Songs of Love & Death

He parked off-road, in a small clearing. He opened his door, got out, opened the back door and stood looking in at the wolf, who was standing on the backseat, absolutely still, utterly focused. One charged moment passed in silence, then Cody barked, “Go free!” and the wolf leaped out of the car, the most beautiful, graceful thing I’d ever seen. He seemed to fly, and in motion, he was perfect, so beautiful it made my chest ache.

“You okay?”

Cody was staring at me. I had to blink hard, but managed not to sniff as I nodded and said, “He’s just so… amazing.”

He went on looking at me for an uncomfortably long time before he nodded, slowly, and said, “More than you know. Will you be okay here by yourself?”

I nodded, but I really wasn’t sure.

He handed me his keys. “If you get too hot, run the air conditioner for a while, listen to some music if you get bored. Does your phone have a camera?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Just, if you see an ivory-billed woodpecker, you want to be sure to get a picture.”

It was only when he flashed me a grin that I realized he was teasing, and managed to respond: “Actually, I was hoping to see Bigfoot.”

I watched him go, light and strong and quick on his feet as he sprinted away into the deep, shadowy forest, and although his movements didn’t have the amazing grace of the fleet, four-legged animal, still he had his own male, human beauty, and when he vanished into the dark, I felt something squeeze my heart.

IT WAS STILL hot and almost unbearably humid, even so late in the day, even though it was already October, but I was afraid of draining the battery if I ran the air-conditioning, so instead of curling up in relative comfort with one of my books, I wandered. I kept to the trail, of course, and peered into the undergrowth in hope of seeing one of the rare orchids or carnivorous plants that flourished in these parts.

I didn’t find anything rare, and I got bitten to pieces by mosquitoes before deciding, fairly swiftly, to turn back. I didn’t belong here. Once in the clearing again, knowing that I had the option of locking myself inside the SUV, or even driving away, I felt better. There was a sinister atmosphere about this patch of southern woodland, or maybe I just thought so after Cody’s story. Everybody knows there are people who delight in cruelty to animals, and if Cody had told me he’d rescued the wolf from starvation in somebody’s garage or basement, I would not have been surprised. But why would anyone go so far into a trackless wilderness to chain and abandon, to condemn to a lingering death, such a beautiful, innocent animal?

Something about the mental image struck me as mythic: a wolf-Prometheus bound to a rock? But it had been a tree, and the only classical myth about wolves that came to mind was Romulus and Remus, abandoned babies nursed by a she-wolf.

I was still brooding on the subject when the two of them came back, the wolf panting but still full of energy, bounding across the clearing to do a happy dance around me. Cody, dripping with sweat, his gray T-shirt soaked and clinging to his muscular chest, jogged raggedly after him. He looked exhausted, until he saw me, when his face lit up, and he carried himself differently, with a new spring in his step.

The sight of him, the way his expression changed, the sheer joy in it, as if he’d half expected me to be gone, sent a surge through me, some sort of emotional electricity connecting us. Can these things be explained? Is there any reason in it? Sometimes, once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you see someone, and you just know. I was suddenly, ridiculously, happy.

Neither of us said a word.

There was a cooler full of cold drinks in the back of the car. Cody poured water into a dish and set it down for Lobo, then stripped off his shirt and poured the rest of the bottle over his head, shaking it off as unselfconsciously as if he’d been alone. I pretended not to notice, but my eyes were drawn to his naked chest, and I was standing so near that I could smell his clean, salty sweat and feel the heat that radiated from him. It was all suddenly too much; the surge of pure lust that I felt was so powerful that I couldn’t breathe. I had to close my eyes and lean against a tree.

“Want some?”

My eyes flashed open; I saw that he was holding out a can of cold beer. “Thanks,” I said, and took a quick gulp.

He looked at me with a sly grin. “Don’t know why you should feel weak. You been secretly working out with the weights in your bag?”

“No, but the mosquitoes must’ve got two pints out of me, at least.”

He laughed, and I gulped down beer more quickly than usual. But when he offered me a second, I shook my head. “No, I can’t—I shouldn’t—I—”

“I guess you need to be getting back?”

I nodded.