The Wolf

I’m somewhere between Albuquerque and Gallup, one headlight smashed to bits, when I see the wolf up ahead with its paw in the air.

The wolf is standing on its hind legs, and there’s this faded leather knapsack suspended from its left shoulder, bulging against ribs and vertebrae.

Against better judgment, I ease the truck onto the highway’s edge. I don’t usually stop to pick up wolves, especially at this time of night, but I’m dog-tired and alone and I could use some company.

So I pull over. Gravel crunches beneath the truck’s tires as I slow to a halt.

The wolf looks almost blue bathed in moonlight, and my solitary headlamp throws a tall, slender shadow behind him as he walks toward the cabin. He’s not wearing any pants. That’s how I know it’s a him.

The passenger door creaks open and the wolf climbs in, smelling of dust and carrion. The truck sags under his brawn.

I notice in the cab’s light he’s got a scar across his snout, pink and hypertrophic, swollen under his left eye like a writhing worm trapped in amber.

Also, his coat is various shades of gray, with hints of black, not blue at all.

The door slams and the truck goes dark. I pull back onto the highway. “I don’t usually pick up randoms,” I say, “but — what’re you, a gray wolf?”

The wolf snarls, gives me a look that says, What’re you, prejudiced? He says he prefers his binomial nomenclature: Canis lupus.

“Not lobo?” I ask. “Don’t folks out here refer to y’all as lobos?”

Again with that look. This time, though, he flashes his teeth as well. They look like stilettos. I decide to bite my tongue on this one.

Instead I ask where he’s heading, and he says California.

“That makes two of us!” I say, and tell him he can ride the whole way if he pleases. He offers a slight nod but nothing more in the name of gratitude.

I flip the cassette player on — it’s an old truck. “You like Willie Nelson?”

Of course, he says, assuring me all wolves like Willie Nelson.

I nose-laugh and throw on “Highwayman,” which seems fitting, and I’m relieved it appears to please the wolf. He shuts his eyes and his lips curl upward into one of those peculiar canine smiles.

Pretty soon the wolf offers to drive, so I pull off at the nearest Mobilgas, where I stock up on Gatorade and beef jerky and Cow Tales.

When I offer the wolf a piece of jerky, he declines. He says he’s already eaten tonight, that he went thirds on a white-tailed deer with his amigos. He also admits to having two stiff jackrabbits (Lepus californicus) in his knapsack.

“Precautionary,” he says, and shifts into gear. We return to the road.

Grabbing a jar of moonshine from the back seat — courtesy my neighbor Clarence who hatched it in a turpentine still in his boat shed back in Slidell — I untwist the top and swig.

The wolf gives me a sideways glance. I ask if he wants a hit. He hesitates at first but then shrugs like, Yeah, why the hell not?

He notes his absence of opposable thumbs and says he needs a dish, though. We end up using the mason jar top, which holds a decent shot.

He laps it up, asks for more.

After a healthy pull from the jar, I top him off.

Once again he tongues the shine.

Now, by God, I’m starting to feel comfortable with the wolf. It’s almost like we’re friends.

I’m telling him everything now, like how my wife left me, how she took the kids with her, how they’re all in El Segundo with the in-laws.

That’s why I’m going, I tell him: to get them back.

I ask why he’s going to California.

He says it doesn’t matter.

I don’t push it.

But now the wolf starts asking questions. He wants to know why my wife left me.

And whatever, I tell him.

I tell him I had an affair with her younger sister, an entanglement of limbs that lasted years.

I tell him how, blacked-out drunk, I kicked my headlight to shit in front of my children when my wife was backing them out of the driveway, how I’m worried that’ll be the last of my enactments they witness.

I tell the wolf I don’t want them to remember me that way.

I tell him I need a second chance.

The wolf pulls over. He tells me to exit the truck.

I ask if he’s serious, and he growls. I step out.

He says I deserve this.

I say, “Deserve what?”

The wolf says, “To be alone.”

He tells me to shut the door, and I oblige.

And now, standing alone in the desert cold beneath dark and diamonds, I watch as he rumbles off into the night.