#assigned reading

This happened when I was in 8th grade, which for context was about 4 years ago when I’m writing this. One of the books we were assigned to read in my English class that year was The Call of the Wild by Jack London. For a brief summary if you weren’t forced to read it (or you were and you forgot what it was about, which is understandable), the book is about this Saint Bernard named Buck who lives a cushy life with his wealthy owner until he is kidnapped and sold off to be a sled dog during the gold rush, where he learns to obey the humans and follow his primal instincts, eventually becoming the leader of the sled dog pack and then becoming fully wild. From what I remember, our class was assigned three projects pertaining to the book; one somewhere in the middle of the book where we had to design a poster for the fight between Buck and Spitz, one at the very end that was just your standard essay about the theme of the book or something like that, and one in-between those that I will be talking about here.

The Call of the Wild is a relatively short book at only 7 chapters. Leading up to this project, we read through every chapter except for the last one. Instead of reading the last chapter right away, we were given a project where we all had to individually write our own conclusion to the book without reading the actual last chapter. I was mildly peeved, because I just wanted to finish the book, but I figured it might be fun. If i remember correctly, there weren’t really any restrictions for what we could or couldn’t do, aside from it obviously needing to be a continuation of the book using the same characters. In the document we were given that explained the project there were some suggestions for things we could include in our chapter, one of which was bringing back previous characters who had died. My favorite character in the book was Sol-leks, a husky on Buck’s sled team with only one eye, and he got killed at the end of chapter 5 when his new incompetent owners lead him over frozen water that breaks under them and causes them to drown. I decided to bring back Sol-leks for my chapter.

Now is where that title comes in. I truly wish I could go back to my 8th grade self and figure out what the hell caused me to take this route with my chapter, because on reflection I cannot figure it out. For whatever reason, likely just for shits and giggles, I decided it would be fun to imply romantic feelings between Buck and Sol-leks. That’s right everyone, in 8th grade I wrote a gay romance subplot between two of the dogs in The Call of the Wild for a graded English assignment. It wasn’t a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it thing either, I had an entire paragraph in there dedicated to how the two spent a lot of time together and got to know each other well and had a special bond that I flat-out said was more than friendship. And I submitted it like that. Where I live, its kind of a roulette of guessing whether someone is homophobic or not, so I wasn’t sure if I might get in trouble for my gay dog story, but I knew if any teacher or faculty member tried to give me shit for it then I would 100% be going to bat for my little Buck x Sol-leks fanfic. Fortunately, I never got in any trouble, and my teacher gave me an A. (if i remember correctly it was a 96 or 97% out of 100) I believe the teacher may have also left comments on it when she graded it, but I don’t remember what they were if there were any. Which leads me to the sad part of this story.

I can’t find the original writing.

I don’t have it saved anywhere, and my school email account I wrote it with is long gone now. Even when I still had access to it, for some reason I was unable to find it in my Google Drive. I couldn’t even find the instruction document or the grading rubric. Not having access to this writing piece is truly one of the worst regrets of my life. I would give almost anything to have it back. I’m genuinely sad I don’t have it anymore. Fortunately, I still remember how it went, so I’ll give you all an abridged version of it here.

For context, in the chapter before this, Buck’s new owner John Thornton had made a bet with a man named Matthewson in a bar that Buck could pull a 1,000 pound sled for 100 yards. Buck succeeded and Thornton won the bet, but Matthewson offered a large sum to buy Buck that Thornton refused.

My chapter began with Buck, Thornton, and Thornton’s other dogs traveling through a wooded area when Buck heard a familiar whimpering. Buck followed the sound to find Sol-leks, cold and alone in the forest. My explanation for how he survived was that he was able to get out of the water and got lost in the woods. Thornton took Sol-leks in to nurse him back to health like he had with Buck, noticing that Sol-leks was one of the other dogs on Buck’s team when Thornton first found him. Over this time when Sol-leks was recovering he and Buck became very close, which is where that previously mentioned paragraph insinuating that they were falling in love comes in. When Sol-leks was healthy again, he joined Thornton’s sled dog team and they continued traveling. However, one night while they were camped outside, Matthewson tracked them down and, still bitter about losing the bet and not being able to buy Buck, planned to steal Buck instead. Buck was captured by Matthewson, but before he could get away, Sol-leks realized he was there trying to steal Buck and attacked him. Buck got free and watched for a moment, thankful that Sol-leks cared so much for him that he would put himself in harm’s way to save him, before Buck joined in on the fight. I don’t remember if they killed Matthewson or just drove him away, but they were able to continue their journey together.

And that’s how it ended. For the most part this story really only exists in my memories, but there are fortunately two things to prove this thing was real and not just a weird fever dream I had that got confused with reality. First is the memories from my friends who also went to middle school with me and remember doing the project themselves. The other one is this page in my sketchbook from 8th grade, in which I drew my own designs of Buck and Sol-leks. The drawing on the bottom was directly based on a scene in my story.

(For some reason its not letting me put the picture in this post, I’m going to post this as-is and reblog it with the picture)

Will I ever revisit this idea again? Maybe. If I have the time someday and the urge strikes me I won’t rule out the potential of me doing something with it. Do I think Buck x Sol-leks is a good ship? I don’t know. I haven’t read the original book in years, so maybe if I went back and read it with fresh eyes I would think differently. Sorry if there are any die-hard The Call of the Wild fans out there who were just scarred by my potentially horrid misinterpretations of these characters.