Mentor
Copyright (c) 2000
Edwin L. Wilson, Jr.

Jesus, it's hot. Why am I out here? This is the biggest waste of time I've come up with yet. This old man can't show me anything, and wouldn't if he could. A sharp sting interrupted Chris's thoughts, and he slapped at his arm. A fire ant curled in on itself and fell into the weeds. Chris shifted over a few feet and sighed. What the hell was I thinking? He'd say "Sure, come on in, I'd be glad to teach you. Want in on my will?" An insect whined in his ear, and he waved it away impatiently. There's still time to register for fall classes. I can be back home in an hour, register by computer, be all set. Set for what?

A screen door creaked open, and the old man shuffled out. He was maybe mid-fifties, but moved like he was mid-eighties. He dabbed his brow under his salt-and-pepper buzz cut with a red handkerchief taken from a hip pocket on his overalls. He stood on the weathered porch of the shack and gazed myopically at the hazy outlines of the mountainous horizon, shading his eyes from the noonday Georgia summer sun with one leathery hand, before cautiously negotiating the short cinderblock staircase.

Christ. Another old cracker living in a tarpaper shack. Well, what did I expect? Jedidiah Smith? Chris mopped his own brow and rubbed the sweat out of his eyes. Okay, okay; back to school. No more screwing around. See ya, cooter-

Chris blinked. "Cooter" was gone. He scanned the dusty yard, littered with car parts and an old washing machine or two, carefully; but the old man was nowhere in sight. Where'd he go? I didn't hear the screen door. Chris stiffened as a shadow fell across his body. He slowly turned his head to look behind him. The old man stood three feet to his right, casually pointing an ancient double-barreled shotgun at him. Chris noticed he stood quite erect, with no sign of the stoop he'd carried only moments before.

"Why you layin' up in my yard, boy? Sneakin' about my place ever' night this week? What you think you gonna see? You some pre-vert, come to watch an old man jerk off?"

Chris opened his mouth, but no words came out. It just opened and closed, soundlessly.

"Gowan, beat it. Take off, way you come in."

Chris slowly got to his knees and stood, backing up slightly. "I.... I just wanted to..."

"You jest wanted ta what? Get yer fool head blown off?" The old man gestured with the gun. "Now git. I ain't got time fer strangers. 'Specially not ones what sneak around my house." He abruptly turned and stalked off towards the shack, carrying the gun loosely in one hand. Chris watched him mount the stairs gracefully and pull the screen door open, stopping to look his way again. "Well? What's yer problem boy, you slow in the head?"

Chris cleared his throat and took a few tentative steps towards the porch. "I... I wanted you to teach me about tracking. I saw an article... they said you were better than any bloodhound at tracking. I... I didn't know how to ask."

The old man stared at him for a long minute. Sweat began trickling down Chris' face in the sun. Finally the old man turned to the door. "Hell, boy, all you had to do was knock on the door." He said, disappearing inside. Chris stood agape for a few heartbeats, then scurried to the porch.

He paused in the doorway, blinking his eyes in the dim interior. The old man was seated in a ratty gray swivel rocker, carving on a plug of tobacco with stubby pocketknife. The shack appeared to be all one room; a couple of tattered easy chairs around an old cable spool used as a table, a plywood counter with a camp stove and propane refrigerator. A rusty army cot sat in a far corner. The old man slipped the tobacco in his mouth and worked it around into one cheek, regarding Chris with a blank expression. Finally he spit into an old pot on the floor next to the rocker. "Well, shit boy, siddown. I'm a busy man, I ain't got all day to spend watchin' you appreciate my décor."

Chris started. "Uh... Yes, thank you." He hurried across the floor and stood in front of the old man, and held out his hand. "Uh... I'm Chris Hancock. Thank you for seeing me." The man stared at Chris with the same blank expression, making no move to shake the offered hand. Chris let it fall limply, and backed into one of the chairs to sit. The man said nothing, and Chris began to feel even more foolish. A couple of drops of sweat trickled off of his nose and onto the floor.

"Well?" the man said.

"Uh... You are... Frank Brenner, right? You helped the Sheriff's department find that girl that was lost in the woods last year?"

The man spit into the pot again before answering. "I reckon so" was all he offered.

Chris shrugged, as if this explained everything. "Well... The papers said you do that sort of thing a lot... help the cops track people, that is. They said you were able to find people when no one else could, when even tracking dogs failed."

The man squinted at Chris. "You with the paper, is that it? Wanna do another story on me? If so, you can get right out. I told 'em last time I wasn't interested in no story."

"Oh, no sir... I'm not with the paper. I..." He hesitated. "I'm a wildlife biology student with the University." He paused, and seeing that Brenner wasn't going to comment, continued in a rush. "I plan on getting my masters with a thesis on native bobcat populations. But there isn't enough grant money to get tracking collars and nets and all the equipment that's usually used... so I want to learn how to track them on my own. The way you track. From what I've read, there's no one else in the state who can do what you do; track things, I mean. And... I thought you'd want to pass what you know on to someone else. To teach someone. To track." Brenner remained immobile. Chris leaned back and looked down at his hands, folded on his lap. "I can pay you. Not a lot, but some. I have some money saved up."

Brenner spat again, and leaned forward. "Bullshit."

Chris was startled. "I... what?"

"Bullshit, I said. What do you really want?" Brenner was sitting on the edge of the rocker now, staring intently at Chris. Chris looked away involuntarily.

"I..." How could he know? Chris thought. Maybe he really is... If he's not, he'll laugh in my face. He looked into Brenner's face, opened his mouth to tell the truth... but what came out sounded weak. "It's the truth. I want you to teach me how to track." His gaze fell to his hands again, which were twisting around each other in his lap.

Brenner continued to stare. "Tracking." He said.

"Yes, sir. Tracking." Chris still couldn't look up.

Brenner sighed, leaned back, and spat unerringly into the pot. "Well, I hope you like to work, boy. Trackin' ain't somethin' that comes easy. You gotta want it. Now, go get yer gear, and bring yer car on up to the house."

Chris looked up to see if the man was joking with him. "Gowan, git! We're startin' today, unless you changed yer mind." Brenner said.

Chris jumped to his feet. "Uh.. Yessir! I mean, no, I haven't changed my mind, I..." he hesitated, then spun for the door. He paused on the porch, looked back in. "Uh... How did you know I had my gear with me?"

Brenner chuckled. "Boy, you don't know spit about nothin'. Now git yer stuff."

--==++==--

"No, goddammit, no! Yer making more noise than a herd of elephants!" Brenner threw his grimy ball cap in the dirt in disgust. Chris sighed and stood stood erect. His back was aching from walking hunched over down the trail. He massaged it with his hands as Brenner glared at him and recovered his hat.

"Dammit boy, lissen to me! You gotta feel your way down that trail! You can't watch the ground. Feel where the twigs and leaves is, with yer feet. And stop tryin' to go so fast! Watch me." Brenner went into a crouch, knees bent, arms away from his side. He seemed to glide across the trail, carefully nudging twigs and leaves aside with the edges of his sneakers, moving silently at a walking pace. Chris shook his head. He was doing what Brenner said, but he still crunched across dry twigs. How can you feel anything through shoes? He glumly watched Brenner turn and glide silently back to him. Brenner put his hands on his hips and regarded Chris with disappointment. Finally he wiped his brow.

"Look, yer doin' ok, but you keep puttin' yer big feet where they don't need to be. Keep yer balance, and you won't have to put that foot down so quick. You can brush the ground with it, push that noisy stuff out of the way. You ain't gonna be able to go as fast as me, you gotta go slow at first."

Chris sighed. "I don't see what any of this has to do with tracking, anyway."

Brenner pulled out his plug of tobacco, a sign that the day's exertions were over. "I done told you that. Spottin' sign is only half the game for the kind of tracking you want to do. You gotta be able to sneak up on them critters if you wanna study 'em, right? You gotta be quiet for that." He popped a carved off slice of the plug into his mouth. "And if you ain't got the patience for stalkin' you ain't got the patience for spottin' sign. Now let's get back to the house before dark."

Brenner pushed past and led the way back up the trail to the shack. Chris stretched his weary back muscles and followed glumly. I've spent a week following this crazy redneck around, he thought, and I haven't seen any sign that I'm right. He sighed. His days had been filled with balance exercises, learning how to walk quietly, learning how to spot tracks, all under the penetrating eye of the man- he'd long since stopped thinking of him as "old"- and his sharp, critical tongue. Nights he spent, exhausted, cooking Brenner's simple meals and trying to get him to talk about tracking. Brenner offered little, preferring to silently read one of the many tattered paperbacks stacked on the floor by his cot, or stare at the walls in the harsh propane lamp light. At the first sign of light Brenner shook him awake, to start the cycle again.

They reached the shack and Chris shambled inside. Brenner was rooting through his food crates on the floor, pulling out some dry beans and smoked meat for the dinner meal. "You said you had some money saved up, boy?" he asked over his shoulder.

Chris sighed. Here it came. "Yeah, some. I sure haven't been spending any up here."

Brenner filled a pot with water from a 50 gallon drum suspended over the burner. "Well, tomorrow we'll go into town and get some groceries. You 'bout eaten' me bare."

Chris pulled off his shoes and irritatedly kneaded his feet. This was getting him nowhere. Time to admit he'd been wrong. The irrational hope he'd felt when he'd read that quote in the newspaper article had been fading all week and was now no longer enough to sustain the charade. It had been a long shot; the longest he'd taken in a series of long shots that had never hit the target.

He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. The longest of long shots, indeed. He grimaced at the memory of his past efforts. Long nights spent in chat rooms or on internet message boards, seeking the one person who held the key to his dreams. Miserable hours in libraries, reading about dead myths and legends. The number of times his hopes had been raised at meeting a new person who felt as he did, only to be lowered again when it was revealed they knew no more than him. Years and years of longing to be something no one could ever be. And now he'd spent a week wasting his time and Brenner's, who was definitely not a-

He chuckled to himself. He couldn't even think the word any more without feeling silly. The chuckle died on his lips and was replaced with a half-sob as a powerful lead weight of despair settled on his stomach. There was no way, there was no grain of truth behind the legends. It was all smoke and haze, after all. His dreams and fantasies would have to remain in his imagination.

He felt a presence in front of him and jerked awake. Brenner was standing in front of his chair with a plate of food. "Damn, boy," he said "Way you jerked in that chair you'd think you saw a werewolf." He put the plate on the cable spool in front of Chris and sat down in his swivel rocker. He began to eat from his own plate as Chris stared.

He looked up. "Dammit, stop starin' at me and eat yer food." Chris looked away, his face burning. Does he know why I'm here, somehow? Is he making fun of me? He spooned a mouthful of the blackeyed peas into his mouth and glanced at Brenner out of the corner of his eye. The man was contentedly shoveling the food in, ignoring everything but his plate.

He cleared his throat. "Uh... do you believe in... werewolves?"

Brenner looked up, swallowed his mouthful, and stared hard at Chris. "Now, that is the damnedest fool question you asked yet, boy." He shook his head and turned to his plate once more.

Chris ate quietly, humiliated. Of course it was a damned foolish question, he thought, and he felt more like a damned fool than ever. One more humiliation in a long line of them. He was irritated at his humiliation and his irritation slowly turned to anger as he ate. Screw this country fool, anyway. What kind of dreams has he ever had? Screw him and this damn shack and the damn bugs and heat. He dropped his spoon and sat back. "You didn't answer my question."

Brenner sighed and mopped the last of his meal from the plate with a slice of white bread. "What question?"

"You said I looked like I had seen a werewolf. I asked if you believed in werewolves. You didn't answer me." Chris's jaw was set in a tight line. He felt as if he was about to explode; the long tensions and frustrations and blind alleys building up pressure in his head.

Brenner chewed the bread slowly. "You didn't come here to learn how to track. Why don't you tell me why yer really here."

Chris trembled, pressing his lips together in a thin bloodless line. Finally he blew a lungful of air out of his mouth in an explosive whoosh. "Forget it," he said, standing up abruptly. "I'm an idiot and it was stupid to waste your time. I'm sorry." He moved to his bedroll on the floor and began gathering his things together, stuffing them in a frame pack. "I'll leave you some money for your time." He began to walk stiffly to the door, cradling his sleeping bag and pack, fighting tears.

"Sit down." Brenner said, quietly. Chris opened the door as if he hadn't heard and walked out onto the porch. "SIT DOWN!" Brenner roared, standing up. Chris walked slowly back into the shack and sat in his chair, still holding his equipment. Brenner slowly sat down and pulled his plug from a pocket.

"Somethin's had you worked up since you came here. It looks like somethin's had you worked up for a long time. You came to me because of it, and it ain't cause you want to learn how to track. Now yer right, you wasted a week of my time fer bullshit, and you owe me the truth." He bit a corner off of the plug and pointed a tobacco stained finger at Chris. "Now you best tell me why yer here, and it best be the truth."

Chris tightly gripped his sleeping bag, bunched in his lap, and ignored the tear that rolled off his cheek. "You'd laugh at me if I told you the truth." He mumbled.

"Boy, I'm so pissed right now that I could stick my boot so far up yer ass you'd taste shoe leather for a month. You start talkin', and I mean now."

Chris wiped his face with the back of one hand and drew in a ragged sigh of breath. "I believe in werewolves. Or I did." His laugh was an explosive bark. He rolled his head to face the ceiling and sniffed. "God, this sounds so stupid."

"Gowan." Brenner sat back, his face shadowed by the shade on the propane lamp.

"I... I always wanted to be a werewolf." He glanced at the shadow where Brenner's face should be, looking for ridicule. "I mean, I never felt right as a... person. A human. I wanted to be an animal. I..." He leaned forward and hugged the sleeping bag to his chest.

"I always felt like I shouldn't have been human, you know? Like this body wasn't the right one for me. That sounds crazy, and I know it does, but that's the way I feel. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I started finding parallels between how I felt and... with werewolves. With the stories, anyway.

"So I've been spending the last couple of years trying to find out all I can about werewolves. I've read every damn book in the library. I spent every night reading internet chat rooms and message boards. I found a lot of people who said they felt the same way I did, but none of them knew how... how to change. How to actually become a werewolf." He glanced up. "I even tried those spells I found in the library. Put on a wolf skin and howl at the moon, that kind of crap.

"But no one ever really knew how it was done, or if it could be done. But I can't stop feeling the way I do, that I shouldn't be human." He glanced at the door, wiped his nose. "I read that newspaper article about you helping track that girl. One of the deputies said you were so good, it was like you were half animal yourself. I wanted to see for myself. I thought..." he shrugged. "I don't know what I thought."

Brenner spoke after a few seconds awkward silence. "That deputy is a pure idiot. He don't know his ass from a hole in the ground." He held up his hand as Chris, face clouding up, started to stand. "He is a very good judge of people, though." He tilted his head sideways, as if seeing Chris for the first time. "Chriscat" he said.

Chris's spine stiffened. "What?"

"Chriscat. That's the name you use on the internet, isn't it?"

"How... You've read my posts?"

"Yers, and about a million others just like 'em." He smiled at Chris's confused expression. "Hell, boy, you think I'm just another crazy coot in a shack in the middle o' nowhere? I been usin' computers since before you had hair one. I ain't as stupid as you think I am."

"If... you knew all along!"

"Nah, not 'til just now. You'd said you lived around here in one o' yer posts, I didn't put it together until you started talkin' about this werewolf crap."

"Then... you feel the same way? Like me, and all the others?"

Brenner leaned forward in the rocker. "Boy, what do you and any o' them know about what it means to be a werewolf? I'll tell ya, not a got-damn thing. If ya did, ya wouldn't be so worked up to become one."

Chris sat back as if slapped and blinked before sitting forward again. "Well, what the hell do you know about it? What makes you any better?"

Brenner chewed the inside of his lip for a few moments, then began shrugging out of his overalls. He stood and shucked off the heavy denim and pulled off his grimy t-shirt. Chris jumped to his feet and backed away, unsure of what the man was doing. Brenner stood naked in the corner. "Well, goddamn boy, I'll show you what I know about it."

Chris started to turn and run for the door, certain that Brenner was an insane recluse after all, when he caught a glimpse of Brenner's arm. It rippled. He stopped, stunned. The arm, and in fact all of Brenner's skin, rippled again; like there were insects running just below the surface. Brenner hunched forward slightly, and groaned, and-

And his body flowed into a new shape. A shape with a deep, barrel chest, narrow hips, and dark brown fur. A head with a long canine snout and fur-tipped ears. Hands with long, ebony claws and tough leathery fingerpads. The Brenner-thing shook it's furred head quickly, as if shrugging off sleep, and opened its muzzle.

"This is what I know about werewolves, boy. A damn sight more than you."

Chris turned again, but fainted before he ever reached the door.

--==++==--

He awoke snorting water from his nose. Brenner, human and dressed, stood over him with a pot. Chris wondered for a second if it was the same one he spit in before remembering what had happened before he'd fainted, and quickly sat up, making his head throb.

"You cracked yer head pretty good there when you took a dive. I was hopin' I wasn't gonna have to drive you to a hospital." Brenner said, setting the pot down and sitting in his rocker. He folded his arms across his chest.

Chris rubbed the back of his head. "You are a werewolf!"

"Well, we know you ain't got amnesia." He nodded with his chin at the door. "Yer stuff's packed in yer car."

Chris looked at the door, and then back at Brenner. "Wait... You read all those messages from people who were dying to become werewolves when you were one, and you never said anything?"

Brenner scrunched further into the rocker. "What'd you want me to say? 'Yoo hoo, here I am?' Ain't nobody gonna believe me, boy, and ain't no reason why I should say anything."

"What?" Chris exploded. "No reason? I've spent my entire life wanting to be what you are, spent it trying to find people like you, and you're too selfish to say anything?"

Brenner sat up and punched his finger out. "I said you don't know jack shit about what it means to be a werewolf, and you don't. It ain't no grand mystical joinin' with Mother Nature. It ain't a frolic in the woods with little happy animals. It ain't a big orgy with giant-dicked wolf-men."

Chris shook his head. "I-"

"Shut up. I used to be like you, a long damn time ago. I chased rumors and myths and legends. Well, boy, one day I found one, and it gave me what I thought I wanted. You know what it gave me? It gave me a lifetime of this damn shack! It TOOK any normal life I had!"

He sat back in the chair and crossed his arms again. "I couldn't ever imagine bein' human when I was yer age, and now I can't stop wishin' I had it back. I can't fit in yer world any more. I can't work in some nine to five job, in an office fulla people, when I can damn smell the bucks in the forest! I can't cage myself in front of some computer screen when I know what it is to be a free man! And I can't live in the woods with all the little cutesy bunnies when some dang hunter'll come along and say 'Whooee, that there Bigfoot'd sure look good on my wall!'

"So now I'm stuck. I ain't human and I ain't wolf. I ain't gotta world I fit into any more. And dammit, that hurts. So now some snot-nosed kid comes along and demands that I make him a werewolf, when he ain't got no idea what it's about! No, sir, I ain't condemnin' someone else. And I ain't gonna torture some kid who's desperate to know by danglin' it out in front of him and snatchin' it back." He stood suddenly and walked into the shadows in the back of the shack. "Now git outta here. You don't know what yer askin' for, and you don't want what you'd get." He turned, a shadow in shadows. Chris sat motionless, mouth open. Brenner took a step forward, waving his hand. "I said GIT! Gowan! I ain't got nothin' for you."

Chris stood slowly, still holding his head, and looked at the door. No, he thought. No. I will never be in this position again. "No," he said out loud, dropping his hand from his head and crossing his arms.

"No? No? What the hell you mean, no? Boy, you don't git from here now, I'll..."

"You'll what? Kill me?" He dropped his arms. "Well, you'd better, because I can't leave here now knowing what I do."

Brenner seemed to sag in on himself. He shuffled slowly to the rocker, looking much like the old man Chris had seen the day this all started. He sat heavily and sighed. "Boy, you don't have to worry about me. I won't kill ya. Ain't nobody gonna believe you, anyway."

Chris shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I can't leave here and live another day knowing what I do. You're the one who doesn't understand, about how I feel." He held a fist to his chest. "There's something hollow in here, every time I think about what I could be. It gets bigger every day. Do you think I'd come out here on a whim? Did you think I wasn't serious? Did you think I hadn't thought about what the consequences of being a werewolf might be?" He shook his head. "Dammit, now I know I was right. That hollow spot will eat me up if I leave here knowing I had a chance and didn't take it." He stepped forward, shaking with rage. "You did torture me, dangle it out like bait and snatch it away! If you didn't think I could handle it, why didn't you send me away the first day?" He dropped the fist to his side, clenching until his knuckles squeezed white. "This is all I got left, now. You either show me, or kill me. I don't really care which, anymore."

Brenner slowly pulled out his small pocketknife, opened it, studied the blade. "Where's yer money you said you had?"

"What?" Chris said, staring at the knife.

"I do this, yer gonna be here a while, and I'm gonna have to git food on my own. Least you can do is pay fer it." He looked up and smiled grimly.

"It's in an envelope under the front seat of the car" Chris said automatically.

"Then sit, boy." He gestured to the floor in front of his chair. Chris sat, numbly. Brenner took his hand, opened it, palm up, and paused. "There ain't no turnin' back, boy. And there ain't no whinin'."

"There's nothing to turn back to." Chris mumbled.

Brenner shook his head. "What you say now." He drew the knife quickly across Chris's palm, holding the wrist with his other hand as Chris gasped. Blood welled from the deep cut and began dripping on the floor. "Leave it" Brenner said. He cut a gash into his own palm, and clasped Chris's hand with his own, pressing the wounds together.

"Oh, son." He whispered, squeezing Chris' hand tightly. "What have I done."

Chris closed his eyes and ignored the stinging in his palm. "You've saved my life, old man." He said. "You've saved my life."