Bute
80
“I don’t know where that judge got six points off that drive,” Ransome said.
“You really expect me to answer that?”
MINNESOTA STOCKDOG ASSOCIATION TRIAL
August 8, Taylor, Minnesota
Judge: Bud Boudreau, Marcus, South Dakota
50 Open dogs went to the post
1. Ransome Barlow
Bute
89
2. Penny Burkeholder
Hope
87
3. Chuck O’Reilly
Shep
86
4. Lyle Boyer
Jock
85
5. Florence Wilson
Kate
84
EASTERN ONTARIO TRIPLE CROWN SHEEPDOG TRIAL
August 15-22, Belleville, Stittsville, Kingston, Ontario
Judge: Ralph Pulfer, Quincy, Ohio
70 Open dogs went to the post
(Cumulative score)
1. Penny Burkeholder
Hope
576
2. Walt Jagger
Dot
559
3. Pat Buckley
Bart
554
4. Cheryl Jagger Williams
Kim
540
5. Amanda Milliken
Hazel
506
IOWA STATE FAIR STOCKDOG TRIAL
August 29, DesMoines, Iowa
Judge: Mike Neary, Brookston, Iowa
18 Open dogs went to the post
1. Ransome Barlow
Bute
90
2. Penny Burkeholder
Hope
89½
3. Dick Bruner
Mac
88
4. Lewis Pulfer
Creed
86
5. George Conboy
Tammy
85
“I HATE these little arena trials. Powerful dog can’t get far enough off his sheep. Everything gets speeded up.”
“Everybody runs the same course,” Ransome said.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I don’t know what I’d do, dog pushed his sheep like that,” Ransome said.
“Nobody asked you,” Penny said.
His head on the transmission hump, Hope panted. It was ninety-five degrees. Waterloo, Burkeville, Center City, Iowa. Flat lands, no windbreaks between the farms, three of four farmhouses abandoned and no motion in the corn rows that dipped and rose as they marched to the horizon. Penny’s arm made a thwock when she lifted it off the windowsill. Heat mirages danced on the narrow blacktop.
“Look at that,” Penny said.
“Somebody’s torn out the wall of that farmhouse so he could store his machinery. That’s his combine in there.”
“God, this is lonely country.”
Ransome shrugged. “They went off to the cities where they got good jobs. What’s so bad about that?”
“I’ve already got thirty-one dogs signed up for my clinic.”
“Oregon’s all right. They got some good dogs out in Oregon. You do many clinics you better get yourself a spare dog. It’s hard on a trial dog working clinics.”
“Everything’s hard on a trial dog.”
“Yeah.” They whipped past a shabby one-room school-house, half hidden in the weeds. “That’s where I went,” Ransome said. “My ma’s house was a mile down that road. I was in the last class to graduate from that school. God how I hated it. High school was better. They had the shop classes in high school.”
They toured tableland above a shallow tree-lined river before swooping down toward the town on its banks. JOHNSON CITY; WELCOME RURITANS!
The houses were white frame, most of them, a few brick ranches. The lawns were well kept and several had sprinklers going. It would have been an attractive town square except for cut-down elm stumps, which let too much light onto the business facades. Courthouse, Woolworth (CLOSED, FOR LEASE), Rexall Drug, several gift and antique shops, one on the ground floor of the stone building that once housed the Johnson City First National Bank. The shedlike building that was the Word of Faith Pentecostal Church might have been a movie theater once. Out on the strip, there wasn’t much to see. Oil dealer, Napa Autoparts, closed John Deere dealer: FLEA MARKET EVERY SATURDAY!! Three pickups and two old full-size American cars snugged their noses to Lucille’s, a cinderblock bar-restaurant that was windowless but had air conditioners sticking out its side walls, like ears.
The tableland they climbed onto was dry grazing land—sagebrush and jimson weed, gold in the late summer heat.
“This is it,” Ransome said, “Home.”
A jackrabbit looked up from his nibbling when they pulled off the road. A thousand feet overhead, a vulture watched the jack’s passage with mild interest. Broken glass sparkled among the weeds where the gas pumps used to be. At ground level, on the broken concrete, the temperature was 102 degrees. The plywood over the windows and front door was painted the same blue as the cloud-wisped sky, and the lettering across the front was red, faded to ruddy: BARLOW’S MERCANTILE, JOHNSON CITY, IOWA, ELEVATION: 1,395.
When Ransome got out, he kicked an empty two-liter Coke bottle into the sagebrush. “Damn kids.”
Penny and Hope got out and stretched. Their shadows were short and afraid to wander from their feet. “Four more hours to Omaha,” Penny announced.
“This was a good business once. Sixty thousand dollars gross I had. And the gas tanks were new. No problem with the EPA.”
Penny covered her yawn.
Ransome stooped to inspect a shutter where someone had pried at it and bashed the nails back in with a rock. “I got insurance,” he said. “Oh yes, I keep up the insurance.”
When he jumped Bute out, Bute actually wagged his tail before he dashed around back to his old kennel.
Ransome scuffed the lintel slab clean before he dragged at the steel door. It made an awful noise but came halfway open. “Come in,” Ransome invited. “I keep the electric on.” When he tapped a switch, four banks of fluorescents popped and sputtered into life. “See anything you want,” Ransome said. “Just take it.”
The coolers and freezers were empty, but the shelves were stacked with the ordinary merchandise of a country convenience store: cans of baked beans and pinto beans and brown beans and tomatoes and boxes of lasagna mix. There were snack crackers—mice had torn into them—cans of Skoal and Red Man racked beside the silent cash register. The calendar behind the counter supported the Johnson County Sheriff, Jack Froelicher. It was turned to April, four years ago.
Ransome said, “That’s how long I been on the road. Saw my first sheepdog trial that fall, tried eight other dogs before I found Bute, and once he was ready I sold the sheep, gave away all the beer and wine and cooler merchandise—eggs, bacon, lunchmeat. I boarded up the place.”
Grainy unpainted plywood blocked the big window frames. Dead flies dotted the counter and crunched under Penny’s feet. A green brocaded curtain covered the opening behind the counter. PRIVATE, NO ADMISSION.
“I’d like to use your bathroom,” Penny said.
“Be my guest.”
The bathroom was tiny: shower, sink, commode. A drip plunked into the rusty shower stall, ten thousand plunks a year, wearing through the paint, eventually the steel, eventually the concrete floor. A washcloth hung over the shower rail, stiff, gray and old.
The rest of Ransome’s apartment was badly lit. The kitchen stove loomed like a white motherly ghost, the refrigerator was painted some darker color. The living room was carpeted with something that looked like brown AstroTurf, the lounger in front of the TV was black vinyl. Shelves held Ransome’s motorcycle trophies and Penny thought she saw some sheepdog trophies too but had no desire to inspect them. She came out of Ransome’s private quarters quick, like maybe she’d be trapped if she stayed.
Ransome was out back where empty doghouses faced a small circular training pen. The training pen
was grown up with weeds, knee-deep blue-gray weeds Penny’d never seen before. Bute was lying in one of the doghouses, cleaning his paws.
Hope lifted his leg and left his signature across another dog’s scent, so faint it was almost memory.
“I am Jack,” the old scent whispered. “A good dog.”
Behind the corral, high plains stretched on across the continent. “Sixty thousand clear.” Ransome scuffed the dirt with his toe. He looked up at Penny. “I don’t suppose you’re interested.”
“It’s greener where I come from,” Penny said. “Shenandoah Valley gets forty inches rain every year.”
“Things have been different since you’ve been traveling with me,” he said. “Hell”—he kicked a pebble against the block well—you were right to take that dog to the vet. Even though it didn’t do no good. I don’t think I’d like to travel by myself anymore.”
Penny raised her eyebrows. “Did I say I was leaving?”
“I don’t really care what you did with that Oren fellow. You’re free, white, and twenty-one.”
“Twenty-six.”
“I mean, hell. I suppose you think this place is pretty ugly. Well, it isn’t anything to me. We find a place somewhere else, I can sell this.”
“Ransome, I know you are a fine dog handler and I owe you for teaching me. You’ve been a good friend. I don’t think I could have tolerated a better one. So far as I’m concerned, we can keep on traveling together. But that’s that.”
Ransome jammed his hat down on his head and called Bute. “Get in the truck. We’re burning daylight.”
The buzzard hung there as the pickup screeched back onto the road and sped away. The buzzard hoped that jackrabbit might choose that precise moment to cross the blacktop, but the bunny stayed at the roadside and wriggled his ears.
TRI-COUNTY SHEEPDOG TRIAL
September 1, Beaver Creek, Oregon
Judge: Dodie Green, Buckeye, Arizona
20 Open dogs went to the post
1. Ransome Barlow
Bute
88
2. Penny Burkeholder
Hope
86
3. Donald Boyd
Nell
86 (Decided on outwork)
4. Pat Shannahan
Hannah
84
5. Candy Kennedy
Sage
82
NOP NEVER HAD any particular regrets about growing old, never wished his life might have been different. In his bed, he dreamed of himself as he’d been, sweeping easily around great flocks, light on his feet—for a few moments when he woke, gray muzzled and old, he was disoriented—but soon he was back in his own skin again, leaving his dream skin for tomorrow night.
One morning, a month ago, Lewis took Nop out to the sheep. They made dark paths through dewy grass, Nop dashing from side to side. It was cool on the riverbank and Lewis paused under the big maple where he and his Daddy had rested their hay horses in the old days. “I dunno, Nop,” he said. “I suppose it’s worth a try.”
Nop wagged his tail. He looked at the sheep, two hundred yards away.
“Just a couple old fools, you and me, trying to make a comeback. We were a team once, you remember, Nop?”
Nop wished Lewis would quit talking. The sheep were drifting over a low rise and some were already out of sight.
“You think we can win again? Has-beens like us?”
Nop wagged his tail, game for anything.
“Well then,” Lewis said, “away to me!” And Nop was off.
If dog trialing was all Penny Burkeholder admired, her father could do that too. He and Nop would lay down such a run on the trial field, his daughter would be restored to him.
Nop had no inkling why Lewis wanted to trial again. He loved the work, the training, taking seriously what had become mere routine. Nop had slowed, but he made up for that by sheepdog wisdom. Over his life, he had herded thousands of different sheep: old ones, sprightly ones, defiant rams, sick old ewes, goofy lambs, and the mothers who’d die to protect them.
As Lewis worked with his old pal, he found new ways to trust him, found times where the old dog could manage sheep the young Nop couldn’t have.
The first trial they ran was the Virginia State Fair Trial in Richmond. A small arena, with a hundred yard outrun, it should have been a piece of cake, but Nop couldn’t get far enough off his sheep, Lewis lost his cool, and they were lucky to finish third.
Nop enjoyed himself (more, perhaps, than Lewis did), and on the drive home, he rode right on the front seat with his head on Lewis’s leg, so deeply asleep the oncoming headlights that splashed the pickup didn’t bother him at all and he drooled a bit and he snored.
When Lewis came into the kitchen, Beverly looked up from her magazine. “There’s a beef stew on the warming oven.”
Nop went to his bed behind the wood stove and pawed himself a nest and grunted once after he lay down: sufficient unto the day. Lewis looked at his wife, and thought how lucky he was to have married well, how most of the good things in his life had flowed from that. He bent and gave her a kiss on the top of the head.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing. That stew smells good.”
Lewis trained his dog and Beverly taught Sunday school and passed out donated canned goods at the church food pantry, each making prayers—that their daughter might be restored to them. They were parents and merely human.
Ransome Barlow was too linear for prayer. As a hard-shelled midwestern pragmatist, he played the cards he was dealt. His case ace, as he saw it, was dog handling. That Texas fellow, Oren What’s-his-name, couldn’t touch him there. He didn’t like that Penny had gone off with What’s-his-name at Oatlands, but there was no helping it. Maybe he should have been sweeter to Penny early on, but there was no helping that either.
Maybe he’d got too set in his ways. Penny had opened doors in his life that he’d never known were there. He didn’t know about getting married and all that, but he surely didn’t want to lose her.
Until they started riding together, she’d had a rough time of it. Who was that cowman who knew those rapists but wouldn’t give them up? Ransome Barlow knew he couldn’t offer Penny Burkeholder stability, children, community approval, money in the bank—none of those things. But he could keep her safe.
LIKE MOST COUNTY FAIR TRIALS, the course was in a horse arena, and since the trial was held at night, the Ferris wheel and the dipper and whirligig were turning and blaring rock music, made it hard to think. Up went the wheel of lights, climbing the stars, around looped the whirligig, lurch and stop swooped the hammer.
The announcer said, “FROM FAR OFF VIRGINNY, MS. PENNY BURKEHOLDER AND HOPE. THIS DUO BEEN WINNIN’ SOME BIG TRIALS LATELY, FOLKS. WASN’T THAT FINE!”
Ransome motioned to Penny when she came off the course.
“Don’t tie your dog to the truck. I’m going away for a couple weeks. I’ve got some business which you ain’t no part of. I already talked to Miz Harwood. She got all your stuff. You can travel with her out to Fort Collins.”
“Hey,” Penny said, “it’s my truck too.”
He said, “I’ll buy you out.”
She said, “What if I don’t want to sell?”
He pocketed his wallet. “That’s fine then. I’ll meet you in Colorado.”
Ethel touched Penny’s arm. “It’ll be fine, Penny. We’ll have a great time.”
“Goddamnit, that’s not the point!” Penny said. But the next minute Barlow was gone.
OKLAHOMA CATTLEMAN’S ASSOCIATION didn’t answer their phone. Oklahoma Department of Agriculture said Ransome could leave a message at the tone. Oklahoma State Fair said he should wait for an operator, and Ransome fed quarters into the pay phone while the recorded message listed events at the upcoming State Fair. Finally, an operator.
“One of your exhibitors is Jack Dickerson. I’m looking to buy a bull from him and need his phone number.”
“Oh, no sir, we’re not al
lowed to give that out.”
“Uh-huh. Well I’m headin’ south tomorrow. What town’s he in?”
“I suppose it’s all right to tell you that. That’s printed on the premium list.”
Dickerson Land and Cattle’s secretary said, sorry, Mr. Dickerson wasn’t available. If Mr. Jones could leave his phone number, Mr. Dickerson would get back to him soon as he got back from Denver.
By five o’clock the next morning, Ransome Barlow was in Denver. The livestock gate behind the colosseum was wide open, and Ransome parked his pickup in the shade of a tremendous cattle truck. The sun was just streaking the sky, orange and purple as cowboys led show cattle softly along, clucking to the two-ton beasts that followed at their heels, docile as mice. A jet from Denver’s Stapleton Airport lifted into the sky, and the sun washed its wings silver.
The colosseum was a cavernous place, and without the golden straw in the pens and the meat density of all those cattle the place would have echoed.
Simmentals, Chianinas, Limousin, Angus, Brangus, and Hereford: the cows looked up as Ransome passed and one or two mooed. It was breakfast time.
Dickerson Land and Cattle’s big pens straddled the intersection of the main aisles. One pen was reserved for tack, harness halters, a stack of rubber buckets. Another held the Dickerson cattle display. Photographs of people gripping the halters of award-winning cows and bulls and a video screen, presently blank, and a pamphlet box, presently empty, which suggested that Ransome should: READ HOW CALF PROFITS CAN SOAR.
A skinny young cowgirl under a terrific white western hat was mucking out a pen into a wheelbarrow.
No, Mr. Dickerson ain’t here. He generally didn’t come by until noon. They’d be showing the two-year-old cows then.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The sun washed the sunrise out of the sky, the jet trails got white and ordinary, a twittering flight of swallows scooped morning insects out of the air.
Ransome fed and watered Bute and settled himself into the show grandstand, first row where he could put his feet up on the rail, and daydreamed. The cattle show was 4-H Limousin heifers, calves born before January first. Family members filled the stands as youngsters led their animals into the ring. The kids wore identical white coveralls, spotless, and their parents coached them urgently from the sidelines. “He’s watchin’ you, honey, the judge! Look sharp!”