Once, a long time ago and before Tom and Leslie moved to St. Paul’s Island, Tom had invited Brian and Danny to go get some ice creams. With Uncle Tom everything was an adventure, so mom and dad were naturally reluctant. But mom and dad were always more concerned with appearances than safety so they let their two boys go with this strange man neither of them liked and neither of them trusted, but whom they felt wouldn’t be stupid enough to do something harmful to their kids because, by golly, it just wouldn’t look right to the neighbors if he did.
Brian remembered he and Uncle Tom and Danny being out late, Tom talking to them about when he was a kid, older than the boys were at the time. He was a teen-ager, he told them. He’d been driving with some high-school pals on the backroads around town, but they’d gotten lost. They were driving on mountain roads but there were no mountains within fifty miles of where they lived and they hadn’t been out long enough to have driven that far. Home town radio stations faded in and out as they drove. Tom said they knew if they managed to get a strong radio signal and drove in the direction in which the signal got stronger, they were heading home.
Brian remembered Uncle Tom asking the boys if they wanted to finish his pistachio ice cream. It was too much for him and they’d already finished theirs, but they’d have to share. Brian and Danny promised, and did, because they did share things back then, and Uncle Tom continued his story.
None of the radio stations got any stronger. In fact, he said, they got weaker and weaker until you could hardly hear them at all. That was the funny part, he said. They didn’t go to staticky like they normally would because all you had was AM back then. They just got weaker and weaker until all you could hear was the sounds of someone whispering, as if they were mumbling to themselves in another room and if you held your breath and stilled your heart long enough then you could just barely hear them through the wall.
Uncle Tom said he and his friends started to get nervous. This was when there was talk about UFOs and abductions, and things like that always happened on backroads at night in the dark. They lowered the windows and everybody except Tom kept their eyes on the sky to make sure nothing was coming down to get them.
Just then Tom saw some headlights in his rearview mirror. He told his buddies, “Hey, let’s just wait until this guy catches up with us. There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment. I’ll wave him down with the flashlight and ask him how to get out of here.”
Everybody was relieved and they kidded him about getting lost as he got the flashlight out.
Tom let the other vehicle catch up to them. It was an older pickup truck, like something from the late 1950s or early 1960s. Tom could tell by the lights and the way they reflected off the grill and the sounds it made as its springs rattled on the old, mountain road.
He slowed but the driver didn’t make any attempt to pass, even when Tom waved him on. Finally Tom stopped. The other driver pulled up beside him. Tom remembered this very well. Now there was no way any other cars could get by on the road. That’s how narrow it was. Overhead was a river of stars banked by tall pines that grew from either side of the mountain road.
The driver killed his lights. Tom rolled down his window but the other driver didn’t move. Tom could make out a silhouette from the backwash of his own lights on the road but he couldn’t see much, so he turned on his flashlight and shined it into the truck’s cab.
All Tom could see was this huge dog, a wolf but not quite a wolf, sitting at the wheel.
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