Part 2: Every Year On March 17th For Twelve Years, I Ride To The Same Bridge Outside Nashville And Leave A White Flower — The Reason Has Nothing To Do With Anyone You’d Expect

I want to do this carefully. I have not written it down before. I have not even said most of it out loud.

The dog sat at my boot for what was probably less than two minutes. It felt like an hour.

I want to be honest with you about something. He did not save me by doing anything. He did not bark. He did not run in front of me. He did not grab my pant leg with his teeth. He did not do any of the things that a movie dog does. He just sat down next to me and looked up at me, the way a creature looks at another creature when it has come to keep company.

That was all he did.

That was all I needed.

I had been awake for two days, and I had been alone the entire time. I had been alone in my kitchen on Wednesday night with a bottle I should not have opened. I had been alone in my truck on the drive out to the bridge. I had been alone on the bridge, looking down at black water, for an hour. And I had been alone in a much deeper way than that for years before any of it.

The dog sat down. The dog looked up. The dog made a small sound — a low quiet huff through his nose, the kind of sound a dog makes when he is settling in.

And the part of me that had decided, some hours earlier, that I was beyond reach — that part of me discovered, in less than two minutes, that I was not.

I was not beyond reach. A stray dog with a cloudy eye had reached me. He had walked up an embankment in the dark and reached me. The math of being beyond reach did not work anymore. If a dog could find me at four in the morning on a county bridge in March, then I was findable, and if I was findable, then I was not what I had been telling myself I was for a very long time.

I took one step backwards from the rail.

The dog stood up. He took one step too. He stayed at my boot.

I took another step. He took another step.

I walked twenty feet back to my pickup truck with that dog at my left boot. He matched my stride exactly. I opened the passenger door of the truck. He looked up at me. He did not jump. He waited.

I bent down. I picked him up. He weighed maybe forty-two pounds at the time — he was a thin dog, hipbones showing through his fur, ribs you could count. He let me lift him. I set him on the passenger seat. He sat down on the bench. He looked straight forward through the windshield.

I closed the door. I walked around to the driver’s side. I got in.

I sat in the driver’s seat for a long time without starting the engine. The dog sat in the passenger seat. He did not look at me. He looked forward.

I started the truck.

I drove the forty minutes home with that dog in my passenger seat. The whole way, he sat upright, looking straight ahead through the windshield, like a passenger who knew exactly where we were going.

I named him Rooster the next morning.

I named him Rooster because he was the reason I woke up to see the sun come up on March 17th, 2013, and because the rooster is the bird that announces a morning that, the night before, I had not believed I was going to live to see.

He weighed forty-two pounds when I picked him up off that bridge. He weighed sixty-eight pounds eight months later. He had been to a vet by then. He had had his right eye looked at — old injury, no recovering the vision, but no infection, just a clouded lens. He had been chipped. He had been neutered. He had been treated for hookworm, fleas, and a deep cut on the pad of his left front paw that had probably been why he had been limping a little when he came up that embankment.

Nobody claimed him. The rescue ran his picture in the newspaper. They posted online. They held him on the books for the legally required three weeks. Nobody came forward. He had no microchip. He had no collar. He had no history.

He had walked up out of nowhere on a freezing March morning. He had sat down at my boot. He had stayed.

The vet estimated his age at three.

I went back to AA the following Saturday. I had not been to a meeting in seven months before the relapse. I drove to the basement of a Methodist church in Nashville. I walked in. I sat down. When it was my turn, I said, “My name is Wade. I’m an alcoholic. I drank on Wednesday for the first time in twenty-eight months. I almost did something on Thursday morning that I am not going to talk about right now. A dog sat down next to me. I am here because of the dog.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Then a man named Roger, who had eight years sober and a face like a worn glove, said, “Welcome back, Wade. We’re glad you’re here.”

I have not had a drink since.

I have been to the same meeting every Saturday at six p.m. for twelve years and counting. I have a sponsor. I have a Tuesday-night step-work call. I am the guy people new to the program call at three a.m. when they cannot sleep, because I gave them my number, because somebody gave me theirs.

I do not talk in those calls about what I almost did on the bridge. I talk about whatever the new person needs to talk about. I talk about my dog sometimes, when it is relevant. I tell them I have a brindle Pit Bull named Rooster who is twelve years old and rides in the sidecar of my Heritage Softail. I tell them he came into my life on a hard night. I do not tell them more than that.

The story is the dog’s. I do not throw it around.

Six months after I picked him up off the bridge, I started riding again.

I had not been on a bike since the divorce. I had sold my old Sportster two years before that to help my wife with a down payment on the house she was now keeping in the divorce. In the fall of 2013, with eight months of new sobriety, I bought a 2008 Heritage Softail off a guy in Murfreesboro and I started riding again. I rode alone for the first six months. I joined the Cumberland Riders in the spring of 2014.

In the summer of 2014, I had a custom sidecar built for the Softail. It had a small foam-padded bench seat the size of a small dog. I bought Rooster a pair of dog goggles. I taught him to climb in. I taught him to sit still while the engine started.

He learned in two days. He has been my passenger ever since.

He has ridden in that sidecar through forty-one states. He has been to the Black Hills. He has been to the Pacific Coast Highway. He has been to the Tail of the Dragon. He has been to a lot of charity rides and a lot of funerals and a lot of long quiet stretches of road on Sunday mornings when neither of us had anywhere we needed to be.

He has also, every single year on March 17th, sat in that sidecar while I rode out to a county bridge outside Nashville, Tennessee, parked at the south guardrail, and laid a single white carnation on the rail.

The first year, I went alone — meaning I left Rooster at home. I thought I needed to do it by myself. I took a single white flower because I had read somewhere that white was for purity and remembrance and apologies, and I needed all three.

I laid the flower on the rail. I stood for a few minutes. I rode home.

The second year, I took Rooster with me. He rode in the sidecar. When we got to the bridge, I parked. I lifted him out. I walked him to the rail. He sat down next to my left boot exactly the way he had sat down at four in the morning on March 17th, 2013.

He looked up at me.

He thumped his tail on the concrete one time.

I laid the flower. I cried. He sat. We rode home.

It has been the same every year since.

Tully had a heart attack in his sleep on March 8th, 2024.

He was fifty-eight years old. He had been my road captain for fifteen years. He had been my road brother for almost as long. He had asked me, three weeks before he died, sitting on a folding chair in our clubhouse with a cup of black coffee in his hand, why I left the meeting early on March 17th and rode out alone every year. He had told me I did not have to answer.

I had not answered him.

The funeral was on March 12th. I helped carry Tully’s casket. I stood at the graveside in my cut and I cried into my beard the way old bikers cry, which is to say, almost silently, with a clenched jaw and one fist pressed against the side of the leg.

Five days later was March 17th.

I rode out to the bridge that morning. Rooster was in the sidecar. The white carnation was in my saddlebag. The day was cold and gray. The Cumberland River was slow and black underneath the bridge, the way it always is.

I parked at the south guardrail. I lifted Rooster out. I walked him to the rail. He sat down at my left boot.

I laid the flower on the rail.

I stood for a minute.

Then I took out my phone, and I sat down on the concrete next to my dog, and I started typing the words I am writing right now. Not all at once. A few sentences. The opening. The hook.

I typed, Every year on March 17th for the last twelve years, I have ridden a 2008 Heritage Softail to the same county bridge outside Nashville, Tennessee, parked at the south guardrail, and laid a single white carnation on the rail.

I sat there with my dog next to me and I thought about Tully in the ground at Mount Olivet Cemetery, and I thought about the fact that Tully had died without ever knowing why I left the meeting early on March 17th, and I thought that that was the wrong way for a road brother to die.

I thought about how many other men there must be, in clubs and out of clubs, sober and not, who carry one specific bridge or one specific apartment or one specific moment around with them and who are not telling anybody, because we have decided as a country and as a culture that men do not say things like I almost did not come back from a bridge in March of 2013.

We do not say it.

We pay for not saying it.

I sat on the cold concrete next to Rooster on March 17th, 2024, and I decided that I was done not saying it.

It took me a year to write the rest of it down. You are reading what took me a year.

I want to say a few things about Rooster, because he is the whole reason this story exists, and I do not want him to disappear into the metaphor.

He is twelve years old now. He is gray on the muzzle. His back legs are slower. His good eye is starting to cloud, and his cloudy eye is fully blind now. He still rides in the sidecar. He still wears the goggles. He still sits up in the seat with his nose into the wind on the highway, and people in cars next to us still wave at him at red lights, and he still looks at me when the engine starts like a man saying, all right, brother, where to.

He has slept on the foot of my bed every night for twelve years.

He has been to AA meetings with me. The church basement people love him. He lies under the table during the share. He wakes up and thumps his tail twice when somebody says something hard.

He is going to die in the next two or three years. The vet has been honest with me about it. He is on three medications. His back legs will go before the rest of him. When that day comes, I will hold him in my lap on the floor of the vet’s office and I will tell him what I have not told him out loud in twelve years, which is that he saved my life on March 17th, 2013, by walking up an embankment in the cold and sitting down at my boot for less than two minutes.

I will tell him that I have ridden that bridge with him every March since. I will tell him that the white flower was always for him. I will tell him that I am sorry for every time I was not enough for him in return. I will tell him that he was the best dog any biker named Wade has ever had, and I will tell him that I will keep riding to that bridge on March 17th every year for the rest of my own life, and I will lay a flower for him too.

He will not understand the words. He will hear my voice. He will lean his old head into my chest. That will be enough.

That has always been enough.

I am going to tell you one more thing and then I am going to stop.

I am writing this not for me, and not for Tully, and not even for Rooster.

I am writing this for the man on the bridge.

The one who has not climbed up there yet.

The one who is sitting in his truck right now with the engine off in a cold parking lot, or in his kitchen with a bottle in his hand, or in his apartment looking at his phone wondering if there is anybody he could call who would not be ruined by him calling.

I am writing this because I want you to know that on March 17th, 2013, a stray dog with a cloudy eye walked up out of the dark and sat down next to a man named Wade on a county bridge outside Nashville, and he did not do anything except sit down and look up.

That was enough.

You are findable. The math of being beyond reach does not work. Somebody — somebody, somewhere, even a stray dog at four in the morning — can still find you, if you give them the time.

Please give them the time.

If you are in that place right now, please call 988. That is the suicide and crisis lifeline. They will sit down next to you in the way the dog sat down next to me.

I am still here twelve years later because something sat down next to me.

I am writing this so you know: something will sit down next to you too.

Wait for it.

If this story moved you, follow the page — there are more stories like Wade and Rooster’s I haven’t told yet.