Aurendel - Strays

Jack Randolph had way too much time for thinking about his dilemma. It was bad enough he was stuck first with tending an injured wolfman and tracking down--for pete’s sake--a magic mirror to send it home. Now he was also supposed to go “hunting” for the self-same varmint. And he had two whole days to cogitate and ruminate, to the great detriment of his mustache.

Oh, certainly the wait--for Kate to bring tranquilizers for his trank gun, for the gamewarden to come get him, for Downey to come back from his antique dealing--gave him time to attempt to get his novel in shape to his editor’s satisfaction. But damned if he could concentrate worth a hill of beans. On Thursday George, his editor, had called all in a swivet right after the sheriff and the gamewarden left, asking if he’d put the manuscript in the mail yet. Of course he hadn’t, and had to fob him off with more excuses. The wolf was bored that afternoon and pestered him into showing it how to use the tv and stereo. As long as it listened to music, that was bearable. But when it watched the idiot box, it kept interrupting his attempts at writing with demands for explanations of things. At last he had to growl a few choice epithets and banish it from his study, locking the door behind it. He finally emerged when the wolf’s complaints of hunger got loud enough to penetrate his writer’s block.

Jack remained surly over supper, not noticing what he ate, lost in thought. He was marginally aware of the wolf watching him, but he ignored it. He returned to work immediately after washing the dishes, muttering, “I’ve got to get this thing finished, or I can forget publishing it.” He finally knocked off about 11:00 p.m., to find the wolf still watching tv. “Watch too much of that and you’ll rot your brain,” he told it.

“Huff-puff! I’ll be careful,” replied the wide-eyed wolf. “Good night, Jack.”

It must have been about 2:00 a.m. when Jack woke suddenly. Wondering what woke him, he got up to check on the wolf. The guest room door was open, the bed still made. “If it’s still glued to the tube, I’m smashing the satellite dish,” Jack muttered to himself. But the wolf was not in the living room, and the tv screen was dark. Investigating, Jack found the sliding glass door to the back porch unlocked, the wolf’s clothes and crutches abandoned on a chair on the screened porch.

Swearing profusely, Jack sat down in his armchair to wait, feet propped up on the ottoman. Damned if he’d go hunting tonight as well as tomorrow night.

Jack started awake suddenly, embarrassed to realize he’d fallen asleep while watching for the wolf, which was standing next to the armchair, leaning on its crutches, a crooked smile on its face as it looked down at him. “Waiting up for me, Jack?” it asked.

Jack harrumphed indignantly, and, realizing that daylight was coming through the windows, demanded to know what in tarnation the wolf thought it was doing.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” it replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why, Jack, I just thought I’d help with your hunting tonight.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that, somehow, but decided to let it ride. “Well, since you’re in the mood to be helpful,” he grumped, “how about helping make breakfast?”

“It would be my pleasure,” answered the wolf.

The wolf was in so helpful a mood that after breakfast it offered to act as a sounding board for Jack’s writing problems. With some misgiving, he took it up on the offer.

“Thing is,” Jack said, “George wants me to throw in a romantic interest. Says readers want it. But what the devil have a safari hunter’s adventures got to do with a romance? It’s nonsense!” he exploded, giving the table a thump with his open hand.

“It appears to me, Jack,” responded the wolf, “that your protagonist is a solitary sort. You’re right--there are few women in the story, and it’s unlikely that Travis would become attached to one of those referred to as ‘natives’.”

“Exactly!” Jack exclaimed, and would have continued if the wolf hadn’t held up a hand to forestall his next assertion.

“But,” continued the wolf, “just because Travis, the protagonist, is unmated--um, unmarried--doesn’t preclude any and all love interest. For example, you mention a native woman who does the laundry and cooking for the safari members. She’s married to one of the native men working as drivers, isn’t she? You could show more of the two of them.”

“What the devil for?”

The wolf sighed reproachfully. “Jack, you don’t even give this woman a name.”

“What do names matter to you?”

“Wolves don’t need them, but humans do. She’s human, Jack.”

Somehow Jack got the feeling there was something beneath the wolf’s words, something it wasn’t saying. He didn’t care for that at all.

“I’ll think about it,” he said shortly. “Seems silly, though. Off the whole point.”

“That depends on the point, Jack. You seem to want to describe the peoples and places, the animals and events, in great detail. Yet you forget the very individuals that are continually present with the group. Aren’t they also worthy of such attention?”

Jack scowled. “I said I’d think about it,” he said, and the wolf let the matter drop. Jack hoped he could integrate the wolf’s suggestions into his book before the evening’s company arrived to disrupt his efforts. He wasn’t looking forward to tonight’s hunt. By the time Kate arrived at Jack’s house with the drug to fill his tranquilizer darts, he was beside himself with impatience.

“You’re late,” he grumped at her as she stepped through the front door.

“And good evening to you, too, Jack,” she chided him. “It’s still more afternoon, really, than evening. I’d hardly call that late,” she said, gesturing at the puffy clouds in the sky visible through the window. They were just beginning to turn pink and gold with sunset. “And you’re in luck--it doesn’t look like it’ll rain.”

Jack harumphed and took the plastic bag of bottles from her. “I’d better fill those darts. No tellin’ how soon the sheriff and this Fisher will be here.”

“Have you had supper yet?” Kate asked.

“Wolf’s in the kitchen fixin’ sandwiches for everybody.”

“Some host you are, Jack, making your guest--your injured guest-- do all the work.” With that, Kate headed for the kitchen while Jack sat down on the couch with darts, trank gun, flashlight, and so forth spread out on the coffee table in front of him. Of course, it was all stupid and unnecessary, but he had to make a good show of it anyhow.

As Kate entered the kitchen, Harold looked up from his sandwich making and smiled at her. “Hello, Kate,” he said. Well, she thought, that makes up a bit for Jack’s ungracious greeting. “I didn’t hear your car,” he said.

“I walked from my house.”

“Oh. We’ve been expecting you a while,” he commented--obviously a nudge for why she was delayed. She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was almost seven-thirty. No wonder she was hungry.

“After I left the clinic for the day I went home and spent a while on my exercise machine, then had to get cleaned up and changed before coming over. I didn’t realize it was getting so late.”

Just then they heard a the doorbell, followed by voices. Jack strode into the kitchen. “We’ll take our sandwiches and go. Need to start while there’s still about an hour’s daylight.” The two other men followed Jack into the room, and they each helped themselves to sandwiches and cans of soda. The sheriff and the warden thanked Harold, tipped their hats to Kate, and headed back out.

“Kate,” said Jack, pausing in the doorway, “would you like a lift back to your place?”

“Actually,” she replied, “I thought I’d stay and keep Harold company while you’re gone.”

Jack started. He hadn’t thought of that. He glanced from Kate to the wolf and back. “Suit yourself,” he said. But as he turned to leave, he thought he saw the wolf stifle a smirk behind Kate’s back.

“Well!” exclaimed Kate, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Somehow it strikes me as funny that these three are going hunting a wolf when there’s one right here, right, Harold?”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed, “very funny.” He grinned slyly, and Kate wondered. It hadn’t really been that clever a remark.

Something about this Harold Wolf bothered her, and she wasn’t sure why. He was evasive about himself in their prior conversations, and while she knew Jack was no sucker, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of the strange young man being there alone with Jack’s things. She’d stay and keep an eye out. Or so she told herself.

Jack sat in the passenger seat of Gamewarden Fisher’s new extended-cab truck, staring intently out the window at nothing but scrub pine trees as they drove south on CR 347. Sheriff Taylor sat in the back, telling Fisher about the latest wolf sighting.

Taylor was saying, “Now, Mr. Fisher, if you’ll just head west on the next dirt road, we’ll go down by Elzey Lukens’ place. She called me this mornin’, sayin’ her poultry had a fit last night late.”

“Doesn’t take much to scare a chicken,” Jack observed.

“Sheriff, call me Sonny,” said Fisher. “Every time I hear someone say ‘Mr. Fisher,’ I look ‘round for my dad.” Then he turned to Jack. “Chickens may be excitable, as you say, Mr. Randolph, but if Miz Lukens has geese, they’re right good watchdogs.”

“She does,” said Taylor.

“Any missin’ this mornin’?” Jack asked.

“Nope.” Taylor replied. “Elzey switched on the porch light and went out with her shotgun when she heard the ruckus.”

Jack nodded.

“Did she see anything?” Fisher asked.

“Said she saw two glowin’ eyes, all green in the dark, then it took off,” Taylor answered.

“Most likely a panther,” Jack grunted.

Fisher drove up the dirt road to Elzey Lukens’ house. When they got to the fence gate, Jack hopped out of the truck to open it, and closed it behind as the truck passed through, then walked up to the ramshackle old house as the warden parked his truck.

Elzey Lukens’ place was a story and a half cracker house raised up off the ground about three feet or so, except where it’d settled. The front porch sagged dangerously, and its white paint was peeling badly. Chickens, ducks, and geese wandered at will through the patchy yard. Half the yard was a shallow muddy pond choked with duckweed and cattails.

The men walked up on the porch, and Taylor rang the bell. Or tried to. It didn’t seem to work, so he shrugged and, opening the tattered screen door, knocked loudly. After a moment the men heard boards creaking, and then the door was opened by a middle-aged woman in a shapeless housecoat. She stared at them for a moment, then said, “You took yer time, sheriff.” She did not invite them in.

Taylor shuffled his feet and said, “Ma’am, we’re lookin’ to find this wolf and catch it. Can you show us where you saw it?”

She nodded, said, “Meet you ‘round back,” and shut the door.

The men walked around to the back of the house, where Ms. Lukens came out her back door to meet them. She pointed at a broken-down looking wooden structure, not big enough for a shed, but too big for a doghouse. Judging by the activity of the poultry, Jack guessed this was their coop.

“It was right over here,” Ms. Lukens said, walking toward a scraggly azalea bush under an old oak tree that shaded the coop. “When I walked out, it moved off that way,” she added, pointing toward a patch of palmetto. “I think it jumped the fence over there.”

Jack frowned. If she had seen the wolf, it certainly couldn’t jump a five-foot fence in its condition.

The men carefully investigated, and Fisher soon announced he’d found tracks in the sandy soil. He looked at them, shaking his head.

“Look here, Jack, Vin, these prints are huge.”

Jack looked. “Coulda been a big dog.”

“I don’t think so, Jack. I’ve got a feelin’.” Fisher was a stubborn one. He moved over to where Ms. Lukens said the wolf jumped the fence. “Well, well,” he said, kneeling. “Lookit these tracks.”

No grass grew in the oak’s shade, where the chickens always scratched. And it was plain that the animal that made the marks in question was limping badly.

“No wonder it came so close to the house,” Fisher said. “It’s hurt too bad to hunt for itself.” He grinned. “This could be easier than I thought.”

“But how’d it get over the fence?” asked Taylor.

“Over my granny’s second best tire iron,” Fisher snorted. “It went under,” he explained, leading them to a hole dug under the fence. Black fur clung to the prickly pear cacti that grew near the hole.

Fisher shouted to Ms. Lukens. “Ma’am, would you mind much if we were to set a trap over by these palmettos?”

“A trap?” Jack exclaimed.

“Why sure . . . Jack Randolph, you don’t think I’d . . . Hell. A live trap. A cage,” Fisher spluttered indignantly.

Jack was mollified, and agreed. Fisher returned to his truck, opened the topper, and called, “Give me a hand with this.” The three men lifted the cage out of the truck and carried it to the spot he’d indicated.

“We need some bait,” Taylor pointed out. Then he looked at the chickens and geese.

Ms. Lukens had been watching with interest, but when she saw the direction of the sheriff’s glance, she screeched, “Oh no you don’t!”

The sheriff took a deep breath to start arguing with, but Fisher forestalled him. Pulling his wallet out of his pocket, Fisher asked Ms. Lukens how much she thought one of her nice fat geese was worth. The two haggled a bit, but soon a large white goose was brought honking to a stained stump where a hatchet directly silenced it.

The cage baited and set, Ms. Lukens led the men to her back gate and let them out to follow the wolf’s trail, while she returned to her house, counting her cash.