Will's Red Coat

by Tom Ryan

  It’s easiest to watch this phenomenon from a distance—say, from the side or top of a mountain—but you can still see it as you walk throughout the valleys. No matter what troubles you, everything appears buoyant early on those kind of mornings when the night chill remains, and white cartoon clouds puff along like parade balloons in the deepest sea of blue you could ever picture yourself swimming in.

  Atticus and I had left Will sleeping at home. We rose early to make sure he didn’t have another accident, and then brought him back inside where he would sleep for a while, for sleeping is mostly what he did. He was good at it. And he was good at tuning us out and pretending we weren’t there.

  We had just crossed the covered bridge on our way home when we heard the excited clamor of tourists. One word rose above all the chatter.

  “Bear!”

  A man behind us, standing in the middle of the bridge with his camera, yelled to say the bear was coming our way, but we kept walking, because we understood the ways of bears in Jackson.

  We heard him crashing through the shrubs lining the Wildcat River before we saw him. A flash of shiny black fur burst through the brush ten feet in front of us. He was young, all legs and nervous energy, and ready to dash across the road. Strangely, though, he stopped. His body tightened like a spring, and he turned to watch us as we kept walking toward him. Instantly, the spring released and he was off, dashing across the road in an awkward galumphing trot as cars stopped to let him pass. Tourists had their cameras and phones out and raced to get a photograph, but he was too fast for any of them. Still, seeing a bear gave them something to tell their friends back home.

  Atticus and I were used to seeing bears, and I thought of this as yet another reason I love living halfway to wild. That morning, though, I had a lot on my mind, and it all came down to Will.

  Our home was no longer peaceful. Atticus walked gingerly from the bedroom each morning, poised to avoid a Will accident. Then there was Will’s temper. He was getting better in that he was eating healthier and sleeping more, and he didn’t attack quite as much when I tried to help him. But he could still erupt at any moment, and I had the fresh scars to prove it.

  I needed to find a balance at home—a way where Will was happier and Atticus and I could feel as if we had a home again.

  Two hundred yards down the road, a foursome of golfers yelled out as the young bear raced across their putting green.

  Those golfers would have stories to tell sitting around the nineteenth hole in the hours to come. Can’t you imagine the conversations, and the excuses?

  “I would have had that birdie had that darn bear not kicked the ball while it was on its way to the hole.”

  A tenth of a mile from our house I heard the thumping of feet, and for the third time the bear crossed in front of us, looking more silly than menacing. He went into the brush behind another house, and I guessed he was heading down to the river, to wherever his den was.

  Back at home, I woke up Will by gently rocking him. When he looked at me, I brought him up to his feet, holding him by his harness so he wouldn’t fall over. During his recovery, he accepted me holding him slightly longer and didn’t take exception to my assistance. Outside, I placed him on the grass on the small rise in the middle of our backyard. He stumbled for a few steps, and I steadied him. Then, cautiously but a bit drunkenly, he started circling.

  Since his episode of what had turned out to be old dog vestibular disease a month earlier, his held tilt was pronounced and he had a difficult time walking a straight line unless he was following Atticus or me or walking to me, or was in the house and had landmarks to help him navigate. That head tilt had him walking in crooked circles, like a boat whose rudder is turned all the way to the right.

  Atticus no longer felt comfortable on the grass, not since Will arrived. You see, Atticus had never gone to the bathroom on the lawn. He’d mark a tree along the property line, and he never defecated on our property. He always waited until we were on a walk. But Will went everywhere. If Atticus had a reason to cross the yard, it was as if he was tiptoeing through a minefield. Mostly he skirted the property line.

  Will circled under the warming sun and took a myopic view of whatever he looked at, like an elderly professor studying a small wildflower. I grabbed a rake to clean up some leaves left over from the fall. I saw Atticus walk from under the trees toward Will, and this surprised me. He stopped halfway to him, turned his back, and faced the vacant yard to the north.

  There was that same young bear we’d seen on our walk. He was a yearling, standing like a huge puppy.

  “Atticus, you don’t know him. Remember to be gentle.”

  With that, Atticus sat, and so did the bear, only twenty feet away.

  I trusted Atticus, who hadn’t worn a leash and collar for years, but still, I wanted him to be cautious. “Be careful, my friend.”

  Atticus dropped to a sphinx position. Will was oblivious to anything going on as he continued making his circles, but I was aware that Atticus had placed himself between Will and the bear. And I understood that although he was displeased with Will and may not have respected his manners, this is where Atticus would play a role in Will’s life. From a distance he watched over Will, definitely not approving of his attacks on me and disgusted by his personal habits, but seeming to understand his own role as protector.

  I’d seen him do this once before. It was on the day Will collapsed, when we were waiting to see Christine O’Connell. Atticus sat on a couch in the waiting room. I was next to him, holding Will in my arms. A man and a large dog came in the front door. Atticus gave a growl and his hackles stood on end.

  “Whoa, Atti! What’s that about?”

  He had never growled at another animal before. The other dog backed up, and Atticus relaxed. When the dog took a few steps forward, Atticus growled again. He was protecting Will, even though he didn’t like him.

  In the backyard, the bear mimicked Atticus by slipping down into the same position. The two looked at each other, and there was no tension or signs of menace or aggression. I took a photo.

  The older bears who live near us had always made their way up from the Ellis River along the bear path, and then across the lawn on the way to the local inns and restaurants. I didn’t mind them because they mostly avoided us. But I could tell by his size and his awkwardness that this fellow had only recently been forced out into the world by his mother. Yearlings are unpredictable. They are new to the world on their own and need to find their way in life. I didn’t want this young fellow to get too comfortable around us, so I chased him off by yelling and moving toward him.

  He disappeared into the woods, and we went inside.

  Will may no longer have fought me whenever I picked him up and carried him up and down the stairs, and seemed to understand it was what he needed, but once we were in our apartment, things were different.

  Will would be as calm as could be in my arms, but I’d warn Atticus that I was going to put him down. Atticus would hop up on the couch, where he was safe. I’d place Will on the throw rug, and the demon dance would start. Anger bubbled to the surface. He’d rear up on his hind legs and spin around, trying to leap at me, snarling, baring his teeth, looking to bite. I’d move quickly out of his reach. Will would become so fierce he’d lose control, toppling over on his side, and his weakness would anger him all the more.

  As strange as it may seem, I felt Will had a right to be angry. I even respected it, although I despised being his constant target and hated the bites.

  It didn’t matter that Will couldn’t hear me. I often told him he could stay angry for as long as he needed to and that someday . . . Well, there might come a day when he didn’t feel the need to be angry, and that would be okay too.

  The arc of his temper was predictable. He would calm down within a minute of the frenzy as his yelps turned to growls, which turned to grumbles. After the grumbles came the snores as his tantrums wore him out, and he’d fall asleep where he fell.

  The morn
ing the bear followed us home, Will threw his regular tantrum after I brought him upstairs. Soon he was asleep again, and when I looked out the window, the yearling was looking up at me. I grabbed two pans and ran outside yelling and clashing them together like cymbals. He bolted.

  There are basic rules I follow with our neighboring bears: I don’t leave trash where they can get into it, I don’t feed them, and whenever we are in close proximity to each other, I make certain we each have escape routes. But I set firmer boundaries with the younger bears. Whenever they are near, I chase them away. Knowing to keep their distance from humans could save their lives.

  There is saying that “a fed bear is a dead bear.” If you feed bears, they will keep coming back for more until it becomes dangerous, and then something has to be done to the bear. The first step is relocating the bear, but if problems persist, they will eventually be destroyed, which is a shame since in most cases it could all be avoided if people didn’t feed them. I respect my role in the relationship with the local bears and always remember that they are not my friends, they’re wild animals. But I also defended their right to pass through the yard. This was their land before settlers took it away from them by developing towns, and who was I to tell them where they could and couldn’t go?

  So I knew how to handle bears, but Will was a real challenge. Not a day passed when I didn’t feel overwhelmed by his physical, mental, and emotional needs. I regularly tried to put myself in his place; that’s why I respected his anger. But switching from the peaceful life with Atticus to the messy one Will had brought to our home was difficult, and I often wondered if I was up to the challenge.

  On that morning of the yearling, while watching Will after he fell on his side, his eyes wild and his teeth showing, a memory surfaced of a place I used to know. When I was getting ready to start the Undertoad, I needed a job. A nursing home in a town close to Newburyport was hiring.

  It was a dreadful place. It reeked of loneliness and desperation, of pain and suffering. If I were elderly, I’d rather be dead than end up there. Even nicer nursing homes can still be depressing, but this was the lowest level. It’s where people ended up because they had no money and no one to care about them. Only a handful of the residents who had family in the area who visited them often could be considered fortunate. The rest were the forsaken and the forgotten.

  Sadness showed in the dim lighting, in the old tile floors covered with years of film, in the dreary paint on the walls and the cheap wood paneling. It was evident in every aspect of the building and it was reflected in the faces of the residents. It even showed in many of the staff members.

  The shifts were often understaffed, and it is charitable to say that those who worked there had had rough lives themselves. I was the only man working there, and many of the women showed up for work each morning hungover. Some had fresh bruises. Sometimes, when I arrived at work, I’d see that some of the silent residents, the ones who wouldn’t or couldn’t talk, also had bruises. It was not a kind place, although you could find occasional kindnesses if you looked for them. Mostly, though, the staff was not much better off than the residents they were poorly paid to care for. It was a fellowship of dejection. The only differences were that the residents were older than the employees and the employees were free to leave after their shifts were over.

  A director had recently been hired to turn the facility around, to make it respectable again. She was the one who hired me.

  She had a virtuous heart and a kind smile, but her husband was dying of cancer and she had little energy to give to the place. When she noticed that the man she brought on to help with exercises was getting the residents to open up in different ways, she gave me more freedom to let me do whatever I wanted.

  My coworkers weren’t sure what to think of me. I was the only person doing rehab work, which they considered a glamorous position. It was a natural fit since I’d taken some courses on rehabilitation in college. They didn’t take kindly to the fact that a newcomer had landed that job, and they couldn’t relate to me because I didn’t go out drinking with them at night, and instead of sitting outside smoking cigarettes at lunch, I’d sit in the lounge or under a tree and read. No matter our differences, I liked many of them.

  A few weeks after I was hired, I was called to Eunice Sharpwood’s room. She was in her early nineties but robust and bright. She was also ornery. The assistant director purposely chose a roommate for her who was deaf and couldn’t speak and seemed completely unaware of anything that happened around her. Whenever Eunice launched into one of her tirades, her roommate would do what she always did—look out the window without a twitch or even a blink, no matter what outrageous things Eunice said or did.

  On that day, with Eunice screaming at people to get away from her, her jowls shaking, her eyes ablaze, her cane wielded like a sword, I surprised her by asking, “Eunice, why are you always so angry?”

  The rest of the staff looked at me like I was an idiot. Why would you even care? Just subdue her, moron!

  She lowered her cane, surprised that someone had asked her something. “Why? I’ll tell you why! Because no one will dance with me!”

  “I didn’t know you liked to dance.”

  “That’s the problem! No one here knows anything about me because none of you care. No one cares!”

  That day at lunch, when the residents gathered in the dining room, I turned on some Sinatra and approached Eunice. “Mrs. Sharpwood, may I have this dance?”

  Stone silence. Eventually, she let her defenses down and said, “It’s about time.” But then she smiled and took my hand. We hung her cane on my forearm, and we danced. She was far better at it than I was, and compared to me, she was nimble. Eunice closed her eyes. Contentment washed over her face. I imagined her young again and thought about how much fun she must have had when she danced.

  As the song came to a close, I started to wobble, as though exhausted by our dance. I handed Eunice her cane, and I collapsed onto the floor.

  “You, my dear, have worn me out!” I then made a show of fainting.

  Eunice smiled again, and jiggled as she laughed. She bent over me and stared. When I opened my eye to look up at her, she hit me with her cane, “Like hell I have. Get up. We’re not done yet.”

  That day, the dining room of the woebegone nursing home saw more laughter in it than it had in a long time.

  Eunice wasn’t the only one there who felt as if no one cared. As I spent time with the residents and helped them with their exercises, I began to see each person differently. One was Mrs. Fish, who rarely spoke and did so in a whisper. When I finished some range-of-motion exercises with her one afternoon, I took my hand off her arm and gently touched her face. She barely moved but looked toward my hand.

  “Abigail, can you tell me about your first kiss?”

  She looked back down at her lap. She looked hollow. But ever so slowly the slightest smile appeared. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She placed her hand on top of mine. “I was ten. His name was Johnny Appleton. We were on a hayride.” She opened her eyes, and like Eunice’s before her, they were young again. She began to talk, and I listened.

  I don’t think I’ve stopped listening since.

  My coworkers didn’t take kindly to my laughter. The more I learned about the residents, and the more I listened when they told me their stories, the more we found to laugh about.

  That day three years ago when the bear followed us home, I thought about Eunice Sharpwood for the first time in close to fifteen years, and I came to understand what I needed to do with Will. Like Eunice, and the rest of the residents of that depressing nursing home, I had to discover what brought him back to life, what made him smile. I had to help him learn to dance again.

  The enchanted forest had helped me discover who I was, and I hoped it would also help Will. I knew Atticus would contribute in his unique way, keeping his distance until he was needed while providing a calming presence. So would the lessons I’d learned from Paige Foster, t
he breeder who brought Atticus into my life.

  And of course there was the influence of Aunt Marijane—her experience with the disabled Navajo children, her understanding of Jung, her mysticism, and her years working hospice.

  Now I was summoning the memories of the once-forgotten elderly who had taught me much in the few months I worked with them at the nursing home. Those dear people, surely long dead, would—in their way—help me help Will. For he was no different from them—a senior citizen, left behind, mostly forgotten. He deserved the respect we should pay all our elders. My goal was to treat him as I treated them—with dignity.

  The yearling did not stay away for long. He returned repeatedly, no matter how often I chased him away. As he grew, he would always make his presence known, but never in a troublesome way. I’d see him watching us from the woods, or walking near us when Atticus and I were out together. He’d weave in and out of the trees, but if anyone else was ever near us, he’d vanish, only to reappear over time when it was just Atticus and me, and sometimes Will.

  When I next called Marijane, I said, “A bear followed us home the other day.”

  “A bear? Tommy! A bear? What happened? Was he a threat? Are Atticus and Will okay?”

  “We were out on a walk and a yearling followed us home. He was drawn to Atticus, I think. When Atti sat, so did the bear. When Atti lay down, the bear did too.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. She was contemplating what I was saying. When Marijane met Atticus, she watched him closely as she approached him. When she reached out to pet him, she stopped. She pulled her hand back and grew serious, and studied him as she studied everyone. He mirrored her. A silent connection existed between them.

  Later in the day, after she’d watched Atticus and me interacting for several hours, she repeated something my father had said about Atti: “Are you sure he’s a dog?” But Marijane added the Navajo spin to it: “He’s like a medicine man. He has a deep spirituality.”

  So when I described Atticus’s interaction with the yearling, she understood the calmness between the two of them.