Free Lone Wolf A Novel by Jodi Picoult Page B

interviewed—peculiar to the point of dysfunctional. But Luke Warren was tall and muscular, with blond hair that reached down to his shoulders and eyes so pale and blue that, for a moment, I had trouble remembering what I was doing there. He wore a ratty old set of coveralls. “Just let me get out of these,” he said, unzipping them to reveal the khaki uniform of a zookeeper. “The wolves are used to this scent, but by now, my clothes could probably walk away by themselves.”
    He disappeared into a keeper’s hut and returned a moment later, his hair tied back neatly and his face and hands freshly washed. “So,” I said. “You don’t mind if we film . . . ?”
    “Go right ahead,” Luke replied. He led us to a bench that offered the best view of the wolves behind him, because—as he said—they were the real stars.
    “I’m rolling,” Alfred said.
    I folded my hands in my lap. “You’ve been staying overnight in the enclosure for some time now . . .”
    Luke nodded. “Four months.”
    “Continuously?” I asked.
    “Yeah. It’s gotten to the point where it’s more comfortable for me than any bed.”
    Already, I was wondering what this guy’s angle was. You didn’t go sleep with wild animals for four months unless you were trying to get attention drawn to you or you were mentally ill. I thought maybe he wanted his own talk show. In those days, everyone did. “Don’t you worry about the wolves attacking you while you sleep?”
    He smiled. “I’m not going to lie—the first night I went in, I didn’t get any sleep. But on the whole, a wolf is far more afraid of a human than vice versa. At this point, because I allowed them to teach me instead of telling them what to do, they’ve accepted me as a low-ranking member of their pack.”
    Definitely mental illness, I thought. “Well, Luke, the obvious question is: why?”
    He shrugged. “I think if you want to know what a wolf is really like, you can’t just observe. Most biologists would disagree, and say that you can watch the interaction of a wolf pack through your camera lens and draw your conclusions based on what you know of human behavior—but isn’t that completely backward? If you want to understand a wolf’s world, you have to be willing to live in it. You have to speak his language.”
    “So you’re telling me you speak wolf?”
    Luke grinned. “Fluently. I could even teach you a few phrases.” He stood up, setting one foot on the bench as he leaned in. “There are three different types of howls a wolf makes,” he explained. “There’s a locating howl, which gives the whereabouts of any pack that’s in the area. Not just my family, but rival packs, too. The defensive howl is a little deeper. It means stay away; it’s a way to protect your territory and the pack inside it. The third type of howl is a rallying howl. That’s the classic Hollywood howl—mournful, melancholy. It’s used when a pack member is lost, and scientists used to think it was a measure of grief, but actually, it’s a vocal beacon. A way for a missing family member to try to find his way back home.”
    “Can you show me?”
    “Only if you help,” Luke said. He pulled me up until I was standing.“Take deep breaths, filling your lungs. Hold those breaths as long as you can, and then exhale. On the third breath, send the howl.” He inhaled three times, cupped his hand to his mouth, and a long, two-tone note swelled through the enclosure, rising over the tops of the trees. The wolves looked up, curious. “Try it,” he said.
    “I can’t—”
    “Of course you can.” He put his hands on my shoulders from behind. “Breathe in,” he coached. “Breathe out. In . . . out. In . . . ready?” Leaning forward, he whispered into my ear. “Let go.”
    I closed my eyes, and all the air in my lungs poured forward on a vibration that started in my center and filled my body. Then I did it again. It was primal, guttural. Behind me, I could hear Luke howling a