Will's Red Coat

by Tom Ryan

  “Thank you. Thank you for this friendship. Thank you for everything. Thank you for letting us go through this together. Thank you for Rachael Kleidon.”

  Before I had been welcomed home by the forest and Atticus and I forged a new relationship along mountain trails, I would have played the part of a victim. Why me? Why did Atticus have to go through this? But in the face of this threat, I made the choice to concentrate on what we had instead of what we didn’t. I told Marijane that’s how I knew I was growing up, finally, in my early fifties: I was learning the importance of gratitude.

  “Besides,” I reasoned to friends, “if anyone should have to struggle through cancer, isn’t it better that it’s us? Seriously, everything we’ve ever been through has been about facing things together and head-on. So why not us?”

  I’d like to think my faith was fueled by love and experience. Atticus and I loved each other, and years of rugged mountain experiences formed the patches of the quilt that represented our shared life. We no longer hiked the great distances, nor did I feel the need to be as intense, but once you rush into the wind on top of Mount Moosilauke, or step into the abyss of a cloud bank along the Bondcliff Trail above the tree line, you take that experience with you forever. Moments of vigor and adrenaline contribute to your fortitude. All we had faced readied us for all we would encounter, and allowed me to say, “Fuck fear!”

  In a way, there I was in that four-question psychology quiz from thirty years earlier. I was in a long dark hallway, treading carefully along, feeling my way in the pitch-black, until at last I’d reached that locked door.

  The prospect of cancer, I told myself, was just another mountaintop. Step by step, we’d scale it to see what was on the other side.

  We had each other, and we had Rachael. That was more than enough. And if it wasn’t, well—fuck fear!

  Rachael telephoned the next day. She was weeping. Her voice was breaking when we greeted each other.

  “Rach, what is it?”

  “It’s, um . . .”

  “Is it the blood work? Did you already get the results? Is it bad?”

  “No, it’s . . . um . . . it’s . . .”

  “It’s what?”

  “It’s all so beautiful!” In a burst of words and tears and light laughter, she said, “It’s amazing.”

  “What is?”

  “You know how you posted about what’s going on with Atticus on your blog yesterday?”

  “Yes?”

  “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing here. People have been making donations toward your bill. It’s just beautiful!”

  I hadn’t mentioned anything about money on our blog. I wrote about facing up to our fears and getting ready for whatever was to come. I wrote of the amputation and the possibility of cancer. Donations as large as $500 came in, and as little as $5 (sent from a woman in Maine who had to get by on a disability check). In twenty-four hours, $7,000 came in, and when Deb and Jaime, the receptionists, told them they had enough money for the bill, people asked to be put on waiting lists.

  “Let us know if they need more.”

  The surgery went well. I didn’t want to get in the way of Rachael and her staff, but when Atticus was stretched out and she was removing the aggrieved toe, she kept calling me forward to be as close to him as possible. I placed a hand on him, hoping he’d sense me while under anesthesia. Maybe not in a cognitive way, but in that ethereal bond that connects us to those we love.

  The severed toe was a mass of bone, blood, soft tissue, and tumor. It didn’t turn my stomach. It didn’t do anything to me. I was thankful it was gone, and I knew that soon he’d be able to walk without a splint, and then without a limp. All that was left was to await the results of the biopsy.

  Fuck fear.

  I was with Atticus when he woke up in the little recovery room. There was a cast on his leg and each of the employees at North Country Animal Hospital signed their names on red felt hearts and stuck them to the wrap. He was drowsy when he opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was me, which is what Rachael and I wanted. Several blankets were draped over him, and his head was on my hand, which was on a pillow. He looked worn but calm.

  He didn’t try to move, he merely gazed into my eyes. I stroked his head, running his floppy ears through my fingers, and I spoke softly to him.

  Text messages were lined up on my phone. The front desk was receiving e-mails wishing us well, and wanting to know if there was any news. Virginia Moore, the director of the Conway Area Humane Society, stopped by to say hello to Atticus and to give me a hug. Flowers were delivered to the hospital for us, as were dog treats. Others bouquets were awaiting us on our deck at home. At the center of this buzz was the still point. At the still point we sat together.

  When the anesthesia started to let go of Atticus, I carried him out back. I placed him on the ground and he stumbled about with his long, stiff cast. He was groggy and in some pain, but he hopped farther than I expected him to, ending up in the middle of the sprawling lawn. Eventually he sat down. When I approached him, I realized he was looking through an opening in the trees across the valley to the mountains of the Green Hill Preserve: Black Cap, Cranmore, Peaked, and Middle. Little Buddha had found his mountains even on the day they took a portion of him away.

  Will was never curious about Atticus’s paw or his cast. I’m not sure he had the ability; all his energies seemed to go into living for the next minute. But he was happy when I brought in all the flowers from Carrie’s shop that had been left on the deck, and he hopped up and down when he saw them.

  Christina Morse, one of the moderators on our Facebook page, sent me a recording from the WMWV morning show in which Roy Prescott sent out heartfelt good wishes to his friend Atticus M. Finch, his voice breaking with emotion. Thanks to Roy, many in the Mount Washington Valley were rooting for Atticus.

  We didn’t have to wait long for the results. Rachael described them so even I could understand.

  “It really is very good news that it is not bone cancer and that we got it all. So we can all be very happy right now. The biopsy results came back as squamous cell carcinoma, arising from the nail bed of the second digit. It has low metastatic potential, so it’s not likely to spread, and there are clean margins.”

  When we hugged and celebrated the results, she added, “I can’t believe the support throughout all of this. I continue to be amazed by the response from so many people all over the world!”

  But I soon heard from Rachael again. There were follow-up concerns. “The mitotic index of the cells they looked at is higher than the pathologist is comfortable with. I think we need to talk about our options.”

  The options were to ignore it and hope the cancer wasn’t spreading elsewhere in Atticus’s body or to start chemotherapy. Atticus was eleven. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him having poison pumped into his system at his age. I didn’t want what could be one of his last years to entail six months of chemotherapy. Besides, getting chemo would mean heading to a bigger hospital in Boston, Portland, or Portsmouth, and they wouldn’t bend the rules and allow me to stay with Atticus during treatments.

  Once again, I put my belief in our good doctor.

  “You know, I could do the chemo here so you and Atti could be together, Tom.”

  “I didn’t know you did chemo treatments here.”

  “We don’t. But I’ll get the instructions from an oncologist and I’ll stay in touch with them the entire time. It’s up to you.”

  When Rachael told me she was concerned about the cancer returning and that she’d move forward with the chemotherapy if it was one of her dogs, I agreed with her.

  Twenty-five days after his amputation, Atticus and I stood on top of Black Cap Mountain. It’s not a difficult hike, but because it was the first since the surgery, there was reason to celebrate on the summit. He did well, and you would never know he was missing a toe if it wasn’t for the strange shape of his paw.

  Four years earlier, Atticus and I had stood atop Black Cap f
or a similar rehabilitation hike. Twenty-eight days after I had emergency gallbladder surgery and survived a near-fatal case of septic shock, Atticus had led me up a mountain again. Now it was my turn to walk with him during his recovery.

  With one less toe, he did far better than I had four years prior, hiking with two tubes sticking out of my abdomen, one of which was connected to a large drainage bag.

  When I was in the hospital, the staff let Atticus visit me every day. Each night he’d stay with Leigh Grady and her husband, Kevin, which he hated. It was nothing against them, but he thought his place was with me. Early each morning Leigh dropped Atticus off in my room.

  I smile when I remember Dr. Bob Tilney walking into my room one day to examine me and finding Atticus lying on the bed while I was in a chair next to him. He looked at Atticus watching me from the bed. “Would it be possible for the patient to get on the bed so I can examine him, please.”

  It was all good-natured, since Bob was also a dog lover and had seen Atticus and me tramping around the back roads of Jackson by his farm on many occasions.

  In the days after my surgery, the septic shock still had hold of me. I was weak and in so much pain I could barely sit up. The first day I was able to walk only ten feet, and I thought I was going to faint. The next day it was twenty feet. Within a few days, though, I was following Atticus around the ward. We plodded along. Twenty laps, then forty, and finally about a hundred. Me with my rear end barely concealed by the hospital gown, and Atticus going as slowly as possible in front of me, constantly checking to make sure I was okay.

  The night following Atticus’s first chemo treatment was a rough one. He was shivering on the couch. When he went to the door, letting me know he had to go out, he crossed the backyard and disappeared into the high grass. I found him lying down in it, as if he were hiding from the discomfort. I sat down with him and waited until he wanted to come inside again.

  The next morning, when I awakened, he stared down at me in bed. His ears were riding low. He was trying to tell me something.

  “You okay, Atti? Not feeling well? Come on, let’s go outside.”

  But when I got out of bed, he led me to the kitchen, where he stood next to a pool of diarrhea. It wasn’t from Will, because he had slept through the night and was still under his covers.

  I thanked Atticus for showing me, shook my head in amazement, and demonstrated what an expert I had become at cleaning up shit. I was beginning to see the exercise of cleaning up feces and urine as a Zen thing, albeit one I had to breathe through my mouth while doing.

  Atti’s discomfort didn’t last for long. He was feeling better by the end of the day, and he was full of energy the day after that. He was doing so well that the two of us hiked Pine Mountain to watch the sunset. We gazed at a burnt-orange sun sliding toward the horizon from the top of Chapel Rock. In the quiet, I heard a curious sound off in the distance. It sounded like matching lawn mowers. They were drawing steadily closer. I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Then two motorized hang gliders appeared. The pilots were sitting in little buggies as they whirred in large circles over Pine Mountain. As they neared Chapel Rock, one of the men yelled down to us.

  I couldn’t hear what he said and put my hand to my ear. “What did you say? Couldn’t make it out!”

  He circled back and flew slightly lower. “I said, is that Atticus?!”

  “Yes!”

  “Keep going, Atticus! Kick cancer’s butt!”

  When they flew out of sight and off into the sunset, we had the mountain to ourselves. As the sun plunged behind the western horizon, it left behind a fiery sky. We hurried over to Pine Mountain, half a mile away, to one of the viewpoints we had taken Will to the previous autumn. A full moon was rising behind Mount Moriah. It was enormous, as full moons are when they’re still close to the skyline. Blue turned to dark blue and the black night fell, and we watched the full moon climb along the ridge and glow orange. The way it was riding right up along the mountain, I thought of Sisyphus pushing his giant boulder up the hill, only to have it come down again so he’d have to start anew. I figured that’s what the chemo would be like. Atticus would feel weak, get stronger, and then it would be time for the next treatment. Six were scheduled over the next five months.

  We sat on a large rock and leaned into each other. I held his water bottle out for him to sip from while I drank from mine.

  It had been warm when we started up Pine Mountain, but the air turned that kind of cool that feels like you are almost swimming through it. The scent of the forest rose like perfume, we heard a nearby crash, most likely a moose, and we too became creatures of the night.

  “Thank you for everything.”

  I wasn’t just talking to Atticus.

  When we lived in Newburyport but drove north every weekend, whenever we’d be out on a trail before sunrise or after sunset, I became nervous. The six-year-old we all have inside us would wake up screaming about being afraid of the dark. Walking through the woods with a headlamp only magnifies that six-year-old’s fear. Tree branches become the gnarled hands of witches, and when you turn your head and the tunnel of light catches a glimpse and shadows are thrown, those witches seem to be moving. It didn’t matter how often we walked through the darkness. I was always slightly unnerved, imagining the supernatural more than anything else. Bears and moose didn’t frighten me; we’d seen them before. Once when a supermoon rose in midwinter, it was so bright out I turned off my headlamp. Atticus and I were on South Doublehead, just a few miles from home. Our nighttime trek was illuminated by the moon above and the reflective snow below. It was like walking through a photographic negative. The mountain slumbered, and the only noise was the slap and bite of my snowshoes and the stab of my trekking poles. While moving toward the saddle that dips between North and South Doublehead, I looked up as we cruised along, and just before walking into him, I saw the huge bull moose walking directly toward us.

  “Psst, moose,” I whispered to Atti, and he sat down. The moose was now within a few feet of us. In a hushed voice I asked Atticus to get behind me and was cautious with my movements.

  All three of us were using the same path cut through the deep snow, and I knew this huge beast was not about to back up. He took another step toward us, and I could smell the musk of him in the clean air. He rose above me. I was ready to pick Atticus up and hop off the trail, even if I would be up to my waist in the snow.

  Two more steps forward and we’d bump heads.

  I slowly turned toward Atticus behind me. But before I bent over, the bull took another step, but cut left through the drifts toward the east in the saddle, a place where we’d always witnessed moose activity in the past. He slipped away gracefully, a huge ship passing quietly, with soft grunts and long plunging legs.

  On that same trail, in close to the same spot, one Fourth of July, we ran into a porcupine. We had taken Leigh Grady up to watch the fireworks. Atticus stayed close to me and we crouched down to watch the porcupine. She turned her back to us, but when we didn’t move, she did. She crawled up onto a rock and sat looking at us. It was over in a few minutes, but how exciting it was to see her eyes shine and the tips of her quills illuminated by my headlamp.

  Leigh told me, “I’m glad you are in front in case we run into a bear.”

  “Leigh, not to worry. Most likely, if a bear is going to be aggressive, he’ll come from behind.”

  Poor Leigh, I think she may have spent the next mile or so looking over her shoulder.

  On another night, we actually did encounter a bear. It was deep in a long tunnel of trees on the climb up to North Doublehead, and it was standing on its hind legs. I thought he was a man at first, until he dropped down and ran into the dense growth on the side.

  No, moose, porcupine, and bear didn’t frighten me at night while in the forest. It was more the irrational fears of ghosts and goblins and unnatural things. And every noise that cannot be explained away as part of nature prickles your skin. Many a night I’d find
Atticus watching me curiously as I banged my trekking poles together repeatedly and sang off-key songs.

  It’s strange, though, that when I gave up the Undertoad and began to strive toward the light of life, I was no longer afraid of night hikes. I could feel my breath rise and fall with the rhythm of nature. I learned to relish the freedom of slipping away from the comfort of home as night fell and we became just as ghostly as the spirits I once feared.

  It seems I had left my anxieties back in the man-made world.

  It was in the pitch black of these hikes, in the utter charmed loneliness of late nights, that I realized how special the stars are. Yes, there was darkness, but there were all these points of hope in the heavenly expanse above us.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but that night on Pine Mountain was the last hike we’d ever take at night. Atticus’s eyes were having a more difficult time in the dark, and of course, there was Will to take care of.

  Writing this, I realize how much I miss the many hours we spent walking through the night on a mountain. Eventually, what used to unsettle me—even downright scare me—turned into a communion and affirmation. With some sadness, I wonder if I will ever experience that again. And even if I do, it will be without Atticus, and that brings about an entirely indescribable emptiness to mind.

  Each chemotherapy treatment was harder to recover from than the last. Atticus weakened. Our milder hikes and even our walks grew less frequent.

  The sessions themselves were fine. Rachael and I would laugh, and Atticus would relax as she inserted his port and hooked the tube up to it and the syringe up to that. As she slowly sent the poison into his body, he relaxed even more. Each time I’d place my phone against Atticus’s side and play Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. I would place a free hand under his chin and he’d rest his head on it, look into my eyes, and ease into sleep.

  After each session, we’d stick around for ninety minutes, just to make sure Atticus was handling it well. We’d walk in the hospital’s large yard and find ourselves seated in the grass taking in the view of the mountains. I’d bring a book of poetry with me and read it out loud as Atticus laid his head against my leg.