HOWLED ME DOWN

The summer I turned nine was like every summer before—except for Raiju, of course. He grew out of my bellybutton as Raiju is inclined to do, but that was entirely my fault.

I never knew my biological father, and he probably never knew Raiju. But that was not my fault. My father died in the sixties in the aftermath of liquor-fueled kinetics involving a Ford Mustang. I was four or five at the time, so it’s as if I’ve never met him. I have seen one photo of him. My mother kept it in a mustard yellow envelope with a few other mementos. The corners of the photo are torn and speckled with pinpricks, the edges are curling slightly, and the ink is cracking. When I close my eyes, I see it vividly despite its accelerating impermanence. There he is, Per Andersen, a tall Scandinavian in a dark coat and cap leaning against a Plymouth in Michigan or maybe Wisconsin. He’s smiling and it’s familiar, reminiscent of other relatives. But it’s the others in the photo that catch my eye: atop the roof rack, a lowly deer, dead and bound; and affixed to the hood, a slack-jawed wolf with its lifeless muzzle reflected in the chrome detailing of a headlight—a disproportionate hood ornament.

A hood ornament that was nothing more than a nuisance. These animals were simply preferred as ghosts in the periphery of American history or colorful caricatures in children’s stories—hunted with fear or hate as reason for their demise. “Predator control” gradually became a sweet euphemism for eradication. The North American campaign to eradicate wolves was no-frills efficiency. And just like that, the wolves were gone.

I only really knew my father had died when the farm changed hands and my Shetland pony named Al was sold back to his first owners. He was a good pony, pot-bellied and cheerful. I named him after my mother’s brother; I didn’t know then, but it wasn’t a compliment. Only when Al was whisked away did I understand that death was ultimately an end and probably a catalyst for change. I was young after all when Per died. I don’t know much about my father except that his name was Per, he was born in Wisconsin, and he departed around the time the wolves did.

Per’s wife, my mother, remarried a Japanese engineer a few years later. That Japanese engineer, Akio Hiko, became my father. People used to say he was the funniest engineer around, but I’m told that is actually a way of saying he isn’t that funny. Akio was a better storyteller. He shared his youth and culture with me through stories and tales. My biological father was conceived in a Norwegian fishing village. He wasn’t born there though. My mother’s family is from the same town as the Andersens, but none of them met until they made it across the Atlantic to the dairy farms of the Midwest. Per hunted animals when he wasn’t drinking or tending to the dairy farm. Mother grew an ulcer milking cows waiting for Per to come home. Akio says there might have been a cow in the Aomori prefecture, but he never saw it. Akio left Japan for the Midwest to work and tell bad jokes in the car industry.

Akio and Mother bought a two-story house with knotty pine interior that was built in 1910 on a lake in the upper peninsula of Michigan. It’s surrounded by crystal waters and deep green horizons. Everything smells of well water. Akio and my mother loved to sail. Even when the wind was unreliable and stranded them in the middle of the lake, they still loved the motions. Akio would wrap his arms around Mother and they’d float out above the waves, waiting for the wind to sigh lovingly again and guide them across the lake’s perfect face. Akio was everything my father wasn’t, and Mother’s eyes only had room for him.

My room is the smallest one that points out to the east. I could see the white points of the sail boat on the days they took it out. The window also offers a view of the boat barn and the forest. I call it the boat barn because it isn’t a real barn. It’s a blue prefab storage unit larger than our house that shelters the jeep, and in the winter, the boat. And to be a real barn, you need at least a cow, or some chickens, or an Al. We have none of those.

I spent mornings on the lake. I’d walk out to the wood plank dock and watch the loons carry their chicks on their backs. They’d call out and the mist at daybreak swirled around them as the lake adjusted to their presence. At the end of the dock, I’d sit and dangle my feet in the water. My toes scarcely skimmed the surface as glints of silver danced just out of reach. I’d pretend these schools of minnows carried me on their backs as they hurried out of view. When they’d leave or take notice of the biped above them, the water would settle back into uninterrupted glass revealing the trails blazed by a dozen mussels that crisscrossed across the lake bottom. One or two bivalves sat at the end of its respective track, too tuckered out to bury itself in substrate and settle in to wait for the next biological green light.

There were toads as well. I looked up species in a cloth-bound guide to animals of North America, trying to give them a name. I narrowed it down to American toads or Fowler’s toads. In the barn attic, I found a brass teapot and used it as a temporary home for them. The bottom was cushioned with wet moss I pulled up from the shoreline. I’d catch a toad and keep him until I found another. I marveled at their bumpy skin. I’d crawl under that old house and hunt the big ones as they’d yell, “ooo-okk.”

By the backside of the house, my mother kept a glorious garden full of purely ornamental things. Lily of the valley usually crept out of the forest and over the flowerbed boundaries. These were my favorite—they were tangled and unkempt and began at the white birch trees that stood around and dropped pages of themselves on the ground. I remember stopping to smell a tulip—one of the ornamental things—and was surprised it had no scent. As I looked at it, my mother howled me down with a wagging finger and said, “don’t pull the flowers; they aren’t for you.” I always wondered why she said that. I knew they weren’t for me.

I avoided her. She became cold as the winters warped her hands. She used udder butter on her cracked hands—the cream used on her dairy cows—long after the cows had left. She’d smear greasy fingerprints across counters and doorknobs. It smelled herbal and strangely antiseptic too. I hated it. The butter was a reminder of the past and a way of life that she begrudgingly left when Per died. Whispers of the motherland and her culture were tied to that farm; a love for ligonberry jam on hard toast and bitter black coffee after a grueling day of farm chores. She lived for hard work.

I was also a reminder of that past. Awkwardly tall for my age, my thin legs wobbled unsteadily under baggy khaki shorts. The hair on my arms glistened in the sun, a blinding blonde. My love for trees and animals echoed my father’s love for the woods and hunting; similar but so different. Similar enough for Mother—that was apparently and entirely my fault. She’d often look at me and say I was Per’s offspring through and through, not in kindness or reminiscence, but in a way that blemished the tender fibers of my heart.

I spent most of my time with my new father. He was much older than my mother and had retired so I was able to spend my summers with him. He was a kind, short man. Thin, wiry. He called me his little Haru, his little spring or “clear weather,” he said it meant. Spring’s a big deal in Michigan—everything comes to life after the frigid winters. I never went by my given name Harriet after that. Before school let out for summer vacation, my teacher read through roll call in the morning and asked for Harriet Andersen. I raised my hand high, an index finger pointing at the popcorn ceiling and said, “My name is Haru, please. Haru Andersen-Hiko.” Mrs. Shutlz smiled and said, “ooo-okk.”

“Haru, come and look at this,” Akio said. I clambered across the porch furniture to retrieve the mosquito repellant and generously sprayed it across my arms and face. I smelled like the lavender and citrus deodorizer in our bathrooms—artificial and overwhelming. Akio pointed to the the birch trees; his fingers traced the white bark as he pulled down on them. The trees dropped pages of themselves on the ground and revealed long sets of claw marks.

“You see these? These are the claw marks of Raiju. He’s the wolf companion of Raijin. Raiju gets upset and throws tantrums. Remember that storm the other day?” I nod my head. “That was Raiju. He must have gotten in trouble and flashed about: he’s the lightning, a wolf wrapped in lightning.”

“But how did he get here from Japan?” I rolled up the bark into tight scrolls.

“We bring our stories with us, Haru.”

I felt embarrassed and small-minded. I tugged on the front of my shirt. “I know,” I said. “I just, how, does a wolf get here? You know across the ocean?”

“He’s Raijin’s companion—you remember Raijin?”

“The Shinto god of lightning,” I said, relieved to have something better to say.

“Yes, very good,” Akio said. I beamed. “So Raiju is his wolf or dog or weasel, but usually wolf. He’s all wrapped up in lightning and thunder and howls in thunder. They say he sleeps in the belly buttons of people. That’s why you’re supposed to sleep on your stomach when it storms. So he can’t get in.”

“What happens if he gets in?”

“Raijin will throw lightning at him to wake him up and that isn’t very good for the person Raiju is sleeping inside.”

I pondered this for a while, pulled my shirt up, and looked at my belly button wondering if Raiju had ever taken a nap there.

“You’re going to give her nightmares with those stories,” said Mother. She was weeding her garden. Akio chuckled and put his hand over the scorch marks.

“No, they won’t,” I said. “I love wolves.”

Mother scoffed and said, “You wouldn’t love them if they had eaten Al.”

“They wouldn’t eat Al,” Akio said. “Raiju definitely wouldn’t. He’s just a companion. And he’s only playful during storms.”

“I’m going to study them one day. I’d like to study animals and protect them. Wolves especially,” I said.

Mother let out a throaty laugh. “We will see about that,” she said, “You wouldn’t like wolves if you had grown up on the farm, that’s for sure.”

She continued pulling out handfuls of lily of the valley, ripping them by their roots and casting them out onto the gravel walkways. Their roots glistened in the sun. It seemed like such a shame to let beautiful things die because they grew over the boundaries of her garden. She threw her gloves down and unraveled a pole coiled in silky streamers that had been resting on the walkway. I watched her unroll the streamers, stopping once the three-foot long pieces of fabric lay unfolded against the pole. Her fingers had deep cracks and callouses that interrupted the lines in her knuckles.

“Haru, Akio found his carp streamers for summer,” Mother said. She paused and rubbed her fingers together. “Dry skin and metal never marry well. It feels terrible.” She pulled a small green tin out of her pocket and opened it. The medicinal scent of the cream wafted over the sweet scent of the lily of the valley. She greased up her hands before putting the tin back in her pocket. She hoisted the pole up and attached it to the little socket on the garden wall below my window. The wind tunneled through their hollow middles. They inflated and three carp took flight. They swam proudly, waving their fins through the sky. They were arranged by size, the largest was attached to the top of the pole, a medium-sized one swam in the middle, then a baby-sized one at the bottom: black, red, and baby blue.

“The carp are called koinobori. We fly them for Children’s Day to celebrate the future of our children. We celebrate in May, but since you were in school, I waited to hang them for you. I thought we had lost them when we moved here. The black fish is the father, the red one is your mother, and the tiny blue one is you.”

The carp continued to swim and dance. One was drawn so it looked as if its mouth was turned up into a smile. Their tails whipped through the air and made a soft flapping noise as they did.

“Haru,” said Akio.

“Yes?”

“What kind of fish can perform operations? Like surgery—like the surgery Mrs. Shultz had last fall?” He had his hands clasped in front of him as he stifled a giggle, and Mother went back to weeding.

“I don’t know, dad. What kind of fish?”

“A sturgeon!” His mouth was open in anticipation as he looked between Mother and me. Neither of us laughed. “You know, as in ‘surgeon.’” He wiped a tear with his free hand as he laughed. The shiny orange carp smiled from above and danced its little carp dance.

The sound of churning gravel signaled a visitor. A blue sedan came puttering down the gravel driveway: Mrs. Shultz. She waved and stopped in the driveway to the barn. Tires had worn the driveway down to the soft earth. She was a quick and limber woman. Before I had taken two steps, she was already making short work of a sack in the trunk of her car. She carried it toward us, but it was no sack. As she approached, the sack revealed itself to be a small, young deer. It still had its velvety hide, with its softly spotted back.

“Hey! Anna and I were talking at the butchers a few weeks ago—remember? About how you had wished you had a smaller hide to hang on the back-kitchen wall. Anyway, the car in front of me—had to be a tourist, didn’t’ recognize it—hit this little fellow and kept driving. I pulled over to put it out of its misery. Then realized I was only a couple miles from your place.”

I tried hard not to look at the poor creature. Its eyes were vacant, but its fur still shining and soft.

“I didn’t ruin the hide,” Mrs. Shultz said.

“It’s so beautiful,” Mother said. She removed her gardening gloves and placed them onto of the pile of weeds. She lifted a shirt and carefully walked over the edge of the garden. “I just added these blackberry bushes around the edges. Their little thorns grab and grab.” She gestured to the scratches across her forearms.

“I had some of those near my bedroom, but those darn deer kept trampling everything to get to them,” said Mrs. Schultz.

“Back at the farm, the deer never bothered us. They knew better. We had more sausage then though. Akio isn’t a big meat eater, so it’s for the best anyway. Will you help me string the deer up? Those trees will do.” Mother pointed to a shaded area by the barn.

“I wouldn’t eat the fawn meat. I got to it as quickly as I could, but it was alive long enough to know what had happened. Meat’s probably tough from the adrenaline,” said Mrs. Shultz.

The two women set to work and laced a rope through the hooves of the hind legs, binding them together. Another rope was strung through the lower branches of a young birch tree. The tree shuddered as the rope pulled the fawn skyward, lifting the limp body off the ground. A light breeze splattered blood across the white bark of the trees. The fawn hung; blood dripped out of the gash in its neck. Arteries were now nothing more than fleshy tubes opened up to drain the blood. They gutted the fawn there in the shade of the barn. It swayed in the trees, fileted and outstretched. I counted the number of ribs that caught the light when the breeze caught in the fleshy kite.

The tip of my nose burned and tears clouded my vision. I quickly wiped away the tears with the back of my hand. My mother didn’t tolerate sensitive people. She scolded me the day we sold Al. She said it was the way of life; animals were animals, not our friends.

Akio leaned into me and nodded at the fawn, he must have noticed my red eyes. “Your mother is a tough, wondrous woman. Don’t let that hardness fool you though. The farm raised her to be tough, but she still has warmth in her. When we first met, she had an old cat named Pecker that she’d let sleep with us at night. Imagine that: a fuzzy, old Pecker shared our bed!”

His pruned face pulled into a warm, open smile, and I laughed until my belly was sore and the sound of the trees groaning hurt my heart a little less.

As the sun set on red-eyed loons and shimmering minnows, I walked in the space between the lake and the forest and stood beyond the manicured beds draped with hosta and curated perennials. In the evenings, I’d take the hanging tomato plants out of their sunny locations and bring them into the boat barn. They’d be safe from the deer who would wander in at night and gorge themselves on anything they could find.

I pulled the barn doors open. It was a shrine to old memories. The attic was full of dusty old boxes full of strange Andersen relics. At some point my mother was a collector of brass teapots. There were dozens of them, more green than brass in their cardboard coffins. Boxes of old dresses with mussel shell buttons. You could still find the punctured shells around the lake from when the mussels were collected for buttons. Most of those mussels are gone now; collected into oblivion. Smaller ones replaced them. They’re not native, but this is their home now too. There was even a box of my dead father’s hunting gear. The guns neglected and forgotten. They served no purpose now.

I often thought about that aging photo in the yellow envelope and wondered: What happened to that wolf—the trophy? Was it stuffed and mounted or skinned and put on a hearth? There was no trace of it in the boat barn. Is the pelt now moth eaten and riddled with holes in a thrift store on the fringe of some dying town or is it disintegrating in a landfill? Are its genes long lost in the dirt or are they still running through the lineage of wolves? I never found out what happened to the wolf. Maybe it was born in Wisconsin.

As I pulled the tomato plants from their perches, I placed them carefully along the free wall behind the jeep. They’d sleep safely here. The last of the plants were hung facing the dock near the far side of the property. It was dark, but the dark never bothered me. The sounds of frogs and crickets kept me company.

A shadow crept alongside my path. I dropped the plant and strained my eyes. The shadow paused too before the dark enveloped it back into the shadows beyond the lily of the valley. I squatted and collected the bruised plant. My toes dug deep into the damp ground. There in the soft ground: toe depressions. The tracks were deep and pitted with rain—they belonged to something much larger than any dog I had ever seen. I kept walking, the breath caught in my throat. I placed the plant with the others and closed the doors, slamming them loudly. The fawn swayed in the trees. The bushes rustled and everything was still. Out across the lake, clouds gathered and rolled toward our house with its knotty pine interior, toward our boat barn with slumbering tomato plants, toward the fallen fawn strung from its toes to white birch trees.

I tossed and turned that night. The rain tapped lightly across the roof and down the sides of the house. Lightning lit up the room and thunder shook the frames on the walls. I pictured Raijin trying to rouse his pet to come out and play. I flipped on my back and placed a pinky in my bellybutton. The thunder roiled and the rain lifted. I fell asleep with my pinky pointed downward.

I woke to guttural noises. The rain had paused its summer parade. I opened my little window pointing out to the forest line. There he was: Raiju. He wasn’t wrapped up in lightning. He was thin and lean. He sat like a dog on its haunches and was looking at the house. I crawled out onto the gently sloping eave of the roof that jutted out over the garden. I gripped the shingles with my toes, they were slick from the rain. I crouched catlike at the edge and peered over. Tight white tulips lined the wet, freshly tilled garden soil, their milky caps glimmered. The carp streamers swam in the dark under me. Raiju watched the fish dance with me. We sat like this for a while. The clouds darkened. Raiju watched the streamers and I watched Raiju.

He got up and limped toward the clearing between the house and the forest, coming closer. He sat again this time in the reflection of the flood lights, I could see a healing wound on his back leg. I leaned forward, entranced by Raiju. The edges of the roof were blurred by the deepening night. My toes and fingertips ached in their gripping postures. The collected rainwater trickled down the shingles, loosening my grip.

I tumbled forward and caught the pole of the carp streamers. The pole bowed but didn’t collapse under my weight. My toes could almost touch the garden wall and the top of the kitchen window. My fingers slipped to the end of the pole. The udder butter clung to the steel even in the heavy evening showers. Raiju snarled somewhere below me. The rain started again and the thunder wound itself up for release. I lost my grip and tumbled down straight into the rambling blackberry bushes and their grabbing thorns. The breath was knocked from my chest; I could feel it down to my belly button. Raiju walked forward cautiously, paused and sat. I could see his eyes now. They were bright and beautiful unlike the glassy eyes of the photo. His chest was broad and strong. I could smell the blood of the fawn on his breath. The wolf had legs like mine, lean and lanky. I wondered if his father had died too.

The porch lights flickered on and Akio, father, raced out. He held me. His hands wove through my wet matted hair as lightning cracked the sky, the rain paused midair, vanishing until thunder exhaled and boomed through our bones. Raiju was gone.

Mother raced out in her flowery nightgown. Her chest swung as she ran to the barn and came back to us. She held one of Per’s old guns. She struggled with it; its joints were old and useless. I felt fear well up in the pit of my stomach as Mother walked forward with the gun. I was not my mother nor was I Per nor was I Harriet. I am Haru Andersen-Hiko, and I grew Raiju out of my belly button.

I screamed out, “Don’t pull the flowers; they aren’t for you!”

Mother paused with the gun and Akio continued to hold me. The carp swam overhead on their bent pole: black, red, and baby blue. And the rain softly returned as lightning played about overhead. We know better now. We’ll howl down the trophies because they don’t belong to anyone.

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E.E. Hussey was born in the Philippines. She was raised in Japan and Italy and has lived in the United States. She holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA from Johns Hopkins University. Learn more at www.eehussey.com