The Pup Who Flushed the First Rooster

Duke had come up beside him. The old dog put his gray nose down to the bird and sniffed it, and then he sat down too, right next to Penny, and the two of them sat there side by side at Duane’s knee.

Duane opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he said it.

“Your dad teach you that shot?”

“He did,” I said.

“He did good.” Duane looked down at the rooster in his hands. His voice was rough. “And who taught that dog?”

“I did,” I said.

He nodded slowly. He looked at Penny for a long moment and put his big hand on her head, between her ears, and left it there.

“Good girl,” he said to her. Then, not quite looking at me, “That’s the first bird this line has had brought to hand in three years.”

He stood up, his knee cracking, and walked the bird up the line to me himself. He did not hand it to Tanner to pass along. He walked it the whole way, through the tall grass, past Roger and past Conrad, and held it out to me.

“Your bird,” he said.

I took it. I put it in the game bag in the back of Tanner’s vest. I did not say anything else, and he did not either. There was nothing that needed saying in front of all of them, and I would not have said it if there were.

Duane walked back to the far end of the line. He raised his hand. We went on.

Penny found four more birds that morning. Two came up in front of Merritt and Keith, and Merritt hit one. One flushed wild and nobody touched it. And one, the best one, was a rooster Conrad hit in the back end at the fence line, a runner, the kind they had lost three of the year before.

It went down hard and got up running and disappeared into the grass along the wire. Conrad swore under his breath. He started kicking at the grass.

“Hold up,” Duane called down the line. “Let the dog do it.”

I sent Penny. She went to where the bird fell, put her nose down, and went off along the fence line like she was on a rail. Thirty yards. Fifty. The grass shook. Then she came back with that runner in her mouth, alive, and sat at Conrad’s feet.

Conrad stared at her. Then he looked up at me with a big grin spreading across his face. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “I owe you a steak, Penny.”

By noon the line had seven roosters, more than they had brought in on the opener in years. We walked back to the yard in the sun. Duane walked slow, with Duke beside him, and the old dog was limping badly but his tail was going.

Freda was standing on the back step in her apron. She had been watching from the kitchen window all morning, I learned later. She did not say anything to me as I came across the yard, but she held the door open for me.

Inside, the sandwiches were on the counter and the chili was on the stove. Freda had made all of it herself, alone, for the first time in nine years.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

“Yes, I did,” she said.

The men washed up and went into the porch room. I went to the sink to wash my hands, and Freda stood beside me at the counter, the way we had stood every October, and started slicing bars in the pan.