Will's Red Coat

by Tom Ryan

  Will’s redemption was too much for me to grasp while it was going on. But in hindsight it was as close to a religious experience as anything I’ve ever known. Several walks a day with Atticus resuscitated me. The forest welcomed us home, and we were able to hide from society, the e-mails and the phone calls and Facebook posts. I was thankful for the kindness, but mostly what I craved was silence.

  In our solitude I truly grasped that Will and I would forever be intertwined—not only with the rest of the world, but within me.

  That’s how I measure how important something is. I look ahead to when I’m on my deathbed, and if something is important enough, if it has touched me with profound intimacy, I believe it will float to the surface when I’m preparing to die. When that time comes, I know I will be visited by memories of Will.

  But for now the days of mourning rolled together. Hours meant nothing. Having gone without a full night’s sleep for most of the past eighteen months, Atticus and I went to bed early. Sleep opened its arms and welcomed me home. We’d be in bed by seven and sleep for twelve, thirteen, even fourteen hours.

  The quieter I was, the more my friends worried. I assured them that all was well, that I had just been through something I’ve never encountered before. They didn’t believe me when I reported that I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t crying. They pushed and pushed for me to say how I was, and eventually it hit me that what I was feeling was humility. I had been humbled by my time with Will. It wasn’t impossibly difficult to deal with his death, because death doesn’t frighten me. What I mourned was the end of the physicality.

  When I thought about Will, I celebrated his life. We should all be so lucky to go out on top. He was loved, and he left hearts heavy with memories and lives inspired by his tenacity. Yes, I was humbled to be part of his story.

  Atticus remained his constant self. It was as if Will had never existed. Knowing him well, I expected that from him. I was the one who needed to recover. Methodically I made my way through our home, throwing out what we no longer needed and removing all the roadblocks I had put up to keep Will from getting stuck in corners and cubbyholes. I washed his things, neatly folding his blankets after they came out of the dryer. I laid them one on top of another, with the same light touch I used to lay them on top of him. Even that simple act was a prayer.

  I knew what I’d do with all of those blankets and quilts. Will had awakened something in me, and I’d long been thinking that I wanted to help others like him. But not just dogs and cats—all animals. A vision came to mind of a small farm, one I can handle mostly on my own, where neglected and abused animals can come to reclaim themselves. I picture a couple of donkeys, some pigs and cows, sheep and goats. I envision a farm for lost causes, where there will be music and laughter and Will’s blankets and patches of wildflowers and sweet william planted wherever joy is needed. It will be a place of tranquility, and the elderly from local nursing homes will be invited to sit with the animals, feed them, pet and touch them. I also see raised gardens they can tend without bending too much or getting out of their wheelchairs, where they can watch the cycle of life play out by the seasons.

  Oh, and those goats and those sheep won’t be treated as goats and sheep, nor will the donkeys and pigs and cows be treated like donkeys and pigs and cows. Like Atticus, like Will, they will be treated as individuals. They will be as equal to me as I am to them. Call it a transcendental farm if you will. Thoreau and Emerson would have been pleased by the concept.

  One day I hope to have the money to do this. When I wrote about it on my Facebook page, many of Will’s fans offered to contribute. I was thankful, but I didn’t want to take their money. There was something else that had me putting it off as well. Atticus had always had me to himself, and he had sacrificed much with Will in our lives. I would like to see what he would do with all those animals who needed to find themselves again, because I understand his ways with troubled souls. But I also knew that for a while at least, Atticus needed it to be just the two of us again.

  With Will’s blankets put away and the house back to normal, there was one last thing to take care of.

  Will’s skin festered with infection no matter how often I bathed and medicated it. One morning, when the sky was gray and cold, and I could feel winter approaching, I washed Will’s red coat. When I pulled it out of the dryer, I didn’t know what to do with it. I sat down numbly and held it in my hands.

  There was no collar or harness, there were no tags. Whenever Will received any of the necessary shots from Rachael, she’d hand me the proper tags and laugh when I turned and tossed them into the trash with a perfect arcing shot.

  There wasn’t even a name tag to hold on to, or else I would have put it next to Max’s on my key chain.

  There was only Will’s red coat.

  I sat with it, holding it in my hands as if I were holding Will himself. A gentle smile came over me. Some laughter too. My chest felt warm, and my hands tingled when I moved my fingers over the soft material.

  A simple coat was part of his transformation. It was for him a superhero’s cape. It kept him warm, it made him feel safe. It was his signature, even when he began to shrink inside of it.

  With Billie Holiday’s voice filling our home, I went to the tool drawer in the bathroom and gathered a few things. Atticus followed me into the writing room, and above that old scratched and scarred Mississippi desk, I attached a large brass hook to the wall. With reverence and gratitude, I hung Will’s coat from it.

  At more civilized times in my life, the Novembers I’d known had felt like loneliness. They sat hollow between the vivid colors of October and the Currier and Ives charm of December. The lonely trees, the way the night steals the daylight, and overcast days have always conspired to remind me of the empty moments of my life.

  When Atticus and I took to the forest, though, my feelings evolved. The trails are quietest in the eleventh month. Mountains stand naked before us. There is a bare-bones feel to them. It’s more intimate. You can see far off into the distance where leaves once blocked your view. Rivers and streams run cold and clear. The sylvan floor is scattered with old leaves, like memories ready to be picked through.

  November has its own smell, a cornucopia of dried fruits and berries, acorns, and chestnuts. Even the desiccated leaves give off a scent that can elevate any day. If you are still, you can even hear November’s song. I used to think of the sigh and cry of the wind through the naked trees as ghostly, but it feels like a welcoming chorus to those of us who have grown comfortable with things at their most basic.

  I also think of a certain leaf that remains behind after the others have fallen: the beech leaf.

  Each spring beech leaves shoot out from their buds with a graceful curve. If you are watching for them, you can’t miss their entry into the world. They are like decorative sabers. But soon they’re swallowed up in the frenzy of late spring as leaves from maples, oaks, hemlock, and birch burst forth. The beech leaves of June are soon anonymous, lost in the uniformity of late spring, and remain that way throughout the summer and into fall. When early October arrives, most trees reveal their individuality with festive ornamentation. But the beech is still an afterthought. Then, when age and wind and rain rob the painted ladies of the woodland of their finery, something splendid is again revealed. The young beech leaves remain, glowing with a lustrous yellow that is surreal.

  Even as they fade, they cling, steadfast, to youthful branches. Some will tumble through a spiral down to the ground, but most hang on, resolute, a spot of bright color in a world of black and white.

  They vibrate in the breeze, sometimes only one leaf at a time when its relatives remain still, as if some tiny fairy is dancing upon it. And when the wind picks up, they whistle through its rush. In midwinter they turn a soft gold, then a papery white, until at last, before falling in spring, they’re as fine as worn parchment. One April day they are there; the next, they are gone, as new buds push them earthward.

  They remind me that sometimes
you have to be very old to be noticed. We don’t all flower at the same time. Ever since his first winter with us, I’ve thought of Will as a beech leaf. Anonymous, perhaps even forgotten for many years, he was at his brightest in the winter of his life. In old age’s dying light, he glowed.

  As I kicked through the fallen leaves with Atticus that November, the beech leaves were more luminous than I had recalled. I often stopped to trace my fingers over them and their tiny veins, to say hello and thank them for their luster.

  I understand that my feelings for November are not universal. Some suffer from seasonal affective disorder and crave the sun of Florida. Some despise the cold. But step away from the malls and the coffeehouses, wrap yourself in your warmest sweater and hat and gloves, get in your car, and drive to a quiet spot where deer roam free. Spend enough time in the quietude, listen to your heartbeat and your breath, and you will no longer fear November.

  Perhaps you will even come to relish the cycle of life. Yes, some plants have gone to sleep and some have died, but they’ve left something extraordinary behind. Their seeds are everywhere. In the drear sits the hope of new life, even if we overlook it. The cycle continues ever onward.

  When I published the Undertoad, I had an important mentor in an elderly fellow named Doug Cray. He was gentle, thoughtful, and at times stubborn. Doug was a retired reporter who’d worked for various newspapers and magazines. His claim to fame, although I’m not sure he saw it this way, was covering Kennedy and Johnson during their terms in the Oval Office. Nothing against the late presidents, but he was more a fan of the jazz greats and would often recount his times with them.

  Doug was forever writing me notes, and he signed off on most of them with the words “Onward, by all means.” It was his way of urging me forward to fight for what I believed in. He was telling me, Keep going, no matter the obstacles ahead.

  When someone who is dear to me dies, I try to incorporate something about that individual into my life. After Doug passed away, I was comforted by his signature line and chose to use it in my own correspondence.

  Through the years it has become a rallying cry for Atticus and me. When facing a steep section of trail and unsure of how we were going to approach it, I’d turn to Atticus and say, “Onward, by all means, my friend.” It worked when Will came along with his endless hurdles too, and when Atticus was battling cancer and the draining effects of chemotherapy.

  In the face of all the death we see in November, and with frozen December approaching, all those seeds scattered across the forest floor are nature’s way of saying, “Onward, by all means.”

  The day after Will died, I asked Carrie to come by and pick up nearly all those flowers people had sent to Will. They were still beautiful and fresh, and I wanted them to continue spreading joy elsewhere. She gladly took them to local nursing homes for those who needed them most.

  I asked her to leave behind the giant vase of roses.

  As October flowed into November, I took a single rose each morning to Thorne Pond and the Saco River. I would read the attached card, then drop the rose in the river and watch it be swept away. I did the same each afternoon out back in the Ellis River. Atticus sat on his usual rock as I hopped from stone to stone until I balanced in the middle of the river and let the current take the rose down to the Atlantic.

  As November came to a close, I took the last rose with me and stood on my stone. The air was crisp, and a little ice clung to some of the rocks. Atticus watched and listened as I read the last card: “Will, I will never forget you. Theresa August, Phoenix, Arizona.” The dried flower sailed through the air, and when it hit the water I watched it float gracefully away. I followed its course until my eyes came to Aragorn on the other side of the river. He sat watching us, just he had that day earlier in the year in our backyard. I nodded to him.

  The three of us considered each other as friendly neighbors do. When I could no longer see the rose floating downstream, Atticus and I turned and headed through the brush and up the hill to our home. It was the last time we’d see Aragorn that year.

  When do you lose someone forever? When are they really gone? I’m convinced it happens when they are no longer in our hearts. I knew Will wasn’t walking with us, but I also knew he was there. The last rose may have floated out of sight, but that little white dog never will.

  Just as I took Doug Cray’s words and made them my own, I carry Will’s resilience and his reclaimed innocence in the words I refer to as Will’s Wisdom.

  It’s never too late to trust again,

  to love or be loved again,

  and it’s never too late to live again.

  13

  Onward, by All Means

  You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

  —THOMAS MERTON

  It’s a year to the day since we said good-bye to Will in the Iron Mountain meadow, under the watchful gaze of Passaconaway and Agiocochook. I think about him every day. It’s always with a smile. His bright eyes; his bouncy, drunken trot; his red coat. There is no sadness. When there are tears, they are because of what we accomplished together. I find myself saying to him, “We did it. We really did it!” Long after those words are spoken, the smile remains.

  It’s my favorite time of the year, when the leaves have fallen, except for the beech leaves. This is their moment, and even as they fade, they still remind me of all that is beautiful and possible. Of course they also remind me of him. I no longer consider them beech leaves, but Will leaves.

  On our walk at Thorne Pond today, we brought apples to feed the beavers. Atticus and I sat together as they swam up to us. Earlier in the year the young ones were skittish and would slap their tails at our passing, warning us away. But now they realized we were not a threat. They climbed up and sat with us as I rolled apples to them.

  From there we stopped off at the long band of milkweed pods. They had been opened for a long time. Some still had their seeds, and I collected them in a small bag to bring home and plant in Will’s wildflower garden and watch them grow in the spring. They draw monarch butterflies, who need all the help they can get, as humans have poisoned their food supply with pesticides.

  When we walked down one of the paths that took us into the belly of the forest, I heard a gunshot in the distance, in the hills beyond. It’s bear-hunting season. I thought of Aragorn and prayed he was okay.

  The other day a local hunter created quite the outrage in the valley when he killed the mother of the Jackson Five, leaving the maturing cubs to fare on their own. These were not the cubs that used to watch Will, but a second set from the same mother.

  Atticus was happy, although his hiking days were behind him. We still got out for two or three woodland walks a day, each at least a mile. He was in good shape, although he was half deaf, and his eyes had difficulty in the contrast between the bright sun and shadow. But we were grateful for what we continued to have. Once in a while we’d climb a simple hill with a view that was made to fill the heart, but I’d tell people when they asked, “He’s retired.”

  When they ask how many mountains he’s been on top of, I have to admit I don’t know. It is anywhere between two and three thousand. I stopped counting long ago. As it turns out, it was never the numbers that mattered.

  Since Atticus doesn’t hike anymore, neither do I. I’m sure I will again one day, but not now, not while we are still sharing our lives. Hiking was always something we did together.

  I miss it, and I wonder if he does too. He still likes to be active. He’s not a big fan of sitting around our home. He looks at me while I’m at my writing desk, and sits and stares until I say, “Okay, you want to go out?” He can’t always hear the words these days, but just as I did with Will, I continue to say them. He responds more to my actions. The moment I turn in my seat, he hurries to the back door. It’s good to see so much l
ife left in my friend.

  At night, I dream of the mountainsides and mountaintops we’ve climbed. In the midst of an afternoon walk, I follow Atticus down a trail, and there is something bittersweet about how many times I’ve followed him before. I think of pushing through the wind and temperatures below zero on Franconia Ridge, or stepping from the trees onto to that stone stage on Mount Garfield that looks out on the Pemigewasset Wilderness. I remember days we were so cold that our gear froze, and how we had to keep moving on winter hikes so that he could stay warm. The memories of all those peaks return to me, even as we make the most of our current days. When I miss them too much, I take heart in knowing that every one of the mountains we’ve climbed is a part of us.

  When someone asks me to name a favorite hike, too many come to mind, but there’s one specific route I think of that changed everything for us.

  It was a June day during our second year of hiking when life was still hectic, but getting ready to change. Atticus still wore a collar, I owned a newspaper, and we lived in the redbrick city. It was before the bears and the little white dog and the cancer came. I didn’t know it then, but we were on our way to finding simplicity.

  We started just after sunrise, pulling into the Oliverian Brook trailhead. Within minutes, I had taken the bike from the rack on the Ford Focus and we were headed three miles up the road through the chilly air.

  The only traffic was two logging trucks coming in the opposite direction. The truckers gave us a surprised double take. At that quiet hour one expects to see moose and bear along the scenic two-lane Kancamagus Highway, but I’m sure they didn’t expect to see a little dog sitting in a basket attached to handlebars, looking relaxed and self-assured, his ears flapping out to the sides and behind him, and a heavy man pedaling madly uphill while wearing a backpack.

  We left the bicycle chained to a tree, and Atticus watched me when I started the stopwatch on my wrist. “You ready?”

  He turned quickly, bounding eagerly up the Pine Bend Brook Trail.