My Life in Dog Years Read Free

through the dappled light, the explosion of a grouse flying up through the leaves—and I would turn to point it out to somebody, turn to say, “Look …” and there would be no one there.
    The second fall after I’d started living in and off the woods I decided to hunt ducks. Miles to the north were the great swamps and breeding grounds of literally millions of ducks and geese, and when the migratory flights started south the sky would seem to darken with them. The .22 rifle was not suited for ducks—was indeed illegal for them—so I saved my money setting pins and bought an old single-shot Browning twelve-gauge shotgun from a kid named Sonny. The gun had a long barrel and a full choke, and with number four shot seemed to reach out forever. I never became really good with it, but couldhit now and then when the ducks were flying at the right angle. Duck hunting soon became my life.
    I did not have decoys but I made some blinds six miles out of town where there were cattail swamps. I would walk out there in the dark, leaving the house at three in the morning, nestle into the blinds and wait for the morning flights to come in from the north. Usually I would get one or two ducks—once a goose—but some I wounded or didn’t kill cleanly and they would get into the swamp grass and weeds in the water and I couldn’t find them.
    It was about then that I met Ike.
    Ike was a great barrel-chested black Labrador that became one of the best friends I’ve ever had and was in all ways an equal; not a pet, not something to master, but an equal.
    I had had other dogs. Snowball in the Philippines, then a cocker spaniel somebody gave me named Trina. They were sweet anddear and gave love the way only dogs can, with total acceptance, but Ike was the first dog I’d ever known not as a pet but as a separate entity, a partner.
    We met strangely enough. It was duck season and I was going hunting. I woke up at three and sneaked from the basement, where I stayed when my parents were drunk— which was all the time—up into the kitchen. Quietly I made two fried egg sandwiches at the stove. I wrapped them in cellophane (this was well before sandwich bags), folded them into a paper sack and put them in my pack along with a Thermos of hot coffee. Then I got my shotgun from the basement. I dumped a box of shells into the pockets of the old canvas coat I’d found in a trunk in the back of the coal room. I put on the knee-high rubber boots I’d bought at army surplus.
    I walked from the apartment building four blocks to the railroad, crossed the tracks near the roundhouse yard, crossed the EighthStreet bridge and then dropped down to the riverbank and started walking along the water.
    The river quickly left settled country and headed into woods, and in the dark—there was just the faintest touch of gray on the horizon—it was hard going. The brush pulled at my clothes and after a mile and a half the swamps became more prevalent so that I was wading in muck. I went to pull myself up the bank and walk where the ground was harder.
    It had been raining, mixed with snow, and the mud on the bank was as slick as grease. I fell once in the darkness, got to my feet and scrabbled up the bank again, shotgun in one hand and grabbing at roots and shrubs with the other. I had just gained the top, brought my head up over the edge, when a part of the darkness detached itself, leaned close to my face and went:
    “Woof.”
    It was that distinct—not “arf,” nor “ruff,”nor a growl, but the very defined sound of “woof.”
    I was so startled that I froze, mouth half open. Then I let go of the shrub and fell back down the mud incline. On the way down the thought hit me—bear. Something big and black, that sound—it had to be a bear. Then the word
gun.
I had a gun. I landed on my back and aimed up the bank, pulled the hammer back and put my finger on the trigger before I realized the gun wasn’t loaded yet. I never loaded it while walking in the dark.