The Last Wolf in Connecticut By Cameron Curtis

This is where she was killed, we are told.

The story smells of leaves on the ground in their death throes; children calling out to each other

and teachers scolding; winter coats unzipped, taken off, and forgotten until the breeze blows

again, and we shiver.

A man named Israel Putnam hunted her down. It earned him the nickname “Wolf.”

We are on a field trip to Pomfret, the last place she was alive. The Wolf Den.

***

There was a picture of me then. Long blonde hair swishing mid-step. Hand encased in my

father’s.

“Daddy’s Girl.”

***

The teachers do not tell us whether this is a monument to predator or prey, but I am too young

not to wonder – not to see the world through their eyes.

Paws glancing off the forest floor. Chest heaving as my muscles expand, contract, expand

contract. Tongue hanging from my mouth. Eyes wide as the spaces between trees filling with

bootsteps and shouts and metal.

***

I am twelve when I tell a friend and six months later, I open the front door to the stink of “we’ll

talk about this later.”

I walk on the balls of my feet. The old wood creaks. My parents let me run up the stairs, this

time, two sets of eyes trained on the back of my skull.

***

The hunter – the not yet Wolf. Stalking her along a frozen stream. Gathering a guard of men and

boys and dogs outside the cave she hides in. Lighting a fire at the mouth, red tongues licking the

stars.

She must die. This I know. This I have vowed to friends and family.

We tie a rope around my foot and I crawl in, long minutes wriggling through nothing until, in the

dark, our eyes meet.

***

He looks back at the road, hands unmoved from ten and two.

“You are not a boy,” my dad says and I know I will always remember it, even if he gets to grow

up and forget.

***

I am pressed against stone, lips curled back, every tired muscle taught.

Can I see the barrel?

The man behind it?

***

They howl my deadname at me from the window of a moving car and leave me there, twitching

on the sidewalk, seeping into the cracks.

It was the first time I walked out of my house without a binder in five years. I still can’t wear that

shirt. I will graduate college with it rotting in my drawer – its stench on my tongue.

***

They brought a storm to the cave. I don’t know how but I swear it is lightning lancing through

my ribs, crashing in my ears, blinding me. If I make a noise, I do not hear it. No one does.

***

I go on walks and take pictures of entrails splattered across the concrete. Birds and squirrels who

didn’t know any better.

The photos don’t capture their hearts’ frantic, final beats but I try my best. For them.

***

I wake up coughing, smoke from my own gunshot choking my lungs. They look at me. Then at

the hole.

Make sure the job is done.

Let us see her.

You promised.

***

My boyfriend tells me a story of a time he hunted rabbits.

He is young. I never knew him then.

He throws firecrackers into the borough with his father and the rabbits come running out. They

set the dogs and children free in the yard to find them.

He does.

It is small enough to fit in his young hands, shaking in the grass. It doesn’t see him.

He is supposed to call the dogs.

To let them chase and catch and rip.

He can’t.

***

Bare feet launch me from the last creaking stair out the door, into the rain. It is three in the

morning during the hottest July Somerville, Massachusetts has ever seen and I am naked, nearly,

more alcohol than blood in my veins, tilting my head back to bark with laughter at each crack of

lighting like my brother did when we were kids; his shirt off, his pale, skinny silhouette against

the sky.

I feel her. Watching. Wanting.

Just as I remember.

I hold her face in my hands as we stand, feet in the gutter, water rushing between our toes.

It will hurt, I say and her skin is soft and her eyes are wide.

But I’ll keep you safe.

I promise.