Jacob stared at the crinkled journal pages and wondered what it would have been like to ride on the back of a wolf when he was a child. His life would have been different: full of secrets and understanding even before the possibility of becoming a wolf came to him. Would his life have been better or just more confusing. He wasn't sure, but he knew that he wanted to know more about his grandfather Ray and whether or not he ever got the chance to be a Wolf Protector. Jacob turned the page.
August 6, 1960
Ray left for college. He never ran into a cold one and never phased.
"But the Huskies won the Rose Bowl, Dad. It is a great college and I love football. Plus I have already registered and sent in my tuition money and maybe I will try out for the rowing team or track team," Ray explained again. He had spent a year working for the fishery in Forks and I thought he had found his vocation. Apparently not. My ancient blue truck chugged along the highway, its bed full of the boxes and suitcases that contained my son's life. He wanted to study history and I was driving him to the University of Washington in Seattle so he could.
"It's never too late to drive back home. You could always take classes closer to home."
"No, dad. I have already waited a year and they have the best history department around. You are just lucky I didn't decide to go to Berkeley. That's even farther away, you know," he smirked. I sighed.
I couldn't believe that just months after giving away his big sister June, I was driving my youngest to college. It made me feel sad. Old. I turned my thoughts to Sally. I would have her and our little house all to myself, I tried to convince myself that it would be enough.
The campus came into view and I was amazed at its sprawling size. There were bunches of thick trees lining the paths between the buildings and shading most of the parking lots. There was a large lake with a rowing team grunting and shouting in rhythm. The campus was larger than La Push, if you didn't count the outlying houses nestled in the woods.
I found a spot to park in the lot closest to his eight-story dorm/skyscraper. I let out a low whistle. "We could put eight of our houses into that thing," I said under my breath. I opened the door and filled my lungs with the hot Seattle air. The heat wave was the last sputter of summer, the last chance for sun before the clouds took their usual place in the sky. Tomorrow was looking to be even warmer.
I hesitated for a moment, then shut the door and met Ray at the back of the truck. He had chosen Terry-Lander Hall to be close to campus and to meet more people. There were a lot of people to meet. Already, young men and their parents were filing into the dormitory. They wore jeans and the multi-colored letter jackets of many different high schools. There were boys in ties and mothers in tears. There were girls with short hair and sweater sets matching flaring skirts. I grabbed the first load of Ray's belongings and led the way into the Hall. The lounge had carpet, couches and a spiral staircase. He stopped to check his room assignment one more time and then we rode the elevator up to his room.
There was already a clean cut boy there, each hair in its perfect place. He had a neat stack of books on the corner of the desk and a bed made up as though it had been in a hotel. Either he or his mother was very particular. Perhaps both.
"Hey, I am Ray. This is my…brother Ephraim. Do you care which bed I take?" We had been pretending to be brothers outside of the reservation for a few years. But he still hesitated and I still ached each time we used the word brother.
"John. As long as you don't take mine, I couldn't care less," the boy said, looking up from his book for only a second. Ray chose the bed closest to the window, leaving the third one empty for another roommate. We made several more trips and each time John ignored us. Finally the last item was in place.
We headed out to give ourselves a tour of the campus, starting with the 24 hour café in his dormitory. My eyes glazed over as I walked around the fifth of his new classrooms. This one was huge, with stadium seating for 200 and chalkboards that covered half the walls. I wondered what kind of boy this university would give me back when they were done with him. Would he be ready to help lead the tribe or would he never want to return to his ancestral home? I gave Ray one final hug and allowed him to shoo me away.
March 28, 1964
La Push is in shambles. The boats and dock broke loose from the moorings and crashed up onto the beach. The waves reached above our door jams and everything is covered in seaweed and dried salt.
I paced in front of my perfect old house. Sally and I had repainted it once Ray and June moved out, so it was a cheerful red color. She said that white paint was for old folks. I laughed and brushed the gray hairs away from her face. "You will never be an old folk," I assured her.
"No, you will never be an old folk, Ephraim. I am getting older everyday. In fact, the other day some of the teenagers called me 'Ray's old lady.'" The look she put on her face deepened the wrinkles that sprouted like beargrass from the edges of her eyes.
"That doesn't mean that you are old, it just means you are his mom. It's slang." I took her in my arms and tried to hug away her worries. It was Friday and we were waiting for our son to arrive. He had called from college and said he had a surprise for us and asked if he could come home for the weekend. He usually waited until school breaks, claiming that he needed weekends for studying. I knew something important must be going on if he was coming to town in the middle of the semester like this.
"Maybe I don't want to be his only 'old folk' parent," Sally continued, jarring me out of my thoughts and waiting posture. I turned to her aghast. She often surprised me like this, saying something she had never hinted at before. Was she saying she wanted me to stop phasing, to leave the tribe unprotected? My mind almost could not connect with the idea she had floated.
My eye caught Ray driving toward us. He rounded the corner in his 1953 Red Chevy, his bright shiny pride and joy, purchased from his own funds last summer. In the front seat with him was a girl with shoulder length black hair and a Hupa design hat on her head. Then I understood. The surprise was not a something, it was a someone.
I turned to Sally who was looking at me expectantly. "Can we talk about me aging later, after Ray has left?"
She hmphed and crossed her arms in front of her. "I am not going to forget," she warned me. I smiled and put my arm around her shoulder.
Ray skidded to a stop on the gravel in front of our house and met the girl at her door. She made a point of opening her own door and stepping out without his help. She took his hand in hers and they walked over to us.
"Mom, dad, this is Carol Allen."
Carol put out her hand. "Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Black." She was polite but not docile. She stood waiting for our response.
Sally ran up to hug Ray almost before he finished the introduction and he returned her hug and kissed her head. Sally hesitated for a moment as though trying to read Carol's intentions, then she hugged her as well. Carol was stiff, this was not a response she had planned for. I stepped forward and shook her hand. "Welcome to our home, Carol."
Sally ushered the pair into the house and started to plead for a moment or two to make the bed in June's room. "Oh, don't bother," Carol said. "I will be sleeping with Ray." She pushed forward, placing her bad on the edge of his bed and sitting down on it as though she had always been there. She removed her flat black shoes and her sweater-patterned socks. She wiggled her bare feet on the hardwood floor next to Ray's bed and looked up at me. It was hard to respond to such forcefulness.
Ray looked a little sheepish, but tried not to, setting his hard brown suitcase next to her tan and black duffle bag. I cleared my throat. "Would you guys like to settle in for a little while, or can we talk in the living room? We'd love to get to know Carol better," I asked. "Your mother has some smoked salmon and crackers for us as we talk."
I sat down on the heavily flowered couch and stared at the RCA Black and White, perched on four thin legs, sprawled out at deep angles. Sally retreated to the kitchen and returned with a white porcelain tray splayed with round crackers and pink fragmented meat.
I looked up at her, the hair that she had pulled back into a thick braid escaping so that it framed her face. She was backlit by the lamp and the subtle light seeping through the clouds. She put down the tray and a six pack and sat next to me, pulling my hand into her own. Her dress was not as nice as the one she preferred to receive guests in and I could tell she was a little uncomfortable, but the magenta stripes matched the magenta flowers in the wallpaper and I did not think she could possibly look more beautiful. I squeezed her hand reassuringly and she looked up at me darkly.
"I thought he was dating Lois, the blond one from Spokane."
"That was in November. He was dating Hazel in February. I think he just hasn't found what he is looking for yet. Not everyone is as lucky as me," I say, kissing her with gratitude. I did not expect this girlfriend to last either, although this was the first time he had allowed someone to share his room during a visit home. I always thought it was so gentlemanly of him, the way he would lead her to his sister's room and even open the door for her. But not Carol. She was definitely getting what she wanted.
Ray led her out to the living room, their fingers loosely touching at the tips, a comfort level which said I know you are not going anywhere but I want to touch you anyway. They sat on the loveseat that matched the couch and looked at us expectantly. "So how did you two meet?" I asked deciding that taking the bait was better than sitting in silence. I picked up a cracker and slipped it under some of the smoked salmon I had caught last summer with Quil and his boys. We had smoked them right on the beach the day we caught them and the salty flavor from the seawater filled my mouth.
"It was at the fish-in," Carol said and she also reached down for some salmon.
Ray must have noticed the confused look on my face, so he continued for her, "We were both at the fish-in protest Puyallup Bob did with Marlon Brando. We were both watching from the side when they got arrested. Carol bumped into me and I helped her back up."
"I could have gotten up myself, though." She looked at him with a twinkle in her eye and I knew she was teasing him in some way I did not quite grasp. "Then he said, 'Walking the edge of our comfortable earth, are you?' I knew that anyone who could quote William Stafford as though it was part of his own thought was someone worth getting to know better."
"We went out to dinner that night and I knew my life would be better with Carol in it."
She was an English major, at the university, but they had to go to Tacoma to run into each other. They laughed at the irony and her eyes twinkled, catching the light as the sun started to set.
"Are you Hupa? I noticed your hat," I commented.
"No, I am Makah on my mother's side and Puyallup on my father's side. I just like this hat," she said patting it softly.
After dinner, we settled back into the living room. Carol seemed to have an opinion on each subject we brought up. "T.R. says 'You must believe: a poem is a holy thing.' To me it is necessary, almost like a heartbeat."
"Who is T.R.?" I asked.
"Theodore Roethke, of course. He just died last year, but he was the best professor UW ever had."
"I don't think I have read a poem since I was in school. For me, the cedars and rhododendron are what is holy. Being surrounded by green and brown and the blue or gray sky is what keeps me going." I was not going to let some poetic phrasing dictate the reality I had come to understand. The trill of the Junco and the creeking of the crickets were the music to my soul, not words on a page.
"Perhaps that is because of your heritage. We often hear poetry in the world around us rather than in the words of the poets. But white people have to hear the beauty of nature through the poets' pen."
I couldn't get over the feeling that she was speaking from the perspective she didn't wholly believe - as though it was one of the several roles she took on, depending on the situation.
She continued, "Anna O. says that Indians and blacks are in the same boat and that we should respond with non-violent protest, too."
I took a swig from my can; it never made me drunk, or even buzzed, but having a few beers when company was over made the conversation go more smoothly. "Who is Anna O.?"
"She was in one of my history classes a few years ago. She went to school in Hawaii first and there the color of your skin doesn't matter. She said someday the whole country will be like Hawaii."
"My parents went to Hawaii for their honeymoon," Ray submitted.
"Well, it was a cruise really. Ephraim surprised me with it. We got to go to Hawaii and Australia and New Zealand. It was so beautiful. Do you want to see my scrapbook?" Sally asked. She jumped up to get it and Carol listened and then asked questions about how we were treated while we were there. I pulled Ray off to the kitchen with the excuse of cleaning up our drinks and getting some more.
"It's been a few months since you brought a girl home. Is she pregnant?"
"No, dad! She is on the pill," Ray said, incredulously.
"Well, remember things change once a woman is pregnant. You both have to change what you eat and her family will have some things to say about it too, I am sure."
"Dad, things are … changing. Marriage and pregnancy are not the goal for us. We want to make a difference and change the way things happen in our state. In our country. You and Uncle Quil shouldn't have to get a license to fish in our rivers and oceans. That is what I am thinking about, not marriage." Ray opened the fridge and pulled out two more beers.
He handed me one and I tapped it on the edge of the counter. He had no intention of returning to the reservation. I knew he could not be a wolf protector, but I thought maybe he would want to be on the tribal council at least. I sighed. I was alone as a protector and would be until Little Quil's son or my unborn grandson was old enough to phase. And they met a vampire. I was hoping it would happen and hoping it wouldn't.
Carol, Ray and Sally starting watching television about 9 pm, just in time for Sally's favorite show: The Twilight Zone. It wasn't about werewolves or vampires or ghosts or anything that actually could give her a nightmare. Instead it was darker, full of hate and confusion. A murderer put to death and the city that watched. They all went to bed afterwards and I slipped out for one last patrol before bedtime.
The woods were dark and only the waning moon lit the trees as I ran quickly in my wolf form. I had not even smelt a vampire the first ten years after the Cullens left. I wondered what the Cullens had told others to leave this area alone. I knew the treaty forbade them from telling anyone about us but maybe they had just vaguely said there was nothing there worth hunting or that it was their own private domain. Something. I had run across a trail or two since then, but never a vampire.
I turned back towards the village and noticed a faint roar coming from the ocean. The noisy night animals hushed to an eerie silence. The roar got louder and I fought against my human instincts and ran toward the sound. When I got to the beach, I could see it coming: a huge tidal wave looming toward La Push, sucking in all the waves in front of it and growing like a mushroom.
We had no siren, no bell system to alert people. I wondered how close to the houses perched on the edge of the beachgrass this wave would reach. During most winter storms, several houses here on the beach have waves almost reaching their doors. A tidal wave large enough could lift couches off of floors and perhaps even shift houses off foundations. I phased to human form and slipped on my shorts. I ran to the Payne's house and knocked roughly. The tribal councilman opened the door with anger, then fear.
"What is it Ephraim?" he blurted out.
"Tidal wave is coming. It looks like a big one. We have got to get to higher ground." I turned and ran south, toward my house. "Warn the north end of the beach," I yelled over my shoulder.
That night, the tidal wave crashed on the beach over and over. Four times we thought the worst of it was over and then the ocean would recede and then the waves crashed down again. Boats were ripped from their moorings and thrown onto the beach, one destroyed the side of the Uley's house. The dock was ripped to pieces and cars were lifted up and thrown down again as though by a grumpy child.
The tribal school was on higher ground so everyone with a house on the beachfront gathered to the school. The Mr. Payne and the principal Mr. Clearwater directed people to spread out in family groups in the cafeteria. Children were crying, wondering why they were out of bed in the middle of the night.
Ray introduced Carol to his friends and cousins and the two of them sat down, soothing five-year-olds and borrowing books from the library to read goodnight stories. The waves crashed every once in a while, jarring the ears of everyone in the school and making the windows shake. Carol held tight to Quil's grandson and I could see why my son had chosen her. She was kind and fierce, loving and stubborn. She was determined to make life better for as many people as she could. I decided I could live with that.
January 5, 1970
I killed a cold one while Billy was at school.
Billy kicked the rock in the pathway and slowed his feet to kick it again. He was walking slower than I thought possible for anyone, even a five-year-old. "Come on, Billy, you are going to be late if you don't hurry," Grandma Sally said.
Billy pushed out his lower lip and hung his head. He didn't want to be late but he didn't want to go to school either. I reached down and took his hand in mine. He had spent all of Christmas vacation at our house while his parents made a stand with some other Indians on Alcatraz. It had been almost a month now, and I was pretty sure nothing would come of it. But Carol thought there was a chance they could "rebuild Indian cultures and political alliances" or something like that.
Ray and Carol had moved to La Push after spending the first three years of their married life on the Makah Reservation. It was closer to the University up there and Ray had one more semester when they married. They had stayed in our house for a month before Billy was born, because Carol said Sally was more nurturing than her own mother. Billy was born in La Push and after a few weeks they moved back to live with the Makahs. Now that my son had come home and brought my grandson, I felt like my life had started over again. I spent a lot of time in the woods with Billy since his parents had left. It rained nearly everyday, but his yellow raincoat with big metal buckles and the silly lighthouse keeper hat he wore kept the rain off. I showed him how to dig ferns and roots and when the storms got too fierce we went to Uncle Quil's house to make nets and repair baskets. It didn't seem that I would be getting any more grandchildren anytime soon, so I was determined to teach Billy everything I knew.
And I meant everything. He went on patrols with me, and unlike my son, Billy knew me despite my wolf form. He called me Grandpa Wolf when I took the form and he rode on my back as though he had done it all his life. His parents let him join us on the beach for a bonfire and myth telling right after he started school and his eyes got so big the fire reflecting in them threatened to consume his face.
"Grandpa, is that a true story?" I looked at him in confusion, stopping the dig for roots for a second. "The one about the cold ones?"
"What do you think, Billy?" unable to tell him the truth without breaking the treaty but unwilling to lie to him either.
"I think it is and I think you killed some when you were a wolf." He started jumping around, showing me how he would jump on a cold one and growling like a cub.
I smiled at him. He understood more about the myths than other children his age. Perhaps it was a gift from his ancestors or a connection to his fathers that would manifest itself in transformation someday. Part of me hoped.
But there would be no more daytime rides on Grandpa Wolf this week. School was back in session and Billy would rather it was not.
Grandma Sally gave him a kiss on the cheek and he quickly wiped it off. "I will wave at you when I get there," he said ten feet from the door of the school. He ran up the stairs, then turned and waved as though he was leaving on a journey. We waved back until he turned and yelled out for a friend. "Hey Harry, wait for me."
I turned Sally around and we headed home. As much as I loved having Billy stay with us, I had started to miss the silence that falls over us when Sally and I are together. I squeezed her hand and she looked up at me, knowing what I was thinking. She quickened her step slightly to get home a little faster and I lengthened my stride to join her.
I lounged around the house in the morning and decided to wait until after lunch to go on a patrol. So with a full belly I phased and jumped over the skeletonized bushes waiting for the leaves of spring. The rain stopped, but the clouds remained, knitting in every human below. I paused at the 101, peering and hearing until the highway was clear, then I leapt across and began to run across the Olympic National Park. I avoided the visitors' centers and pushed out to the edge of the park, smelling for any hint of a cold one.
At Lake Cushman, I smelled it. Thimbleberries too sweet to eat mixed with roses too strong to enjoy. The painful smell wafted past me on the wind and I turned my head to face it. I guessed the vampire was a hundred feet away, but I could not see it. I edged slowly and silently forward and could see a row of tiny houses set up along a dock on the other side of the lake. I looked upwind and saw the cold one mimicking my position farther up, crouched down an peering at the houses. He had flaming red hair cut short against his head, perfectly even on every side. He was dressed in a tight longsleeved creamy yellow turtleneck, dark jeans and an old belt. He was almost as tall as I was. I froze. Any movement would give me away.
He started moving toward me, down the hill toward the houses near the lake. I couldn't let him get there and I couldn't let him get past me and downwind. I knew timing was everything. I waited, motionless until he was within reach of a pounce. I jumped and knocked him down, setting us both rolling down the cliff side. I snarled and ripped at his face and head. We tumbled further, but he was silent and in pieces. His body crashed into a moss covered hemlock tree.
I ripped off his arms and legs, teeth on shoulders and thighs, then phased and slipped on my shorts. I felt in my pocket, but it was empty. I had nothing to start a fire with. I looked around. The needles and grass and mossy rocks were soaking in this morning's rain. My father's two stick method would not work.
I put forward a tentative finger and reached into the pocket of his now tattered pocket. There I found what I had hoped for: two dollars tucked in a wrinkled wallet. The stench on them was awful. But I could not let him try to reform himself, so I slipped the armless turtleneck over his headless neck and put it on myself. I chokes at the smell so close to my nose. I considered holding my breath, but I knew that would make it all the worse once I did breathe. Instead, I breathed through my mouth, tasting the sweetness instead of smelling it. I pushed the head a little further away, and I let gravity take me down the hills and mountains to the lake where the houses were. My legs and arms moved more quickly than usual, jerked around by gravity like a rag doll.
I crashed out into a clearing and approached the water, following it around through the low leafy kinnikkinnik bushes still green in January, but missing their bright red berries and salal plants equally bare. My feet were wet and muddy from walking in the sloshy edges of the lake when I reached the first residence on the curve of the lake. It was a cabin made with logs, each eight inches of the house was curved and filled in tight.
I could hear the clang of silverware against a pan and the splash of a sink full of water. I stepped over the thin fence, unable to keep out even deer or rabbits, and knocked on the door. A surprised woman answered the door with a baby in her arms.
"I am sorry to bother you," said the stranger in a ripped turtleneck and shorts, "Could I perhaps buy some matches off you? Mine got all wet." I held my hand out, palm up with one of the folded dollars in it.
She was startled, but said, "sure." She left the door open and returned in a moment with a small matchbook in her hand. It was white with a colorful carousel printed on the front. A souvenir pack from a vacation. The woman dropped it in my hand and shifted the baby, chubby hand in chubby mouth, to the other hip. She began to close the door, without taking the dollar. I picked up the matchbook and held the dollar out with my other hand.
"Please, I insist. I really appreciate it." I held my hand still until she took it.
"Thank you," she said quietly and closed the door tightly.
I turned and headed back over the fence, past the now familiar but bare berry bushes and leaped over a small green creek. The smell of the cold one filled my senses again and I turned up the hill, and climbed as quickly as my bare human feet could take me.
The pile of the red-headed vampire had shifted since I had left. An arm had reattached and the head had rolled three feet closer to the pile of white stony body parts. I gathered the driest needles and branches I could and tore out a thin gray match. Soon the flames and thick purple smoke took over the pile. I gathered up the head and plunked it into the fire. I stripped off the stinky shirt and threw it in the fire as well. Then I stepped back and slouched against a fir tree until the cold one burned out.