Education as a tool of liberation was a philosophy that dated back to Claws, the precursor group to the Cainites. Coloreds Against White Supremacy.
Back when the Blessed Acres of Cain was just an upstart Black nationalist group without the renown of the Black Panthers or the reach of the Nation of Islam, the founders ran schools often focused on survivalism. Driven by revelations from God, they wanted their people to renounce white civilization any way they could.
If Black people planned to survive in a society antagonistic to their existence, they had to learn to be resourceful. Intimate familiarity with the land reduced dependence on the white economy. These philosophies were the impetus for the establishment of the compound. A swath of land would help foster connection with the earth. There was a belief that because the dirt was eons old, it possessed knowledge, and by eating it, people could share in that knowledge. Some of the early founders said it could impart visions. Eamon Fields had taken this small amount of mysticism and used it as a seed to form an entire religion, but there had always been and always would be a practical component of learning and doing and working.
So Vern knew all there was to know about wolves, what they sounded like, their behaviors, their mating cycles, their hunting patterns, where they lived, their place in recovering ecosystems devoured by the white man’s fear and greed. She knew that the nearest wolf den was fifteen hundred miles from where she was.
How had she missed this? How had the very first sound of them not sent her heart into deathly contortions? She’d been too overtaken by the uncanniness of motherhood, with all its wetness.
The wolves that weren’t there howled, on the hunt. Bewildered, Vern pressed Howling tighter to her chest and moaned. This wasn’t supposed to happen, not out here. Hauntings were particular to the compound. Everybody got them back there. It was withdrawal, according to Eamon Fields, as still preached by Reverend Sherman. Detox. People on the compound lived lives removed from the poisonous influence of the white world. The psychic toxins that plagued the rest of humanity seeped out of them in the form of night terrors and visions violent enough that folks had to sleep strapped down.
But Vern had fled the compound going on two months ago. She was in the outside world now, supposedly swimming in toxins. These devils, then, unlikely as it was, were real.
Vern’s little brother, Carmichael, had once done a project on the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone region. Under one of Sherman’s academic programs, young men could visit libraries off the compound. It was a recruiting technique. Black families saw how smart and cleaned-up Cainite boys were and wanted that for their own sons. Better the Blessed Acres than incarceration, they must’ve reasoned.
Carmichael’s project had been about the dangers of white toxicity, how European settlers had hunted gray wolves dead, disrupting the ecosystem’s balance. It took years of fighting to reintroduce them.
Maybe the Parks and Wildlife Services here had done the same in this area without Vern knowing. Wolves had been extirpated from this area, too.
Or wild dogs? Coyotes? But coyotes howled like dying witches, high-pitched and squealing. These chants were a sorrow song.
Vern tied Howling snug to her front with a piece of cloth. She braced against the tree to stand, legs unsteady from muscle strain and the weight of her still-big abdomen, uncontracted. Evening dew moistened the woods into a mire, and she had to mind her steps.
Vern walked eastward, away from the sound of the wolves. She touched every third or fourth tree to make sure she kept straight, each trunk marked with the carvings she’d made to find her way at night, when her vision was lowest. Her feet sank into the ground as she walked. Cool mud squeezed between her toes.
There was no path. With every step she cleared bushes and brush. Underfoot, leaves and vines and branches grabbed hold of her ankles. It was true dark now, with little light left from the setting sun to show which way was east.
More howling, and closer still. Vern forced her legs to move faster, heart racing. She wiped sweat from her temple, cheek, and brow. Despite the autumn chill, her swiftly beating heart and quickened breaths heated her body through.
“We’re gonna be all right,” she lied to her babe. Wolves didn’t naturally prey on humans, yet here they were now giving chase.
Their wolfish whinnies rang just behind her. So fast they’d caught up. She could hear their devilish steps against the sticks and the mud of the forest floor. They were just behind, a few feet away, then inches.
Next, hot breath. Afterward, a tear at her ankles, casting her downward onto her side, her poor babe awaking with his own howl. A hot tongue slithered in her ear, burrowing in that cave of cartilage. It was as awful as a kiss.