Last Trip to Grand Junction

He woke alone in the  trailer, a single-wide on concrete blocks on a rented half-acre lot on a dirt road off Route 32 ten miles east of Leesburg. Jess Clark looked at the calendar, taped on the refrigerator door, where he marked off the days with a pencil stub on a string, and read in the first un-Xd block, “February 11, Sat.” 

He turned the left burner eye on the two-burner stove to high to heat water for coffee and put the enameled steel pot on it. There is something I must do today, he told himself, and strained to remember. Then it came to him: he must drive to Grand Junction. Tonight was the drawing in Bryan Hall. He must be there to find out when Bess would run. Then he would handle her. 

Bess was the best dog he had ever had in his string. This would be her third try to win the National. She had been lost at 15 minutes her first eligible year. Lost again with six finds at 2:40 on her second try after re-qualifying three years later. Both years she had left him on a deer scent. She had re-qualified again for this year; he felt sure she was now broke off deer. 

He poured boiling water over a spoon full of instant coffee in a mug, remembered to turn off the burner eye. He sat, waited for the coffee to cool enough to sip, then downed it. He was in his pickup at 9, headed for West Tennessee. The route was engraved in his mind; he did not have to think about it or consult a map. 

He knew Bess was already at Ames, driven over by his son Bob who had his own string now and would have a dog horse for him, would scout Bess as always. 

He filled the two tanks of the old diesel dually at the usual truck stop west of Leesburg, added two quarts of oil, bought a case of plastic quarts and put it on the back seat. He bought a foot-long turkey sub from the Subway franchise housed in a corner of the truck stop’s main building and asked that it be cut in half, wrapped and bagged as two, his lunch and supper. 

He drove sixty miles an hour across the remembered miles on routes paralleling Interstates 85 and 40, stopping only when nature called or fuel dropped below a quarter in the second tank. He always avoided driving on Interstates. He arrived at the Ames Plantation as dark fell but well before the drawing’s start time and parked near Bryan Hall. There were plenty of parking places; he was the first to arrive for the drawing.

He was dead tired, so after eating the second half of his foot-long sub and drinking the second half of his bottled Pepsi, he put the driver’s bucket seat back as far as it would go, tilted it back, pulled the brim of his old gray felt handling hat down on his nose and closed his eyes. He had stretched his tan Carhartt coat over his knees, pulled its collar to his waist. He was asleep in seconds. 

His son found him sleeping there when he arrived for the drawing. He had a single entry to run. It was not Bess, but a granddaughter of Bess, call name Ann. 

“What are you doing here, Pop?” 

Jess Clark woke slowly, confused, then realized where he was. 

“Here for the drawing,” Jess said to his son. 

* * *

After the drawing Bob drove him to the Days Inn. Ann was in an airline crate in his room and Bob took her out to empty after getting Jess settled into the second bed. He was already asleep when Bob returned to the room with Ann. Bob had called his wife on his cell phone and asked her to move Jess’s clothes from his trailer to their house. When he and Jess returned to Leesburg from Grand Junction, Jess would not return to the trailer. 

Ann drew the afternoon of Wednesday of the first week. Bob told Jess he would be riding front for Ann, which he did, sort of. Bob asked another handler whom he had earlier asked to ride front to keep an eye on Jess while he in fact rode front for Ann. 

Bob picked Ann up after an hour thirty minutes with two finds. Her ground race had been adequate but not one that could make her a winner, considering other races and bird scores already recorded. Bob arranged for the son of another handler based at Albany to drive Jess’s dually home. He prayed it would not break down. 

Half-way back to Leesburg, Jess, riding shotgun as Bob drove his dually pulling the horse trailer, Ann sleeping curled on the dually’s back seat, said, “You know son, I thought I had Bess broke off deer.” He was remembering Bess’s second race at Ames Plantation from long ago, Bob could tell.