French Brittany

It's the day after Thanksgiving and the sky is clear and bright, shining over distant rolling hills which are speckled with thick groves of maple trees.  Father and son walk over soggy green grass carrying shovel and a bundle of lime-green peach tree stem-shoots.  Their shadows are cast long and thin and there's a constant fifteen mile an hour breeze flowing over the open valley, stretching toward more rolling hills of golden brown corn stalks, recently brush-hogged for winter.

            The father lays the shovel and bundle on the grass and disappears into the garage, returning with a fifty-pound bag of leaf soil.  The son watches as his father sets the bag down and picks up the shovel, systematically burying the blade into the soft ground five or six times, creating a perfect circle.  Then, pushing the smooth handle of the shovel toward the ground, the father pries open the turf easily and sets the circular piece of sod to the side of the hole.  He continues digging up muddy clumps until a cone-like recession lay unearthed in the yellow sun.  He does this three times, placing each hole approximately five yards apart in a perfectly straight line.

            Removing a stag-handled pocket knife from his coat, the father cuts knotted haywire that ties the canvas soil bag shut, spraying a dry dust as he slides the glimmering blade through.  He folds the string three times and places it in his front shirt pocket, and bends down, running the blade through brown freezer paper that is wrapped over the stringy roots of the stems.  As he is unwrapping the damp paper, clear gelatin moisture crystals fall to the ground and once completely unwrapped, he brushes out the remaining crystals from the tangled ball of roots.  He looks for a second at the mess and begins fishing out a few roots, unraveling carefully until finally one of the stems comes free.  Then, folding the paper over the remaining roots, he picks up the loose stem and sets it next to the first hole.  The son doesn’t speak, but watches every step closely, as his father picks up the bag of soil and pours in a decent amount of bedding. 

            Resting his knees on the ground, the father picks up the stem and buries the roots deep into the soil using his thumbs to massage it into place and his hands to pat down and cover the twisted roots.  After nodding toward the bag and spitting tobacco juice on the ground, the son picks up the heavy canvas and pours more soil into the hole, mounding around the thin base of the shoot until the father raises his hand for him to stop.  Pressing and molding, the father makes the hole flush to the ground and a little green stem stands sturdy, shaking just a bit in the breeze.  They proceed to plant the remaining two in the same manner.

            Walking to the end of the stems, the father squints his eyes, making sure that it is lined up perfect.  And it is.  The mud on his knees has dried to a light brown the same color as the blade of the shovel and he brushes off the powdery dust, carrying the shovel across the yard toward a wheelbarrow, which sits in a dormant garden, empty.  The son watches as his father wheels the scoop next to each pile of dirt and shovels them in, clanging the aluminum blade on the lip of the scoop to capture the remaining clumps at the last pile. 

            Placing the shovel in the wheelbarrow, father and son walk back to the garden and dump out the soil in the middle, spreading the dirt flat with the back of the shovel.  A grey-haired man with a Navy sailor's cap and blue coat comes walking up the valley being followed closely by his short French Brittany.  Her back legs, instead of propelling her smoothly, hop together to lessen the stress on her hips, but she still gets around fairly easy, hopping ahead of the old man and sitting at the feet of the son who massages the old dog's ears and she stares at him with clear brown eyes.  The old man finally reaches the top of the climb at the edge of the garden and rests his muddy boot on a rusty iron roto-tiller blade that sits unattached.

            The father addresses the man as Dave.  He lives down the valley in a brown house with a boat sitting in the driveway.

            "Looks like that'll be her last hunting trip," Dave finally says after watching the son pet the shaggy dog for a few minutes.  "Just never been the same there in the hind legs ever since we got back.  And she had a hell of a run at it too, this year.  Probably her best one in five years, I'd say.  It started off kind of slow with the fields being crowded and all.  Birds just seemed to sense us all there and hid out in the thickets trying to wait us out.  But, after a couple days, it picked up."

            The father placed the shovel in the scoop, carefully laying the handle down.  "Oh yeah?"

            "Yeah, we maxed out the rest of the week, even with five heads.  It really picked up.  You see, the gamers started thinning out as the week went along cause the cold air started moving in and you know they never come prepared for the cold.  They think cause it's September that it's like September here, but you can never trust South Dakota weather.  Once that jet stream starts moving back down around late August, you never can tell how it'll be." Dave took his sunglasses off and wiped them on his jeans. "Hell, you can hardly tell how it'll be here in September."

            The father shook his head.

            "Well, the first few days were slow, but it was nice weather and we just walked the grounds getting our bearings straight.  So, by the time the cold came in, we had a game plan kind of worked out already.  Plus, we hunt there every year so the grounds become more familiar every time.  Shit, after ten years, they better."  Dave paused.  "Down along that shelter block, probably a hundred yards west, there's a hillcrest that domes up pretty good and north of that it levels down into a meadow probably a hundred yards squared and it butts right up against the tree line.  It's beautiful tall grass, dead by this point in the year, but with good visibility.  The quail like sitting on top of that crest in the morning cause there's good sun that comes down and these birds aren't mating yet, they're just burrowing down in the grass for the warmth.  So, Wednesday, I think it was, there they are, you can see probably a hundred-fifty of them squatted down, brown in the dead grass and we've got a feeling they'll be on the move pretty soon, maybe drift further west over the hill into a thicket or try to get south down by the lake cause the sun was starting to rise pretty fast. We had to move and filter them into that meadow north of the hill, kind of funnel 'em into a tight spot and we knew we had to move pretty fast.  But, at the same time, we know we need a set man down at the bottom of that meadow to start taking them when they bail into that tree line.  So, I yell at this younger kid, probably twenty-five years old, a hell of a lot younger than all us old guys, 'get your ass down to the bottom of that meadow as fast as you can and set up for when we push them over the hill,' and he goes bolting off down the shelter block with his gun just swinging.  And we started pushing up the south side of the hill, maybe spread about twenty yards apart.  The quail are still bunched up at this point, but they'll be moving soon, you see.  So, we push hard and I'm thinking that boy had better move fast and get set cause the further we push up the hill the more and more quail I see and it looks like it's going to be a day and we can't miss out on these birds.  The goddamned things had been hiding for two days already.  We get half way up the hill and they start moving north down the other side, not spooked, but real casual like. We speed up to try to keep them going north and as we are getting close to the crest of the hill I start hearing 'boom boom boom' down on the other side and I'm thinking that this boy is damn fast, but when we finally reach the top of the climb I see that the boy ain't no further down the hill from here to the house," Dave points at the father's house, "and he's just set up shop blasting at these birds from the hillside and they're flying everywhere and I'm thinking that this goddamned idiot's ruined the whole day for us by spooking these birds." Dave smiled wide briefly as the son laughed.  "Although, he is dropping some here and there.  We finally get down to where he's at and start gunning them too.  It was chaos from him pulling up too soon, you see, and the birds were flying everywhere swooping north and west trying to get the hell out of there, but after us old guys had finally gotten our feet set they started dropping all over the place," Dave stopped and pointed down at the dog with a wide smile.  "She's having a field day fetching these birds from all over the place.  See, there's also a group of guys behind us on the top of the hill gunning down birds and she's fetching their birds too!"  He laughed.  "I look down at my feet about twenty minutes into the firing and I've got ten or twelve birds lined up to me and she's going out after more, retrieving every damn bird in the field and without any direction at all.  She just sits and watches the sky as we rise up our barrels and when one falls she goes and grabs it.  Absolutely amazing retrieving that day and the rest of the week, matter of fact.  Of course, I gave the guys their birds, but if I'd been an asshole I probably had twenty birds by the time it was all done, maxed almost three heads," he laughed again shaking his head. 

            The father spit tobacco juice on the ground and shook his head with a smile. 

            "So, we had a few real good days like that and after the crowds had thinned then it was real good.  I had this girl running after dozens and dozens of quail from here to the bottom of this valley," Dave said and pointed toward his house.  "Our group did real well and maxed out all five heads and she's down there maxing out fifteen heads with the amount of birds she got."

            The father sat on the roto-tiller blade and began tying his boots.

            Dave sighed and looked down at the dog.  "The ole girl's ten years old, though, and she was ran real hard on this trip.  Like I said, probably her best outing in five or six years, maybe totalling close to thirty miles of retrieving in a week.  It just took a toll on her legs and after about a week of her being back here, she started hobbling around about as bad as me.  The vet gave me some of the gludocosamine and I've been giving her the tabs every day, but I don’t know.  My wife says, 'just another excuse for you to get another one,' but I don’t think I'm going to be getting any more dogs.  May end up retiring myself, actually.  I've had some good times out there, but it takes a lot out of an old man like me, driving across the country and spending weeks at a time.  I think I'm just getting too old."  Dave stopped and looked over the valley back toward his house.  "Took her to the vet again last week and they did the x-rays and she's got that hip dissplaysha, had it since birth.  It doesn't start wearing too bad until about this age.  They told me they could take her to surgery and shave that hip joint down real smooth, but they don't think she'll ever hunt again."

            "Probably pretty expensive," the father said.

            "Ah, I don’t care about money.  If she's in pain then I'll go ahead and do it, but just sad she won't be able to hunt.  She loves it out there.  Lives for it.  If I start packing up the truck for a trip, she starts running around the house excited to go.  I can't put her through having to stay in the truck or having to stay at the house.  It'd kill her.  I think I'll just have to hang it up too."  Dave wiped his sunglasses on his jeans again.  "But we had a hell of a last go at it," Dave said to the dog who lay beside the roto-tiller blade in the sun.  "Plus if I pull her out of hunting now, there's no reason she shouldn't live till seventeen, eighteen years old.  You know."  Dave stopped again and wiped dirt off his boots, bending slowly at the knees and then petting the dog's head, massaging her throat and the son watched as his dirty thumb and forefinger tracked along the buried windpipe up to the tip of her black and white dotted chin. 

            "I see you boys have been planting some trees.  I seen you from way down the valley and started thinking that it might be too wet this fall for the seedlings to catch.  Hell, maybe it's fine on top of the hill, but I know my yard's nothing but a swamp."  Dave stood up from the dog and walked down the line of the garden, peering down at the wet dirt that the father and son had spread earlier.  "Well, it looks like it isn't too soupy, but boy I know those seedlings don't like to catch, especially if we get a good frost here in the next couple mornings.  What kind of trees did you put down anyhow?"

            "They're peach trees," the father said.  He held his hands apart about three feet.  "Some little shoots."

            "Now shoots have a better chance of surviving through the winter.  And I know, I know, every damn planter will tell you that planting in late November is the right time of year, but believe me I've seen it year after year.  They end up little dry twigs that you can't hardly see anymore.  By April, you get the mower out and chop 'em down not even thinking twice about it.  Again, maybe up here on the hill they'll do just fine and by spring they'll bud, but I'm just telling you to be a little cautious."  Dave looked down at his boots.  "You know, these winters can be rough."

            "I'm not worried," the father said and spit tobacco juice in the garden.  "But I appreciate it."

            Dave shook his head and turned toward his house, the sun glaring off of his smooth shades.  The little French Brittany hopped to Dave's feet and sat her bushy black and white tail down on his boot and looked up into his face.  He nudged her off gently and ruffled the fur on her head.  "Well, I suppose we'd better be getting back down to the house.  Don't wanna keep you too long."  And after the father told him to take it easy he hobbled slowly down the sloping cornfield into the bright valley with the dog hopping along behind him. 

            The father and son walked over the soggy grass, splashing sprinkles of mud on their jeans and their shadows were cast long and thin, pointing toward the line of peach trees that they had planted earlier.  Taking one last look at the line to see that it was straight, the father motioned that they were perfect.  And as they climbed the wooden steps to the porch at the back of the house the father stopped and looked over the valley toward Dave's shrinking figure as he descended further towards his house.

            "Dave talks a lot," he said and opened the door.