The White Wolf

The Strangest Day

By Matthew Sager

It started in the early light of the morning. I awoke to a scratching at my bedroom window. There at the window was a large white wolf. I assumed it was a wolf although I had never seen one up close as I live in a small southeastern Ontario town where wolves seldom dwell if at all. I am twelve and it is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen. I moved my room to the basement weeks before because it has a television and is huge. My mother never comes down here as it was my father’s den before he left us to parts unknown. From my vantage point safely behind glass I watch him walk away towards the alley behind my house. I am up before anyone else and decide to follow. He looks back at me as he heads towards the river, as if saying “hurry up”. I finish tying my shoes and at what I consider a safe distance I follow. Down to the bank he wanders looking into the river and back at me. We walk for hours down the bank and back up again. Where the water is low on this warm summer day, we cross the river and up the hill to the other side. I realise that during our walk we are now only a few steps apart and we continue our walk with him leading. He is bright white like a cloud in a dream and I start wonder if I am dreaming a very vivid dream. I still follow, we walk for hours through the suburbs into forest and back out onto farmland. We walk trails the wolf seems to know and some he doesn’t. We come around a corner on a steep trail out into a roadway. We see a car crashed into a tree on this dead-end road with a man slumped behind the steering wheel and smoke coming from the front off the wrecked car. I get the door open and the wolf helps me drag the man out. The mans face is a bloody mess. The wolf turns the man over as the car bursts in to flames. I try and wake the man up, as I look, I realise through the blood and bruises that this is my father. He comes to, sees me and gives me a big hug. He tells me of the mistakes he has made and was trying to get back home. We start the long walk home, him limping while I support him. Suddenly we hear sirens in the distance. They had seen the smoke from the burned-out car. The wolf slowly walked away up a hill and is gone. They say blind luck, the paramedics and I saved my father that day but I know it was the white wolf.

I have seen the white wolf at least ten more times in my life, always a warning sign of danger. He was there when my infant son nearly drowned and when my mother was taken off life support. I learned to watch for him always, sometimes he helped other times he just stood watch. Now a man in my late seventies I am always on guard. I walk the fields behind my home every evening and often reflect on the life I have lived. A proud father of two boys and a girl who now have children of there own. My wife left with the wolf a few summers ago amidst lots of tears in our family. I live a solitary life now amid a global pandemic my children in cities far away from me to keep me safe. I watch the babies grow through Skype turning into little people of there own. They have their own fears and dreams in this new reality and I am happy I have lived a full life. As I go for my evening walk, I see the white wolf beside the tree line. Beside him is my wife in her favorite Sunday dress. I run to her, we embrace and follow the white wolf out into the night.