by Jim Harrison
At home, Carnac missed few opportunities to display the flip side of his character. He kept right on eating rugs, shoes, the springer’s tail, and, whenever the opportunity presented itself, he wrapped his front legs around anything that felt right and humped it until his eyes glazed with happiness. Carnac is not popular with those who don’t know or care about his split personality. He is with me.
Graduation day came on an overcast winter morning, full of fog and pale shadows. I released him into a section of the farm where I had heard quail whistling and watched proudly as the little dog cast back and forth, looking at me for direction, moving with a special eagerness, as if his instincts were telling him that this was what all those weeks of training had been about. The terrain sloped through a mixed cover of grass, year-old oak saplings, and myrtle bushes to a small cornfield cut into an open bench in the middle of the woods. Half the corn was standing. The rest had been mowed down. There was grain on the ground. The deer had taken to the field, as had the turkeys and at least two coveys of bobwhite quail. The wind was right, it was early in the day, and wild smells sprang out of the dew.
Carnac worked on fifty yards ahead of me, looking pretty sure of himself. Quail had always been easy for him to find before, and he saw no reason why they wouldn’t be on this day.
When he stopped, he had a face full of bird scent and, except for a speeding tail and puffing cheeks, he stared ahead and didn’t move. The scene warmed the cockles of my heart. This was the first of our salad days together. I walked up behind the dog, quietly reminding him to stay, walked to a piece of low cover, and watched a good covey of bobwhite quail hurl itself off the ground and fan over the cornfield. No doubles today, I thought, and, assuring the shot, dropped a bird twenty-five yards away.
“All right, little man,” I said, “fetch it up.” I was feeling pretty good about the developments.
The Brittany broke for the bird while I reloaded and thought about having a glass of wine for lunch, a big one, to mark the occasion and adjust my personality. Carnac ran behind a stand of tall dog fennel. I must have crippled that bird, I thought heading his way; what a good dog I have. I encouraged him from the far side of the fennel stand, and when I got around to where I could see, there he was, facing away from me, muzzle in a bush, tail wagging. It looked to me that he had the bird, so I told him to fetch it back. He didn’t, so I told him to sit, which he did in his ramrod fashion. No problem, I thought; he pointed, held, and then found the bird. I didn’t expect as much on his first day out—after all, perfection is elusive. I broke the gun, walked up behind the puppy, and reached around his head for the quail in his mouth. The only thing my fingers encountered were two scaly feet, which when pulled on surrendered, and came free.
The rest of the bird shot straight down Carnac’s throat.
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