“I am boss.”
“Put some whiskey in a glass. We will exchange whiskey for money, which I have here in my pocket.”That’s how I met a werewolf. Or a wolfwere, I’m still not sure how that works. This wasn’t the kind that’s a man who turns into a wolf when the full moon’s out, it’s the other kind, wolf that turns into a man. I guess they’re all lycanthropes of one sort or another. Look it up on your internet, I’m not here to teach you medicine. Anyway, this guy was a wiry dude, tall and lean. You’d think a wolf that turned into a man would be hairier, but this guy was bald. Aside from a little fuzz around his mouth, and some very shaggy eyebrows, he was entirely hairless, as far as I could see, and his old flannel shirt was missing a lot of buttons, so anyone could see most of his chest.By the time I met him he had been turning into a man for years. He didn’t know why he changed, or when it started, he just gradually came to understand the world and learn English, and a bit of French.As I could figure, and Joe (that’s what he was called, probably because it’s what you call a guy who doesn’t have a name) could recollect, he had transformed from wolf into full grown man, and like any other man, he can’t remember the first few years worth of his nights as a human. He had to learn, during his two or three nights a month, how to not be a wolf and how to function as a man.He did pretty well, for the brief time I knew him, anyway. As I said, he spoke English and a little bit of French, though some ways of thinking about language and experience seemed to escape him. Present tense worked okay, though he couldn’t seem to think about the future any further than his next meal, except in very general terms. Past tense didn’t work at all. If a thing was true once, then it was always true- unless it wasn’t.
“He has fear.” Joe said in that Canadian bar where we met. I was trying to prevent a fight simply because I liked the bar and wanted to come back, but Joe was ready. The whitecap fratboy and his friends were well out of place in this mountain town, local bar, and had pegged me and Joe as an easy way to prove they were tough enough to drink there.
Now, I’ve fought in all four of America’s Secret Wars and a few of the public ones, so I’ve killed at least one of everything that weighs more than a hundred pounds and can swing a knife or tentacle barb. I was a little less sure about Joe. I knew he was strong, but when you’re about to get into a fight and your only friend is a guy who’s frightened of vacuum cleaners, you ought to give some thought to backup.
“He has fear” Joe said when I suggested he back down. “I am the boss.”
“Oh ho, this bald motherfucker’s the boss!” The whitecap shouted back to his friends in their booth. As soon as they laughed, Joe’s lips curled back and he breathed out heavily.
That’s when I spotted it. See, back in 1957 I spent some time training dogs to sniff out robo-men. These were wild dogs, bred in the woods and totally unfamiliar with modern technology. Wild dogs, just like Joe.
We were sitting, the kid was standing, a dominant position. The fratboy crowd was egging him on, rewarding him with happy noises. Joe was an alpha dog. He had to be. He lived longer and was cleverer than any other wolf out there; he must be an alpha among the wolves he interacted with every other day of the month. As soon as I saw those lips curl back, I knew Joe was going to assert his position as ‘boss.’
I liked that bar okay, but there were two more in that little town and Joe was quickly turning this into an interesting night. I figured, what the hell, I smiled too, and stared over into the booth of fratboys. I tried to give off the same alpha dog aura that Joe was projecting, but I probably failed. It didn’t matter, I was happy enough to be number 2. I’d still get to beat up some loudmouth, drunken rich kids.
A short time later, I had Joe’s whiskey in one hand, my stout in the other as we cut through a couple alleyways and listened to the sirens approach.
“I am boss.” Joe said. “I don’t like leaving. I am boss.”
I agreed, but explained that the police wouldn’t agree that he was boss, no matter how much he proved it.
“I know about police. They are boss. I know this.” He said, reaching for his whiskey. “I don’t like leaving.”
I suggested that allowing the fratboys to be treated by the EMTs had raised him even higher in the eyes of the bar staff, regulars and other tough locals. He smiled. “They know that I am boss. It is good.”
I stuck around that town for another year, and spent every full moon drinking and talking with Joe. I tried to teach him cribbage, but he never had the patience for it. He liked to look at girls and buy the meat he had to hunt every other day of the month. Sometimes he got looking at girls, but his wolf side and the whiskey would take over and he’d get a little grabby. I made a lot of peace with a lot of waitresses during that time. Some nights he just came over and did his best to read my books.
He was a good kid. I miss him.
Eventually, when I got roped into the Doombridge Project, I had to fake my own death, but I let Joe know what was going on, as a parting gift to my friend, I left him all my public funds, my little house in the woods and all the books I had collected that year. It was more than enough to keep him in steak and whiskey, two or three days a month for fifty years, at least.
I wish I could have gone back to see him, I’d love to hear what he had to say about F. Scott Fitzgerald or Robert E. Howard or to see if he ever managed to smile nicely at a waitress without drooling.
He was a good kid.