by Tom Ryan
Eventually we made our way down to the “VIP room” where the heroes of the night were gathering, along with some of the sponsors of the event. Again Atticus walked in as if he owned the place: not with an air of arrogance but with comfort and ease. He sauntered in, his little bum swaying in a carefree manner, surveyed some of the smaller dogs in their jeweled collars and sparkling leashes, and stopped directly in front of singer Emmylou Harris, the big star of the evening. She was on hand to get the Humanitarian Award. He stopped right in front of her and caught her eye. How could he not?
I picked him up, and introductions were made, and we chatted for a while, Atticus sitting up in the crook of my arm, Emmylou occasionally rubbing his belly or his chest, the photographer taking photos and more photos.
From that exclusive room, Atticus and I made a break for it, seeking out the manicured lawn against the sea with the view over to Boston. Outside, we talked with the caterers and the security people and heard their stories, and they smiled at the little dog who greeted them as if they were stars like Emmylou Harris. When we went back inside, a couple of folks were in panic mode looking for us. It was time to mingle with the rest of the attendees in the main lobby. There were many dogs at the cocktail reception, pretty dogs, some shaped as perfectly as if they were backyard topiaries, all well behaved, all leashed. Atticus wove through them, no leash, no collar, feeling free—sauntering.
There was plenty of money in the place, lots of old Beacon Hill money, and yet everyone was as nice as could be. Then again, I was with a carefree little dog, one who was always at home anywhere.
It was as it had always been for Atticus. Everyone knew his name. I grabbed an extra chair and pulled it up to the table for him. Nearly all the dogs that were in the cocktail reception in the lobby were put in another room during the dinner.
Speeches started, food came, and we people-watched. Atti and I shared some chicken and then were visited by Dr. Maureen Carroll. We shared a warm hug and a long chat, then went to talk to Ann Novitsky, her vet tech. We’d only met Maureen and Ann twice before that night, but it was like visiting old friends.
It became time for the presentation of awards. Heather Unruh, News Center Five coanchor, introduced the first hero, Amanda MacDonald, a remarkable teenager. She had done incredible work gathering signatures for a ballot question intended to put an end to greyhound racing in Massachusetts. She read her speech with poise beyond her years.
I was told we were up next. Great . . . how does one follow such an impressive kid?
I’m a writer, but I decided not to read a speech. I figured I’d just wing it. While the introduction was read, photos from some of our hikes flashed on the large movie screen behind Heather, and people loved them. At one point the audience gave such a joyous gush of oohs and ahhs at a photo of Atti on North Kinsman with Franconia Ridge in winter white behind him that Heather stopped reading the introduction, turned around, looked up, and said, “I’ve been stumped by a dog.”
I carried Atticus onstage, just as I always held him on a mountaintop. When I turned toward the audience, I was blinded by the bright lights. There were people out there—I just couldn’t see them. I knew that the movie screen above and behind was showing a larger version of the two of us, and I was wondering if the audience could see the wetness in the corners of my eyes. The weight of the past week came leaking out. My legs shook, and so did my voice.
I’m not really sure where I started, but after thirty seconds or so it was easy. There were people to thank, jokes to make, talk of Atticus and what he’d been through, praise for Angell and the doctors and the vet techs and fund-raising people.
At one point while I was telling the story of my friend Atticus and his blindness, he laid his head on my heart, and the audience melted. It’s one of the few things I picked up from them. Later a woman asked me, “Did you train him to do that?”
“No,” I said. “He does what he wants to do.”
Carter Luke would later tell me his staff at MSPCA-Angell and he referred to Atticus putting his head on my heart as “The Moment.”
The next two presentations went to Boston Police Department dogs and Emmylou Harris. Then it was over.
A week before, I had held Atticus with a hole in his throat and wondered if he would live. My, how things had changed. When the awards ceremony ended, we couldn’t make it through the crowd. Maureen Carroll told me she’d laughed so hard she nearly peed. Others told me they’d cried. When we made it to the hallway, Atticus met his public and posed for photos. Each time someone walked by with a centerpiece of flowers, Atticus stopped them by putting his front paws on their thighs so he could smell the sweet scent. He had a way of getting his point across. On a night of a lifetime, it was time to stop and smell the roses.
One man asked me, “Is Atticus the perfect dog?”
I was surprised by the question, and I took a moment to think about it. I quickly cataloged our six and a half years together and said, “No. But he’s the perfect dog for me.”
During my speech I forgot to mention three individuals who would have loved the night.
My father: He who adored the Kennedys and Boston politics and anyone on Channel Five News would have loved it, if only for the setting. When my brother David gave my father’s eulogy, he said that Dad always wished for but never received a standing ovation and wondered what that was like. At the end of the eulogy, we all stood up and clapped for him. I would have gladly given Jack Ryan the standing ovation Atticus and I had received. I was hoping he was watching from wherever he was.
Paige Foster: What a proud night for Paige. Atticus was with me because Paige gave him up. She once told me she was going to keep him, but instead she gave him to me. Because of her kindness, so much had happened in my life. Imagine having bred more than a thousand puppies and giving up the only one you were going to keep, and having him be honored this way.
Maxwell Garrison Gillis: If it weren’t for Max, there wouldn’t have been an Atticus. Max changed everything. He opened my heart, and when he departed, he left it open and in walked Atticus. But in all honesty, a bit of Max did make the journey with us, and a bit of him remained behind. I brought along a small vial of his ashes and sprinkled them inside JFK’s sailboat, Victura, which sat outside on the lawn.
When we returned to Tamworth after our big night, I looked forward to getting back on the trails. But first we’d have to see Dr. Christine O’Connell again. She was pleased with the way Atticus had healed, and she smiled when she told me she’d received fan mail for taking care of him.
I didn’t know much about Christine other than the fact that she looked very young and she’d been there for us when we needed her. I asked, “How long have you been a vet?”
“I was a vet tech for several years before I became a vet.”
“But how long have you been a vet?”
“Only a few months,” she said.
I’m not sure how I would have felt had I known that before she went to work on Atticus’s throat, but I was glad that things had worked out the way they did. She had gumption, and I liked that about her. I was also happy to know that we had someone to turn to in the mountains in case we ever needed anything. We’d always return to Angell for Atticus’s major medical needs, but Christine would be our regular vet from that point on.
33
Paige
Just as Paige was the only person I called back when Atticus was attacked, she was the first person I called the morning after our big night at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. I recounted the entire evening, and she hung on my every word. She giggled and laughed. She asked me to repeat things and wanted every detail. It was as if she never wanted to forget any of it.
Oh, how she was filled with joy at how the little dog she’d bred had gone from being an only puppy in the hills of Louisiana, to an instant celebrity in Newburyport, to a legend in the White Mountains, to being honore
d as a hero. When I told Paige that the award was as much hers as ours, she was humbled; I could hear the sadness in her voice. “Without you, Paige, none of this would have been possible. I have you to thank for so much.”
In the coming weeks, we e-mailed regularly, and on the Monday before Thanksgiving we had a conversation that revealed more than I ever could have imagined. Paige, who had always been warm, supportive, intuitive, and above all mysterious, began telling me the story of her life—and how Atticus came to live with me.
She was a willowy, ethereal woman, tall and slender, with long legs, and she loved being outside. She was tough and hardworking, and yet, as she put it, she could be “as delicate as fine china.”
Six months before Atticus was born, Paige was riding her bicycle along a country road and was hit by a car. She’d struggled to regain her health, but nothing had worked. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, she limped through life. She’d lost her center, and nothing felt right. Then, on a March night, something unusual had happened. One of her dogs had been due to give birth. Paige had a way with animals and had worked with them her entire life, starting on her parents’ farm, and she could predict how many babies an animal would have. She figured the mother dog had four puppies in her, but when the moment came, she was stunned to find only one tiny black-and-white pup.
She’d never been wrong like that before.
She held this little creature in her hand, cleaned him off, weighed him, and on the way to bringing him back to his mother she stopped in her tracks. There was something different about this little baby. She wasn’t sure what it was; she just knew it deep down in her heart.
Over the next six weeks, she devoted much of her time to him, and, curiously, in that same period she began to heal. “There was something about him that reflected who I was,” she told me. She’d often carry him out back into the woods and sit his tiny body on her lap and let him look out on the world and tell him she didn’t know how it was going to happen but that he was going to have the most extraordinary life.
Paige, who had lovingly bred more than a thousand puppies and sent each of them off into the world, had decided that for once she would keep one. He was the only thing that made her happy. You see, she was locked in a very unhappy marriage.
Life had not been kind to Paige. It began when she was seven years old and her grandfather started touching her. It would go on for years, and no one had wanted to believe what he was doing. As with many children who are sexually abused, Paige often ended up with other people who weren’t kind. I suppose that’s how she ended up with a much older husband who treated her miserably.
“Tom, that day you called to ask if I knew something was wrong with Atti and that’s why I charged you less . . . well, it hurt. You wondered why I only charged you four hundred and fifty dollars. If I hadn’t been married at the time, I would have given him to you for nothing.
“I had no intention of selling Atticus to anyone, but then you contacted me out of the blue, and I could hear how heartbroken you were, and I figured if Atticus had helped me as much as he did, he would be able to help you, too.
“The morning I sent him off to you, I sat in the airport parking lot and cried my eyes out. I cried and cried until there was nothing left, because I didn’t want to give him up. He was all I had!”
I was speechless.
“Later that same day, when you had Atti in your arms and you called and thanked me, I could hear how happy you were, and I knew I’d done the right thing.
“Then you kept on calling and wanted to do right by him. I always give the same advice to everyone who buys a puppy from me, but it seemed like you were the only one who would do whatever I told you to do. It made me so happy to see you two grow together. And how everyone in Newburyport took to him—I just loved that.”
In the days that followed, we talked endlessly, and Paige revealed more and more.
“Whenever I sent out a baby to live with a new family, I felt as if I was standing on a beach and sending each one off in a little boat to sail across the ocean to a life where they would be safe, happy, and loved. I always wanted to know so much about their new lives, because they were living my life for me—a life I’d never have. I’d send them off and stand there looking out over the water and say sadly, ‘But not for me.’ But none of the people kept in regular contact with me except one. That was you. You told me everything, and without knowing it you let me live through the life you and Atti had.”
I often listened to Paige in silence during those phone conversations with tears running down my cheeks.
“Then when you started hiking mountains with Atti . . . you have no idea what that meant to me. When I was a little girl, I would tell my mother that there would come a day when I would run two thousand miles away and go live in the mountains and no one would find me. And there the two of you were—two thousand miles away in the mountains.
“When you sent me photos of him sitting on top of a mountain looking out like that, I sat at my computer and traced my finger over the screen and imagined that I was living that life, and I could feel what Atti was feeling. You often took my breath!”
She talked of when I’d called her about Atticus going blind. “It was as if you were saying, ‘Please, Paige . . . please help me. Help me fix him.’ And I would have done anything, Tom. My heart just melted. I never told you, but I called my vet down here and I was going to drive up and get Atti and bring him back and have his eyes fixed, and when he was all better, I was going to bring him back to you. But then I heard how everyone wanted to help and how nice they were. I just couldn’t believe it. So I didn’t say anything, and I was so happy when everything turned out good. But I was always right here for you and Atti. And if anything ever happened to him, you would have had a new puppy within days, and you wouldn’t have had to pay a cent.”
There wasn’t much Paige and I didn’t share. We opened our lives up to each other. One day I felt guilty after I got mad at her. It was when she was telling me about her husband. She never referred to what he did as abuse, but that’s what it sounded like to me. I asked her, “Why did you stay, Paige? Why did you put up with it?” For she was still married after nearly twenty years. She was tied to him through debt and was two years into a three-year escape plan.
I didn’t yell, I was just short, and I was angry because I wanted Paige to be happy and because I knew what it was like to be abused. But when she started crying, I would have crawled through the phone to her if I could have. In between sobs she said, “Why did I stay? Why did I stay? I stayed because no one ever gave me an instruction book, Tom! I didn’t know how to get out. Life’s not easy, you know!”
I apologized, and Paige did, too, and we continued to talk day after day.
All the while as her story unfolded, I couldn’t believe what she had done for me. It was astounding. This little dog, this amazing woman, the gift they gave me. The life they gave me.
One day the subject of our first conversation came up. It was after she had shown me photos of all her other puppies and I hadn’t been interested in any of them. She said she had one last puppy, but he was “different.” I mentioned how I fell in love with Atticus because he wasn’t like the other dogs. They were all perfectly posed, but not him. He could have cared less about impressing the camera.
“Tom Ryan, you have to remember that I didn’t want to give him up, and I wasn’t sure I was going to send him to you, so when I took his photo, I didn’t pose him like I did with other babies. I was half hoping you wouldn’t be impressed. But you saw through that and didn’t care how he looked. I had a lump in my throat after that, because I knew I was going to lose him.”
There was one last question I had for her. I’d always been curious about her first piece of advice on raising Atticus: Carry him everywhere you go, and don’t let anyone else hold him that first month.
“That worked so well. I tell everyone who g
ets a puppy that they should do it. Where does it come from, Paige?”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone, as if she were wondering whether she really wanted to tell me, and then in a soft, vulnerable voice she said, “That’s the way I always wanted to be loved, Tom.”
34
Home
When I think back to the night that Atticus and I were honored as heroes at the Kennedy Library, I think the good people at the MSPCA only got it half right. There was a hero on that stage, but it wasn’t me.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell wrote, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
That wasn’t me. It was Atticus. He ventured forth again and again from “the world of common day,” he faced “fabulous forces.” And as Campbell pointed out, the journey was not complete until the hero returned to “bestow boons.” And boy, did he ever. He brought inspiration to everyone who followed his journey, but none more so than me.
Four decades into my life, I made a decision that changed everything. I adopted an unwanted dog and gave him a home. He, in turn, gave me one. In his brief time with me, Max opened my heart and left the door open for Atticus. I owe much to one dog who died and even more to another who lived. Max sent me on my way, but it was Atticus who led me home again, who taught me about love, about the kindness of my fellow man, about daring to dream and finding a way to love my embattled father—who, while he never understood this, will always live, as long as his son carries his dreams for him.
While it was never planned this way, it is wonderfully ironic that Atticus was named after my favorite literary hero. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the attorney Atticus Finch takes on the lost cause of helping Tom Robinson. Atticus is tested as never before. It’s not a stretch to say that my little Atticus went to even greater, more heroic lengths in saving his Tom.
