Wolf By Kim Carroll

I know it already when the baby went missing, that it was gonna happen that way. Of course I didn’t mention this to the detective, or Sawyer’s folks, because if you watch any of those police shows, like I have, where a baby goes missing then you already know you’re the number one suspect if your’re the Momma. Which I am, so I was. I already know’d that if you say the wrong thing it might cause suspicion on you and then right away you got trouble comin’ at you. And if some reporter gets wind of it, it goes even worse for the Momma cause they put you on the TV where nobody really beilieves you are innocent, no matter how hard ya cry and blow your nose. Mostly I could tell the police, especially the special dective guy, just thought I was some sort of dumb young kid that got knocked up because I didn’t know how to keep my legs crossed like a good girl would. Well, the truth is I ain’t perfect, but I ain’t so bad neither. I think I turned out alright coming from the low circumstances of how I were raised. My momma was a drinker and her boyfriend was a saved meth user. Saved as in meaning he quit it, the meth. Now he is only a drinker and pot smoker. I guess my momma does some of that too, but nothing too serious, not like shooting up or anything like that. My daddy, lives near Momma, in the same trailer park, just at the opposite end. He has a new wife, who has about fifty children, so he don’t have too much time to be spending with me. Plus I was a lot older than most of the new kids. Anyway I I try to just get on as best I can. Plus I have my own worries, what with everybody acting like I might be some sort of monster, what would hurt her own littlin’. I might’ve sit and worried myself into a way low down place 'cept for that’s not how I am. I wanted to pull myself up like Ricky Lake and make something of myself. That’s how I got the job waiting on folks at The Marquam Café. They was looking for someone they could pay

under the table and didn’t care that I was only fifteen. They said I had a real nice way with the customers and also I set the glasses of water on the table by the bottom and not by grabbing them on top where people put their lips. Momma taught me this. She waited tables off and on too I was the second to the youngest one to work at the café, the first being Sawyer, who was the owner’s son and did a lot of the cooking and dishwashing. He was only sixteen. I like that boy right away. I got butterflies jumping in my belly everytime we was in the same room together. He was a tall skinny kind of kid with black hair that was long enough that he had to keep it in a ponytail under his hair net. Sometimes it made me want to giggle to look at him outside smoking a cigarette trying to be all cool, while the whole time his hair was in a hair net like some granny. Anyway, it weren’t too long before Sawyer and I hooked up. I could tell Mr. and Mrs. Lupine weren’t none happy about it. But the truth was Sawyer wasn’t no brain scientist and I guess they thought he could do worse than me. At least I was a hard worker and didn’t take smoke breaks all the time like Sawyer. I liked Sawyer something. He had the softest brown eyes I ever seen on a boy. Anyway one day I got to feeling sick. I started puking and puking. Usually when I get a bug I puke it up and then I set awahile and I start getting my energy back. But this time it was different. The bug just kind of hangs on, dragging my whole body down. It gets to where I can hardly get up in the morning. My mom is asking me what’s wrong, and I think I have that blood cancer. Then one day I drag myself to work like usual and there is this couple with this babydoll baby, all blonde curls and dimples with these pink rose petal cheeks and it hits me like a flash of lighnin' what’s been goin' on inside me. I get all sweaty in my armpits and I can feel my tongue

swelling like I need to vomit. I throw their plates down and run to the bathroom. That night I tell Sawyer. We go and get one of those pee tests. And it’s a good thing I read the directions ‘cause I always thought those things worked like a thermometer. You know? I thought you stuck that thing up your yahoo and it came out flashing a red or green light or somethin’ like that. I cun tell ya’ I was pretty nervous until I read the ‘structions and all ya got ta do is pee on it. I felt pretty relived by that, let me tell ya. Of course it comes out plus, which in case ya don’t know, means that I sure as salt on meat I’m knocked up. Later that week we tell his parents. And then we or they decide we should move in together. The Lupines have a little piece of land with a real nice double wide trailer. But I don’t really want to be living with them, on account of it makes me feel too nervous. So instead Sawyer and I move into their camper which is behind the house, but hasn’t been used since Sawyer was a kid before they bought the restaurant. Anyway the next nine months I spend in the moldy stink of the camper, tuckered out in a way I han’t ever imagined I could be and still be amongst the livin’ and still waitin’ tables. I don’t go to school and neither does Sawyer. We figure now that we gonna be parents we’ll just keep on helpin’ at the café. When Sawyer isn’t at the restaurant or sleeping, he is off in town with his friends hanging around outside Marquam Store, smoking cigarettes. It don’t bother me too much, him being gone. I can’t much stand the stink of smoky cigarettes, they way it sticks to ya no matter what. It sends me into a pukin’ fit everytime. When my water breaks at the restaurant one day, Mrs. Lupine rushes me to the hospital which is a two hour drive in traffic. But that baby takes his own sweet time stretching through my body like he is trying to come out my belly button rather than my yahoo. Mrs. Lupine is all kindness talking to me while I sob in pain. I ain’t no good with pain that goes on and on. I can

take a lot for a short time, but when it just don’t stop for nothing is when I start to break into halves and crumble down inside. I ain’t got the will for it. Mrs. Lupine, she is telling me the whole time what a good girl I am. And that I’m doin’ great. She offers to call my folks. I tell her I’d rather wait for the baby to come on account of I haven’t told them about it. In fact I hain’t seen neither of my folks after I quit school. This might make some folks sad but for me, it’s made me much more peace feeling in my heart. Anyway we make it okay to the hospital and that baby comes out after two hours of cursing and sweating and screaming like someone was taking a knife to my insides. Sometimes while the pain was comin’, I would hear the screamin’ and think, why don’t that screaming stop, and then I would realize it was me that was screaming. Even being worn flat by the birth, and grossed out too, 'cause it ain’t really this beautiful thing that TV and movies make you think it is. Cause really the baby comes out looking like it’s wrapped in a bloody snotty blanket of muck. There ain’t nothing really beautiful about it. And you might think cuttin’ the cord is special thing to do, well let me tell ya it ain’t. Really the cord ain’t no cord at all. It’s this disgusting, thick as a hotdog, bloody hose that shots blood out all over when it is cut just like some sort of horror movie. In fact the whole thing is just a horror film. There ain’t’ nothing sweet about it. But then they put that baby in my arms and I am lovin' him already more than I ever loved another living thing in my life. About that time Mr. Lupine and Sawyer come. We name the baby Lowell after Sawyer’s great grandfather. When I look back, I realize those were the best times we ever had with baby Lowell. He was a contented baby at first, sleeping nuzzling against me. I thought he was by far the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It even made me softer at Sawyer, on account of he helped make

that baby. And I even felt more like a real daughter to the Lupines' on account of the baby being their grandbaby. But at around three months, that baby started fussin’ all the time. I would get up and sit on the edge of the mattress and bounce the little guy. “Cain’t you shut him up?” Sawyer would yell, which of course just made it cry harder. It wasn’t just during the night either. That baby cried most of the day long. It got so that I would rock back and forth on my feet while I was taken an order on account of all the rockin’ I did holding the baby. The other thing I noticed about that time is that Lowell was an exceptionally hairy baby. There was this real soft fine black hair that grew ouver his shoulders and back. The doctor told me this was normal. But it seemed to me there was something not quiet right about it. About that time I started givein it baby asprin to get it too sleep at noght. And that helped me a lot. Ya know ya go kindda crazy if ya don’t get the kinda sleep the mind needs to get going strong again. So I started to feel better. But then the baby started movin’ and it were all I could do to keep track of him. He crawled through cupboards and up on the counters.. So when I weren’t workin’ I was chasin’ that guy all around and on top of be tuckered out from chasin’ him, that monster started cryin’ at night again. And it was up to me to shut him up. Sometimes, when Sawyer weren’t home, I just put the pillow over my head and let it wail itself out. That might take two hours. But I was just too tired to move. And I weren’t bothered so much by that baby on account of he was makin’ me so tired I was becoming all numb inside.

When baby Lowell turned eight months I knew there was something wrong about him. Now, I seen quite a few things in my life. When I was a kid, my pop used to raise rabbits for the hides and the meat. We would butcher them ourselves and then stretch the hides inside out on these triangle wire shapes and hang ‘em to dry. The way a rabbit screams is somethin’ horrible. It makes your skin go all shivery and the hair on your neck stand up. Pop would grab out of the hutch by the ears and they’d kinda kick their big feet trying to get a hold of somethin’ to push off of. ‘Course there weren’t nothin’ but aur. Then he’d lay them across this big old stump in the back of the trailer. It was all red and stained where the blood ‘ud come out. And I used to wonder if they knew what was comin’. First he’d knock ‘em senseless and then he’d cut their heads off with this kinda large hatchet. That hatchet would always stick there on the stump after he was done, just wait ‘til next time. Anyway that was an awful thing for a kid to see. And I spose it probably messed me up some. Stuff like that ain’t nothin’ for no kid to see. Anyway, like I said, somethin’ was just plain wrong with that baby. I had half the mind to leave him on the lupine’s porch and ring the doorbell and run away. But there weren’t nothin’ for me to run to, ya know. I person just cain’t go without havin’ somethin’ to go to. Anyway, weary to the bone, I put baby Lowell down for the night in the basinet beside our bed in the camper. But something must have scared him the middle of the night 'cause he wakes up and he is screaming his head off. Like usual, Sawyer says, “Can’t you shut him up?” And then puts the pillow over his head. I don’t want to make Sawyer sound bad but sometimes Sawyer gets real sour at the baby and at me. I just really wish he’d go out when he gets like that, but his parents were on him to save money so we could get a proper trailer to live in. They even said we could put it on their

land. Anyway Lowell is climbin’ out of the basinet. I can see his body is all tense like when he is flustered. It’s dark in the camper but there’s a full moon so I can see him okay once my eyes blink through the tiredness. That’s when I know’d somethin’ awful happened. Lowell screams a blood curdling scream and then falls limply like a rag doll on the basinet mattress. I jump out of bed and I’m about to grab him, when I see it. His skin is being covered by some sort of black fungus. I reached down to touch it just kinda in amazement. Then I am afraid that the fungus is going to get on me. But Lowell is wimping like a little puppy and my mother heart in me doesn’t care anymore and I pick him up in my arms and that’s when I know it’s no fungus at all. It’s hair. “Sawyer,” I say in a hushed whisper, “for the love of God and Jesus, Sawyer somethin's attacking Lowell!” Sawyer sits up in bed now and rubs his face with his hands. When he looks up I can see his whole face crumple up and squint like he is trying to get a better look. “What in the hell—" he reaches over to turn on the light. I am looking at Sawyer and his face goes all pale and his eyes look wide, so wide I can see all the white around the little brown circle. His mouth hangs open like an old man with a stroke that can’t control it. Slowly, slowly I look down at baby Lowell, only I don’t see baby Lowell. Instead I see a furry beast looking at me with these feirce liquid black eyes, and growling like some kinda scared witlkess animal. harp little fangs that snap. He starts wriggling and wriggling trying to get out of my arms. But I don’t want him to fall onto the floor and get hurt so I wrestle him onto the bed and lay on top of him. All the time Sawyer is shouting. “Keep him away! Keep him away! He’s got the rabies. Don’t let him bite you.”

Finally, panting, I yell back, “For cryin’ out loud, Sawyer! It’s Lowell. It’s just Lowell. That’s all.” Right then and there like a punch in the gut I know Sawyer ain’t nothin’ to me. Him being scared of his own baby. I jest cain’t figure it. Sure Lowell weren’t hisself, but he was still our baby weren’t he? It weren’t jest Sawyer taken afright that bothered me. I realize I was more comfortable when it was just me and the baby. And with Lowell changin’ I jest didn’t know how Sawyer would take it. I wished then, laying sweatin’ and tryin’ to hold the little guy that Lowell ‘ud jest disappear. He weren’t right as a daddy. He just never took to little Lowell. Finally the little guy was worn out. Poor little hairy Lowell was whimpering jest like a lost pup. I taked him in my arms. The truth was even though he was covered with hair and his teeth are all fanglike and yellow and his eyes ain’t the eyes of my little baby, something in the way those strange black eyes looked at me, something in the way they look so sc aedf and alone kinda tugs at me. Makes me think it don’t matter what’s afflicting this little guy and how ugly and monstrous he is, he still is my little Lowell and I ain’t got nothing but love that could burst me for him. That was four days ago. I suppose I ain’t slept too much since then. Right off I had to convince Sawyer not to tell nobody. He got it into his head that we needed to get the preacher and have the demons scared out of Little Lowell. But I weren’t gonna have no of that. Those religious folks would probably end up burning him at the stake just like them witch women in Salem. I mean I know'd that was a long time ago, but as far as I can recon’ it, people hain’t changed all that much inside. Not those preacher folks anyhow. So I finally convinced Sawyer that it would be between us and I guess it will be, ‘cept for now the police are hanging around asking questions.

“Where is your husband?” “Sawyer ain’t my husband,” I say my lips kind of smile even though my heart don’t. “He’s Lowell’s daddy. But the truth of the matter is that Sawyer went to work Monday and he never came home. His parents ain’t seen him either.” The detective was writing something down. “Now I know'd your thinkin' that’s suspicious the husband and the baby gone missing,” I shrugged. “Sawyer and me weren’t all that friendly any more. You can’t really blame him for running off, being a kid and all.” “Your younger than he is,” the detective pointed out. “I was born old,” I say. And I guess that the truth. I was born old and born for heart ache. The thing was Sawyer just kept getting’ edgier and edgier around the little guy. He kinda’ started to lose his grip on reality. He wouldn’t touch the little guy and he would go all scared if it got too near him. He wanted to tell his folks. But I couldn’y have none of that. When Sawyer let Monday for work I made sure he weren’t comin’ back to give us no trouble. Lowell’s changing was just the excuse he had been looking' for to escape. I don’t blame him none really. It weren’t his fault Lowell got all hairy and I suppose that that’s the kind of thing only a mother can overlook. “And why didn’t you tell Mr. and Mrs. Lupine that you thought their son had gone missing?” I shrug.

” Well I guess on account of I thought that he might be with them and maybe they were all fixin’ to throw me and baby Lowell out.” The detective nodded. “So you think Sawyer wanted you and baby Lowell to move out?” I shrug again. “I couldn’t tell ya all the things goin’ round in Sawyer’s head.” I think about it for a moment. “You know, I don’t think Sawyer was the type that could tell ya what he had in his mind on account of most times he weren’t thinkin nothing at all. He was just hangin’ out in his head like a dandelion waiting for a wind to blow him away.” “And baby Lowell. What happened to him?” He’s givin’ me that look that says he already knows what happen to baby Lowell and it makes my heart go kind of frozen like. My nose starts to get all stuffy and my eyes get kind of blurry. I know deep in my heart right at that moment Lowell is gone. I probably won’t see my baby ever again and even if I do, it won’t be the baby Lowell, it will be the monster baby. I don’t even know what to tell the detective. Sawyer’s gone so I ain’t got no one else to agree with my side of the story and I know I will get locked up secure in some loony place where the folks is so drugged on medicines that they drool on their shirts. I’d rather go to jail than end up in that kind of place. The way I see it, is that if you put a person like me, a person with all their marbles, in a place like that, it won’t be too long before their marbles will become as jumbled as the rest of those poor crazies.

Sawyer’s last mornin’ in the camper, something strange started happen to Lowell. Thinkin’ back, I wonder if maybe the two were somehow connected. Maybe I jest should’ve let Sawyer run off naturally. But were scairt that he might tell someone about the baby and I couldn’t have that. Anyway somethin’ peculiar started to happen when I got back to the camper. I quick washed up. When I came out of the cold shower I noticed that Lowell was a might bigger than he’d been earlier that mornin’. His growl sounded more threatin’ and it sent cold tingles down my back when he snarled at me from across the room. And I tell you what, I never would hurt a single one of those hairs on my baby, but just for my own protection, I kept a kitchen knife on me at all times. Awhile I left the knife on the counter sure that Lowell didn’t mean me no harm. I was getting’ used to him bein’ bigger and I weren’t so scared that Lowell would hurt me. I mean somewhere down deep he must know I’m him momma and I love him and I’d love him no matter what horrible things he did. Even if he got out of the camper and ate Mr. and Mrs. Lupine, I’d still love him. Not that I would want to cause Sawyer’s folks harm. Anyway so I thinks that deep inside Lowell still knows me. He hunches in the corner of the bed and I bring him bowls of water and I make a whole box of that baby rice mush which he licks a little but that’s all. He’s grown so he’s about the size of a medium sized dog. Someimtes, he kinda walks around the whole place taking covers off the bed, dumpn’ the drawers out of the kitchen area. He laps up the water from the toilet and I have to keep shuttin' the lid, even though he still manages to get it up when I’m not looking. He’s plumb wearin’ me out getting into things. And I almost just give up and think I’ll just let him get into everything. Who cares? If he gets into trouble and eats the Comet or cuts hisself on something sharp, well, it weren’t because I didn’t warn him. Well, I guess it tuckered us both out because we fell asleep together on the bed.

Sawyer still hadn’t shown up from work, but I wasn’t expecting him too. He was gone. I could feel it. Anyhows about midnight I waked up to poor big little Lowell howling something awful. I try and shush him up, but he won’t listen to nothin’ and even growls at me when I get close. I can see his teeth have a spikiness about them. I imagine they’re pretty sharp too. I know from experience when a baby bites they puts their whole body into it, so I weren’t going to get too close. You might think that I’d be worried about the Lupines waking up to their grandsons’ terrible yowls. The truth was old Mr. Lupine was practically deaf and his wife slept with cotton in her ears on account of him snoring so loud. Anyway it weren’t enough for Lowell to go all wild with howling to wake the dead, he starts jumping around the camper shakin’ it so hard I’m sure were gonna fall off the blocks. At first I tried to catch him. He was jumping around the place; bed ta table, ta stove, ta couch ta bed, and ‘round again. Once I got a hold of his foot but he tugged out my grip with this amazing superhuman baby strength. He was racin’ around the place so fast that he was like a black blur and all the time he’s howling in this way that’s getting more and more desperate and finally he just busts through the door and runs off into the night. I run after him as fast as I can, but he is faster than a sprintin’ deer. I can tell after about fifteen minutes of chasin’ him, that I ain’t gonna catch him. And my heart aches something awful. And I howl into the night tryin’ to call him in his own way. I sit right on the cold ground and weep my heart out my eyes. I miss my baby so much. I don’t even care that he’s a monster; I take him back in a second. But that was yesterday and I sat and waited all day racking back and forth in place like I used to do when my momma would

leave me in the car while she and her boyfriend went into a bar for a drink. Back and forth, forth and back, saying in my head, “come back, monster baby, come back monster baby.” Then next day is when Mrs. Lupine came out. She tells me that sawyer hasn’t shown up at work and I says I don’t know where he is. But she can come in and look around, which of course she does. Which just kind of makes me angry at her. Her and her stupid son. Then she asks. “Where’s the baby?” her face is all lines and deep furrows. I shake my head and start to cry. I don’t know what happens. I fall on the ground and the next thing I know the detective is standing over me inside the Lupines' living room. Only I don’t know he’s the detective and I have this strange thought that maybe I have been throw into the future and this is baby Lowell. “Lowell?” “I’m Detective Hale,” the man says. And I am stunned trying to think what is about to happen. You see the thing is I knew I couldn’t keep that monster baby a secret. But now that he’s gone I am stuck, because I cain’t tell nobody cause they’ll think I did that baby some harm. And so I put it in my head to tell the detective that the baby’s been missing since Sawyer ran off. And so that was my story. I tried to make that the detective was thinkin’ that were protectin' Sawyer, and in the end that helped to make him on my side of the problem. “Why didn’t you report the baby missing?” the detective asks coolly. “Missing? Why how’d I know Lowell’s missing, as far as I know he’s just with his poppa? I didn’t know that Sawyer weren’t intendin' on coming back.” I said all innocent.

“Do you still think Sawyer is coming back?” And that’s when the tears start spilling down my eyes. Not because I knowd Sawyer ain’t coming back, but because my baby Lowell is out there somewhere. I howl out his name, “Lowell! Lowell!” and then something happens that surprises me. Miss Lupine bends down and hold me in her big fat arms just like I’m the baby. And I cry and cry. The detective says they look for Sawyer and when they find him they’ll get Lowell back to me. Mrs. Lupine changes and s=suddenly treats me better than my own mother ever did. I still live in the camper. That was one month again. Tonight I have cooked up a whole package of hotdogs and set them outside. I am sitting here in the night air with the flashlight next to me. It’s supposed to be a full moon. I am ready. When I hear that babies howl, I’m going out there. I’m gonna bring my baby back. Monster or no monster, he’s mine.