Mother’s Wolves

I pressed record on my mother’s cassette deck, the one she had used for the experiment five years before. Leo held the megaphone up, pausing before I gave the signal. We were in a cedar swamp, miles off the main road. A thick weave of branches and brambles choked the air. The usual waterways swimming between moss-laden trees were reduced to a trickle. A dry season sucked up the moisture, allowing us to move between the cedars with ease. The occasional spongy squelch rose beneath our bootheels as we pressed down on the green carpeting. It was a full moon. The wash of pale light made our headlamps useless.

The blank cassette unspooled. A prerecorded howl from a timber wolf barked through Leo’s megaphone. It echoed through the trees, shaking sparrows from a nearby perch. With the sound fading, I watched the tape, the red record button flashing. I could feel Leo staring, waiting for my reaction. A minute passed. Then two. Then five. No wolf was going to reply, to prove my theory that yes, they had returned to Maine. I clicked the button off. The whirring tape fell silent. There was a forty-five minute hike back to my Jeep. We couldn’t wait. I had to teach a class at 9 a.m.

“Maybe we should play it one more time?” Leo asked.

“There’s no point. If there were another wolf out here, it would have responded,” I said, taking out my GPS, its LCD screen aglow.

“They could be shy.”

“I don’t think you can ascribe human emotions to animals like that—not shyness, at least.”

Leo’s narrow shoulders slumped as he tucked the megaphone into his backpack. I should have played into his optimism. Leo volunteered five to ten hours a week helping with my study, lugging equipment in and out of dense forests. He was the only undergrad to answer my request for an assistant. He didn’t need the extra credit. Every paper he turned in was A-worthy.

Another howl would hurt no one, but the wolf’s voice, or lack thereof, hollowed something in my chest. It was the thirty-first night with no reply.

We walked the 1.6 miles through the forest, pushing branches out of our faces, avoiding small pools of murky water. Occasionally Leo would mention some wolf-related trivia. It was a nice gesture, but I knew the statistics. Our outings were part of my thesis. I agreed with him to keep up morale.

“Yeah,” I replied, “it’s weird how coywolves are more common than purebred wolves in parts of Canada.”

“Apparently they’re even on Cape Cod. There’s a picture going around the internet of one wading through mudflats,” Leo continued, leading into another discussion on gene dispersion and heredity. Even though I craved silence, I was glad to hear that someone else, besides myself, still cared. Leo, despite the evidence, didn’t believe wolves were going extinct.

*

The scent of rotting wood and pine sap grew thick while we traversed the flat paths cutting through the underbrush. As the Jeep came into view, I told myself if I didn’t catch a response soon, I’d hang up my recording equipment. That, or if I didn’t find my mother’s lost camp. Whichever came first.

Another howl would hurt no one, but the wolf’s voice, or lack thereof, hollowed something in my chest.  

“Mia, what do you think about stopping at the diner before you drop me at the dorms?” Leo asked when we were in the Jeep, tires spitting loose stones. I could tell he had been working himself up to the question. I couldn’t crush him. I sensed more than scholarly interest, but a midnight date couldn’t happen. The whole stereotype of relationships between grad students and undergrads had historically played itself out. I didn’t need to add another page to the book, regardless of the gender swap.

“Not tonight, Leo. I need to figure out what I’m going to teach tomorrow.”

“You mean you don’t . . .”

“Nope, I don’t plan that far ahead. I have some loose ideas, but that’s about it. Don’t mention it to the others, right? Our secret.” I hoped confidentiality would flatter.

“I would never.” He stared out the windshield, face blank, the full moon bathing his angular features and slicked-back hair in pale light.

*

My mother had been part of the first experiment. She wasn’t the head scientist of the Wolf Inquiry Project, just one of the more fervent members of the study. Their purpose was to prove wolves had returned to Maine, a state recently abandoned, thanks to temperature hikes, overhunting, and habitat destruction. My mother, along with a team of volunteers, had drifted through the woods around Holden with an identical setup to the one Leo and I now carried. There had been rumors in nearby towns. Several chickens and goats turned up dead and bloody. Ghostly dog-shaped blurs crept across highways. An elderly woman claimed she captured a picture of one on a disposable camera, but the film was too blurry to prove anything.

My mother sent letters, swearing they were close to locating a pack. If found, legislation would be proposed, adding Maine as a sanctuary state to establish a breeding population. The Wolf Inquiry Project took three months. My mother and I usually kept in close contact, but throughout those weeks, I only saw her sporadically. Being apart for so long was a rarity; I had chosen to do my undergraduate at UMaine so I could be close to her. Campus was only three towns away. Mom’s brief letters took the place of our weekly Thai-food dates, our trips to the movies and garden walks.

Their research teams recorded zero howls. On the last day of the study, my mother took a new tape deck out on her own. Many members abandoned the project when no results surfaced. She didn’t rendezvous with the scientists at the agreed-upon hour. Nor did she show up the next day. Or the next. She didn’t come back at all. Police found her truck on the side of an access road but couldn’t locate her body. Every paper said she was dead but published no evidence. I never let their claims of starvation and exposure exist as anything more than hearsay. Statistics said 98 percent of people who go missing in Maine’s woods turn up within twenty-four hours. Ninety-nine percent are found, eventually. With my mother in the remaining 1 percent, I knew she didn’t want to be located. Dead bodies can’t consciously evade search teams, grid layouts, German shepherds, and helicopters. I knew she was out there.

Mom had been gone for five years. I wanted so badly to believe I’d find her on the other end of the recorded howls instead of a wolf.

When my father died of a sudden heart attack six years ago, when I was still a senior in college, my mother quit her job as a park ranger in Acadia and searched for a new cause to throw herself into. Being selected for the research team enabled her to become singularly focused, a temporary reprieve that rapidly morphed into an obsession. With the project’s failure and no chance of establishing a breeding population for the wolves, something inside her broke, something that wouldn’t let her come back to society and all the reminders that her husband was dead and she hadn’t helped the species attain rebirth. With her only remaining distraction gone, it was no surprise she took to the woods. That’s what I thought anyway. So I searched, retracing her steps through once-trod forest, picking the same paths and hunting trails she wrote about in letters. I wanted to help the wolves; that part wasn’t a fabrication. My advisors hadn’t connected our last names. They hadn’t considered I’d have an ulterior motive to my studies.

I considered talking to Leo about it, but the intimacy seemed too much and I didn’t want to taint his image of what we were trying to accomplish.

*

Like most days, I ghosted through lessons, relying heavily on group discussion. Leo was there, adding his knowledge of dwindling ecosystems to the conversation, comparing statistics of what lived in local forests a hundred years ago to what remained today.

I put a check mark next to every student’s name. Full credit for the day, like all days. Between waves of heat pumped through malfunctioning radiators, the throb of fluorescent lights, and the approaching snow clouds, I couldn’t drag my mind away from my mother.

During our weekly meeting, my advisor asked if I was sleeping enough. He handed back a typed section of my dissertation. Innumerable red circles and underlined words marred the paper.

“Maybe you should take next semester off, Mia,” he said, a hand resting in his thick beard. “If I write you a note, it won’t affect your stipend. UNE won’t face extinction in your absence.”

“I’m fine,” I said, paging through the edits. “Long nights out in the woods take their toll after a while, you know?”

“Well, get your sleep schedule in order. No one likes a sloppy scientist.” He smiled. “If you change your mind, let me know. We’ll work something out.”

*

I could feel Leo’s eyes as we pushed through the undergrowth of a forest outside Augusta. Part of me knew he was checking out my butt. The other part knew he’d fixated on the revolver strapped to my hip. My advisor said it would be stupid to go that deep into the woods without one. Between bears and moose in rut, who knew what we’d find. A pair of dirt bikers said they came across a wolf-like carcass by a glacial pond. ATV paths crisscrossed the whole wooded region. Their encroachment was illegal, but I appreciated the tip.

“You wouldn’t shoot one, right?” Leo asked.

“No way. That would defeat the purpose,” I said. “I’d just fire a warning shot. They run at loud noises.”

“That makes me feel better.” Leo adjusted his glasses with his free hand.

“But if it turns out to be a bear, those things don’t scare off easy.”

“Let’s hope they started hibernation early,” Leo said.

“It’s about that time.”

“As long as they aren’t looking for a last snack before the big sleep, we’re in the clear,” Leo said, raising his arms above his head, clenching his jaw in ursine imitation. I stifled a laugh. We didn’t need to spook our quarry.

I looked through the undergrowth for footprints. My mother had small feet. She had been wearing hiking boots with serrated metal treads. I’d recognize them. I always imagined stumbling into a sheltered glade of elms, finding her tent pitched in their shadow; her clothing hung out to dry, a cook fire puffing smoke into the night air. I’d rehearsed my first line: Professor Folger, I presume. She loved that Livingstone quote. I’d lead her, half-feral, back to the Jeep, back to my apartment, where she could sleep on my fold-out couch until she reacclimated to society. I had seen documentaries where people fell into hermitic life, how they struggled to reintegrate. That wouldn’t be her. Not with my help. I’d file her nails, clean the mud out of her hair, delouse her scalp, remind her she was important, important to me.

I should have known something was wrong when she started writing letters. She had never been all that communicative before. Her words transformed from scant nature observations to an almost-cultish devotion to the wolves. She also mentioned Dad a lot. What he would have thought about her work, about the state of the environment. She reminisced about family trips: the time they took me to a Florida alligator preserve and bird sanctuary, how my father taught me the difference between heron and crane, all those hikes to forage for edible mushrooms. She never let me forget how to tell poisonous ones from safe. Just look under the cap.

In his youth, before becoming a paper-mill operator, my father had been an animal-rights activist. Pictures of him standing next to PETA members, garbed in black, chained before cosmetic factories and redwoods, lined our mantel. That’s where my parents met. At a rally against a small, notably abusive zoo fifty miles away from her hometown. Kind of an odd love story, but better than the I met him on Tinder line I’d been hearing recently.

*

By the edge of the pond, its crystalline water nearly luminous in the moonlight, we found the corpse of a coyote, ribs protruding through fur, dried blood pulped across nearby trees. A tangle of plastic drifted out of its stomach cavity, along with entrails scavengers left behind. It looked like a trash bag, something that once held a mistaken meal. There was no confusing the coyote for a wolf. Too small, muzzle narrow, the composition of the face, the hue of its fur. I jotted down observations in my notebook and took out the cassette player, a fresh tape in the deck. There was no sense wasting our trip. The terrain matched appropriate habitat. The clean water supply, the proliferation of prey. I had seen rabbit pellets and trees rubbed raw by deer antlers. Roots hung over the pond’s edge. There’d be fish in the shallows, waterfowl nesting by the shore.

Leo stood frozen behind me, fearful, staring down at the carcass, oblivious to the equipment I removed.

“Are you with me, buddy?” I asked, shaking the recorder toward him.

“Oh yeah, my bad,” he said as he hurriedly drew the megaphone out of his bag, making sure our wolf recording was ready to play from his iPhone.

“You think this will be the time?” he asked.

“I hope so,” I said, confident a single reply wouldn’t bring my advisors to call off our forest wanderings and abruptly end my search for my mother. They’d want more evidence, not a single fluke.

Leo played the recording once I got the cassette spinning. The howl seemed to grow out of the megaphone, deep and alive, cascading across the surface of the pond to reach the distant shore. Leo looked like he wanted to say something as the sound spread around us, but I held up a silencing hand. The tape was spinning. I didn’t want to ruin the recording. As always, the moments passed, the silence thick. Nothing stirred. There were no wolves nearby. Coyotes didn’t yip in the distance. I cut the recording and flashed Leo the okay.

“I’m sorry we missed them,” Leo said as he zipped the megaphone into his pack, as if the wolves had been there the day before and we were lagging. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Maine was likely barren. That the old farmers and widowers who responded to my want ads had declining eyesight or worse hearing.

Despite my melancholy, I couldn’t deny his genuine kindness. I was sure if I told him about my mother, he’d have the same reaction. Oh, that’s tragic, can I help? I can set up some trail cams around here . . .

“No worries,” I replied. “It’s not like there’s anything we can do to drag them into existence. I’m just glad you’re still coming with me. Being alone in the woods sucks,” I said, imagining my mother’s camp, as always, her ranting to herself, fueling the fire, cupping hands around her mouth to howl at the moon.

“I wouldn’t bail on you,” Leo said.

“Thanks.”

“Any chance we could stop at the diner on the way back? Seeing as how there’s no class tomorrow?” Leo asked.

It was Friday night. I couldn’t recycle excuses.

“Not tonight. The coyote messed with my stomach. I don’t think I can eat anything.”

*

I remember helping my mother pack. At the moment, the extra gear wasn’t surprising. The bedroll, twin lanterns, canned meat, powdered milk, all those changes of clothes. I helped her fold pants so they would fit in neat balls, tucking socks in on themselves until they were miniscule lumps of wool. She’d purchased the tent at a yard sale months before, had me test it with her in the backyard, bending metal ribs through the fabric. We slept out there one night, pointing out constellations, sipping cheap beer.

“That’s Lupus,” I said, dragging my finger across pinpricks of light.

“You would point that one out,” she said, nudging me in the ribs with her elbow while browning a marshmallow over our rusting firepit.

I had moved back into my childhood bedroom after my father died, helping her cook and clean, getting her library books when she couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. She had seen the ad for the Wolf Inquiry Project in one of the nature magazines I picked up. I often wondered what might have happened if I had rented her a movie instead. There were so many moments I should have caught on, so many telltales. The constant glances toward the door, the proliferation of hugs, the words of wisdom siphoned from Hallmark proverbs.

*

“Wolves are one of the healthiest signs of an ecosystem. Knowing there is enough food to feed apex predators means things thrive. It means diversification. That’s why we’ve been searching for them. To prove it isn’t so bad . . . that the forest isn’t receding, that . . .” Leo went on, the heat from the classroom drawing sweat across his forehead. I cut him off with a raised hand.

“A hundred percent right,” I said, halting him before he said anything that might tie us together in a more intimate knot. “On that note, I think we’ll call it a day. Make sure you submit your response papers by midnight Friday.”

The mass of students swept past, the scent of fruited cologne and gym sweat a confusing mixture. Leo remained in his seat, mouth open, midthought.

“. . . I was really getting it there,” he said. “They needed to hear my point.”

“I’m not denying that,” I said, leaving my podium. “It’s just that I want to get out of here soon. We’ve got a long drive. Can you be ready in two hours?”

“Hell yeah,” he replied, shoveling notebooks into his Wildlife Fund backpack.

“I’ll pick you up at your dorm.”

*

Leo spent the ride expounding on the effects of removing gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act. Two months before, we spent a weekend with several of my colleagues from the Bio department, protesting the possibility outside the statehouse. Leo’s picket sign read, “Weapons Aren’t for Wolves!” Mine read, “Wolves Belong in the Wild. Not Trophy Rooms,” in red block letters. Only a single reporter from the local newspaper noticed. The image of the two of us raising our signs made the eleventh page of the Sunday paper below an ad for discounted shotgun cartridges. I don’t think the editor intended the juxtaposition.

Removing wolves from the Endangered Species Act would ensure they’d be free rein for hunters. The proposition didn’t make sense paired with our findings. Maybe in other states, but not ours. The whole thing made me depressed, considering my own doubts in our study and the doubts about my mother. The two coalesced into one globular letdown. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save them. Even though I stood in the same evergreen glades and inland swamps she had, we felt no closer. I knew the wolves were a long shot, but the reports and sightings seemed more surreal and farcical than they had five years before.

We passed through small villages and reclaimed logging towns; our drive to Wilsons Mills took hours. The trees were denser, older, more foreboding than back East. The town was as far west as we could go without hitting New Hampshire. I read a report about a local sighting by the border. If I read it, maybe mom did too. It would make sense that her migratory patterns mimicked those of her subjects. I could see her, loping into local libraries, hooded, scanning monthly wildlife journals before retreating to her camp in the forest.

We left the Jeep on the side of a dirt road spanned by power lines, the sun setting, the ground wet from recent showers.

“The US Fish and Wildlife Service can’t do that,” Leo went on. “They’ve proven Maine would be perfect for reintroducing the species. The habitat is ideal. It’s—”

“I know,” I said. “But we’ve got to be quiet. If there’s anything out here, it will hear you and hide.”

“Got it.” Leo tightened the backpack straps over his shoulders. I really admired his dedication, but the overview wasn’t necessary. The title of my thesis was literally “The Potential Benefits of Reintroducing Timber Wolves to Eastern Maine.”

We followed a muddy ATV track dissecting the forest, avoiding knee-deep puddles and slippery inclines. Pines blackened my periphery. No movement passed between them; dense branches sucked up all light. The smell of sap was thick in the air, the moist rot of moldering leaves lingering beneath. At one point, my headlamp drifted across bear prints embedded in the mud. I adjusted the revolver strapped to my hip. I wanted to go farther, to where I hoped the forest would thin out. That would be the ideal spot for Mom’s camp. It would be the easiest place for wolves to stalk prey. The cool night air wicked through my jacket. A few more hours, I told myself; then we could turn back.

We did our first recording by a rock outcropping a distance off the path. The wolf call went up; silence returned. We repacked and trekked deeper into the woods, checking the GPS repeatedly so we wouldn’t lose our position. A second recording occurred by a freshwater spring, water bubbling up from the placid depths. Natural water sources were a solid bet. Deer and moose frequented the spot. Wolves were fine eating either. The cassette tape unspooled and gathered the stillness of the air. Leo made a joke about drinking from the pool, but I described the symptoms of beaver fever and he leaned back from the water’s surface, his face barely above his moonlit reflection.

“Hey, do I need to apologize for nagging about the diner thing?” He asked as we drifted deeper into the forest.

“No, why?” I said, pushing a branch out of my path.

“I just never want to be one of those guys. You know, the creepy ones.”

“You’re fine. Don’t worry. We can talk about it when we get back to the Jeep, but for now we . . .” My words evaporated as a series of breaking twigs and shushed branches crackled ahead of us. The steps sounded human, midsprint, leaves crushed underfoot. I peered through the trees, searching for the shadowed figure, hoping to find my mother’s form painted against an elm, hair streaming. The rush of movement built, swelling into something ethereal. I reached into my pack and took out the tape deck, pressing record. If we were going to stumble upon something, I would not miss out. It’s what my mother would have done. I wanted her body to leave the cover of the trees, to recognize her scent in the mix of bark and dirt, to feel her hand graze my skin, pulling me close in the embrace I’d longed for since she left.

There was a hand on my hip, then a tug at my belt—the embodiment of my desired hallucination. The tension and sudden jerking confused me until I saw Leo with my revolver. My mother wasn’t there.

“What are you . . .” I asked before the thing lunged into our midst. Leo pushed me out of the way as the creature separated us. My stomach dropped. All the thrills of potential joy fled with the animal’s arrival. It was the size and shape of a large dog, fur hanging thick and tangled. I caught a glint of teeth, peaked rows of white enamel, pink gums beneath, lips pulled back. Then there was the muzzle flash, the ricochet of noise swallowing us as the animal bounded off into the woods, ignoring the path, disappearing into the undergrowth. The kick of its pale gray legs separated the greenery, only to blend and dissipate. I wasn’t sure if it was a wolf, a coyote, or a feral dog that had escaped from a local hunting camp.

The tape continued to record in my hand, the endless winding of film against reel. I looked down and knew the only sound heard would be the shot, our screams, and the flutter of paws receding into the woods. It was the same as the blurred photographs I received from the old ladies, the vague voice mails from farmers lamenting dead chickens. If it was a wolf, then yes, they lived in Maine. If it wasn’t, well . . .

My mother didn’t carry a gun. If she were tracking such things, the same scene might have played out with a different ending. My mind drifted to the almost-lycanthropic being I’d imagined her becoming, half wolf, half researcher, neither coming back to me, dead or alive. She wouldn’t be my Livingstone, the warm body I’d find on my couch after class. I couldn’t kid myself anymore.

I wanted her body to leave the cover of the trees, to recognize her scent in the mix of bark and dirt, to feel her hand graze my skin, pulling me close in the embrace I’d longed for since she left.

Leo helped me up out of the pine needles, brushing away the dropped foliage with his hand.

“They serve omelets twenty-four hours a day, right?” I asked.

“What?”

“At the diner. They serve breakfast twenty-four hours a day, yes?”

“Yeah, why?” Leo asked.

“Because we’re not going to find what I’m looking for.”

“But we just did. If you play the howl, I’m sure you’ll get the reply.”

“Maybe, but she’s not out here.”

“Who isn’t out here?” Leo asked, as I inserted a new tape into the recorder.

“I’ll tell you when we get to the diner. Grab the megaphone,” I said.

Leo seemed to shake loose from my ramble, realizing what I asked. I hadn’t detached from our shared reality and the thing we sought together. He raised the plastic mouthpiece to the sky when I flicked on the red recording button. The howl peeled out of the horn, chasing the creature’s fleeting steps through the thick undergrowth. I stared down at the turning film, heart half-frozen as moments slunk on, wind whispering into the microphone. My finger lingered over the recording button, ready to depress the nodule, to accept defeat. Then, in the distance, a single cry rose—met by another, then another, the wolves singing in chorus. It seemed to build endlessly, the vocalization of a species’ sorrow manifest across miles, churning and churning. When the howls died, Leo and I looked at each other. We stowed our equipment in their respective bags and took off running toward our Jeep.

Not everything was so close to extinction.

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