“Shut up. Listen.”
A deeper voice said, “Yes. It’s just me and my mom now.”
“I’m sorry,” Joe said, and his voice was rough and gravelly.
“For?”
“For whatever just made you sad.”
“I dream. Sometimes it feels like I’m awake. And then I’m not.”
Mom and Dad burst out onto the porch just as Joe said, “You’re awake now. Ox, Ox, Ox. Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
“We live so close to each other.”
My father put his face in his hands. Deep within us all, crashing and colliding, came three words.
packpackpack
The shadows stretched as the afternoon waned.
Mark came out onto the porch, demanding to know if that was Joe, was that Joe, was that—
They appeared around the blue house.
There, on the back of a large boy, was Joe, eyes alight.
My father dropped his hands and took in a shuddering breath.
We never looked away from Joe.
From this stranger who watched us with wide, dark eyes.
They stopped before us.
“Mark?” the boy said.
Mark smiled. “Ox. How lovely to see you again. I see you’ve made a new friend.”
Joe dropped from Ox’s back, stepped to his side and took his hand, dragging him toward us. Something was shifting, and I didn’t know what. It was massive, and I was overwhelmed. It felt like the day Kelly was born. The day Joe came back to us.
And Joe.
Joe, Joe, Joe.
He said, “Mom! Mom. You have to smell him! It’s like… like… I don’t even know what it’s like! I was walking in the woods to scope out our territory so I could be like Dad and then it was like… whoa. And then he was all standing there and he didn’t see me at first because I’m getting so good at hunting. I was all like rawr and grr but then I smelled it again and it was him and it was all kaboom! I don’t even know! I don’t even know! You gotta smell him and then tell me why it’s all candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome.”
We were all stunned into silence.
We didn’t know then what he would become.
Had I known, I would have done everything I could to push him away. To tell him that the Bennetts were cursed, that he should stay as far away from us as possible. He was misunderstood. His daddy said he was going to get shit all his life. His mother, a woman underestimated in her own right, might have survived the coming of Richard Collins.
What would he have become without the wolves?
I thought about that a lot.