Wild Things: Four Tales Read Free

was good to me once, but that changed. Maybe it was the wolf attacking his stock. Maybe it was something else."
    "You see him as a rancher. I know him as a man who lost his only daughter."
    The boy went silent for several minutes. The man watched him.
    Then, the boy said, "Not my fault, either."
    "I believe you," the man said.
    "I didn't do that to her," the boy said.
    "I believe you," the man said. "But he hired me to track this wolf. You came along because he wanted you to know what it meant to track a wolf. That's all."
    "She was a good girl," the boy said. "We would've been married if...it doesn't matter. It was an accident."
    "I know nothing about her or you," the man said. "I just know I was hired to track the wolf. You are the local boy who has all the hunting trophies. So you came with me."
    "I wanted to help him. Her father. To make up for it," the boy said.
    "If it was an accident," the man said, "then there was nothing to make up for."
    The man glanced over at the rifles, placed well-beyond the fire, in a ditch between rocks and a rotting log.
    The boy began to get up as if he, too, thought about the rifles.
    The man drew out the gun tucked under his coat, and pointed it at the boy. "Stay where you are, son," he said.
    "You're not tracking the wolf," the boy said.
    The man stood up and moved closer to the boy. He whispered to the boy that he should not be afraid.
    The boy looked as if he might turn and run at any minute, but the man's whispers were calming. The man spoke about how everything would be all right.
    "I didn't kill her," the boy said. "Her father is crazy. I didn't kill her. She decided to do what she did. I had no part of it. I was hunting with my uncles. She thought I had abandoned her. I would've married her. I would've come back. If I had known. I would have. She was good. She was a wonderful girl. I knew I wanted a girl like that. Any man would. You would've if you had known her. She was like an angel to people. I saw it the minute I laid eyes on her. She was one of the good ones. Not all people are good, are they? But she was. She was a good one."
    The man aimed the gun to the side of the boy's head. "Most people are sheep," the man said. "A few are the dogs that guard the sheep. Now and then there is a shepherd, but they are rare. But there are always wolves. A wolf wants to find the best of the sheep and devour it. That is all a wolf wants to do when it finds sheep. That is all it can do."
    After the man bound the boy's hands and legs, he went to get his rifle. He stood several feet back from the boy, estimating where best to make the killing shot.

A Madness of Starlings
    1
    What possessed me to retrieve the little fledgling, I can’t say for sure. I rescued the baby bird from the jaws of the tiger-striped tomcat that had been stalking it. I wanted to show my boys that the smallest of life sometimes needed protection from the predators.
    I brought it into the house, hoping to wait out the cat’s bloodlust. My two boys came out to look at it. I warned them not to touch the bird just then. “The less contact it has with people, the better.”
    After an hour, I took the bird outside again. My kids watched from the living room window.
    It hopped in the tall summer grass that I had not gotten to with the mower. Its mouth opened wide, up to the skies, expecting its mother to come with food.
    I stepped back onto the porch and scanned the area to make sure no cat returned. I hoped that the bird’s mother would return and feed it so that the balance of nature could be restored and I’d have no more responsibility.
    An hour later, the fledgling continued to hop and squawk and open its mouth to heaven. No mother arrived. I had lost my own mother when young, and did not like remembering this when I saw the bird I came to call Fledge. Loss was the bad thing in life. I hated it, and didn’t wish it on a baby bird.
    I took the little guy in, and my wife, Jeanette, and the boys (little William and tall