Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

My father released his hold on Lark, who rolled away, coughing. “You’re fired,” he said.

Lark tried to argue, but my father just ignored him and walked back into the enclosure where he’d been working on the pond. I waited until Lark cursed a blue streak and stalked up the hill to the trailer to collect his belongings. Then I let myself through the safety gate and sat on the grass outside the enclosure where my father was working.

“I don’t care that he had a few drinks,” he said bitterly, as if we had been in the middle of a conversation and he needed to defend himself. “But he should know better than to do it on the job.” He dug his shovel into the ground and upended a heavy chunk of earth. “Think about it. A drunk guy staggering around. What’s that look like to you?”

“Uh… a drunk guy staggering around?” I said.

“Well, to a wolf, it looks a hell of a lot like a calf that’s been wounded. And that triggers the prey drive. Didn’t matter that the wolves know Lark, or work with him every day. The way he was moving was enough to make him lose his identity to the pack. They would have killed him, if they could have.”

He jabbed his shovel into the ground so that it stood upright like a soldier. “It’s a good life lesson, whether or not you ever work with wolves, Edward,” my father said. “No matter what you do for someone-no matter if you feed him a bottle as a baby or curl up with him at night to keep him warm or give him food so he’s not hungry-make one wrong move at the wrong moment, and you become someone unrecognizable.”

That comment, of course, would become personal years later. My father had made one wrong move at the wrong moment. I realize, with a start, that after this morning he might accuse me of the same.

The drunk at my feet begins to snore. A moment later, a police officer walks in. “Showtime,” he says. I look up at the clock and realize I’ve spent three hours in here, most of it in the quicksand of memories about my father.

It just goes to show you: you can put nine thousand miles between you and another person. You can make a vow to never speak his name. You can surgically remove someone from your life.

And still, he’ll haunt you.

We are back in the same interrogation room I was in before, except now, in addition to the detective and Joe, there’s a guy with a very bad comb-over and eyes so red I would assume he was stoned if I didn’t think that was particularly risky behavior for someone who routinely works in a police station. “All right,” the bail commissioner says. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment to get my conjunctivitis diagnosed, so let’s make this snappy. What’ve you got, Leo?”

The detective hands him a piece of paper. “This is a pretty serious case, Ralph. It’s not just second-degree assault; the accused also interfered with the duties of hospital personnel and adversely affected the health of a patient.”

What does that mean? I think. Is my father worse off than he was before?

“We’re asking that bail be set at the amount of five thousand dollars with surety,” the detective finishes.

The bail commissioner reads the paper the detective has handed him. “Pulled the plug ?” he says, looking at Joe. “Mr. Ng? What do you have to say?”

“This is my stepson we’re talking about,” Joe begins. “This is the town where he grew up, and he’s surrounded by family and friends. He’s got ties to the community, and no funds with which to flee. And I give you my word I will personally not let him out of my sight.”

The commissioner rubs his eyes. “The purpose of bail is to secure the accused’s attendance in court. We don’t practice preventative detention in Beresford, Mr. Warren, so I’m going to set bail in the amount of five thousand dollars personal recognizance. You’ll be released on your own promise to appear in court tomorrow morning, to keep the peace, and to be of good behavior. You won’t be able to leave the state of New Hampshire while this matter is pending. I’m going to make it a condition of your release that you have a psychiatric evaluation, and I’m going to issue a no trespass order in and around the hospital.”

“Wait a second,” I say, already breaking my promise to Joe to be silent. “That’s not going to work. My father’s in there, and he’s dying-”

“Not quick enough for you, from the sound of it,” the detective says.

“I will not let my client be harassed,” Joe argues.

The bail commissioner holds up his hands. “Shut up. Both of you. I’ve already got pinkeye; I don’t need a migraine. You’ll be arraigned tomorrow in district court.”

“What about my father?” I press.

That’s when Joe stomps hard on my foot.

“What did you say, Mr. Warren?” the commissioner asks.

I look at him. “Nothing,” I murmur. “Nothing at all.”

A kill is a scary place to be, six inches away from the snarling, snapping jaws of a wolf on the other side of you. It’s feast or famine for wolves, and most of the time during a kill they haven’t eaten for several days, so this is a battle for survival. If you move too far to the left or turn the wrong way, they’ll let you know, growling and biting at you, and yet even in all that tremendous energy and frenzied excitement and hot anger, they pull their punch, so that the discipline you suffer isn’t nearly what the prey animal has coming.

Most of the time, the wolves knew I couldn’t keep pace with them and would be more of a hassle during a hunt than an attribute. In a straight chase, I couldn’t move fast enough; I didn’t have the same weaponry to bring down prey, I couldn’t even defend myself with my thin skin. But after the snows came, the hunting technique changed to an ambush. For the few months that two feet of snow covered the ground, I was not only invited to participate in the hunt, I was expected to be there.

In an ambush, the pack needs the weight of the big males. Sometimes they need a prey animal to turn and run into some brush, where other wolves jump out and surround it while the hunters make the kill. I was settled in a little bowl dug out of the snow with the youngsters in the pack and the alpha, waiting for the big black wolf and the other adult female to run the quarry toward us.

We had been waiting for days-not moving because we’d disturb the snow and tip off the prey. Even with wolves on either side of me, I was cold, and I started to occupy myself by letting my mind run wild. These wolves were masters of camouflage. They knew the wind direction, and how to disguise their scent. But was the deer working on instinct, too? Would it know, from years of ancestral experience, that if a wolf chases you like this at this speed in this formation, it’s going to lead to an ambush rather than a straight chase? Would it know from some rogue change in the wind that there is trouble up ahead?

My thoughts abruptly scattered as the alpha started eating snow. The young male immediately followed her lead, burying his muzzle into the snow and chowing down. The young female reached up to a branch where an icicle was hanging like the ornament on a Christmas tree, and snapped it off between her teeth. She sucked on it like a lollipop.

Why on earth are they doing that? I wondered. It wasn’t anything I’d seen in the three days we’d been camped in this copse. Maybe the wolves just needed to move around a bit because we’d been in one place for so long. Maybe they were thirsty.

But the wolves never had been skittish before, and since I wasn’t thirsty, they probably weren’t, either.

I was wondering if the deep snow was dehydrating them in some way when the alpha snapped silently at me and wrinkled her muzzle, then buried it in the snow again. I got the hint. I began scooping up handfuls of snow and eating it like there was no tomorrow.