I was a grade school werewolf
At those tender ages, before the onslaught of peer pressure and conformity have collared and choked off our pulsing primitive within, the wild is still just under the surface.
The sharp staccato of slender cloven hoofs thumping and crunching with urgency down the ridge was startling on this still October morning.
My brain barely registered what I was hearing when the eight-point buck shot into view at a gallop as if Beelzebub himself was in pursuit. He passed by within range of my arrow but never slowed for even a millisecond. I doubt he heard my imitation of a doe’s nasally bleats, the feeble and lame attempts of a human trying to seduce a deer with cervid dirty talk, to try and slow him down. But maybe I shouldn’t be so critical of my calling. Even during my horndoggiest days of young adulthood (which really didn’t have much dog in them), avoiding death would’ve always trumped getting laid. Probably.
What was he running from? The wind was right for me. And here in Arkansas, large predators capable of taking down a deer are few. I know of five — coyotes (in the plural), a bobcat, a black bear, feral dogs (in the plural), and a human. My bet was another human. Though I try to steer clear of those places where most other humans hunt, such is the outdoor experience on public land.
But the buck’s flight was different than I usually observe when a human plays the boogeyman. Besides the frantic gait, there were other signs or rather lack thereof — no waving blaze of a white tail and no snorting, blowing alarm ringing through the creek bottom putting every other deer in the vicinity on high alert — that told me this creature wasn’t just bumped but was running for its deer life.
As I pondered all of this, the silent and dark answer to my question appeared on his trail. It moved with a distinctive canine lope.
A dog?
Dogs, both semi-and fully feral are underestimated predators and harassers of whitetails. But dogs are usually loud-mouthed and watching an adult deer pursued by dogs always gives me a sense that the deer knows it’s in total control of the situation. The deer didn’t act like this was a dog. As the creature came closer I discovered it was, in fact, a coyote. A black coyote.
Melanistic coyotes are almost unheard of across the range of the species, but when they happen they’re most likely to happen in the South. I count myself extremely lucky to have seen two, now, in my lifetime. I was over the moon.
But it wasn’t just seeing a black coyote that sent me into nature-nerd nirvana, it was watching a large(ish), wild mammalian predator in pursuit of large mammalian prey. In all of my time spent in the wildlands, this was the first active pursuit of such kind I’d ever witnessed. Even more shocking than a black coyote chasing a deer, though, was that it was only ONE coyote. One coyote that weighed maybe 25-pounds soaking wet in full-kill pursuit of a 130-pound whitetail buck. I didn’t think coyotes carried the load of gumption, let alone capabilities, required to tackle a full-grown buck solo. But the deer sure as hell thought this one did.
The coyote lost the trail for a second and slowed a bit, making a half circle to within 10 steps of my treestand before throwing its nose to the shifting breeze and bolting with purpose in the deer’s last known direction. And then it simply became one with the woods. A shadow swallowed by shadows.
I saw more deer later, though, no shots were offered. But killing a deer would have just been gravy on the morning. Even a bloody arrow couldn’t have delivered the dose of adrenalin pushed through my veins by observing that pursuit. I was buzzing on the experience all day. And the encounter triggered memories of wild canids. Not memories of other encounters with wild canids, but memories of a boy who wanted to be a wild canid.
I don’t recall all of my Halloween costumes prior to 1978, but I do remember trick-or-treating as the Creature from the Black Lagoon a couple of times. Back then, dinosaurs, lizards, Godzilla, and fish were my obsessions so scaly, green, and/or aquatic creatures were at the top of the list of what I wanted to be. But the autumn I was seven, everything changed.
I blame it on Andy Gibb and Dad.
That summer my mom bought the album “Shadow Dancing.” The album’s cover featured a photo of the youngest brother Gibb looking absolutely resplendent with his feathered and fantastic shoulder-length coiffure. For reasons I can’t understand now, I decided I wanted hair like that. And for reasons I do understand now and am eternally grateful for, Mom was cool with it. Dad, however, was not a fan.
Of course, my messy locks did not ever look a thing like those worn by Gibb. But, of course, that wasn’t Dad’s issue. Dad wore a high-and-tight during his school days, and I recall that when his hair touched his ears it was time to visit Leon’s Barbershop. Yes, he grew up in the 60s, but Dad’s idea of popular musicians was Hank Sr., George Jones, and Earl Monroe. And he thought George could’ve used a trim. He’d only even heard of Andy Gibb because he was married to Mom.
Since Mom was on board with it, Dad couldn’t lay down the law about how his son chose to express himself, and I don’t think it was anything he got too worked up over or even thought much about anyway. But subtle and not-so-subtle negatives about my hair and joking (I think) threats about what he planned to do about it were a near-daily occurrence. I never got upset over any of it (if you’ll pardon my light pandering to the “good ol’ days” cliche, most of which I think is bullshit, thick skin was a requirement for growing up as a Gen-Xer for better or worse). But one late August afternoon while we ate popsicles on Granny’s porch, Dad uttered some words that sank deep into my hide and hung on like a pair of sharp canine teeth.
“Henry,” he said (he often called me Henry, short for John Henry the steel-drivin’ man), “yer gettin’ shaggy as a wolf.”
And with that faintest of observations that I was ever-so-slightly wolf-like, my hair was no longer the portal for transformation into a minor disco god. My wild and untamable locks were now an outer manifestation of the wild and untameable beast within.
It all made sense now. This is why I was drawn to the forest and field, felt those primal urges to shed my clothes and become one with the woods. This is why my desire to chase and capture small wild creatures was so powerful. This was why I ate my beef as rare as Mom allowed, sometimes sneaking a ball of uncooked hamburger when she wasn’t looking. This was why I chewed gristle and tendon from the fried chicken drumsticks, even cracking through to get at the marrow and eating it with relish. I was a wolf. How did it take me so long to figure it out?
While waiting in the lunch line at school the next day, I turned to the kid standing behind me.
”Hey. My dad said I’m a wolf. Just thought I’d let you know.”
The kid shrugged.
I became obsessed.
Wolf heads roughly sketched in pencil replaced my daily renditions of T-Rex and Stegosaurus. Of course, Youtube and videos on demand weren’t a thing back then, but anytime a nature show about wolves was on I was glued to the set. I also knew our dogs were just domesticated wolves so I studied how they moved — the trot, the lope, the stalk, how they walked on their padded toes with a long foot angling up into that powerful and graceful curving ankle. It was all tendons and ligaments below the knee, a lot like my skinny, gangly legs. The better to run you down with, my deer.
I remember walking tip-toe in the dark mud of our driveway making wolf tracks that were also Johnny tracks.
And as a reader, I devoured everything in our elementary school library that had anything to do with wolves be it natural science or fiction. The shiniest gem in that voluminous treasure chest of lupine knowledge was a thick book about humans who did become wolves and the lore surrounding the legend — including all of the old means and methods used to transform. A book telling me how to become a wolf. And I was already more than halfway there. Dad said so.
I signed my name on the card, practically howling to Ms. Berry (our librarian) that I’d need the book for at least two weeks and maybe more. I think I checked that book out at least a half dozen more times before I moved on to junior high. I still remember its cover with the depiction of a werewolf in full wolf form standing on some lonesome road as a blazing red sunset backlit the black timber. The wooded road reminded me of those lonely paths I’d found in the hardwoods surrounding both of my grandparent’s homes, comforting sanctuaries where I could trot, lope, and stalk untamed.
I understood that by and large werewolves had this negative stigma in our popular culture of being murderers. I’d read in the book that taking “wolf form” for many of those who claimed the ability to do so in earlier times was a way of shifting the blame for atrocities they committed against other people. Most self-proclaimed lycanthropes were likely insane, but that answer seemed too neat and tidy to cover all of the legends. And I also read that some shapeshifters took to all fours not to kill other people, but for the pure bestial freedom found only in shucking your civilized humanity and running on the bare pads of your paws.
The only way I can explain how a seven-year-old boy understood and embraced this basic concept of totemism, why I possessed a longing for something more than Saturday morning cartoons and T-ball, is that the feelings were innate, visceral, and instinctive. It’s not something I had to be taught, and believe me when I tell you that no one I knew could or would teach me anything close to it. But everything I’ve learned since then has told me that my seven-year-old self was on to something. This is not new information. Almost every kid has a favorite animal and looks for the similarities and familiarities between themselves and the creature they most relate to. My oldest granddaughter loves cheetahs because they’re fast like her. At these tender ages, before the onslaught of peer pressure and conformity have collared and choked off our pulsing primitive within, the wild is just under the surface. It’s camouflaged only by the thinnest veneer of what we are expected to be. I wonder what we could become, who we could become, what our world would become if we unshouldered that burden of expectation.
But despite my innate longing, finding a way to fully become a canine seemed out of reach. The book said there were a few methods for werewolves to become wolves whenever they wanted, and that that full moon requirement was just the product of some screenwriters’ imagination. The most surefire way was to be born into a lineage of werewolves. You could also be cursed (though I could not imagine ever thinking of it as a curse) by someone with the power to perform magic. Getting bitten by another werewolf without getting killed was an alternative. And the other two primary options required super-specific accessories: either a two-sided belt made of wolf fur and human skin or a special ointment made of unknown ingredients.
I was already wolfish, so I was probably born into a family with wolf blood on one side. And I had strong suspicions about which side my lycanthrope DNA came from. Dad had dark and heavy eyebrows, darker skin, and black hair. He was somewhat furry even as a man and born and raised in the wildest, most remote region of Arkansas. He was also the person who said that I was wolfish. Had to be a hint. But if I had the bloodlines, why hadn’t I been able to fully transform? Maybe, like seemingly everything else, I wasn’t old enough. Or maybe I needed a booster of some kind.
Getting cursed seemed like a long shot because I didn’t know any witches or warlocks. And even if I did, they would never have let their true identities be known in our small Bible-thumping town where churches outnumbered businesses.
Getting bitten by another werewolf without dying was the most intriguing to me as a kid, though, now I don’t understand the appeal. Back then, I figured I could reason with the biter, maybe mention that I was a bit of a wolf myself and just needed a nip or two to complete the process. Wolves are pack animals. Surely any other werewolves I encountered would want a running buddy, right? But finding a werewolf in my hometown seemed about as improbable as finding a witch or warlock and for the same reasons.
Human skin/wolf fur belts were a no-go for obvious reasons.
The book said that werewolf ointments were always a gift from the Devil and usually required a quid pro quo involving your soul. I did not have a problem with that. The problem was that I didn’t know how to summon Satan. I stopped short of actually praying to God to make me a wolf. With the Devil involved in so much of werewolf lore, it seemed like a huge conflict of interests.
Looking back, I think it’s funny and quite enlightening that even though my family was in church every time the doors were open — that I memorized Bible verses every week and always said I wanted to go to heaven when asked — I was more than willing to exchange my eternity for the opportunity to run as a beast o’ the wood in this earthly realm and who cares what happens afterward. At seven years of age, those oldest of ways already seemed a far better option than the cage of culture slowly entrapping me. I sometimes, often actually, think that in many ways I was much wiser back then.
So becoming a wolf for real wasn’t going to happen unless I figured out some extremely complicated stuff. But Halloween was just a few weeks away. I could pretend to be a werewolf. Even out in the public. Even at school. And no one would know the depth of my fantasy but me.
I’d have none of that rubber mask stuff, though. Those nasty-smelling wolf fake faces looked comically unreal and way overhyped the wolf as a monster. I never wanted to be a monster. I wanted to be a wild thing. And none of the wolves I’d ever seen in nature documentaries or books were drooling, mangy-looking freaks. In total contrast, they seemed to carry themselves with a quiet dignity even with muzzles coated in caribou guts. They weren’t raving, bloodthirsty demons. They were predators emanating a cool confidence and members of a family with warm bonds forged through seasons of feasting and famishing together. That’s the look I wanted.
Also, the mask was too easy on and too easy off. Too noncommital. I didn’t want to half-ass it on the one day and night that would bring me closest to a reality that could never be realized. I wanted to be a wolf in the truest sense of what a wolf would be, or as close as I could come to it.
As luck would have it, I found a doable way of doing just that at a scholastic book fair just two weeks before Halloween. It was in the back pages of a book about movie monsters with a special section about homemade costume recipes in the spirit of that old Hollywood makeup magic.
The book’s recipe for becoming a wolf was inspired by Lon Chaney’s 1941 Wolfman. You know, the old black and white “even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night, can become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon is shining bright” movie. Besides the full moon bit, which I already knew was bullshit, I wasn’t really a fan of Chaney’s pug-nosed look. But you play the cards you’re dealt and Mom couldn’t figure out a way to give me a long snout. Instead, she used an eyebrow pencil to color on a canine-like nose and whisker dots on my upper lip. She used dark foundation on my face and arms. And for the pièces de résistance, she snipped hair from a black wig and adhered it to my hands, arms, and face.
I can’t say my childhood was perfect, but that I had a mom willing to help her son get as close as possible to becoming a wolf surely says I was one of the luckier ones. Now if she’d known how wild and wooly those desires ran, that her boy wanted nothing more than to run through the woods in only the fur gifted to him by nature and thought that bartering his soul for the chance to do so didn’t seem like a bad deal, things might have been different. But ignorance is bliss. Doubly so when it comes to the intricate inner workings of your child’s imagination.
From that year forward, I was a werewolf transformed in the same manner every Halloween until I retired from the trick-or-treating scene and turned away from those boyhood fantasies. Or at least found a more socially acceptable outlet for them as I became fully domesticated, collared, and leashed by a society that demanded I grow up and join it.
Of course, gray wolves were gone from Arkansas, if they were ever here at all, long before I was born. And even though I’ve traveled to gray wolf country a few times, paw prints and piles of scat are the closest I’ve come to an encounter with the totem beast of my boyhood. But these resourceful little prairie wolves like the one that just chased a deer within spitting distance of me, the ones we call coyotes, are flourishing in my home region and have served as more than worthy substitutes. Even as we carve up acres of wilderness making room for crop and home, they and their whitetail prey have adapted and found a niche in the fringe between their world and ours. Those uncultivated borderlands are also where I spend a lot of my time. Longing for miles of the uninterrupted untamed, I find some solace and great joy in knowing that despite our abuse the wild has endured. It can still be observed in the leaf-crunching glory of a chase at dawn.
And as the black coyote dissolved that morning, I felt a familiar but old and buried urge. I felt the outrageous impulse to leap from my human skin to lope after it and join the hunt on all fours. The pangs of an impossible desire from more than forty years ago radiated through my being, the seven-year-old boy and the wolf both hungry to run free.