Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

I don’t, now.

The officer snaps off the gloves and tosses them in a trash can. Then he hands me a laundry sack. Inside are blue scrubs, some T-shirts, underwear, shower shoes, a towel. “This is a complimentary gift from the manager on duty,” he says. “If you have any questions, you can call the front desk.” He starts laughing, as if this is actually funny.

I am taken to a nurse, who checks my blood pressure and my eyes and ears and sticks a thermometer in my mouth. When she leans down to listen to my lungs with a stethoscope, I whisper in her ear. “There’s been a mistake,” I murmur.

“Beg pardon?”

I look around to make sure that the door is closed and that we are alone. “I don’t belong here.”

She pats my arm. “You and me both, sweetheart,” she says.

She turns me over to a different officer, who marches me into the belly of this jail. There are double gates at several steps, manned on both sides by people in control towers, who slide the doors open and closed in sequence. When we step through one of the portals, the officer reaches into a bin and hands me another laundry sack. “Sheets, blankets, and a pillowcase,” he says. “Laundry’s every two weeks.”

“I’m only here for the weekend,” I explain.

He doesn’t even look at me. “Whatever you say.”

We are on a catwalk, with metal that clangs every time I put down my foot. The cells are on one side. Each has a bunk bed, a sink, a toilet, a television with a plastic casing so that you can see its guts. The inmates we pass are mostly asleep. The ones who are awake whistle or call out as I walk by.

Fresh meat, I hear.

Ooh, we got us a baby.

I find myself thinking of my father, instructing me as I approached the wolf enclosure for the first time: They can tell if your heart rate goes up, so don’t let them know you’re afraid. I keep my eyes straight ahead. My watch has been confiscated, but surely it’s already late afternoon; it is only a matter of hours before I can leave.

And again, I hear my father’s voice. It’s hard for me to describe what it was like, locking myself inside the enclosure that first time. At the beginning, all that existed was pure panic.

“Vern,” the officer says, and he stops in front of a cell that has one inmate inside. “Got a roommate for you. This is Edward.” He unlocks the door and waits for me to move peacefully inside.

I wonder if anyone has ever just absolutely refused. Hung back, clawed at the iron bars, hurled himself over the catwalk’s railing.

When the door is locked behind me again, I look at the man sitting on the bottom bunk. He has a buzz of red hair and a beard with food caught in it. One of his eyes bounces and veers to the left, as if it’s not tethered inside his head. He has tattoos on every inch of skin I can see-including his face-and his fists look like Christmas hams. “Fuck,” he says. “They brought me a faggot.”

I freeze, holding the bag with my sheets and towels. Which is all the confirmation he needs.

“You try to suck my cock in the middle of the night and I swear I’ll cut your balls off with a butter knife,” he says.

“That won’t be a problem.” I move as far away from him as possible (not easy, in a space that is six feet by eight feet) and climb into the upper bunk. I don’t bother to make the bed. Instead I lie down and look at the ceiling.

“What are you in for?” Vern asks after a minute.

I consider telling him I’m waiting to be arraigned for murder. Maybe it will make me seem tougher, like someone who should be left alone. But instead I say, “The free food.”

Vern snorts. “It’s cool. I get it. You don’t want anyone knowing your business.”

“I’m not trying to be an enigma-”

“Yeah, damn straight you’re not sticking some hose up my ass-”

It takes me a minute to figure that one out. “Not an enema , ” I say. “And I’m not hiding anything. It’s that I don’t belong here.”

“Shit, Eddie,” Vern says, laughing. “None of us do.”

I turn to my side and put the pillow over my head so I don’t have to hear him anymore. It’s just a few nights, I tell myself again. Anyone can survive a few nights.

But what if it isn’t? What if Joe isn’t able to make all this go away, and I have to wait here for six months or a year until we go to trial? What if, God forbid, I wind up convicted of attempted murder? I couldn’t live like this, in a cage.

I’m afraid to close my eyes, even after the lights go out hours later. But eventually I fall asleep, and when I do, I dream of my father. I dream he’s in a jail cell, and I am the only one with the key.

I reach into my pocket to get it, but there’s a hole in the lining of my pants, and no matter how hard I search, I can’t find it.

I once saw a wolf commit murder.

There was a lone wolf that kept crossing the boundaries of the other packs and poaching off the livestock from farms in the area. No matter how many times my pack warned him off through howling, he wouldn’t stay away. It wasn’t my decision to act upon, however, but rather the alpha female’s. Every time this wolf was near our territory, tension rose. The wolves in my pack would fight with each other. At night, other packs would call, telling him to get lost.

One day, the big black wolf-the beta rank-disappeared on a patrol with the other female. That in and of itself was not unusual; it was his job within the pack. However, this time, he didn’t return. Four days passed… five… six. I started to worry-to believe he was gone for good-and then the female came back alone, confirming my fears. That night, our pack howled, but it wasn’t a location call. It was pain, wrapped in the skin of a single note. It was what we did, when we wanted to sing someone home to us.

I have been on the receiving end of that call. In the forest you have no direction, so when this constant vocal tone comes out of nowhere like the beacon of a lighthouse, it gives you a direction to follow, to tell you where your pack is waiting. But the beta didn’t turn up. Three nights of calling, and he never answered.

I was sure he had been killed.

Then one night, when we howled, there was an answer. Not from the black wolf but from the lone wolf who’d been such a hassle to our pack.

The alpha continued to call to him. Far be it from me to question her motives, but I imagined this would be a disaster. Here she was advertising the vacancy in the pack, inviting him to join, and he would be nothing but a nuisance.

Eventually the calls of this lone wolf came closer, and he approached the pack. Everyone was on guard; after all, this was an unknown quantity for the family, and the first meeting would feel like an awkward dance, the beginning of an arranged marriage. No sooner had he loped into the clearing where we were waiting for him, however, than the big black beta wolf barreled out of the cover of the forest and ambushed him. Immediately the other female and the young male leaped forward to help fight.

The lone wolf was dead within seconds. Lying still on the ground, he had the look of a cross between a feral dog and a wild animal, which would explain his bad behavior. The beta was surrounded by the rest of our pack, which licked at his muzzle and rubbed against him in solidarity, in welcome.

I don’t think I’m reading human emotion into what happened that day when I say it was a coordinated attack. For the pack to intentionally create a ruse, where the beta was sent off to lie in wait-in silence-in order to lure the lone wolf closer; for the beta to wait for the lone wolf to be drawn out from his cover, so that he could be taken down with the help of the rest of the waiting pack-well, it was premeditated, and malicious, and very, very necessary at the moment to keep the family safe.