Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty or death, graphic violence, death, physical abuse, and racism.

In a bar in Germany during the spring of 1968, Walt is with his fellow soldiers: Carl, a Black man from Chicago born to a German mother, and JohnBoy and Christ, both white. When JohnBoy gets into an argument with a large man with black hair, Carl and Walt diffuse the situation. They leave the bar but find that the train is not running. They must walk back to their base, and as they leave the station, an old man yells to them, “Vorsicht vor dem Wolf, Jungs!” (320), which Carl translates as, “Beware the wolf” (321).

As they walk, Walt thinks about how he signed up to come to Germany to avoid going to Vietnam. When a truck stops on the road, JohnBoy and Christ talk with the driver, hoping to catch a ride. They run away when they realize the truck driver is the large man from the bar, who yells, “Hütet euch vor dem Wolf, Jungs!” (323), before driving on. Carl translates this to mean, “protect yourself from the wolf” (323). To avoid more confrontations, they decide to walk the rest of the way through the woods.