Searching

He was born in the crawl space underneath our cellar stairs. I don’t know why his mother, a stumpy chocolate Labrador named Mocha, ignored the whelping box and chose to deliver her puppies there, but once she’d made up her mind, there was no changing it. He was the firstborn, and Mocha struggled to get him right. As it turned out, he was the most playful, plumpest pup in the litter, and we named him Barkley, after the 76ers’ irrepressible “round mound of rebound,” Charles Barkley.

By the time Barkley was seven months old, he’d shown promise as a retriever; he marked and remembered falls well and had a keen nose and a boundless will. For two pheasant seasons, he and his sire, a well-mannered Labrador named Luke, matched each other step for step until Luke’s owner’s heart gave out. Within weeks Luke left us too, killed by a car not a mile from his home. He was a dog that never roamed, and I’ve always thought he was searching for his master.

From there on, Barkley and I frequently hunted alone. Obedient yet untamed, his athleticism and his apparent satisfaction in being a purebred animal in the truest sense of the word was a joy. I marveled at this magnificent machine who would cover ground like a gust of wind and hunt to the verge of exhaustion, but when it was over, would sit at my side, pressing against my leg, his yellow-brown eyes blinking with contentment, his narrow blaze bright white on his muscular, ebony chest.

Now, I don’t want you to think I’m telling you about a perfect dog because I’m not. Barkley could hunt all day alongside another dog without so much as a curled lip, but he nearly finished off a couple of dogs who invaded our property and, after several failed attempts, killed our daughter’s cat. Yet, throughout it all, he held my respect and affection despite his imperfections, something we do with dogs and humans even though others may not understand why.

Barkley was coming into his prime when I was offered an important job in London. I say “important” not because the job would alter the course of history but because it was important to me and represented the pinnacle of my career. The downside to moving to England was that Lyn and I couldn’t stand the idea of living without Barkley, Mocha, and our quirky mixed breed, Luther. But, even worse than living without them was subjecting them to six months of quarantine in London, so we arranged for a woman to live in our house in Rosemont and care for our pack until we returned from my search for fame and fortune.

The week before our third Christmas abroad, at midnight London time, we received a phone call from our housekeeper who said that Barkley had been killed by a car. While she tried to assure me that he hadn’t suffered, my gut began to heave as I pictured him dying in a ditch along a poorly lit road, attended only by a well-meaning stranger. And a siren voice screamed, Damn you, Barkley, for leaving me and damn me for leaving you. I couldn’t get those thoughts from the front of my mind for months and still can’t get them from the back of my mind all these years later.

Our housekeeper and I didn’t mention Barkley when I arrived home for Christmas but hidden in my stack of mail she’d left a letter of sympathy, apologizing for her part in his death. The note ended, “I only hope he found what he was looking for.” And so do I, for when we were separated by geography and my sense of self-importance, I guess I was looking for something elusive as well, something as fleeting as the life of a dog.

Sambo

This story took place during the 1995 hunting season on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Cold, blustery weather battered the wood-frame house that Bob Tyson and Syd Thayer, sales representatives from Sports Illustrated, had rented to entertain two advertising executives from DuPont and me. On our first morning, our guide, Frank Plummer, hunkered down by the woodstove, his large hands wrapped around his coffee. His Labrador, Sambo, lay next to him, occasionally thumping his tail on the linoleum floor.

When Frank told us he lived about an hour away in Rock Hall, Syd suggested that he must have to get out of bed really early to be with us by five.

Surprisingly, Frank said that he never goes to bed, just falls asleep in a straight-backed chair in front of the TV.

“Really?” Syd said. “You mean you never slip upstairs to visit the missus?”

That’s when Frank said he’d rather sleep with a good bird dog any day than a woman. And that’s when all of us took a hard look at Sambo, hurriedly put our coffee cups in the sink, and pulled on our hunting jackets.

In the gray haze of dawn, Frank stationed the hunters from DuPont in a pit blind in a large field of corn stubble while Syd, Bob, and I quietly approached our blind. Suddenly, Bob shouldered his gun, fired two shots, and said, “Got ‘em!” Syd and I hurried to the river where two of the dozen or so goose decoys rocked back and forth in the water.

I looked at Syd.

Syd looked at me.

Neither of us looked at Bob.

Without a word, we settled in the blind, where Frank and Sambo soon joined us.

The sun rose slowly, and we waited. Bob lit a cigarillo and clenched it in the side of his mouth, and we waited some more. Finally, a pair of black ducks surprised us from downriver. Before Syd and I could react, Bob lurched to his feet and shot twice. The ducks continued upriver. Sambo didn’t move.

Bob swore, set his gun down, and wiped at his face as though he’d been stung by a bee. He’d put his cigarillo out on his cheek with his shotgun’s stock and was in a fair amount of pain, both physical and emotional.

Once Bob had calmed down, and Syd had stopped laughing, V’s of geese dotted the sky in the distance, and our spirits rose. Frank tried to attract the birds with his goose call, and within minutes four circled and set their wings to land.

Frank whispered, “Wait,” then, “Now!”

All three of us stood and shot, and two geese fell in the water while a cripple collapsed in the high grass on the far bank. Without a command from Frank, Sambo exploded from the blind. First, he swam across the river, hunted in the heavy cover for the wounded bird, and swam it back to Frank. Next, he retrieved the lifeless goose that had been carried furthest away in the current, then retrieved the third, and shook off and hopped back into the blind.

I said to Frank, “That’s one impressive dog you’ve got there.”

“Sambo’s not mine,” Frank said. “He belongs to the widow who owns the house you’re renting. She’s offered him to me a couple of times, but I always turn her down.”

When I asked why, Frank said, “Because she might get a fart in her head and ask for him back.”

Of course, Frank had a point. A kindly old widow lady wandering around the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake with a fart in her head wouldn’t make for a pretty picture in anybody’s book.