Wolf Mountain, page 2
An icy wind kicked up, stinging his eyes. He blinked, set his face as far down in his collar as he could, and trudged up the front walk. Nobody answered the door when he knocked. This told him two things: the children were not here and Valerie was pretending not to hear him. She was probably going to try to goad him into a fight and nothing good could come of that. Asher told himself, no matter what, not to lose his temper.
He rang the doorbell.
Valerie opened the door a crack, an unwelcoming expression on her face. “What are you doing here?” Apparently, her gambit was to be overtly rude. She didn’t make way for him to come inside.
“You know perfectly well what I'm doing here.” He was careful to use a tone that was neither combative nor cowed. “I’m here to pick up the kids.”
“They aren’t here. You know that.”
Asher waited a beat, breathed, and said in a measured voice: “I don’t know that. I have no information about where they would be. But I want my children now, as is my legal right.”
Valerie kept the door only slightly ajar. Asher thought she was trying to break him down with the cold. “You can’t have them this weekend. They’re with my mother.”
It took all his self-control to keep it together. “That’s illegal. It’s my time with them. That’s what the judge said. You are now in violation of the law.”
“They need to see their grandmother too.”
“That’s not my problem. It’s my turn to have them and you gave me no notice of any conflicting plans.”
“It was all in the email.” She grasped the door with authority but Asher could tell that the cold was beginning to get to her as well. She wore only a gray skirt and a white silk blouse. The sleeves were rolled about and her forearm bore gooseflesh.
“You never sent me an email.”
“Yes, I did. It’s not my problem if you can’t be bothered to clean out your inbox.”
He set his teeth. “I never got any email because you never sent it. You’re lying.”
“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.” Valerie tried to slam the door but Asher had anticipated the gesture and blocked it with his snow boot. Instead of closing, it just bounced back, comically wobbling.
Asher pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Valerie stepped back, a look of naked hatred on her face. “Get the hell out of my house.”
“My house—I still pay for it.”
“That’s not what the judge said.”
“But you’re not exactly listening to what the judge said now, are you?” He couldn’t help it—his voice was rising.
“If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the cops.”
Asher looked up toward the second floor. “What are you afraid of? That I’ll find out that you and Ralph are living here in a common-law marriage and you don’t need my alimony anymore?” Asher yelled up at the ceiling: “Ralph! You here?”
“That’s it, I’m calling the cops.” She ran to the wall phone in the hallway and dialed. Pretended to dial was more like it, Asher was sure.
Asher took a few steps into the house and closed the door behind him. “What are you going to tell them? Officer, my husband is upset because I’m kidnapping his children?”
“Hello, police? My ex-husband just forced his way into my house.” It sounded terribly fake and rehearsed when she said it. Asher was sure there was no one on the other end and he was offended that she thought he was so easily deceived.
“Tell them that I threatened your life,” Asher said in a mock-helpful way. “Better yet—tell them I’ve threatened the president’s life. That’s a federal offense.” He sat down on his old couch and crossed his legs.
“Please, come quickly. He’s becoming violent.”
“Yes, he’s sitting very violently.”
“Thank you.” She slammed down the receiver and walked over to him. “The police are on their way.”
Asher smiled and got to his feet. “Sure they are.”
“Wait around and see.”
“No, I’m going to lead them on a car chase. It’ll be on the news. Let’s hope I won’t have the kids in the car by then.”
He opened the door and stepped outside. Valerie called after him: “You really think that the kids would rather spend the weekend with you than with their grandmother?”
He froze in his tracks. She knew how to hurt him and she enjoyed it. His mind raced for the most hurtful thing he could say back. He turned around. “That makeup really works. Nobody will notice your crow’s feet.” He continued in the darkness toward the car. He heard “Fuck you!” behind him and he gave her the finger without looking back.
Asher didn’t go to pick up the children. That was the worst of it. Valerie had played her hand well. If he got them now, it would only be to use them as pawns in the battle with his ex-wife—something he’d promised himself he would never do.
The thing was, Asher actually liked Valerie’s mother. Trish had always been good to him—keeping in contact all through the divorce. She held onto an impossible desire that he and Valerie would rekindle. And, on top of that, she was a wonderful grandmother. He was sure that she had a weekend at an amusement park or some such thing planned for the kids. If he showed up now, they'd be disappointed that their fun weekend with Grandma had been replaced by eating Chinese takeout and playing video games at Dad’s crappy apartment in Weehawken.
What had gone wrong with Valerie—how had she grown up to be so cold and selfish with such a wonderful mother? He didn’t think she’d been born that way. Rather, he believed that Valerie had simply been too beautiful for her own good. A lifetime of men fawning over her had skewed her perspective. Now, as her beauty faded, she was rebelling against her role of housewife and making a play at being young again. The inevitable plastic surgery wasn't far away. She would eventually become one of those worn-out, artificial-looking women one often sees on reality television. The kind that tried so hard to retain their beauty, they actually made themselves repulsive.
He got back into his car and headed off down the empty street. The houses were lit softly from within. A couple even still had their Christmas lights up. Families would be inside now eating dinner together while he spent the weekend alone.
What he felt as he drove away wasn’t exactly regret. There was no chance he and Valerie would have stayed together. The more he thought about it, the more he came to believe there had never been a time when the two of them were actually happy together. He dated her because she was beautiful and then she got pregnant with Leslie so the right thing to do seemed to be to get married. They had substituted sex for love. Then, a few years later, Christian was born. Christian! She said she wanted to name him after her grandfather but Asher knew it was just to piss off his own Jewish mother.
He couldn’t be sorry that he got married because Leslie and Christian were the two most important things in his life. Unfortunately, now they were theonly things in his life. He knew that was too much responsibility to put on the shoulders of two little kids but that was the dilemma in which he found himself. When he'd gotten married and become a father, he had abandoned his heretofore promising career in journalism to be a family man. He didn’t like the idea of continuing to hop all over the world chasing stories and possibly being killed while his kids were growing up at home. Instead, he did far less sexy reporting for local magazines and newspapers—stories that didn't involve travel. Eventually, he secured a position teaching journalism at a small local college.
But at the moment, he had nothing going on. The divorce had wrecked him mentally and emotionally. He hadn’t been able to write while it was going on—it had consumed his life. He had decided to go on sabbatical during the upcoming semester to work on his book about political corruption in New Jersey. But that project didn't interest him at the moment. He now had no new semester to plan and he was going to miss a precious weekend with his children.
Asher Greene did what any red-blooded American would do when confronted with the onset of a terrible depression. He went to the mall. As an undergrad, he’d once read an essay condemning malls as the epitome of decadent, American, capitalist, consumer-driven culture. According to the essay, the shopping mall was America’s rejection of the natural world. In a mall, one is cut off from the rest of the universe—it rejects space, time, and the natural environment.What’s so bad about that?, Asher thought. He needed to be in Hemingway’s clean, well-lighted place to think. He needed to be around people.
He thought about taking in a movie but decided to go to the bookstore first. It was one of those large chain bookstores that had effectively replaced libraries. Asher liked that they carried newspapers from all over the world. He strolled inside, grabbed a couple of foreign newspapers, purchased a large latte, and sat in the café to read.
He saw the news item about twenty minutes later. An Australian paper had picked it up from the Associated Press. In the weeks to follow, he would often wonder exactly what it was about the story that had struck him so strongly. It hit him like a thunderbolt—his paper coffee cup frozen halfway to his mouth. In the end, he was forced to conclude it had been magic.
WEREWOLF LYNCHED IN HAITI
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Seydou Marchand — one of the millions of Haitians displaced by last-year’s earthquake — was hanged from a tree in the tent city of Carrefour.
His crime? He was a werewolf.
That’s the story his neighbors are telling, anyway. No one will say who exactly lynched Marchand but it was probably members of the local community.
The event occurred after the grisly remains of two local children were discovered not far from Marchand’s tent. Marchand — an unpopular character in the tent city — was believed to be the culprit. His neighbors however, believed him not only to be a murderer but a werewolf — or a “loup-garou”, in French. There is a strong belief in werewolves in Haiti and they typically attack children. Usually, people who commit violent crimes — crimes too gruesome to be ascribed to a normal human being — are believed to be werewolves. As such, Marchand was hanged before he could change back into his “wolf form.”
The story was a couple of weeks old. Asher got out his smart phone and Googled it. The Australian newspaper was the only source he found that had carried it—and they had only used it as color. It was the type of news item that had been associated with those crazy old supermarket rags with headlines like: BIGFOOT CAPTURED BY THE C.I.A. or ELVIS FOUND LIVING IN SOUTH AMERICA. The difference was that this story was real—it had just gotten buried by the other stories about Haiti. It was, of course, the first anniversary of the earthquake.
Nobody else had seen it. But he had seen it and he knew there was a story there. It was 2011 and there were countries in the world where people were still getting killed for being werewolves.
“Haiti?” Gary Simmons said. “Have you lost your mind?”
Asher Greene sat in Simmons’s office in Newark, New Jersey. He was the International News Editor ofThe Newark Star-Ledger. Even though it was “just a Jersey paper” it was a good and reputable publication. Besides, there was always enough crime and corruption in New Jersey for a “local paper” to report anyway.
“Why not?” Asher said. “It’s a good story.”
Simmons grimaced. He did not at all look like a newspaper editor. He was a short, thin man in his mid-forties. A birth defect had left him with only a half an ear on his left side. He was a precise person—he spoke slowly and quietly and did not lose his cool under pressure.
“I can think of several reasons off the top of my head,” Simmons said. “First, you’re a day late and a dollar short. Everybody’s already done their ‘Year After the Earthquake’ story.”
“I told you,” Asher said, “that’s not the story I’m doing.”
“Which brings me to my second point.” Simmons rested back in his chair. “Werewolves? Really?”
Asher snorted. “I’m not planning on bringing one home on a leash. I want to do a story on a society that still lynches people for being werewolves. It’s six-hundred miles from America and it’s another world.”
“Next point—your story is in bad taste and is inherently racist.”
“Excuse me?” Asher was flabbergasted. He rose to his feet. “I’m racist?”
Simmons remained unflustered. “No, but your story is. You’d be a white American reporting on the ‘ridiculous beliefs of poor, savage blacks’.”
“That’s your interpretation.”
“That’ll be anyone’s interpretation. And it couldn’t come at a worse time. Haiti had it bad enough before the earthquake. To make fun of their beliefs in the wake of a disaster would be like kicking them while they’re down.”
Asher ran his hand through his hair. “You keep saying I’m trying to degrade Haitians. I want to report on a story. That’s all.”
“Which brings me to my last point. When was the last time you were in the field like this? Ten years ago?”
Asher looked hurt. “Are you seriously doubting my abilities as a reporter?”
“No, but you are. That’s why you want a dangerous assignment. You have something to prove to yourself. Have you ever evenbeen to Haiti?”
“No,” Asher thought for a moment, “but I’ve been to other rough spots before.”
“When you were a cub reporter. I’vebeen there. Haiti is a different place. Andthat was during the good times.”
Asher turned away from Simmons and walked over to the window. He looked down on Broad Street in the fading afternoon light. The piles of filthy snow were almost black. He’d watched Newark change over the years. It was getting better but it was still an ugly city. In his time working here, he’d often have lunch at Newark Airport, watch the planes take off, and dream that he was on any one of them.
“Gary,” he said, still watching the people make their way over the banks of snow, “you don’t understand—I need this.”
“Listen, I understand. Divorces are rough. If you have such a hankering to get to the tropics, head down to Jamaica. Book yourself in Hedonism and get laid. It’ll be a hell of a better experience than Haiti. And when you come back, everything’ll look different.”
Two days later, Asher Greene boarded a plane bound for Haiti.
Chapter 3
Welcome All Monsters!
Asher Greene walked through the airport in Fort Lauderdale on his layover to Port-au-Prince. Being on the way to the field again already had the old juices flowing, even though he was breaking one of the fundamental rules of journalism: Never travel on your own dime!
The meeting with Simmons had been a disappointment. He’d gone home to his apartment in Weehawken feeling dejected. He’d sat in silence for a while, staring at the wall and considering his options.
In his mind, he ran through a list of other publications he could hit up: travel magazines, literary journals, online ‘zines—Lonely Planet, The Travel Channel. He also thought of hitting upWoman’s Day, which was becoming a surprising showcase for good writing.
Then, an idea occurred to him that cut through the thicket of his confusion like a machete. Why do I need anyone’s permission to go to Haiti? Had he been under Valerie’s influence for so long that he could now no longer do anything under his own initiative? Had she really emasculated him that much?
Of course, it was going to be a whole hell of a lot more expensive going down there on his own. He’d have to pay his own way. But, after a quick internet search, he discovered that getting to Haiti was surprisingly easy and cheap. Added to which, if he were paying his own bill, he wouldn’t be under a deadline—he could stay down there as long as he wished. Besides, the story was getting cold. He couldn’t afford to wait for sponsorship. “Fortune favors the brave,” he’d said to no one in particular. Twenty minutes later, he had booked his entire trip.
The waiting area at Fort Lauderdale International Airport seemed to be made up mostly of Haitians. Asher had flown out of Newark—really the best airport in the New York area. It had been cheaper to fly with a connection.
He sat among the other passengers waiting for his flight and thought about his trip. He allowed a moment of doubt to creep in. What was he really doing here? For a hot second, he’d seriously considered Simmons’s suggestion about Jamaica. Maybe all he really needed was a vacation? No—that wasn’t it. He did need to get away—and get away to someplace warm—but he didn’t need rest, he needed to work. Simmons had been right—he did have to prove something to himself. He had to prove that he still had it. That he could still do it after all these years. That’s why he was on this fool’s errand—because he thought he’d spotted a story that no one else had.
Asher Greene’s path to journalism had been anything but conventional. His father, Sid, had owned a restaurant and advertised in the local paper. Over time, he struck up a friendship with an editor there. Since young Asher had shown absolutely no interest or aptitude in working at his father’s restaurant, Sid arranged for him to work at the paper.
After being initially resentful, Asher fell in love with it. Soon, they were letting him write rather inconsequential pieces for no additional pay. Asher didn’t care—he just loved seeing his name and his words in print. Even though he went on to get a Master’s in journalism, he learned the most about the business from the little rag he’d worked at as a kid.
When Asher finally boarded the plane, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see live chickens running down the aisle. Many of the Haitians were unused to plane travel and didn’t know what to do. A good number of them didn’t speak or read English. Instead of sitting in their assigned seat, they plopped down wherever they felt like, as though they were boarding a bus. This infuriated the flight attendants to no end. A kindly, white-haired American took it upon himself to go over to all the passengers who seemed confused, checked their tickets, and helped them to their proper seats.
