Wolf by Jim Harrison

Author:Jim Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I got up in the middle of the night and started a fire after hearing what I thought were footsteps in the brush. A dream I suppose. The fire burned quickly and with a roar, big chunks and strips of dry pine ripped easily off a stump. The tree cut how long ago? My mind was sinking into a small black ball. With no prospects how will I ever travel first class anywhere? I want to go to San Francisco again someday and stay at the Palace or Fairmont or Mark Hopkins or the St. Francis. Fuck steerage and the contempt of everyone. Held for vagrancy in Fraser, Colorado, once because I lacked two dollars of the needed amount to make one an ordinary citizen. And in a small town outside of Topeka questioned by a bored deputy in an old car with “Deputy Sheriff” hand painted on the door. He only wanted to talk. And the usual homosexual ride that begins with “Do you have a girl friend?” Yes of course and a ponderous cock and you can't have a single solitary bite. They're uniformly nice about the whole thing. Pun intended. One in Waltham with a St. Christopher statue on the dashboard. Should have a tiny blindfold so he doesn't have to watch blowjobs. Saints deserve some consideration. And an actual pass made by a war-torn veteran who had to speak through a battery-operated amplifier held against his throat. Sounded like a faulty growling tape recorder—the obscene question drawn out, a forty-five rpm played at thirty-three. Would have been more interesting if the machine accelerated the voice into insane chipmunk talk. My brain shrank perceptibly again. I felt a whirling sort of nausea, facing the fire in the darkness and wondering if I were meant to be one of those fragile individuals who shrink into dustballs from generalized pain and are swept into asylums. No Heathcliff with ten hounds and vast moor. Where is a “she” to retrieve me, draw me out of the riddle that only leads to another. I have lost my faith I thought in “figuring things out,” the various tongues in my skull that spoke daily of alternatives, counterploys, divisions, instructions, directions. All the interior sensuosities of language and style. And I live the life of an animal and transmute my infancies, plural because I always repeat never conquer, a circle rather than a coil or spiral. I've talked myself into the woods up here and will there be a common language when I return? Or is there a need for one or was there ever such a language in any world at any time? I think so. Before the gibbet or guillotine the cheers take the same arc of sound and come from a single huge throat. No king to require a spokesman. Off in the dark there is a wolf who speaks his limited instincts to another. I imagine he knows that there are few of his own kind left. On Isle Royale they control their population without help.

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