Sam the Fishing Dog

by Jeff Hazlett

Henry Weaver and his dog Milo lived at the end of Chestnut Street on the western edge of Augustana.

            Their one-story home was small and simple, built in the prairie style with a low-pitched roof and broad, overhanging eaves to blend into the surroundings. It sat modestly among the dwarf apple trees and flowering shrubbery that dotted the front and side yards.

            Yet Henry always felt his home to be embarrassingly extravagant. The stone fireplace and hand-carved surround belonged in a castle, he thought, and the leaded glass window in the front door, with its intricate design of tulips and daylilies and wildflowers, in a cathedral. He admired the built-in cherry bookcases that covered one wall of the main living area, but he didn’t own any books. Not one. The shelves, instead, held framed photos of each of his dogs since the very first, since Sam.

            On this late-winter morning, the sun steadily climbing through a clear blue sky that held only the whisps of a cloud, Henry sat in his kitchen drinking coffee, checking his watch and looking out the back window across the familiar field of undisturbed prairie grass and to the Three Sister Hills in the distance. Milo laid sleeping underneath the kitchen table.

            “Missy has a little snow on her,” Henry said. “Reaching just into the treeline.”

            Milo’s left eye twitched; otherwise, he didn’t move.

            “It’s been a dry winter. But you never know. Something might be coming.”

            Henry checked his watch again – ten o’clock.

            “It’s time,” he said.

            He rinsed his coffee cup, left it in the sink and took Milo’s leash down off its peg. The soft leather uncoiled, the metal clip at the end tapped lightly on the floor. Milo came out from under the table, shook himself awake and stood expectantly.

            “I’m sure it’s okay if I bring you,” said Henry. “I mean, I didn’t check or ask or anything. But I’m sure it’s okay. You’re a good dog.”

            Of all the dogs Henry had ever owned, Milo reminded him the most of Sam. It wasn’t just Milo’s similar heritage – part bloodhound, part bluetick coonhound and part something else entirely – or his quiet steps and easy manner. They just understood each other, the way he and Sam used to.

#

Henry stepped from his front door with Milo at his side and started the familiar walk toward the center of town. He followed Chestnut Street to Seventh Avenue and turned north.

            He patted his pants pockets as he walked. Did he have his wallet in his back right pocket? Yes. His house keys in his front right pocket? Yes. His comb and handkerchief in his back left? Yes. And in his front left, yes, his 1876 silver half-dollar with its mysterious bullet hole.

            “I could talk about my lucky coin,” said Henry. “Yes. I could make something up about that. About where and when it came to be shot and by whom. Whom, right? Whom, not who?”

            Milo didn’t seem to have an opinion.

            “Yes, that might be a nice story. Kids might like that. Fun and adventure. But then, no, no, maybe not. Guns and bullets. That might not go.”

            A cool breeze from the west pushed a few dead leaves and an empty paper bag across Seventh Avenue. Henry heard a window slide shut in one of the houses to his right. The wind rushed through again, feeling just a bit wet.

            “Maybe I should have grabbed a jacket before we left,” Henry said to Milo. “The weather might be turning.”

            He had dressed lightly in a pair of gray cotton work pants and a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a blue-gray plaid pattern; the top of a white crewneck t-shirt peeked out from underneath the unbuttoned collar. His dark brown shoes were clean and polished.

            At Sprague Street, he and Milo headed east again. Augustana Elementary was just a few blocks ahead, shielded from view by the copse of black walnut trees on the schoolgrounds.

            A squirrel darted across their path on Sprague and stopped a few feet from a barren maple tree in one of the yards; it rooted into the brown grass, stopped to glance at Milo, then rooted again more diligently.

            Henry gripped the handle of the leash a bit tighter as they walked. Milo looked toward the squirrel but made no move to chase it. He snorted and turned his gaze back to the sidewalk and the coming intersection.

            “You know,” said Henry, “it wouldn’t hurt you to bark or try to chase a squirrel here and there. You don’t want people to start thinking you’re stuck up or something. Or maybe you are a bit stuck up. Maybe you think you should be living among the presidents. They say Jefferson was a bit stuck up. Or Washington. They say he was kind of a prude. But then, no, you’re not a prude, I guess. At least not when you get a chance at Miss Emerson’s goldendoodle. What’s her name? Honey? Don’t know what you see in her. She shows absolutely no enthusiasm for you. Talk about stuck up.”

            They crossed Twelfth Avenue and as Henry stepped up the curb to the sidewalk his left knee buckled slightly. He felt no pain, only a familiar wariness that reminded him to step up with his right leg whenever he could. He felt thankful that the first grade class at Augustana Elementary was on the ground floor.

#

Mid-morning, the kids were outside on the playground, boisterous and intense at their games. None of them were bundled in spite of the season; the bright sunlight kept them warm.

            Inside the school’s foyer, Henry stopped for a moment. The familiar bulletin boards and display cases held important-looking notices and, in a long row along the right hand wall, a string of drawings, some in crayon, some in color pencil, some in watercolor.

            “Look, Milo,” said Henry. “One of the kids has drawn a yellow lab, like your friend Trixie, but, no, wait. I didn’t see the wings. So maybe this is, uh . . . hmmm.”

            The first grade classroom was at the end of the hallway to the right, he knew. On the way, Henry stopped outside the steel double-doors that led to the school’s kitchen, careful to stay far enough back so that a sudden swing of a door wouldn’t catch him or Milo by surprise. The clang and clatter of metal trays resonated into the hallway. Henry heard someone from inside the kitchen barking orders. “You’ve got to spray those trays first,” she called. “And get those other trays into the warming cabinets. No kid gets a soggy fish stick from this kitchen.”

            “Fish sticks,” said Henry. “There we go, Milo. Yes, fish sticks.”

            Milo’s left eye closed and he dipped his head slightly to aim his right eye at the crack between the doors. He sniffed once, twice, three times and then let out a low, trilling growl that settled into a gentle kitteny purr.

            “Mr. Weaver!” A voice called from further down the hallway. “Henry, hello.” It was Mrs. Baker, the first grade teacher, outside her classroom, shining like the coming spring in a flared green skirt and a flowing, flowery top of purple and yellow and blue. Mrs. Baker had moved to Augustana from the state capital just a few years earlier, when she was Miss Helen Atchison and fresh out of teachers college. Not long after and to everyone’s delight, she met and married young Roger Baker, whose family owned the local mortuary. Everyone liked the match: the lively bride, beloved by her students, softened the handsome yet always-too-serious groom. More than five hundred people showed up for the dance after the wedding reception, packing the high school gymnasium well into the night, and no one danced lighter or stayed longer than the school board members who felt that the wedding vows no doubt sealed a lifelong commitment to the children of Augustana from their new first-grade teacher.

            Henry and Milo walked down the hall to greet her. Milo kept to Henry’s side but glanced back over his shoulder more than once to the steel double-doors.

            “I hope it’s okay,” said Henry, motioning to Milo. “He’s never been to school. And I thought the kids might like him.”

            Mrs. Baker glanced at Milo and then to Henry and then to Milo again.

            “It wouldn’t be Augustana without a dog in the classroom,” she said finally. “But let’s get you two out of the hallway. I’ve got your spot set up.”

            Inside the classroom, Mrs. Baker motioned Henry to a wide, solitary wingback chair with a deep, curved barrel-back and upholstered in a rich dark-brown leather. The chair, by itself, would seem out of place in the classroom; but, set as it was on a thick gray rug and accompanied by a side table and floor lamp, it provided just the right bit of staging for story hour. This is where all the storytellers sat – on the wingback chair, against the far wall and its row of low, full bookcases running underneath the tall windows that looked out onto the playground.

            Mrs. Baker pulled the black shades down on the two windows behind Henry and turned on the floor lamp; her preparations were nearly complete.

            In front of the chair, the floor was open. There, Henry knew, the first-graders would sit and listen and laugh and groan and interrupt and poke at each other and then poke at him with questions – oh so smart questions and silly questions and questions from the furthest reaches of their minds that they could barely put into words, as they pondered the story he’d tell and try to find a place for it within their nascent understanding of the world.

            Mrs. Baker unstacked the books on the small side table and set them out in an array, so that Henry could see the various covers and titles.

            “A lot of our guests for story hour let the children choose from their favorites,” she said. “You know you’re always free to read a story if you like. Last week, Miss Emerson read The Dragon’s Missing Tooth. She did a wonderful job voicing out all the characters.”

            Henry really didn’t want to hear anything about Miss Emerson. The week before she’d also turned a hose on Milo, which seemed so unjust. So he had a thing for Honey. He was just being a dog.

            Henry settled into his chair and patted one of the books on the table as if considering his options. He unclipped the leash from Milo’s collar and his companion settled himself comfortably on the rug.

            A gust of wind came in through an open window near the front of the classroom, rustling papers and rolling pencils off desks. Mrs. Baker pulled the window shut and pulled down the remaining window shades as well. The school bell rang, sending its call outside and up and down the hallways.

#

The first-graders streamed into the classroom, their faces flush and their voices still calling loudly to each other. One young boy clung to a kickball, even when he sat down on the floor in front of Henry. A young girl with a ponytail and a purple sweatshirt sat down next to him.

            “Bobby and Anna!” teased a nearby classmate.

            “Anna and Bobby!” echoed another.

            Henry counted the kids around the room. If his memory served, Mrs. Baker had twenty kids the year before and now, this year, just sixteen. All so tiny and new, thought Henry. And one, he noticed, who set himself just a little bit apart and off to the side. His nice yellow sweater was embroidered with the name Jeffrey.

            The kids jostled each other as they sat on the floor in front of him, but the rowdiness and buzz of the playground disappeared instantly when Milo sat up. The kids turned to look at Mrs. Baker and then back to Milo and then back to Mrs. Baker again.

            “Mrs. Baker,” said one little girl. “There’s a dog.”

            “Just for today,” said Mrs. Baker. “And just for story hour.”

            An excitement swept over the kids, as if they’d just been told they were having cake and ice cream for lunch. A few gently whistled; a few patted the floor in front of them with their hands, coaxing quietly, “Here, boy.” For his part, Milo stood, his tail wagging but only modestly. He did not rush forward to play; instead, he laid back down on the rug.

            Henry sighed and considered his companion. Perhaps it’s true, he thought, dogs really do take after their owners. And Milo takes after me too much. He’s just three years old, but he behaves like an old man, not barking or chasing or playing, just being there, observing, from a chair, from a spot on the sofa, from a spot on the floor.

            Mrs. Baker stepped next to Henry and put a hand on his shoulder.

            “Class, this is Mr. Henry Weaver,” she said. “Mr. Weaver grew up in Augustana, just like you. He still lives in the house where he grew up – right, Henry? A cute little house at the end of Chestnut Street. He visits my first-grade class once a year and always tells a fantastical story. All of my other classes have loved him, and I know you will, too.”

            Henry smiled to the class as Mrs. Baker moved to the light switch near the classroom door.

            “How old are you?” asked one boy, fidgeting and fussing with his shoelaces.

            “How old am I?” asked Henry. “I’m seven dogs old. That’s how old I am. And that’s saying something, let me tell you.”

            “You look like a baby,” said a girl near the front.

            The children giggled.

            “You look like my baby brother Arlie,” said another girl. “Your head is all shiny and your face is all smooth and round and your cheeks are all red.”

            Henry had heard this before – many times, though never in such scrupulous detail. He could barely visit the barbershop or the diner or the grocery store without someone, somewhere on the scene, commenting, “I hope I look as good as you when I’m your age.” He was, he knew, baby-faced. He didn’t mind.

            “Did you go to school here?” the first girl asked.

            “Was Mrs. Baker your teacher?” asked Arlie’s older sister.

            “Oh, no,” said Henry. “When I was your age, this school wasn’t even built yet. The elementary school back then was a lot smaller, over on Monroe, and my teacher’s name was Mrs. Ortega. She was a short gal, kind of hefty, not pretty at all, looked like a man in a dress. She had hairy legs and a twin brother named George. And I remember she had a thing for smoking cigars.”

            Mrs. Baker coughed loudly and Henry noticed her head shaking no – shaking no, no, no.

            “But today,” said Henry, “I was thinking maybe I’d tell you a story about a dog, about my first dog, the one I had when I was your age, my dog Sam. We used to have so much fun together and get into all sorts of adventures, just by accident, it seemed. That is, if you like dogs and it seems that you do.

            “Sam looked a lot like Milo here. He had short hair, all gray and black speckled like Milo. And he was real, real smart. So smart. Smarter than me.

            “But the interesting thing about Sam, the thing that made him unlike any other dog I’ve ever owned, was that Sam was a fishing dog.”

            Henry waited for a reaction.

            The ponytailed girl named Anna raised her hand. “A fishing dog?”

            A few others chimed in. “What’s a fishing dog?”

            “Well,” said Henry, “a fishing dog has a sharp eye and a keen nose. He can see things and smell things that people can’t and regular dogs can’t either. He can help you find the best fishing spot and help you choose just the right bait, too. He can help carry your gear or your catch and if he’s been trained right – and, oh, Sam was such an educated fishing dog – he could help you clean and prepare your catch and even start a campfire.”

            The kids looked at each other. This was a lot of new information. Some glanced back at Mrs. Baker, but she maintained a steady gaze on Henry.

            “My goodness, Henry,” she said. “Sam must have been such a special dog. And you loved him so, too. I can tell.”

            A gust of wind pushed against the windows, and with a stronger gust the widows rattled in their frames.

            Mrs. Baker dimmed the classroom lights, leaving Henry in his chair and Milo on the rug under the solitary glow of the floor lamp. Henry began in his usual way:

From the Three Sister Hills,

Missy, Mandy and Mabel.

Down the Whispering Stream,

Past the Stone Creek church gable.

A white winter storm,

A fierce grizzly bear.

With just a few words,

You’ll find yourselves there.

So sit close together,

As close as can be,

And listen . . . listen to me.

#

It was a Saturday morning. Yes, a Saturday morning. What other morning could it be? Everyone knows the greatest adventures begin on a Saturday morning.

            I was just a little fellow, a first-grader, so many years and years and years ago, and it was the middle of a Saturday morning in late winter and I was just sitting on my bed at home with nothing to do.

            And then I heard my dog Sam.

            Short little barks. Low little growls. He was barking to himself. Growling to himself. Like people do sometimes, talking and muttering under their breath.

            Sam was dragging something down the hallway toward my room. It got snagged on the rug. Ruff! It got caught on a chair leg. Grrrr!

            Then there he was. He had hold of both of our wicker creels by their straps and he dropped them, finally, at the foot of my bed.

            Sam wanted to go fishing.

            Part of me thought this was silly. It was still winter! Part of me thought it was too late to get started. It was already ten in the morning! But another part of me knew that Sam was a fishing dog and not just any fishing dog but the world’s greatest fishing dog. And, if Sam said there were fish to be caught, well, Sam was never wrong.

            So I changed into my jeans, put on some thicker socks and pulled on a warm, hooded sweatshirt. I stepped into my brown boots and tied the corded laces tight.

            I strapped the two creels across Sam’s back, almost like a saddle. Empty, they’d be no burden to him, but if we had the kind of luck Sam seemed to be expecting, they’d soon be packed tight with cutthroat trout and then I’d have to carry them myself on the way home. And that would be okay. That would be wonderful.

            Then I threw on my pack jacket, grabbled our tackle kit and my best rod and spinner and the two of us together rushed out the door. Rushed. Raced. Ran. In such a hurry that we forgot to pack any lunch at all. Not even a cracker or a cookie.

#

Sam got ahead of me. Across the yard out back and down the trail to our usual spot. Mulberry Pond. In the woodlands off from Stone Creek.

            The trail was muddy and I had to go around in a few spots, trudging off into the taller fescue and prairie grass. But when I got to the pond I didn’t see Sam. Just the dark pond, covered in shade from the surrounding Mulberry trees and quiet. Our spot’s no good, I thought. Not today, anyway. And good spots from the bank are hard to find. Where’s Sam going?

            Then I heard Sam bark; he was waiting for me, not far, climbing, up Stone Creek and toward the Whispering Stream. I trudged on.

            As the woodlands cleared, I could see the Three Sister Hills off in the distance. Missy and Mandy both had snow on their tops, reaching down to the treeline. Maybe Mabel, too, but some hilltop cloud cover kept me from knowing.

            Sam kept barking and I kept following. We were reaching the mouth of Stone Creek and approaching the more rapid waters of the Whispering Stream. We had never gone this far before, and I thought I felt the wind turn wet, as if a winter storm might be coming.

            I stopped and called for Sam to come back.

            He barked.

            I called.

            He barked.

            I called.

            Finally, with great exasperation, he came back to find me sitting on the ground off from the juncture of the creek and stream.

            He sat and stared at me and seemed to roll his eyes as if to say, What in the world am I to do with such a boy? A boy who won’t come when I bark?

#

And so we went on, Sam leading and me following. The ground got steeper. The stream narrower. The water faster and louder.

            We climbed and climbed and climbed.  To spots I’d never seen before. To trees Sam had never peed on before. And that’s saying something, let me tell you.

            I lost my sense of the Three Sisters. I no longer knew which hill we climbed – maybe Missy to the north, maybe Mabel to the south or maybe Mandy, the middle sister. I only knew the ground under my feet and the trail that led up and up – covered here and there with leaves and pine needles, marked here and there by loose stones, crossed here and there by an exposed root from a nearby tree.

            And then a sharp bend in the stream; it turned away from us and I saw, behind a huge boulder, a small eddy where the water swirled and overflowed and chased down a curve in the ground to our left.

            This couldn’t be it, I thought. This little eddy. This tiny bit of water. It would be way too small, way too cold, too close to the trees, always shaded.

            I looked at Sam and, as if reading my mind, he snorted.

            In a bit of a huff, he stomped off to the side now, away from the stream, barking for me to follow.

            Then just a few paces further I saw it, where the water fed off from the eddy and created a large backwater pond, on a level bit of ground, clear and beautiful and exposed to the sunlight from edge to edge. I saw in the middle of the water a steady, gentle run flowing from the eddy back to the rocky hillside where it hit and then split off left and right to push shallow little riffles back along the edges of the pond.

            Sam stood on the bank of the pond, his head lowered, his left eye closed, his right eye targeted on the water. He let out this low, little, trilling growl . . . grrrrrr . . . that turned into the gentlest little purrrrrrr . . . softer than you ever heard from any cat or kitten. This is how he let me know, this is how he always let me know, that we’d found our spot.

            I stepped next to him, and Sam sat down, looking out onto the water. He was, I could tell, quite satisfied with himself and I patted the back of his neck and rubbed his shoulders.

            “I see it now,” I told him. “I see why you hurried to get here.”

            The sun was high, the pond lit. What fish it held, we would soon find out.

            I grabbed my tackle kit and looked for my favorite lures.

            Jumper – a giant cicada with a shiny brown head and orange body and giant see-through wings. The wings would stay tight to the body on the water but if you tugged on the line a bit the wings would open like it was going to fly off. Real eye-catching for a trout or a bass. I thought the still water of this backwater pond would be perfect to really work it.

            Or maybe Spitter, a grasshopper lure that I liked. If I worked the line just right it would pop and dance across the pond and even spit water out of its mouth.

            When I grabbed for Jumper, Sam howled. A long, awful howl. And then another that cried into the hillside. “Oh, in the name of all my lost toys and long-forgotten buried bones,” his howl declared. “Do I have to teach this boy everything?”

            He came over and put his paw on my hand and then he rummaged through my kit with his nose and grabbed a neatly arranged sheet of nymphs and mayflies and stoneflies and midges and scuds and worms and sculpins.

            I didn’t understand at first, but then I got it.

            He wanted me to do some bottom bouncing. Tricky. And I could lose some leaders and lures that way. But I wasn’t going to argue. Not with Sam.

            When I got older, I would learn all the keys to winter fishing that Sam already knew – that the fish weren’t going to jump to the surface and chase Jumper or Spitter. They weren’t going to rise and chase any surface lure at all. They were feeding on nymphs and minnows and crayfish or whatever else they could find along the bottom. In winter, they were nesting, almost hibernating like a bear. Even in the warm, sunlit waters, they’d maybe dart six inches or a foot for a meal. But no more than that.

            So I took a nymph lure – a hare’s ear, all gold colored beads and wire wraps. It would sink. And it was a chameleon; it could look like any kind of bug to a fish, any kind at all.

            I looked for where the sun hit the water, where the fish might congregate. From the bank, I cast my line and I must have spun it out forty feet or more and I slowly worked the rod and the spinner to bounce the lure back towards me and sometimes a little left and sometimes a little right.

            A strike! I pulled back hard on the line. But I felt nothing. Did I miss? No! He had the lure and had turned toward me. I waited for him to turn away, and when I felt the tension in the line I pulled back hard. My rod bowed. I had him! Sam let out a yelp.

            What a fight! I held the line and let him struggle and, when he turned towards me on the bank, I reeled in as much line as I could. When he turned back out to the middle, I held again, all the time worrying that my line might break. Holding and reeling, holding and reeling, I brought him in. Our first catch – a cutthroat trout with the bright red stripes below his jawline. Into the wicker creel.

            And then I saw the pond churning, clearer than ever, thick with fish. We could have dipped them out with a fishing net, but where would the sport have been in that?

            “My goodness, Sam!” I called out. “What a spot!”

            I reeled in cutthroat trout, rainbow trout, brown trout and, when I switched to a worm lure, six straight mountain whitefish – small but still good eating.

            Our two creels were overflowing when Sam grabbed my coat sleeve to keep me from making another cast.

            “Sam,” I said. “You’re all white!”

            I hadn’t noticed the quickening snow, falling thick and growing on the banks of the pond, on Sam and on me. Sam shook himself free of his snowy coat, and I noticed the hood of my sweatshirt, hanging  heavy and wet down the back of my pack jacket. It’s funny, sometimes, how things can sneak up on you and leave you wondering . . . just leave you wondering.

            Sam tugged again at my coat sleeve, just a gentle tug. Then he nudged me in my legs with his nose, nudged me with some urgency away from the pond and back up the bank.

            “You’re right,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

            We were tired and hungry, and it showed when I cut my lure from my line and dropped it in my kit instead of untying and cleaning it first. I picked up handfuls of the new snow and packed our catch tightly into the creels for the walk home.

            I heard a tiny growl. And a second.

            “Is that you or me, Sam?” I asked. “I know I’m hungry.”

            Sam tugged at my sleeve again, harder this time.

            Then I heard the tiny growls again. Not my stomach. Not Sam’s either. From the direction of the eddy. First one. Then the other. Back and forth they went. And then the growl that filled my ears and shook my bones. Louder, deeper, tripping toward angry and coming closer.

            “Grrrrrarrrhhhhh!”

            Sam let go of my sleeve. We stood there. Quiet. Unmoving. Staring each other in the eye. I turned my head just enough to look back towards the eddy. Just over the rise, I knew, they were coming – a momma grizzly and two cubs, out from their den early this season and without a doubt hungry.

As quietly as I could, I grabbed my gear and the two creels crammed with our catch. But where to go?

Sam tugged again at my coat sleeve. He didn’t bark or whimper or make a sound. He just tugged. Away from the eddy, away from the backwater pond, and up the hill. So we climbed.

Up and up and up.

Did the bears see us? Hear us? Smell us?

We climbed up the trail. Up and up. We climbed until I thought we were in the clouds. But no, not the clouds. Snow, thick in the air, and blowing down from the hilltop.

We wanted to run but the hill grew too steep, the trail too slick. With each step we struggled against the hill, against the wind and against our fear.

We heard the grizzly growl again.

“Grrrrrarrrhhhhh!”

She’d found our spot on the bank of the backwater pond.

#

Finally we reached level ground and a small clearing – and at the back, set against the rise of the hill, a cabin with a log frame, finished sides and a simple shed roof sloping from back to front.

            We rushed for it and didn’t bother to knock. The heavy door resisted us at first but unlocked and unlatched it finally gave way. We scrambled inside and pushed the door shut. I saw steel brackets set in the doorframe and, leaning against the wall, a stout wooden bar. I placed the bar across the door and let it fall into the brackets. A heavy bar lock for a heavy door. More, really, than we could have hoped for.

            Sam and I sat on the floor and caught our breath and stayed as quiet as we could as we turned our eyes to our new surroundings.

            The cabin was one large room with a couple of cots, a table and chairs and against one of the side walls a number of wooden barrels of different sizes. A row of large cupboards ran across the back wall. In one of the back corners, an antique copper washtub held firewood and kindling. In front of the cupboards sat a prominent cast iron stove with a black flu climbing up through the ceiling.

            “Sam,” I whispered. “Where are we? Is this somebody’s home?”

            Then I noticed on the floor one of my creels, unclasped and lying open. The six little whitefish I caught . . . all gone. They’d fallen out, somewhere outside, somewhere on the trail.

            “Sam. The whitefish.”

            I worried that I’d left a trail of appetizers from the pond to the cabin. Grabbed by the momma grizzly, “Mmmmmm, yes, please and thank you.” Snatched up by the cubs, “Mmmmmm, please, sir – may we have another?”

            A heavy blow against the door proved my worries true and brought us both to our feet. With a second blow, we were both howling and crying – the wooden bar securing the door was cracked. With each succeeding blow, the crack grew wider and deeper. How many more blows could it take?

            The momma grizzly turned away. But we knew she’d be back. She and her two cubs. No doubt they smelled our catch. And me. And Sam. If and when the bar gave way, she and her cubs would have the rest of our catch for a snack and us for dinner.

“Grrrrrarrrhhhhh!”

The large grizzly slammed against the door again. The bar held.

In the next instant, Sam grabbed our two creels and carried them back to the stove. He began rummaging through the cupboards, whacking their doors open and shut as he searched and searched.

Rushing back and forth, he pulled out a large sack of flour, a five-gallon bucket labeled applesauce and box after box after box of cornflakes.

“Sam!” I cried.

I shook my head no, emphatically no, this was not the time to worry about eating. This was a time to worry about getting eaten.

But Sam had an idea.

He was putting everything to work now, absolutely everything he’d ever learned through his studies. His standing as the world’s foremost fishing dog was not an empty boast of his child owner. He carried the highest honors ever received from the Université des Chiens de Pêche, located on the outskirts of Saint-Bernard-Les-Faux in northern France. The prestigious university’s most decorated graduate was going to take our catch and turn it into an irresistible bear trap.

#

The stove looked new. Square. Dark gray. Cast iron with a steel cooktop. The front had two doors with glass viewing windows and long spring handles for opening and closing. The top door was the firebox; the bottom door was for the huge baking oven, which had a lining that looked like brick and two wire cooking racks.

            I opened the door to the firebox and placed a log on each side. I used them as a base for three more logs set crossways and then filled the space in the middle with kindling. With a long match from one of the cupboards, I lit the kindling and nursed it along. When it looked ready, I loaded a couple of smaller pieces of firewood into the middle. Soon I was out of my pack jacket and helping Sam with the other tasks.

            We cleaned our catch and prepped the cutlets.

            Sam insisted I slice the cutlets into little strips, not more than a half-inch or three-quarters of an inch wide. They looked so tiny. Like little sticks. I’d never seen fish prepared like this before.

            Sam showed me how to roll the sticks in the flour, dip them in the applesauce and roll them across the crumbled cornflakes, which he had seasoned with other things he’d found in the cupboards – parmesan cheese, garlic powder and a lemon pepper mix.

            To a grizzly, nearly any scent smelled like food – good smells, bad smells, anything at all. So Sam wanted to create something that would overpower any other scent in the cabin and draw the momma grizzly and her cubs straight to the fish. He planned to arrange the baked fish in a pattern on the floor under the cupboards and have the trail of fish lead the bears to an open five-gallon bucket of raspberry preserves. Irresistible.    

            We found trays.

            I was about to load them with the fish and shove them in the oven when Sam howled loud and clear. I needed to coat the trays in cooking oil first. Or the fish would stick to the tray and that was no good.

            With everything in the oven, we had about fifteen to twenty minutes for the other parts of Sam’s plan – that’s how long it would take for the fish to bake. The scent of the baking fish escaping through the flue seemed to reach the bears – the two cubs cried louder and louder. We glanced at the wooden bar securing the front door and hoped it would hold at least one more time.

            We turned our attention to the empty wooden barrels off to the side of the room. This was the trickiest part of Sam’s plan and presented me with the greatest unknowns.  We needed to break apart the barrels without breaking the individual staves. Within a few minutes, we had done enough, and I had picked out two longer ones and Sam four shorter ones.  

We took the trays out from the oven and Sam arranged the fish in what he felt was a suitable presentation leading to the raspberry preserves in the furthest back corner. Then we tied the barrel staves to our feet with some paracord from my own pack.

We were ready.

            I lifted the wood bar lock out of its latches and leaned it against the wall. Then we both stood beside the door, our backs to the wall. The next time the momma grizzly attacked, she and her cubs would be inside.

We waited.

            Suddenly Sam turned his attention back to the meal he’d prepared. Something wasn’t right. He clomped to the back of the cabin in his barrel staves.

            “Sam!” I called, as quietly as I could.

            He was re-arranging the array of breaded fish cutlets, grouping them differently, ordering them differently. I did not know why.

            “Sam!”

            He ignored me.

            “Sam, they won’t care!”

            He was in his own world. His perfectionism possessed him.

            “Sam, you might as well set out napkins, too! It won’t make any difference!”

            The door flew open and the momma grizzly sauntered in, stepping slowly, patiently.

            “Sam! Let’s go!”

            The grizzly stood on her hind legs, her short arms reaching up, her head thrown back as she let our an enormous, deep-chested growl. Her two cubs ran in and joined her, one on each side, mimicking her every move and sound.

            I put my fingers to my mouth and blew the loudest whistle I could – a shrill, high-pitched whistle that penetrated through the low guttural threats from the bears.

            I was out of breath.

            “Sam,” I wheezed. “Sam, please. I don’t want to lose you.”

            I caught Sam’s eye. He looked at me. Strangely. He seemed to have forgotten where we were and what we were doing. All of the cooking, all of the preparation, all of the fine and disciplined details – they had transported him back to his university days and his life in France.

            “Sam,” I mouthed to him. “Come. Now.” I held my right arm straight out and then brought it to my left shoulder. I rarely commanded him. But I tried now. Did he even remember the command? My eyes were wet and their wetness was spilling down onto my cheeks. I repeated the motion. And waited. Never taking my eyes from his.

            The bears rushed to the fish and they took no notice as Sam dodged between them and joined me at the door. We were off – slow, slow, slow across the small clearing, awkwardly clomping, lifting our knees high to get the staves above the ground and then stepping forward and repeating and repeating and repeating. I was nearly exhausted by the time we reached the top of the trail.

            Then it was all speed, a blur, faster and faster and faster. Downhill. Gliding down the snow-covered trail. First Sam was ahead and then me and then Sam again as we ducked tree limbs and took flight from snow drifts and tree roots across the trail, navigating turns, sometimes on the edge of a single stave.

Sam howled and I howled louder back at him, until we finally tumbled to a stop in a large snowdrift at our spot on the bank the backwater pond.

I started laughing.

“Let’s do it again, Sam!” I called. “Let’s do it again!”

I laughed from the thrill of it all, from the joy of it all, from the joy of the day, from the joy of having a friend like Sam, from the joy of the sport, of the catch, of the cold, of the wind, of the snow. I laughed and didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay right there at the backwater pond with Sam.

When I stood up, I realized Sam had already untied the staves from our feet. And I saw that the once clear pond was now cloudy and gray and framed in white billowing snowdrifts all along its banks.

I knelt back down and hugged Sam and he in turn licked my face warm.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I know. Time to head home.”

We looked east and began the walk back to our little house on Chestnut Street.

#

“And that, my young friends,” said Henry, “is how Sam and I escaped the momma grizzly and her two cubs, how Sam invented fish sticks . . . and, incidentally, how I learned to ski.”

Henry waited. For laughter. For groans. For hands shooting up in the air.

            Mrs. Baker turned the lights on.

            Henry scanned the faces of the children – kickball Bobby, ponytail Anna, monogrammed Jeffrey. They weren’t looking at him, though; all of the kids were focused on Milo, who was standing next to Henry’s chair, his head low, his left eye closed, his right eye focused on the classroom door. And he was purring. Like a cat.

            “Look, Mr. Weaver,” said Anna. “Look. Milo’s a fishing dog, just like Sam.”

            “Yeah,” came other voices. “Milo’s a fishing dog.”

            “That’s just silly,” said the boy forever fussing with his shoelaces. “What’s he pointing at? There aren’t any fish around here.”

            The kids considered this puzzle, looking to each other, to Milo, to Henry, to the floor.

            “Well,” said Mrs. Baker, from her spot by the door. “It is fish stick Friday.”

            The school bell rang.

            The kids jumped up.

            “Can Milo come with us, Mrs. Baker?” asked Bobby. “Can Milo come and have some fish sticks?”

            The others chorused the plea.

            “You know he wants to, Mrs. Baker,” said Anna.

            Henry joined in, “Oh, my, yes. Milo loves fish sticks. And well he ought to.”

            The kids heard Henry’s “yes” and took it as permission granted. Without waiting to hear more, they were gone and Milo, too – much to Henry’s surprise and satisfaction.

            “I’m sorry, Henry,” said Mrs. Baker. “They’ve rushed off without so much as a thank you. But I know they loved your story.”

            Henry picked up Milo’s leash from the floor and coiled it tightly in his hands.

            “Tonight,” Mrs. Baker said, as she and Henry started down the hallway to the cafeteria, “half of them will ask their parents for a fishing dog and the other half will ask for a spinner and a box of nymphs and worms. Then their moms and dads will ring me at home after dinner for a full and detailed explanation.”

            Henry saw Jeffrey hurrying back toward them in the hallway. The young boy stopped in front of them, his eyes anxious, but he had no words. Henry handed him Milo’s leash and Jeffrey hurried back to the cafeteria.

            “Sam sure was a special dog,” said Mrs. Baker, taking Henry’s arm. “Was he the same dog who invented Sloppy Joes in order to catch a gang of cattle rustlers?”

            “Oh, no,” said Henry. “That was my third dog, Fido. And they weren’t cattle rustlers, they were horse thieves.”

            “Ah, yes, I remember now. The calls I got that evening. Moms and dads wanting to know why their kids were begging for roping dogs and chewing tobacco. Yes, I remember.”

#

The next morning, Henry sat in his kitchen, drinking coffee. Milo was asleep underneath the kitchen table.

            Henry considered the view from his kitchen window. The good weather persisted and Friday’s wind had quieted.

            His doorbell rang.

            Henry opened his front door to find a small group of youngsters from Mrs. Bakers first grade class outside – Bobby, Anna, Jeffrey and two others. Anna stepped to the door.

            “Good morning, Mr. Weaver,” she said. “We were wondering if Milo might like to come fishing with us.”

            Henry glanced around at the kids again.

            This is a wonder, he thought. An absolute wonder.

            Bobby stepped forward, too. “Please, Mr. Weaver.”

            Henry noticed that Bobby and one of the other boys each carried a rod and spinner and a wicker creel.

            “My goodness,” said Henry. “What nice looking rigs you’ve put together.”

            “Our dads both fish,” said Bobby, “and we’ve been a few times, too.”

            Milo came onto the porch, circulated among the kids and settled next to Jeffrey, who held something that Henry did not recognize.

            “Yeah,” said Bobby, following Henry’s gaze and reading his expression. “Jeff is such a dork. He brought his older brother’s snowboard.”

            The kids laughed.

            “Well,” said Jeffrey. “Just in case, you know? Right, Mr. Weaver?”

            Henry went back inside and grabbed Milo’s leash from its peg; he returned and gave the leash to Jeffrey.

            “Just in case,” said Henry, smiling.

            “We won’t go far,” said Anna, as the kids and Milo hurried away.

            “No, don’t go far,” called Henry. “But bring back a good story.”

BIO

Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Jeff Hazlett today lives in Omaha and is a member of the Nebraska Writers Guild. His short stories have appeared this year in Lighthouse Digest and the Ginosko Literary Journal and are expected soon in Talking River Review and other publications. Find him at: jeffhaz.com.