Fifty dollars. Would you say that’s all a life is worth?
Yet that pittance is all it takes to legally murder someone. So what if the vessel doesn’t have thumbs, speak our language or have a family unit as we think of one? Does that make the creature any less deserving of life—or a death not filled with fear and torture in its last few moments?
I don’t think so…
Laughing and drinking, each of the five hunters, one in a ski mask, another in a wool-knit cap, a fat one in a blaze-orange coat, another with a scruffy beard and one in a snow suit, takes his picture with the wolf in the background—the wolf whose paw has been caught in a trap for the last three hours. Bloodied fur stains fresh, white snow—proof that the terrified animal has tried to gnaw himself free—preferring to die from blood loss or lameness to a human’s hand should they be successful in their escape.
But few seldom are.
Shattered, exposed bone scratches the steel trap around its leg as the hunters stagger from too much alcohol taking their time in ending the majestic being’s life, allowing it that much longer to suffer as their blurred vision makes it impossible to find the shutter button. The wolf howls into the encroaching night—the sound like a mother mourning the loss of a child, but none of its pack will come to its rescue. None of them is a match for man’s gun.
None—except for me.
Dim light catches all five points of the alloy blade I release into the air and in the silence of the forest it’s easy to hear the high-pitched PING ! as it connects with the lock of the trap. It was a sound difficult to miss but somehow the hunters do. For a moment the wolf sniffs the air and peers into the dark, surrounding forest with his piercing blue eyes in search for the source of his freedom.
He never thinks to look up. Not that it would help him anyway…none of them will see me until I want them to.
The wolf’s full coat of soft, grey and white fur blows flawlessly in a blustery gust that seems to come from nowhere as she approaches the five humans who should’ve ended her when they had the chance. The wind lifts snow from off the braches of the surrounding pines and birch trees, creating a curtain of white that won’t draw back until show time.
And by then it’ll be too late.
I watch as the wolf stalks them. She’s weary from exhaustion but she’s still stronger than any one of the humans—myself included. She pins her ears back, she’s only a few feet away now. It won’t be long. My heart beats in my throat, harder with each staggering step the wolf takes towards revenge. I really should try and stop what’s about to happen, but is not natural to want revenge?
Of course it is. And nature is what’s about to happen. And just like the good film crews of National Geographic as the lion they’re taping takes out a zebra, I resign to stay out of nature’s way.
But then the wolf stops. She relaxes her blood stained lips and they cover her bared teeth. She sniffs the air again and cocks her head towards the woods to her left. She looks back one last time at the hunters and then slinks away towards the gloom of the forest. I pause to think about what I’ve just witnessed. The wolf, despite the torment it’s endured, has resolved to let the hunters live—it’s a bigger gesture than most “civilized” humans would muster.
And it makes me wonder just who the animals here are.
I respect the wolf’s wishes and turn to leave when the wind shifts. The veil of falling snow lifts and the wolf in exposed. The hunters stop talking, noticing the freed beast for the first time. My heart stops as they, all at once, pivot in the snow and glare at her.
She stops in mid stride, lowering in head in a plea of mercy for which they will give no quarter.
They each raise their scatterguns.
And I descend from my birch branch.
I land on the muzzle of blaze-orange’s gun, it fires and blasts a crater in the snow five feet in diameter and the scent of gunpowder hangs thick in the air. I use the distraction to gain advantage and I spring off the ground catching him in the chin. He falls backwards and into wool-knit. “Get out of here, NOW!” I command the wolf through the Jargon—a small device I invented that interprets animal sounds into human speech and vice-versa. I can’t tell if the wolf hears me because the other’s fight or flight kicks in and they decide on the latter.
Their mistake.
Before wool-knit can move his corpulent co-hunter off him, I move in, grabbing orange-clad’s discarded weapon. As I roll towards him I bring down the butt of the firearm on his head with a THUD that makes the remaining members of his hunting party think twice as he sinks beneath the snow, unconscious, with a plume of white powder. The remaining three trappers stand awe-struck, staring at me as I rise from the ground, clumps of snow falling from my broad, black-suited shoulders. They didn’t move, either by drunkenness or frozen by fear.
Slowly I turn around, the wind blowing snow flakes out of my brown, synthetic-fur mane that extends down my back like a cape that ends in a point just above my keester. Ski-mask and snow-suit’s shaking bodies block the other hunter, their alcohol-laced breaths hanging in the air. “It’s a good thing you big strong hunter-types enjoy your brewskies…” I say, cracking my knuckles. “Because you won’t be taking in anything solid for awhile…”
“That so?” The one with the scruffy beard asks from behind his friends. Suddenly I see it—the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun poking through in between the arms of his friends. But it’s all too late, and before I can dodge out of the way the muzzle flashes and I’m propelled backwards as a thunderous BOOM! echoes through the woods. My ears are ringing as I land behind a small snow drift where I check myself over. Luckily all the buck shots have hit my armor—but the remaining three hunters don’t know that…
“What the hell, DUDE?!” I hear one of them shout. “Sober up, man—that’s murder two at least!”
Scruffy-beard chuckles, “no it’s not.” He minimizes. “It’s manslaughter at most.”
“Yeah well, either way—I’m not going down for this!” The other shakes.
Scruffy-beard lights a stogie. He lets the match fall and it melts into the snow. I can smell the cheap cigar’s foul odor from here. “Well I guess we’ll just have to go ahead and make sure he’s never found then, won’t we?”
They crunch though the snow towards my drift, “that’s cold, man!” Snow-suit says.
“NO…” I growl from my hiding place.
“Huh?!” They all three belch in unison as the first snow ball CLACKS against the scattergun, forcing it from scruffy-beard’s hands. Scruffy looks up just as the second one belts him right in the nose. His friends take off, running behind me as another snow ball whacks him in the forehead. I pause as he staggers before I send a final ice ball, this one knocking him to the ground.
“…that’s cold.” I finish my sentence just as I hear the mechanical whine of two snowmobiles sputtering to life. I’m on my feet as ski-mask takes off, leaving snow-suit behind with engine trouble. I take out three more throwing blades and hurl them at the thin birch branch ten feet above the stalled sled.
The first blade misses its mark entirely, the second chips out a chunk of the branch and the third severs it from the tree. From fifteen feet away I watch as the branch plummets towards the Polaris, snow lifting off and scattering to the breeze as the soft wood gains momentum.
And then it cracks against the stranded snowmobiler’s head and he slumps against the steering column, unconscious. I rush over, and push snow-suit off the seat. Through the cracked windshield I can see the red tail lights of ski-mask’s sled fade farther and farther away. I smash out the rest of the plastic windshield, pull the choke out and the sled fires right up.
Snow kicks up from the ground as the treads peel out. The other trapper thinks he’s gotten away but I know these woods like the back of my clawed gloves and I easily weave the snow craft around trees and boulders that shoot up from beneath the powder like icebergs in the frozen tundra.
And then his tail lights disappear.
But as I said—I know these woods like the back of my hand.
He’s gone down a hill into a shallow ravine, but as shallow as it is, there’s no way he can scale the sides with a sled.
He’s trapped. And that’s where it’s going to end.
I skid around a dense thicket of raspberry bushes twelve feet from the ravine and speed up towards a large, uprooted jack pine. The distance closes quickly and before I know it my snowmobile is rumbling over the tree. Bark and snow ice off and follow behind the sled like an exhaust trail as it becomes air borne. Shortly after take off I kick off the seat, I grab a hold of my cape and the special material catches the breeze and slows my descent as the snow craft crashes against the rocks of the ravine just ahead of ski-mask. The explosion floods the area in a bath of violent orange and yellow firelight. Startled, the driver of the other sled brakes hard, steers off to the right and skids to a stop. “What the?” He scoffs angrily as my shadow across his turned back gets larger and larger as I descend closer and closer until finally I let go of my cape and land on him with everything I’ve got.
He hits the ground harder than the others because the snow has melted from the blazing fire five feet from where he lays. He’s still conscious—barely. He moans and stirs in the mud and I flip him over and grab him by the collar of his vest and tear off his ski mask. I recognize him—he’s the son of the founder of the Conversation Academy
“Idiot.” He growls at me. “Do you even know who I am?”
I smile beneath my mask. “Sure do.” I growl back. “And you can tell your father I said conservation should be more than just a reaction to our greed. If we practiced it from the start, you wouldn’t be laying in the mud right now. And if we don’t start taking better care of our planet we’ll all be laying in the mud.” I say, letting him fall back in the mud. “I’d better not see you back out here when deer season starts, or our next meeting won’t be so pleasant.”
“You tree huggers are all alike—such drama queens. You can’t stop us—we’ll kill em’ all.” He snarls from the dirt.
My teeth clench.
My fist balls.
I swing.
And his vision goes black.
I bring ski-mask’s sled to a stop back at his trap site. I drag him over beneath a pine tree and begin huddling his friends with him. Bunched together like this, they’ll stay warm enough until they all come to.
And by then I’ll be long gone.
I switch lenses in my cowl to the snake lens in order to see their warm bodies beneath the snow but I find something else—a smaller body whose temperature is dropping fast. I rush over but I know it’s already too late.
For the wolf.
I kneel down beside her and scrape off the snow that’s melted and refrozen as small balls of ice against the wolf’s dying body and I realize that this happened with that first shotgun blast. The animal’s chest heaves as it strains to supply the creature with its last few breathes. It wuffles something that the Jargon interprets as a thank you.”
“For what?” I ask, a pang of guilt coursing through me like acid in my veins. “I couldn’t save you.”
People say animals, dogs in particular, can’t smile. But as I gaze at the creature’s magnificent form, I swear she smiles at me. Then it whimpers and the Jargon translates. “Not for what you failed to do, human—but for what you meant to do, and for what you will do. You’re the…” The Jargon pauses as it struggles to find the right word for the sound and then it comes… She tells me that I’m a catalyst. And that her only regret is not living to see the hope I will bring to her kind. Then, satisfied in knowing that someone will carry on the fight after she’s gone, she gasps heavily—it’s what creatures do when they take their last breaths of life before they leave this place and become nothing more than ghosts of a Wisconsin that once was.
Then her eyes rolled back in her head.
She falls limp.
And then, she’s gone.
I arrive back home and enter then Den through the hanger doors of the tunnel that connect the basement lab to the outside and I tear off my mask in defeated disgust. Through the floor boards above me I can hear my infant son crying up stairs as my loving wife walks to the stove where his bottle waits in a bath of warm water. The thought of the two of them warms my chilled heart and the snow melts off my suit and forms a puddle at my feet. I sway from exhaustion and grab a hold of a steel table to steady myself then I sit down in front of the wall-sized computer monitor where I absently tap at the keys and just stare at the board, unable to get the image of the lifeless wolf, who was beautiful even in death, out of my head. I run through everything again and wonder if I could’ve done something differently.
The possibilities of scenarios and alternate outcomes is endless and suddenly I fear that perhaps the only thing I did right was burying the wolf in the snow twenty miles away from the trap site so the hunters at least wouldn’t get the satisfaction of reaping the benefits of murder.
Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me, coming down the stairs.
Her footsteps, and my heart sinks even farther. How can I face her after such avoidable failure?
“Rough night?” She asks.
At first I shrug without a sound, too ashamed to speak. But she waits there, giving me the time I need, cradling our cooing son and eventually I come around, “…you don’t know the half of it.”
“Actually I do.” She corrects. “The latest ‘Feral Man’ sighting is all over the news.”
That’s the name the press gave me and I hope one day they’ll get my name right.
I nod my head and feel my face getting hot, I need to say something before I’m choked off completely, “so you know then—that I couldn’t save the wolf…”
I can see her reflection in the mirror surface of the computer screen. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. She knows how hard I take it when things don’t go my way out there and she usually knows just what to say to put it all in perspective and make it all seem better.
This time is no different and she takes a step closer as Brock, whose name means “Badger”, begins to fuss. “Here.” She says, handing him to me. “Your son needs his hero.” Then she turns and walks away, back up the steps to the main floor of our home and leaves me, soaking wet and feeling like half the man she sees me as, with our five month old in my arms. For a moment he just wriggles there but then he stops and grabs my finger with his chubby little hand and looks up at me. And I hold my reflection in his eyes for what seems like a very long amount of time.
I peer deeper into those two little balls of wonder and feel my heart soften as I start to forgive myself as a new thought replaces the one of my failure: the eyes of a child are truly amazing.
When we look at our children we see ourselves and when that reflection falls short of who we want to be there’s always something else in their eyes if you just look deep enough.
Hope. And the redemption of the next generation.
