Nop's Trials Read online

  The crossdrive was adequate and she hit her crossdrive panel, but she was still coming on too fast as her sheep headed for the pen.

  The most common fault of a novice handler is at the pen where he’ll let the sheep circle the pen with the dog chasing them. Since the dog’s on the outside track, he can never catch his sheep to head them, and every time the sheep circle the pen, the handler loses another three points, one per sheep. The handler has to quit, relax, drive the sheep out and begin penning again, but it’s hard to remember that with the sheep circling and the dog circling too, panting so hard you can hear it fifty yards away. When the first sheep broke at the pen, Bit O’ Scot lost one point. When Doug Whitenaur panicked and hollered at his dog, she backed off and two more sheep bolted, starting the chase every handler dreads. And as the points dwindled away, the panting dog raced around the pen putting all her heart in it while her master screamed commands, “Come by! Way to me! Get back, I told you, get back! I’m talking to you. I’m talking to you.”

  Some handlers turned away because there are those too delicate to watch another man playing the fool.

  “Time!”

  Whitenaur dragged his dog off the course. He was white with rage. Lewis didn’t see Whitenaur drag the terrified animal into the woods at the back of the course.

  Everybody heard the dog’s howls. Lewis closed his ears and his mind. Twenty-five dogs had run. He was number twenty-eight. He unhooked Nop and took him for a walk, away from the others.

  Nop strolled with his customary jauntiness. The trial was a big deal to his master but to Nop it was just another piece of work.

  His master’s voice in his ear, talking, keeping him easy, lending him some of Lewis’s good humor and strength.

  Nop’s tail was plumed as he trotted through the empty pasture sniffing the sniffs, enjoying the looseness in his own body, enjoying his life.

  The autumn sun was lower in the sky when Lewis and Nop took their place in the handler’s circle. It was chilly and Lewis wished he had a coat. His mouth was dry. Every trial his mouth was dry. Just him, his dog, three sheep. It was simple.

  “See sheep? Nop, Nop, see sheep? Steady now. Come over here on the right, Nop. You just stay outside that tall corn.” With Nop quivering at his knee, Lewis took a half step to the rear because Nop would run shallower set up that way. “Away to me!” And Nop was off, skirting the corn. He chanced a quick sideways look to see the sheep growing in his vision. He came up behind a touch too quick and, for a second, nearly lost his concentration but Lewis’s sharp whistle, “Steady!” pushed him on to the balance point. That was all Nop needed—the simple reminder that he and Lewis were in this thing together.

  He stalked those sheep like he had come up the hill for them. They faded away before him. They were heavy to the right, so he stayed on that side pressing them back to the line, straight through the fetch panel, around Lewis’s heels. Nop made it look easy. Straight again through the drive panel.

  Nop flicked from side to side. A black-and-white dog harrying black-faced sheep across dark green grass on a muggy day in Maryland.

  Lewis stayed dead still at the pen, gate wide open, whispering commands: “Walk up. Stand. Come by. Walk up.” The sheep went into the pen like they had absolutely nothing better to do on such a fine afternoon.

  The audience was dead quiet. Nobody was gossiping now. Lewis checked his watch. He had a minute and a half to make his shed. He positioned Nop back, far back, and reopened the gate. Three sheep dashed out, single file, and the ribboned sheep was last. Lewis took a short step forward, leaned his torso, and if that ribboned sheep paused or did not, Nop came through. Blasting through a gap so tiny no human had seen it. The two lead sheep bolted from the ring. The ribboned sheep froze in her tracks and Nop stopped, standing in her vision. She backed until her butt pressed against the pen she’d just quit.

  “Lewis, that’s a shed,” the judge said. And went on to say, “That’s a pretty good shed,” and the crowd was laughing and clapping their hands and one handler (a Texan, no doubt) was hooting from sheer joy.

  Lewis rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. Must have got some dirt in them to make them water like that.

  Everybody had their hands out trying to shake his. Nop jumped into the cattle-watering tank, submerging and cooling his parts, lapping at the waves he made.

  Ethel Harwood said, “Lewis, I don’t believe I’ve seen a better dog than Nop, here or in Scotland. I’ll give you five thousand dollars for him, if you’d like to sell.”

  But Lewis couldn’t have been any richer. He shook his head.

  While the winners were accepting their awards (gold belt buckle for Lewis, silver buckle for second, silver tray for third) Whitenaur was revving his engine. Vroom. Vroom. He roared away like the devil was chasing him.

  Lewis paid it no mind. He wasn’t annoyed by the noise or flattered by the congratulations. Everything was a haze. In his mind’s eye, he was reliving it: Nop blasting through that tiny, tiny gap. The most beautiful animal alive.

  FOUR

  For the Kennel Dog, the Nights Are Long

  Sourball snarled, “Thou art scat.” Nop yawned. Sourball was pacing her cage, same as always, and Nop lifted one eye to watch the elkhound’s back and forth. The chain around Nop’s neck had pulled cars before and was still stout enough for the job if it was called for. Some of Grady’s coon dogs wore rope leads but Nop would have chewed through a rope in a second. Because of the weight Nop didn’t do much pacing. He lay outside his hollow gum doghouse whenever the weather was good and often when it wasn’t. Unlike the coonhounds and the foxhounds, he never barked when the Gumms drove into the yard.

  Most of the coonhounds were okay. Some of the males might have tangled with Nop and sometimes they growled insults, but they were all sissies compared to Sourball.

  Sometimes when Grady Gumm was drunk, or badly out of sorts, he’d put one of the dogs in with Sourball for thirty seconds, no more, no less. It was long enough. Sourball’s attack was so sudden and so contrary to ritual that, besides Dixie, she’d twice killed dogs put in with her before Grady could snatch them back.

  Grady Gumm didn’t fight Nop again. Having nearly killed him, Grady got it in his head that Nop was more valuable than he’d thought. If Whitenaur was willing to spend three hundred dollars to keep him away from the trials course, maybe somebody else would pay too. Grady Gumm waited for the money Whitenaur had promised.

  Nop’s leg healed, though the scar was wide, ugly and permanent. With the low nutritional level of the dogfood (the cheapest dry dogfood in hundred-pound bags and deer offal) it was a miracle the leg healed as well as it did. Nop had only a slight limp now and that might have cured with a little exercise. Nop never got any exercise.

  Grady took the coon dogs out and the bear dogs too. One memorable night the hollow was emptied entirely except for Nop at the end of his chain and the moonbeams walking through the deserted shacks, the quiet road, the hollow gum houses. When the dogs returned and piled out of Grady’s pickup, they were very excited, reliving the chase, the scents they’d followed, the bear they’d hounded into Grady Gumm’s bullet. They smelled of blood. Their excitement was infectious. Nop almost felt he’d been on the trail himself.

  It fell to zero, below zero. Sometimes it snowed and Nop lay inside the hollow gum, smelling the stink, the scent of all the dogs that had been confined there before him.

  He dropped his scat in the same place every day, behind his house. Grady Gumm never bothered to scoop the offal away but the smell wasn’t bad because of the cold.

  Nop lay, breathing through the hair of his curled tail, silent, watching the moon roll across the ice-cold skies. He lay awake most of the night. No bird that found Gumm’s trees or rested in the scraggly bushes was beneath his notice. Sometimes he fixed on Sourball’s crazed pacing, hypnotized by the other dog’s compulsive rhythm.

  Nop’s winter coat was patchy and dull. His slashed ear never would be erect again. It hung on the side of
his head like a prizefighter’s mistake.

  When Grady Gumm didn’t hear from Whitenaur, he wrote another letter, angrier than the first. No reply. Grady’d seen Burkholder’s posters all over the county and Lester was pestering him to sell the dog back. Lester said they could claim they just found Nop wandering down the road.

  Grady put out a few feelers, just had Lester drop some hints at the White Post Mercantile and then at Galloway’s place out on Route 340. Word was, for five hundred and no questions, a certain missing stockdog might turn up found, not mentioning any names, mind you.

  But before the message could reach its intended, the sheriff intercepted it and before the sun went down behind the Blue Ridge, Lester was answering a whole lot of awkward questions at Sheriff Lohr’s office, about what dog and where and the sheriff scared the life right out of him, but Lester wasn’t one of the “talking scared”—he was one of the “dead-silent scared” and clammed up.

  If he tried to collect the reward, old Grady was going to answer some questions he might not enjoy. Lewis Burkholder had so pestered Sheriff Lohr about his dog that the sheriff jumped in too hard, too fast and the fish were scared away.

  Every day Nop ate every single scrap of food he was given and every day he was hungry. His eyes were too bright. The snow melted into icy mud and clung in balls to his belly fur. He knew to a millimeter the reach of his chain and lay in the same places every day. When it thawed, water stood inside the hollow gum tree and when it froze, Nop slept outside. The chain rubbed galls on his neck.

  Occasionally Grady Gumm would come out and kick Nop. That kick was by far the most interesting event in his life.

  Grady was worried about the sheriff. The lawman picked up Lester again and allowed as how he’d forget one of the DWI’s (driving while intoxicated) on Lester’s driving record if he happened to remember where he’d heard about Lewis Burkholder’s stockdog.

  Grady Gumm cursed Doug Whitenaur. “I been a lot of bad things,” Grady said, “but, by God, I never once in my life broke my bounden freely given word.”

  He had to get Nop off the place. No telling when that damn sheriff might take a notion to come up to Sally Gap for a look-see.

  Grady phoned a man he knew. Man raised pit bulls. The man came out and looked Nop over, checked his teeth, listened to his breathing, inspected his scars. He shook his head. “I don’t care how much spunk he’s got,” he said, “my pit bulls will kill him too quick. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you ten dollars now or twenty if you feed him until April when I start training. I’m breeding now. Once I start training, my dogs’ll kill a bitch in season rather than breed her. How’s that for instinct!”

  Nop eyed the pit bull trainer with open curiosity. The man might become his master. Nop wagged his tail.

  The pit bull handler was disgusted. “I’ll give you twenty for that elkhound bitch of yours, right now,” he said.

  Sourball cursed in the dog tongue and the handler smiled. “Twenty dollars. She’ll last four or five fights. I like her ways.”

  Nop had been dismissed. He crawled back into his log.

  Several times that winter, parties gathered at Grady’s house to go deer hunting. The deer season was long past, but it was more fun hunting when the woods weren’t cluttered up with others.

  Most of these hunters lived out of county—one or two as far away as Alexandria. They held jobs in tire stores and garages, in small factories, and one worked at the poultry plant where Mark Hilyer had applied. They came out to get away from their lives: to shoot, cuss and drink.

  T.T. Raines was drunk the first time he saw Nop and sick hungover the second time, which is how Nop acquired a new master.

  T.T. had been a fair bull rider ten years ago and five years ago had made a barely good rodeo clown. He never made a success at that line of work. He’d never made a success at anything, but he sure did love to rodeo.

  “How you makin’ it, T.T.?”

  “Still foolin’ ’em.” That was always T.T.’s answer.

  He wasn’t a bad man. He was just forgetful.

  T.T. was some kind of distant kin to Grady Gumm. They traced a connection through the West Virginia Raineses.

  In between rodeos, T.T.’d come up to Grady’s place and drink some beer and brag on all the big-time rodeo men who were his nodding acquaintances. Whenever he got drunk he’d pull out his Rodeo Association card from his dog-eared brown wallet and lay it down for everyone’s admiration like it was maybe a license to practice law or medicine.

  He was a good sort, bought more Old Milwaukee than he drank and was unfailingly polite to Grady Gumm’s wife and kids (who retired to the Ten-Wide and shut the door whenever the hunters drove in).

  T.T. never cared for bear hunting. Out west, where they had grizzlies, he could see bear hunting. But in these hills a big bear didn’t weigh three hundred pounds and, hell, it wasn’t fair or anything like an even contest—that was T.T.’s opinion.

  When the boys went out that night, they left old T.T. alone in the same house with Grady Gumm’s wife and kids and T.T.’s mason jar of oily slick popskull liquor. Though T.T. was godawful lonesome once the boys were gone and nothing for company except Father Willie Nelson singing on the tape player, he would have died before he knocked on the door to the Ten-Wide to visit with Grady’s wife. He didn’t really like being in the same house though the door between the two sections was sure stout and locked too. A man oughtn’t to find himself in a situation like this: it might be misinterpreted. He took another sip of whiskey. Every flat surface had its share of round beer cans. He dumped them in the garbage bag and hauled the bag to the porch. Willie sang about “do-right women and do-right men.”

  T.T. went around the corner.

  Nop was all alone in the yard. T.T. grunted, zipped himself up and approached the dog. Nop got to his feet. That was all. He didn’t slink away, he didn’t wag a welcome, he just eyed old T.T. like he would a sheep. Steady, unafraid.

  T.T. waved a hand in front of Nop’s muzzle, trying to break the gaze, “Whoa, Son. No need to get nasty with me. You are a Border Collie, ain’t you? You look just like the dog Buster Wilson trailed around in Mexico. Dog was a trick dog, he was. Made Buster a good piece of change. His name was Spot. What’s your name?”

  Nop wagged a hello.

  When T.T. hunkered down to pet the dog, he had to set one palm flat on the ground for balance. “Hell, Son. Old earth just wants to pull me down. One day it’ll manage it, sure enough. You just sniff at my hand all you want to. You and me are gonna be friends.”

  T.T. sat out in the moonlight rumpling Nop’s fur. Nop was a young dog and it had been long since anyone touched him except in anger and Nop wriggled and twisted his pleasure. T.T. lowered the level in the bottle. If T.T. was passed out when Grady Gumm came home, he wouldn’t have to fear Grady’s jealous suspicions.

  T.T. took another piss. Companionably, Nop lifted his leg. Nop smiled and was very charming.

  When, finally, T.T. Raines stumbled back inside, Nop felt great loss. An emptiness where his heart had been. He sat on his haunches and cried out his disappointment and his loneliness to the round white eye of the moon.

  Next morning, T.T. barely made the door before he was sick and he had to clamp down hard or he would have fouled his pants too.

  The bear hunters hadn’t found bear last night, but a couple gutted deer lay frozen and stiff in the bed of Grady’s pickup. They looked more alive than T.T.

  T.T. wobbled down to Sally Branch and scooped up ice-cold water which chilled but failed to clean the whiskey grease on his forehead and cheeks. “Oh mama,” he said, “why do I do me like I do?”

  A thin wisp of smoke from the Ten-Wide’s chimney where Mrs. Gumm was making breakfast for the kids. T.T. smelled the fatback frying and it smelled not good.

  The rodeo would be in Roanoke. It was four hours down the interstate to Roanoke. T.T. had a pint of bonded whiskey in the glove compartment of his Impala. It was half empty though he couldn’
t remember when … It helped some. Damn sun. Damn sun, anyway!

  Something was very wrong with the man who’d befriended him last night and he smelled terrible, but Nop wagged his tail.

  “ ’Lo, Doggy,” one hand raised in an awkward wave.

  “Say, T.T. You like that dog?”

  “Mornin’, Grady. Yeah, that’s a fine stockdog.”

  “Smart as a whip. Man could teach that dog to do anything.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Something wrong, T.T.? You look poorly this mornin’. You see those deer we got? I dropped that doe from two hundred yards, one shot right through the lungs.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So. You was waitin’ around here last night all by your lonesome. I don’t suppose my wife came out, did she?”

  “Naw. Never heard a sound from that Ten-Wide. Not all night, Grady. Not a peep.” The acid was rolling around in T.T.’s gut.

  “Yeah.” Grady didn’t look like he believed him. He walked over to Nop, same as he always did for a kick. Nop stood up and eyed Grady, same as always but this time no kick. “I got no stock, you know. No cows, or sheep either. What do I need with a stockdog? I think I’m gonna take this one out to the ravine this afternoon and put him down. He ain’t no use to me.” He unclipped the chain from the hollow gum tree and gave it a jerk. Carefully, on tiptoes, Nop walked toward Grady. “Hell, he don’t even like me. He likes you though, T.T. You can have him for twenty dollars. You’d’ve spent that much if you’d spent last night in a motel.”

  “Would have had a bed too,” T.T. grumbled. Nop walked right up to him and looked him right in the eye and it was T.T. who turned away. “Ain’t got but thirty dollars,” he said. “And I’ll need half that for gas.”

  Grady grinned at him. Unshaven, splotchy with booze and bad sleep, Grady Gumm looked like the devil. “Well,” he said, “I’d plumb hate to see you stuck beside the road, T.T. You give me fifteen and the stockdog’s yours.”