Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

“Well,” Cara replies, undaunted, “I need a lawyer.”

“I already told you I don’t try civil suits-”

“A temporary public guardian was appointed for my father. I don’t even know what that is, really. But there’s a court date on Thursday to pick a permanent guardian, and I have to let the judge know that I’m the only person who wants to keep my father alive.”

Watching Cara in action, I am impressed. She is a terrier with her teeth sunk into the mailman’s pants cuff. She may be the underdog in size and in scope, but she isn’t giving up without a fight.

Boyle looks from Cara to me. “Your kid,” he says, “is quite a piece of work.”

When he says that, I realize who Cara reminds me of at this moment.

Me, back when I was a reporter, and wouldn’t stop until I got the answer I wanted.

“Yes,” I say. “I couldn’t be more proud.”

Maybe Cara chose to live with Luke instead of Joe and me. Maybe she is willing to give up everything, now, to care for her father. Yet in spite of her infallible allegiance to Luke, it turns out she is very much her mother’s daughter.

Danny Boyle scribbles something on the back of one of his business cards. “This woman used to work for me. She practices law part-time now. I’ll call and tell her you’ll be in touch.” He hands the card to Cara. “And after that,” he says, “I never want to hear from you again.”

There is a very real pecking order in a wolf pack, a fluid and constant test of dominance and respect. If a higher-ranking wolf comes toward me, I am supposed to move my weaponry-my teeth-from right to left, horizontally. If, on the other hand, I am passing by that wolf, I should not approach too quickly or I’ll find him stiffening and leaning forward, holding the position until I lower myself. Once he looks at me, making the eye contact to beckon me forward, I can inch closer-and even then, I have to pass on the side, avert my head and my teeth to greet him, proving that I am not a threat.

Needless to say, I didn’t know any of this at first. Instead, I was just my stupid human self with a true gift for getting in the way of wolves who ranked higher than me. The first time I tried to get too close to the beta without a formal invitation, he schooled me. We were in the clearing, and it had started to rain-a nasty, cold sleet. The beta had the good fortune to be positioned under the thickest cover of trees, and I thought there was plenty of room beside him. So the other young male wolf and I decided to share the space.

The beta’s eyes slitted and he growled, a low rumble, but I didn’t get the message. When I was about twenty feet away, he showed his teeth. The young male immediately ducked sideways, but when I didn’t, the beta growled again, deeper in his throat.

I still didn’t see this as a warning. After all, he’d been the one to engage me first, to invite me to travel with the pack. So you can imagine how my heart rate skyrocketed when, in an instant, he closed the distance between us and snapped at me, his teeth clamping centimeters away from my face.

I was rooted to the spot with fear. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The beta gripped me with his jaws, his teeth and breath sealing over my face. He roughly turned my head to the left and down, teaching me the correct response. Then he snapped at me, growled deeply, showed his teeth, and growled lightly, reversing the lesson.

Later that day I was sitting with my knees drawn up when the beta loped closer and suddenly lunged, grabbing my throat on the underside. I could feel his teeth sinking into my skin, and instinctively I rolled to my back, a position of utter subordination. He wanted to make sure I’d learned what he’d been trying to teach me earlier, I realized. He squeezed my neck harder, stealing my breath. You know what I am capable of, he was saying. And yet this is all I’m going to do to you. This is why you can trust me.

The highest-ranking wolf in the pack isn’t the one that uses brute force. It’s the one who can, and chooses not to.

It is telling, I suppose, that all of my work outfits are different shades of gray. Not just for the metaphorical value, but because it means that in the morning, I don’t have to agonize over whether I should wear the green blouse or the blue and if one is too showy for my job as a public guardian. The sad truth is that when it comes to making personal decisions, I find it difficult to commit, whereas when it comes to organizing the affairs of others, I am a natural.

The Office of Public Guardian in New Hampshire is a nonprofit that serves nearly a thousand people who are mentally ill or developmentally disabled, who have Alzheimer’s or who have suffered a traumatic brain injury. We are assigned to cases by judges who receive requests for temporary and permanent guardianship. Yesterday, my boss tossed another file onto my desk. It was not the first time I’d been appointed a temporary advocate for someone with a brain injury, but this case was different. Usually, our office is pressed into service when a hospital can’t find someone willing or able to make medical decisions for a ward. From what I’ve read, however, the problem here is that both of the man’s children are jockeying for that position, and things have spiraled out of control.

Apparently I am the only person in my office who has never heard of the ward, Luke Warren. He is famous, or at least as famous as a naturalist can be. He had a television show on a cable network that showcased his work with wolf packs, but I only listen to the news and to PBS. It is La-a (pronounced Ladasha, which leads me to wonder if she’s as frustrated by her moniker as I am by my own) who drops the book off on my desk this morning. “Helen,” she says, “thought you might like this. Hank left it behind when he moved out, the pig.”

Who knew that Luke Warren was not only a television personality and wildlife conservationist but also an author? I run my hand over the raised foil lettering of the title of this autobiography. LONE WOLF , it reads. ONE MAN’S JOURNEY INTO THE WILD. “I’ll give it back when I’m done,” I promise.

La-a shrugs. “It’s Hank’s. Which means you can burn it as far as I’m concerned.” She touches the cover of the book, with its photo of Luke Warren being smothered in kisses by a presumably wild animal. “Sad though. That someone could go so fast from this”-she moves her hand to the dark case folder-“to this.”

Most of the wards I’ve worked with have not published autobiographies and do not have YouTube footage of themselves in their prime at work. In this, it is easier to get a sense of who Luke Warren was before his accident. I pick up the book and read the first paragraph:

What I get asked all the time is: How could you do it? How could you possibly walk away from civilization, from a family, and go live in the forests of Canada with a pack of wild wolves? How could you give up hot showers, coffee, human contact, conversation, two years of your children’s lives?

When I become someone’s guardian, even in a temporary position, I try to slip under that person’s skin, to find something within myself that’s similar to him. You would think that a forty-eight-year-old single woman with a monochromatic wardrobe and a manner so quiet that librarians ask her to speak up might not be able to relate to a man like Luke Warren, but the connection I feel is immediate, and intense.

Luke Warren would have been deliriously happy to shed his human skin and become a bona fide wolf.