Harrison walked out of the room, smiling and easy on the razor-thinness that was the surface of himself, closing the door quietly on the still woman in the bed and the nurse with the calm professional air. Doctor Joe was there, an old friend with whom he’d killed a thousand or so ducks and geese over the long, good years. Doc was smiling, too, so Harrison knew exactly what the score was. Doc didn’t mean it, but Doc’s smile was Hell’s smile.
“Hello, Dick,” Doc Joe said. “I just heard on the radio there’s a pressure area moving in. Damn fine duck weather coming up.”
Harrison made a point of broadening his own smile and nodding thoughtfully, as if the only important thing in the world were duck weather.
“Come on down to the office, Dick” Joe said. They walked along side by side, two big men, about the same height, both dark and bulky, in their late 50s. Not so old, Harrison thought . . . Well, not so very old, but plenty old enough.
The office was small and new and very clean.
“Okay,” Harrison said. “You don’t have to drag it out. Let me have it straight, right now.”
Doc made a quick, angry movement with his left hand. He looked tired and tough.
“Look here,” he began, “nearly every day I have to handle a matter of life and death. But this isn’t that kind of matter. Edith may outlive both of us. It’s just a heart condition. The only thing is . . .” Doc Joe lit a cigarette and drew on it hard. “The only thing is she can’t climb mountains or go square-dancing or . . . well, sit in a blind on a freezing morning looking for some ducks that probably won’t show up. Catch on?”
“Sure,” Harrison said. “I catch on.
All his life with Edith, the whole 30 years of it, they had done the things she would not be able to do now. The walks in the winter, and the waiting in the cold blinds with a dog shaking his good heart out in his eagerness. The time she’d shot her first mallard—that had been a time for you! It had dropped like a plummet, dead in the air, and it had taken him a week to get the truth out of her. There had been 20 in the flight, and she’d aimed at the lead bird and dropped the one that was bringing up the rear. She’d sworn Dick to eternal secrecy.
He said, “And what is death, Joe? Got a quick answer?”
Doc stood up, and Dick thought that he loved Edith, too, in his own fashion.
“I’m a busy man,” Doc said. “I haven’t time for fools. She may be good for ten years, fifteen, more. With rest and care.”
Doc took his glasses off and cleaned them. “Why don’t you see if you can get some ducks tomorrow, Dick? The fact is, I don’t want her bothered anymore, even by you, until tomorrow noon at the earliest. You take Jerry and . . .”
“Jerry’s thirteen,” Harrison said. “He was a great dog once, but he’s old now.”
“Try it, anyway,” Doc said. “Down at Big Pond. Or you might even get some pass shooting at the point. Not that you were any good at pass shooting. Never saw the day I couldn’t lick you.”
This, Harrison thought, was a play in which you had to do your part. The guy who carried a spear in an amateur production of Hamlet.
“You want to go tomorrow and be proved a liar?”
Doc shook his head. “I’ve got two operations. Now get the hell out and let me go to work.”
The one-story house looked bleak in the rain. Actually, it was a cheerful house—off-white, with green trim at the windows. These were the pleasant colors that Edith had chosen.
Jerry came down the walk to meet him. Jerry was a big springer spaniel, a liver-and-white, and he was still a handsome dog. He was grizzled about the muzzle, and at the moment he walked stiffly, the way an old dog will who’s just risen from sleep in a warm place and is having trouble organizing his movements. Then he broke into a trot, head lifted, great brown eyes on Harrison, and he showed—almost—the fine, free, happy style of his great days when there hadn’t been better gun dog in the state.
Harrison rubbed the dog’s head roughly, the way Jerry liked. He remembered, not wanting to, the time Jerry had retrieved 20 ducks, running hard, breaking surface ice each time, returning proudly.
“Heel,” Harrison said. “Show some manners. Come on in.”
Inside, he turned all the lights on, wastefully, unnecessarily. It was past the dog’s eating time so he said, “Biscuits!” in a quick, rising voice. Jerry reared, his big paws beating the air.
He watched the dog eat. Yes, he still looked good. But he was old. On half a dozen occasions Harrison had decided it was high time to get a pup and start him, but he’d never had the guts. He couldn’t bring a young, vibrant dog into an old, tired dog’s house.
Harrison said, “Let’s go.” He walked through the house and into the little study at the back that was his own room.
Harrison sat down on the sofa and closed his eyes. He opened them and said, “Jerry.”
The dog came to him, and Harrison took the wide, rough head between his hands. “She’s okay, he said. “Hear me? Only we’ve got to take it easy when she comes home. She’s got to take it easy.”
Jerry made a questioning sound. Harrison twisted the leather of the long ears. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Our trouble is, we look backward. We want to be young again, and no one can be that.”
The dog cried softly once more. Anyone who said that dogs couldn’t talk was a fool. They could talk too much.
Harrison went to bed early. The dog came upstairs with him and lay down in his own bed in the hall corner. Harrison turned the light off and stared at a ceiling he could not see.
He woke at three, after an hour or two of sleep, hearing wind and rain against the walls and windows. It was a beating rain, the kind that had a breath of ice in it, that made you wince when you were hunched in a blind and it caught you fair in the face.
Then there was another sound, high and eager, made up of wonder and mystery and purpose, which made itself heard above the wind. A flight of ducks was moving, talking among themselves. It was a good-sized flight. And after it was gone there was another flight.
The dog, asleep in his corner, made an uneasy sound. He heard them, too, Harrison thought, and now he was seeing and scenting them in dreams, remembering the fine hunts of past times. Remembering when he was a young dog, tough as they came, and no day was too hard.
Ducks called once more, closer now. Weather was driving them down. In his mind’s eye he saw the windswept places where some might light—the Big Pond, the Little Pond, the cove in the bend of the river, the grain fields.
He heard Jerry’s rough pads scratching the floor. The dog crossed the room and pushed a cold nose against his cheek.
Harrison switched the light on and lit a cigarette. The dog sat on his haunches, staring at him, the fine eyes bright and wondering. The dog lifted his head and listened—silent, his body quivering. Then he made a low sound deep in his throat.
Harrison knew, and wished he didn’t.
“So you want to be out there?” he asked. “So you want to freeze your damn rear end off?”
The dog’s stub of a tail beat against the floor like a drumstick.
“So you think you’re a pup again. You don’t know we’ve shot our little bolt.”
Harrison pressed the cigarette out. “Go on back to bed.”
But the dog didn’t move. He licked Harrison’s hand and made that deep sound in his throat again.
“Go to bed,” Harrison said. “Now!”
The dog left with enormous reluctance. Harrison lay back, listening to the voice of the storm and the slow steps of the dog. Jerry reached his bed, paused, and after a moment went on down the hall.
Harrison sat up again just as the dog came back with the leash in his mouth. This was another of the puppy tricks Edith had taught him—to go for his leash on command. Then, as he’d grown older, he’d done it on his own whenever he wanted something badly—to go hunting, for instance, when ducks were crying their way across the sky.
Harrison looked at the dog for a long time. Then he threw the blankets off and stood up. The rain sounded like pellets fired from a gun. “All right,” he said.
Harrison dug out his foul-weather hunting clothes. The dog sat watching, leash in mouth. When he was young he’d tried to tear the house apart during moments like these. Now he just watched.
When they walked out to the garage, Harrison had to turn his face away from the wind. Sleet was blowing almost horizontally. He was tempted to turn back, but the dog made him go on. The dog was taking the storm in stride; he looked at Harrison with eyes that said it was miserable as could be, but he had known this before and could handle it. The pain went with the pleasure, and out there somewhere were the ducks and the life he had been bred and born and trained for and loved beyond the fireside and the plate of food and the soft comforts of home.
They got into the car, and Harrison started the engine. This wasn’t duck weather. Duck weather was a low overcast and a reasonable amount of wind and a nice drizzle of cold rain. But it wasn’t the first time he’s gone after ducks in weather this bad, just on the off chance something would happen.
There was that time up north. They’d been married about a year, and the dog in their lives was Jerry’s great-great grandfather. A big flight of geese had come in, and he’d dropped two at close range. She’d shot late and missed with her first barrel. Then she’d tried an absurdly long shot, when the goose was almost lost in the sleet and the black, swirling clouds. The goose dropped stone-dead, and Jerry’s great-great-grandfather made the retrieve.
Harrison had accused her of closing her eyes. He’d said that shot and bird had reached the same point in the sky at the same time by a marvelous coincidence. She’s told him he lied in his teeth—bird shooting, even under these conditions, wasn’t difficult. Men just tried to make it seem so.
Then they’d laughed and kissed and gone on in. Dinner that night had been an occasion, with champagne, and a raw hunk of sirloin for the dog.
The main trouble, Harrison thought now, was that a man had a memory.
Ten miles down he turned off the highway onto a dirt road. He was moving by old knowledge now; he hardly needed to see. He’d made his way to Big Pond a thousand times. And half of those times Edith had been with him. He parked by the old barn. From here on the road was only a trail. He and Jerry had a long half-mile to walk.
He opened the door and stepped out. The wind shoved him sideways like a strong hand, and the sleet cut at his face. It was black as the inside of a hat.
He said, “Still want to go, Jerry?”
The dog jumped out, shaking himself. Harrison got out his shotgun and a double handful of shells. “Okay,” he said, “just remember this was your idea.”
As he started on, he saw another shape, and made it out to be a ramshackle car deep in mud. It wasn’t badly stuck, but it couldn’t pull out without help.
“Damn idiot,” Harrison said.
A flashlight flicked at him, and a young voice said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Harrison. This is Jack Farrell. I thought I could run a little closer to the pond. I guess I should’ve known better.”
“You should have,” Harrison said. Jack Farrell was a kid of 19 or 20, the son of an acquaintance. A nice sort of kid, who liked to hunt. “I’d shove you.” Harrison said, “but I’d bog down, too.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Harrison,” Jack said. “I’ll get out. Don’t you bother.”
Harrison felt a quick, unreasoning anger. Everything and everyone seemed bent on making him feel old—Edith and Jerry and Doc, and now this fool of a boy, with the deference in his voice and manner. The boy was talking to the old codger, the useless man—
“Look here,” Harrison said, “get in that wreck and start the motor. Put it in high so it won’t spin the wheels.” This was experience talking. “I’ll put a fence post under your axle and lift you enough to get going. Stop when you get on the crown. Then you can back up.”
Jack said, “That’s swell of you, Mr. Harrison. Only—”
“Don’t argue,” Harrison said. “We both want to hunt, and there’s no sense in wasting time. Use your light and see if you can find a post.”
There was a post a few yards away. When Harrison picked it up, it didn’t seem very heavy. He wasn’t a cripple yet. And getting the car out was no great chore. The boy started the motor, and Harrison lifted with his shoulder under the post. The car rocked, and then found enough traction to move.
Harrison dropped the post and took a long breath. Jack Farrell came back, his light shining against the sleet. “That was sure good of you, sir. I hope it—”
“Glad to help,” Harrison said. “Use better judgement next time. Well, here’s luck. I’m shooting the first blind.”
“I’ll be up from you then, sir,” Jack said. “Thanks again.”
Harrison whistled for Jerry and went on. By heaven, he wasn’t an old man yet! He had more sense than a kid a third his age, and the muscle and push to back it up. And that, of course, was one of the things that fed the man-eating ants inside you. It wasn’t that he was kicking, only there could have been so many more good years, and now there could not be. This was the downhill slide, when he still felt like climbing.
By the time they reached the blind he was bone-cold, but that was part and parcel of the game. He worked a forefinger free of his shooting glove and loaded the gun.
Jerry’s nose touched his hand. The dog was shaking like a leaf in the wind. Harrison pulled him close and stroked the wet, quivering flanks. Then he waited for the light to increase. The wind tore at them, even in the blind, and he lowered his head and closed his eyes against the driving, icy rain. But he wasn’t tired, he told himself. He felt fine. He wasn’t idiot enough to think he felt as good as he ever had, but still he felt fine—up to whatever might happen. Jack Farrell would be his witness to that! It was different with Edith and the dog. He wasn’t resentful. It was just a statement of fact, like a multiplication table.
Then Harrison felt another thing. He didn’t honestly believe, in those obscure corners of the mind where belief lives, that Edith was through with the kind of life they’d known so long. He believed, try as he would to be sensible, that she’d snap out of it and be as strong as he was.
At last the dark gave way to the frail morning light, and the wind and rain lessened. Harrison searched the sky and found no living thing.
Now he could see the pond clearly, and the thin cover of ice that ran delicately from shore to shore and back to the roots of the tule grass. If you happened to drop a duck in the middle of it, a hundred yards or so away, it would be mean going for even a young spaniel. The dog would have to break ice all the way, trying for footing where there was none, trying to swim where it was impossible. And for a dog who was old and tired, and all that was left was heart—
The dog made the low sound again, but it was deeper and more urgent now. Harrison looked up and saw the ducks.
“Steady,” he said. “Easy boy!”
There were two of them, 80 or 90 yards overhead—fine fat mallards. They were swinging into the wind, and as Harrison watched, they started down to the pond. He reached out a frozen hand, found the shotgun, slipped the safety off. Then he waited. That was the thing—to let them get within good shotgun range, not to hurry it. The mark of an amateur was to shoot too soon. They made a long circle around the rim of the pond, dropping lower, but going away. Then they turned in toward him.
They were starting to drop their feet, maybe 10 yards above the pond and 30 yards ahead, when he rose and brought the gun up. A bead of ice had formed on the sight, and he had trouble sighting. He fired and saw the ducks flare, unhit. He took a long, difficult shot at the first duck with his second barrel, leading carefully, as if he had all the time on earth, never stopping his swing. The duck staggered in air, flew on briefly, and dropped stone-dead in the center of the pond. Harrison saw tiny bits of ice leap as the bird hit. Then it was still, floating in a pool of clear water.
Jerry broke, not waiting for the order to retrieve. He came to the ice, went through it into the water, and paused. He pushed on awkwardly, in a clumsy movement that was between a swim and a walk.
Harrison had the whistle to his mouth, but dropped it. The break had been a sin—the kind of thing a green, half-trained dog did. Jerry knew better.
Only now it didn’t seem to matter. The thing that mattered, for this brilliant moment, was the old dog and what he was trying to do. Maybe the old dog wasn’t so old and done after all. Maybe the old dog, like himself, had plenty of kick and power yet.
Jerry was 25 yards out. The ice had thickened and the water was deep. Jerry did what he could—he bucked the ice with his chest, tried to climb on it, then fell back, thrashing, when it broke under him. Harrison, huddled inside his foul-weather clothes, knew how cold the dog must be. And Harrison knew, if vaguely, a much more important thing he had never been aware of before.
The dog was still in the water now, resting, a slow, weary movement of his legs keeping him afloat. The retrieve was impossible—the duck was 60 yards off, perhaps more. You might ask it of a young dog, but not of a dog who was 13, which meant that he was about 80 as man measures time in terms of life and strength. Harrison knew he had to call him in.
Harrison blew the whistle, the series of short blasts that meant “Come in!” The dog turned his head. Then he looked away again and beat against the ice.
It made no sense. So all you could do was let the dog go, let him kill himself if that was what he wanted. In the meantime you watched, your own cold forgotten, and you put aside the confusions in your mind. For the dog was out there, fighting the ice, after a duck he would never reach. An old dog, tired beyond reckoning—
Then the miracle happened before his eyes. The dog was no longer old and tired. The dog was young, proud in his youth and strength, as he had been those long years before. The ice and cold were nothing but a test of mettle—there to be conquered, and they would be. All it took was confidence and purpose and time. Look—there the duck was, only 30 yards from the dog now, then 20, then 10. Then Jerry had the duck and was turning.
Harrison called, “Come on, boy. You’re okay.”
He walked stiffly to the water’s edge. The cold was everywhere, fastening, holding, gaining. The dog was fighting the ice once more, head up, the mallard in his mouth, but he was making small progress.
“”Drop it!” Harrison called. “Drop it!” But he knew before the words were lost in the weather, that this was another order that would never be obeyed.
But it was all right, Harrison told himself. This was a young, powerful dog, who didn’t know what weakness was. Ice and cold had never been made that could stop him. Look at him now; he was coming on. Maybe it was impossible, but the world was full of impossibilities. The dog was making it—just as they’d all make it.
“That’s the boy,” Harrison said. “That’s it. You’re working like a field trial champion, boy.”
When the dog failed, the power went out of him all at once. One minute he was forcing the ice, the next he was drifting, his head sidewise, his body gone lax. He still had the duck in his mouth—he’d never abandoned a bird in all his life; there was that kind of pride all through him—but he was all finished. He’d done his best, but there was nothing left.
Harrison dropped the shotgun and started across the pond. He stepped into a pothole, and water sloshed into his boots, cold as Little America. He pushed on. He reached the dog, caught him by the collar, and made the turn back toward shore. But his strength was gone. The way it looked, they’d both freeze and drown out here. He’d never get the dog in, and he’d never leave him . . .
Then, as from a distance, he heard a sloshing of water and a cracking of thin ice, and he heard a voice that was remotely familiar.
“Mr. Harrison!” the voice said. “Wait! I’m almost there!”
The arms that went around him were strong arms, but Harrison resisted them.
“The dog,” he said. “Get the dog.” He’d never been so tired in his life. There was no power of movement left. This must be as close as you could come to the end of life while you still lived.
“I’ve got him,” the voice said. “We’ll go on back now. Take it easy. I’m holding you both. Everything will be all right.”
Then they were on land, a wonderful three feet from the water’s edge, and he was lying on his back looking up at the face of young Jack Farrell. The dog was beside him, still as death.
Harrison sat up, rubbing his frozen fingers against his face. “Thanks, Jack,” he said. “Thanks very much. You did us a good turn. But I won’t need any more help. Go on back to your shooting.”
“But Mr. Harrison—”
Harrison smiled. He’d been this boy’s age once, three or four million fine years ago, and he knew all about it. He knew more right now than he had ever known in all his life.
“It’s all right, Jack,” he said. “Go along. Thanks again.”
The boy left, and Harrison turned to the dog. Jerry was panting hard. And that meant he was all right; he was going to make it. Harrison peeled off his jacket and covered the dog.
“You damn fool,” he said.
He wadded the jacket tightly about the dog. He bent down with an effort and rubbed his cheek against Jerry’s grizzled face.
“You wouldn’t give up, would you? And Edith never gave up, either, until they practically threw a net over her. Neither of you has any sense. Or me.”
Harrison stroked the dog’s head with fingers that had long since lost all feeling. “You damn, wonderful fool.”
His hand was still under the hunting coat, the dog’s heart that was strong now, the heart that was bringing the dog back to the old animal he had been an hour ago, his great days over, his time of twilight and fireside upon him. Very likely this was the end of hunting as far as Jerry was concerned. As it was for Edith.
And when it came to himself— Well, he’d just learned a great deal about himself, and it had taken a dog and a boy to teach him. You had no right to regret anything when you had so much behind you. You could not lose the life he and Edith had known, any more than you could lose what the dog had done this morning. There it was—eternal, fixed in the framework of time and space and experience that made up mind and memory, a past, a present, and a future.
Harrison closed his eyes and rested. Then he struggled to his feet. “We’ll go home now if you’re ready, Jerry,” he said. “We’ll both take it easy.”
They reached the car, and the dog climbed in slowly. Harrison took his place behind the wheel.
Then he moved off. He drove fast and hard. He had to get home and care for the old, exhausted dog, and change his own clothes. It would be a long wait until noon, but he could take any necessary waiting in stride now. At noon he’d see Edith and kid her a bit and tell her everything was fine. And—most important—he would mean it. n
Note: “The Wonderful Fool” was originally published in the November 1952 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.