Jack Comes to Town

Here comes Jack. He is a werewolf. He is proud of this, and nothing you might say will change his opinion of himself, for he is not the scary, kid biting, sneaky type at all. As a matter of fact, he not keen on biting any humans! He would much rather eat cereal or crunchy tacos. In the werewolf world, he is what you might call…quirky. He actually LIKES non-werewolves and associates with everyone! (Can you imagine? He says they’re fascinating.) 

Everyone knows that werewolves bite. It’s a stone cold fact. Not Jack though, Jack is a hugger. He hugs everyone and wants the hugs to make his fellow werewolves smile, because hugs make him smile. You have been warned. If you are not a hugger, hide behind a tree as he walks past. HURRY! He is getting closer. 

Jack is lankier than the average werewolf, and people think he is rather flighty. He isn’t. The fact is, his brain is thoughtful and detailed, and he spends most of his time in an imaginary world of his own design, which he spends many hours perfecting. He draws pictures of characters who live in it, imagines adventures they will have in it, and when he is out walking, he animates it, for to him it is as real as a puppy licking your face. 

At any given moment, he knows exactly what he wants to do and he will not be deterred from doing that very thing, even if it’s time for lunch, although he claims to be very hungry ALL OF THE TIME. He likes snacks. He is always snacking, or thinking about snacks - CRUNCHY snacks. When he’s not walking about town exploring and imagining, he is having a snack and playing video games on his computer, while he watches Awoooo!Tube on his other computer. (He has them set up next to each other in his “wolf cave” bedroom.) 

Jack wears whatever he is in the mood to wear and if you don’t like it, it doesn’t matter to him at all. Today, he is wearing his light blue t-shirt, white ball cap and puffy grey jacket vest. This vest is absolutely necessary, because it has pockets filled with springs and magnets, many different colored pens, a flashlight, raisins, fidgety things, and anything he can find that he can “use to make weapons for adventures” because, “you should always be ready to defend yourself.” Weapons which, of course, he will never need or be able to use because Jack is not violent, his weapons are just for fun and he lives in a very safe neighborhood. He didn’t always live here, he used to live in an all werewolf community. They weren’t very nice. 

Now that you’ve met Jack, you’ll be wondering what he is doing in Merryville. Why did he move? Well, that’s a hard story to tell, but I’ll try to do it justice. 

The werewolves he had gone to live with welcomed him in when he first came to their part of the woods because he had decided not to transform back into a human after each full moon, but to just stay in his wolf form. (It’s a myth that you have to change, you know.) Their part of the forest was completely full werewolf, so Jack’s parents moved him there to live with the town’s local social worker. She was supposed to look after his best interests and allow his parents to visit every day. They couldn’t live there because werewolves can’t resist biting humans, especially kids and Jack’s mom was about to have another baby. Convinced that they were doing the right thing, they went back to town happy in the knowledge that their beloved son belonged somewhere. The forest bordered three towns. 

Camperville was closest to the full werewolves, and the werewolves spent most nights there. Camperville residents loved to tell ghost stories at night around their fire pits, and they thought it was too much to ask of them to move a safe distance from the werewolves. They knew they would get bitten, but they were willing to take the chance, after all, they had torches, pitchforks and silver bullets for their guns! 

Pilpokey was the next town over on the way to the city, it was a bit too far for some of the older full wolves to travel, and the younger wolves preferred Campertown. Pilpokey citizens were paranoid and didn’t like to do much at all. They would drive into the city if they were looking to leave the house. Pilpokey isn’t even worth the mention, but I thought you should know that it exists. 

Merryville was next to the city, but was still close enough for a day trip into the forest. Merryville’s folks were fond of gathering and being part of each other’s lives, and they had heard tall tales about werewolves, but hadn’t ever seen one. 

Jack and his parents were on a picnic when he was bitten. They didn’t even know it had happened until he started transforming at the full moon. When they took him to the Pediatrician, she told them about the social worker from the forest and the rest is history. Anyway, when Jack became a young man, the people had had enough of his ways. He didn’t like to howl at the moon, he insisted on wearing clothing, and instead of biting kids, he only wanted to hug them. He used a SCOOTER! In their eyes he was disgraceful, and they banned him from coming to their social events, and made fun of him behind his back for having an imagination. He tried to get a taco truck to move into the forest and would order cereal off of Cramazon. He was not interested in “acting normal”. So they ganged up on him. They torn down his wolf cave and smashed his adventure weapons, they ate all of his crunchy snacks and stole his scooter. 

Jack knew it was time to go, so he packed up what was left of his belongings, rented a house and moved to Merryville. He chose Merryville because the name sounded cheerful, and Jack is a cheerful guy. When he isn’t creating, playing video games or watching Awoooo!Tube, he is singing. Jack loves to sing. He sings everywhere, in the shower, in his living room, while pacing around the island in the kitchen and making snacks (it helps him think of his next weapon design), he sings absolutely everywhere. He is well known for it. His voice is really wonderful, but I can see that you want me to get on with the story, so I will.

Merryville has a small town main street. On the street are clothing shops, and restaurants, and even a cupcake shop, which Jack thinks is brilliant. “Everyone likes a cupcake!” he says. Across the square is a radio station, and the government buildings where people do their voting (very important, you know!). He loves the town because he can walk everywhere (he refuses to drive a car), and he can talk to everyone who walks by. Let me tell you though, it hasn’t been a cheerful place lately. No, it’s quite the opposite at the moment. 

Parallel to Merryville’s main street is Champion Street, where the Fenton boys live. The three Fenton brothers are Greg, Nick and Mike. Their parents, Alan and Sue, built houses for their children to live in as adults, so that when they (the parents) retired and decided to travel, the brothers could be close and share everything. As a matter of fact, they share an enormous backyard. Alan and Sue live on the next street over so that their backyard can also be shared with the brothers. Together, they have their own sort of courtyard for a backyard. It is wonderful, or at least it was wonderful. 

Before Alan and Sue went away on their travels, it had been beautiful and fun, it has a swimming pool that the grandparents had given to them, a trampoline, a vegetable green house and flower garden, and a patio with a curtained gazebo and table for eating together and playing games. The gazebo has those pretty outdoor strands of lights all around the top. Imagine the family spending time in the backyard together grilling cheeseburgers to eat after a swim… well, these days it’s kind of overgrown and lonely. No pets play in the yard anymore, the pool is kind of leafy, the vegetable garden is all a tangle. Only Mike sees the Hollyhocks and Morning Glories as they start to close for the evening. He still likes to walk around thinking and imagining stories and new games to design which takes him outside a lot, usually at dusk. His creative mind enjoys the colors of the sky right before the sun goes down, but he, like his brothers, stays mostly inside. Greg never comes out, unless he is going to buy fizzy water and donuts. He’s a serious composer. His soundtracks are used by all of the latest game designers, and when he isn’t composing, he is playing video games himself. Nick is also a musician. He plays the flute. Nick actually does go outside, but most people don’t see him because he leaves straight out the back door and goes over to the town’s halfpipe to skateboard, then he comes back through the back yard and slips into the house before anyone notices. Of course, they have friends, but they are all on line, and they’ve never actually met each other. Greg says that this description of him is a stereotypical representation of his generation, and he has given me very nasty looks over the subject, but so be it, after all, this is my story.

Before the Fenton brother’s parents went on their travels, they took out an advertisement in the Merryville Gazette to rent their house while they were gone. It just so happened that Jack saw the ad and decided to take the place himself. He set up new computers and can be heard singing over the sound of the lawn mower from time to time. He tries to talk to Mike, but Mike likes to be left alone.

Jack arrived on the day after the big storm. See that huge hole in the ground? There was a two hundred year old tree standing there! Two weeks ago a huge storm thundered through town and there was a sound like freight train derailing. It was the tree being drug up from the ground. It knocked out the power lines and we were all thrown into darkness. That tree had been there forever, and we’ve all sat in it’s shade. We hang twinkle lights on it at Christmas, and when the weather is nice, we have enormous pot lucks and farmer’s markets around it. They say that General Hall actually rested there after a major battle, and his soldiers camped in a field where the library and Pizza Cafe stand now. It’s sad to see something that special uprooted. The townsfolk don’t have the heart to chop it up, so it was just laying there looking all sad. It’s made the whole town pretty depressed. 

Last night there was a big town meeting. On top of their sadness surrounding the tree, the town is even more upset about Jack moving in. Everyone is in an uproar because there is a werewolf in the town. They still haven’t accepted him. People are all scared because he claims that he only wants to hug us, he sings all the time, and when the full moon comes along his singing turns into a throaty howl. He’s always acting out stories in his head, and he rides a SCOOTER! He said that he has ideas about what to do with the tree, and no one wants to hear them. Mayor Dundas said the other day that, “he had better not come near that tree because that guy is up to no good!” The moms in the town are sure that his pockets are full of candy to lure kids for him to bite and he’s always walking everywhere on imagined adventures and he tries to tell us about them. It’s all a bit…quirky. Everyone, even the Fenton brothers came to the meeting and they don’t really go anywhere. They’re kind of the town hermits.

Young Mike Fenton stood up after a long series of arguments and said that he had been watching Jack through the whole meeting and decided that we should actually give him a chance- said he had caring eyes. 

That meeting lasted for hours and Jack was accused of being weird and scary and shifty. There was a lot more yelling, and the Mayor said it was time to figure out what was to be done about Jack and our tree. Greg and Nick went over and talked to Mike and Jack for a while and they asked for a moment to speak. Next thing I knew, Mike was heading toward the microphone.

The Mayor had announced that Jack was to be taken back to the forest, and Jack was beside himself with sadness, he likes this town and was hoping to stay. Mike said, “Listen everyone. Our family has always lived in this town. We know every one of you, and we care what happens to this tree. We also know that Jack is new here and change is scary, but our parents trust him for some reason, and let him rent their house. Jack shares our backyard, and I have seen him while I am out walking in the garden. I’m pretty sure Jack’s alright, you can trust me. He has a really great idea. Let us take the tree and you won’t be disappointed.” 

There was a great silence and then the mayor stood up to speak. They took a vote and for some reason I can’t explain, the town let the Fenton brothers and Jack take the tree to their backyard. No one knows what they’ve been up to and next week, we’re all supposed to go out to the big hole in the ground.

The following week:

Good evening, I see you couldn’t stay away either! Have you heard anything through the grapevine? No, Neither have I. I woke up this morning and saw this huge curtain, but I haven’t been able to get near it. I don’t suppose you were able to peek under it? Not even Mrs. Gibnose has been able to weasel her way over there. Did you hear that Mr. and Mrs. Fenton have returned for this? Apparently they have something to say. No one has seen them for years! 

The crowd is gathering, the sun is going down and strings of lights are coming on.

Mrs. Fenton is heading to the microphone, listen! 

“Mayor Dundas, Ladies, Gentlemen, Boys, Girls, and Werewolf,

My husband and I are so happy that you could join us for this moment, you see, we heard that our son Jack had returned to Merryville, and we couldn’t be more delighted that he has found his way back home and back into our lives. He has told us his story about how the werewolves rejected him for his kindness and imagination, and while we’re glad he is back where he belongs, we have felt saddened that the town has not accepted him either, although he has given you no actual cause for alarm. We intend to give him our house, and we will build another one in the empty lot next door. It is our hope that you will see what an amazing soul he is. We also couldn’t believe it when we heard about our dear town tree. When our boys told us about it we made sure that Jack’s plan to use it could be realized. We brought in the finest carpenters, and we are certain that the town will enjoy this tree’s contribution for another two-hundred years. Mike has planted a garden around it, which will be called the General Hall Memorial Garden. Let’s try to live together without fear and suspicion. Let’s remember who we are as we embrace the changes in this dear town. Alan dear, the curtain please.”

The curtain is falling! There is a gorgeous stage with the tree carved above it. Under it’s branches, Greg, Nick and Jack are performing together. The lights are magical and everyone is starting to dance. This is such a great party! I’m so glad that you could come too! What a night to remember this will be. I’ve never heard such loud laughter and applause around here.

That’s Jack over there, the lanky one. He’s a werewolf, and he’s all ours.  



The End.