The Wolf Keepers by Elise Broach
A faint smell of tiger pee drifted into the kitchen. It had a particular acrid stench that almost burned your nostrils. Mike always had to shower before dinner.
“Give me ten minutes,” he called, before thudding upstairs.
Lizzie poured a jar of spaghetti sauce into a pan and began stirring it over a low flame. There were only a few dinners she could make by herself—spaghetti, soup with cheese toast, pans of store-bought casseroles or lasagnas that she only had to heat in the oven—but she cooked a couple of nights a week. Mike cooked two or three nights, often barbecuing fish or chicken on the grill in the backyard. Then they got pizza or Chinese takeout on the other nights.
As she stirred the spaghetti sauce, Lizzie thought about the boy. He had gobbled down the rest of her lunch as if he were starving. But then he had also saved some for later, and that seemed so deliberate when he was clearly very hungry … as if he wasn’t sure when he would eat next. Between that and stealing the little kid’s hamburger at the snack bar, there was something strange about him. She wondered if she’d see him again.
Her father appeared in the kitchen, rubbing his hair with a towel. He kissed the top of her head and grabbed a bunch of silverware from the drawer. “That smells great,” he said. “A lot better than I do.”
“You smell okay now.”
“Do I? I can still smell it.”
Lizzie dropped a fistful of spaghetti into the boiling water. “One of the wolves seems sick,” she said.
Her father nodded grimly. “Yeah, Athena. She’s not doing well.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?”
He shook his head. “She was throwing up; now she’s not eating and she’s having trouble standing. It came on pretty suddenly. Karen took her to the clinic.”
Karen Lockport was the zoo veterinarian … and also Mike’s sometime girlfriend. They occasionally went out to dinner, and while she never stayed over at the house, Lizzie got the impression that she might like to. Her father had dated several women over the years, but none of them ever spent the night. He kept them separate from his life with Lizzie, a division of worlds that she appreciated. She liked Karen—who was smart and intense, with the quick confidence of a doctor—but she and her father formed their own small circle of family, and she didn’t want outsiders interfering with that.
“It’s not something contagious, is it?” Lizzie asked. The greatest fear of zookeepers was a contagious illness that swept through a certain species. It had happened only once at the John Muir Wildlife Park; one of the otters developed a fungal respiratory disease that eventually killed all four. It was even worse when a more exotic species of animal got sick, because veterinarians had less experience treating them.
Mike shook his head. “I hope not. Maybe a reaction to something she ate. But we decided to isolate her just in case.”
Lizzie watched his face, trying to gauge how worried he was. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”
He grabbed two oven mitts and dumped the pot of spaghetti over a strainer in the sink as steam billowed around him. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. She seems weak, but she’s alert.”
Lizzie felt a wave of relief. Her father was almost always right about these things. He’d seen so many sick animals, and he usually seemed to know when they weren’t going to make it. Lizzie had asked him about it once, how he could tell when they were going to die. “It’s their eyes,” he’d said. “They’re not focused on anything. Dying animals are so deep inside themselves, they’re not looking out at the world anymore.”
She got two plates from the cupboard and her father forked spaghetti onto them, while she ladled the tomato sauce. This was how they were together, she and Mike … a team. Her father worked long hours and Lizzie was left by herself much of the time, but they had the household routines down to a science.
Now, as the blue dusk cloaked the yard, Lizzie sat at the table with Mike in the small, bright kitchen. For a minute, she considered telling him what had happened at the snack bar earlier. But then she thought about the boy, and how quickly he’d disappeared when she asked who he was. He seemed like a secret she shouldn’t share. At least not yet.
Chapter 5
THE HIDEOUT
THE NEXT MORNING, Lizzie pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, quickly ran a brush through her hair, and toasted a bagel to take with her.
Mike was standing at the kitchen counter reading the newspaper. “Where are you running off to?” he asked as she gulped a glass of orange juice.
“Nowhere. I just want to check on the wolves.” She slathered cream cheese on the bagel, wrapped it in a paper towel, and tucked her notebook under one arm.
“Good idea. I’ll come with you.”
“But you’re making coffee,” Lizzie protested. “It’ll take too long. Meet me over there?”
Her father wavered. “Yeah, all right.”
Lizzie did want to check on the wolves. But mostly she wanted to be near the front gates when the zoo opened, in case the boy came back. She was sure she’d seen him at the zoo before. Maybe he lived nearby and visited a lot in the summer. She had a feeling he came to the zoo alone, and she wanted to find out more about him.
It was just after eight o’clock when she walked down the driveway into the zoo. The morning sun was high, but the entrance gates wouldn’t open for another hour. This hour of the day and the evening hours after closing were Lizzie’s favorite times. The zoo was empty and silent in the early morning. Occasionally she would see one of the custodians or one of the keepers emerging from the animal houses, but mostly she felt like an explorer on a foreign continent, thousands of miles away. Dew sparkled on the clumps of flowers bordering the walkway. She passed the pink flamingos, each standing on one leg in the lake, with their curled, black-striped bills; then the herd of gazelles in the African Savannah exhibit, who turned their tiny, masked faces toward her in sync; then the crocodiles, sliding from their sandy embankment into the murky water of the moat.
The zoo animals were grouped by continent, so within minutes, Lizzie had passed from Africa to North America. Here were the funny otters. They ran across their pen as she drew near, their sleek backs undulating, making their strange chirping noise. She clucked her tongue at them. They paused to stare at her with beady eyes, then slipped into the water, twisting and curling around each other, already hard at play.
Lizzie passed the prairie dog exhibit. The prairie dogs were all still underground, so their habitat looked like nothing more than a dusty hummock of earth. Now she could see Wolf Woods. As usual, the wolves were at the back of the enclosure, under the stand of pines. She counted six. For a minute, she scanned the large field in concern. Then she remembered that Athena had been taken to the clinic.
Four of the wolves were standing; two were lying down. Even at a distance, Lizzie could pick out Lobo immediately. He stood apart from the others, ears pricked, watching her. Lizzie dropped into her usual position on the rock near the curb and opened her notebook across her knees. She took a bite of the still-warm bagel, licking the cream cheese off her fingers. She knew not to whistle or snap at the wolves. They weren’t pets. She just wanted to watch them, not interfere with their normal behavior.
She uncapped her pen and began to write.
July 27, 8:15 a.m. Wolf Woods. The pack is gathered beneath the pine trees in the rear corner of the pen. There are only six of them now because Athena is sick and in the clinic. I hope she gets better soon! I wonder how it is for the others, not knowing where she is or what’s happened to her.
Lizzie knew that certain animals mourned their dead. She wasn’t sure about wolves, but her father had told her that elephants did. They would sometimes stand watch over their dead relatives, bury them with leaves and branches, show deep sadness, and even shed tears. The zoo visitors loved hearing these stories—anything that made the animals seem more like humans. Lizzie herself felt impatient with those comparisons, though. It seemed wrong somehow to assume that animals experienced the same emotions as human
She looked up and gasped. Lobo was standing in front of her, a few feet from the fence. He’d crossed the enclosure in the time it had taken her to write those few sentences, and he had done it in utter silence. It was all too easy to imagine how swiftly and silently the wolves could track and kill their prey. As Lizzie watched, his ears flattened, and the ruff of his fur stiffened. Startled, she glanced around and saw Mike walking toward her. When she turned back, Lobo had retreated to join the rest of the pack.
“He’s not used to me yet,” Mike said. He stood behind her, his coffee mug cupped in both hands, a wisp of steam rising. “Maybe he prefers women. He seems more comfortable with you and Karen. He’s settled in better than the others, don’t you think?”
Lizzie nodded. “He’s the only one who comes to the fence. The rest stay in the back.”
Mike sighed. “It’s not a good place for them, this pen.”
Lizzie looked at him, puzzled. “But it’s so big compared to the others.”
“Yeah, it’s the best we can do. But wolves roam. In the wild, they cover twenty, thirty miles in a day, sometimes a lot more than that … and the territory for a pack can be several hundred square miles. So even if this pen looks big compared to some of our other ones, for a wolf, it’s probably the equivalent of a closet.”
Lizzie looked at him in horror. “That’s awful! Why does the zoo even have wolves, then?”
“Conservation,” Mike answered. “It’s to protect them. You know the story with these guys … They were all injured or trapped up north. Some of them were caught killing cattle or sheep. If we don’t keep them here, safe, they’ll end up shot or poisoned.”
Lizzie lapsed into silence, thinking that this was another reason her father was called a “keeper.” It didn’t just mean to hold on to something, to keep an animal in a cage. It meant to keep safe, to keep alive, to tend to and care for. But in this case, keeping the wolves meant sacrificing something else.
Her father took a last swallow of coffee. “This pen isn’t perfect,” he said. “But it’s better than the alternative.”
Lizzie sighed, not at all sure. At least if the wolves were in the wild, they were free to run and hunt and roam as far as they wanted. They might not live as long—they might not live long at all—but wasn’t the life itself better than the one they would lead in a cage at the zoo?
“Hey.” Mike tugged her ponytail. “Don’t worry. They’ll get used to this place soon enough. Karen wants to rehabilitate these guys in the wild at some point, so who knows, maybe that will happen one day.”
“Really?” Lizzie squinted up at him, suddenly hopeful. “Could she do that?”
“Well, not anytime soon. Not after what we paid for the new exhibit. The board of directors won’t allow it. But she’s pretty determined, so maybe in a few years.”
“Oh.” Lizzie frowned, closing her notebook. A few years sounded like a long time to spend in a place that felt like a closet.
“Okay, I have work to do. See you tonight.”
“Bye,” Lizzie called as her father strode down the path toward the Rain Forest exhibit.
The sun was bright and it was nearly nine o’clock. Lizzie decided to position herself close to the zoo entrance and watch for the boy. She carried her notebook and the remaining half of her bagel, now cold, and settled herself on one of the benches. Two teenagers were working the cash registers at the gate, and a bunch of families were already lined up outside. So it began, another summer day at the zoo. Within an hour, Lizzie knew, the place would be filled with people, families with young children, couples strolling together, the occasional elderly person who almost always came alone, walking quietly from exhibit to exhibit, lost in thought. She hoped the boy would come. Biting into the bagel, she watched as the crowds streamed through the gates.
* * *
After an hour, Lizzie was bored and uncomfortable. The wooden slats of the bench were biting into the backs of her thighs, the sun was hot, and her hands were sticky with cream cheese. Even though she’d been trying to write down little observations of the people—with the thought that humans were a part of nature, too—she hadn’t seen anything all that interesting, much less remarkable. She stood and stretched, wadding up the paper towel and tossing it in the trash can, ready to give up.
But then something caught her eye.
It was a blue shirt.
It wasn’t coming through the entrance gates. It was behind her, flitting around the corner of the elephant house. Lizzie turned and shielded her eyes with one hand. She’d only seen a glimpse of it, and now the blue shirt was darting between groups of people until it disappeared altogether. She started walking quickly, not certain that she’d seen it at all.
When she got to the elephant house, she looked around. A ragged line of people clustered against the high concrete wall, hoisting toddlers high in the air, calling to Timbo and Belle. The elephants stood in their dusty yard, each one’s head aligned to the other’s rump, patiently swishing flies away with their stringy tails.
It had been the boy, hadn’t it? It had looked like the same blue shirt … which was odd, wasn’t it? Why would he be wearing the same shirt? And he hadn’t been standing on the path, in front of the wall where you could see the elephants. He’d come from behind the elephant house, from a wooded area where the public wasn’t allowed. There wasn’t anything there, as far as Lizzie knew. It didn’t make sense.
She surveyed the crowd one more time. No blue shirt. Okay, then, she thought. Let’s see what’s behind the elephant house. She waited until nobody was looking in her direction, then quickly hopped over the wooden guardrail and ran through the brush, around the corner of the big concrete building.
It was dark and shaded behind the building. At first all she saw was the thick shrubbery, punctuated by an occasional small tree, struggling toward the sunlight. She began to poke around, peering into the foliage.
Then she gasped.
Against the wall of the elephant house, tucked under the dense bushes, was an old, dirty blanket. As Lizzie approached it, she saw something else: a soda can. Then an empty, grease-stained paper plate creased with folds—her pizza plate from yesterday! When she bent down and looked more closely, she could see a backpack, shoved deep into the mass of twiggy branches.
Chapter 6
TYLER
LIZZIE SURVEYED THE scene. The boy was clearly sleeping here, or at least staying here. The blanket, the backpack, the can of soda—how long had he been taking refuge in this hideout? She tried to think what to do next. She could track him down, or wait here and surprise him. But it was only mid-morning now, and there seemed few things more boring than sitting in the dark shrubbery behind the elephant house. She decided to scout around and see if she could find him.
The zoo walkways were now full of people. Lizzie listened to snippets of conversation: “Oh, look at his BIG trunk! How’d you like that to wrap around you and squeeze you tight?” “Mommy! Pick me up! I want to SEE!” “What does a monkey say? Oooo-oooo, aaah-aaah.”
Zoo visitors always took great delight in imitating the animals—either their movements or the noises they made. It was true that Lizzie herself did this with the otters and an old macaw parrot in the Rain Forest, but she prided herself on really sounding like the animals, to the point where the macaw would squawk back at her. Other people seemed to just be clowning around. Anyone could tell that the black-and-white colobus monkeys didn’t say “oooo-oooo, aaah-aaah” any more than a pig said “oink.”
Lizzie wandered down the path, into the sea of colorful summer shirts. Where was the boy? Then she had an idea. If he’d just gotten up, maybe he was at the snack bar, scrounging for food again. She wended her way through a gridlock of strollers and ran down the hill to the food court.
She saw him immediately. He was sitting at one of the tables, eating a carton of french fries. He had his back to
The boy jumped in surprise. He curled his arm protectively around the french fries. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here, remember?” Lizzie gestured at the fries. “Did you find those on a table?”
“No,” the boy mumbled. “I bought these.” He shoved a handful of fries into his mouth, chewing noisily.
Lizzie studied him. “If you had money, why didn’t you buy yourself lunch yesterday?”
He glared at her. “Didn’t have enough.”
A sudden pit of sympathy opened up in Lizzie’s stomach. She looked at him, and her expression seemed to irritate him.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Then why are you following me?”
Lizzie felt her cheeks grow hot.
“I’m not.” She watched him eat the last french fry.
“Quit staring at me,” he grunted, getting up and rubbing his palms on his shorts.
Lizzie stood, too. “Are you still hungry?” she asked. “I can get free food … you know, because my dad works here.”
The boy’s dark eyes bored into her. “For real?”
She nodded.
“And you don’t have to pay?”
“Nope.”
“Sweet,” he said softly.
“Do you want something?” Lizzie asked.
The boy shot a quick glance at the large menu over the snack bar, then back at Lizzie. “Well, I’m pretty full up,” he said nonchalantly. “But, you know, if it’s free, I could probably eat a hamburger.”
“Sure.” Lizzie started to walk to the counter to order.
“With onion rings. And maybe a vanilla milk shake. I love milk shakes.” He grinned, and she could see his face open up finally, shining with anticipation.
“Okay, a hamburger and a milk shake.” Lizzie walked up to the cash register. It was too early for the lunch crush, so there was no line.