I was the first one to hop up and I runned to him and hugged him and he stumbled back a bit but was smiling and says “whoa whoa Scamp! Watch ma feet!” He takes a step back and starts to tapping them and dancing around and he finishes his dance and bows toward his truck. I see something piled in the back and something also inside of the cab moving around. Daddy gestures for me to follow and we both head to the truck and he says “allow me to introduce to you...” he opens the door and it gives a cronking sound and with a flourish, he bows and says “the dawg!”
Something bounds out of the cab and makes right for me and starts barking ferociously and Daddy is going, “no! Bad! He’s one of us! Bad dog!” The thing is chasing me around the house and Momma comes out now and shouts “wolves! Wolves around the place! They gonna eat him! Do something!” Daddy is running toward me and picks me up and the dog is circling Daddy and taking leaps at me and barking and snapping it’s jaws. Daddy is holding me up higher since one of the snaps got the tip of my shoe and he’s taking kicks at the dog but the dog ain’t pay him no mind and Momma says “get him to the truck!”
Daddy runs over and throws me inside and slams the door and the dog is jumping up against the window and fogging it with its breath and is making muddy prints on the glass with its monster paws. “Jesus jumped up Christ!” Daddy says, “I done rode with that dog the whole way back and it ain’t do nothing but stare out the window! Even let me put a seatbelt on it!” He’s breathing hard and Momma is standing a safe distance from the dog and says “well you better get a leash on it and tie it up or something! It’s liable to murder us all!” Jacob is peering out the door but Momma pushes him back inside and closes it.
Then Jacob pops up at the window and he’s lookin out and he wants to be in on the excitement. The dog has calmed down some and is walking around the truck just in case one of the doors were to open suddenly and Daddy says “well, I got us some corn so I guess that’s good news at least” and gestures to the truck bed where kernels are piled up. “A few blowed away while I was drivin’, but I think we still have most of it.” He blows out his cheeks and grabs a tuft of his greasy hair so that it’s now sticking up. “How y’all do while I was gone Momma has her arms crossed and wants to know what kind of dog that was for it wasn’t nothing she ever seen before. Daddy smiles proudly “that there is what you call a half and half!” Momma says, “half what and half what else?”
Daddy says he wasn’t too clear on one of the halves, but the other half was probably wolf and they’s a rare breed since wolves usually only eat dogs so it was pretty much like a Jesus dog, where Jesus was part person and part angel. Just like this dog. Momma says “that dog ain’t no angel. How we going to feed it since all we ate since we got here is some poison mushrooms and smashed cans of cream corn and a fruit medley and a bag of probably human jerky?” and Daddy gets excited and asks if we got any cream corn left since that’s Daddy’s favorite.
Momma frowns and Daddy sighs and says, “well, we can set it free outside, watchdog style and it can hunt for itself and protect us from the wicked wilds and maybe it’ll bring us a thing or two to eat, that is if it don’t get too riled up about sharing.” Momma says that dog probably was exactly the kind of thing what got riled up about sharing and Daddy days it don’t matter since we have a whole truck full of corn we can nibble on now. “We can make us a feast! You know how much you can do with corn!? Cornbread, corn by itself, corn... brisket.” “Corn brisket?” Momma says “What you know about makin’ corn brisket? Who going to be the one making all these corn things?”
Daddy says “I done maked corn brisket before and it ain’t hard! What, I ain’t never made nothin’ out of corn before?” and Momma says not since she’s been around “I done made it before! I done it!” Momma asks how it’s made and I tap on the truck glass next to Daddy since that wolfdog is still trying to get at me and he looks relieved to change the subject since he was starting to remember that he ain’t made no corn brisket before, and it was probably something he seen on T.V. “Scamp! We gotta save the Scamp! Scamp savin’ time!” He calls out to Momma, “we’re going to have to pull a switcheroo, I guess. Need that dog in the truck and need that Scamp out of the truck, preferable without no chunks taken out of him.”
“Whistle at him. give him a whistle.” Momma goes, and Daddy whistles at the dog through his teeth like tweet tweet, but it don’t mind him for it’s paying attention to me and is sitting in front of the truck now so it can watch me real close. “Hey you! Dog! Hey Dog!” but it still ain’t move so Daddy changes tactics. “Now’s the time for lurin’ I guess.” and he goes to the back of the truck and picks up a handful of corn and walks to the dog, “here you go! Nice tasty corn! Best corn there is probably!”
The dog briefly sniffs his hand, then goes back to staring at me in a spooky way with one tooth hanging out. “Goddamn it all!” Daddy throws the corn at the dog, but it bounces off and a few kernels get cought in its fur but that’s about all. Just then, Jacob bangs on the front window from inside and that catches the dog's attention. He gives a low growl and is looking at Jacob now, and Jacob bangs on it some more and Momma thinks out loud that she’ll have to clean the window again since Jacob is getting his handprints on it and all, but that does the trick and I guess Jacob is a genius.
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The dog tears over to the window and starts barking and howling. The one behind this window is bigger and juicier looking than the one in the truck it’s probably thinking. “Now’s the time! Get that door open!” Daddy shouts at Momma and she’s opening the door to the house while Daddy opens the door to the truck and shouts, “time to do some scampering!” And I do, but it’s a close thing for that wolfdog is a smart one and gets the idea pretty quick and is heading for me again and likely enjoys chasing things better before eating them anyway, so this was better for him. Daddy boots the dog as it’s running at me and that throws it off enough so I can just slip in the door with Momma and it’s jumping against the door but I guess we’s safe for now, only Daddy is outside and we is all stuck inside.
We all run to the window to watch what Daddy does and he’s got it by a paw and is trying to drag it toward the truck, but it don’t like that too good and is growling at Daddy now. Daddy says “hotdamn!” And lets it go and the dog goes back to guarding the door, for now there were three treats inside and all it needed to do was wait. Daddy is standing there on the driveway and I can see he’s thinking and he snaps his fingers like he just got a thought and runs to the truck and gets inside. He’s rummaging around and pops back out and he’s got a loop of dirty orange twine. Momma rolls her eyes and says “had twine the whole time” like we was watching T.V.. This was getting good. Daddy loops the twine up at the end and he’s swinging it around his head like a cowboy and throws the loop toward the dog, but it falls about ten feet short on account of how light the twine was.
“Done missed! Missed the first time” Jacob calls and we is all riveted now. Daddy swings it around his head again and this time it hits the dog on the side and falls to the ground. We all groan and Jacob calls out again, “done missed again! Hit him on the side though! Getting’ closer!” Like we ain’t all can see what’s taking place before our eyes. Then Daddy just walks up to the dog and puts the loop around his neck and pulls it tight. “Could’ve done that the first time around!” Jacob calls out again “Done wasted time what with throwing it at the dog!” We is all laughing now and Daddy is looking proud as he pulls the dog along toward the truck with its legs tripoded out and dragging through the dirt.
Daddy gets it all the way to the truck but the dog don’t want to go inside now. “Dog is just sitting there! Ain’t want to go in that truck!” Jacob says, and he ain’t wrong. Daddy gets both truck doors open then and crawls through one, still holding the twine attached to God’s own wolf son and gets out the other side and starts to tugging on it something fierce. The dog gives a yelp and climbs in even though he don’t want to, and Daddy pulls it close to him, then closes the door on the twine, keeping the monster from jumping back out the other way even though it sure was trying hard.
Daddy runs around the other side and closes that door now too and the dog is trapped inside. He looks over at us looking at him and we all break into applause and he sees that and starts taking bows to the left and to the right before running out of sight toward the house. He busts inside and says “did you see that! Got em! I lassoed him from about 30 feet away on the first try! Then I had to wrestle the wolf all the way to the truck and got him stuck in there just a pretty as you please!”
That was Daddy’s wolf story he would tell whenever he would get the chance.
“I ever tell you the time wrastled with a wolf and wore it down so much it gave me its coat so I would finally let up!?” We all agree that it was a fine catch and everything was now solved. “Damn right! Oh! Did I tell you I got that corn like what I was going to do! Got the shit outta that corn!” “We all seen it” says Momma, “and watch your language around these here boys, they ain’t but little.” Daddy looks proper chastened. “Got the corn just right I mean! Right good I done!” Momma crosses her arms and a right good arm crosser is Momma.
“What, you buy a wolf and it came with a free pile of corn? Or was it the other way around?” Daddy says they was separate encounters and he happened upon the wolfdog while he was driving home with the corn already. He spreads his hands out in front of him and starts weaving the tale.
“There I was, driving along, minding my own business, only thinking about you all and how much y’all were going to love this corn” he looks forlornly at Momma who raises her eyebrows “and I seen a man walking on the side of the road with this thing following behind him. I call out the window, ‘nice lookin’ dog!‘ and he goes ‘huh?’ So I pointed behind him and he goes ‘hotdamn! A fukkin’ wolf!’ and starts to run, and the dog picks up pace and the man is hollerin’ which was confusin’ seeing as how it was his dog and all and I go ‘he’s getting’ closer! You can't run away from your own dog!’ And the man yells behind at me ‘he ain’t mine!’ and I laugh for he’s playing a joke probably, so I open the other door while I’m driving to get a better look at the big beautiful thing, for it’s beside my truck now, and it jumps right in! I think it thought I was going to help it catch up with its man, but I had a thought about what a regal animal it was and all so I just closed the door and kept driving! Haw Haw!” and Daddy is slapping his knee and laughing. “I done took it!”