Winter's End

He stood in the darkened living room staring out the large picture window, feeling like a specimen in a primate house. Outside, heavy snowflakes fell circumspectly, like thousands of tiny paratroopers with billowy white parachutes, awaiting a compromise between friction and gravity.

Suddenly, the room flooded with lethargic light, and he found himself staring at his dim reflection. His wife yawned groggily behind him.

“What are you doing up?”

“Got hungry and wanted a snack. Thought I caught something out the corner of my eye outside.”

“What was it?”

He looked at her reflection in the glass.

“Must have been mistaken. Nothing there.”

“Well, do you still want your snack?” She took a step toward the kitchen.

“Nah, I’m good. Let’s go back to bed.”

Shuffling down the hallway together, she hooked her arm around his, and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Wide awake, listening to his wife’s gentle snoring, he felt the fingertips of a headache beginning to gouge at his brain. He closed his eyes tight, counting his breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth.

Intrusive thoughts barged into his mind, commandeering his inner monologue, forcing him to contemplate his sins. His fingers twisted into the sheets, and his muscles contracted as he fought the interlopers. His breath was growing more labored and rapid when he felt a thin but strong, cold hand on his chest.

“Be still now, Walter, be still.”

Walter’s breathing slowed, and his muscles began to yield. Slowly, he released the sheets from his grip.

Opening his eyes, he turned to his wife. She slept still and didn’t appear to have moved at all since he last looked at her.

“I won’t let this be,” Walter rolled onto his shoulder and reached for the beaded lamp chain, fumbling for a second before pulling it and releasing the yellowed light into the bedroom.

“Walter?” His wife mumbled as if she were talking in her sleep. “You need anything? Some warm milk?”

Walter rolled onto his back and found her thin leg with his shaking hand. He patted her gently, then rested it on her thigh.

“Just needed the light for a minute. Go back to sleep now.”

A moment later, she released a sigh and resumed her quiet snoring. The warmth and smoothness of Lettie’s leg calmed Walter, and he drifted into a slumber. He fell into dreams saturated in reds, with images of ratty dogs rooting in deep snow, digging into icy dirt, and whining with pleasurable anticipation. Of cracking bones, and glistening teeth, scraping marrow into slobbering mouths. He dreamed of a crying child, of cowardice, and of fleeing in fear of a feral pack of curs.

As Walter abruptly emerged from sleep, ochre sunshine already illuminated Lettie’s handsewn curtains; their embroidered sunflowers glowed warmly. Down the hall, shuffling and clinking informed him of Lettie's location. The smell of bacon and coffee made his stomach growl, and he rose from bed.

He slid his feet into slippers, donned his robe, and started down the hall. Halfway to the kitchen, Walter’s vision wavered, and his heart quickened drastically. He attempted another step, but electric pain radiated from his left arm through his chest as if he’d touched a live wire. His knees gave out, sending him reeling forward, slouching into the doorframe of the bathroom, smacking his forehead.

Darkness enveloped him, leaving him limp; his weight rested on his face pressed into the carpet's piling. His lungs jerked for air, and his heart fluttered like a wounded butterfly fighting the ebb and flow of a strong wind.

“Oh, my Lord!” Lettie’s voice penetrated Walter’s haze just as he fell into oblivion. She walked as quickly as she could to him and leaned over to put a hand on his shoulder. Walter thought he heard her call 911 as he slipped into unconsciousness.

Walter began trudging upward out of the blackness when he felt a warm, wet nose on his hand, a tongue, fur. He heard a low growl, the snapping of jaws, and a snuffling in his ear that startled him into foggy consciousness. His eyelids fluttered open, and he frantically searched around him, looking for beasts.

“Lettie!” He tried to sit up as he yelled for her.

“I’m right here, Walter, right here.” She stood up from the chair next to his bed and took his hand. Walter calmed slightly and leaned back again. Lettie leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

“Where am I? What’s happening?”

“You’re in the hospital. You had a spill and hurt your head.” She hesitated. “You had a heart attack.”

Lettie nervously smoothed the thin hospital blanket; her fingers passed over a tuft of grizzled hair clinging to the fibers. With a wrinkled brow, she lifted it close to her eyes to examine it. The hair was thick and somewhat stiff.

“Whose dog was in here? Why’d they let it in?” Walter stared wide-eyed at the fur.

Lettie tucked the fur into her handkerchief and replaced it in her pocket. She took Walter’s hand, cupping it between hers. “Shh, hush now, Walter. There was no dog, or beast, of any sort in here.”

“The fur...”

“Walter, enough now. It was just picked up in the wash. Now, close your eyes and rest some more. I’m right here.”

Walter eventually drifted away to sleep with Lettie dozing in the visitor’s chair at his side. He began to dream of childhood. Flashes of a snow-covered world, his dog Lean, his baby sister Marietta, alternated, burning brightly one moment, dissolving the next. He smelled cloying mud, dog dander, the iron in blood. The sounds rose and blended with the imagery; wind thrashing barren tree branches, people yelling, dogs barking and growling, and children screaming.

His sister stood at his bedside, opposite Lettie’s chair. Her face and arms were torn and bleeding; her clothing wet and dirty, punctured, and ribboned.

“Etta!” Walter sat upright as far as his weakened body would allow.

Lettie, startled by Walter’s cry, jerked awake and rose unsteadily to her feet. She closed the gap from the chair to Walter’s bed and took up his hand, caressing his head with the other. Walter turned to her, chin trembling, large, round eyes, framed by sagging and puffy lids, bloodshot and moist.

“Etta. Help Etta.” His mouth remained open, his jaw quivering.

“Walter, Etta is ok. She’s in no danger.”

Again, Walter slept. Dreams returned with a vibrant verisimilitude, straddling the ambiguous barrier between consciousness and oblivion. Before him, Etta led as they crossed the empty lot with its broken yellow weeds, laden with the snowfall that covered everything as far as they could see. They hunched under their hoods as the crisp wind whipped their reddening faces. Underneath the white ground, their boots crunched in the gravel as they stomped toward the construction site, where they enjoyed examining the work and collecting wood scraps and unused nails.

Walter’s long, sinewy Greyhound, Lean, ran around them, investigating; his nose informed him of past and present odors and their hidden meanings. Lean suddenly stopped, whining and growling; ears and tail erect. The dog’s change in demeanor alarmed Walter, and he stopped, calling for Etta to come to him.

As Etta turned, two tall but thinning, hoary beasts emerged from behind one of the skeletal houses.

Walter froze, jaw agape, at the sight of the two coyotes. Silently, Lean bolted toward the two canines, streaking across the field like a blue, organic missile. Before Walter could react, Lean was lost in a chaotic fray. Time slowed cruelly and dramatically, forcing Walter to witness the brutality in minute detail. Snapping fangs, plaque-covered gums, black-tipped gray fur, stark crimson blood, torn flesh.

The animals had broken the ice covering a wide puddle, and they were covered in mud, rolling and kicking and biting at each other. Etta screamed between deep, shuddering sobs, clutching Walter’s arm so tight that he thought it would break.

Abruptly, the growling and squalling and clamping of jaws ceased. Through his shock, Walter realized that Lean no longer fought or moved at all. He lay motionless; his beautiful blue fur mottled with mud, pieces of dead vegetation, and blood.

The coyotes recovered from their massive adrenaline dump enough to become aware of their surroundings again. Visually scanning, sniffing the air, they locked eyes with Walter and began to walk toward Walter and Etta. Walter pulled his arm free from Etta and placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him.

“Etta. We need to leave now, but we can’t run. We must walk backwards very slowly; don’t turn around and run. You hear me?” Etta stared back blankly.

“Etta!” Walter thought he finally saw recognition in her eyes. He moved her behind him, and they began walking backward. As they walked carefully, the coyotes advanced, increasing their speed as they drew closer. Without warning, the coyotes broke their pace and began to run.

Walter fought to remain calm, fought to be courageous, and to protect Etta — but as the Coyotes began running full speed, Walter’s courage failed him, and he turned and ran. Behind him, the agonized, terrified screams of Etta grew fainter as he pushed himself toward home as hard as he could.

A meager funeral was held in a tiny church, converted from a day-old bakery, in a rundown commercial area in Walter’s town. A small, simple coffin, holding what wasn’t carried away by the beasts — what they could find at the site — was unceremoniously lowered into the cold, hard ground in the middle of a heavy snowfall.

As soon as he was able, Walter left his hometown, having spoken to his parents for the last time years earlier. From that point forward, Walter spent his life doing all he could to help others, to bury himself in positivity. He decided quite young never to have children and was fortunate enough to meet someone who agreed.

Outside, heavy snow fell, hanging a dense white blanket over the windshield of the ambulance. Wipers jerked back and forth, frantically fighting against accumulation, and the driver leaned forward, hoping to see through the gaps in the flakes.

Finally, the driveway to the morgue materialized from the flurries, and the ambulance pulled in and parked. The partners unloaded the body and moved it on the rattling wheeled stretcher to the storage room before heading back into the cold.

As the final light dimmed in Walter’s eyes, lenses obscured like cotton, Etta and Lettie and Lean began wavering and shrouding; gradually assimilating back into the countless unseen molecules vibrating throughout the autopsy suite. One day soon, Walter’s own would rejoin the invisible tapestry — from which we all come and to which we will all return.