Epilogue

Echo leaps from the car into a bank of snow. They drove after Ray’s last final that morning from their rental house on the edge of Oklahoma State’s campus. Leo and Ray unload their packs and bags of groceries, happy to be back at the river stone house for their winter break. Freedom. Echo shakes the snow from her silky body, her eyes lively. They are home. With a sudden acceleration of speed, she races through the fields adrift with snow, her muscles moving like a racehorse, defined and rippling, kicking up tides of white flakes in her wake.

Ray puts down his pack and loops an easy arm around Leo’s shoulder. She leans into him as they watch Echo fly, leaping over branches, navigating a landscape, though covered with snow, she knows by heart. At the edge of the tree line, Echo turns with tight precision, and she sees them, her pack, watching, waiting. She sprints toward them with utter abandon, at breakneck speed, as if she cannot reach them fast enough. Echo screeches to a halt before them, and a spray of snow covers their laughing forms. The graceful creature lifts her front paws simultaneously and hurls her whole body forward in a bow, an invitation to play. They reach down and touch her, all hands-on dog. She will go with them anywhere, and she has, to a different rhythmed life, a distant place called Stillwater. But here, on this patch of rough Oklahoma earth, they seem most centered. The unseeable weights they carry inside seem to fall from their beings, snowmelt under a persistent winter sun.

Outside the river stone house, the snow continues to fall. Inside, there is warmth. Ice crystals adhere to the glass, and the fire sparks and cracks in the cast iron wood burner. Leo and Ray finished decorating a single pine branch, felled by the weight of the snow, with strings of popcorn, cranberry, and pinecones dipped in earth-friendly glitter. The semester is, thankfully, over. Leo stashes away her second-year veterinary books on a shelf. She pulls down her American Lit book and sits next to Echo, who is before the blaze, chewing a bone on her fleece doggy bed.

Ray has fallen asleep on the couch. The demands of the term have taken their toll. For the first time in a while, they can relax. Leo starts to read.

From the couch rises a guttural sound of anguish. Leo knows immediately where Ray’s dreams have taken him, back in time, back to the front line. Though the flashbacks, the triggers of intense anxiety, and the nightmares have diminished, they are still there. The losses and painful truths are part of Ray’s inner world. He will serve them for the rest of his life.

Echo cocks her head to one side, then to the other, listening to his low moans. She gracefully unfolds herself and stands. Leaving her bone behind, she goes to Ray. Quietly climbing next to him, she nuzzles her russet muzzle into the crook of his neck and audibly breathes in and out through her nares.

Leo watches with hushed wonder. Never underestimate the intuitive capacity and power of a dog. Ray’s stifled sobs subside as Echo gingerly stretches along the length of his frame, the slight heft of her body grounding him, calm culled from chaos. She keeps her nose nestled in the bend of his nape, and as her breathing slows to match his, she guides him to a deeper, more restive, light-infused place.