Preacher John The Road Goes On: Part V-B

Part V-B

      After the service, Lucinda joined them in the churchyard where Mack and Buster waited for them.  Lucinda went over to the dog that stood quietly as John introduced her.  The dog looked her in the eye and wagged his tail.  Lucinda reached down and rubbed between the dog’s ears.  Buster closed his eyes in obvious pleasure.

      “What a beautiful dog.  I’d love to see him run.”

      “Buster’s just a derby.  But he’s showing great promise.  John’s his handler.” Bobby said with the comfort that he always had when talking about dogs.  It was everything else that was outside his comfort zone.

      Lucinda looked at John and the old man smiled at her, “Buster’d be proud to show you what he’s made of.  You got your riding clothes with you?”

      She turned and looked at a white Mercedes SUV and nodded towards the vehicle, “They’re in the car.  I’ll follow you out and Bobby can ride with me to keep me company.”

      Bobby blushed again.  He wasn’t used to having an assertive woman around.  He’d had many girlfriends over the years and had even been married once for a few years but he couldn’t settle down, nor did he want to.  Lucinda hit the button on her keys and the Mercedes chirped, “I feel a little silly locking my car here, but it’s a necessary habit in Bismarck.”

      She headed for the car and Bobby followed like a dog in heel.  He got in the passenger side and Mack, John, and Buster hopped into the truck and led the way out of the parking lot.  Dr. Lucinda Ford made small talk as they drove along, telling Bobby whose ranches they were passing, where her school friends had lived, anecdotes of growing up in the country.  Bobby just nodded and added a few uh-uhs.  Lucinda was an attractive woman but looked rather imposing to a country boy like Bobby.  There was not a hair out of place, her make-up was subtle and understated, the dress she wore to church simple, but obviously well tailored to her trim body.

      At camp Lucinda pulled a bag, a pair of well worn cowboy boots, and a thoroughly battered straw hat out of the back of the Mercedes and followed Bobby into the house.  She paused as she stepped into the kitchen and looked around, “This is pretty much how I remember it from the day I sat at that table, drinking tea, and listening to Miss Etta Mae.”

      “I’ve replaced the stove and the refrigerator over the years, but other than that it’s the same as the first time I came north with Mr. John.”

      Bobby pointed to the bathroom, “I’ll go out and help with the horses.”

      Mack and John were already saddling up two horses.  Mack turned to Bobby as he finished with his horse, “Which horse you want for the doctor lady?”

      Bobby paused, “We’ll let her ride Charley.”

      Mack didn’t say a word but turned to John and raised an eyebrow.  Charley was the newest horse on their string.  Trey Sutton had bought him for Bobby after the first championship Rebel Yell had won with Trey as his owner.  Charley quickly became Bobby’s favorite horse.  He was smooth as silk in all his gaits and one of those unique horses that understands its job around dogs.  He was also a great horse to scout from.  Charley always knew where the dog was, and if you didn’t, you could just give him his head and he’d take you to the dog.  If that wasn’t enough of a tell, Bobby went in to the shed where the saddles were stored and brought out a saddle that he’d won a couple of years ago but had only used once.  The seat was a little small for him and it just didn’t feel right, and put it on Charley.  His regular saddle had been rebuilt and repaired so many times over the years that there was hardly anything left from the saddle John had given him on his first trip to the prairies.  It was his lucky saddle and he expected to be riding it through the gates of Hell or wherever he went in the next life.

      As Bobby tightened the cinch on Charley, he looked up and was smitten.  There stood the woman of his dreams — wearing worn snug jeans with the pointed toes of down in the heels cowboy boots sticking out below the frayed pant hems, with a big silver belt buckle that looked to have a girl rounding a barrel on a horse on it, and a t-shirt that proclaimed the wearer to be “Country Bred and Proud of It!”  This was topped by a battered straw cowboy hat that could only get that way from years of wear.  A blonde ponytail bounced below the hat brim as Lucinda walked across the dooryard to the three men and the horses. 

      John smiled at her, “Doctor, if you’d been dressed like this last night I would have recognized you immediately.”

      Lucinda smiled and laughed, and the world was a brighter place for it.  “I don’t get many days off, and the next one of you who reminds me of work by calling me doctor is going to be in trouble.  Most of my friends call me Luce or Lucy.  I’d like it if you three would as well.”

      Bobby handed the reins of Charley to Mack, “Help Doctor . . . er . . . Lucy, adjust the stirrups.”

      “That’s better.” She stepped close to Charley and rubbed his head.  The horse seemed to be just one more male who had fallen under Lucy’s power.  She stepped up into the saddle with the ease of someone who had spent a lifetime riding. 

      Mack and John went and got Rebel Yell (Jack), the best dog on Bobby’s string, and Buster from the kennel, put them in harnesses, and then got another pair of dogs for a first brace.  Bobby and Mack handled the dogs in the first brace while John roaded Jack and Buster and talked with Lucy.  As the two horses ate up the ground in their running walk Lucy told John how she used to get frustrated jogging along on her quarter horse when she had ridden with them all those summers ago.  She had barrel raced through her teens and still had a barrel racing horse, but she had bought a walking horse after she got out of medical school that she rode whenever she could get out of the office.  They talked about the dogs and the birds they pointed.  She asked about field trials and how the whole thing worked.  John explained the arrangement of owners and professional trainers to her and she became quiet and thoughtful.

      After about 45 minutes, they stopped and switched dogs.  Mack took over the roading duty and John handled Buster while Bobby turned Jack loose.  Although still a derby, Buster was fast becoming the second best dog in camp and Bobby felt that with a few breaks he would become Jack’s equal or more.  He was glad that John had been able to find the dog within Buster, because he and Buster just could not get on the same wavelength.  It was something that happened, and he was excited that John had come north with him and again found the joy of working great dogs.  He in no way felt that his debt was paid in full, but at least he’d finally made a few payments.

      Buster and Jack filled up the prairie as they made a swing through some of their best bird cover.  The two handlers lived in the moment, focused on their respective dogs, oblivious to Mack and Lucy riding behind them.  In the first half hour each dog had two finds with the other dog called in to back.  As they made the swing back towards the camp, Buster went wide to the left and stacked up by a small bluff that often held a brood of sharptails.  John squeezed his legs and his horse stepped up into an easy lope.  Mack and Lucy followed as Bobby tried to bring Jack around for another back.  Jack was soon on point in the opposite direction and Mack peeled off to help Bobby. 

      Just as John stepped down from his horse, Buster dove into the bluff with a low growl.  Birds blew out the other side, and Buster yelped in obvious pain.  John soon saw the problem as Buster jumped back with a face full of quills.  John had the collar of the dog and looked down at him, “For a smart dog, you sure do some dumb things.  I hope you learn your lesson from this.”

      People say dogs go one of two ways with porcupines; they either learn their lesson after one encounter or spend the rest of their lives trying to get even.  Some become such dedicated porkie hunters that they become useless as bird dogs.  John hoped Buster wouldn’t be one of the latter.

      Lucy was down off her horse, “What do we do?”

      John looked at her and smiled, “We pull them out.  Didn’t you learn that in medical school?”

      “No.  We had a dog when I was a kid that had so many quills in him that we had to take him to the vet.”

      John put a harness on Buster and tied him to the horse, then rummaged around in his saddlebags for a pair of needle nose pliers.  When he found them, he handed them to Lucy, “I’ll hold him, you pull.”

      “Just pull? Isn’t that going to hurt?”

      “They got to come out.”

      Lucy kneeled down next to the dog and went to work.  Buster stood stoically as Lucy worked with quick precision.  Soon Mack and Bobby were there and Bobby joined Lucy on the other side of Buster.  Even with two of them pulling quills it still took the better part of an hour to get them all.  Buster never flinched even when they pulled the ones inside his mouth.  Bobby finally stood up and then got a .22 pistol from his saddlebag that was there just for occasions like this, “That pig still in the bluff?”

      “I didn’t see him leave.”  John replied and then started to say something to Lucy.

      “You don’t have to say anything to me.  Remember I’m an only child and didn’t have any brothers to shoot the pests around the ranch.  Daddy taught me to shoot when I was little and then put me in charge of protecting the chickens.  Skunks, raccoons, weasels, fox, if they went after my chickens, I hunted them down and took care of them.  Do what you need to do and don’t worry about me being squeamish.  I cut people open for a living.”

      Bobby walked over to the bluff and shot the porcupine.  It probably put the total porcupines killed during the summer into double digits.  They were lucky that all the older dogs would point a porkie and not grab it.  This was only the third time this season that they had pulled quills from a dog. 

      “I’m sorry we had to interrupt your ride . . .”

      Lucy cut him off, “Don’t be silly, I haven’t thought about work since we left the church this morning.  I feel bad for Buster, but this has all been fun for me.  What do we do now?”

      Bobby didn’t know what to say, he just stared at this remarkable woman until John jolted him back to reality, “We turn Buster loose and run him back to camp.  And then I’d like some lunch.  Breakfast was a long time ago.”

      He took the harness off Buster and Mack held him while John got back in the saddle.  “I think I’ll keep Jack in the harness.”  He stepped up as did Lucy.  John blew his whistle and Buster tore off across the prairie as if he had just been turned loose from the kennel.  John sang to him as Buster worked his way from bluff to bluff.  John could hear Lucy talking behind him and every once in a while Bobby would get a few words of his own into the conversation.  Buster had two more finds before they got back to camp.  The four dogs were put in their kennels and John and Mack began the noisy task of feeding all the dogs. 

      Lucy and Bobby went into the house to make some lunch.  After a little while, Bobby came out and asked them to leave Charley and the horse he had been riding saddled as Lucy wanted to show him part of her family’s ranch that abutted their lease.  They soon came out with sandwiches and bottled water in a bag that Bobby hung from his saddle and rode out of the yard.

      The two older men watched them go.  Mack turned to John and said, “We’re supposed to be heading down the road in a couple of weeks.  Do you think this is going to change his plans?”

      John thought about it before he answered, “Someday maybe, but going down the road is a big part of the life he’s chosen.  You can’t just leave it.”

      “You did.”

      “Yeah, and look at me: a 75 year old widower who’s just thinking about Buster’s next trial.  The road goes on and we can’t help but follow it.”

Preacher John The Road Goes On: Part V-A

It was just over 2100 miles from the trial grounds in Canada to Trey Sutton’s farm in South Carolina.  Pulling the trailer with the two horses  really didn’t slow them down on the major highways as the dually ate up the miles and the diesel fuel.  The horses didn’t need to be let out, but they did need to be checked and watered on a regular basis and their hay nets refilled.  The crossing back into the U.S. was easy as there were other trialers ahead of them in line, and they had all their paperwork in order.  Trey and Bill Johnson thought about driving straight through but neither was on a tight schedule so they decided to spend a couple of nights on the road.

      During the long hours as they rolled down the road in the intimacy of the front seat of the truck from the border across North Dakota, through Minnesota and Wisconsin, into the traffic jam of Chicago, down to Indianapolis, Louisville and Knoxville, and finally over the Appalachians to the low country of South Carolina, Trey and Bill got to know each other’s stories.  Bill had made a small fortune developing high-end housing and commercial property in and around Atlanta, but the housing bust had just about put him out of business.  His personal exposure was fairly well protected, but his multiple layers of corporate protection had rapidly peeled away, causing him to lay off hundreds of people and default on a variety of loans and lines of credit.  He barely had enough people left to keep a couple of large house projects going. 

      As they got to know each other, Trey could see that Bill understood the housing market and he brought up the project that his brother-in-law wanted to develop.  There were many old farms and plantations that had been or were in the process of being developed as high-end retirement/second home communities.  Bill was familiar with that specific market and had been involved with one of the first ones in Georgia.  The buyers were mostly Northerners, many of whom had first moved to Florida and then wanted something a little more rural but with plenty of amenities.  Stables, riding trails, fishing ponds, a clubhouse with tennis courts, a gym, a pool, and a restaurant were all niceties that needed to be included.  Many featured high end shooting preserves with plenty of quail and bird dogs.  The developments where corners were cut to keep prices down didn’t seem to do as well as the places that offered more amenities and charged big association fees.  Bill explained that the beauty of this type of development was that it continued to generate substantial revenue even after it was built and sold out. 

      Trey made a number of calls to his brother-in-law as they traveled south getting details and answering Bill’s questions.  Trey’s biggest concern was the economy.  He was worried that this type of development might have lost its allure in light of the current economic situation.  Bill made the point that the real estate market has always been volatile.  The most important key to success was to be in position to catch the upward swings.  Even if they closed on the property tomorrow, which wasn’t going to happen, there would be three to five years of pre-development work before they could consider selling their first lot. By that time, even Trey was pretty confident that the economy would be in much better shape.  As they rolled into Trey’s farm a tentative plan had been struck where the three of them would meet and look over the property and come up with a possible development plan.  The fact that they would stress the sporting aspects of any property and could use it themselves for working dogs and raising quail in the interim was probably what sold Trey.  The fact that Bill was involved and had the expertise to temper his brother-in-law’s enthusiasm made it seem doable.

      In North Dakota, Bobby Pickett, Mack, and Preacher John fell back into the routine of working dogs on the prairies.  Although astronomically fall was still a few weeks away, the nights were getting colder and they rarely needed to stop working dogs in the middle of the day to escape the heat and avoid hurting the dogs.  The young broods of chickens and pheasants were also changing.  The birds on the lease had become more wary.  It became harder for the young dogs to work the birds – especially the pheasants.  They tried to stay in the parts of the lease where they were more likely to find sharptails but even those birds were more skittish.  It was as if they knew that in not too many days the dog trainers would be gone with their blank guns and the hunters would arrive with live ammo.  This was probably more credit than a creature with a real “bird brain” deserved, but Preacher John loved these birds and endowed them with more sense than they warranted.

      He still thought about Etta Mae and her death the previous March and the many years of his life he had devoted to and cared for her.  But the memory was changing.  The pain had subsided.  She had lived a long and full life and if he believed in her faith, she was in a better place watching over her family in Georgia and her husband as he followed dogs over the prairies they both had loved.

      The women of the church in town had wanted to do something in Etta Mae’s memory.  She had spent many summers among them and they thought of her as one of their own.   John had reluctantly agreed to attend a Saturday supper in the church basement where there would be a chance to share memories and honor Etta Mae.  He said he would be there.  He figured Bobby and Mack would use the time to do the week’s shopping and maybe spend some time in their favorite bar, really the only bar in town where often five or six dog trainers could be found on a Saturday night.  But no, they had both said they would come with John.

      They quit early that Saturday so they could get cleaned up.  They were surprised by the number of cars in the churchyard – more than were usually there on a Sunday when John regularly attended services.  It was an old fashioned church supper – casseroles, potato salad, coleslaw, Jello molds of various shapes and colors, a red punch spiked with nothing stronger than ginger ale, and a table loaded with everyone’s special desert.  After all had eaten their fill and then some, the young minister moved to the front of the room, “I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Etta Mae Smith but I’ve spoken to many of you who did, and one thing has stood out in every conversation I’ve had – and that is that Etta Mae was a true Christian lady in every sense of the word.”

      He went on to define his terms to knowing nods from many of the older parishioners.  Throughout the minister’s short talk, John kept watching a young woman, maybe in her late 30s or early 40s, it was hard to tell, who kept looking at him.  She seemed vaguely familiar but would have been just a child if he knew her from before.  When the minister finished his speech he turned to her and said, “We thought long and hard and said many prayers trying to decide how we would honor Etta Mae’s memory.  And then Lucinda was home for a weekend and made the suggestion that we all agreed upon.  I’ve asked her to tell us about it tonight.  Lucinda.”

      The woman John had been watching smiled at him and then stood up.  “You all know me, but I don’t think Mr. Smith probably remembers me.” And then he did.  She was the daughter of the rancher next door to the lease who had come over to play with John Jr. and the other kids.  She had often ridden her horse over and would come with them when they were working dogs.  “The summer I was 12, I hung around with his kids and loved to watch the dogs run the prairies.  I still do.  I was 12 and thought my parents didn’t know anything.  I am an only child and I think my dad expected me to stay and marry some nice boy that would run his ranch.  I told Miss Etta Mae about it and said I didn’t want to stay here in Hicksville.  She sat me down in the kitchen and poured me a glass of sweet tea.  She told me I was a smart girl and I could make of my life what I wanted to.  She told me that running a ranch was hard and noble work.  But it wasn’t for everyone.  I told her I wanted to be a veterinarian and care for horses and dogs.  She encouraged me.  And then she never came to prairies again.  When I was in high school I heard she had a stroke and decided that day that I didn’t want to be a vet anymore.  I wanted to be a doctor.  I didn’t know how hard that was going to be and there were many times when I wanted to quit.  Every time, I thought of Etta Mae, and kept going.  She was right, as you all know I’m a vascular specialist and work with stroke victims almost every day.  So, when I heard that the church was planning to do something in Etta Mae’s memory, I wanted to be a part of it.  My partners in Bismarck and I have made a donation to the church to be used to create the Etta Mae Smith Scholarship fund to help young people from the community attend college.”

      By the end of the story there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  The minister had moved over beside John and motioned for him to stand and follow him to the front of the room where Dr. Lucinda Ford handed him a check to give to the church for a very substantial amount of money.  John wiped his eyes and gave Lucinda a hug, “I do remember you. And I know Etta Mae would be proud of what you’ve accomplished.  Thank you . . .”

      The minister handed him another check.  “We could not match the amount that Lucinda and her partners gave but the members of the church have all contributed in your wife’s memory.”

      “Thank you.  Thank you all.”

      Everyone in the room wanted to shake John’s hand or give him a hug.  Many shared memories they had of Etta Mae so many years ago.  By the end, John was emotionally drained and once again overcome by the sense of loss he felt about his wife.  At the same time, he felt a release.  The thought that Etta Mae had been held in the hearts of all these people so far away from her Georgia home made him proud that he had been her husband.  He had no regrets, but, at the same time, he was happy, yes he had to admit, happy to be once again riding the prairies following bold running dogs.

      At the end of the evening, John introduced Lucinda to Bobby and Mack.  To John’s surprise Bobby invited the woman out to the lease to ride any time she wanted.  Lucinda looked him up and down as she thought about it.  John was pretty sure that Bobby was starting to blush under the deep tan of his face acquired during a lifetime spent outdoors.  Lucinda came to a decision, “How about tomorrow after church?”

      Bobby practically stuttered, “I don’t usually go to . . . I do the shopping Sundays . . .” Lucinda just stood and waited.  John and Mack tried to hide their amusement at Bobby’s discomfort. He paused and then gave in, “After church. We’d be happy to have you join us.”

      Bobby didn’t mention that the last time he had been to Sunday service he had been around 12.  Nor did he mention that they didn’t run dogs on Sundays when they were at camp.  It was a day to take care of all the chores that never got done during the week when they were up before sunrise and often watched the sunset from the back of a horse as they rode in with the last brace of the day. 

      “Great. I’ll bring a change of clothes and just follow you out after the service.”

      Sunday morning Mack and Buster dropped John and Bobby at church and headed for Walmart with Bobby’s list for the week’s groceries.  Lucinda was at the front of the church with her parents and saw John and Bobby as they slipped into a pew near the back.  It was a typical service – the choir sang – the minister preached – the deacon read – everyone stood and sang – it ended.  No lightning bolts from heaven smote Bobby and he sighed in relief when it was over.  If truly pressed, he would probably admit to believing in a higher power.  There seemed to be just too many wonders in the world for random chance to be responsible.  But he was a loner, really living on the periphery of modern society – on the road more than not.  His life had the illusion of freedom that many seemed to envy.  To Bobby, it was just what he did.