My Friend Bob

    My friend Bob lived in the country where there are coyotes. Bob did not (or claimed to not) like the coyotes because they were forever slaughtering the chickens he kept. Deep down however, I always thought that Bob felt some kind of kinship with the coyotes, both being lean and grey and rather haggard looking, and like a coyote Bob frightened easily. I remember asking him once as we drove into town to buy three new chickens and new wire for the fence, why he didn't just get a guard dog or two for the chickens, or maybe some donkeys, which the old people swore would keep coyotes away. He just mumbled something about how they had to eat too, but maybe he would get a dog, and then turned the radio on, ending the conversation. 

    

    Bob caught a cold one particularly chilly fall, which due to his insistence on not giving up his awful filterless cigarettes and whiskey, quickly turned to pneumonia. Due to his weakness he had to neglect the chickens, he never had gotten the guard dog, and within a few weeks there were none left, the coyotes had gotten them all. 

    I went to visit him when I could, and was alarmed to see his condition getting worse. With each visit it seemed that his fever was higher and his body weaker, and I didn't say anything about it but noticed that there were old bread loafs and food rubbish in his yard, he had begun to feed the coyotes. The last time I saw him I tried in vain to convince him to see a doctor. His lungs were wasted, and whistled as he inhaled. I spent that evening with him and under the full moon the coyotes started singing, waking me up from my place on the sofa. It was then I noticed Bob sitting in his recliner chair, gazing out the window seemingly spellbound by the howls. As I put him back to bed, I noticed he was burning up with fever, and he confided to me that sometimes now when they were howling loud like this and he was listening to the rattle and whistle of his wasted lungs, sometimes he could not tell which was which, his breathing or their howls. He then laughed it off as the ravings of an old man and slipped back into sleep, while I wrestled with whether to betray his confidence and call the doctor or not. 

    I never did call the doctor, and left the next day. Bob died a few weeks after that. An early arctic cold front moved in, and Bob had gone to bed with the window open. The temperature dropped rapidly, and in his weakened state Bob undoubtedly could not get up to close the window, (in my darker moods I wonder if he even tried) , and thus froze to death in his house. Bobs nearest neighbor, who lived two miles away, said he couldn't even get to sleep that night, the coyotes were howling so loud. Bob's house sat abandoned for a few years and finally due to neglect and an open window, began to rot and collapse. 

    They say, I wouldn't know, I haven't been back there myself, but they say that sometimes on certain nights, especially when the moon is big and full and the air is cold, sometimes you can see packs of coyotes walking around the ruins, sniffing at the rotted wood and plaster, and howling as if they missed something.