Free Ian Mackenzie Jeffers The Grey by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers Page B

what there is of him, no sitting with him helping him over and telling him he’s going to die, I just let him get ripped apart and watched it, and the wolves have taken up this circle looking at us now, not moving, just waiting for us, it looks like, to comprehend.  We see Ojeira, standing off, looking at Feeny, terrified.  The wolves look at us like somebody who’s just hit you and is waiting to see if you got the point, if you’re going to try and get up again, or if you understand now who just hit you, and how hard.  
    The big one stares at me, more fixed than any of the others, who keep glancing over at him.  He doesn’t look like something I could shake off my back.  He looks more like he’d go through my back on the way to my stomach, and cut me in half.  I just stare at them, afraid to do anything, waiting.
    Then he gets off his paws and charges me, straight over the snow, not taking his eyes off me.  I’m still out in front, I don’t know how many yards ahead of the others, but enough to feel alone.  I don’t think I can laugh my way through another fight with a wolf, not this one.  I watch him coming, and I tighten up, can’t help it.  I know this wolf can kill me, if he decides he wants to, but I’m too scared to run away and too scared to run at him, I don’t know what to do.  I watch him come at me, closer and closer, twenty feet, fifteen, and I’m afraid to move or I know I’m dead if I do, and he just stops, dead, ten feet away, staring at me.  I still don’t move.  I remember other wolves I’ve had staring matches with, and I’ve never seen one look at me like this.  This one hates every winter he’s ever had, and hates the fifty blood brawls he’s fought because he’s the biggest, and the meanest, and he’s had to. And since I’m here, now, in his place, he might hate me, too, and anybody with me.  Watching him, I feel like he’s still deciding what he’s going to do with us.
    He sits down, calmly, staring at me, and I still don’t move, and none of the others do either, I don’t think.  I can’t hear anything behind me, I don’t know if they’re still there, and I’m afraid to look.  Then he stands again, forward on his paws, and he shoots straight at me another few feet again and stops dead again and stares at me, and snarls again, and I stay still, again.  With him this much closer I can feel him jumping on me, but he doesn’t jump yet.  He’s close enough for him to jump at me if he wants, but not close enough for me to reach out and grab him, or swing at him, if I was that brave.  I don’t like him being smarter than me, and he is, out here. Anywhere, maybe.   Maybe my father hated them because they were smarter than him. 
    I shift a little, in my boots.  I don’t mean to, it’s hard to stay as still as I’ve been trying to. It looks like I’m leaning forward, an inch, at most.  He bares his teeth, his lips peeled back, eyes popping, ears down, tail in the air, straight up, brushing back and forth, barely, and he keeps his eyes on mine and snarls, from the bottom of somewhere I never want to be.  His teeth are huge, all out of his mouth for show, and he’s telling me: ‘ Get out of my house, you piece of shit , or I’ll take your throat in one bite. ’
    We keep staring at each other in the wind.  I don’t know what to do but stare.  Then he turns, circles around, so he’ll see me if I come at him.  But I don’t go at him, and he trots off and leaves me there, lopes past Feeny, and Ojeira, toward the dark again and they’ve all fallen in behind him, loping away.  I’m finally brave enough to turn my head and see Henrick, and the others, standing still like I am, behind me.  The big wolf turns again, looks back at us, from farther off.  One of the ones next to him, the next-biggest, starts to howl, and the others join in, and the big one tilts back and howls too. 
    I still don’t move, none of us does, we just stand there