Will's Red Coat

by Tom Ryan

  “Really? Do you think I am?”

  “In a lot of ways. In the ways that I loved about him. You do things for me that he used to do. I’ll talk about a book I want to read, and you’ll send it to me. I’ll get a card from you, and there will be a check in it, just because. That’s the part of you that’s like Jack. He could be so kind.

  “He would have been so proud of all of this. You being a published author would have given him something to brag about, even if he wouldn’t have said a word to you about it. He’d tell me. He always did.”

  When Marijane and I talked, there were few limitations. She’d even ask me about my sex life.

  “I’m not going there, Marijane.”

  “Why? We talk about everything else. It’s part of your life.”

  “I don’t mind telling you about my relationships, but I feel a little uncomfortable discussing my sexual history.”

  “Fine, I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m a good listener. You know I am.”

  “And you’re also a seventy-eight-year-old virgin.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised!”

  “What? You’re not a virgin? How many lovers have you been with?”

  “Um . . . none, but I’ve counseled many. You would be surprised what I know.”

  “I’d rather not know.”

  We’d go on in this way, the laughter building the longer the conversation went, until finally we laughed so hard our bellies hurt. Before hanging up, she’d add, “Remember, if you need to talk about that part of your life, I’m here.”

  “And I’m hanging up now. I love you.”

  “I love you too. Walk in beauty.”

  Marijane never failed to ask about her friend Atticus, and about Will, whom she’d never met. We talked about us taking a road trip out to see her, but I wasn’t sure about bringing Will that great a distance. I’d already decided against a return trip to Provincetown in February, because I didn’t feel he was up to it. Mostly what he needed was just what he was getting: quiet time, care, good food, flowers, music, and friendship.

  Will would still dance and give a half spin in a drunken fit of love for me, but his endurance was waning. As the weeks passed, his skin became even more sensitive, and I took to bathing him once a day. He enjoyed my attention, even if he couldn’t stand up on the bath mat in the tub as he had in previous months. He was patient when I lathered him up and rinsed him off.

  Sometimes Atticus would come in to watch us as I bathed Will. Together like this, seventeen-year-old Will seemed younger than Atticus, who was twelve, between Atti’s stoic nature and Will’s reclaimed sense of wonder.

  One evening, while Atticus was on the couch and Will was sleeping, I went to shave. I looked at my reflection as I smoothed the cream over my chin and cheeks. There were lines under my eyes, the result of addressing Will’s nighttime needs. But even with those lines, I noticed something in my eyes that hadn’t been there a few years ago. I saw an ocean of calm. My body was tired, but my spirit had grown peaceful.

  Life has a strange way of leading you to where you need to be. Atticus and I were barely hiking any longer, and I believe we both missed it. My bank account was depressingly low. Will needed attention nearly twenty-four hours a day, and I wondered how long I could go on like that. But I saw in my reflection the same calm and warmth I had always heard in Marijane’s voice.

  I felt a soft poke against my lower leg. It was Will, looking up at me with eyes earnest and bright. They had never been so big or so kind. I dropped down to my hands and knees to face him. I kissed him and he rubbed his head against mine. When I stood up again, he stayed to watch me finish shaving. He leaned against the door, seeming like a friend I’d known for years.

  Will and Atticus were continuing to motivate people like Annie, helping them to believe again when life may have been cruel or callous. My two friends were like kites in the wind, and as they floated by, people saw them and were lifted as well.

  I’d read testimonials from people who’d been in the hospital for weeks recovering from a stroke or an amputation or some other serious operation and were inspired by Will to not only live, but live well. Widows wrote to say they’d been heartbroken and in despair but used the example of Will to help them go on. And a particular kind of story was especially moving to me, hearing from people who’d lost a dog or cat and feared loving and losing another. Many people wrote to say they were opening their hearts again—and choosing this time to adopt an elderly animal they’d never have given a second glance to in the past.

  Will and Atticus were changing their corner of the world, lifting up those who witnessed their lives on our Facebook page.

  When I turned back to the mirror to wash off the rest of the shaving cream, I looked into my own eyes again. I’d never really done that before. Perhaps I was afraid of what I’d see, or maybe it was what I wouldn’t. But on that frigid winter night, while the snow was falling yet again and winds lashed at the house and the door rattled and windows shook, I understood that I too had been changed. I had something more than contentment—perhaps I was full of what matters, and no longer fearful of what didn’t.

  A week later, while I was on the phone with Marijane, she told me her shoulder was hurting after a fall. It wasn’t healing the way she expected it to. There were other aches and pains, things she didn’t complain about typically. It got worse, and a home health aide came to help her until she felt well enough to take care of herself again.

  By the time spring arrived, Marijane was in the hospital. The saintly woman who had so often ministered hospice care was suddenly receiving it herself. We talked a few times on the phone. I could hear she was tired and weak, but she was in good spirits. I told her I would call her again.

  The phone rang the next day. It was Marijane’s closest friend, Julie. Doctors didn’t think she’d make it through the night, and she wanted to say good-bye. Her voice was strained, but even then the calmness was there. I could feel it as we spoke our last words to each other. She promised to say hello to my father for me.

  I said, “How do you know you’ll see him up there? He could be down there.”

  Even at the end of our days, there was laughter. A few more words were spoken, I told her I loved her and she said the same to me. Then the words were harder to come by on both ends.

  There was a shattering pause. I listened for anything.

  I waited.

  “Tommy . . .” Marijane was very quiet now. Her words were slow. “Tell Atticus I love him. Walk in beauty, you two.”

  Walk in beauty.

  Those were the last words she said to me. She died peacefully the following night.

  For much of the rest of the day I sat thinking about her.

  I didn’t sob breathlessly or mourn until I got sick. I sat still, as she used to do for hours on days she meditated. I took breaks for Will or to get some water. Other than that, it was stillness. Marijane was not frightened at the end. She accepted it.

  I looked at the pile of books we’d read together. Thumbed through some of them, put them back on the table. One at a time I picked them up and flipped through the pages. They were dog-eared, highlighted, underlined, and scribbled in. In the margins I’d find words I’d scratched and others Marijane had brought up that I wrote in my copy. The books, the notes, the lived-in pages—they were like old maps shared by nephew and aunt. They’d taken us this far together. Now we were apart. But I didn’t feel lost. And I didn’t feel I needed the maps anymore.

  Instead, I closed my eyes and thought of her—and there she was. Not far away. I could hear the laughter and her wisdom, the way she listened.

  She would have smiled to know that when I opened my eyes, Atticus was sitting on the couch, just a few inches away, staring at me. We were off to walk the trails to the forest and to heed their invitation to “come closer, come closer.”

  That night, when I tucked Will in to an old Andre
ws Sisters recording of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me),” I watched him drift, feeling safe under a quilt.

  I played the song repeatedly.

  Two and a half years before, when Marijane was on the book tour with Atticus and me, I surprised her by pulling the song up on my phone and plugged it into the car speakers. That night, on a long ride back from Northshire Books in Vermont, I could see the tears flowing down my aunt’s face. She grabbed at my hand and held it tight. She continued to look away from me out the passenger-side window.

  It was the only time I heard her cry.

  We held hands until the song finished.

  “You remembered. You remembered when I told you that Jack used to sing this to me when he came back from the war and I was so young.”

  10

  Celery

  Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.

  —PYTHAGORAS

  The word that most often came to mind while playing with Will in our backyard was numinous. There was something charmed and spiritual in his transformation. In the hours of soft light, early in the day, and late, when shade stretched out on the grass, he often seemed to glow. If a shaft of light was slanting down, it always appeared to catch him and follow him as he circled and trotted.

  His had become a full life, with every little flower and weed the object of several minutes of devotion. In the lazy summer days, he luxuriated in the cooler hours, then found refuge under the flow of the air conditioners when the sun was overhead. He’d sleep that part of the day away. When the air conditioners were off, he’d pant, so they were on most of the time from May through the remaining summer months. But he still wanted his quilts piled up on top of him when he slept.

  When the sun dropped behind the tall trees out back, we’d return to the yard, with the crows and chipmunks never too far away and always watching him, clucking and chattering. They’d be out of sight, but as soon as we came down the stairs, the crows would come flying and land on branches just above us.

  While they watched him, Will kept his eye on me, making sure I was never far from him. His wildflower garden thrived, filled with color and butterflies. Bees zipped this way and that to collect their pollen. The pumpkin patch looked hopeful. The whole yard, which would never be seen in a Better Homes & Gardens spread, was our own timeless Garden of Eden, where anything seemed possible. Guided in part by Will, I was allowed glimpses into a world I might not have noticed before.

  Many a morning I’d lie next to Will, both of us on our bellies, looking at miniature strawberries hidden in the grass, or the bright yellow of a dandelion, or an unknown purple flower. He’d sniff everything. I would too, because I wanted to see what Will’s world was like, and appreciate his way of appreciating it.

  On those afternoons, with Atticus sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs while I was on the other, Atti enjoyed playing the sentinel. I followed his eyes to see the slightest movements around us. Never chasing, but always capturing the lives of nature scurrying, flying, and hopping about.

  Atticus was showing no ill effects from his chemotherapy. His missing toe was never an issue. We still got out for hikes, but they were shorter because Will needed me at home more. Gone were the marathon treks of the past. Rarely did we go more than six miles, but I didn’t miss it all that much. I was still finding what I needed. And I think Atticus was too. He always enjoyed our times away on the trails when it was just the two of us, or on the rare occasion when we joined Ken and Ann.

  I could always tell when Atticus needed a hike. It was about the same time I did. We’d both get restless. He’d sit by my backpack or at the back door. When we’d go outside, if we hadn’t hiked lately, he’d sit by the car. He had his ways of making himself heard.

  We concentrated on less known mountains, which were still profound in their ways. We were introduced to many of these by Ken and Ann, who had been hiking for more than forty years, although we returned the favor by taking them to Pine Mountain and Thorne Pond.

  Less strenuous didn’t mean less exceptional. A mountain doesn’t know how big or small it is. It simply is. It doesn’t get caught up in the mundane the way we do while massaging our egos, or being urged onward to always do more, to always keep up with others. Increasingly, I understood that happiness comes at the places where we can be still.

  Finding the right match of activity and stillness had become my quest. Whenever we set out to hike, I’d choose three trails relatively close to each other. If the first parking lot was crowded, we’d go to the next. If that was just as busy, we’d go to a third. It was easy enough to find a mountain that was not popular on a particular day or a given time. We’d often set out before sunrise and arrive at home by ten in the morning, already having had a full day. At other times, we’d wait until sunset, when everyone else would have finished hiking, or nearly so.

  In that quiet, in the calm we’d find on a hidden ledge or on a summit without others around, without cell-phone conversations or selfie addicts clicking away to fill up their Instagram feed, we found what we needed.

  Back in our home, I had to be on call for Will, but on a mountain path, we replenished our peace and our need for exploration. It was in the stillness that we fed our souls, but in movement where we spread our wings.

  New Hampshire’s landscape was still teaching me what I needed to know. The forest had been my classroom and my church; it educated me and centered me. But my continuing education didn’t stop there.

  I had long ago set out to teach Atticus to be gentle in considering all life, but after those years with him, and our time with Will, and the comings and goings throughout our little patch of land halfway to wild of those who were not domesticated, I realized that it was my time to learn more about what being gentle meant. Richard Bach was correct in Illusions when he wrote, “We teach best what we most need to learn.”

  For half a century, I never gave much thought to what I ate. Big Macs, Whoppers, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and Ben & Jerry’s were all washed down with two liters of Coke or Pepsi a day. My vegetable of choice was french fries, or whatever was layered on my burgers and subs. But that started to change when I began spending time with Susan Carter. She was the daughter of a friend, and she had been a vegetarian since before she was ten years old. Susan was an excellent cook, and if we had plans to have dinner at her house, she’d ask what I wanted.

  “I’ll just have whatever you’re making.”

  “I’m a vegetarian, but I don’t mind cooking meat for others. I do it all the time.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll have what you’re having.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  During my meals with Susan, I began to discover foods like quinoa and kale. I’d never heard of them before. The meals I had been eating before Susan introduced me to whole foods were made from ingredients that came from a science lab. For the first time in my life, I started appreciating broccoli and asparagus, things that used to make me gag when I was younger. Not that we had them very often when I was growing up. Supper was always pork chops, fried chicken, or London broil. Vegetables were some form of potatoes, green beans, or corn, and a small wilted salad made up of tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce.

  The first time I ate dinner at Susan’s house, she served quinoa with almonds and dried cranberries in an acorn squash. My first meal without meat was a success. I felt cleaner and healthier.

  In the coming months, I learned about tofu, and how it could be made to taste like almost anything. I ate more rice, couscous, and something called millet. During those long stretches of time when I wasn’t eating with Susan, I started experimenting with black-bean and veggie burgers and steamed vegetables. Who knew that cauliflower could taste so good?

  I was still eating meat, but I never felt healthy after I did.

  When I wasn’t making it down to Massachusetts and Susan Carter’s kitchen as often, I began experimenting more on my own. I watched the docume
ntary Forks Over Knives and started giving some thought to the impact my food choices were having on animals I professed to love. The film introduced me to the work that Gene Baur and his staff were doing at their Farm Sanctuary locations in New York and California. And as I read more about eating a plant-based diet, I was introduced to recipes without meat or dairy, which would have seemed impossibly foreign to me in the past.

  While others might have adopted this way of eating for their health or the environment, my reason was simply compassion. After all, who was I to tell Atticus it wasn’t cool for him to kill a vole while I was eating other animals, most of whom suffered during their short but hellacious lifetimes on factory farms?

  One of my heroes is Dr. Jane Goodall. Her life’s work with animals and her compassion for those who cannot speak for themselves and for the good earth itself often nudge me in the right direction. When she speaks, I listen, and in turn I find myself becoming more human.

  She wrote: “Thousands of people who say they love animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs.” I realized that through my ignorance and my decision not to look at what I was eating more closely, I was part of the problem she addressed.

  I love animals, and yet I had done my best to ignore where the hamburger on my plate came from, the suffering of chickens that led to buffalo wings, or how many lives had to be sacrificed to fulfill my desire for barbecued ribs.

  I learned something about my friends when I announced I was going to change to a vegan diet. I already knew that people like to argue about religion, politics (especially in an election year), and dogs (the right way to raise and treat them and what to feed them). Suddenly I was learning that people liked to get angry about food choices. Many I knew were mad at me for giving up meat and dairy. They attempted to shame me, and would laugh at what I was eating. I didn’t mind that they continued eating steaks, chicken, and pork chops. I couldn’t care less about them eating cheese and ice cream, and drinking cow’s milk. That was their choice. But for some reason, they were threatened by my choice, even as I stumbled into the produce section of our local Hannaford supermarket seeking out food I’d never heard of before, such as daikon, star fruit, and gingerroot (which looks like misshapen gnomes who have been tortured into their twisted positions).