-
Brushwolf
- Michigan State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
27 Brushwolf When a man cocked a rifle and aimed at a wolf’s head, what was he trying to kill? —Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men It’s no different here. Mostly fear. Or hate. Or some semblance of failure. If you grab the devil’s walking stick, it’ll tear your hand in two. Fruit so heavy only a few birds eat, and most of the berries are left to fall and turn the earth. We believe the brushwolf walks in shadows as dark as that tree’s fruit, blood as acrid as rot in October. Some nights you can hear a fawn crying like a child, torn and ragged, dragged into death’s quieting muzzle. In the coldest months we sit in hunting blinds hoping for a deer to pass, saying we must feed our families. 28 At night we dream beside our wives, praying to the lie of sleep that the innocence of our children might save us. As we enter the hunt our desire to see a brushwolf rises: first wind after the sun comes up; fire irrevocably altering the earth. But what of the wolf that runs in our bodies?— its blood a river of silence wandering this place we’ve cut and cleared. Each time we raise our rifles, peer into the undergrowth, the head of the animal is magnified, and the oldest among us try hard not to imagine what we will kill. ...