Wolf Man

 

 

 

MAINE STORIES

This story is fiction.  The names and places herein are fictional and are not meant to describe any real people living or dead or places.  The story comes entirely from my imagination.  Ann J. Ahnemann

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People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within. -Ursula K. Le Guin

Wolf Man

Nobody knew right off where he came from.  Just showed up at the Market one day.  Most people in town don't get too exercised by much of anything.  The common phrase is, You saw it in Maine.  And if people are surprised by something, you wouldn't know it.  Call it Yankee stoicism or whatever you like.  That's just the way it is down east.

This time it was impossible not to see the effect of this particular apparition.  There were wide eyes and side-along stares at the huge man-  6 feet tall and weight lifter huge.  He was immediately dubbed Iron Mike.  As time went on Iron Mike's hygiene markedly deteriorated. His hair grew a mangled wooly mass with bits of something or other stuck in it.  His beard just about covered his entire face. 

It wasn't long before everyone in town began referring to the stranger as the Wolf Man or just plain Wolfie. No matter what the weather he wore overhauls, a black leather bomber type jacket and carried an enormous pack on his back. Walking stick in hand he might appear anytime of the day or night anywhere from along the Washington Road, East Pond Road, Route 36, Bunker Hill and Goose Hill and as far as Waldoboro. If you know those roads you know you would come up over a rise losing for a second the sight of the road ahead to plunge down the other side.  And there he'd be, suddenly in your headlights, a hunched over beast of a man. It was like seeing Big Foot. 

The Wolf Man was more clinically known by the State. State Welfare clued in Sheriff's Deputy Leland Stilwell.  He lives up in the town of Sommerville, known to the locals as Scummerville. Some of the places up there are pretty rough. As Wolf Man was living up that way the State charged Deputy Stilwell to look in on him for the State Welfare Department. The Deputy was just the man for the job being near 7 feet tall, with chistled high cheek bones, and tough as nails. All belying the fact that he was a genuinely nice guy, well known and liked in the community.  Helped a lot of folks around, most famously those starving kids that showed up at the Market years ago and their mom. Sent them cash money over the years even though the mother had a string of loser lovers. Leland kept track of her boys. Took them places, watched their football and soccer games, remembered their birthdays. The oldest is now in construction and the younger boy went on to be a EMS supervisor.  Grown now, they aren't shy about telling everyone what Deputy Stilwell did for them.

Deputy Leland Stilwell is known affectionately as Chief Tall Tree.  He'll never make Chief of Police of course. He's due to retire. And be glad of it.  Too much nonsense going on these days what with drugs, meth labs and all.  And his best friend and former partner Stuart Greenlaw is no longer a Deputy. Stuart drives bus for the school since he lost his spleen and half his stomach when he was caught between the open door of that drunk kid's car and dragged. Stu acts as dog catcher when he's not driving bus.

Deputy Stilwell was clued in by the state as to the Wolf Man's background. His given name is Morrison Roland Railsbach. He is a Viet Nam veteran, spent some time in the VA in Augusta.  There are records that he was treated for post traumatic stress, and a host of other mental disorders, hearing voices, hallucinating and drug abuse. The VA report states that  he would rave on and on that he had spent his tour in Cambodia. Kept saying over and over he could read a goddam map and he didn't give a shit what the government said, that no troops were in Cambodia. Left us there to rot. Nothing to eat but dog. Then he'd go off with a string of unintelligible nonsense punctuated with obscenities. They put in a straight jacket if he got to banging his head on the wall or went for an orderly. Spent most of his time sitting in stony silence in the all purpose room. Nobody bothered him or wanted to be near him. The counselors couldn't make much headway with him and prescribed a host of meds and basically that was the end of treatment. The VA reported that one day he just up and disappeared. This Fall the sightings of Iron Mike are the first anyone's seen him in a long, long time.   

Any stranger in a small town is suspect.  Everyone knows or is related to almost everyone else in town and they take care of their own. The Wolf Mane is a mystery.  Mysteries aren't real popular in the Village.

Folks would fairly grill Donna at the Market about him as they would see Wolfie go in from time to time.  She told them he never gave her any trouble.  She did tell Deputy Leland Stilwell that when Wolf Man came in he smelled like he been dragged through a manure pond.  Pants so dirty it looked like they could walk on their own.  Customers who happened to be in the store when Wolfie appeared parted like the Red Sea when they saw him, of course. But he never bothered anybody.  Would bring his beer and 5 or so cans of Bush's Country Style and a couple of boxes of Milk Bones to the counter, dig food stamps he used to pay for the beans and a few crumpled bills for the beer out of the pack he always carried, and would say something like 'aftanoon mam' real polite like.  Donna she said that under those bushy eyebrows he had the most amazing shade of blue eyes she'd ever seen a human person have.  Donna would give him day old bread. She felt sorry for him. Told the Deputy so. He had to agree with her that this 'Wolf Man' had probably gotten a real bad shake in life.

Deputy Leland Stilwell had seen more than his share of trouble.  His father would be drunk most of the time, beat on his mother, took a belt to Leland and his brother.  He still has the scars on his back from where the buckle dug in. He knows a lot about what trouble can do to a person.  And worse, his only son is an alcoholic. Leland buries a six pack or two of Shipyard he likes to drink once in awhile in the woods up there behind his place so his son can't get at it.

Leland has tramped those woods since he was a kid and hiding out from his dad. He knows well where the Railsbach cabin is. It's a ramshackle affair, built from scraps in the woods up off the Valley road bordering on the old Henry Watson place. Someone, Morrison most likely, has purloined boards from the shed where Henry used to shelter his ox team he kept for hauling timber.  Nothing but a ruin now really, mostly collapsed and the right side of the roof stove in to the ground.  Henry's grandkids own the farmland now.  Call it a farm still.  There's not any farming going on out there anymore. Some haying maybe the kids let a neighbor pay a small stipend to do.  

Leland knows Carrie and Jim 'Jigger' LeBlanc who live in Carrie's granddad's old house now.  Carrie reported to Leland that she knows a woman who comes now and then to see Morrison.  Brings him stuff, checked on him last winter.  The woman drove into the door yard a year or so back and knocked on the back door.  Said her name was Alice Railsbach Timmerman. Asked would they mind if she parked her car in the dooryard when she came in to check on her  brother, the road out there being completely grown over.   

Jigger wasn't real happy about it. He hated the fact that this Wolf Man lived just on the other side of their property.  Didn't want to have a damn thing to do with him. Told his wife i'd be better for everyone if the man was dead. But it was his wife's place afterall.  Jigger had it in mind to keep the shotgun loaded. Carrie told Jigger not to be a horse's ass about it.  She liked the woman.  About 50 years old.  Neat.  Well spoken. The pain of her brother's situation written all over her.  Carrie told Alice OK by her, long as he stayed away from the house. And she reminded Alice her brother better keep the path to the old burial place out there clear. It's the law.

 There are a number of burial plots on people's property from days gone by when folks buried their own right on their own land. Six or so graves marked by leaning slabs of stone were out there on Henry's place in a small clearing in the woods, engraved with long forgotten names and dates, most so weatherworn as to be almost unreadable. One for a baby that lived only two days.

Railsbach's sister Alice told Carrie she'd drive up the lane by the house when she came and tramp back through to her brother's cabin on foot. Gave Carrie the number she could be reached if there be a need.  Carrie kept Leland in the picture about the arrangement.  So that's how it went  until  people began seeing Wolf Man in town this particular Fall. 

You can believe Wolf Man suffered some terrible abuse from kids on their bikes daring each other to ride by and grab a hunk of Wolfie's mangy hair, or pitch a stone or two at him and ride away like hell on wheels.  Wolfie would just keep on walking, not even giving a glance at the kids.  Guys in the pick-ups driving by the man would give loud blasts of their horns as they blew by him. Wolf Man never even flinched.

Funny thing. There wasn't a stray dog that didn't love him. You would sometimes see two or three of the sorry creatures loping along beside him.  He would throw down some of the day-old bread to them, even stop and give those curs a pat or two. Feeding strays is a no-no in deer hunting parts.  Gets so a pack of wild dogs will chase deer until the deer drop of exhaustion to escape, or break a leg trying.  Stuart swears when he went to his truck to get his loop to catch one of those dogs Wolf Man appeared out of nowhere and stuffed the dog down into his pack quick as a wink.  Stuart  figured a dog catcher wasn't paid enough to mess with that shit and drove on.

Sometime in late November Deputy Leland got a call from the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department that Carrie LeBlanc reported there was trouble out at her place.  Alice, Railbach's sister, had come to the door out of breath and said her brother had gone crazy.  She said Morrison didn't seem to recognize her, even threatened her.  His own sister!  Alice was crying and telling Carrie he must have gone off his meds and They better call the Sheriff's Department. 

Deputy Stilwell and his new young partner Deputy Davy Burgess took the cruiser out to Henry's Place.  When they got there Alice and Carrie both were crying in the door yard.  Jigger was dancing around toting a shotgun.  Leland told Jigger not to do anything stupid.  Then he told them all to go in the house and stay there until he and Deputy Burgess got back from seeing to Morrison back at the shack.

Leland told Davy to just follow his lead. Davy was only too glad to comply.  He was new to the job. Grateful to be working with Deputy Stilwell a veteran officer and one of the most respected Deputies in the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.  For a newbie Deputy it was a real feather in his cap to have been accepted as partner by Leland Stilwell. Most of all he didn't want to screw up.

Hiking to Railsbach's cabin was tough going.  The deputies had to break through thick undergrowth. An eerie silence closed in. There was not a sign of life, not even birdsong.  When the cabin appeared before the two deputies Leland said he would go around back to see if Morrison was out there.  Deputy Burgess stood looking around a moment a the wreck of the place, all pasted together with tar paper, and mismatched boards, some with different color paint peeling off, open spaces and inch wide between some of the boards.  All around rusted wrecks of unrecognizable things, trash, tires, whatall, just about grown over with weeds. Silence.  Like not a soul was alive in that wreck of a place. Deputy Burgess decided to knock on the door. 

His knuckes were inches from the weathered boards of the door when the thing crashed out out him, came right off its hinges, and a huge figure exploded out into the light.  Deputy Burgess fell straight down to the ground on his back knocking the breath clean out of  him.

 In a second the mammoth man was on him, a maelstrom of fists like hammers, of foul breath, black teeth and blue devil eyes burning beneath wild hair. Davy didn't even see the knife then, but felt pressure and then the burn as the blade went into his shoulder. His neatly creased khaki sleeve turned red.  Then Davy saw the arm raised again, sun glinting off of what must be a 9 inch blade, and Davy knew he was done for.  He only had time to croak, Help me! Help me. Leland!  He's killin' me!  

Leland came running around from the back of the shed.  He saw Davy on the ground bleeding, saw Morrison looking and sounding like fury itself, saw the blade, shouted at the man who was beyond this world, drew his revolver and fired. Leland is a very good shot. If the man hadn't been so wild he would have hit an arm, maybe. As it was the bullet entered square in the middle of Morrison's forehead.  Leland checked Davy to see that the knife wounds, while deep, weren't life threatening.  He tore his shirt up and used it to bind up the worst of the cuts on Davy's arm. Then he bent to close the lids over Morrison's eyes.  Those sapphire blue eyes are what Leland could never get out of his mind.

Leland called for EMS and back-up and told Davy not to move.  It was only then that horrific howling coming from inside the shed registered.  Leland stepped over the sill to see a dog shredding it's paws to get out of a wire pen in the corner of the shed.  The howling went on and on.  Leland went out and knelt by Davy while he called his friend Stuart Greenlaw to get out to Henry's place to see about a dog that needed taking care of. He briefed Stuart about the situation and hung up.

Things got sorted out a bit.  The LeBlanc family, Railsbach's sister all were put in the picture.  Even Jigger was sobered to near silence by the state of affairs.  Davy got to the hospital in fair shape, Morrison's body was taken away to the Coroner's office, Stuart Greenlaw came to take away the dog they found in the shed.

The dog was a Husky mix by the look of him, who howled pitifully at passing Morrison's blood stain on the ground.  He kept looking and pulling back so Stu had to drag him with the loop to his truck.  The dog never ceased his howling, but never made a move to snap or bite either as Stu lifted him up into the cage in the back of his pick-up. Stu drove home and tied the dog onto one of those huge White Pines that line his driveway til he could figure out what do with the miserable creature. Sometime during the night the howling stopped. The dog was dead when Stu went out to feed him the next morning.  It crossed Stu's mind the dog died of a broken heart, but he never would say that to anyone.

 The Lincoln County Sheriff's Department got the scene roped off. They debriefed Deputy Stilwell and Deputy Burgess at the hospital and consulted with Stuart again a day or so later because of things they discovered out behind the isolated shack: neatly arranged stones over mounds of dirt.  Dried weeds arranged at the head of each mound.  Must have been eight or ten mounds.  The Sheriff's Department had Digger O'Dell open up those mounds. They more than half expected to find human bodies.  What they found were dead dogs.  Stuart came out and had a look.  Eight of them, each in a separate grave, neatly wrapped in burlap and placed just so with what looked like deer bones arranged in odd patterns around the carcasses.   All of the dogs appeared to have died of old age.  None had been mutilated in any way. It was Stuart's opinion that these dogs had been buried with great care. He could find no evidence that any of the dogs had been killed. Some of the carcasses looked like they had been there awhile- just mostly bones.  Some still had some hair on them. But those decorated graves.  Damnest thing Stuart or anyone had ever seen in their lives.

 

 Leland, of course went to Augusta to see Davy at the hospital.  Leland was mad as hell, had been since it all happened. Couldn't sleep he was so mad. He drove along to Augusta General muttering to himself.  That numbnuts kid, that peckerheard  Davy.  He knew Morrison had mental problems, and that his sister Alice said he was having some kind of fit.  And he up and goes and knocks on the guy's goddamn door!  Goddamn Davy.

Not long after Deputy Burgess got out of the hospital Deputy Leland Stilwell put in for retirement. He didn't tell anyone, but that first time he went in to see Davy the doc insisted that Leland have a physical.  Turns out when the blood tests came back Leland found out he had diabetes.  He threw out the bags of Horehound candy kept in his truck to munch on all day and give to the kids who knew he always had some. He stopped drinking beer altogether.

Stu hadn't seen Leland for a few weeks which was unusual.  He figured that Leland needed some time to himself.  He knew that the Sheriff's Department had given Leland a month's leave after the shooting.  He called Leland at his home.  Leland's wife Louise answered.  She said she'd have Leland call.  And then, You know he's put in for retirement, Stu?  That was a surprise. When he asked Leland about it he said, Ayah.  Bout time.  And that was all he said about it. Leland and  Stu still went to Moody's Diner some evenings.  Stu had the walnut pie while Leland sipped black coffee.  It was good just being together jawing again, telling stories, talking over old times, laughing, flirting with the waitresses, just like always- Leland's deep bass a counterpoint to Stu's lively tenor.

One morning before sunup Stuart's phone rang.  Jean came downstairs still in her nightgown knowing by Stu's tone it was serious.  Stu hung up the phone and turned to Jean white as a sheet, shaking.  Leland, he said, had been found out beyond the Railsbach cabin. Dead.  He shot himself with his own service revolver.  Stuart told Jean, he told no one that he was feeling bad, he left no clue, no note, nothing at all.  Not a goddamn thing.

 

EPILOGUE

Leland left a good bit of money to Louise, his wife- money that he started salting away when she was diagnosed with M.S. and could only get around in a wheelchair after their son was born. It was enough she could move into a new assisted living place in Wiscasset near the water and live out the rest of her days in peace.  Leland's son got a good job in Texas wanting to get as far away from the State of Maine as possible. 

Morrison Roland Railsbach had three brothers and three sisters all of whom except his sister Alice lived in Massachusetts.   Each got  a share of what little money there was from the sale of Railsbach's land to Jigger and Carrie LeBlanc. Railsbach, it turns out, had a child who also lived in Massachusetts.  He had never adopted her.  She got nothing from Railsbach.  But she was used to that.