B (3:17)
On most of his birthdays, Maureen would give Charlie a sweater. Maureen was my dad's co worker. Charlie was my dog. He was a little white terrier, a very active little guy, always snuffling around at something, barking, growling if you took his spot on the couch. But when we'd zip him into that year's sweater, he'd go completely still and he'd get that same stillness when my sisters and I would sit in a circle around him and color on his white fur with magic markers. I used to think he was still like that because he was happy, content to be our little dog. But now, I don't know. Wildness glimmered up in him, though. From time to time he'd chase after vacuum cleaners, growl at bongo drums and suspiciously eye the dishwasher. But he was quiet, mostly stoic. A good listener, my dad's only friend through long stretches. My dad's a guy prone to the nostalgic and swoops of sadness. And I'd stumble in on him on early mornings in tender conversation with Charlie, testing ideas out on him. What do you think, big guy? He'd say. What do you think? I imagined he was very lonely. Charlie, that is, lost in a purgatory where he didn't belong. Okay, congratulations. You've made it this far in someone else's pet story. I promise things are about to change because it's shortly after his 13th birthday. Maureen, I think, got him a little blue jean jacket with a sheepskin inside and Levi buttons. That Charlie got eaten by a pack of wild coyotes. Let me back up just a step or two. This all happened on Cape Cod, the easternmost tail of Massachusetts, where you can find beachgoers in the summer. Kennedys, I think, if you know where to look. And very few predators. A couple hawks, the occasional fox. But other than that, as the local fauna goes, it's pretty much snow white land. Chipmunks, bunnies, skunks. Until the coyotes came. I was about 15 when we first started hearing about them. And for us East Coasters, it made no sense. Coyotes were symbols of the west. Somewhere far, far away from Massachusetts. Somewhere where the land was orange and wide and open. So I looked into it and it turns out that for a long time it was that way. Coyotes, like big states and cheerful personalities, was a strictly western thing. But in the 1920s, people started spotting coyotes in New York. And by the late 50s they'd made it up to Massachusetts. Only they couldn't quite get out to Cape Cod. See, Cape Cod is literally cut off from the rest of Massachusetts by a canal that's almost two football fields wide. So for decades the coyotes were kept on the mainland. Until one night, sometime in the late 70s, a pack of coyotes decided to do what the rest of us do. They gathered up their kids together for a road trip and crossed the bridge, or possibly some speculate swam across the canal. But I think it's a far better image to picture them as silhouettes walking in single file across the bridge with a big white moon behind them. So suddenly they were there. And they started multiplying. More and more sightings of them in backyards and on runners routes. The local press started running articles. Keep your pets in after dark. A cave was found, local lore has it, with hundreds of collars. In 1998, a three year old boy was bitten. And then my sister found a goose completely slaughtered down on a dock by the pond. It was surrounded by a splatter painting of feces strewn so wide she deemed it the of terror. Now it turns out my family came to Cape Cod right around the same time as the coyotes. In the late 70s, my parents bought a cabin in the woods that overlooked a purple marsh. The cabin had a deck and that's where we spent most of our time. We'd sit out there late into the night watching birds, then stars. And that's where Charlie was the happiest. On the deck. He'd pace around occasionally, nails scraping the wood. But mostly he'd just flop down with a sigh, a literal human sigh, and gaze out along with us. We never needed a fence because he simply never left. When the coyotes first showed up, I used to like hearing them. You'd hear it as you lay awake in bed. The howls, sometimes far off, sometimes right up close. It felt thrilling to know that things were happening. Life cycles and grisly nature, predators, prey right outside the walls. It used to make me feel like part of the earth. So here's how it happened from my perspective. It's late August. Sun is setting. We pull into the driveway, but we don't see Charlie on the deck. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. My dad said, no way. Everything's fine. But then we heard a whimper off in the woods. My mom and sisters and I jumped into action. We called for him, shown flashlights. Charlie. But the woods had gone quiet. And I remember this part very clearly. We were all standing out on the deck, craning our necks, listening for something. And just as my dad was forming the words, look, there's nothing to worry about. He'll turn up in the morning. We heard the yelp. So Charlie. That same noise he'd make when you stepped on his tail, followed immediately by the howls. I ran into a closet to hide from the sound. The next morning, there was nothing. Not a shred, not a collar, not a bone, not a piece of hair. They say one way the coyotes do it, especially with other dogs, is that a lone coyote comes up to the dog and starts playing with it. Eventually, they go off together, and after just a few paces, the pack descends. Or a slight variation, a coyote pretends to be hurt. It whimpers and cries and calls out for help. I can only imagine Charlie in that moment. There he is, standing face to face with his past self at long last. I imagine his head looked up a bit, his chest swelled, his ears perked up, and he stepped off the deck. It's right around then that we would have come home. He would have heard us roll into the driveway, seen our flashlights, heard our calls, and for once, ignored us. I wonder how fast it happened. I wonder if he even knew. I imagine he did. I imagine he saw the eyes suddenly, all at once, realizing he was surrounded and thought, I've been had. Well played, my brothers, well played. And I like to imagine a nod of respect on their part before they descended. The morning after it happened, we were empty. My dad couldn't look up. He kept rearranging chairs around the kitchen table as if some new arrangement would obscure the empty spot on the floor. And for so long, that's how we experienced it. It was about us, the family member we lacked. And then one day, years later, it dawned on my sister that for all the sadness we felt, that last moment for Charlie was probably glory. For that one moment, he was wild. He went out like a wild dog. We were all standing out on the deck when she said it. And my mom smiled and said, yeah, that's a nice thought. But then she turned to us. You know, who's to say they got him? Who's to say he didn't off and join the pack?
