"Werewolf's Rite of Passage" (1977)

The search for the werewolf’s tail in Chapter Six of the unpublished Loup Garou is unlike anything else. Folksy, hilarious, weird, and drawn out to absurd lengths, it’s one of the strangest episodes in Lafferty, capped by a perfectly ridiculous payoff in a later chapter. It might be his shaggiest shaggy dog.

The whole thing starts when the redneck liar Corbey, a "crafty old swindler," comes up with a bit of folklore to show off for the men gathered in Scroggins’s store. A musky excitement rises as Corbey gives a detailed, physical account (all of which is of course made up) of werewolf transformations. He says that when a man turns into a wolf, the hair comes out in waves as the man shivers, and then he tells the final, most important step, which establishes himself as the local expert. It’s the appearance of the tail: "It sounds like a cork popping when he brings it out." That detail is the linchpin of what follows, when he argues that after repeated transformations, "that tail gets where it won't go back all the ways anymore," leaving the loup garou with a permanent stub that would betray his nature.

The Louisiana men of Yellow Knife, the novel’s primary setting, now believe they have a test. Every man in the community must be stripped and examined. What starts as a crazy suggestion (Sheriff Pidgeon’s attempt to laugh turns into a "tinkling giggle" as his "Adam's apple bobbled very rapidly") escalates into deadly seriousness when the storekeeper, Scroggins, draws a gun from under his cash box and enforces the rule.

The most absurd moment in the chapter is a toss-up between one involving Ribaul and another involving Mr. Boston. Here is Lafferty on Ribaul:

But finally he submitted. He didn't have a tail either. He'd just been smarting off, being French. And being French also, he did a very vulgar thing when the men, and particularly Tadler, examined him at very close range. It lowers the standards of a region to have such types as Ribaul around.

Before this, Boston attempts to lend the proceedings a bit of formal dignity:

Boston didn't resist, or really hold back. He was too honest a man to hang back on such a community effort. But he did feel impelled to make a little speech first. "I will not be derelict in my duty, neighbors. I realize that we must all cooperate in the common cause, and perhaps my own behavior will give encouragement to another. I am an honest man and a responsible citizen. And though to one like myself, a man of the finest sensibilities, this duty is of such a nature that it is only with the greatest effort that I force myself to forgo my natural reticence at so indelicate a"-- "Ah, drop your pants, drop your pants, man" interrupted Swinert. "We've no time for eloquence." Swinert was not a man of the finest sensibilities. Boston dropped his pants, his speech unfinished, his face burning.

After that, it’s pure spectacle and mob rule, with Lafferty heightening the irrationality, which he would later reverse in the short story rewrite, "Three Shadows of the Wolf." The novel describes the collapse into credulity as a “dam bursting,” pants and overalls dropping in a “sudden flood.” Men are compelled one after another to strip, from the notorious liar Ragley to the disgraced Sheriff Pidgeon and the dozens who followed in panicked solidarity, all to prove their innocence. It’s a cackling, mordant emasculation, all observed by the sly thirteen-year old Clela.

The image of the tail popping out like a cork stayed with Lafferty. It's his contribution to the werewolf myth, and how could it not stick with him? It is as vivid and brilliant as his remark about the werewolf’s ankle:

"The hardest part when he turns is right at the ankle bone," continued Corbey. Corbey was a crafty old swindler and he was about to pull something rich. "It hurts them there at the ankle bones. You see, a wolf is the same as a dog in the back legs. The knee (what appears to be the knee) which joints opposite to a man's, it is really the same as a man's ankle bone - not his knee bone. The wolf's real knee (what would be the knee of a man if we followed the bone to bone correspondence) is way up in the wolf's haunch. But when a man turns into a wolf the biggest change has got to be right at his ankle bone which has to expand about eight inches. You find one of those fellows who turns a lot and you'll find a man who always has sore ankles. You mark my words on that."

In 1977, Lafferty wrote a poem for OKCon titled "Werewolf's Rite of Passage," which reused the folklore he had created nearly two decades before in Loup Garou. It’s a fascinating take on puberty.

"Werewolf's Rite of Passage"

Ten twelve-year olds, a full-mooned night,

A Passage Rite led by the Masters,

The change to honest folks affright,

Directed by the Wolf-Shape Casters.

The limbs unhinge, the head grows long,

The hair turns thick and rank and grizzly,

The eyes slide round, the stench grows strong,

The mouth lolls open red and drizzly.

The ankles stretch, the haunches slip,

The frame swings downward, that's the fast part,

The feet emerge in claws and rip,

And, popping out, the tail's the last part.

"The moment comes," the Masters shout,

"Ah, change, boys, change, no time to trifle.

We want to hear those tails bust out

Like popping cork or banging rifle."

And nine boys change in perfect blend

And stand as fiendish wolves infernal.

The tenth one fails right at the end:

No tail. The rifle shot's internal.

The tenth will never more see day.

The tail jammed in a manner gruesome.

To dying boy the Masters say

"We're sorry son, we always lose some."