Word got around that my Poppa, Reuben Henry, had a great bird dog, a lab named Buster aka Buster Fleabag according to Aunt Gert. Poppa explained to me how bird dogs like springer spaniels and Brittany spaniels quartered back and forth at a good clip. Buster was methodical. He poked along with one thing on his mind: Bird. He didn’t know how to do anything else besides sleep and eat.  What he’d do was stand in front of a closed door and just stare at it. Aunt Gert mocked him in a slow, goofy voice. “Do I go through it or around it or just stand here forever? I’m gonna just stand here forever. Or what? Huh?”

If there was but one bird within a mile, Buster would find it. Poppa said his perseverance slowed him down, every blade of grass, every fallen twig. He’d plod through brush at his own slow pace, pick up the scent, follow it to its rightful owner, at which point, the bird flushed, and Poppa got it. Buster flushed. Poppa shot. A bird in the bag. A bird in the pot. The perfect team. They knew each other well.      

Poppa got Buster as a pup, although this was now years later. It had been a choice between two retrievers, Labrador, and a Chesapeake Bay. Both he said were superb dogs, but with totally different temperaments. “If you’ve got a Chessie with you in your duck blind when the warden comes to check your limit, the Chessie’ll take his arm off, but, if you’ve got a Lab in your blind, your baby will wag its tail and happily show the warden where the ducks are stashed. Poppa’s choice – a black Lab with a big head and a small brain – our Buster. They were suited for each other. Poppa’d rather shake your hand than bite it.

I overheard Poppa tell someone that he preferred hunting with Buster to seventy virgins in paradise. Regardless of IQ and number of legs, when they were in the field, Poppa and Buster were one. Not a word, not a bark passed between them. Poppa would think it and it would happen. Buster would lie around all day barely twitching a single muscle to flick a fly, but as soon as Poppa went to the gun closet and took out the bell Buster wore around his neck, Buster was like a puppy all over again. Poppa loved it when the only sound he heard was Buster’s bell as he moved through high grass. Couldn’t see Buster, but that bell…clong clong clong…a dull clong clong clong…

Poppa always knew where Buster was and what was in front of him. He didn’t point. He flushed. He chased it down. He rumbled like a tank. A cluck and a squawk and a drumming of wings and a rocket bursting into the air from dense cover, the thunder being different depending on whether the bird was a pheasant or grouse. A pheasant cackles and flushes and heads for the hills. A grouse thunders, veers, and vanishes.

Poppa loved to talk about the best day he and Buster ever had in all their days when all they’d done was sit underneath a wild apple tree the whole livelong day, thirty- two degrees at dawn, sixty-five at dusk, and a gentle drizzle. Normally, Poppa said Buster kept his distance at about five yards. But that day he put his big, square, dumb head in Poppa’s lap and kept it there. Buster loved to have the inside of his ears scratched. Poppa would scratch his own back against the trunk of the tree, up and down and a shiver between the shoulders, like a bear.

Another day he told me about, one where communication was only by thought. Poppa said he and Buster were not two different species that day but something other only they could be and know.

“Sunlight filtered down through a low-lying fog, in some places revealing the ground spackled with the random growth of that cover. It was like we’d discovered this world as we moved through it—infinitely more beautiful than anything they’d experienced before. We were sauntering through an enchanted land. There’d been an overnight freeze, so the ground crackled step upon step. Chiarascuro cracked rocks into fractals and twisted branches into garlands. Buster lurched forward, dropped his head, and lunged like a fullback on the one. A gaudy pheasant broke from the mist and made for the sky. I fired. The bird goes down, touches down, but immediately swoops back up because all I’d done was ding it. Up it went but so did Buster—three feet, nearly four—snatched that bird right out of the air. No major league center fielder could’ve done it any better, but it came with a look of utter disdain from Buster.” Poppa smiled when he gave me his best Buster imitation, “You blew it,” Buster would have said if he could have said it, “I bailed your ass out, turkey. Forget the braggin’ rights on this one.”

When Dub heard about Buster, he had to see for himself. Dub had pheasant on his property, so he invited Poppa and Buster to come try their luck.

“What’s the lucky part, Dub?” asked Poppa.

“You’re here, aintcha?” Dub snapped back.   

Buster lived up to his reputation. Three pheasant up. Three pheasant down. Poppa gave him his head. The first thing Buster did was walk the perimeter of the field. At one end, Buster waddled through a section of swale so wide and thick Poppa wondered if it’d ever end.  Didn’t bother Buster a bit. He plodded on in his own slowpoke way. Of course, that’s where the birds were hiding, smack in the middle of that boggy fortress, only Buster flushed them, found them, and brought them back. Dub’s mouth hung open. He was salivating. Looked like he had rabies, quipped Poppa.

Some days later, Dub calls to say he’s coming over. Which was unusual. But he wanted to show Poppa what he’d gotten—a puppy—a cute little Brittany spaniel.

“I’m gonna train him ‘til he out hunts yours,” said Dub, always subtle.

“Nice looking pup,” said Poppa, “Best of luck.”

“He’s a tiger,” said Dub.

“Save some birds for me, will ya, Dub?”

Weeks went by. No Dub, not until he showed up at the front door uninvited and smiling like a pumpkin.

“Reuben Henry,” he said, “Buster’s met his match.”

“I didn’t think this was a contest,” said Poppa.

“Everything is,” said Dub. “Where you been?”

The plan was to hunt first thing.

Once Dub was out the door, Poppa’s tone got real serious. “Listen to me, Thea. You can insult a man’s wife. Insult his kids, his car, his special bar-b-q sauce, but don’t you never ever criticize a man’s hunting dog. It is a sacred creature, and blaspheming God’s Own will surely get you hurt if not mutilated and killed.”

That said.

Poppa takes Buster over to Dub’s place and takes me with him. Dub’s got his Brittany with him, gloating until he sees me.

“What’s she doin’ here?”

“I can’t seem to get rid of her,” Poppa said with a smile, letting me know he was only fooling.

“Ain’t right,” groused Dub.

“Where’s it written?” asked Poppa.

“It don’t need to be written,” Dub said back, “It is what it is.”

“It is what it was,” said Poppa. “C’mon, let’s hunt. You stay behind me, Thea.”

“Mitzi’s gonna tear Buster a new one.”

“So be it,” said Poppa.

They separated maybe fifteen feet and began to work the field. It hadn’t been tilled for who knows how long, so chunks of scraggly brush pocked the place. Paradise if you happened to be a pheasant. Buster’s plodding along. Mitzi sprints back and forth—she puts one up—it’s almost out of range. Dub’s a pretty fair shot himself, didn’t miss much. He didn’t that time, either. As the bird plummeted towards earth, Dub gloated, like a dad with a newborn handing out cheap cigars. It was, I thought, the world’s most disgusting smirk on his fat, smug face. He absolutely loved himself at this moment.

“Mitzi, huh?”  he said to Poppa.

“Mitzi, huh,” Poppa said, pointing with his chin.            

Mitzi was standing over the bird.

“Bring it here, good girl,” said Dub, rightfully expecting his expensive retriever to retrieve. “That’s a good girl. Bring it to daddy.”

Mitzi took the bird in her mouth, looked hard at Dub, turned, ran in the opposite direction, and buried it. Buried it! Dug a hole and dropped it in. Plop. Every time Dub got a bird, Mitzi would run away and bury it. She was so proud of herself. It was then that I got what Poppa meant. You don’t laugh at such a thing.

Dub was apoplectic. Had we even chuckled, he would’ve shot us both dead. Instead, he shot Mitzi, and even that wasn’t the worst thing about him. Here’s what was.

Dub had two grown sons who worked in the city but spent every second of their free time at his place. Their place, actually, as it would be passed down to them after their father’s death. They grew up there, fished and hunted, split wood, helped put a new roof on the barn, planted trees, tended a garden. The place was home. Their home. But they had no clue.

Decades past, Dub got a divorce from the boys’ mother, only the boys took their mother’s side, planting a grudge deep in Dub’s heart that festered over the years. He spent a lifetime plotting his revenge. Against his own sons. They had no idea. Dub took up with a woman the last two years of his life. I think her name was Bessie, maybe, Bertha, something with a “B”. Poppa wasn’t sure. Dub left his entire place to her. Dub did. Cut his kids right out of the will, out of every damn thing they should’ve had coming to them. She later sold it for close to a million dollars. She seemed like a nice person, but, come on, who does that to their kids? Not that Dub’s boys weren’t also mini-Dubs, especially the youngest, a genuine hard-off if ever there was one. Harley—Poppa said Harley only had one expression—dumb.

After Dub shot that sweet dog of his, we didn’t see him for a while. 

*The above is excerpted from the eighth chapter of Stephen H. Foreman’’s Home: A Love Story, published by Alternative Book Press.

About the Author:

Stephen H. Foreman is a screenwriter (The Jazz Singer, Hostage, The Resolution of Mossie Wax), director, and the author of three previous novels, Toehold and Watching Gideon, both published by Simon and Schuster, and Journey, published by Skyhorse Press. After a hitch in the Marine Corps and a host of treks in jungle, desert, and wilderness mountain terrains, Foreman finally came to roost and taught writing at various universities. Same year, same month Foreman was offered tenure, he was also offered a three-picture deal from Universal Studios. He snagged his ticket and migrated west to Los Angeles to work as a screenwriter and director. He now lives with his wife, Jamie Donnelly, and continues to write in the hamlet of West Kill in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.