Chapter 11: San Francisco
Not far from the ocean swell, after we awoke from our last night of tent camping, Ben and I had our first and only taste of animal wildlife. Up until that moment the wildest thing we had seen was the old woman carrying Ben’s groceries in Randle and the leftist protesters in Arcata. Funny to think that it took us all the way to the Bay Area suburbs but there we were and there it was: the wilderness.
As we began our final breakfast outdoors, in our sequestered little hike and bike camp area, I became aware of a bird that was squawking relentlessly. After a solid five minutes of annoying caws I could ignore it no longer and began searching the bushes around us for its location so that I might close its beak permanently with a well-thrown cooking utensil or rock. A true outdoorsman, of course, would have immediately identified the nature of this bird’s calls but I did not and am not a true outdoorsman. I am not Davy Crockett. Neither am I his sidekick. Neither am I Bill Bryson nor Bill Bryson’s sidekick. Most importantly, of course, is the fact that neither am I a small animal that forages for food on the scruffy hills of Point Reyes for I would certainly have been murdered and eaten long, long ago.
As I scanned the horizon for the bird, my hawk-like eyes picked out something else instead. I motioned to Ben.
“Look: a mother and her baby.”
On the hill across from us was a young fawn with her mother; they both stood as still as statues, never blinking, never twitching — even in the slightest — their delicately poised ears. Suddenly, I put two and two together: they were listening to the bird as well. The bird was trying to tell us something! I looked behind us on the opposite hill to ask the fowl what it was, exactly, it had trying to say lo these many minutes, but before I could utter a single inquiry I finally saw what the hubbub was all about.
“Look,” I whispered, “over there! A coydog!”
Ben turned away from the hillside and looked at me instead.
“It’s not a coydog; don’t be daft.”
Ben and I had had a long standing debate over the existence of coydogs. He did not believe that they were real and was bothered every time I said the word “coydog” in a sentence or wrote it in an email or on a bathroom wall; and he was bothered often because I used “coydog” to identify every wild animal with four legs that was bigger a chipmunk — just to annoy him, of course. But they do exist! They do! Whether or not I have ever actually seen one or correctly identified one in the wild is beside the point. The point is that neither of us know our wild animals from our assholes so my guess is as good as his anyway. And why should I be wrong? Why does Ben get to be the smart one? The clever one? The strong one? The pretty one? The one who holds it all together in his atheistic certainty? When is it my turn to be right? Well, it was a coy dog — that’s how I saw it and this is my story and I’m the one writing it and if Ben disagrees in any way he can type it out on his own time however he wants and I will never correct him or call him names like “you rotten bastard” — which I am wont to do. Right here and now, however, he says what I want him to say, and he does what I say he does because, for once, what I say matters. And I say it was a coydog, and it matters not that it isn’t ACTUAL GOD’S HONEST TRUTH, Ben will agree with me (if just this once).
The bird continued to squawk. After a moment’s pause, considering the hurtful words Ben had most recently uttered, he looked more closely at the four-legged animal, but ten yards away now, and gasped. “Your right,” he said, suddenly, breaking out of a strange trance that had held him for years and caused me much concern, “I’ve been wrong all this time. That is a coydog! Damon, your intellect is amazing and, I must say, you are looking rather handsome this morning with that hint of a red beard creeping out of your lumpy visage.”
“Well, yes, thank you, how kind of you to say.”
“And,” he continued, just as I begun to document his comments with the tape recorder and which I transcribed faithfully later, copied here, and then later still have seemed to have lost, “have I told you lately what a wonderful friend you are and a terrific man and a exceptional cook and overall a gentleman and a scholar?”
“Why no, Ben, you haven’t. But thank you. It means a lot coming from you.”
And then we had a big teary man-hug and I accepted all his apologies and told him that it would be okay; that I was there for him; that he could cry; that I wouldn’t let the coydog or the fawn bite him; that we would always be friends; that I would take care of him; that Heterosexual Life Partnership was about more than proving oneself superior at identifying fauna; that it was all going to be all right.
It was all going to be all right.
DAMON: It is July 15th, Ben and I are packing up the camp for the last time [choked up] and it’s getting all emotional around here right about now. I need a hug.
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