The Wolf and Ma Barker's Grand-daughter

The Wolf and Ma Barker's Granddaughter
Copyright Theodore Holden 1990s

Once upon a time, in a hilly and heavily wooded district to the South of the great city of Chicago, there lived a wicked wolf which was much feared. This vile creature sought to secure his livelihood by means of numerous cons and scams, often lying by the roadside pretending to be a dead wolf until a curious child would walk up to examine him, thereupon seizing the unfortunate child by the ankles and shaking the coins from his pockets. On rare occasions, the wolf had been known to kill and eat a particularly well-washed child, although the children of the district were, for the most part, safe enough on that score.

It came to pass, one day, while this loathsome villain was lying in the road doing his dead-wolf imitation, that he heard the high-pitched whine of a small two-stroke engine slow to a gentle ring----ding--ding--ding--ding, pop--pop--pop--pop, and looked up to such a vision of loveliness as he had never beheld prior to that moment; a sixteen year old girl with red hair tucked under a blue riding cap sitting on an old two-stroke Scott motorcycle, a basket of sorts hung over the crook of her right elbow. The girl wore gloves and boots, suitable for riding, and goggles, and the riding cap which was held in place by string and ribbons against the wind; the rest of her attire might best have been described as peasant garb, the skirt just short enough to avoid being caught in the motorcycle's drive chain.

It was several moments before the wolf could collect his wits sufficiently to speak. The curious incongruousness of the vision upon which he gazed was lost in the girl's simple charm and great beauty and in the tremendous excitement they aroused within the wolf. The natural lupine caution which had served the creature well on numerous occasions in the past was overwhelmed, and availed him not at all. The wolf knew that a teenage girl would be too heavy to hoist up by the ankles and rob and, quite possibly, too strong to kill and eat before other humans would arrive with guns, and that whatever he might hope to accomplish must need be done with cunning and guile. He did not imagine himself to have been in any peril.

The wolf took a deep breath and held it several moments to calm his nerves and racing heart, then spoke: "Never have I beheld such charm and comeliness. Prithee, how art thou called, and whither goest thou on thy swift mechanistical steed with yon basket?"

The girl replied: "I am called Red Riding Hood and I am on my way to my grandmother's house."

"Thou wearest no hood?", said the wolf.

"Silly, I AM a hood; I am called 'Red Riding Hood' because of the bike and the red hair. You appeared to be injured, lying in the road like that; are you quite all right?"

"I must have fainted" said the wolf. "Pigs and rabbits have been scarce in the district (and edible kids, he thought), and I've gone hungry a great deal of late, but I am quite all right now." "So great a feast of beauty seems to have abated my need for food, though I'd not have thought it possible until now."

"You poor wolf!", said the girl. "You are quite gallant. I am taking this basket of 45 caliber ammunition to my grandmother's for her tommy gun and the family will be roasting a pig there for dinner this evening. Do take the shortcut through the woods and join us there. I am sure there will be enough for you to have some and you might have all of the bones to gnaw upon." With those words, the red-haired girl twisted the hand grip on the bike and raced off down the winding forest road until she disappeared from sight and the banshee howl of the small engine subsided and died.

The wolf should have known better; it was axiomatic that someone in his line of work should have regarded anyone so completely unafraid of him as someone he should have been afraid of. Indeed, had he actually seen brass casings in the open corner of the girl's basket, he would have split back to his lair in the deep woods mucho pronto. He had, however, seen only biscuits under the basket cloth and smelled biscuits (the girl had biscuits on top of the 45 ammo) and, besides, the girl had to have been simply letting her imagination run away with her as teenage girls often do. Nobody the wolf had ever heard of had a grandmother with a tommy gun. The wolf had never even seen a tommy gun in real life and he had no possible way of knowing that this was the one little girl in the entire world whose grandmother not only owned one, but was very, very good with it.

There was the further consideration that the wolf's cousins frequently observed his dead-wolf scam from the shadows of the forest and he had no way of knowing whether they might have witnessed the encounter with the girl. If he chickened out now, there was the very real possibility of spending the entire rest of his life being called Maricon or Wimp Lup‚ by every other wolf in the tri-state area; something which had actually happened to a wolf of his acquaintance several years prior.

With no further ado and despite any misgivings he might have had, the wolf bolted into the forest through several hundred yards of undergrowth and wild berries and shrubs, and into the deeper part of the forest amongst the tall trees and the perpetual darkness of the high leaf canopy, and picked up the open trail directly through the forest. There, using the fast loping stride of all his kind, he proceeded to break every known record for short, medium, and long distances and somehow managed to arrive at Grandma's cottage fifteen minutes before Red Riding Hood did, slobbering like a mad fiend (since wolves can't really sweat) and gasping for breath.

It chanced that Grandma and her two grown sons, Red's uncles, were gone when the wolf arrived (actually, they were attending to some banking business in a small town about 35 miles to the south-west). The wolf hoisted several buckets of water from the well, splashing them over himself, and drank half of one bucketful, and shook himself dry. Presently, his pulse slowed and he began to feel cool and comfortable. "I've just got to have that red-haired girl!" he thought, and he devised a fiendish plan. The wolf picked a pair of Grandma's pajamas from the closet along with a nightcap and put them on along with a pair of Grandma's reading glasses and got into Grandma's bed with a book open (and upside down) in his forepaws as if reading and, when Red Riding Hood walked in the door, pretended to be Grandma.

"Come closer, ma dear...", said the fuzzy Grandma, "It's been some time since Ah've seen ya. Come hop in bed with Grandma and help me read this hyere book; these old eyes ain't much good fer readin no more."

"Why Grandma, you look kind of fuzzy today!" giggled the girl. "Have you given up shaving or something?"

"Nah, mah lektrik razor's broke..." said Grandma, "Gotta getta new one."

"Grandma, what big ears you have!", said the girl, and the wolf, who was vainly proud of his fine long ears and acute sense of hearing, indeed should have been using them just then because Ma Barker and one of Red's uncles were in fact returning and walking through the front door at that very moment.

However, the wolf was somewhat disoriented by the unwonted flattery and merely replied: "The better to hear ya with, mah dear."

"Grandma, what big eyes you have", said the girl, and the wolf replied: "The better to gaze upon yer deep blue eyes an flame red hair an ruby lips, an shapely hips, an shapely..."

"Grandma!" interrupted the girl, "What big TEETH you have!"

But before the wolf had any chance to explain the use of the big lupine teeth or of any of the other nifty parts of his anatomy, the odd conversation was again interrupted, this time by the unmistakable "CLICK, CLICK" of the hammers being pulled back on two Thompson guns as Ma Barker and Red's Uncle Johnny walked into the room.

"SWEET JESUS!!!", yelped the wolf, and bolted out the bedroom window without bothering to open it as the quietude of the idyllic cottage was shattered by a deafening roar of machine gun fire. And fortunate he was to have helped himself so quickly; Jesus was no more into helping villains in those days than he is now.

The wolf got back to the deep woods quite a lot the worse for wear, bleeding and missing the bottom third of his tail, and considerably wiser. Ma Barker, who was a bit nearsighted, spat a wad of RedMan tobacco into the spittoon near the door, looked at Red, and said "Lan sakes, child, Ah do wish yah'd start bringin a better class o men folk home with ya so's Ah wouldn't hafter shootem lahk thet. Shaggy-lookin varmint lahk thet mighta givn' us all fleas or sumpthin'. You clean up the mess hyere whilst Ah cook supper. Be about forty minutes.", and walked off to the kitchen.