Black Wolf, Petal

Black Wolf 

Petal

Raulbert had begged maman not to send him. Write me an excuse, can’t I stay home with you? Please maman, I don’t want to go!

It wasn’t that he meant to be rude - he never meant to be that - but old people were just so … so crusty. Like those fish that swim along in the sea with a whole host of little wormy parasites clinging on, or maybe it was like some chocolat that you put in the fridge, only you forget about it, and then when you remember and come back to reclaim the treat and the bag was unsealed, and the chocolat inside has gone a strange sort of white. That was old people, a little bit worn, a bit rinsed, a little bit – 

Raulbert, your will have a lovely time with your class. Teacher will be with you – 

But maman they might try and kiss me! The little boy closed his eyes and shivered, remembering the time his ancient grandma had planted a wet, hairy smacker on his cheek.

Raulbert, his mother had bent close to his 8 year old eye level. Her perfume smelt like vanilla and butterscotch icecream, her eyes were the same warmth as an Autumn hue… his beautiful mama, his sweet smelling maman. You will bring such joy to those old people today; some of them do not see young people – their grandchildren or own children. You will go in there with all your class and make them smile again. You will be doing a very good thing, and teacher will be with you. 

And that is how Raulbert found himself letting go of maman’s hand that early morning, boarding the coach at the school gates with the rest of his class. The trip was part of Activity Week, where there was supposed to be fun activities like day trips to the coast and fossil hunting, only, he thought sourly, they were collecting very different fossils this year. It was part of giving back to the community, Teacher had explained. A chance to spread light and joy, and so it was that they was visiting the old people’s home, The Community Nursing Home of the Glorious Elderly.

Raulbert hated the whole idea of it. He knew what waited the other end: kisses that were like wet snowballs in the face. 

It was a short journey to the nursing home, with lots of silliness, but Raulbert didn’t feel like joking with Theo, Daniel, Johnny – not even Dennis could make him smile. Not even when he done a very good impression of an old person with no teeth in. Nothing. Only the faintest scent of his mother’s perfume, lingering on his shirt, fortified a little comfort.

And then they arrived. The coach pulled into The Community Nursing Home of the Glorious Elderly, and a few ladies stood at the door of the Home, as though awaiting soldiers returning from War. Raulbert liked that thought, imagined he’d just fought a great many enemies and was now returning to the Queen his maman and these ladies here, well they were her ladies-in-waiting. As they clambered off the coach, he nearly told this to Dennis but changed his mind. Dennis would laugh at him and call him a mummy’s boy. 

The Home smelt of mashed potatoes and urine. Teacher cast a quick look over the children, just to gauge their reactions. She was a little worried that they might say something rude. It had been her idea, to impart a little bit of compassion to her class. God knows, it was a world that needed it during a time of pandemics, threat of terrorism and god knows what else.

The residents – the well behaved ones at least - were sitting downstairs in the common room. Teacher tried not to show the sadness this scene impressed upon her. The elderly had a blanket over their knees, and a good few were in wheelchairs, whilst a handful of others sat in straight backed chairs that looked like they’d been built in the 1800s. The room was warm, and one tv, set high in the wall, was showing some dreary gardening feature that looked like it might have been filmed 20 years before. What Teacher couldn’t have known, is that Raulbert shared her sentiments. This was a sad place, he felt in his small body and big heart; this place, with it’s scribbles and drawings hanging upon the wall, was not unlike the classrooms back at school, the ones where the babies learnt. 

The morning passed, however, without incident or too much awkwardness. The children lined up and sang some hymns, and the sound of the children’s voices won out - the residents sang along, unconcerned by their own hoarse voices, unhindered by spittle or decorum. Teacher felt this emotion, and it touched her, deep. It was a good decision to come, after all, she thought.

Later, and the children are doing drawings, at the table, on the floor, sharing with the residents, who are more relaxed after the hideous rendition of The Lord’s Prayer and babbling at more or less the same cadence as the children. And Raulbert, where is he in this medley of blurred lines? A few of the children have been asked if they want to walk the corridors and say hello to the bed-bound residents. Raulbert had most definitely not wanted to do this, but he didn’t want to sit on the floor and draw either (there might be wee on the carpet) and he didn’t want to sit at the table either (blobs of food could be there). So he went with Theo and Dennis and a few of the other kids, and Teacher led them down the corridor. He hung back when they poked their heads in and said hello. He had so far avoided any eye contact and uncomfortable conversation where he would have to repeat what he said a million times. 

They went to maybe 5 different rooms, and the last one he overheard the Nurse say to Teacher ‘we kept the more rambunctious residents on the second floor today, but we must say, this has been a really lovely treat for most of our Glorious Elderly’…. Raulbert shrank back a little and edged his back to the wall, and out into the corridor. He sighed and stared at his feet, thinking of dinosaurs on the beach and how he and his friends had laughed and ran in the sea spray last year, collecting shells and shark’s teeth that must of belonged to a Megladon two millions years ago. 

A door stood a little-ways ajar, and Raulbert could just see a painting of an animal on the wall… black fur that was so dark it was nearly blue. Teeth that were barred in a snarl with a red tongue like a violent slash of blood; but it was the two eyes that flashed menacingly, even in the overbright light of the room, that drew the boy away from the wall, to push open the door, to step – 

‘You come to look at my Wolf, boy’.

It wasn’t a question, and Raulbert felt a thrill jolt through him. He snapped his eyes away from the painting of the wolf, looked towards the figure which sat upright in bed. He was old, for sure, this man - His skin was wrinkled parchment and he was hunched over, yet still there was this humming energy, like get to close and you might receive a shock. His hair was iron grey, peppered with white, and he had a beard that ran to a point. His eyes were small, but even from the door Raulbert saw something wily, unmissable and sharp. A hunter, he thought. 

Raulbert took a step in to the room, felt a sudden shuffle under his feet. Scraps of paper littered the room like confetti. He gawked at the artwork… sketches of wolves, of children running with wolves, no, from wolves. 

‘The wolves are here’. The old man said, and Raulbert looked up and quickly scanned the room. For the first time he noticed the elderly man’s accent, but it didn’t sound French like his maman, or Greek like Theo’s or Turkish like Dennis. ‘In the corridors, the wolves …’ the old man’s voice trailed off as he sunk slowly back in his bed, his eyes fixed to Raulbert’s even as the propped pillows seemed to slowly swallow his neck, the bed reclaim his body.

Bizarrely, embarrassingly, a laugh threatened to bubble at the back of Raulbert’s throat. He suddenly thought of one of his favourite picture books that maman would read, The Wolves in the Wall, about unruly wolves that lived inside one family’s home, only it was a funny book, a silly book, a kids book, NOT. REAL but MAKE. BELIEVE.

Are there really wolves here? Raulbert asked.

Ah! The old man sat up again. You are other, not from here? Raulbert noticed that the elderly man had a scrap of paper in his lap and was holding a charcoal pencil, not fine like some points that artists might use, but more like a burned and blackened branch he’d found and decided to use.

I’m French, my mama is French. We moved here a few years ago. There was more to that story but Raulbert didn’t want to tell. 

The old man seemed to know it, too. He nodded his head slowly. Wolves, he said, sometimes they follow. He looked at the painting on the wall. The great Wolf loomed, it’s front paws slightly elevated, the back legs slightly lower. It gave the impression it was looking down at you, a contemptuous king surveying his land.

This one here, the old man pointed the stumpy charcoal at the painting: I call him Black Shuck, he was King amongst wolves.

Interest piqued, Raulbert moved further into the room ‘What are you drawing?’, and stepping carefully over drawings, he came closer to where the elderly man sat, wrapped in bed sheet and linen and pillows with what looked to be an oversized, once green now-faded-to-grey heavy cardigan around his shoulders.

‘My village where I lived, very far away’. For a moment Raulbert thought the elderly man was not going to show him, but whatever it was, a moment or thought, it passed, and he turned the sketch towards him. A small stream cut through a mountainside; a girl, younger then Raulbert, sat at the riverbank with black petals scattered across her lap. 

There are no wolves here, Raulbert said in way of comfort to the elderly man, but those old eyes only flicked up, smiled that sort of grim smile that adults do when they are about to tell you some sort of hard truth; ‘oh, they were there - she was their first’. He inclined his head towards Black Shuck ‘He sent his wolves after her, she was the first to be dragged away’. 

Raulbert was very still. His heart was hammering like a drum. This was all strange, he knew this. Adults didn’t speak like this in front of children. But did old – he looked at the eccentric artist – very old people count as adults anymore? If he turned his head slightly he could see the open door and across the hall his teacher and form group in the adjacent room, but right now, here, he knew deep inside that this was far better then being with his group – it was even better then when he found the shark’s tooth last year. And was it wrong, to be in here? He was with … he looked at the name tag above the bed. Sasha. Mr Sasha Ber-en-son. He was old and scary but at least he wasn’t dull. And he was a great artist. Raulbert felt he was in the right room. 

He asked the inevitable. ‘What happened?’

‘Wolves boy, a pack like you never seen…’ Sasha holds his arms wide….’Many hungry wolves  attack the village of my country, up and down the valleys. Fearless. They came to the river, into the houses, day, night’. His eyes roamed around the Resident’s Room, tripped over sketch after sketch scattered on the floor, the bed. Raulbert too, followed the trial of Sasha’s eyes. The sketches were of wolves, but they also portrayed quaint little streams, mountainsides, little wooden shacks, that girl with the black flowers. 

He points; ‘Who is she?’

The old man sighs. She was a girl in our village, Svetlana he looks up at Raulbert. ‘Do you know, boy, some of the villagers used to say she called the pack, summoned the Great Wolf’, he inclines his head to the painting of Black Shuck.

‘But how could she do that?’ a sliver of fear and excitement. Could Raulbert learn the secret and would he be tempted to call Black Shuck out of the paintings, maybe to scare anyone who was prejudice against him and his mum, like when some of the kids called him Froggy.

‘They were funny like that’ Sasha continued: ‘these old people, with their old ways, from an old country’. He sighed, moved a little as if uncomfortable in his bed, his oversized cardigan, his skin. ‘They needed to blame someone, so they blame little girl’, and then he smiled, slowly. Funny, Raulbert thought, old people either have false teeth or wonky teeth heading off in all directions, like a signpost…but do they have sharp little dagger teeth?

 ‘There was more attacks?’ Raulbert said, sitting on the bed, but not too close. 

‘Oh yes boy, so many. They took Svetlana first, and then they took more – mostly the women and children. The women not fight in War, like men. Women stay home, look after the land, home, and the children went and played by the rivers, watched horses in the meadows, watched themselves in the reflection of the waters, not knowing they were being watched too’. He whispers, and Raulbert has to lean closer to hear ‘by a thousand bright eyes from the hills’. 

He coughs, or maybe a short, hard sounding laugh - that thing that old people sometimes too without apology.

‘It was the War – you know War boy? WAR. It drove the wolves into the villages. They were pushed out of their forests, men were killing each other, living off the land and hunting the deer, the rabbit. The wolves were hungry, you see boy? Do you know the worst sort of beast?

Raulbert was beginning to think it was scary old men. He wasn’t so sure how thrilling it was now, to be here with Sasha and his creepy drawings. 

‘The worst beast is a starved one. It will cross any boundary to get its prey’. 

A funny feeling started to knot in Raulbert’s stomach. He knew this feeling, had felt it before. He stood, no longer caring about the papers he was scuffing at his feet. He pointed to the painting of Black Shuck. 

‘Why do you have a painting of him?’

‘Ahh….you know they say they capture him, King Wolf. They say they caught him and when they cut him all they find is a ball of woman’s hair in his starved insides’ The old man’s eyes gleamed.  ‘Bahhhh!!! I don’t think that true…Black Shuck was fat with meat. And the attacks they keep happening, even when war stop, up and down the valleys, they keep going. Children, women, sometimes ….. a boy’. 

Like lightening the old man’s hand shot out, grabbed and curled around his 8 year old boy-thin-wrist, the nails like blackened claws digging into child-skin. Raulbert opened his mouth, but whether a scream pierced the air, or nothing at all came out, he didn’t know. He couldn’t seem to move, scream -

Wolves boy! Sasha’s spittle stained Raulbert’s face, his breadth stinking and hot like fire on flesh;  I see him, King Wolf, he walks the corridor, he follows!  

Teacher, suddenly, her hands around Raulbert’s shoulders, pulling him away, and a nurse, her hands prying the old man’s hold free. A sound like wind rushing through a carpet of leaves on the floor, and a smell like maman – no Teacher, Raulbert is cuddled into Teacher’s blouse and he sees now Dennis, Johnny, all standing pale faced, unsure, at the door, and more nursing staff pouring in like flies. Lastly, before he faints, he sees Black Shuck on the wall, his snarl more a ghastly grin, a joke well played - 

It has not been the day Teacher imagined. It had gone so well, to begin with. The staff had apologised. The resident Mr Berenson was a survivor of a war waged in Russia; he liked to draw and paint, but could no longer walk. He was given to fanciful ramblings and loved to scare any who would listen to him with his wolf stories. The staff had wanted to take that awful painting of the Black Wolf down, but it had disturbed Mr Berenson greatly so it remained. They were just so sorry he had now scared the boy –

Raulbert didn’t care whether Dennis called him a mummy’s boy. He felt thoroughly miserable. He probably had white streaks in his hair and he was a little ashamed to admit, but he had wet himself when that crazy man had lunged for his wrist. Teacher told his maman that the resident had told him a scary story but Raulbert said he never wanted to go to school, or an old person’s home, EVER again.

Later, and he sleeps. He closes his eyes, boy and old man, many miles away from the other but no matter, for the corridor stretches before them, golden light spilling across the glowing glaze of the floor. Only at the end, the very end, it is dark, and that is where HE comes from. Padding, his footfalls as silent as falling snow, his head lowered, his eyes alive. And there, with each fall of a paw, black petals crisp and curl.

The End