Cycle of the Werewolf
JULY
They canceled the Fourth of July. No one cares that much when Marty Coslaw tells his friends that they canceled the Fourth of July. Maybe they don’t care because they do not understand how important the Fourth of July is to Marty.
“Don’t be silly,” his mother tells him impatiently - she is frequently impatient with him. When she justifies her impatience to herself, she tells herself that she will not treat her son differently only because he is disabled. She will not treat him like a child only because he will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
“Wait until next year!” his dad tells him. “Ha-ha, so you finally didn't get something you wanted!” his big sister says when he tries to tell her how sad he is that the Fourth of July has been canceled. This night is very special to him. The fireworks over the town park, the pops of brightness followed by the loud KER-WHAMP! sounds of the explosions.
Kate is thirteen. And Marty is ten. She believes that everyone loves Marty just because he can’t walk. She is very happy that the fireworks have been canceled. Even Marty’s grandfather tells him to stop complaining - and Marty’s grandfather usually has lots of sympathy for him. “They are only canceling the fireworks. And you know why.”
Marty knows why they are canceling the fireworks. The killer, that’s why. The stories in the papers are calling him the Full Moon Killer. But Marty’s friends at school are saying that the Full Moon Killer wasn’t a real man at all. They think he is a supernatural creature. A werewolf, maybe.
Marty doesn’t believe that. Werewolves were only in the movies. But he thinks there could be a crazy person out there who uses the full moon to kill. The fireworks have been canceled because of the curfew. No one is allowed to be out of their houses past 6:00 pm.
For Marty, who could not run or ski, or climb or play football, just thinking about the fireworks made a big difference for him. Thinking about the warm summer night, a cold Coke in his hand, the lights in the sky, the explosions, the noise. That is what Marty lived for the whole year.
But now they have canceled the fireworks. It does not matter what other people are saying. For Marty it feels like they have canceled his Fourth of July. Only his uncle Al understood. He was visiting his sister, Marty’s mother, for the holiday. Uncle Al had listened to Marty complaining that afternoon after lunch.
Marty had told him and was worried what Uncle Al was going to say. “Do you see what I mean? Do you understand? It doesn’t have anything to do with being in a wheelchair, like Katie says. It’s just not fair, when you look forward to something for so long… Not when it’s something you really need. Do you get it?”
Marty waited very anxiously while Uncle Al considered his question. Finally, Uncle Al said quietly, “Sure I understand. I get it. And I bought something for you. Maybe you can make your own Fourth.” “My own Fourth? What do you mean?” “Come on out to my car, Marty. I’ve got something… well, I’ll show you.”
Before Marty could say anything, Uncle Al was walking away towards the front of the house. Marty followed him. The batteries in his wheelchair made a soft whirring sound. The sound did not bother him anymore. It was part of his existence now.
Uncle Al’s car was an expensive Mercedes convertible. Marty knew his parents did not like the car (“It’s a fifty-thousand-dollar accident waiting to happen,” his mother says). But Marty loves the car. Once Uncle Al had taken him for a ride along some of the smaller roads in the country. They had driven very fast down the small roads!
Uncle Al did not tell Marty how fast they were going. “If you don’t know, you won’t be scared,” Uncle Al had said. But Marty had not been scared. He could not sleep that night because he had been so excited by the drive.
Uncle Al opened the car door and took something from the front passenger seat. Marty arrived in his wheelchair and stopped. Uncle Al put a large paper bag on his skinny legs. “Here you go, kid. Happy Fourth of July.”
The first thing Marty saw when he looked in the bag was the exotic Chinese writing on the package label. Then he saw what was inside, and his heart began to fly! The package was full of fireworks! “The ones that look like pyramids are Twizzers,” Uncle Al said.
Marty wanted to say something, but he could not speak, he was so happy. “Just light the fuses, put them on the ground, and they shoot colored sparks into the night. The tubes with the thin sticks - those are bottle rockets.
Put them in an empty Coke bottle and up they go. The little ones are fountains. There are two Roman candles. And of course, there’s a pack of firecrackers. But you should only use those tomorrow.”
When Uncle Al said those last words, he made a movement with his head toward the house where Marty’s mother and father were - he knew they would not like the present he had given Marty. “Thank you!” Marty was finally able to say. “Thank you, Uncle Al!” “Just don’t tell anyone where you got them,” Uncle Al said.
“Right! Of course!” Marty answered. “But are you sure you don’t want them, Uncle Al?” asked Marty. “That’s okay. I can get some more later,” Uncle Al answered. “I know a guy in the next town who will be selling them until late tonight.”
He put his hand on Marty’s head. “This is your Fourth. Don’t light any of the noisy fireworks or you will wake up everyone in the house. And for Christ’s sake, don’t blow your hand off, or your mother will never talk to me again.”
Then Uncle Al laughed and got into his car and started it. The engine made a loud roaring sound. He waved to Marty and raced off down the road. Marty didn’t even have time to thank him again. He sat there for a moment watching his uncle drive away. He tried not to cry.
Then he put the pack of fireworks under his shirt and buzzed back to the house and up to his room. In his mind he was already waiting for night to come and for everyone to be asleep. He is the first one to go to bed that night. His mother comes in and kisses him goodnight.
“Are you okay, Marty?” she asks. “Yes, mom.” She pauses. She is about to say something, but she changes her mind. She leaves. Later his sister comes in. She does not kiss him. She comes close to his bed. She whispers, “See? You don’t always get what you want just because you’re disabled.”
“You might be surprised what I get,” he says. She looks at him for a moment with suspicion before she leaves. His father comes in last and sits on Marty’s bed. “Is everything okay, big guy? You’re in bed early. Really early.” “I’m just feeling a little tired, daddy.”
“Okay.” He touches his head and stands up. “I’m sorry about the fireworks. You’ll just have to wait until next year.” His father leaves and Marty smiles a small, secret smile. And now he begins to wait for the rest of the house to go to bed.
It takes a long time. He can hear the sound of the TV in the living room. He can hear his mother talking on the phone with a friend. He can hear her wish someone a happy Fourth of July. Yes, she says, it is too bad they canceled the fireworks show. But she thought that, under the circumstances, everyone can understand why.
Every now and then, as eight o’clock becomes nine o’clock, he puts his hand under his pillow to make sure the bag of fireworks is still there. Around ten-thirty, when the moon is high in the sky, and its warm silver light fills his room, the house is silent.
He waits for a while longer. He must have fallen asleep, because when he looks, the moonlight has changed - it is brighter and it has moved across his room. He touches the wonderful bag of fireworks under his pillow again.
He takes the bag out. He puts his pajama shirt into his pajama pants and puts the bag of fireworks and a book of matches into his shirt. Now he prepares to get out of bed.
Getting out of bed is an operation for Marty. But it is not a painful operation, like people sometimes think it is. There is no feeling in his legs, so he cannot feel any pain. He puts his hand on the wooden back of the bed and pulls himself into a sitting position.
Then he pushes his legs over the side of the bed, one by one. He does this movement using only one hand. The other hand holds a bar that his parents installed in his room. The metal bar is on all four walls of his room.
One time he tried moving his legs with both hands and he fell off the bed and onto the floor. The sound of the crash caused everyone in the house to come running into his room. “You stupid show-off!” Katie yelled at him. She helped pick him up and put him in his chair.
He did not hurt himself too much. He had a cut on his forehead and his lip was bleeding. “Do you want to kill yourself? Well?” Katie had said, and she ran out of the room crying.
Now he is sitting on the side of his bed. He dries his hands on his shirt. Then he uses the bar to pull himself hand-over-hand to his wheelchair. His legs are useless. They are dead weight. He pulls them behind him. The moonlight is very bright now. There are shadows all over his room from the silver light.
The brakes are set on his wheelchair. He lifts himself up with confidence into the seat. He pauses for a moment to rest. He listens. There is no sound in the house. Do not use the fireworks that make noise, Uncle Al had told him. Marty agrees with him now.
No loud fireworks tonight. He will make this Fourth of July his own personal Fourth, and no one will know. No one will know until tomorrow when they will all find the burned pieces of Twizzers and fountains on the veranda. But it will not matter tomorrow.
He takes the brake off his chair and turns on the power. The little yellow light, the one that says the battery is charged, is bright in the dark room. Marty pushes RIGHT TURN. The chair rotates right. When it is facing the veranda doors, he pushes FORWARD. The chair rolls forward, humming quietly.
Marty unlocks the veranda doors and pushes FORWARD again. He rolls outside and onto the veranda. He opens the wonderful bag of fireworks and then pauses for a moment. He is fascinated by the summer night. He listens to the chirping of the crickets.
There is a pleasant aroma on the wind. The wind moves through the leaves of the trees. The moon is shining an unbelievable silver in the night sky. Marty cannot wait any longer. He puts his hand in the bag and takes out a snake.
He lights a match and then lights the fuse of the snake. He watches in silence. He is fascinated. The snake burns with a green-blue fire. It grows magically, spinning and throwing flames from its tail. The Fourth, he thinks. His eyes are bright in the night. The Fourth, the Fourth. Happy Fourth of July to me!
The bright flame begins to burn low. It flickers and then it goes out. Marty lights one of the triangular twizzers and watches it as a fountain of yellow fire shoots from the top. Before it can go out, he lights a second twizzer that shoots a dark red flame, like the roses that grow next to the fence.
Now there is a wonderful smell of burned powder. The smell fills the night. The wind moves the smell slowly away. He puts his hand back in the bag and pulls out the packet of firecrackers next. He has opened the packet before he realizes that he cannot light them.
The noise they would make, like a machine gun pop, would wake up the whole neighborhood! Fire, alarm, tragedy! If he lit the firecrackers, he would be in trouble until Christmas for sure. He leaves the Black Cat firecrackers on his legs, and puts his hand back into the bag.
He closes his hand on the biggest twizzer of all - a World Class Twizzer! He lights the fuse with a sense of happiness and fear, and then he throws it. Red light as bright as hellfire fills the night…
And it is in this blood-red light that Marty sees movement. At the end of the veranda, under the trees in the distance, the bushes begin to move. Slowly a dark shape moves the leaves apart. There is a low noise, like a cough and a snarl. The Beast appears.
It stands for a moment under the trees. It smells the air. And then it begins to move up the grass to where Marty sits in his wheelchair. Marty’s eyes are open wide. He tries to push himself into the back of his chair.
The Beast is leaning forward, but it is clearly walking on its two back legs. It is walking the way a man walks. The red light from the twizzer flashes in its green eyes. It moves slowly. Its nose is testing the air. It smells prey. It can smell that its prey is weak.
Marty can smell it - he can smell its fur, its sweat, its violence and ferocity. It makes the grunting noise again. Its lip, the color of liver, pulls back to show its teeth. They are sharp and long. Its fur is painted a silver-red in the mixed light of the moon and the twizzer.
It has almost reached him. Its hands are claws. They are so like-unlike human hands. They are reaching for his throat. Then the boy remembers the packet of Black Cat firecrackers in his lap. He does not realize what he does. He takes a match and lights it. He touches the flame to the master fuse.
The fuse burns with bright light. It burns the back of his hand. The werewolf is surprised and steps backwards. It makes a sound that is like a grunt that is also a question. Like its hands, the sound is almost human. Marty throws the packet of firecrackers in its face.
They explode in noise and light. There is a sequence of explosions, one pop-pop-pop after another. The Beast screams in a roar of pain and anger. It steps backwards, almost falling. It reaches up to its face to push away the fire and pain in its face.
Marty sees one of its green eyes explode as four firecrackers burst at the same time with a terrible KA-POW! Now the Beast screams in pure agony. Its claws pull at its face. It roars again. The lights in Marty’s house begin to come on.
The Beast turns and runs back down the grass towards the trees. There is the smell of burnt fur in the air now. Marty can hear someone in the house yelling, “What was that?” It is his mother’s voice. Her voice is not impatient - it is terrified.
“Who’s there, goddammit?” His father is also scared, but he is also angry. “Marty? Is that you?” That is his sister Kate. Her voice does not sound mean at all now. “Marty, are you okay?” Marty sits in his wheelchair as the big red twizzer burns bright, then goes out.
Marty is too shocked and scared to cry. But his shock is not a terrible emotion. He feels excited at the same time. The next day, his parents pack a suitcase with some of his clothes. They follow the police’s suggestion and take Marty away for the rest of the summer. The Full Moon Killer might try to kill Marty again, they say.
Marty feels exhilarated. It is stronger than the shock he feels. He has looked into the terrible face of the Beast and he lived. There is also a simple joy in him. A quiet joy he will never be able to communicate to anyone. Not even to Uncle Al. He feels the joy because the fireworks happened after all.
Marty’s parents were very worried that their son would be traumatized from his experience. But for Marty, the experience confronting the Beast would live in his heart forever. And he believed that because of his experience, it had been the best Fourth of all.
JULY
