Lone Wolf Read online

  Or in other words: There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along.

  EDWARD

  When I come into the kitchen, where Joe is standing at the counter eating a bowl of cereal and flipping through the high school sports section of the newspaper, he glances up at me. "Is that what you were planning on wearing?" he says, in the tone of someone who had something completely different in mind.

  I've never really paid much attention to clothes; I'm not the stereotypical gay man in that respect. I'm perfectly happy wearing the jeans I've had since high school and a sweatshirt so old that it's threadbare in the elbows. Of course, I had starched shirts and ties for my teaching assignments, but they are somewhere between here and Chiang Mai in a box, I imagine. Given that I flew to New Hampshire on a moment's notice, with only a small carry-on bag, my sartorial choices are pretty limited. "Sorry," I say. "When I was packing, I didn't realize I'd need a good courtroom look."

  "Do you at least have a collared shirt?"

  I nod. "But it's denim."

  Joe sighs. "Come with me."

  He puts down his bowl and walks out of the kitchen, heading upstairs to my father's bedroom. I realize too late what his intention is. "Don't bother," I say, as Joe begins to rustle through my father's closet. "He didn't even own a tie when I was growing up."

  But Joe reaches into the bowels of the closet and pulls out a white dress shirt, pressed and still hanging in its plastic dry cleaning bag. "Put this on," he orders. "You can borrow one of my ties. I keep an extra in the trunk of my car."

  "It's going to be huge on me. My dad's built like the Hulk."

  Joe flinches almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, I'd noticed."

  He leaves me so that he can go get the tie. I sit down on the bed, trying to keep myself from giving this moment more symbolism than it is due. As a boy I never felt like I measured up to my father--who was larger than life, literally and figuratively. Putting on his shirt will be like a little kid playing dress-up, pretending to fill shoes that are too big for me.

  I rip open the plastic and begin to unbutton the shirt. When did my father start wearing stuff like this, anyway? I cannot remember a moment in my life when he wasn't wearing flannel, thermals, coveralls, battered boots. You don't dress for success when you're spending 24/7 in a wolf pen; you wear whatever will give you protection against nips and scratches and mud and rain. Had he changed in the time I'd been away, enough to be able to acclimate himself to the world of people as seamlessly as he blended into the company of wolves? Did he go to wine bars, to poetry slams, to theater?

  Is the father I kept imagining in my mind, on an endless home-video loop, now someone different?

  And if he is, can I really be sure that what he said to me over a shot of whisky when I was fifteen was still what he believed?

  Yes, I tell myself. It has to be, because I can't let myself face the alternative.

  I pull my sweatshirt over my head and shrug into my father's shirt. The cotton is cool on my skin, wings settling over my back. I button the placket and then slip my hand into the starched breast pocket, peeling open the starched skin of the fabric.

  When I was really tiny, my father had a red and black buffalo check wool jacket that he used to wear to work. It had two breast pockets, and whenever he came home, he'd tell me to choose a pocket. If I picked the right one and reached inside, I'd find a piece of penny candy. It took me years to realize there were no right and wrong pockets. They both had candy; I couldn't help but be a winner.

  I turn around on impulse and look in my father's closet to find that jacket. At first I think it's not there, and then I find it hanging behind a pair of ripped Carhartt coveralls.

  I notice my reflection in the mirror that is glued to the back of the closet door. To my surprise, the shirt isn't big on me at all. I fill out the shoulders, and the arms are exactly the length I'd choose if I were buying this for myself. With a start I realize that, now, I could easily pass for my father, with my features and my height.

  I reach for the buffalo plaid jacket and put it on, too.

  "It's a statement," Joe argues, the same argument he's made since I walked downstairs wearing my father's coat. "And in court, you don't want to do anything to get a judge riled up."

  "It's a coat, not a statement," I say. "It's freaking fifteen degrees out. And this is New Hampshire. You can't tell me every defendant wears Armani."

  Before we can bicker any further, the sheriff walks into the courtroom. "Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, all rise!" He faces the gallery. "All those having business before the district court shall now join near, give their attendance, and they shall be heard. The Honorable Nettie McGrue presiding!"

  The judge is a tiny bird of a woman with a cap of frighteningly yellow hair and a sharp, pointed nose. Her judicial robe has a profusion of lace at the collar that makes me think of a rabid, frothing dog. "Counsel," she says, "I will take any formal matters that are scheduled for arraignment."

  Beside me, Joe stands. "Your Honor, I'm ready in the matter of Edward Warren."

  "Mr. Warren, come forward," the judge says, as Joe hauls me upright. "Clerk, arraign the defendant."

  We walk to the front of the courtroom, and I give my name and address--well, I give my father's address, anyway. "Mr. Warren," the judge says, "I see you're represented by counsel . . . Would Counsel identify himself for the record?"

  "Joe Ng, Your Honor."

  "Mr. Warren, you're before the court having been charged by complaint with second-degree assault against Maureen Cullen, a nurse at Beresford Memorial Hospital. What say you to this charge?"

  My fingers curl around the cuff of my father's jacket. "I'm not guilty, Your Honor."

  "I see bail was set at five thousand dollars personal recognizance. The defendant, having appeared here voluntarily, is released on the same recognizance. Mr. Warren, I'm going to set the same bail conditions that were set by the bail commissioner: you are ordered to have a psychiatric evaluation, and there's a no contact order with your father, and a no trespass order with Beresford Memorial Hospital." She fixes her bright, black eyes on me. "You realize that if you fail to have the evaluation performed within the next ten days, or if you go to the hospital to see your father, you could be brought back and held without bail at the county jail pending a hearing? Do you understand the terms and conditions of your release?"

  She asks me to raise my right hand and swear that I'll be back here in ten days for a probable cause hearing, whatever that is.

  "Next matter," the judge says, and then it's over.

  The whole procedure takes about two minutes, tops.

  "That's it?" I say to Joe.

  "Would you prefer it to drag on longer?" He pulls me out of the courtroom.

  I follow him through the parking lot to his car.

  "Now what?" I ask, my words shifting shape in the cold. I stamp my feet while he unlocks the door.

  "Now you do what the judge said. You get your psychiatric evaluation and you sit tight while I try to figure out how to get this case thrown out." He turns on the ignition and backs out of his spot. "I'll drive you back to your father's--"

  He is interrupted by a blast of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Startled, I fiddle with the radio to turn it down, but it isn't even switched on. "Joe Ng," he announces out loud, to nobody.

  Then I hear another voice, broadcast through the hands-free phone system. "Joe? This is Danny Boyle, the county attorney."

  "Danny," Joe says, wary. "What can I do for you?"

  "Actually, it's the other way around. Your stepson was indicted today for the attempted murder of his father--"

  "What the hell?" I burst out.

  Joe punches me in the arm. "Sorry. Let me turn down the radio here," he says, and he shoots me a deathly look and puts his finger to his lips: silence. "I think you might have that charge wrong," Joe continues. "He was arraigned for second-degree assault."