2
Moonsingers
“Bob, where’s Galen? Didn’t the two of you come home together?”
The men had headed out at the crack of the autumn dawn, her Bob to play with his beloved old locomotives at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, and Galen to one of the city’s free clinics where he “kept his hand in,” as he called it, by volunteering medical care for the indigent locals. The work had helped to lift the dark clouds that still seemed to take hold of him periodically in the six years since he had joined his friends on the mountain. He felt useful again. With the three kids progressing so well in school now, Nancy also kept busy volunteering for the Red Cross.
“He’s somewhere in the woods,” Edison said. “He asked to get out of the kidmobile on the way up. Said he was carrying out some observational experiment with the forest animals. I gave him one of the phones, so we can call him when the school bus drops the kids off. Better he keeps his mind active. I don’t want to see him slip into another depression.”
Nancy nodded and returned to the kitchen and her dinner preparations. Three adults and three preteens could scarf down a lot of food.
Galen sat in the blind he had set up as his observation post, quietly waiting and watching. He had trained his binoculars on an opening in the rocky hillside, upwind from the blind, and he mentally reviewed his notes. He still couldn’t believe it—Canis lupus, the gray wolf! Actually two of them, male and female. What were they doing this far south? He had always thought them to be northern predators.
Must be the ever-encroaching developments forcing wildlife closer to the cities and suburbs.
He had read that even his beloved Northern Virginia was seeing an influx of coyotes. Deer were overwhelming the subdivisions, and traffic incidents involving the animals had become near-daily occurrences. One poor black bear paid with his life for wandering into a hospital.
There! He saw the movement. The male, must be a good eighty to ninety pounds, carrying a dead rabbit in its mouth to the den opening. Then he saw the reason why: The smaller female was limping—she couldn’t hunt. He adjusted the binoculars and saw the healing wounds of buckshot.
Oh, no, Mrs. Wolf. You don’t want to fall into the sights of any of our local brave hunters!
The male put the dead rabbit down and sat on his haunches, while the female hobbled to the prey and ate her meal.
Slowly, slowly, Mrs. Wolf, don’t wolf it down.
He chuckled softly to himself at the absurdity of the thought.
The male nuzzled the female, and they both entered the den. It was still a bit early for mating. That would happen in a few months, probably sometime in January, and the cycle of life would start over.
Galen sighed as he watched the lupine couple.
Leni, Cathy, June. You all shared my life so briefly, only to be snatched from me, leaving me no family, no one to share my later years.
He felt the clouds gathering and caught himself.
Yet, here I am living on a mountain in the middle of Pennsylvania caring for three orphans.
He noticed a blurred reflection of his likeness in a rain puddle at his feet.
No, old wolf, your time isn’t quite past. You still have pups to raise.
He glanced at his watch then quietly slipped out of the blind and walked the half-mile down to the bus stop to wait for the kids, thinking about how at dinner he would tell Carmelita, Freddie, and Tonio about the new guests on the mountain.
The dog felt the pain from the kick radiate up his abdomen to his back. It was not the first time the two-legged one had done this. Usually he would just slink away to a corner of the yard at the end of his run, tail between his legs, to show the big one he understood who was dominant.
Not this time.
Maybe it was because he was old now. Or maybe in his dog’s soul he felt the urge to try at least once for dominance. So instead of retreating, he turned his head toward the large one, mouth muscles pulled back along his long jaw line in a snarl. He felt the satisfying penetration in his teeth, as they pierced the large one’s pain-making leg. His tall pointed ears heard the cry of agony that only he had vocalized in the past. Now his attacker felt the pain.
“You damned sonofabitch, I’m gonna blow yer brains out!”
Lem Caddler clutched his right leg to staunch the flow of blood. He backed away slowly from Clyde, or as he usually called the big, German Shepherd-Labrador mix, his “good ol’ huntin’ dawg.” This had never happened before. For one thing, he had been raised believing a dog was an animal, not a member of the family. For another, he had learned from his father that you gotta show a dog who’s boss, which was what he had done—often. And now the bastard had turned on him. He held his hand on the wound as he hobbled toward the farmhouse to grab his shotgun. No way he’d let that dog get away with this.
“‘Bout time to break in that new dog, anyway,” he muttered to himself. “This one’s got wuthless for huntin’.”
Clyde trembled as he watched his master enter the house. Instinctively, he knew: Escape now or die!
He looked around the yard and spotted the chain holding the new dog, like himself but younger and sleeker, cowering behind the large maple tree. He loped over to the animal and they faced muzzle to muzzle. The smaller dog, possibly sensing its own future fate with Caddler, rolled over onto his back, exposing his underbelly to Clyde. Then he rose and followed him in a run to the full extent of their restraints. Clyde had expected the usual sharp snap against his neck, as he had felt so many times, but now the leather collar, grown weak and cracked over the years, gave way easily.
Not so with the young dog. He let out a painful yelp, as the stretched chain yanked him back on his rear end.
Just then Caddler emerged from the farmhouse, shoving shells into his gun’s twin barrels.
With all his strength, Clyde bit into the dog’s collar.
“What the…?” Caddler cried out. “I’ll shoot ya! I’ll shoot ya both! Dumb bastards!”
He raised the shotgun and fired. The rain of buckshot struck the two animals like the simultaneous stings of a hundred hornets.
Pumped with fear and pain, Clyde bit through the collar, and he and the other dog lit out for the woods. Before Caddler could load up and get off another round they were gone.
The three children helped clear away the dishes from dinner—a nightly custom—then sat back down at the table. The next activity, also a custom imposed by Nancy, was inviolable. Each evening, they were required to report the happenings of the day at school. What lessons had they learned? What were their homework assignments? Were they having any problems with the schoolwork, the teachers, or their classmates?
The after-dinner time became like a family conference. It was an opportunity for everyone to share newly learned lessons, to vent emotions, to ask questions or receive explanations, to admit lapses in judgment or behavior and, in some cases, for the children to accept the stern words of their elders. The three guardians took their parental role very seriously, and they involved themselves as much as possible in their charges’ lives. Only when they grew older did the children fully appreciate how different their tios and tia were from the modern-day, average American family.
Sometimes, what the adults talked about actually interested the thirteen-year-old girl and the twelve- and eleven-year-old boys—and tonight was just such an occasion.
“Guess what I saw today!”
Galen actually grinned as he looked at the others seated around the table.
“We have some surprise guests on our mountain!”
Freddie rolled his eyes.
Probably another bird, he thought.
Always