“The Wolves of Circassia” is a short story by Daniel Mason that was selected for the anthology The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners. It’s about a homecare worker who looks after a man with dementia. His hyperactive grandson spends lots of time with them as well. It can be read in the Amazon sample (48% in). Here’s a summary of “The Wolves of Circassia”.
“The Wolves of Circassia” Summary
Seine is a home health aide for patients with dementia. She’s been with her current family for a year. The old man, a former cardiologist, doesn’t know his wife or son anymore. He tells the same stories every day. One is about Rita, a nurse he met in the South Pacific, but his wife points out he never served there. Seine listens with patience to both, and she tends to feel an allegiance to her patient’s version of things.
The house is in Walnut Creek. There’s an orchard with a path leading to a valley that the old man can still walk in. He hasn’t been to the peak on the other side in twelve years, when he was sixty. From there, a person can see farther than from any other peak on Earth due to the flatness of the surrounding land. His wife confirms the “loneliness” of the peak.
The living arrangements at the house were settled in the second week of the lockdown. The couple’s grown son was going through a divorce, so he moved back home, bringing his own young son with him. The little boy has difficulties with attention and impulsivity.
Before the outbreak, Seine would make the two hour drive home weekly to her husband and youngest daughter. She has two grown daughters and a grown son, as well. Seine wasn’t able to control who she was coming into contact with, so she moved into the house. Once a week, she drives back to talk to everyone from her car.
Seine sleeps upstairs in a room next to the old man, the son’s former room. The son uses the small guest room near the kitchen. He works on a laptop and has heated conversations on the phone. He corrects his father at supper and is uncomfortable with his condition. They don’t tell the old man or the young boy about the epidemic.
Everyone pays little attention to the old man’s stories except his grandson, who is intensely interested. He listens raptly to the repeated stories about various medical subjects. At other times, he’s very fidgety and talkative. Between stories, the boy will occasionally relate some science fiction he’s reading with magic portals and unusual names and the old man acknowledges it.
In the evenings, Seine talks to her sister on FaceTime. She worries about the boy growing up alone, with school being closed. His father plays catch with him sometimes, but he’s uncoordinated and his father’s distracted. His classes are over Zoom. Otherwise, he spends his time on the computer or reading his Kindle, lost in his magic worlds. When his grandmother sits with him, he gets distracted quickly.
“The Wolves of Circassia” Summary, Cont’d
Seine starts taking the boy on her walks with his grandfather. She let’s them go on ahead while she talks to her middle daughter on the phone. She’s a nurse and is having trouble coping with the death and the threatening families who are being kept from their loved ones.
The old man and young boy are happiest with each other, away from the judgment of the others. Seine’s not sure how much they understand about each other. The old man walks with a pair of hiking poles and, surprisingly, the boy never bangs into him. One time he rushes into the street to look at a dead squirrel and is almost run over.
After this close call, Seine changes their walking path away from the road and into the valley. She’s a bit uneasy in this wilder environment but the old man is comfortable, having walked it many times.
Seine remembers a story he told about a boy being dragged out of a school house in Circassia by a wolf. His wife claims it’s made up, or it could have come from his father who was in a Gulag in Central Asia. Seine wonders what happened to the boy, but the old woman doesn’t know and isn’t even sure it happened.
May passes and the valley blooms. Seine’s asthma flares up and she needs to stop and rest on a low branch while the old man and boy walk on. She starts unrolling a blanket and massaging her feet while she waits. Resting there without worrying about her client or her own family, she’s almost happy.
When they return, the old man and boy are talking about the same thing they were when they left. Sometimes, they keep walking right past her and she has to hurry to catch up. Their walks continue like this twice a day until a June evening when Seine falls asleep on her blanket while waiting.
She dreamt she was back in Tonga with the old man and boy bobbing in the ocean. She often dreams of people needing help with her unable to physically respond.
It’s dusk and the trail is empty. Seine gathers her things and feels a tightness in her chest. She doesn’t have her inhaler due to the slowness at the pharmacy now. It’s dark when she gets home and she can tell immediately they aren’t there.
She considers asking for help from the boy’s father and the old woman but doesn’t. That would mean admitting to a lapse and acknowledging that the world can’t always be tended. She looks at the front of the house, but the street is empty. She looks at her phone, thinking it buzzed, but it hasn’t. She sees the lock-screen picture of her middle daughter with her tongue out—a prank.
Seine goes back to the path and walks fast into the valley. Her imagination runs wild with wolves, waves and a magic portal. Her breath comes back and she starts to run.
I hope this summary of “The Wolves of Circassia” by Daniel Mason was helpful.