Will's Red Coat

by Tom Ryan

  I feared I would be taken, as in the refrain from Yeats’s “The Stolen Child”:

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping

  than you can understand.

  That’s when I ran. I ran as fast and as hard as I could, tripping and falling, stumbling to my feet again, breathless, wheezing for air, not getting any, my heart racing, my lungs screaming. I hopped over dead trees, past ferns that grabbed at my ankles, beyond the shadows and the gloom, and away from the ever-present, ever-louder words, “Come closer!”

  I raced through the last tunnel of trees toward the field, and when I made it, I fell to my knees to drink in the air. I didn’t dare stay there for too long. I was afraid of what I imagined as an enormous unholy hand reaching out, pulling me back into the despair, never to be heard from again.

  That was my last time in that darkest of places, from the darkest moment of my young life. I believed if I returned, I wouldn’t find my way home. I would be lost forever, and forgotten, just as I was already forgetting my mother—what she looked like, her voice when she spoke to me, the smell of her red lipstick when she read to me on her lap.

  We were all lost in those years after my mother died. My father, who used to beat us, didn’t as much anymore. The violence waned, but his temper didn’t. He grew tired and sullen. With each passing year it was worse. When I was in high school, and the last one in the house with him, it had become a silent, stifling place, and I was a sulking, moody teen. I came to think of him as a man who was tired of living.

  My childhood was defined by loss—Isabel dying, Jack decomposing, brothers and sisters fleeing. Whatever innocence I had shriveled up and died. Even hope was impossible to come by. I felt a kinship to D. H. Lawrence the moment I read: “If I think of my childhood it is always as if there was a sort of inner darkness . . .”

  Into my twenties, thirties, and even early forties, I’d fall asleep and be visited by that chilling song of the trees and the river, “Come closer. Come closer.”

  I did just the opposite. I avoided woodlands and sought out the safety of civil places. As I grew up, and grew older, I’d find comfort in bustling communities and a distracted life. I didn’t want quiet, because quiet meant I was inviting the song to reach out to me again. Even then, it would always come, usually when I was sleeping and defenseless.

  However, in my attempt to stay safe, I was also half dead.

  I became brave only for tiny Atticus, bringing him to Moseley Pines in Newburyport, where he could experience what he needed. He immediately felt at home there, and I discovered that strangely so did I. Hours were spent in a glade of lady slippers, my back to a tree, while I read and Atticus sat up watching the breath of the forest. The way it sighed and settled, how it welcomed shafts of sunlight, and mists that wove like ghosts on chill days when the rains had stopped, or how in winter, the snow among the pines turned it into the holiest cathedral I’d ever been in. Those brief excursions across town led to weekends away in the pastoral hills of Vermont, which led to short hikes and grew into longer walks, which brought us eventually to the mountains of New Hampshire. There we became nemophilists, haunters of woods.

  Two years and hundreds of mountains climbed later, I sold the Undertoad and moved north with Atticus. Thousands of mountains later, Following Atticus was published. It detailed the experiences of two unlikely novice hikers: a dog who was considered too small, and an overweight newspaper editor who had a fear of heights.

  I started a Facebook page, for marketing purposes, and the page brought readers. They were captivated by the photos I shared of Atticus in breathtaking scenes, or sitting serenely and Buddha-like on summits throughout this glorious enchanted forest. The more I shared, the more was shared with me. Those who were following me while I followed Atticus started sharing stories about their own fears, triumphs, and travails.

  Yes, the forest that had always called to me, had always wanted me to come closer, was welcoming me home at last, by way of Atticus, and his primitive and peaceful heart.

  My aunt Marijane Ryan, my father’s youngest sister and a former nun who had left the Church to become a therapist and who worked in hospice, pointed out that Jung thought of the forest as a place of the unknown in us. It is frightening, and eventually can turn into a place of transformation or of refuge, depending upon where you are in your personal journey.

  It had been all three to me, and now the forest is my refuge.

  The mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose life’s work was the monomyth, also known as the hero’s journey, knew a great deal about Jung as well, and his lectures and books often echoed him. Campbell said, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life . . . The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damn thing in the cave that was dreaded has become the center.”

  On my hero’s journey, I was guided by Atticus, who was not at all human and perhaps not all animal either. He fell somewhere in between, it seemed to me. By following him, I found peace in my life.

  Then the universe conspired to change our lives again. It’s how he showed up and turned our peaceful world upside down. But it began innocently enough. The forest had helped me, and I thought it would help another lost soul as well.

  It began as many a beginning does, with an end.

  His name was William then. He was fifteen. He couldn’t see very well. He couldn’t hear at all. His body ached with neglect and the torment of the years. Age had not been kind to him and fate had cast him adrift. I’m told that the only people he had ever lived with had grown too old to take care of themselves, and it would become clear to me that they hadn’t taken care of William for a long time either. Ultimately, he was left at a kill shelter in New Jersey.

  Whenever I think of this part, and I think of it often, I imagine how that had to feel for him. How hopeless and cold. How empty. How haunted he had to be that first night all alone. I think of the smells of disinfectant, urine, feces, and fear, with fear being the worst. I think of his confusion, and how he could see little and hear nothing. I imagined his underfed body shivering, because that’s what he did when he showed up in our lives a few days later.

  As providence would have it, he was removed from that shelter by an organization called New Jersey Schnauzer Rescue when a volunteer contacted the group about William’s plight. That’s when I heard about him.

  A lone photograph of William and a paragraph or two were posted on the New Jersey Schnauzer Rescue Facebook page. They wrote that his was one of the saddest cases they had ever seen. It was shared, with social media spreading the post across the world. Eventually, our friend Laura Bachofner shared it on the Following Atticus Facebook page, which was growing in popularity since our book had been published eight months earlier. She hoped one of our six thousand fans might take William in.

  Atticus and I were sitting on the couch the night I noticed the post, which featured a photo of William looking shaggy and perhaps a bit hot. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and his ghostly eyes gave evidence of cataracts. I wished him well. I’d check back every now and then to watch the responses. Many wrote about how sad it was that he was given up at his age. Some were livid about it. Others wrote that they would take him, but . . . There were a lot of reasons listed, but they all translated to one thing: William was probably not going to find a home. That’s when I did a most unexpected thing, and William’s destiny took yet another unforeseen turn.

  I wrote that Atticus and I would take him.

  When I sent out an e-mail to our friends informing them we were bringing old William to live with us, I don’t think anyone believed me. It had always been just Atticus and me, with the occasional girlfriend here and there. For the ten years we had been together, I’d never had a desire for much more, and I had no reason to believe Atticus felt any differently. He’d never been fo
nd of other dogs. He liked greeting them, but within seconds he would move on. It had always been this way. Perhaps it had to do with him being the only one in his litter, a discovery that surprised his breeder, Paige Foster. She had expected at least two other pups and had never been wrong about that kind of thing. Years later she would tell me that this was her first sign that Atticus was different.

  My friend Cheryl was the first to respond to my e-mail, warning me against bringing William home. “Don’t do it, Tom. That little guy is at the end of his life, and nothing but blindness, incontinence, and cancer are ahead for him. It will be all stress and heartache. There will be expensive vet bills and then he’ll die. You and Atticus don’t need that sadness, and that’s all there will be.”

  Another friend offered similar advice over lunch. I asked him, “What would you do if the situation was reversed?”

  “I told you,” he said. “I wouldn’t take him. It’s not worth it. You and Atti have a great life. Your first book just came out. You’re on top of the world. Why change it?”

  “No. I meant what would you have me do if you were the one who was old, in pain, alone, and had no place to call home?”

  My friends were well intentioned, but I wasn’t asking their advice.

  My mind was made up. It was as simple as William needing a home and the slim prospects of him finding one. It was like a switch had flipped, and that was that. But isn’t that how so many of life’s most important decisions are made? A flash of awakening, a jolt of acknowledgment, a decision made—no matter how unrealistic it may seem. At least that’s how the most influential choices I’ve made have come about. Passion had more to do with them than reason did. My head doesn’t stand a chance when my heart leads the way. I’ve nearly always trusted my intuition, and when I haven’t, things haven’t gone as well.

  Sometimes you don’t understand what you do until long after you’ve done it. But right then, while it was unfolding, I was inexorably drawn to have him here. Two thoughts came to mind. First, no one should have to die alone. And I asked myself, What would I wish for Atticus if something happened to me, and he was without a home and was just as frightened and confused?

  If I gave it thought beyond that, it was envisioning a simple transition to life with a kindly dog. I imagined the refreshing mountain air infusing him with peace and giving him some enjoyment at the end of his life. Maybe we could get him up a short peak along an easy trail, even if I had to carry him up in a backpack. And, of course, I felt the forest would help as it reached across the river up to our home.

  Five days later we met William for the first time. It was in a hotel parking lot in Connecticut. Three members of the New Jersey Schnauzer Rescue group were with him. They were excited to meet Atticus because they’d read our book, and to them, as fans of the breed, he was a celebrity. They were elated when he greeted each of them, and when I saw William . . .

  My God, when I saw William, I was horrified.

  My insides were churning, and I was wondering how he was still living, why he was still living. I felt sick, thinking it was cruel that someone had kept him alive. There was nothing to him. He was as brittle as a leftover husk the winter winds had hollowed out.

  William was white except for dark feathering on top of his nose and at the tips of his pointed ears. He had long black eyelashes that would later become a focal point of his face, but I didn’t notice them that first day. I was concentrating on the way he walked. The lack of flexibility in his joints made each step a painful one. His spine was rigid and appeared to be the source of a catch in each step. His straight front legs reached out, but his hind legs held him back, which led to an almost lyrical gait, almost like a rocking horse. He was underweight to the point of being bony. Someone had given him a rough haircut since I’d seen his photograph, but it only accentuated how fragile he was.

  I greeted him with treats, offering them to both Atticus and William at the same time. Atticus gently took his from between my fingertips, one at a time, while William lunged roughly at my other hand as he hunted for the snacks, nipping at my fingers. I would later understand that this had to do mostly with his poor eyesight. I had no doubt that the volunteers had taken wonderful care of him in the few days before delivering him to us, but he didn’t seem confident of when he’d see his next meal.

  We said our good-byes to the three volunteers and I asked Atticus if he would like to hop into the backseat. He complied, although he had always sat up front next to me. I put William in the front passenger seat so I could watch him. When I lifted William, he turned wild, snapping and snarling and whipping his head around trying to bite me. It was so sudden and such a shock that I nearly dropped him.

  The man in the group offered an apologetic smile and said, “Yeah, he does that. It helps if you have one hand on the back of his collar so he can’t get at you.”

  I hadn’t done a lot of homework on William, but I’d been told two things that made me feel comfortable about bringing him home:

  “He’s very sweet.”

  “He gets along well with other dogs.”

  It was only when we entered Massachusetts heading north that I realized Atticus hadn’t interacted with William.

  We stopped twice for William to go to the bathroom before we reached New Hampshire. Each time he thrashed around in my arms, with teeth snapping and high-pitched yips and yelps.

  I wanted to throw up.

  Max had been an older dog when I took him in. I never quite knew his age, but he was believed to be between twelve and fourteen. Like William, I gave him a home without giving it much thought when I feared he wouldn’t find another place to live.

  When I first met Max, he was at a groomer. She’d given him a bath, and he was waiting for me.

  When I showed up, she wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  When the groomer appeared, she showed me a little dog who looked more like a sheep. He was all gray hair—a bushel of it—with a black nose and chestnut-brown eyes that could barely be seen under a thick curtain of eyebrows.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of him. But he was kind, and while I didn’t have a leash or collar with me, I didn’t need one. He followed me out the door happily, hopping into the front passenger seat of the car, and that was that. We were together. I was his, and he was mine.

  During our first few weeks, he’d bark nonstop in my third-floor apartment whenever I left him alone. Eventually, that would cease, and Maxwell Garrison Gillis became a perfect roommate. It was all very easy.

  A dozen years later, as Atticus and I were driving north with William, my anger simmered, and I considered calling back the rescue group and telling them, “We’re bringing him back. You can keep the check, but this dog is suffering.”

  I tried to call Christine O’Connell, our veterinarian at North Country Animal Hospital, from one of the rest areas, but I couldn’t reach her. I think it was mostly to vent, but I also wanted to let her know that we might have to make an extremely tough decision about his life.

  I drove in brooding silence after that. Atticus sat in the back watching the scenery fly by the windows. When I looked at William, lying just a foot away with his eyes closed, my friend Cheryl’s advice echoed in my ears: “Don’t do it, Tom. There’ll be nothing but stress and heartache.”

  I’m not sure why I didn’t call the rescue folks. Goodness knows I wanted to. I even made a deal with myself that if I called before reaching the mountains, it would somehow be okay to return him, but if he made it to the beaver pond at the foot of Mount Moosilauke, I’d keep him. I kept telling myself to call. Call. Don’t put it off. And yet I drove on in a daze, chewing my lip, stewing about what to do.

  Back and forth I went, reaching for the phone, putting it down. All the while I grew increasingly upset. We had just met him, and I was thinking about putting him out of his misery. It shouldn’t have come to this. The responsibility of that choice shouldn’t have fallen to me.

  When we reached the beaver pond in Kinsman Notch, we h
ad entered into the White Mountains and the decision was made. There was no turning back; William was our responsibility. When we pulled into a rest area, he tried to bite me again.

  He walked around the parking lot and then into the water. I looked at his stiff spine, and how fragile he was, and the way he seemed lost. I wondered if he even knew he was now standing in the pond.

  Atticus watched all of this, and I looked over at him.

  “I think I screwed up, my friend.”

  He just looked at me. Who knows what he was thinking? But seeing his gentle face, that intent gaze, I promised myself that I would never let Atticus suffer as William was. I would see to it that he would never be in such pain.

  In Lincoln, an hour from home, we stopped one last time, and this was when William’s teeth finally found their mark. He caught my thumb in his mouth and bit down. I tried to jerk away, but his bite tightened. I felt him pierce my skin and go deep. Blood trickled down my thumb.

  My initial instinct was to strike out, to take my free hand and knock him away. I could never imagine hitting Maxwell or Atticus, but they had never attacked me like that.

  My hand reared back and I readied myself to backhand him—but then I stopped.

  Something else took hold, something stronger than the burning pain in my hand and my rage. It was instantaneous and involuntary.

  Call it an epiphany of sorts, if you will. Or heavenly intervention. Or something else beyond my ability to comprehend.

  With my hand tensed to strike, I stopped thinking about the William I was expecting to meet and instead put myself in his place. I thought about what had been done to him. He had had no say in what had befallen him, no say about the pain in his body, about being betrayed, about being left alone in a strange place, about being passed from stranger to stranger.

  I took a deep breath. I took another.

  Slowly my anger eased.

  I took another breath.