Blue
I had just won the American Dog Writers Association Award for Best Short Fiction of 1977 with “The Last Dog.” I wrote “Blue” a couple of months later, submitted it to the same market—Hunting Dog Magazine—and won again. The secretary of the organization, who had expressed some distaste for science fiction or fantasy stories, asked me if I planned to do any more. I replied that I’d probably do one a year as long as they were handing out the award. They cancelled the award one week later.
I had a dog, his name was Blue.
Bet you five dollars he’s a good one too.
Come on, Blue!
I’m a-coming too.
They sing that song about him, Burl Ives and Win Stracke and the rest, but they wouldn’t have been too happy to be locked in the same room with old Blue. He’d as soon take your hand off as look at you.
He wandered out to my shack one day when he was a pup and just plumped himself down and stayed. I always figured he stuck around because I was the only thing he’d ever seen that was even meaner and uglier than he was.
As for betting five dollars on Blue or anything else, forget it. It’s been so long since I’ve seen five dollars that I don’t even remember whose picture is on the bill. Jefferson, I think, or maybe Roosevelt. Money just never mattered much to me, and as long as Blue was warm and dry and had a full belly, nothing much mattered to him.
Each winter we’d shaggy up, me on my face and him just about everywhere, and each summer we’d naked down. Didn’t see a lot of people any time of year. When we did, it’d be a contest to see who could run them off the territory first, me or Blue. He’d win more often than not. He never came back looking for praise, or like he’d done a bright thing; it was more like he’d done a necessary thing. Those woods and that river was ours, his and mine, and we didn’t see any reason to put up with a batch of intruders, neither city-slickers nor down-home boys either.
It was a pretty good life. Neither of us got fat, but we didn’t go hungry very often either. And it was kind of good to sit by a fire together, me smoking and him snorting. I don’t think he liked my pipe tobacco, but we had this kind of pact not to bother each other, and he stuck by it a lot better than a couple of women I outlived.
And, Mister, that dog was hell on a cold scent.
Blue chased a possum up a cinnamon tree.
Blue looked at the possum, possum looked at me.
Come on, Blue.
I’m a-coming, too.
Except that it wasn’t a cinnamon tree at all. I don’t ever recollect seeing one. It was just a plain old tree, and I still can’t figure out how the possum got up there all in one piece.
It must have been twenty below zero, and neither of us had eaten in a couple of days. Suddenly Blue put his nose to the ground and started baying just like a bloodhound. Thought he was on the trail of an escaped killer the way he carried on, but it was just an old possum, looking every bit as cold and hungry as we did. The way Blue ran him I thought his heart would burst, but somehow he made it a few feet up the tree trunk. Slashed Blue on the nose a couple of times, just for good measure, but if he thought that would make old Blue run off with his tail between his legs, he had another think coming. Blue just stood there, kind of smiling up at him, and saying, Possum, let’s see you come on down and try that again.
It was a mighty toothy smile.
Baked that possum good and brown.
Laid sweet potatoes all around.
Come on, Blue,
You can have some too.
Never did like possum meat. Even when you bake a possum it tastes just awful. The sweet potatoes were just to kill the flavor. Folksingers and poets live on steak and praise; let ‘em try living on possum for a few days and I bet that verse would come out different.
Anyway, I did offer some to Blue, just like the song says. He looked at it, picked it up, and kind of played with it like a pup dog does when you give him a piece of fruit. At first I thought it was just good taste on Blue’s part, but then his nose started to swell where the possum had nailed him. Usually I’d slap a little mud on a wound like that, but mud’s not the easiest thing to come by when it’s below zero, so I rubbed some snow on instead.
First time in his life Blue ever snarled at me.
When old Blue died he died so hard,
He jarred the ground in my back yard.
Go on, Blue.
I’ll get there too.
Guess the possum had rabies or something, because Blue just got worse and worse. His face swelled up like a balloon, and some of the fire went out of his eyes.
We stayed in the shack, me tending to him except when I had to go out and shoot us something to eat, and him just getting thinner and thinner. I kept trying to make him rest easier, and I could see him fighting with himself, trying not to bite me when I touched him where it hurt.
Then one day he started foaming at the mouth, and howling something awful. And suddenly he turned toward me and got up on his feet, kind of shaky-like, and I could tell he didn’t know who I was any more. He went for me, but fell over on his side before he got halfway across the floor.
I only had a handful of bullets left to last out the winter, but I figured I’d rather eat fish for a month than let him lie there like that. I walked over to him and put my finger on the trigger, and suddenly he stopped tossing around and held stock-still. Maybe he knew what I was going to do, or more likely it was just that he always held still when I raised my rifle. I don’t know the reason, but I know we each made things a little easier for the other in that last couple of seconds before I squeezed the trigger.
When I get to Heaven, first thing I’ll do
Is grab my horn and call for Blue.
Hello, Blue.
Finally got here too.
That’s the way the song ends. It’s a right pretty sentiment, so I suppose they had to sing it that way, but Heaven ain’t where I’m bound. Wouldn’t like it anyhow; white robes and harp-strumming and minding my manners every second. Besides, winter has always chilled me to the bone; I like heat.
But when I get to where I’m going, I’ll look up and call for him, and Blue will come running just like he always did. He’ll have a long way to go before he finds me, but that never stopped old Blue. He’ll just put his nose to the ground, and pretty soon we’ll be together again, and he’ll know why I did what I did to him.
And we’ll sit down before the biggest fire of all, me smoking my pipe and him twitching and snorting like always. And maybe I’ll pet him, but probably I won’t, and maybe he’ll lick me, but probably he won’t. We’ll just sit there together, and we’ll know everything’s okay again.
Hello, Blue. I finally got here too.