One grey Ohio winter when I was about 10, my mother, father and I drove from Columbus north to my Uncle Norman’s farm, a few miles outside of Fostoria. It was Sunday and we were going to visit my father’s sister Flo. Aunt Flo and Uncle Norman lived on a 100 acre parcel out where the land was so flat that at night the 100 watt light over the barn door could be seen for 10 miles. In the summer I had sat on their front porch, in the bright sunlight, and watched rainstorms pass in far the distance.
Flo and Norman had three children. I never got to know them well but what I remember most was that they were shy, quiet, and had large beautiful eyes. My aunt and uncle lived simple lives and worked hard. Uncle Norman’s hands were large, like bear paws, hard and rough.
Even with the long drive from Columbus, Sunday dinners were a treat. My Aunt Flo would prepare a farmer’s meal of fresh corn, roast beef with thick German noodles, and fresh milk from one of their cows. To this day, I remember coming into their house from the grey cold and being engulfed by the warmth of her simple cooking.
This Sunday was a raw winter day. It was the cold with a biting wind straight out of the north. The rows of corn stubble in my uncle’s fields stretched out towards the horizon: black lines drawn across the frozen ground with thin patches of grey snow scattered about. The wind blew an icy grey dust that swirled through the tattered land.
We hurried straight from the car into the house. However something was wrong. The smell of a waiting meal was absent. There was the rich aroma of fresh coffee and baked bread but the traditional smell of our Sunday feast was missing.
We sat around the kitchen table with its blue and white checkered cloth, under a hanging lamp with five bare light bulbs. In that pool of warm light I sat silently, eating hot buttered bread smothered in my aunt’s thick strawberry jam, and listened to the grownups talk.
Uncle Norman told us about a pack of dogs that had been living in an old barn at the edge of his farm. They were strays that people from town had dropped off one by one over the spring and summer. During the summer and early fall, the dogs had lived well by catching rabbits and pheasants. But now, the land was bare and the dogs were starving and getting aggressive. They had chased the children from the yard into the house and even run after Norman as he drove his tractor in the fields. Something had to be done.
Apparently Norman and my dad had already talked about this on the phone. Dad said he had brought his rifle and he would go out and see what he could do. It was then that I guessed that uncle Norman wasn’t a hunter or, perhaps, hunting dogs wasn’t a thing he wanted to do.
Dad asked me if I wanted to come along. Mother gave him a sharp disapproving look, which he appeared not to see. I eagerly said yes. I didn’t spend much time with my father and this would be a very special occasion to be with him and to go hunting.
Once the dad’s coffee was drunk and my bread and jam eaten, we got ready to go out into the cold. I put on my navy blue woolen coat and stocking hat. My dad put on a coat that I’d never seen before, a tan hunter’s coat made of a canvas material with a brown corduroy collar. It fit him perfectly so I knew it wasn’t my uncle’s. Dad then put on his old brown felt fedora and we went out. At our car, dad opened the trunk and pulled out a bundle, unwound it, and produced an ancient Winchester rifle. I had never seen a gun before and was awed that my father owned one. I watched mesmerized by the ritual of the hunter checking his weapon and then slowly loading the brass cartridges one by one. He took a handful of shells from a box and put them into his coat pocket. He handed one to me and told me to put it my pocket, “Just in case I run out.”
Even though it was early afternoon, the light was murky and there was a sense of desolation.
We started by walking down a rutted dirt lane that took us to the farthest property line of my uncle’s farm. Nothing moved. The dogs had eaten all of the small game.
Then, far off along a fence line appeared a lean shadow. It looked at us and then trotted away following the fence. The dog was a blue wisp of smoke moving quickly to cover. Dad told me that the ruined barn where the dogs lived was in that direction. We walked over to the fence and began following the now disappeared dog.
The wind had picked up and commenced a low moaning sound. I thrust my cold hands deep into my pockets. I wrapped my fingers around the bullet Dad had given me and held it tight.
We hadn’t gone far when we saw the dog. Not more than 50 feet from us, it was sitting between two rows of stubble and watching us. Even as young as I was I could tell that the dog was in terrible shape. I could clearly see its ribs through its matted fur. Its eyes stared at us dark and unblinking. It seemed to be waiting for something, resigned. It seemed to be made of ashes.
I was frozen to the iron ground.
Silently and in one slow fluid motion, Dad cocked the rifle and raised it to his shoulder. He took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled a steaming sigh. Just as the last of his breath blew away in the wind, there was a bang. I jumped.
For a moment, the dog sat there looking at us, then lay down as if to go to sleep, and died.
This was the first time that I had seen something die and I wasn’t certain what I had witnessed. After a moment Dad asked me if I was okay and if I wanted to go on. I said yes and we went off along the fence line towards the barn. As I passed by I looked into the dog’s eyes and for the first time I saw the distant stare of death. I wondered, “What does it see?”
The day had changed, I had changed. Now the cold wind sounded mournful and even though at time I didn’t know the meaning of word, I sensed its power. I looked at my dad and he looked at me. He looked strong and determined as if this was the way of things.
A little further down the fence line a second dog appeared. It too sat silently watching us. It was as if it were offering itself to us. Again, dad slowly raised his rifle and slowly exhaled. Again, the rifle spoke and again the old dog simply fell over dead without a sound.
We went on towards the barn. By now it was late afternoon and getting dark. Dad said that we should start back. I agreed, my hands were numb and the wind was piercing my coat.
Just as we turned toward the distant lights of the farmhouse a large dark shape ran from the fence line and into the barn. Dad said that we still had one more task to do.
In the shadows of the barn we could hear a deep growling. The hair on my arms and back of my neck stood up. I had never heard such a threatening and dangerous sound. While I waited in the open doorway, Dad quietly searched in the gloom for the source. After awhile he materialized and told me what I must do.
The dog was in a length of old steel ditch pipe. The pipe was big enough that it could turn around and go out either end. Dad handed me a shovel and quietly positioned me at one open end of the pipe. He drove the shovel deep into still soft earth and showed me how to place my foot against the shovel’s blade and push the handle forward to seal the end of the pipe. There were spaces large enough for a dog to get its muzzle out and snap at me. Dad told me to keep my leg away from holes. He also told me that I needed to stay there until he came to get me.
He then walked back into the deepening darkness at the back of the barn.
The growling grew louder and closer. I put my weight against the shovel handle. I couldn’t breathe. The cold wind stopped blowing. The barn and the world grew silent. Time stopped and I waited. The dog waited. And then there was a sound like thunder and the growling stopped.
After a time Dad came out the darkness and said that it was all over. He asked if I wanted to see this last dog and then took me around to the other end of the pipe. He had pulled it out and there in shadows lay the largest dog I’d ever seen. Even starving it has huge. Even dead, it sent a chill through me.
We walked back to the farmhouse and the feast that Aunt Flo and my mother had prepared. We walked back in silence, our shoes making crunching sounds on the frozen earth.
I only remember two things from that evening. The first was my dad telling a much abbreviated version of our hunt: just the simplest of facts. The only time he elaborated was when he told about me standing my ground at the end of the pipe in spite of the terrible growling. It was the only time in my life that I heard my dad talk about me with pride. The second thing I remember is his silence on the long drive back to Columbus.
Years later, I tried my hand at hunting small game. I discovered that I had a good eye and that I could pull the trigger and kill. However, each time I killed a rabbit or pheasant I saw that long distance stare of death that took me back that dark afternoon when I helped my dad hunt dogs. I gave up hunting.
Later still, my dad built a cottage in southern Ohio and on weekends he would go there to relax. One late fall day, while he was sitting on the porch a skinny old dog came out of the woods and sat in field next to the cottage and watched him. He did this several times over the following month.
One Friday, on his way to the cottage, dad bought a hundred pounds of dog food and a bowl. When he got to the cottage he filled the bowl and placed it out in the field where the old dog always sat. Before sunset, the dog appeared and after a bit ate the offering.
By the time that snow was on the ground, three stray dogs would come out of the woods to sit in the field to watch my dad and have a meal. By the end of the first winter Dad had added a dog door to the garage, sleeping pads, three bowls and enough food to last a week at a time.
For the last three years of my dad’s life he would go to the cottage every chance he could to be with his three stray dogs. He named them Babe, Boy, and Blue. He would talk to them as he sat on his porch and after awhile, they all came to lie beside him and keep him company. No one else could get near them, just my dad.
My dad died in February not long after his 56th birthday. I was at home at the time. He had a massive heart attack and fallen in the bedroom. I gave him mouth to mouth respiration but it did no good. I looked into his eyes and saw that distant gaze that I had seen when I was boy and asked him, “What do you see? What do you see?”
His death hit my mother and me very hard. I was 23 and, as a young man, didn’t have a clue how to console her or handle my own grief. I don’t know why mother did what she did, perhaps it was the memory of that sad winter Sunday long ago and the starving dogs or perhaps she thought that dad needed companions. Whatever her reason, in her grief, my mother had my Uncle John, who had a cottage next to dad’s, catch the three dogs and take them to the vet where they were killed.
So my winter tale ends, with a cold mournful wind sighing under overcast skies. A cycle completed with a beginning, a middle and an end.
