I found it in a muddy hole in an old redwood grove. Who knew how long it had been down there. Its fur was matted and it was ghostly thin. It didn’t look much like a coyote at all, but something almost reptilian: a living fossil dug up near an old hiking trail in Henry Cowell Redwood State Park. I pulled it gently from the hole and carried it back to my car, where it laid quietly in the backseat the entire drive back into the city. I looked back in the rearview mirror a few times, and thought I caught it staring out of the window and up at the moon. At last, when I parked the car, I carried it silently up the steps and into the crooked Victorian.
“What trouble you must’ve gotten yourself into,” I said as I drew the bath. I had swaddled it in a towel and laid it on the bath mat. “We’ll get you cleaned up.” And I did. I gave it a bath in the clawfoot tub. The silence between us was amplified by the groaning of the pipes. The white porcelain amplified the black water. Every so often, the coyote would pull its head away from me to face the small window above the toilet.
After the bath, I dried it off and brushed out its fur, paying close attention to its pain. Once it was clean, I dressed the wound on its hip and laid it down to sleep on a crushed velvet chaise lounge in the fainting room. Built-in shelves filled with books lined the walls. The books spilled off onto the floor where they piled up like paper stalagmites, towering up to the ceiling, blocking the windows and vents. In so many ways this room was like a cave, but in so many ways these books made it home.
“This is the safest room in the house,” I said. “You’re so lucky I found you.”
* * *
The following morning, the coyote was gone. When I opened the doors to the fainting room, a man was lying in its place, naked on the chaise. My immediate reaction was to flee, but then I saw the bandage on his hip so I made him some breakfast and put on a pot of coffee.
“You must be hungry,” I said, waking him.
He turned and looked at me with deep silver eyes and, seeing the clothes in my hand, he took them from me. With little assistance, he dressed himself.
I helped him walk to the kitchen and helped him in his seat. Then, the two of us ate in silence. He picked up the coffee mug with his fists and blinked wildly as he slowly brought the steaming cup to his face. He took a loud slurp and then winced at its bitterness.
“Here,” I said. “try this.” I stirred some milk and sugar into his mug. He looked at it, then up at me and then back down, as if I had performed some act of sorcery in front of him.
I inched it forward in front of him like I may have put a saucer of cream in front of a kitten.
Apprehensively, he lifted the mug with his fists and took another sip. This time, his eyes widened and he licked his lips fervently. He took another long dram.
“Careful,” I said. “You’ll burn yourself.”
He continued to drink.
“Here,” I said. I got up and took his hands in mine. “Like this.” I opened his hands so that his palms held the cup as if he was catching a large moth. His hands were cold beneath mine but, together, we felt the warmth inside the cup.
As the evening waned, we took to the living room and sat by the fire. I made us some tea and I read a book. He looked at me curiously from the threshold of the doorway and I beckoned him to join me on the sofa. He slowly made his way over, his balance having improved greatly from that morning. It seemed he could put more weight on his right leg.
“It’s a book,” I said. I flipped through it. “These are pages. Each page has these markings called letters, and when you put the letters in different orders they tell different stories.” I read to him for a little while but soon he was tired, so I helped him into the fainting room and bid him goodnight. It must have been a long and challenging day for him.
* * *
I laid in bed unable to sleep. The moon was just above the rooftops outside my small bay window and it called out to be adored. Bright and full and silver. I’ve always felt a coldness from the moon--not of malice, but of loneliness, with not even an atmosphere to hold it close. All it had was the light of the sun as it walked away, and it shined it back down towards the earth, lamenting, love me, love me, love me. But I felt a weight from the moon then, and I caught myself shying away from it quite a few times.
“It’s just the moon,” I said to myself, but I was not entirely sure I hadn’t already allowed it to become something else.
* * *
I made a small breakfast. A French omelet with lox and capers, raspberries with cottage cheese, grapefruit juice and, of course, coffee. I stirred milk and sugar into his coffee and, as I placed the mug on the table, he entered the room.
“Smells delicious,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, and sat down.
We ate.
“Your English is impressive,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said.
“How did you learn so quickly?” I asked.
“I helped myself to the books in my room.”
My room, he said. It had a wonderful ring to it.
“All of them?”
He nodded, and said, “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” I said. “They’re there to be read. I’m glad someone is making use of them.”
“Have you read them all?”
“Most of them. Over the years. They’ve been good company in this old house. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I could read that many in one sitting.”
“I guess time is different for me.”
“And who are you?” I asked.
“I’m whatever I need to be. When I read Salinger, I was Caulfield. When I read Oscar Wilde, I was Dorian Grey. When I was in the woods, I was a coyote. And while I’m here...” He let his sentence die there.
“Have you ever been a man before?”
“I can’t say. My memory isn’t bound to linear limitation or circumstance. It’s a pool not a bank. I remember only what I need to remember.”
“Where did you come from?” I asked, pouring more coffee.
“I was born out of necessity,” he said.
“Whose?”
“I don’t need to know.”
“Does that not matter?”
“I suppose not, as long as the need is met.”
“And what need is that?”
“That’s not for me to say. I am a map, not a guide.”
“Well. I’m glad you’re here. I haven’t had many visitors. I can’t even remember the last time I set the table for two.” That wasn’t entirely true. I could remember the last time, and the time before that--I just preferred not to.
He did not respond.
“Are you saying you need to be here?” I asked shyly.
“I needed to be found, yes,” he said. “The necessity beyond that isn’t mine to know.”
* * *
“Do you have a name?” I asked. The fire was dwindling so I placed another log on it. It had taken me a while to summon the courage to ask for his name. I feared there wouldn’t be a need to tell me. We were on opposite sides of the sofa.
“I’ve had several, but I don’t remember any of them.”
“What can I call you?”
“Whatever you need to.”
The fire grew and soon we were cast in amber.
* * *
The moon seemed to listen outside my bay window. I had never noticed how clear a view I had of its arc. It rose and set right outside my window as if for me alone, as if I was all alone on this peninsula. And hadn't that been true in so many ways for so long? The moon listened, but what did it think? Did the moon sense the same coldness from me that I had felt from it? Did the moon pity me? I looked out at the moon as if it would confirm my intuition. It did not. It just hung lazily in the velvet night.
I see you, it may have said, we are not so different, you and me. We go round and round. For what... for who...?
I crept out of bed and down the long, tall hall, towards the fainting room. I rested my ear against the door. Total silence. Had I expected something else? I wasn’t sure. I marveled at what could be on the other side of the door. What form did the specimen I found in the forest take now? What did it become when it slept, when we are all at our most vulnerable? I imagined him not only reading the books on the shelves, but becoming them: being whatever was needed of him. His elusiveness and mystery were as alluring as his beauty. And he was beautiful. The beauty in him was beyond physical, it was the kind of beauty that moved. He was performance art.
I placed my hand on the knob, wanting to go inside and lie with him on the chaise, to wrap my arm around him and let him know that he was safe and that he would remain safe. To be with him. To love him. To call him what I needed to call him.
I decided to let him sleep.
* * *
I grew fond of cooking for him and serving him. Whenever he ate, it was as if he was tasting everything for the first time. I would tuck a napkin under the collar of his shirt, place the plate in front of him, and he would eat with such pure unadulterated joy that it made me resentful. I thought maybe I lacked a certain capability to appreciate anything so simply and fully.
He laughed at all of my jokes. He had never heard one before.
I taught him how to tend the fire and we would talk while it burned.
“What is it that you need?” I asked him one night.
“I don’t need,” he said. “I am.”
“If you fulfill every other need, who fulfills yours?”
He looked at me, blinked, and then tended the fire. Afterwards, I would help him to bed on the chaise, leaving him to his solitude and his books. Then I would make the long, lonely walk to my room.
* * *
“Are you real?” I asked him.
“What is real?” he asked, poking the fire.
I didn’t know how to answer that.
* * *
The hall seemed to get longer and longer each night. It became harder and harder to say goodbye and goodnight. And every night, there, at the hall’s end, gleaming brightly in the crooked bay window, the moon appeared. A voyeur, an un-welcomed spectator.
“What do you want?” I asked it. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The moon, of course, said nothing.
I scoffed and shied away from it, turning over in the bed.
But its luster filled the room with mythical blue light and it became inescapable. My bedroom door was open and light shone brightly on the door of the fainting room. What would he say if I asked him to follow me one night, to share my bed? Even if he slept at the foot, like a loyal but well loved pet could I reduce him to that? Was I such a slave to my own needs?
Sirens rolled through the streets of the city, sounding like a pack of howling wolves.
* * *
“You’re healing nicely,” I said one night as I changed the bandage on his hip. I must confess, I was not entirely forthcoming with him. He wasn’t healing nicely, he had healed nicely. Was that a lie or semantics? I felt manipulative and I felt ashamed. But was I not vindicated? Did he not say he was here to fill a need, and whose could it be besides my own?
Admittedly, I was afraid. Afraid that when he was able, he would leave like the other men in my life had, leave me to my single table settings, and all those books that filled my head but not my heart. And hadn’t I waited long enough? Didn’t I deserve to sit on the couch while someone poked the fire, to love someone so simply and so fully?
I peered out of the window and searched for the moon. It was not there. So I put a fresh bandage on his hip.
* * *
The moon came to me in a dream. I was in a small, wooden rowboat on a still lake. The sky was full of stars. Stretched across it were eight moons, one for each of its phases. They bowed above me like a threshold. In the water, they bowed beneath me like a cradle. One by one, each moon was pulled into the water like white balloons tied to strings where they came together as one bright light in the front of the dinghy and spoke to me. When it was done, the light turned into the lure of a giant angler fish and swallowed the boat whole.
* * *
So, one night, after I bid him goodnight in the fainting room, I closed the door behind me and locked it. I turned back and spoke to him through the door.
“The moon is looking for you,” I said flatly. “They want to take you from me. I don’t know how I know, but I do. I can feel it.”
“You know because you need to know.”
“Why would they want to take you from me?”
He paused, and then said, “She is my mother.” His voice was muffled from behind the door. I knelt and peered through the brass keyhole. I saw the chaise and the bookshelves, but nothing else.
“Your mother?” I asked the empty room.
“Yes,” he said. The voice came from behind me but, when I turned around, there was nothing there. I looked back into the fainting room. It had lit up with moonlight. “She is calling me home.”
“You are home,” I said. “I saved you.”
“I can never be saved, because I can never be in danger. I can only be what I need to be.”
“You tricked me?” I clenched my fists.
“If that's what is needed of me.”
“How could you do that?” I asked.
“I don’t concern myself with how.”
“You said you knew what I needed. You said I could call you whatever I needed to. Don’t you know what you are, what I need to call you? You are Mine.” I banged on the door of the fainting room. “You’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine.” I was inconsolable. I was ferocious and helpless. I was a wolf at the door.
At long last, I loosened my fists, and they fell limp and red at my sides.
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
Then I said, a little solemnly, “What are you, really?”
“Many things,” he said. “I am a conduit. I am a construct.”
I looked through the keyhole again and saw only the many faces hidden in the moon.
“And right now,” he said, “I am a mirror.”
Water began to pool out from underneath the door. It filled the apartment, climbing up the wainscoting of the hallway like the ocean in the sinking Titanic. In a moment's time, it was at my waist.
And then, as if summoned, a small rowboat floated silently down the long hall.
“Is this a dream?” I asked.
It floated in front of me and I stepped inside. Ahead, the hallway stretched on and the boat floated effortlessly and seamlessly down the corridor. At last, it came upon the door of the fainting room which stood open, a trail of open books bobbing up and down in the water. A cushion from the chaise floated past. And there, in the corner…
“No no no no no no no.”
...a coyote.
I used the oars to row to it. I pulled its limp body into the boat. He was cold and wet just like I had found him. Then, all at once, the walls fell away and we were floating alone in an ocean of nothingness, with no light from the moon.
We drifted on the surface of my loneliness. The water lapped at the boat. I held him in my arms and wept. He was a mirror, and in it I saw my unwillingness to compromise. The “water” I had filled my life with, once considered to be a mote, had grown so immensely that I was now on an island of isolation, cast indifferently on the shore by my own stubbornness. I was not a slave to my needs but to my insecurities. I had denied my needs, drowned them, and reduced them to nothing more than a dead dog.
The moon rose, a blood orange over the vast horizon. As it climbed higher into the sky, it called the boat home.
* * *
I carried his body up one of the many dark and hidden staircases of San Francisco to the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve. The fog was glowing. The eucalyptus trees stood tall and still. I followed the moon to a small clearing at the end of a path.
I knew because I needed to know.
I laid him down, his body wrapped in a shroud I had sewn from the pages of the books from the fainting room and resisted the urge to open it. I didn’t want to know what else he needed to be. I wanted to remember only what I needed him to be: a companion, a stranger, a teacher.
I dug a small hole with my hands. I knew it was crucial to feel the earth against my skin, to allow it to collect and then rest in the beds of my nails. It was ceremonial. The ground was an altar, the moon was an idol, the trees a clergy. I felt the weight of their stares as I laid him in the ground, whole and at peace.
The moon did not follow me home.
ANTHONY RAYMOND (he/him) works as an organ donation coordinator in San Francisco where he lives with his husband, along with their cat and dog. His poetry has been featured in Poet’s Choice.