Mulak Reader - Housman’s Dog

A. E. Housman’s poetry is dreary and dark, but I’ve always found the message of “To An Athlete Dying Young” a fascinating assumption—not the sort of thing done on purpose, but a truth in life nonetheless. Sports Afield thought enough of this story that they used it as their entry in an inter-magazine contest for best published fiction in the year it appeared. It didn’t win, but I got to keep the compliment they paid me, and it still feels pretty good.

HOUSMAN'S DOG

             "The time you won your town the race

              We chaired you through the market place:

              Man and boy stood cheering by

              And home we brought you, shoulder high."

With the drake wood duck in his mouth, Woodie emerged from the flooded rushes across from us and stood belly-deep in the water, looking for my brother.  John got to his feet, rocking the boat a bit, and waved his hat in the air as he called to his dog. The pup started towards us and seemed surprised when he fell off the submerged river bank into deep water, but he came up swimming. With the duck in his mouth his breath came as a series of audible wheezes as he dog-paddled back. The silence that a mid-morning drizzle brings to a November marsh made the pup's breathing sound all the more labored. Several of the decoys in the rig turned and followed in the dog's wake as he swam through the spread, and the combined effect of the dragging anchors all but stopped his forward progress. John was quickly there at the edge of the bank, encouraging his dog.

          "C'mon, Ol' Woodie... C'mon, boy..."

          The pup seemed in trouble, and I began to pull the boat out of its hiding place.  John waved me back. The dog struggled to inch closer to shore, and after a moment John was able to reach out and grab the dog's chain collar to haul him in. Woodie laid the duck in the shallow water at my brother's feet, then backed up in expectation of another round of the familiar "go-fetch" game of his training sessions.

          "Hey, this is Steven's. Go take it to him." John held out the bird, but Woodie wanted it thrown.

          I clapped John on the back and shook his hand. "Congratulations! That's terrific. I'm glad I was a part of it." This was the pup's first retrieve under the gun, and the three of us stood around grinning at each other over it all.

          We tossed the retrieved decoys back into the rig. Until the end of his short life, Woodie would never figure out the mystery of the underwater decoy cords, and he rearranged our spreads on his every retrieve.

          Beyond the boat, out in the swirl of the current, I noticed the visual echo that was my empty shell. It bobbed in the eddy, almost but not quite shipping water each time it yawed. Staring at the empty, my thoughts drifted to John and his puppy-become-retriever: My brother had long held the conviction that he just did not have the spare time necessary to train and keep a hunting dog of his own, and had resigned himself to the role of a hunter who enjoys only other people's dogs. But one day a two-week old golden retriever puppy was suddenly thrust upon him—It's mother had been killed by a car, and wouldn't he please take one of the pups? Woodie was bottle-fed through his infancy and named for the ducks on the new waterfowling stamp, and here, six months and dozens of training sessions later, had just made a retriever

man out of my brother. I smiled at the thought, and glanced to where Woodie shared the stern seat with John. They hunkered low together, and it took me a moment to realize that the moving reflections on the water belonged to a pair of mallards they had spotted winging into the rig...

              "Today, the road all runners come,

               Shoulder high we bring you home

               And set you at your threshold down:

               Townsman of a stiller town."

The reflections in the dark water matched a pair of flaring whistlers in the snowy sky. My opportunity for a shot was lost in a daydream, but John's gun said that he had been paying attention. One of the pair continued on a down-sloping tangent to the upward curve of his partner's flight, and hit the river out beyond the shelf ice in mid-river.

          Woodie stood on the boat seat, intently watching the bird's descent. Now in his third season, he had at last come around to agreeing with John's insistence that he stay put and mark the bird's fall.

          "Go ahead... Go get 'em, Woodie." The dog turned a circle on the boat seat, then with just a suggestion of a push from my brother, jumped into the water. Once out, he swam strongly, catching only one of the decoys as he passed through the rig.  He reached the ice and climbed out, searching the water beyond. The whistler must have made a move that was seen only by the dog, for he suddenly sprinted forward and plunged into the open water. "Look at that!" John grinned. He was on his feet, with both hands shading his eyes as he stared out through the snow. The dog was in the water, swimming with a renewed purpose. The bird surfaced momentarily, then dived again. He was a hundred yards from us.

          Then, abruptly, the action seemed to stop. The shelves of ice had been drifting along imperceptibly with the river's slow current, but now one had struck something that caused it to stop. The sheet nearer to us pivoted on the hung-up floe, and the open water beyond began to shrink as the distance closed. Woodie was still swimming, waiting for the duck to surface again.

          "Woodie!  Woodie!" John waved his arms over his head, but the dog would not look back. "Oh shit." He was suddenly very ashen. The sheet of ice continued on its collision course, and the danger to the dog became increasingly evident.

          I sat riveted to the seat. With 50 yards of moving river ice between our boat and Woodie, there seemed little we could do. But John was in the shallow water, pulling on the bow line. "C'mon. Let's get out there."

          I got out and pushed at the transom. "John, what can we possibly do?"

          He spoke to me, but his eyes were on the shrinking patch of water beyond the ice.  "This ain't no story in some friggin' hunting magazine, for Chrissakes... That's my dog out there..." He left the rest unsaid. I started the motor.

          When I looked up, Woodie was swimming for the edge and appeared about to save himself from the crush. Then the whistler surfaced again, saw the dog, and turned and swam away. Woodie followed.

          "Woodie!" John yelled frantically, then lifted his gun and fired two shots over his head. Unheeding, the dog closed the gap on the swimming duck, but then the whistler dived again. There was only ten yards of open water left, and that was closing fast. I added my shouts to John's.

          Just before the floes sheared together the dog attempted to climb out, but the current beneath the moving ice pulled him under, and in a moment there was no open water to be seen.

          John turned to me in panic. "Quick—Give me your flotation jacket."

          "No."  I was sure of my answer. Instead, I handed him an oar. "Here—Use this.  We'll break our way to him."

          We hit the shelf ice with the motor at full throttle. Both of us were knocked off our seats, but the impact opened a long series of cracks. Things immediately began to move downriver again: We had inadvertently freed the hung-up floe. Standing, we rocked the boat from side to side and made surprisingly good progress through the rotted ice. Using the oars to push the broken ice out of the way, we both worked frantically—Until the omen appeared: The whistler floated out from under the ice, belly-up.

          This time, it was me who cursed.

          We continued to break ice, but the urgency had gone out of our search.

          I didn't notice the dog until we were just a few feet from him. He was completely submerged, and seemed an incongruous patch of tan in the dark water. I stopped the motor and started forward to help, but John waved me back. He reached out and grabbed the dog's chain collar and hauled him in. The legs were already stiff.  We were a half-mile downriver from our decoys. I started the motor and swung the boat around.

          John turned away and pretended to watch the shoreline slip by. His face showed no emotion. Thankfully, conversation was all but impossible over the drone of the motor. My gaze continued to drift to the lifeless form in the bow. Woodie was dead. Ice formed on his fur. I recalled his occasional taste for a badly shot-up duck, and how his whole body would wag when he was happy. He had been a one-man dog in every sense of the word, and John held up his part of the bargain by being blind to Woodie's every fault. With tears freezing on my cheeks I reflected on how right John had been: This wasn't no story in some friggin' hunting magazine, with a miraculous retrieve and a happy ending. The duck stamp under the plastic cover on our licenses showed a pair of Canadas feeding peacefully, but waterfowling is a game with death for the looser—And it isn't always the ducks who loose. Any hunter who goes out onto a tide-swept marsh or a frozen river without the realization of all the implications of that fact is a fool.

     Overhead, motion caused me to glance skyward.  A single drake whistler sailed out of the snow, his wings set on our decoy spread up ahead...

           "Smart lad, to slip betimes away

            From fields where glory does not stay.

            And early though the laurel grows,

            It withers quicker than the rose."

          I glanced up at the overhead motion. A single teal sailed out of the October blue sky, his wings set on our decoys. He swung by with a blurring speed, and the lead I gave him might be measured in boxcar lengths. When the shot caught him the illusion was that of a sprinter tripping: The teal was in graceful flight one moment, and the next was cart wheeling through the air with his wings, feet, and head forming a five-pointed star. He actually bounced when he hit the water, but promptly righted himself and began swimming away.

          Next to me, Bingo was a cocked pistol on the boat seat. John said, "Go fetch." and it seemed the dog might jump all the way to the crippled bird. He swam powerfully. At his approach the duck dived. The dog treaded water, his upper body above the surface, waiting. When the teal showed himself again ten yards away, Bingo lunged at him, nearly running out of the water in his scramble to get to the bird. The teal dived again, but so did the dog, and when he came up a moment later he had the duck in his mouth.

          To his credit, my brother didn't pretend that Woodie's death in the ice had never happened or that it was somebody else's fault. That he continued to hunt as before and started another golden retriever almost immediately was the mark of the man's character. But there can only be one "first" dog in anyone's life, and John felt that he had been cheated out of his. The unfulfilled promise of what Woodie might have become haunted our every outing. That this new golden had far more natural ability mattered little to John, if he even realized it at all.  Indicative of his indifference was the fact that his children had named Bingo, and after three years John referred to him only as "the dog".

          There was nothing labored about Bingo. He was a massively built golden, and whatever he did seemed to come easily to him. He needed no help getting into the boat, nearly vaulting from the water to the seat. He sat there with the live teal in his mouth, both of them blinking at me. The full-plumage drake looked for all the world like he had just flown off the duck stamp. After I dispatched the bird and Bingo shook the water out of his coat, I placed an arm around his neck and playfully grabbed his muzzle. "Mister Bingo Barnes, sir, you are one mighty fine bird dog."

          Bingo grinned his open-mouthed dog's grin back at me.

          At the other end of the boat John took no notice of our antics. He stared out onto the early autumn marsh. I tried to follow his gaze, but it went much farther than I could see, past the decoys and the distant shore, beyond the horizon to a snowy river where ice floes sheared together and whistlers flew low across the dark water.

            "Now you will not swell the rout

             Of lads that wore their honours out:

             Runners whom renown outran

             And the name died before the man."

Home | Naming of Sawbuck Point | The Warning | The Corvis Addiction | Winter Dreams | The Cipher | Fisticuffs | The Compliment | Stop It | First Snow | Housman’s Dog | Wax and Wane | Winter | Wisdom | Branta Canadensis Northeaster | The End | The Fella in the Red Hat | Showers Heavy at Times | Meat Dog | Of Ringers and Leaners | Rudi-ka-Zudi | Mikes Dog | Adversaries | And Fishing Too | Bluebills on the East Wind | Brown Feathers from my Game Vest | Cycles | Daddy's Girl | Drumming Logs | Epilogue | For a Good Bird Dog Dying Young | High Tide in a Peasoup Fog | Good News Bad News and the Sportsmans Quiz | Just a Bit Longer | Just Mallards | Knuckleball | Motherhood (Sort Of) | Notes on Opening Day | Pretzel Logic | Secrets of Successful Bootwearing | September's Song | Stone Fences | Suzie | The Cutting Edge | The Latest New Spot | The Mousecatcher | The Poacher | The Sportsman's Lexicon of Sniglets | The Streak | The Tarnished RXP | The Thaw | Thunderbird | To Fetch a Bird | Wellfleet | Why?

This site was last updated 09/21/06