The Demolishers Read Free

...”
    I sighed. “I knew we’d get to that after-all-it’s-just-an-animal routine eventually, sir. But Bultman isn’t doing what he’s doing for an elderly bitch that would soon have died of natural causes anyway. He’s doing it for his right to keep an elderly bitch and, when her time was up, let her die in peace with her old gray head in his lap.”
    “Very touching, Eric, but . . .”
    I said, “I won’t go after him, sir. I won’t say he’s justified in what he’s doing. As you point out, it was only an animal, and a lot of human beings are going to die for it. But I can’t go after him because, as I said before, if it had been my dog, I’d have reacted in exactly the same way; so how can I hunt down the man for that? As a kid out west I learned that if you mess with a man’s horse or his dog you’ve only yourself to blame for what happens next. It’s time these people learned it, too, and I’m not about to stop Bultman from advancing their education. If you want my resignation, it will be on your desk as soon as one of the girls downstairs can type it up . . . "

Chapter 2
    When I was a boy, a Labrador retriever was always black. I was aware that the yellows and chocolates were permissible variations, but I can’t recall ever seeing one of those offbeat canines. Nowadays, however, every dog breeder is striving for something new and different. The yellow Lab has been rescued from obscurity and is starting to take over from the black.
    The pup that had been given me by the Swedish relatives on whose farm I’d stayed the previous spring ranged in color from pale red gold on the back to straw white on the chest. He was the biggest juvenile Labrador I’d seen. At eighteen months he weighed over a hundred pounds, with enormous feet and a head like a bear. His greeting was overwhelming, like being mauled by a grizzly; but I didn’t mind. I mean, it showed that he remembered me and, dammit, love is where you find it. There aren’t that many humans around eager to hug and kiss me.
    “Grown a bit, ain’t he?” Bert Hapgood said, grinning. He was a lean dark man in jeans and a denim jacket. “Down, pup, down! I ought to charge you extra, Matt, the grub he puts away. In the morning you can shoot him a duck or two and see what he’s learned about handling them. . . .”
    Bert and his handsome, brown-haired wife, Doreen, ran what might be called a combination operation. They had their kennels, and they boarded and trained dogs throughout the year; but they also had boats in which they took people fishing in the appropriate seasons, and they had a considerable amount of local marshland under lease, on which they ran guided hunts in the fall and early winter from their rustic hunting lodge on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. It was a weathered building raised on stilts like the beach houses I’d passed on my way there, so high storm tides could wash underneath without damage. From my room, spartan but comfortable enough, I could hear the surf until I fell asleep thinking about tomorrow’s hunt.
    It was an improvement over some night thoughts I’d been having. I kept telling myself that I’d survived longer in the business than most, and that it had been only sensible to quit before the statistics of my profession caught up with me; but I’d have liked to have it happen in a more friendly fashion. I assured myself that it was ridiculous to entertain any sentimental or regretful thoughts about Mac; might as well start getting mushy about the public executioner. Still, we’d worked together a hell of a lot of years . . . But that night in Texas I thought only about ducks and dogs and shotguns, and fell asleep in record time.
    In the morning, after a hearty breakfast, we loaded the yellow pup into a crate in the back of Bert’s four-wheel-drive pickup and headed east along the highway, with another carload of hunters following along behind. It was a clear morning, with a good breeze and the sky already