Wolves as Pets, by Hannah Pass
Wolves as Pets
from a series of untitled linked fiction
Day two at camp and we are told about the Wolf House. The house that holds thick-coated dog bodies, dripping tongues. It’s early morning and there is a deep mist in the air, fluffy like goose down. We squish our faces against the windows of our cabins, towards the outside. We breathe white clouds onto the glass.
Now I have kept my fair distance from the house, just far enough to hear the wolves stir but not pant their heavy breaths. Most of the counselors own at least one. Clara has had hers for eight years now and she says he is still the love of her life.
We stand here, watching the wolves walk poised on their toes. They poke their heads out of their house that is made of cedar and point them up towards the sky with pupils wet like their noses. They bite the air. We watch them trot around the campground like a pack of school children, shredding bark with their claws, leaving gashes in the trunks of tree bodies. Every morning we listen for the “click click” of dog paws.
In the stories I liked best as a child, the wolves blew down houses. They hunted girls in red capes and swallowed their grandmothers whole. Their coats: a marbled gray. The insides of their mouths: a fiery red.
We wait patiently now, our eyes on all eight of them. Some of us, with our hands flat against the windows, while others pick dirt out from under their fingernails. We want an extravaganza! A bellow. A howl! We want them to ravage a small pink-nosed animal.
The wolves gather under a tree. They curl into a coiling pile, yawning. A bundle of yarn.
In the stories I liked best as a child, the wolves are actually people. They walk on their hind legs and have faces like our own with big toothy grins. They wear clothes over their fur, and boots laced up to their knobby knees.
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HANNAH PASS lives in Portland and is aN MFA student at Pacific
University.
Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon
Review, The Collagist and Poor Claudia among other places. She is a
Nonfiction Editor at Silk Road Review and an assistant for the Tin
House Writer's Workshop.
Find more at Hannah Pass, the official site.
Hannah Pass joined us in February for Small Doggies Reading Series PDX006.
This piece was originally published in the Small Doggies Reading Series Chapbook #1, available for sale and chock full of other amazing pieces by each author from Reading Series performances 1 - 6.
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[Author Photo Courtesy the Author][Photo Via: doglistener.co]