this was just…
Speaker:common sense. He decided that was good enough for him, though.
Speaker:“That wasn’t when I expected you to answer my question, pup.”
Speaker:Miles started his engine.
Speaker:“That wasn’t when I expected to answer it.”
Speaker:Dan pulled on his helmet.
Speaker:“But like you said,
Speaker:we came out here to let him go.”
Speaker:Miles nodded. “Well,
Speaker:nearest campground’s likely about twenty to thirty minutes away, now it’s dark.
Speaker:Dunno how much I’ll be able to sleep, but,”
Speaker:He shrugged and scraped up the kickstand with his boot,
Speaker:“we should all try.
Speaker:It’s a long ride back home.”
Speaker:“Let me know if you need help getting to sleep.”
Speaker:Dan said. He didn’t feel less sad, but he did feel lighter.
Speaker:No longer empty inside.
Speaker:No longer tired. The sadness was no longer a problem, no longer an enemy, it was all right.
Speaker:And of course it felt better, he decided,
Speaker:that was exactly what the trip was supposed to do.
Speaker:So he had to make sure the rest of his pack got there, too.
Speaker:“Or if anyone else does.”
Speaker:“I will. Thanks, pup.”
Speaker:Miles touched his cheek.
Speaker:“I’m really glad Ted turned you, for what it’s worth.” “Huh!
Speaker:Not as glad as I am!”
Speaker:Dan said. The pack followed Miles into the night.
Speaker:And if Ted, his way parted from them at last,
Speaker:took another road, to other shores,
Speaker:there were none to see,
Speaker:or tell of it. The End.
Speaker:This was “The Last Journey Of Theodore Vulcek,
Speaker:Leader, Beloved Husband,
Speaker:and Pack Brother” by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:read for you by the author himself.
Speaker:As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Voice of Dog