him high and right then, once again
barely beat the setter to the kill.
"My God," Dad said, shaking
his head as he came up out of the
creek, "he smells worse wet than
dry. I didn't think it possible."
I
have many hunting memories
from a long life, some good and
some not so good, but I have
never considered myself a "quail
hunter." Most of my experiences
with the little fellows were usually
blunder-hunts, taking a bird or two
on rabbit outings or stumbling into a
covey on the way to hunt something
else, but I'd like to think that on that
day we did it right.
When we returned Lightning
to his pen that evening, even the
old man patted his stinking head,
saying through his grimace "Good
Dog." The three of us would
hunt together three more times
that fall, and all of those outings
were repeats of the first hunt,
dog stinking, working beautifully,
snatching a bird when he could
get away with it, the cussing and
laughing and shooting printing my
memory with the joy of a good dog
and the company of the man that
was everything to me.
Of course, anything so
wonderful cannot last. When we
found Lightning dead in his kennel
on the morning of a planned hunt
just before Christmas, we did for
him the only thing we knew to do:
we buried him with a bird between
his paws on a little rise above
that buckwheat field. We stacked
his grave with flat soapstone, a
pyramid that still stands today in
an overgrown and lonely Wythe
County valley. I hiked up there
a few days ago to see if I could
find it; the fellow that owns the
property now was working nearby
on his fence and he walked up the
hill to me. As we talked he stopped
suddenly and looked at his boots.
"What the hell is that smell?"
he said.
He looked at me like I was crazy
when I said "Lightning."
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