Following Atticus

by Tom Ryan

  I was exhausted, and my body was dragging. It was one of those times I found it most difficult to be alone up there, but I suppose that’s one of the reasons I’d undertaken this winter-long adventure. I had decided to challenge myself and make myself stronger, to come face-to-face with who I was in those worst of elements and in an environment I’ve always feared, with the hope I’d emerge a bit different from when I went into it.

  Not for the first or last time that day, I looked ahead at the shrouded path and could see very little. On either side, not too far away, the ridge dropped off into a mist, and that was it. There was nothing but a gray abyss. My fear of heights heckled me. I told myself that with a few wrong moves across the ice I would be sorry. So I was deliberate with each step in my crampons, waiting to hear the bite of metal in ice before taking my next step. And while feeling all alone, the view of the landscape varying from fifty feet to a few hundred depending on the gusts and clouds, I was in need of inspiration and regretting my decision to take on the mountains in winter.

  Where’s the sun when you need it? I asked that question of myself a lot on stormy days up there.

  But just as I asked, all I had to do was let my gaze travel through the mist some fifty feet ahead toward the cairn suddenly revealed by a receding cloud, and there in front of me was my inspiration—a twenty-pound dog.

  Little Atticus had taken the lead, strong gusts be damned, and was ducking his head and floppy ears into each gust, marching forward with a sideways catch—like John Wayne.

  At that moment I’d never felt more love for him or more pride in him. He was my ineluctable hero, there, as always, to lift my spirits and astonish me and even at times make me laugh. He wasn’t supposed to be made for those kinds of conditions, and yet there he was, not only up there but leading the way—leading me to safety. He marched on inexorably toward the two peaks. How could I not follow? How could I not be lifted by his persistence?

  I watched in admiration as he walked forward with strength and confidence, his small body unbowed by the storm or the great mountains. That little dog, who was supposedly made more for sitting on a lap or in a bicycle basket or a car seat next to an open window, reminded me again and again throughout that winter that limitations are something we put on ourselves.

  A couple of days after that hike, I went out and paid three hundred dollars for a digital camera to replace one that I had dropped on another trail and watched slide off an icy cliff. When I’d bought that first camera at the beginning of the winter, it was for the purpose of taking video to show my father the mountains he would never stand atop. But I had another reason now. I wanted to capture images of Atticus for all time, so that someday when I’m old and gray I can look back on the videos and say, “I once knew the most amazing dog. . . .”

  Paige and I were no longer having lengthy phone conversations. There was nothing wrong, just that she was living her life and I was living mine. I’d also felt a little guilty about how often we’d talked during Atticus’s first year, for we could talk the day away. Minutes turned into hours whenever we were on the phone together. I reminded myself that she had many people who bought puppies from her and I didn’t want to monopolize her time. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t keep her posted. I e-mailed updates of our winter hikes and sent pictures of the little dog she’d bred standing in his Muttluks on snow-covered mountaintops. Her responses were always breathless and filled with exclamation points. There was a singsongy, breezy, and upbeat feeling to her words as she thanked me repeatedly for filling her in. I could almost hear her southern accent as she typed, “Keep making memories . . . and send them by the wagonload!”

  She was astounded by what Atticus had done in the summer by hiking all forty-eight. But that paled in comparison to her amazement at what we’d done in the winter. We’d come up short by not getting to all the mountains, but not in Paige’s eyes. “I told you I always thought he was different, but not even I expected him to do something like this!” she wrote. “I wonder what he has planned for us in the future!”

  I didn’t know it at the time, but that first summer and winter would get us ready for what was to come next: an adventure that dwarfed anything we’d done up to that point. It would change everything.

  6

  For the Kids

  For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

  That was me, the Henry David Thoreau of Newburyport. I was the “self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms,” I “did my duty faithfully,” and while I received payment for it, it wasn’t much. But that was my choice.

  I loved running the Undertoad, loved writing about the political storms and breaking stories, shifting the way the city saw itself, and chronicling a community full of characters. Every two weeks there were new stories to tell, a cast of heroes and villains—some new, some returning from prior issues, and on occasion some of them even reversing roles—and the continuing developing story of a city that was going through the change of gentrification.

  However, better than any of that was how I’d become a part of a community. Every two weeks people invited me into their homes when they bought my paper, and I heard from many of them. Sure, the department head who was accused of lying, the zoning board of appeals member who supported a developer he did business with, and the mayor who was caught red-handed trying to secretly rush through a road that would financially benefit one of her handlers but hurt the rest of the city—they all hated me. But those who had lived in Newburyport for years and saw things like this happening again and again were thrilled to finally have someone bringing it all to light. These grateful readers far outnumbered the angry ones. Had it not been for their kindness and backing, I couldn’t possibly have lasted so long. Since I had no staff, they were my support system.

  I came to town a stranger, started the Undertoad a year later, and immediately commenced cultivating friendships with a colorful cast of characters. When I first published my letters to my father, it allowed people to see a more intimate view of the man who was revealing the intimacies of Newburyport, and that drew them even closer. They felt like they knew me. To some extent they did. They even felt like they knew my father. It’s one of the reasons people reached out to me when Max died and then welcomed Atticus to town.

  There weren’t many days when I wasn’t meeting with someone for breakfast, someone else for lunch, and having coffee or tea with yet another person in between. My dance card was always full. These were not just readers who had stories to share; they were also becoming friends. My critics would blanch at this thought, but I made the rounds connecting with people so often that I almost felt like the old parish priest. There wasn’t much that went on that I didn’t know about. It wasn’t just politics either. If someone was sick, or had a baby, or if someone’s kid had graduated from college or gotten the lead part in the high-school play, I knew about it. It felt great to have a home and to be included in the fabric of the city and of the lives of those who lived there.

  One of my favorites was Vicki Pearson. Whenever we stopped to see her at the Tannery, I was impressed by the vast array of her duties in handling much of David Hall’s business matters. David not only ran the Tannery, that wonderful complex of unique shops, he also owned a multitude of rental properties around town, and it was Vicki’s job to stay on top of all those renters. She appeared to do it without much effort. But more impressive than her ability as a businesswoman was her heart of gold. I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t like Vicki, and that was a true rarity in little Newburyport. She was married, had a son from a previous marriage, had many friends, and she adopted me as one of them. She loved the Undertoad and subscribed to it from the very beginning. But best of all, she loved dogs, came to like me as a person and not just as an editor when I took Max in, and then fell for Atticus in a b
ig way. It’s why she’d insisted we eat at the Purple Onion, where Atticus could join us.

  One day I received a call from her son telling me that Vicki was in Anna Jaques, Newburyport’s hospital, and wanted to see me. I’d known she was sick. I just didn’t realize how bad it was.

  When I entered her hospital room, she looked nothing like the Vicki I’d grown to appreciate and love. Her skin was loose, hanging on her bones, and her eyes protruded from their sockets. She looked tired, frail, and broken. Then she spoke, and the old Vicki was back again, wasting no time in giving me my orders.

  “I need some help,” she said. “I’m planning my funeral.” She said it with a little laugh, as if she were planning her own fiftieth birthday party, which she’d done the previous year.

  It wasn’t long before she had me laughing, too. We laughed the way we always had. Lots of quips and jokes about her short future—and then came the “no-nonsense” Vicki.

  “I’m dying.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “You know what the good thing about dying is, Tom? You can make people promise you things and they can’t say no to you.”

  She then made several requests and had me promise that I would fulfill them. Among them was her repeated insistence that she wanted my help in planning her funeral. I was touched by her choreographing her exit so that she wouldn’t stress her husband or son. Even in the end, Vicki didn’t want to burden them, and she acted with strength, courage, and grace. And yet none of it seemed real. She was too full of life to be dying.

  Bright and early the next day Atticus and I were with Vicki, me in the chair next to the bed and him on the bed. Atticus was there for nearly every visit, and even as she started to slip away more and more, a combination of the morphine and the cancer making its way up her spine, she’d slowly open her eyes and say, “Hi, Atticus,” whenever we’d arrive.

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  A former neighbor of Vicki’s shared a story with me. Once the neighbor’s dog had gotten out of its yard, and Vicki had found it wandering the street and taken it in. She liked her neighbor but was reluctant to return the dog because she felt it deserved better.

  I think Atticus and dogs in general were close to Vicki because they can sense things many of us miss. In return, it was clear that Vicki saw the best in all dogs.

  Toward the end, when Vicki was too weak to speak, I read to her. One day I shared the passage about animals from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” from Leaves of Grass.

  I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,

  I stand and look at them long and long.

  They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

  They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

  They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

  Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

  Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

  Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

  So they show their relations to me and I accept them,

  They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

  Her eyes stayed closed, but she gave the slightest smile and moved her hand slowly over Atti’s head as he rested against her side.

  What made Vicki so precious was that while she was impressed by nature and flowers and dogs and pretty much everything that is natural, she wasn’t impressed by people who were impressed with themselves. That was another rarity in Newburyport, which took itself very seriously. That’s why it was such an interesting marriage when she sat on the board of directors of the chamber of commerce. As with most such boards, there were plenty of people who were indeed impressed with themselves. Yet Vicki couldn’t care less about status or position and was more aware of who and what she was, and who and what other people were, than anyone I’d ever known. And while she didn’t like phonies and would have laughed at some of the folks who turned up at her funeral because it was considered the “right thing to do,” she let others live life as they pleased, unless they crossed her.

  She retired when she turned fifty to spend more time tending to her garden and her two favorite flowers—her grandchildren, one of whom she took to Disney World in Florida with her newfound freedom. It was then that she decided to run for the school committee, and she based her campaign on a very simple premise: for the kids. At one of our lunches, she confessed that there were many reasons she was running for office, but she gave me credit for motivating her to run because of things I’d written in the Undertoad.

  “Every two weeks I read the ’Toad, and I’d think, the kids deserve better, and so I decided to stop saying it and do something about it.”

  Being a member of the school board was a thankless position. In the hierarchy of elected offices, it was the lowest of the three. First and foremost was the mayor, then came the eleven city councilors, and finally the six members of the school committee. All these positions except the mayor’s were handled by ordinary citizens who had day jobs, and the hours these elected officials gave were incredible. With school funding cut year after year, it was frustrating to be a member of the school board and have to deal with angry parents. You had to believe in what you were doing, and you really had to love kids. Vicki scored high on each of those points.

  She won easily, but soon after the election her chest pains started. She thought she might be having heart problems, so they ran a few tests and gave her medication. Then came numbness in her limbs. By Thanksgiving Day, three weeks after the election, she couldn’t shower without help from a friend. She couldn’t stand. She was told it was only a reaction to the medication. Additional tests showed a large tumor on her back, and before anyone knew what had happened, this vibrant woman who’d participated in a three-day, sixty-mile walk to fight cancer just a year earlier was paralyzed from the waist down. She underwent surgery, but she would never walk again.

  On Inauguration Day she sat by herself in a wheelchair in front of the stage. The rest of the school committee sat up on the stage with the members of the city council and the mayor. The two other new members of the committee did join her on the floor when the three were sworn in, but they later returned to their seats, leaving her seated alone, looking withered and exhausted.

  Everyone thought she’d be fine. Not having the use of her legs wouldn’t hinder Vicki Pearson. But it was soon discovered that the tumor along her spine was getting worse, and all hope was gone.

  In a letter home to my father I wrote, “Vicki was aware enough to realize Atticus and I had stayed in Vermont for an extra day. We talked a lot that night we got back. It was after visiting hours, but we didn’t pay any attention to those. That was the last good conversation we had. There were plans for an interview, but she has drifted too far away. While she seems so distant and tired of fighting for life, when I see her I no longer see the loose skin or the dry lips. I do not see her brittle hair or hear the morphine pump or smell the residue of urine from her catheter bag. I don’t see legs that won’t move. What I see is the Vicki I have known since moving to Newburyport. I see her in the faces of the nurses who attend to her, have been inspired by her, and have grown because of her. I see the Vicki no tumor can take from me or the city or anyone else. Long after she stops breathing, after her body is cold and decaying, after we have cried to the point where we cannot cry anymore, she will still be here—a wonderful spirit lasting with those who were touched by her for as long as they remember her.”

  During those days in her hospital room, Vicki shared with me the story of her life, what she called “the unedited version.”

  “It’s important that you know it, Tom.”

  “Why is that?”

  She licked her lips, closed her eyes and though
t, then opened them again. “I don’t know. . . . I think it has something to do with the ’Toad. After all these years of reading it, I feel that you’re the only person I’ve ever met who tells it like it is. I guess I just wanted to tell it like it is to you.

  “Besides,” she added, getting ready to drop a bombshell on me, “you and Atti are going to be standing up in front of the church giving my eulogy.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I heard you, but I’m not doing it. Let your husband or your son or one of your friends do it.”

  “You guys are my friends, too—you and Atti. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than have my friend, the editor of the Undertoad, and my nephew, Atti, telling the story of my life at the church.”

  I continued to resist, but she trotted out her joke again: “You know what the best thing about dying is, Tom?”

  “Yeah, I have to do what you ask.”

  But in the end I didn’t do what my friend requested. I wasn’t allowed to. When she died, nothing was in writing, and those close to her—I’m not sure who, exactly—changed her plans. I suppose someone thought it was more fitting that Vicki be eulogized by one of the local bank presidents instead of the controversial editor of the Undertoad.