Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf…la la la la la

My old man was a drunk Irish bastard from Dublin- booze in one hand, pills in the other, and anger simmering underneath like a faulty boiler. He sounded and even acted like Connor McGregor, a bit deeper voice and large for an Irishman. He was a good looking guy and build like a pro athlete. I think under different circumstances he could have been a hell of a man, but his father was the same. Me Da grew up getting pummeled every time his Da got pissed (drunk) so it stands to reason that I would be up against the same wall. The ol’ man would get schnockered, and then it was a coin toss: would he pass out in the chair, or would he decide it was a good time to swing on someone ? And I was always the line in the sand. The first time is still as clear as day, he slapped my mother in a drunken rage and I attacked him. He was leaning down over her with his finger in her face and I ran up and grabbed a fist full of hair and didn’t let go until he threw me into the livingroom. I called him a drunk bastard and he began to laugh and then punched me…not real hard that time, but it was enough to make me cry, more shock than anything really. It’s just…no one had ever punched me before- so I didn’t know what to expect, and it was coming from my ol’ man, so that part hurt more than the fist. I think me attacking him got under his skin- well I know it did because he brought it up constantly throughout our relationship. When he only drank it was mainly just verbal, but when he popped those pain pills it just…did something to him. After I defended my mom, it sort of became a “thing”. I hear the cap on the bottle…he got drunk and called me “Feck-shite” and got sent to bed early with no supper- or….OR….I would hear that bottle of pain pills rattle followed by a the whisky cap. To this day, hearing a bottle of pills rattle puts me into a momentary fight or flight. Those were the long nights. Those were the lessons in life that made me tougher than a coffin nail, both mentally and physically, and as soon as I heard the rattle I knew I had about 30 minutes before he would start some shit. It got to where I would provoke him on those nights. Once he hit me a few times it took the wind out of his sails and he left my mom and little brother alone. So eventually he made me his auto-target. Not every night, but enough. Enough to harden me into something that I shouldn’t have been. So I got angry.

I began to act out, not unprovoked agression, just criminal mischief- I was heading down the wrong path…and stayed the course in one way or another for most of my young life. And when I did something like that, my Da would pummel me- which I was getting anyway, so maybe I was balancing the scales with the bad things I did.

There was one night he got mean in that special way only drunk men can manage – that dead-eyed, sloppy, hateful mood – and he threw me across the room because I was standing in the way of the television. I yelled “FUCK YOU!” Aaaaaand, then he kicked me. Hard. More than once. And I remember this dull cramp in my back…it felt really tight and then BAM! the pain hit me all at once and I gasp so loud in pain that it even scared him. Blah blah blah…long story short, I got a bruised kidney. Of course my mom wasn’t in there and he denied doing it. Couldn’t even stand straight, could hardly talk and the next thing I knew the ambulance was there. Hospital lights. Hospital smell. Doctors whispering like I couldn’t hear them. I remember pissing red into a plastic jug and my mother losing her mind.

By the time they released me, my mother had made her move – me pops was off his hitch and gone back to work, the bags were packed, tickets bought, fear turned into jet fuel, and we were gone! Straight across the ocean to Mother’s Mother Russia (see what I did there?). We went to a small town pretty far north of Moscow where my mother’s parents still lived. I spoke about as much Russian as my grandfather spoke English, which is to say: almost none. But something clicked between us anyway, instantly, like some primitive recognition. Blood knows blood, even across the language barrier.

My dedushka – my grandfather… was a quiet giant. Six foot-four, thick hands, whethered look but a chiseled body- even at his age. You wouldn’t know it by his demenour, but the my mother said he was a man who solved problems the Soviet way – quietly, permanently, efficiently. He ran one of the Soviet warehouses back in the communist days, and my mom always explained it like this:
In America, you want a sofa? You go buy a sofa.
In communist Russia, you want a sofa- you go apply for a sofa if you get approved, there were only a handfull of sofa typed, and usually you got what you were given. If you complained they would give it to the next person and you were fucked.

But my grandfather? He could make things happen. He coordinated…you want this- they want that, you both switch and everyone is happy. Important people owed him favors. Good people loved him. Bad men respected him. Worse men feared him. There was a kid who hated me because he didn’t have a grandfather…evidently because of mine. Later in life, after his passing I was told a lot of stories by the family as we drank…and yea- it’s exactly what you’re thinking.

To me though, now and especially then, he was just the first real father I ever had.

He woke me up every dawn, already dressed, already brewing tea or frying food. We’d go outside and do chores together – chopping wood, fixing fences, feeding animals – sometimes talking, sometimes laughing, sometimes just being quiet in each other’s company. It was the most peace I’d ever had at that point.

Then one morning he shakes me awake earlier than usual. Breakfast already made – egg sandwiches with ham, the kind where the bread soaks up the heat and the whole house smells like warmth. We get into his truck. He doesn’t explain where we’re going, just drives. And drives. And drives. Forest swallowing the world around us. Snow on the branches. Frost on the glass. We ate our sandwiches and he tried to teach me Russian songs while I tried to teach him English ones, both of us butchering the other’s language but laughing anyway.

Eventually we pulled up to this old farmhouse tucked so far into the woods it felt like we’d crossed into a different timeline. An old man came out, beard like steel wool, eyes sharp. He and my dedushka talked, nodded, and walked toward a barn. My grandfather waved me over.

I heard the puppies before I saw them.

Inside the barn, the air was warm with hay and the smell of animals. Then I saw the litter – stumbling, yipping, rolling over each other in a wild, chaotic pile. My grandfather pointed and said, “volk.” Wolf. I didn’t understand at first, so he lifted his head and gave a soft, perfect wolf howl.

My jaw hit the floor.

Then he said in English, “Choose”

I was vibrating with excitement. The cubs were all adorable, wrestling, tumbling, making tiny growls. But off to the side, alone, sitting like she’d been waiting specifically for me, was one quiet little female pup. She didn’t bark. She didn’t move. She just stared at me like, Well? I don’t have all day.
I walked to her, picked her up, and still remember that puppy breath in my face as I touched my nose to hers. She licked my nose, and that was it.
Choice made.
Or maybe she chose me, and manipulated me into choosing her- but more about her smarts later.

Soooo…my grandfather bought me a wolf.

We took her home and on the way we tried out dozens of names to see which one was hers- we said name after name until one made her ears perk: Noushka. And that was it. My wolf. My sister. My shadow. My protector. My partner in crime.

She wasn’t a pet – wolves don’t play that.
She was family.
She imprinted so deeply on me that we were practically one mind split into two bodies. They communicate through body language, small sounds and instinct, but every tilt of the head, every twitch of the ears, every shift in breathing had meaning. Even with humans, and she knew what I was feeling…hell I imagine she knew what I was thinking most of the time. But she also had the vocabulary of a child- she understood conversations- maybe because we were joined at the hip and I talked to her like a human.

Sixteen years she lived. Sixteen. That’s ancient for a wolf.
I think she stayed that long because she knew she was needed.

After a couple of months my mother let me know that she was pregnant, and that we were moving back to the States. She said that my father had stopped drinking and yadda yadda… It was true for a year or so, but he eventually fell off the wagon, and when he rared back to hit me there was a big bad wolf there to blow his house in- but that’s a story for another chapter.