Chapter Three

My sleep that night was riddled with unsettling dreams. I’d wake up from one and, when I finally managed to get back to sleep, dive into another.  The dreams were both different and the same. They were different in the respect that I was in various locations. The sameness was in the fact that, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I ended up in the company of a very large wolf. 

In the first dream, I was riding Roger through the woods at dusk when a large black wolf with dark beady eyes came at me from out of nowhere. Roger reared up and I fell; hitting my head on a rock.  I remember the pounding of my heart as if it had really happened when the wolf began to lick the blood from my wounded head.  Something tall came up and the wolf craned its neck to look up at it.  I have no idea who or what it was because that’s when I woke up.

In the next dream that I recall, I was walking through my old neighborhood in the Chicago suburbs with my two best friends, Cricket and Debbie.  It was night and the moon was full.  We stopped to search for the man in the moon when a wolf lept at us from seemingly nowhere and knocked Cricket down.  Debbie screamed her lungs out and ran away as fast as her long, slender legs would carry her, but not me.  I stood, frozen, while I watched in horror as the wolf disemboweled my friend.  It wasn’t until the wolf turned toward me with snarling teeth that dripped of blood, guts, and saliva that I saw its beady black eyes that I realized that it was the same wolf as in my first dream.

I tried to scream for help as it slowly approached me. It got so close that I could smell the animal body odor it emitted, but, as hard as I tried, my vocal cords were mute.  Then, a white, blue eyed wolf appeared, and the wolves fought each other.  I managed to get my feet to move and I ran for my life.  I woke up sweaty and sore, as if I really had been running for my life.

I trembled from head to toe as I got up and went into the bathroom for a drink of water.  I looked out at the brilliant moon, remembered Cricket’s disemboweled corpse in the moonlight of my dream, and shuddered.  Thinking I needed something better than water to settle me down, I went to the kitchen and warmed a cup of milk in the microwave.  Hoping that the tryptophan that the warm milk offered would help me sleep like a baby, I headed back to bed.

I fell asleep quickly, only to have yet another dream about wolves.  This time I was on the patio of my new home.  I was stretched out on a lounge chair, enjoying my favorite snack of honey and goat cheese on a club cracker while looking at the moon and remembering sitting in the back yard with my father in my younger years with a telescope, when the white, blue eyed wolf sauntered up next to me. Its coat looked smooth, but it felt surprisingly coarse.  

This time, I wasn’t afraid.  In fact, I reached out and pet its head as I offered it a cracker.  It carefully took my offering from my hand before resting its head on my lap. It felt relaxing and right until I could feel the presence of something behind me. Whatever it was, it had to be tall because the wolf had to lift its head up high to look at it.  When the wolf snarled viciously at it, fear consumed me, and I woke up.

I found myself sweating and shaking after each dream.  I’d tell myself that I was dreaming about the wolf because of my conversation with Lila and Bruce in hopes of convincing my mind to stop the nightmares.  But they didn’t stop until I climbed out of bed the following morning.

“You look exhausted,” my mother said as I made my way to the coffee pot.  She watched me fill a mug with a curious look. “What’s wrong?”

“Why should anything be wrong?” I asked as I put the cup of steaming black, aromatic liquid to my lips and took a careful sip.

“You only drink coffee when something’s wrong.  Otherwise, you drink hot chocolate.  That’s why.”

“I’m developing a taste for coffee,” I said.  It was true, but she was right.  I preferred hot chocolate in the mornings.  I rested my elbows on the counter and, holding the hot mug with both hands, rested it against my forehead.  “I had bad dreams all night.  I couldn’t shake them.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” my mother said as she came over to me and rubbed my back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It’s nothing.  I just kept dreaming that a wolf was chasing me,” I said as I turned and leaned my back against the counter.  After sipping more coffee, I added, “It’s probably from Lila and Bruce telling me that the woods are full of wolves and bears.”

“They were only trying to keep you safe.”

“By telling me I could be eaten while riding my horse?”

She cocked her head and chuckled at my dramatic attitude.  “Did they say you’d be eaten?  I didn’t hear that.  I simply heard them tell you to be home by dusk or risk running into a wolf like Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Very funny, mom,” I grumbled as I took a seat at the kitchen table.

“Do you want some pancakes?” she asked, good naturedly, as she pulled out a griddle pan that was being stored in the oven and set it on the stove top.

“I do,” Josh said as he scurried into the kitchen.  He looked at me and said, “You look like shit.”

“Joshua!” my mother barked. “Language.”

“Sorry,” he said with a smirk before turning to me and saying, “You look like hell.”

I heard my mother’s soft, throaty moan as she raised her eyes to the ceiling.

“Can we have bacon too?” he asked as he helped himself to the orange juice in the refrigerator.

“Get a glass, you animal,” I mumbled as he opened the carton and raised it to his lips.

“Glass, son,” my mother said firmly just seconds before the carton would have touched his lips. 

He glowered at me as he reached into a nearby cupboard and pulled out a glass. “Happy?”

I simply smirked and sipped my coffee.

The smell of bacon filled the room and soon my stomach was awake and demanding sustenance.  Feeling a little more like myself, I got up and pulled some plates out of the cupboard and set the table.

We were cleaning up after a filling breakfast of bacon, eggs, and blueberry pancakes when Lila Masterson knocked on the sliding door leading to the patio we’d congregated on only the night before.

Mom laughed as she beckoned her to come in while teasing her about becoming a back-door friend.  She explained that she’d walked over the fields from her little cottage to ours because it was shorter and that the back patio was the first thing she came to.

She wanted to invite us to a small picnic she was having that afternoon. Claiming that it was a last-minute decision to have it, she apologized for the lateness of the invite.

I didn’t want to join them at this picnic, but I saw no way out of it.  Feeling the strain of improper sleep and a constraint on my time with the horses, I planned out my day in my head while I listened to Lila and my mother talk about the picnic menu and the guest list. 

I decided that the exercise the horses would receive that day would be on the lunge line.  The up side of this was that it would take less time than riding, so I’d be able to work with all three horses.

My thoughts left the horses and I paid closer attention to the conversation in the room when Lila informed me that there would be a few picnickers attending who were my age.  I’d yet to meet anyone younger than thirty, so this was good news.

“I don’t know them well,” Lila explained. “Their parents golf with Bruce and his father.” She turned to Josh.  “If I’m not mistaken, one of them goes to the school you’ll be attending in the fall.”

“How nice.  You won’t feel like such a stranger on your first day of school, Josh,” my mother said with a warm smile before turning to me. “I’ll bet you’d welcome a little company your own age, right?”

She was right - even if she was embarrassing me in front of the neighbor by exposing my loneliness- so I forced back the color that was rising in my cheeks, gave a small smile, and nodded my agreement before I excused myself to go tend to the horses.

I could hear Lila singing my praises about how dedicated and competent I was when it came to tending to my responsibilities as I exited the house to make my way across the patio toward the stable.  I smiled with satisfaction at how proud my mother sounded while agreeing with her.