THE WAY IT WAS

What I started to do on this warm, calm September evening, was to train a puppy to hunt coon with Sad Sam of blue tick, walker heritage. He got the name Sad Sam from his drooping, long ears and his heavy jowls which pulled his eyes open, exposing his teary eyeballs Unprepared. He was always drooling.

Eleanor and I climbed a mountain to get Sam as a puppy, just prior to Christmas day. We climbed up a narrow path of fresh frost snow. The full moon was overhead with all its translucent beauty. The snow was a shimmering field of diamond specks and the spruce trees were throwing their sinister shadows across our path. We reached the lone cabin of  Red Small for a prearranged meeting to pick up the puppy. He invited us into his abode. He, being a hermit, lived alone with his dogs. Inside was a stove, table, chair and a bed with a spring on top; no mattress or blankets. He must have slept in his clothes.

I bundled the puppy inside of my red- and black-checked wool jacket, with only his little black nose sticking out. The descent was cold. West Paris village was beautiful from above, with its snow-capped roofs, wood smoke curling out of chimneys, filling our hearts with Christmas cheer, of belonging here at this very moment. That is how Sad Sam came to us. We spent many enjoyable years hunting.

Sam was a one-man dog. He would get into Eleanor’s basket of clean clothes to sleep. She would try to get him out to no avail; he would bare his teeth and growl, and there he would stay until I came in. All I had to do was say, “Sam, get out of there.” He would meekly slink away so sadly with his head down. He rode beside me for days at a time on my farm equipment with his head on my knee, a good friend.

That warm, pleasant September evening, without mosquitoes or no-seeums, I set out so bravely to train another young pup how to hunt coon. Sam, being a true coon hound, would not chase anything else. It seemed such an easy task for him to locate one for the pup. The pup barked as if he had treed something, so I went to the tree he was sitting silently under. This being the first training session, I was ill-prepared. The flashlight had to be shaken to keep it lit. I assumed there was a coon up in this hemlock, so I climbed to its very top, but there was no coon. The idea was to shake the coon down for the dogs. Sam was not there; this bothered me some, therefore I started down, shaking the flashlight as I retreated. The pup was gone, and Sam was not there either. I heard a quiet shuffling sound approaching, then a deep-throated grunt. There is not a hog raised for miles around this neck of woods.

What appeared was a sow bear looking for her cub. She came straight to my tree, stood up on her hind legs, and clamped her sharp black claws deeply into the hemlock. The flashlight kept flickering on and off at its own discretion. The sow sniffed the air. Every time the light flashed, it looked as if fire was coming out of her eyes.

 Now, how am I going to get out of this one? Up in a tree, a bear starting to climb up, and the flashlight will not stay on unless I shake it

I yelled, “Get out of here! One idiot is enough up here! Sam,” I yelled, “for crying out loud, don’t desert me now!”

I remembered my empty revolver on my hip, but there was no time to load, and I had forgotten to bring bullets. I tried to whistle to Sam, but my mouth was so dry I couldn’t pucker.

I heard something coming. “Over here, Sam, over here. I knew you would not leave me.” That stupid pup; I should have known Sam would not chase anything but a coon. One big “Woof” and the bear was gone, the pup ran after her, barking.

I wrapped my arms and legs around that rough hemlock, slid down to the ground, and ran for home three-quarters of a mile away. When I slowed to a walk, I felt blood running down my arms and legs, caused by that slide down the rough hemlock. I was walking slowly now, mulling over the previous events, slowly getting braver by the minute. I’m going back and chase that bear up a tree, I told myself, but first I’ll get help, a rifle, bullets for sure.

On entering the kitchen, I found Eleanor reading a book and listening to Amos and Andy on the battery radio.

“Has Onni gone to bed yet?”

“Yes, he has. He is tired after working in the woods all day, let him sleep. Ty, what is going on? Is something wrong?”

“No, no, not a thing. I’ll see if he is awake.”

Cousin Onni’s bedroom was off the kitchen. I opened the door. “Onni, are you awake?”