SAVE THE WOLVES
R. S. Causo


The bear in the mirror is me, more than are manners and poses. The bear is 
there, the bear is me, the bear is never at peace. We are the stories of the war, 
the chance in the mirror. We hear each other and we must go on.
	--From Dead Voices: Natural Agonies in the New World
	Gerald Vizenor

Marcus Mantuk was an Alaskan Eskimo, a bear-like young man serving in a remote 
outpost of the Army in his native Alaska. He had struggled for a whole year to be transferred 
from the 101st Air Assault Division to this isolated place, but it didn't work against his 
nightmares, as he has planned.
Mantuk had tattooed on his large right arm the 'Desert Shield' and 'Desert Storm' 
patches, and had a more startling sort of insignia in his left flank-a huge scar, made by a 
small 7.62 soviet bullet.
But worst of all were the dreams. Dreams of his dream-beast-a twelve foot grizzly with 
its chin dropping human blood-running like a locomotive on a pavement of dead bodies. 
Its claws toss away broken weapons, equipment and body parts. And it runs towards 
Mantuk, who stands naked and soaked in sweat, waiting under the Sahara sun. Just these 
images, but day after day, until he could not take that waiting anymore. At some moment the 
grizzly would catch him, Mantuk knew. Yet he couldn't wait any more.
He wanted to rush the things up. He wanted to run away, and maybe find a place-
somewhere, somehow-to hide and live like a beast himself and forget all the human things. 
All the hierarchies and wars.

The blizzard blew continuously through the morning after his evasion. That would favor 
him-he knew how to live in this weather, but the pursuers would be delayed for sure.
Mantuk ran and walked all night and morning, wearing a white-camouflaged winter dress 
with a furry hood. He had a hunkpack full of high-caloric food he took a week to steal and a 
M-21-the selected-parts M-14 version with a scope. He could make it through the ice to 
Canada.
He had grown up around here until he was 16, when his family moved to Kentucky, were 
he enlisted in the Screaming Eagles. He had nourished this wish to come back and live as he 
was raised, free in the wild, but he was afraid of how it would be when he was back. He felt 
that some essential part of him was destroyed at the very instant he stopped touching the 
land with his feet. Anyway, Mantuk knew the tricks to survive. But then the blizzard died 
away and the air cleared. Suddenly he was under a bright blue sky he scanned with his small, 
deepsocketed brown eyes. He saw above the horizon behind him a black spot. An aircraft of 
some sort-they were after him.
Mantuk started to run as fast as he could until he reached a small hill with a bunch of tiny 
dry trees on its top. He hid himself among them in the hope the pursuers had not seen him 
yet.
It seemed the aircraft did not get any closer. Mantuk breathed freely, but then he saw a 
pack of wolves coming from the north. Five of them, trotting gaily across the ice plain, 
sniffing the frozen soil, darting their ears around. The halted next to the hill, and Mantuk 
thought they had noticed him. But he knew the wolves would not be dangerous to him. 
Mantuk and the wolves had different paths to walk, he going east, to Canada; they going 
south, running from the northern cold, perhaps following the migratory caribou.
However, a second later Mantuk realized he wolves had noticed something else-the 
distant roar of a helicopter.  
He turned to the aircraft. It still was far away, but getting closer. He raised the rifle and 
looked through the scope. It was an old civilian Jet Ranger. Oilmen? he thought. Not so far 
up north. What then?
He remembered the wolves and understood. Wolf hunters. They would kill the animals to 
sell them to the fur trade-for 200 dollars each. The government was saying the wolves were 
slaughtering the moose population. It could be, but for some odd reason Mantuk didn't like 
the idea of shooting wolves from a helicopter.
Why?
Mantuk was around Highway 6 to Iraq and saw the carnage when retreating Iraqi troops 
were almost annihilated by the Allied fighters and tanks. They thought it was all of the 
armored Iraqi force fleeing for safety , but instead it was an army of desperate men who had 
taken every working vehicle available to escape from a much stronger foe. Those men were 
shot as ducks in a pond. The war was stopped right there, when President Bush feared 
headlines claiming a massacre in the desert. Yet to Mantuk the war went on in his mind, in 
his recurrent nightmare of the dream-beast running on a body-covered soil.
The Jet Ranger was close enough now to scare away the wolves. They fled quickly. The 
helicopter crew spotted them and the aircraft increased its velocity.
All of a sudden Mantuk heard a shot. The bullet hit the snow at the shadow of the tail-
end wolf.
The helicopter got closer enough for a better aiming. Another shot and the tail-end wolf 
was hit. It rolled many yards in the snow, leaving behind a track of blood.
The Jet Ranger started a curve that would give the shooter a better angle to fire.
Mantuk wasn't thinking when he raised the rifle and loaded it.
*
'You give me a better angle, Paul!' Judd yelled above the rotor's noise.
Paul Waller made the helicopter draw a close curve in the air. The pack with the 
remaining four wolves was reached by the Jet Ranger, which stood twenty-five feet high to 
the left of them.
Waller saw his partner Judd Turque aim his Winchester.
Paul was upset because these five animals were the very first ones they had seen in the 
operation. A thousand dollars would barely cover the cost of fuel. And Paul had a wife and 
two kids to feed. His real job was to carry bear and moose hunters during the seasons-he 
had planned to make extra money while waiting for the next season, but until now the 
enterprise had not been profitable. Where were the raging wolfpacks the government was 
telling of?
He heard a sharp sound in the back of the helicopter, and turned his head to see what 
was going on.
He gazed at the body of Judd dangling at the end of his safety belt. Also saw his buddy's 
blood dripping down to the snow.
And then a second bullet went through the back of his seat, and Paul Waller forgot 
everything but his wife and kids. For just a second.
*
Mantuk observed the helicopter crashing with a thunderous bang against the ice plain, and 
the wolves galloping away without any harm.
He also saw that one of the men was alive. The one he had shot first, lying under the 
flank of the helicopter, his smashed legs held as in a trap. The man moved a hand, reaching 
his face. Mantuk put a full metal jacket bullet through his head. He then put the rifle on 
safety and stood.
He went down the hill, and as he passed the smoking debris of the Jet Ranger he felt no 
pity for those two men. Mantuk also felt he was far from human judgment now. From now 
on, he was to be judged by a different sort of being.
And as he walked away, looking back, there was the dream-beast sitting beside the Jet 
Ranger, its dumb gaze locked on Mantuk. The giant grizzly then dove his huge head into the 
open side door of the crashed helicopter, and drew its chin back once again dropping the 
blood of men.
Mantuk realized he would never get rid of it-the beast would follow him wherever he 
went, forever.
Burt weirdly he felt a strong sense of relief. For the wolves, at least, were running their 
way free now.



R.S. Causo
Rua AimberË, 406/103
SÇo Paulo-SP 05018-010
Brazil

roberto.causo@dks.com.br