(STATELY PIANO)
GK: This is the weekend of my daughter's high school graduation and I, who like most Midwestern men of my generation was brought up to never show strong emotion, tomorrow, the moment the band plays that old familiar march (POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE) ---- I will sit with other parents and.....(SOBBING) watch them go by, our flesh and blood, grown up, mature, independent.
FN (WITH P.A. ECHO): And today's valedictorian.....will now give her speech in French.....Ophelia Keillor.
TR (GIRL, FRENCH)
GK: My child, speaking perfect French. How proud I will be.
FN (WITH P.A. ECHO): The prize for Most Talented Graduating Senior goes to......Ophelia Keillor. (APPLAUSE) Who will now perform the Paganini Caprice in G.
(VIOLIN, INTENSE PAGANINI)
GK: My child, a gifted violinist. What a miracle.
FN (WITH P.A. ECHO): And the Maynard Phillips Crump Scholarship to Harvard goes to......Ophelia Keillor. (APPLAUSE) (BRIDGE)
GK: My beautiful gifted child, our pride and joy, who benefited from all the special attention she got, the accelerated classes, the summer camps, the lessons, the therapy. What a contrast to my own childhood growing up on the prairie of North Dakota. (PIGS)
SS: Slop them hogs, Sonny, and when you're done with that, go git the cows in and milk em. There's work to be done before supper. Supper is beans and bacon.
GK: What??
SS: No complainin' do I care to hear from you, young man. Now go git. And tomorrow we start combining forty acres of spring wheat.
GK: It was drudgery. Back-breaking labor. Working for obsessive parents. (TR SWEDISH) I never understood my father at all. Work, work, work, that's all we ever did. I never went to school.
SS: No need for schoolin. Book-learnin ain't gonna help you figure out how to pick up rocks any faster, that's for sure.
GK: I taught myself to read from the Sears Roebuck catalogue we kept in the outhouse. Words like percale and polyester and chenille were my earliest vocabulary. And then one day----- everything changed.
SS: Your dad and me are going away for awhile, Sonny. We been convicted of bank robbery. (TR SWEDISH) Yeah, we went into town with guns drawn and tried to stick up the bank but they could see right away that the guns were carved out of soap and so the sheriff came and caught us red-handed and now we're going up to the penitentiary for ten to fifteen years and you're on your own.
GK: But what am I going to do, Mom?
SS: The farm's been sold to pay for our lawyer, so you can't stay here. And we never took you to church so there's no use in prayin. Looks like you're on your own. (BRIDGE, DISTANT WOLF HOWLS)
GK: It was scary that first night all alone. I sat on a hilltop looking up at the moon and then I was aware of creatures around me, big hairy animals with tails. (HOWLS) And they became my family. ---- (TENTATIVE GROWL). A beautiful silvery wolf approached me and sniffed me. (WOLF SNIFFING) He didn't seem dangerous, only very curious. (WOLF, QUESTIONING GROWL) I spoke to him. Wolf. I'm alone. Illiterate. An orphan. I need your help. (WOLF TENTATIVE RESPONSE, RESEMBLING THROAT CLEARING).
If you could take me home with you, just for the night, I'd be very grateful. (WOLF TENTATIVE RESPONSE) Please. Just for one night. (WOLF RELUCTANT AGREEMENT) He took a long time (WOLF SNIFFING) inspecting me, walking around me several times, smelling, and then he walked away and looked back over his shoulder (WOLF BARK) and I understood that I was to follow him. I did. And that was how I spent the next ten years of my life. We lived in a den in the side of a hill. Five of us. We squeezed in tight. It was very cozy. (WOLF TALK, SOFT, SNIFFING, PURRING). The others lay down and I lay in the middle of them. And they licked my face and hands. They named me ***----. They were very affectionate, always touching me, licking me, nuzzling me, and I needed their support, because it was very hard sometimes. Wolf grammar is complicated: the vocabulary is only about a hundred "words" and each one has many possible meanings ---- (WOLF WORD), for example, can mean "the place where the deer come at night to browse" or "the way the sky looks when winter is approaching" or "Are we going to have squirrel again?" or "There were fresh droppings on the trail today --- yours? No?" --- and verb tense is indicated by the angle of your tail, which in my case, I didn't have --- so I was limited to the present. I never developed a taste for slugs and worms and very rare meat. On the other hand, I loved howling, which we did several times a week. We'd get together on our hill and call to wolves faraway
(GK, RK, RD, CS, HOWL 4-PART HARMONY, AMAZING GRACE)
When I turned eighteen, my brother took me aside for a talk.
TR (WOLF SENTENCE)
GK: I have to go back??? What? No.
TR (WOLF): You're too different.
GK: You think I don't know?
TR (WOLF): You're a lousy hunter because your sense of smell is poor. We can't support you any longer.
GK: I have other abilities. I can dance. I can tell jokes.
TR (WOLF): We don't need that. Go. You are not a wolf.
GK: I can't believe you'd say that to me.-----And then he bit me. (TR LUNGE, SNARL, GK YELP). He bit me and I ran away toward the highway. (TRUCK PASSING) And I walked until I came to the Grandmother's house.
SS (OLD LADY): Oh hello. Why are you wearing no clothes?
GK: And I met the girl with the red riding hood.
FN (GIRL): Hi. What's your name?
GK: *****.
FN (GIRL): Oh. Interesting.
GK: And they taught me to wear pants and shoes and I got into radio and learned to tell stories and get along in polite company, though sometimes, I can't help it, I have to go out and catch me a chipmunk. They are so good with the skins on. And sometimes I need to get up close to my daughter and (SNIFF) and lick her face and snuggle up close. And sometimes I have to go out at night and (GK HOWL, SWEET AND LOW).
WOLF QUARTET: Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the northern woods.
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the northern woods.
Over the rolling prairie go,
Come from the dying moon and blow.
Blow him again to me,
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.