My mother drew me in closer as I buried my fingers deep into the thick fur around Moose’s neck. Our eyes were wide as we regarded, with sharp fear, the beast in our car.
“She is going to get out, John.”
The words hit me in the chest with a thud, and I gasped. She most certainly WAS going to get out — the tiny car rocked back and forth as the enormous wolf paced inside it. She glared at us through the back windshield, her eyes glowing with electric intelligence. The fur stood on end along her spine, as if statically charged. She snarled darkly as she made direct eye contact with each of us in turn: a clear warning.
My father registered my mother’s obvious advice with a quick nod, and a glance upward at Uncle Rob, inviting him to reject the warning. He could only confirm it with a wary sideways glance. The two men stood smugly, smoking, regarding their handiwork with simultaneous pride and trepidation. My father scratched his beard, thoughtfully working out his next maneuvers.
“What the hell are you thinking, bringing a wolf into the inner city — to our home?!” With shaky fingers, my poor mother lit a new cigarette with the stubby end of her old one.
My father brightened at the chance to reveal his plan.
“She’s for breeding!”
He made long, direct eye contact with me, then.
“We’re gonna make you a new puppy, Pookie!”
* * *
Uncle Rob was one of those fake uncles that most everyone has: a vaguely shady friend of my father’s who crashed on our couch whenever my father wasn’t crashing on his. His own house was nestled far into the pristine wilderness of central Minnesota. Given to frequent protracted disappearances, my father often escaped to Uncle Rob’s house to play Daniel Boone.
The previous Spring, the men had been ice fishing together, and were packing back out, heavily laden with gear, on foot through the woods. Now, my father had once taken me ice fishing, and to this day I hold it dearly as one of the single most unpleasant experiences of my young life. One must build his own shelter in the middle of a frozen lake, pick a large hole into the icy floor by hand, assemble and light a wood-burning stove, and finally secure fishing poles on free-standing rigs. His construction work now done, the fisherman has nothing left to do but drink beer — a lot of beer — and wait, watching for quivers in the line. This process may take anywhere from one to four days, until the fisherman, stuffed to the brim with liquor and trout, feels sufficiently rugged.
It was this mindset — certainty of their absolute mastery over nature — that consumed the men when they came upon the pile of pups. Gray and white, curled up against the wind, still blind and squeaking pitifully, the wolf cubs lay waiting for their mother to return. She wouldn’t be far, so the men craned their necks anxiously to peer between the trees while selecting the best and scooping him up. They ran all the way home with the tiny animal, giggling like two schoolboys who had just stolen a Playboy magazine.
It was just weeks before he was the size of a pitbull. Long-legged and brimming with the eager energy of an un-trained puppy, this wolf could run. Fast. I shrieked in terror and climbed onto the radiator when Uncle Rob brought him over.
“Come on, Pookie, he wants to play with you!”
“HE IS A WOLF, DAD!” I screamed back, making my position clear.
Soon, the wolf had grown so that he had to stoop slightly to lick my face. He had keen, golden eyes that were always darting around, scanning the horizon. His sweet, clever, fleecey face was the size of a manhole cover. He let me clamber onto him, taking handfuls of his thick, fleecy fur to hold on tightly as I rode him around our brick one-story city bungalow. Uncle Rob named him Moose.
The other first-graders were just a little sweeter to me on the playground once they heard the whispers: “Did you hear that girl lives with A FREAKING WOLF, now?!”
I was sold: Moose was the absolute coolest.
My father bristled with pride watching my change in attitude regarding the wild animal in the house.
“You see that?” He gushed, glaring at my mother. “She is just as calm and in control of that animal as any seasoned dog owner. She’s got a gift. And that wolf is completely tame, now. Just look at the two of them together. It’s a Jack London fantasy in here.”
Then, a troubling thought possessed my father: Rob would eventually want to go back home to his Grizzly Man lifestyle. When he did, he would be taking my Moose with him. Soon, his home and his daughter would resume a bourgeois, wolf-free state, unless he did something immediately. Maybe he couldn’t make Moose mine, but he would do the next best thing, and make me my very own Moose.
And so, here they were, my father and his old pal, Rob. And here was my father’s rustbucket 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit, no bigger inside than a golf cart, which he had “liberated” from a junkyard a few months before. The pathetic hatchback groaned on its shocks as the blur of fur and teeth turned tight circles inside.
Moose whimpered and shrank against my side.
“Jesus, John. Moose wouldn’t know what to do with all that — look at the poor thing! Get that she-devil crazy bitch out of here before she shakes that car apart and eats my child.”
My mother tossed her spent cigarette and retreated to the house. I followed, Moose trailing behind. Before she closed the door and locked it with the deadbolt, my mother leaned out to call to my father.
“You put that thing right back where you found it!”
It wasn’t the natural order of the house, but for just a moment, my father had been temporarily tamed by the imminent prospect of subjecting his six-year-old daughter to a mauling. So, he set his mind onto solving this problem of the wolf in the Volkswagen.
I still have no idea how those two men had managed to corner this fully-grown wild animal in the first place. I really have no idea how those two clowns had managed to stuff a few hundred pounds of she-wolf through the hatch of a Volkswagen Rabbit, and drove with her all those miles into the city. But however agitated this poor beast had undoubtedly been throughout her ordeal, she was beyond pissed off, now.
Faced with the equivalent of packing into a phone booth with a wheat thresher, the two men had to think creatively and quickly: she certainly wasn’t becoming less violent as time drew on. Surely, it would work out just fine; they were masters of the wilderness, after all.
Standing on Moose’s back for a better view of the spectacle, I pressed my face against the front window, feeling soft fur between my toes. I watched as my father regarded the car for a moment, stroking the thick, black pelt on his face. I saw the electric anticipation glowing in his keen eyes as he gathered the courage to re-enter the car. Suddenly, in one slick, fluid motion, he flung open the creaking car door and darted into the driver’s seat with animal quickness. Uncle Rob jogged around the car and hopped in at the other side, muttering under his breath the whole way.
Now, all they needed was a little something to settle everyone’s nerves. My father produced a skinny joint from behind his ear, previously made invisible by his thick curls. He lit it quickly, and down the road they went, creaking along in the stolen car not worth recouping, puffing away on their skunk weed to soothe the savage beast that accompanied them inside.
Several days later, with Uncle Rob and Moose having since vanished, my father returned home intact and alone, save for the cranky stray Siamese cat that popped out from inside his jacket when he slid open the zipper.
He was back at it, but even the cat ran away days later.
My father hung around the house only slightly longer than the cat before escaping again to perpetrate some new scheme, apparently having forgotten all about Moose who was, along with the she-beast, never mentioned again. But even still today, when I think about my father, I still see the wild animal plucked from its native habitat, trapped in a rusted-out Volkswagen Rabbit.