Blinker Was a Good Dog

by BEN HUR LAMPMAN

1

A MAN naturally disremembers — it all happened such a while ago a good many the yarns that used to be told up river and down about him and her, and how they was always a-jowering and a-jawing one at t’other, come day, go day, the old man and the old woman. Them as knowed them never blamed them, on account of they was so all-fired alone on the home place, with the young ones growedup and gone, that him and her was sort of bound for to entertain theirselves, in times when there wasn’t no mail in the country, and no radio.

So him and her taken to disagreeing, the whole eternal time, sort of to keep interested. All the while the old man would have give his last breath for the old woman, happen it would come in handy, and the old woman would have more’n died for t he old man. Him and her was like that. Lots of folks is.

But of them times beyond reckoning when him and her was as cross as two sticks, one at t’other, in all them years at the old place on the upper river, a man recollects best of all the time the old man was plumb sot on having a regular Christian funeral for their old dog Blinker, so near as the old man could manage it. You knowed about how the old folks finally lost Blinker, him that they’d raised from a pup, on the bottle — he growed old and gray with them two, him and her — but did ever you hear tell of how Blinker was buried?

By Godfrey, that time the old man and the old woman may have been nigh to a-splittin’, because the whole p’int was religion — and the old woman, she sot great store by religion; she could be hard as a niggerhead when it come to the Word. Of course the old man, he knowed this to his sorrcr, but when Blinker up and died on him, and laid there in the chips in the dooryard, slid’ as a poker, and the old man was recollecting how the old dog used for to grin at him, dang him if he could see any way to get out of a-burying Blinker like a Christian. For the life of him, seemed like he couldn’t.

So the old man, he come into the kitchen, and he seen right away that his old woman had been a-weeping, whilst at her housework — but when he taken his courage in hand, and told her what he had a mind for to do, told her as best he could manage, the old woman she give it some thought for a moment, and then she turned on him, clicking her store teeth. He knowed that for the worst sign of all. But danged if he didn’t have for to admire her, like always, outfacing him like that — little and puny but bold as a bobcat, whilst she give him a piece of her mind.

When his old woman got her dander up, seemed like she looked like the girl he fetched home from the valley. She looked like the queen on a playing card. And she give him to understand that them two had buried their own, years past, and had sorrered over them, and though the old man might be sort of minded to forget, a woman she must always recollect. She wouldn’t have spoke ary word such as that — if she’d rightly knowed how it hurt. But, howsoever, when a woman gets riled — The old man, he stood there and blinked at her out of his whiskers, but he was as sot in his ways as she was in her’n, and lie knowed what lie allowed for to do.

“It’s mighty un-Christian to bury a dog like a Christian!” the old woman says. “ You want me, your own wife, for to sing a gospel hymn over Blinker, whilst you pray? God is my witness I cared full as much for old Blinker as you ever did! Who redd-up the kitchen after him, since ever he was whelped? Who seen to his platter? But I shan’t have no part in mockery that’s fit only for heathens. Nor shall you!” says the old woman. “It ain’t fitting for Christians!”

And up come her apron whilst she cried her eyes out. She fair twisted the old man’s heart — but you know how it is. There’s times when a man is just bound not for to give in to them, He taken a chew of tobacco and he stomped out of the house. What was in his heart was as nigh to bitterness as ever had been there. It come to him then, like a thousand times afore, that they always got a man at a disadvantage, on account of they never lack words.

Well, sir, a man reckons that the old woman knowed she was bested, when the old man slammed the kitchen door, but first-off she dried her eyes, like women will, and put some wood in the stove against time she was going to need the oven. She clicked her store teeth, too, every once in a while—but all the time she was a-listening. She was a-listening because she knowed right well that poor Blinker wasn’t more than a step from the kitchen stoop. And after a bit the old woman heard the old man say “Whoa!” There the old fool was, with the bay mare and the stoneboat, alongside of the old dog.

She looked out and give him a look that ought to have wilted him in his tracks, but he give her a glare like ice on a duck pond, right back. “The old fool!” she was a-thinking. Might as well have taken the old dog in his two arms, and carried him to wherever it was — but, no, the old fool was sot on a Christian funeral. The tears come up to her eyes again, but still the old woman was riled as could be, and she couldn’t make no allowances for him. It was so un-Christian. All she said was: —

“I declare, if you’ve a mind for to make an old fool of yourself, like a heathen in darkness, you might as well change your shirt! Come in here, this minute!” The old man, he taken Blinker up in his arms, and he laid the old dog down on the stoneboat, and gentle, there on the new straw, and stooped and picked off a burr, before he turned to give his old woman so much as a look. He glared at her then, like before, and breshed by into the kitchen. She might have put her hand on his arm, easy — but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She watched him stomp into their bedroom, right off the kitchen, and she seen that when he come out the old man had on a clean shirt. It wasn’t the shirt she’d have chose— but at least, she seen, it was fitting. He give her never a look when he went past her and out of the kitchen door — and, a-listening, she heerd the old man say, “Giddap, Dolly! Easy, girl!” The stoneboat was a-grating on the gravel.

2

Soul alone in her kitchen, the old woman began for to mix a batch of lazyman’s biscuit — the old man was uncommon fond of it — but all the while she knowed that her heart wasn’t in it. Seemed like there come betwixt her and the dough, bat her eyes as she did, pictures of Blinker and the old man — and some of them pictures was of Blinker when he was skeercely more than a gangling pup, and of the old man when he was still so supple he could put one hand on the top fence rail and clear her.

It wasn’t biscuit dough she seen, there in her kitchen on the upper fork: it was Blinker barking at the foot of the lone spruce in the meadow, whilst the old man he circled the tree — and him in his prime then, the best man on the river — with the Harpers Ferry musket cocked for a shot at a silver-gray that Blinker had treed. She seen Blinker leaping; she heerd the musket; she seen the squirrel tumbling, over and over; she seen the old man in his prime. And then she seemed to see Blinker with one flank raked open by a cougar, and still a-laughing, and the old man — he wasn’t old then — with one foot on the long, lanky cat.

She seen them two a-going for the cows together, as many the time, and of a sudden her eyes they blurred till the dough wasn’t there any more — and the old woman she jerked back from the table, for her mind was made up, and she taken off her apron and went straight into their bedroom. The old woman was in such a hurry a body might have suspected she had for to catch the stage at the Corners. She come out of the bedroom with her hat on, the pink roses bobbing, and she made for the kitchen door. She had a book under one arm, and when her favorite rocker got in the way she flang it. clean across the kitchen. As folks used to tell it, up and down the river, the old woman was in a hurry. But she’d time for to break off one stalk of wallflower, there by the stoop.

He had stopped the bay mare back of the henhouse, where there was a considerable stand of honeysuckle, and the raw, black earth, with fishworms in it, was throwed back in a heap. And Blinker wasn’t on the stoneboat no longer, so the old woman judged that the old dog must be in his everlasting grave. Back of the lienhouse and under the honeysuckle, where the old dog used for to sun himself. The old man, his eyes lifted and shut tight as could be, he seemed for to be a-praying, with his whiskers a-waggling. For the old woman hecrd him say, plain enough, as she come a-hurrying up: —

“And, Lord, what You got to remember is that Blinker was a dangcd good dog! Dagnab me, if he wasn’t! Wherefore, Lord —”

But right there his old woman shoved the old man over a ways — she had a sharp elbow — and “Amen, Lord,” she says, and “You tarnation old fool!” she says, and she makes him take half of the hymnbook. She had the page open at the place. The old man opened his eyes and squinted, but he taken his hall of the book, like he w’as used to, and she chosen the hymn mighty well, though at first she had thought of singing “Old Hundred,” on account of it says to serve Him with mirth — like Blinker always done. But she changed her mind, and the place she had the book open was at “Beulah Land.” So them two sang — she did, and he trailed her — the old man and the old woman, back of the henhouse, whilst the words went away across the crick and the river: —

Then the old woman, she leant over and dropped in the wallflower and she seen Blinker for the last lime — a-laying there on the straw at the bottom like he was sleeping. The old man, he taken up the spade and he done what he had for to do, and times he was thinking of Blinker, and times he was thinking that the old woman’s voice still was like a girl’s. Happened it was along toward evening, and there was a sliver of young moon in the sky. His old woman she taken a glance at the new moon, and she might have been a-thinking of times they walked in the mowing together, for what she said was, half to herself, “Yander’s a hunter’s moon.” She meant that there’d be quite a dry spell. That there was too bad, for the old man he bridled to hear it. He tossed in the last turf and he flang down the shovel.

“Hell’s fire, old woman!” the old man he snorted. “You taken leave of your right senses? That there moon is wet as ary moon ever I see! ” Then they was at it, like always, over and over, a-jowering and a-jawing again. Him and her was like that.