Page 145 of Before We Say Goodbye
This time, Otis didn’t hold back. “Ahhhwwooooo! Ahhhwwoooooooo!” He felt the power of the universe soar through him. “Aaaahhhhhwwwwooooo!”
The padding of paws sounded in the distance. He felt no fear, only the desperate hope that Amigo’s family was coming for him.
Then it happened.
Amigo let out his first howl. “Ahhwwwwwoooo!”
It came out like a baby speaking for the first time, testing the ability of the tongue.
He tried again and again. Otis joined in, two lost lonely souls out there calling to their loved ones.
Otis howled like he never had before, and he felt the call of the wild dogs and the presence of Rebecca and Cam and Mike, and he howled to them from his core, telling them that he wasn’t done with this life, that he would give it all that he had, that he would do it all for them, in their honor. He would attempt to live this life with the grace that hisfamily taught him, and when his time came, he would drift away from this body and find them in the hereafter.
A proud dog appeared at the end of a row, a beautiful beast of a coyote. The moon cast a shadow of him onto the ground.
“There he is,” Otis said, then noticed the other dogs behind him.
Otis slowly rose and backed away. Amigo stood between him and the others. The coyote pup let loose another howl, this time far bigger, one that cut through the mountain air, showing the world that he, this little guy, had found his family.
He took several steps toward them, sniffing the air. The other dogs made light calls, singing lullabies to him. Amigo grew braver by the minute, moving closer.
Ten feet away, five feet away, and then he leaped toward them, and they all buried their snouts into him, knocking him to the ground. Belly up, he cried with delight, and the other dogs surrounded him in a way only family could.
Though there would always be those pieces of his heart that belonged to those he lost, Otis had never felt fuller in his heart, and he knew that his family was out there too.
When the excitement of the reunion dissipated, the alpha coyote looked at Otis and stared for a long time, eyes on eyes, soul on soul. One alpha to another.
A million things were said between those two, none of them requiring words.
Otis finally gave a nod, and the coyote backed away. He turned his attention to Amigo, who seemed to be smiling beyond those eyes that glowed in the dark.
Otis touched his heart; tears pricked his eyes. “Goodbye, my friend. Don’t go too far.”
He couldn’t know what Amigo was thinking, but they shared something wonderful in that last moment before the alpha gently grabbed Amigo’s fur with his teeth and urged him to follow.
Otis watched as the pack of dogs, Amigo’s pack, meandered off into the night, the moon casting their shadows down as they went. He raised a hand in one last wave, bidding them farewell.
Returning to the house, Otis grabbed a beer from the fridge, because it takes a lot of good beer to make great wine, and he walked into his office and thumbed through his CDs. Finding Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s first album, he set it onto the player and skipped to the song he needed to hear.
“Guinevere,” the song they’d sung at Woodstock when Otis had knelt down into the mud and proposed to his forever girl, filled the air.
Otis sat in the chair he’d been sleeping in since they’d left him, and he wept big tears of loss and finding. He peered up at the urn, hoping and praying that there was more left to life than the ashes that we all became.
A purple bus. Two lovers making a promise in a sea of people. A life spent among the vines, raising two fine boys who lived boldly and beautifully and became damn fine men before they were taken away far too early.
That couldn’t be the end, though. Not even close.
Otis pressed up from the recliner and went to the desk. He took the journal and closed it, its work completed. The rest of what he’d write wouldn’t require a pen. He’d finish this journey out there in the vines, out there making something with what he had left.
Carrying the journal and a pack of matches, he walked to the fireplace and set it down on the grate, splayed open.
This was the way it should be, memories captured in ink but burned into the heart.
Otis struck the match; the flame came to life.
He held the flame under the words that had saved him, the words that Rebecca had urged him to write, the words that only barely scraped the surface of their love story.
As the flame drew near the page, a gust of wind pushed through, blowing out the match.
