Bookie Jones

We have a new member in our family since I last wrote. His name is Chipper Jones, or "Bookie Dawg" if R.L.'s being silly. He's an 8 month old Flat-Coated Retriever from Cahaba Flat-Coated Retrievers in Birmingham.

Last year, I read the novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. The story is a retelling of Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin and revolves around a family of 2nd generation dog breeders and their mythic, "homemade" breed of dogs. Their son, Edgar, is a mute boy, especially gifted in "dog whispering," who runs away after his father dies, escorted by a litter of loyal puppies that he has raised and trained all by himself. Edgar, like Hamlet, suspects that his Uncle Claude has murdered his father, Gar, to be with his mother, Trudy, and to take over the family business. (Personally, I love the character names.) If you've read Hamlet, it's not a big secret what happens, but it's still riveting and even surprising how it all unfolds. I highly recommend it. The book is FILLED with beautiful and insightful characterizations of dogs--their movement , their motivation, even their thoughts and intuitions.

I loved the novel, and the more I read it, the more I missed having a dog in the family. I'm talking about a strange sort of deep, inner tug-toy desire for a new dog. H and I have had a dog or dogs for the vast majority of our nineteen years together, and after a year and a half of dog free living--a nice break by the way--that void was starting to howl. So by the end of the novel, I had researched every breed known to God and man, from the Nova Scotia Duck-Tolling Retriever to the weenie dog, and settled on FCR's. All the info out there sounded too good to be true. I read How to Raise the Perfect Dog by Cesar the Great cover to cover, twice. I got all the props ready--crate, bully sticks (one of Cesar's favorite tricks), Kongs. I started saving tennis balls left over from matches and tournaments. I bought squeeky toys. H and I brainstormed the "name list" for a couple of months. (Chipper wasn't even on it.) I interviewed veterinarians. I mapped out and practiced walking routes in the neighborhood, and I designed my own, original training and thinking exercises. I left no water dish unturned.

We've had Chipper Jones for over six months now, and he's been a dandy addition to our home and family. I don't think I've invested this much of myself into any family pet ever--and that's probably saying something. And after several rough patches through puppyhood and puberty (like the time I ran over him on the four-wheeler at the cabin--he wasn't hurt...), the hard work is starting to pay off. Chipper is turning into the mature, responsive dog that I had envisioned. He's R.L.'s best friend and companion, sparring partner and mischief accomplice. And H has only just begun to work her special brand of magic with him. (She has a way with dogs that I can only attribute to her Cherokee side. It's a marvel to witness her when she gets down on the floor to caress and whisper in a dog's ear.) He's even helped me lose twenty pounds.

So, Chipper and I have started preparing for dove season. I've been shooting .22 blanks off at every meal before he eats and taking him out on the boat a lot to make sure he's cool on Labor Day weekend. My buddy even stuck a dove in the freezer for me for live retrieving and "lost bird" exercises. He's coming along nicely and should be ready to go Saturday, September 3rd. It's gonna be a big day for us. Hopefully one where we begin to establish a bond only understood by very few, lucky hunters and their good ole dogs. I've observed it between my Dad and his Yellow Lab, Wheat, and between Dad's friend Nathan and Jack the pointing English Setter, but I've never had it myself.

Last week, on Lake Maumelle during an early morning fishing trip/dog training session, I let him jump out of the boat for a refreshing dip, and he swam all the way UNDER the boat--went down on the starboard side and came up on the port side. I kid you not. Damnedest thing I've ever seen a dog do in my life.

I've thought for a while that when he gets a little more distinguished and mature that I'm gonna start calling him Mr. Jones. You're well on your way Bookie Buke.

Blue Moon New Year's Eve

Blue Moon tonight. Check it out.

Lake Ouachita Fog

Well the fog's so thick you can't spy the land. -Bob Dylan

The compass fails and leads the boat in one, sweeping circle. We putt along, marking time, waiting for it to lift so we can find our way home to Poison Ivy Island. Now and again, we are within twenty yards of the shore and don't know.

Redbank: 1958

Papa knelt before Turkey Creek and lowered his arm and cupped his hand and drank from it while the boy swung the pendular axe by the throat and knocked the arch of his boot with the pole of the axe. Papa opened the pouch of chewing tobacco and pinched it, chewed it and spat then rose and returned to the fell. The boy clasped the saw, moved the choke to half, and drew the cord. The saw fired and surged, and he handed it to his father who set the choke back with his thumb, pinching the throttle, and knelt in the heap of saw chips and cut the wood. He lifted and carried and pitched the logs as Papa partitioned them. When the fell was all cut, the boy asked,

“Papa, may I split the logs?”

“Like I showed you,” Papa said.

His father stood over him while he centered the toe of the bit onto the near ledge of the oak log and spread his feet to shoulders' width. The swell knob rested off the heel of his left palm, and he watched his breath. Then, he wheeled and caught the throat of the handle in his right hand and delivered it in line, letting the weight of the bit crack the log and sink into the chopping block. It was a clean first swing that hurled the halves end over end in the crepitant leaf-litter.

“Nice swing young man.”

Fat Pine: 1983

Papa knelt before the hickory embers and wielded the spatula that he cached along with the grill grating in the hickory tree above the fire pit, and he flipped the beef patties. Strewn around in the sandy dirt lay a bow saw, the morning’s newspaper, some ground peppercorn, garlic salt, a hatchet, and a tin of minced onion flakes. The smoke from the embers wafted over to Dad and finally him and on through the clearing into the mother-naked hardwoods.

After lunch, he led his grandfather to the spring for a drink. The glistering frost on the leaf-litter winked and melted in the noonday effulgence while they walked down the drive, the boy watching his breath and balancing on the rib of grass splitting the sandy ruts. They descended the embankment and crossed another trail into the cedar glade where the inky cypress boards constructed a coruscating box of water in the ground. A tarnished ladle was hooked over the backboard, and they both knelt and dipped it in the water and drank from it.

“It’s good Papa.”

“It is good. Mmm. Best water in the world.”

“Where is Dad?”

“He is at the ravine looking for fatwood.”

“Why didn’t he come for water?”

“There is Pepsi Cola in the truck. And work to do.”

“May I help Papa?”

“We need your help.”

“Good. How big is a hundred acres Papa?”

“You know that.” Papa held out his arm and pointed it across the woodland above them. “From the upside-down pine to here, at the spring, and from the far side of the ravine to Turkey Creek.”

“Is that big?”

“Not especially.”

“How many is all of South Carolina Papa?”

“Too many to count.”

They found Dad down in the ravine kneeling before the pine stump digging out the roots with the fold-shovel, brow and forearms beading sweat. His father didn’t stop digging and picking as they drew near. Papa stepped in front of the remnant and wrapped his arms around it and wobbled it, but the stump was not yet free. Papa knelt and his father handed over the shovel.

“How was the spring?”

“It is the best water in the world Dad.”

“Good. Take that shovel from Papa and dig out around those roots.”

He picked and dug, making a small tunnel under the stump, and then he started at it from the other side. Papa lifted his arm and pulled the chewing tobacco out of the shirt-pocket and opened the pouch and pinched it and chewed it. The boy stopped and watched.

“Do you want some young man?”

“No. I won’t be able to dig.”

“No sir?”

“No thank you sir.”

“I’m going for the peach baskets,” his Dad said.

“Will you bring him a Pepsi Cola?”

“Yes sir, you want one?”

“Not now, I’m alright.”

Papa knelt before his grandson and watched him work at the stump. It was almost free. Papa told him to shake it, and he did, but it wouldn’t come. So he handed his grandfather the tool and stood up while Papa finished the business. When Dad returned from the truck, the fat pine lay on its side next to the hole, and he was striking it with the hatchet.

“I smell turpentine! You got it."

“Yes he did.”

The slivers of wood fell before the stump, and the men stacked them into the baskets filling each of them. Then they walked away from the oddment and out of the ravine carrying the baskets and set them in the truck bed.

“Can I feed the fire Dad?”

“Ask your Papa.”

“May I feed the fire Papa?”

“Yes you may. Saw up that hickory branch.”

The men watched him work down the length of the branch with the bow saw. He stopped once to rest and to watch his breath. When he finished he carried the sticks and stacked them next to the fire pit. He went to the truck bed and removed a few pieces of the fat pine from one of the peach baskets and returned to the embers and stirred them with a piece of the lightwood. It lit off straightaway, and he positioned it and the other slivers over the glowing coals, and then he crosshatched the sticks of hickory around the resinous blaze. The flame spread swiftly to the hickory. He plodded back to the truck bed and held out his arms.

“Load me up please.”

“You want a fire, do you not?”

“Yes sir. A big one.”

The boy lugged the split logs and stacked them next to the fire pit. He looked at his father, then propped the logs over the hickory.

“Like a teepee, right Papa?”

“That is right young man.”

“It is a good fire son.”

“It is getting warm Dad.”

“It is a fire son. On a deep bed of coals.”

They stood around the fire pit and watched the wood burn. Then Papa told him the story about the cemetery across the road. Once some boys in the Sunday school class were camping there in the clearing, and they went to the cemetery at dark to look around. An especially ornery boy was pining for something to supervene, and when he sat down and leaned back against the headstone, the grave marker shifted and groaned, and the boy shot hell-bent out of the cemetery hurdling the fencerow and didn’t look back and didn’t let up until he made camp.

Island #35

I'll be on Lake Ouachita till Tuesday camping and trolling for walleye. Putting in at Buckville. Catch me if you can.

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Saturday 3/22/97—Chesler Park 1

Newberry’s twinpod or Physaria newberryi (yellow flower)

Locoweed or Astragalus mollissimus (purple flower)

Rufous-sided Towhee (laughing canyon bird)

Canyon Wren

“Gnarly” Juniper or Juniperus osteosperma

Prickly Pear or Optrantia polyacantha

Indian Paintbrush (red flower)

Smooth Scouring Rush or Equisetum laevigatum (horsetails—later to be known as “Mankilla, tryin’ to kill a man”)

Box Elder or Acer negundo

Single Leaf Ash or Fraxinus anomala

Fishhook Cactus or Sclerocactus whipplei

Fourwing Saltbush

Peppergrass

Big Sagebush

Tumbleweed

Cheatgrass

Blackbrush

Cryptogam Crust

Lizard dude

           And we’re tracking a cougar.

Natural Burial

I started 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry this week with my classes, and yesterday one of the poems we discussed was "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne.  It goes like this:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The poem is one of Donne's Holy Sonnets.  He had unenthusiastically entered the ministry at the insistence of King James, and his quick wit, his flair for the dramatic, and his rolling intellect had established him as the mega-rock star preacher of his era.  In the poem, the speaker condescendingly confronts Death and personifies him as a tool, a cocksure pawn of Fate, Chance, and desperate men.  For the believer, death is really a peaceful little nap at the start of eternal life.  Yet he runs around like a bluffing bully.  The cacophonous  couplet at the end reveals that the joke is on Death.  While we wake eternally, death dies.

I'm not sure about all that, but what I do know is that I dig the gist.  

So naturally, I had a dream last night about my death.  It wasn't a morbid or a disturbing dream.  It was one of those dreams where I was thinking, sort of awake.  I was contemplating my own little nap and how I hope it goes down.  Here's what I dreamt:  

When I die, dig a hole in the woods about two meters deep in Newton County, Arkansas or in the Blue Ridge somewhere, 20 or 30 yards away from a waterfall or a bluff or a big, old tree where woodpeckers hang out.  Wrap my body in a linen shroud and place it in the hole.  No embalming fluids, no incineration, no concrete vault.  Cover me up with some soil and relocate a dogwood, a wild blueberry bush, blackberries and raspberries for the bears, some dwarf lilies, mayapples, and ferns.  I love ferns.  Or just spread some rich duff and fallen leaves; it doesn't matter.  One short sleep past, I'll wake eternally and death shall be no more.  Visit the waterfall, the bluff, the tree and see what I become. 

I'll send you off with a tune in your head if you know the Dave Matthews Band:

Gravedigger,

When you dig my grave,

Could you make it shallow

So that I can feel the rain?  

                                 --David John Matthews 

The bounds of the Universe are thin on January the 4th.

[if there are any heavens]

by e.e. cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have

one.  It will not be a pansy heaven nor

a fragile heaven of lillies-of-the-field but

it wll be a heaven of black-red roses

my father will be (deep like a rose

tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her

silent)

with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which

is a flower and not a face with

hands

which whisper

This is my beloved my

                                        (suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow.)

                                                                                                          MRF and MJF

Burn a candle today if you have the time.

--MJF

A Fishing Secret

Game Warden friend of mine was always asking how I catch so many fish.  Finally I said, "Come along with me sometime.  I'll show you."  We made plans and met down at Jolly Rogers Marina early one Sunday morning, loaded up and launched the boat as the sun rose over Pinnacle Mountain.  We motored across to the other side of the lake, under Highway 10, back up Maumelle Creek a little ways where I killed the engine.

He asked, "Is this it?  The secret fishing hole?"  I didn't say anything, just reached down into my tackle box, calmly pulled out a stick of dynamite, lit it and threw it out into the water.  Couple-seconds later that thing said, "ka-WHOOMPH!'  Course the game warden was horrified as dead fish started floating to the surface.  I was trolling around dipping them up with the scoop-net, and he was saying, "You can't do that!  I'm going to have to arrest you!"  I stopped, reached into my tackle box and pulled out another stick of dynamite.  I lit it, handed it to him and said, "Are you going to stand there and talk all day, or you gonna fish?"

--MJF

A Whole Front Yard Full of Fat Robins

--from the memoirs of Mary Rome Foster

"My Daddy caught a robin at work one day and brought it home to me.  For a five-year-old, there is nothing more wonderful than a pet of any kind and to have a bird and a wild one at that--wow!  Daddy had done it again.  (He was the best you know.)

I put it on the front porch and sat with it all afternoon.  Talked to it.  Gave it bread and worms.  (YUK!!)  And kept telling it how lucky it was to have ended up with me.  No bird would ever be so loved.  

It watched me closely but never made a sound.  And it didn't eat anything either.  Birds are supposed to eat a bunch!  But not this one.  He just watched me.

Along about dusk (you know, that homesick time of day when the shadows get long and the sky makes everything look orange), Mother came out.  

'Pretty bird.  You really love it don't you?'  Mother asked.  'Daddy thought you'd enjoy having it.  For the day.'

Notice how Daddy gave it to me, but Mother had to come with the unpleasant news.  She sat down and told me that each year, I could claim the first robin of spring and that it could always be a message of God's promise to be there when I needed."

--MJF

Rock Creek Trout

I am wary of Winter's gray song.  I don't like to stay inside.  I pull on layers and position the gear in the bed of the truck.  Drive to Rock Creek and suit up: neoprene waders, fleece toboggan, nail-knot multi-tool, fly rod, 2 flies, creel.  In that order.  Stalk the creek through the riparian thicket. Crouch and observe the activity; tie two on about a foot apart with the brown sow bug trailing the bead-headed, gray sow bug.  Call it the best of both worlds.  Roll cast; dead drift; swing; repeat.  The air must be slush.  It should be snowing, rather the flakes are suspended, invisible.  Have to adjust for that, a little more oomph.  Water congeals on the line as I strip it; freezes and clogs the guides.  One more cast before I must retreat to the covert and break the ice.  Roll cast; mend; dead drift; swing; repeat.  Her silver belly rolls out of the water, lets slip her girth as she takes the gray one, flexes the tip, and snap.  She bites it off cleanly and leaps away through the slush.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Trout Stocking--Family and Community Fishing Program is a valuable allocation of our public funds.  They stock municipal waters with thousands of farm-raised trout throughout the winter months to stir an outdoor lover's coals during the gelid hours.  Take advantage of it sometime.  

--MJF