OLD DOGS by R.E. Massey

Sports Afield, January, 1991 – Vol. 205, No. 1

            “Backcountry”

The smoke from the old brier pipe curled out and was blown straight sideways by a northern wind that sheared and shrieked down the lake.  A line of men crouched and watched for ducks on Tennis Shoe Pass, north of my hometown on the prairies of western Minnesota.  This pass was actually a country road diked up to cross the lake.  Ducks had to pass through on their way up and down it.

Whitecaps hissed against the opposite shoreline across the highway.  A line of birds raced down the lake, heading for the pass.

“Mark!” commanded my old man, setting down his pipe and crouching to his knees.

All eyes were now on the ducks.  It was a duck day on a Minnesota pass.  The conditions were excellent for gunning.  The big lake was running strong, and a migration of ‘bills had just moved in with November.  The pass was loaded that day—the duck hunters had moved in along with the ducks.  The fall bluebill shoot was always well attended in those days.

It was then possible—indeed, if a man were good, it was probable—to bring home the limit of 18 divers from that lake, sometimes within two hours.  As the line of ducks broke over the pass, guns began to pop.  I’ll always remember that day for the series of events that began just after those shots. 

A big chestnut-colored dog tiptoes across the edge ice that bordered the shoreline, ending 40 yards out into the lake.  It was an old dog I knew well, Earl Maher’s Pal.  Earl was my father’s best friend and like a second old man to me.  Pal plunged into the open water and began retrieving ducks.  A snorting began that I could hear even over the howl of the wind.  Earl, my dad and I had driven to the lake in the wee hours of a bone-cold morning, and now, with luck, we could go home with three limits by noon.  With luck.

The duck dog was snorting out and back, grabbing ducks, carefully laying each one on the ice shelf before swimming out for more.  Time was running short for the old dog, I thought, as two dead ducks drifted away from him down the lake, blown by the wind.

From their blinds along the lakeshore, all the men could sense something was going wrong for old Pal.  He had made the last two retrieves swimming against the current and wind, and it had taken something out of him.  He couldn’t get up on the ice ledge.  Front paws thrown over the shelf ice, he struggled for purchase.  Time after time we watched him heave himself up himself up onto the ice, but each time he sank back into the gun-blue water.  We all strained with him, muscles tightening.  A flock of five ducks sneaked through the pass, but no one was watching.  All of us watched the dong.  He was hanging there now.  “He’ll get his breath and go!” yelled my old man to Earl.  It seemed as though he might be right.  As Pal clung to the ice, I could see his flanks heaving in and out.  His plume of frosty breath cooled and whitened his muzzle.  One duck in the pile next to him began to kick, its leg slapping the ice, sounding like a baseball card when the spokes of a bicycle hit it.  That’s what it sounded like to me, anyway.  I was that close to childhood then. 

Men had gathered on the shore with us, across the ice from Pal now, and we slowly began to realize that my old man had not guessed right.  Pal was not gathering strength for another spring.  Pal was done for.  Pal was barely hanging on.  He was shaking and shivering.  The energy in his old body had been spent retrieving those ducks.  He was cold. Cold and old and alone.  He was whining—a sound alien to the throat of a proud dog like Pal.

I guess none of us forget the day we knew for sure we had grown up.  I know.  I can recall each incident of that whole day.  I was weedy in those days, but I was tough.  I was puffed up that day: I was 16 years old, I had a best girl, and I had cracked the starting lineup on the high school football team.  I was bruised from the drubbing I had received on the gridiron the night before, but I felt good. 

The bluebills were in and I was shooting the pass with the old boys, my pa’s bunch.

Not many a grown man would try to gun the pass with those old boys.  It was real shooting, you see.  This wasn’t a deke shoot, where the ducks sail in with their legs down to land.  Pass-shooting bluebills in a 40-mph wind was the ultimate challenge in those old lead-shot days.  That’s why I felt good.  I could gun with the best of ‘em, and these old boys were the best.

The old men who stood around me were the best.  For many hunters, the science of leading a duck tearing across the pass was insoluble puzzle, but not to these old ballistics wizards.  All of these men had put in at least 50 years with a gun in their hands.  Several who stood around me now had chased Pancho Villa down in Mexico with the National Guard.

Now, as I stood with them on the shore, I could see the sorrow in each man’s eyes.  None of them wanted to see old Pal go under.  Maybe because they were old dogs, too.

These men had given me their advice and fellowship since I was little.  I could recall sitting atop the shoulders or knees of all these men.  I owed them all, and I owed the dog, too.  He was the dog of my youth, you see.  Not my dog, but the dog of my youth.  His eyes sagged a little, and his broad back bowed with age.  “Not much different than the old boys,” I thought.  Now a young heart was needed to save the dog.  I was needed.  It was pay-back time. 

“Get a rope!” I yelled, and those old boys snapped into action.  They were like old fire horses who jumped at the clang of the bell.  It didn’t matter that they were almost out to pasture themselves; they rose to the occasion.  I watched them moving around me as I pulled off my hippers.  They were going to save that old dog whether I helped or not, I knew that.  I also knew they realized the advantage my weedy young body had out there on that thin ice.

Pal was still hanging on.  He had some purchase with his claws but had slid back a little into the freezing water.  He would hold on until he couldn’t anymore, but clearly life was slipping away.  He knew his time had come.  Old muscles fluttered under his oily coat.  He called with a trembling voice.

I thought about what it would be like to have to go to sleep that night remembering that call, and I moved.  He wasn’t going down that day!  Yes, I knew what a cold-blooded practical man would do.  A practical man would weigh the life of an old worn-down half-blind rat-tailed retriever, and he would snort.  I knew that, but Pal wasn’t just a bag of bones and hair.  I still bear the scars on my rear where he had none too carefully clamped his jaws.  I was 5 years old when he hit the water of Lac qui Parle Creek to save me.  Earl had trained him well, and he knew when to act on his own, too.  He saw me slide down the bank and into the rain-swollen current.  He knew a young child shouldn’t be there.  His retrieve by the seat of my pants dented my dignity along with my derriere, but saved both.  Now I was going to pay him back.

With a rope attached to my ankle, I began my mission.  Nails had been dug out of a car trunk.  With a twelvepenny in each chopper mitt, I had two ice picks to claw my way over the ice.  I moved forward with a sick feeling in my stomach.  I knew the ice would be painfully thin and I’d feel a lot older by the time I reached Pal.

But it was my choice, and I wanted it.  Boys in those days wanted to be outdoorsmen like their fathers.  Boys these days run up a high score playing Nintendo.

I set my teeth and kept crawling.  The ice cried under my weight, and Pal cried as he saw me coming.  Duck hunters know November ice.  They’ve all stretched their luck on it a time or two.  Its two-inch thickness supports, but just barely.  I was down on my belly, distributing my weight.  The one-inch ice ahead of me was a thin sheet leading into some of the coldest, meanest-looking lake water I’d ever seen.

My pace wasn’t fast.  I was snailing along on the treacherous ice.  The arctic-cold wind came tearing up the legs of my pants.  Why hadn’t I stuffed the cuffs in my wool socks?  I stopped to pull my stocking cap down over my ears and looked back for a second at the old boys.  They were flapping their arms and stomping around to keep warm there on the shore.  Guns down, and ducks, flying all over the place, forgotten now.

I had to set a careful course.  “I’ll line up off to the side of Pal as I come across.  He’s weakened the ice in front of him, that’s plain,” I thought.  “Besides, if I’m out here anyway, why not pick up the ducks?  Kind of a frosting-on-the-cake routine.”  Did I really think it’d be that easy? Yes.  I’d grab the dog by the collar, let him walk back, and fetch those ducks, too.

I slid on, pushing my body with my toes now.  I had given up the nails because I would need my hands free.  I remember my heart nearly burst just then when an awesome sound assailed my ears:  A big flock of bluebills pitched into the open water only 10 feet from me.  I goggled back at their beady yellow eyes.  Close, at eye level, they seemed like an army of alien invaders.  They had scared the liver out of me.  “Yaah!” I yelled at them.  The birds raced away across the surface of the water.

I looked into Pal’s liquid brown eyes and murmured soothingly to him.  I wanted to get him ready to go.  He mustn’t panic and lunge, or we might both be plunged into the water.  “Let’s go, old buddy,” I whispered as I reached over to grab his collar.  I remember thinking at the time how old he had gotten.  That bluish-milky cast in his nearly blind eyes shone out at me.  He turned his head to face shore and the old boys.  They were yelling encouragement.  He seemed to be focused on the sound of their voices, concentrating.  As I stretched slowly toward him, his eyes centered and set on me.  With a groan of arthritic pain, he lunged for me.  I grabbed him by the loose skin on his neck and pulled. 

He was out of the water in a bound.  His front legs were on my back, and he was using my head as a foothold for one hind leg.  I was pushed down into the lake as the thin ice began to give way.  Pal ran up and over me.  As he dug for shore, my back straightened out and my chest and head bobbed back to the surface.  I was soaked, and my clothes began to freeze in an instant.  The moment the dog had made contact with the surface ice, however, the old boys had started pulling the rope.  My chin scraped across the top of the ice as they hauled me in.  I didn’t have time to be scared.  I was flying along across the ice so fast I passed the dog and slid into shore feet-first like a baseball player.

Greasy fleece-lined storm coats were hastily thrown over both dog and boy, and we were hustled into town to get warm.  A belt of brandy was provided, and a cigar, too, was shoved into my mouth.  It was a time to celebrate.  We sat in the back booth of Stan Ronning’s café, telling stories, staying warm, listening to the drip, drip, drip of my frozen clothes thawing over the oil burner.

It had been quite a day.  I knew then, as I dunked my donut into a cup of scalding coffee, that it was a special day, one I would never forget.

Pal?  He was none the worse for wear.  Like the old boys, he was tasting the tough side of life.  He was down but clearly not out, and, like the good old boys, he still had a few good years left to shuffle around the duck sloughs.