by Tom Ryan
The war raged on. I had many supporters, but I was on the front lines by myself. I began keeping a baseball bat in my car for protection. Elderly friends sometimes rode shotgun when I delivered the ’Toad overnight to make sure no harm came to me.
I may have been public enemy number one, but I was saved because I was dealing with bullies who weren’t all that bright. They were, to borrow a term from Jimmy Breslin, “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.” Each time they came after me, they’d stumble and trip. It was the Road Runner versus Wile E. Coyote, and a community was watching and often laughing. I received numerous traffic tickets, and there was something outrageous about every one of them. I even received one for driving with worn tire-tread depth. It was written by a cross-eyed police officer who had been driving in the opposite direction. On the day my car insurance lapsed and my registration became invalid, the police were waiting for me with their version of a dragnet, and an officer was assigned to catch me driving. During the morning when several officers extended their breakfast at a local restaurant just so they could do their best to intimidate me at the next table, a bank was robbed on the other side of town. The crooks probably wouldn’t have gotten away had the officers not been busy glowering at me while I ate my bacon and egg sandwich. At a city council meeting, all but four members of the department marched into the council chambers armed and in uniform—bringing to mind a police state—and presented the councilors a letter of complaint against me and my paper. Thirty uniformed and armed officers’ attempt at intimidation was televised, and it backfired. People began taking public stands against the troubled department. A rally of several hundred citizens took place outside city hall in front of the statue of William Lloyd Garrison to decry the behavior of members of the department. Suddenly people weren’t as afraid as they’d once been. The mayor at the time was forced to hire an independent consultant to look at the department. The consultant’s report backed up the years’ worth of stories I had written and even talked about how some local business owners admitted they were concerned that police officers might not protect them because they advertised in or sold the ’Toad.
That’s what was going on in my life when my trash was taken.
I returned from a meeting at city hall, and something looked different. And suddenly it hit me. All the rest of the trash on the street was still there waiting for the trash truck the next morning, but mine was missing. I thought it was curious, but a lot of curious things took place in Newburyport. I made light of it and shared the story with a few friends, one of them a police officer.
The next night I would learn that it was the police who had my trash. Two detectives were sifting through it in search of the sordid details of my life. I can’t be certain what they were looking for, but it was believed they were searching for anything that would tarnish me: drug paraphernalia, child pornography, or perhaps something even more valuable to them—notes that would lead them to the informants within their department who were blowing the whistle on them. But alas, while my life might have seemed exciting to some, I was a boring, albeit overweight, fellow, and what they mostly found were too many Twinkie wrappers, Big Mac containers, and empty pints of Ben & Jerry’s.
Having the police go through my trash shouldn’t have shocked me. I had learned to be prepared for anything. And from the moment I published my first opinions on Newburyport politics, I’d led a controversial life. But it was the missing trash that got to me more than anything else. I felt violated. The very people who were sworn to protect my rights were digging through my personal life to find any way possible to hurt me. In the days that followed, I became paranoid. I’d done nothing wrong, but I half expected the police to break down my door at any moment and haul me away. I stopped sleeping and became increasingly edgy.
I had reached my breaking point.
A couple of weeks later, I received a seemingly harmless e-mail from Nancy Noyes, a member of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals. She sent it to everyone in her address book. There was a dog in need of a home. His original owner decided she no longer wanted him, and he’d been passed on to a family member who couldn’t really take care of him, then to another, who was allergic to dogs. That’s when Nancy intervened. Her plea was simple: “Can anyone give Max, an older miniature schnauzer, a home? If we can’t find him a place, he may be dropped off at the pound, where, because of his age, he most likely won’t be adopted and he will be put down.”
I sat down to write Nancy and let her know that I would run a free ad in the Undertoad trying to find Max a home. As I got ready to type, my mind wandered. I’d always loved dogs, and I thought about getting one again someday. But not now. The time wasn’t right. I was too busy with my paper, and besides, my landlord didn’t allow pets. I wasn’t sure what a miniature schnauzer was, but I figured it was a small yapper you’d see wearing a sweater knitted by the little old lady he lived with. When the time came for me to get a dog, it would be a real dog—a black Lab. Now, that was a man’s dog—handsome, regal, strong, and loyal. The best dog I’d ever had was a black Lab named Seamus, so I knew something about them.
I then thought about how I had read somewhere that if you’re bad at relationships, take a break from them. (And Lord knows I needed a break from them. I wasn’t good in intimate relationships in the first place. What was worse, I had the unfortunate trait of choosing women who were even worse in relationships than I was.) After a while, get a plant. If the plant does well, try a pet. If you do okay with a pet, try another relationship. I looked at the plants turning to dust on my windowsill, and as if in a drugged state I inexplicably typed, “If no one else takes him, I will.” It wasn’t until I pushed the “send” button that I woke up from my daze. I instantly regretted my decision and thought about e-mailing Nancy back. But there were so many people on her e-mail list, one of them would surely provide a home for an unwanted dog.
When Nancy did write back, she said, “Thank you, Tom! That’s great! The two of you will be very happy together.”
What had I done? Where were all those good-hearted people who were going to take him so that I didn’t have to?
A dog meant commitment, and I didn’t want commitment. My life was too crazy for a pet. I tried to think of ways to back out of it. In the meantime I went online to see what a miniature schnauzer looked like.
Oh, my God, it was one of those little yappers!
The next afternoon I was told Max was ready for me to pick him up.
So soon? No. Impossible. I wasn’t ready, hadn’t yet told my landlord (did I mention he didn’t allow pets?), and hadn’t even had time to prepare for a dog in my life or to dogproof my apartment. I delayed by a day and was told I could pick him up the following afternoon. He would be at a local groomer’s, where he’d been washed but not cut.
I showed up without a leash, a collar, or a clue. While waiting for the groomer to make her appearance, I made my way around the room looking in each crate and thinking, That dog doesn’t look too bad, or I hope that’s him. What I didn’t see was anything resembling a miniature schnauzer. Things were seeming hopeful—out of all the dogs in the place, there was only one I wouldn’t want. It was a miserable-looking fellow or gal. Frankly, I couldn’t tell its sex, since it looked more like a sheep overdue for shearing than a dog. While the other dogs were attentive to me when I paused at their crates, the little gray sheep didn’t move. It lay there, uninterested, and for all I knew it was deaf, dumb, and blind. Poor thing, I thought. I pitied the owner of such a little beast and pictured someone just as unkempt and listless.
A moment later the groomer appeared. She was a heavyset woman who breezed in looking like she was in a hurry to get rid of a problem child. After some small talk, I asked, “Is Max in the other room?”
“No,” she said. “He’s right there.”
I glanced behind me. She was pointing at the sheep.
I thought about making a break for it, but she was a
lready unlatching the crate. The lump of hair wobbled out and over to me. I shifted my weight to my back foot, still thinking of running. The sheep came closer.
The groomer hurried us to the door as I protested that I wasn’t prepared. “I don’t even have a leash or a collar. . . .”
“You’ll be fine,” she said. The “fine” part came just before she slammed and locked the door behind us.
I walked over to my waiting car. The sheep followed.
I’ve had only one blind date in my life. The fact that I have had only one should tell you how it went. I opened the passenger door that day to let Max in much as I’d opened it for my blind date so many years earlier—with regret. I had the same feeling on both occasions: hope that neither date nor dog would get in. In both instances they hopped happily into the car. In both instances my stomach sank.
On the drive to my apartment, I occasionally glanced over at Max, wondering what he was doing. He was simply sitting up glancing back at me through the shag of gray hair covering his eyes. We did that a lot that first day, each of us looking at the other. I don’t know how long we sat in silence, but I figure we were both thinking the same thing: What the hell did I get myself into here?
That night I went to a party and didn’t want to leave the little sheep alone, so I enlisted the help of Doug and Barbara Cray, a couple of eighty-something friends who missed having a family dog. I was gone for only a couple of hours, but when I returned, I was greeted not by a little sheep but by a happy dog. Barbara told me that since I’d left, he hadn’t budged from the door. He sat waiting for me to return. It was if he knew we belonged together. Somehow on that very first day, the sheep no one wanted and the man afraid of commitment had already bonded.
Plain old “Max” soon went through a metamorphosis. He got a haircut and finally looked like a dog, and then I changed his name. He became Maxwell Garrison Gillis. Max was just too common, hence Maxwell. Garrison was short for William Lloyd Garrison, and Gillis came from Bossy Gillis. What better names to attach to the dog of the city’s latest independent newspaperman than two of my predecessors’?
Soon he would become known around the downtown and people would greet him by name. Even my landlord, who “just this once” allowed a pet into one of his apartments, snuck him treats.
Since I worked from home, I spent all my time in the front of my studio apartment, either sitting at my desk or sleeping on the couch. Max chose to sleep in the kitchenette. No coaxing would get him to stay in the main room with me, and that would never change. The only time he came to where I was sitting was when he needed to go out.
However, in the world outside my apartment, it was an entirely different story. We were inseparable. Maxwell G. Gillis became as regular a presence downtown as any other local character. Readers of my paper came to know him through my most popular column, “A Letter Home.” It was an actual letter to my dad, and Max often appeared in it. When I delivered the ’Toad overnight, he would come with me and was delighted by the number of subscribers who left treats out for him. He was a regular at city hall and even attended a mayoral inauguration. He got used to walking next to me without a leash and made his way in and out of various stores for treats.
Max was finally living the life all dogs should live. Unfortunately, that would not last.
I had him for less than a year and a half before the seizures started. John Grillo, our vet, told me with a sad shrug, “He’s old.” I knew this to mean he wouldn’t last much longer. I just didn’t realize how quickly the end would come.
Two days later, after a particularly violent set of seizures, I decided I would bring him to Dr. Grillo’s the next day. That night Maxwell G. Gillis and I sat in front of Caffe di Siena and held court as city officials, business leaders, and a handful of good cops stopped by the coffee shop to pay their last respects. As people came and went, there weren’t many dry eyes when they patted his head for the final time.
Later that night, Max once again refused to come into the main living area, so I took my bedding and went to the kitchen where he was lying on his dog bed and lay down with him. I was determined that the little dog who’d been unwanted would not spend his last night alone. And so I curled up with him, felt his weak heart beating, felt his chest rise and fall, felt him fold his back into me like a dog who finally knew what it was like to be loved. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep that night was his peaceful sigh.
The next morning we woke up as we had fallen asleep, and for a little while Max looked just fine, as if he’d never been sick. I was hopeful. Then a seizure struck. He convulsed and collapsed in exhaustion. Another came, and then another. I made the call to Dr. Grillo’s office.
On his final day, we made the rounds one more time and shopkeepers said their good-byes to the dog with the distinguished name who no longer looked like a sheep. It was a difficult day for many, but none more than me. After saying his last good-bye, I carried Max to the car and put him in the passenger seat, and he sat up the way he did that very first day, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. But there was something different about it this time, at least for me. From the very beginning, he was comfortable with me, as if he knew he had a purpose in my life and that I needed him more than he needed me. While he had once seemed like the awkward blind date I couldn’t shake, this time I didn’t want to say good-bye.
We took a final drive around Newburyport from Maudslay State Park out to Plum Island, where he loved to romp on the beach. He gazed out the front window and watched Newburyport fly by. With a mile to go, Kenny Loggins’s song “Whenever I Call You Friend” came on the radio, and it took all I had to be strong for the dog who was a friend when I needed one most.
I stayed with Maxwell G. Gillis and held him while two shots were given and life left him, his body flattening out on the metal table as if his soul had escaped and was now as free as it always should have been. I had a hard time leaving him there by himself, and I stayed for quite some time holding his lifeless body.
For the next couple of days, I mostly kept to myself. When I finally ventured out, it was late at night when no one else was around, and when I walked by the stores where Max got his treats, I was stunned to see that several of them had hung signs in their windows paying tribute to Maxwell Garrison Gillis.
NEWBURYPORT LOST A GOOD DOG TODAY.
WE’LL NEVER FORGET YOU, MAXWELL GARRISON GILLIS.
NEWBURYPORT WAS BETTER BECAUSE OF YOU, MAX.
And there were more. Many more.
When I went to my post-office box over the next few days, I would find more than fifty sympathy cards, some from people I didn’t know. They told me how they already missed seeing Max around town.
The once-unwanted dog had become a most-loved dog, and not just by me. In the end he got to die with the dignity and the love he didn’t know before we met.
During the time we spent together, he not only found a home, he also gave me one. That was something I hadn’t counted on. When I rescued him, I didn’t realize that I was taking the first steps toward rescuing myself.
J. M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, said, “We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.” The loss of my friend made me understand just that. His coming and then leaving were both gifts that reminded me that there was much more to this world than the corruption and wrongdoing I wrote about in my paper.
Maxwell Garrison Gillis had opened a door, and Atticus Maxwell Finch was about to walk through it.
2
“Carry Him Everywhere You Go”
The best advice I received about raising a puppy didn’t come from a book or a class but over the phone from a gritty voice with a southern twang. Paige Foster, Atticus’s breeder, suggested I carry him with me everywhere we went during the first month we were together. I stretched it to two.
“And don’t let anyone else hold him during that time,�
� she added. “He needs to know you’re his family. Y’all will bond that way.”
I owe much to Paige. Buying a puppy from her meant having the freedom to pick her brain, no matter how often I called—calls that in the beginning were more frequent than she bargained for, I’m sure, and were typically panic-driven. I liked her style. She shot straight from the hip and preached common sense with a touch of earthy mysticism. During our conversations, which were always lengthy, I came to think of her as intuitive, and I trusted her in every way. By following Paige’s advice, Atticus and I were able to forgo obedience school, much to the chagrin of various self-proclaimed dog experts we met through the years.
Once, upon seeing Atticus sitting up next to me on a park bench without a leash or collar on, one such expert marveled at how well behaved he was. She had a stern voice that made me feel as if I should be sitting up straight, too. She asked what kind of training I put him through, listing various intimidating words and phrases that sounded to my ear to be Germanic in root and I took to be the schools of thought for serious dog trainers.
I shrugged. “None, really. We just hang out together.”
This did not sit well with her. She sized me up as a rube and gave me a look that fell halfway between pity and a scold before marching off in search, I imagined, of a music store where she could purchase some Wagner.
For as long as I can remember, people have commented on Atticus’s peaceful demeanor. Then, as was almost always the case, they’d ask him to give them his paw. He wouldn’t. Instead he just looked at them, not even bothering to cock his head.
They’d ask again. Again he just studied them.
Then it typically went this way:
“Does he know how to give his paw?”