Short Stories

Buck and Booty

September 8, 2020 | Fiction, Short Stories | Comments

Buck was handling and Booty scouting for Bootjack in the opening prairie championship of the season. The dog’s owner Fred Gray was riding in the gallery for his first prairie trial. He had bought Bootjack as his first trial dog in April and put him with Buck on recommendation from a friend. The grounds were new to all. Buck and Booty had studied them on Google Earth on Buck’s iPad, a recent gift from his son. Read more

About Families

August 25, 2020 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben and Sam found themselves in old age constantly contending with family strife in their practices of law and medicine. Time after time they watched families disintegrate into discord, indeed mutual hate. They often were on hand when a patriarch or matriarch died, only to witness strife break out among the children with unbelievable ferocity. “Why,” one or the other of the curmudgeons would ask the other after a family Read more

Dream Trip North

August 13, 2020 | Short Stories | Comments

It was his twenty third drive from Georgia to Manitoba, interrupted only by two summers in the army. He wondered if this would be his last. He made it in five days, sharing time behind the wheel with his scout Booty Blevins. Both were exhausted when they arrived. Neighbors came over and took charge of the dogs and the stock. Too tired to eat, he and Booty were quickly under blankets and asleep in the shack that served as their home for July and August. Read more

The Blue Hen ~ Conclusion

August 4, 2020 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

One by one the sealed bids were opened by the club’s president and read aloud to the hushed crowd of tuxedoed and gowned revelers. The bids ranged in odd numbers from a low of $30,001 to a high of $50,001, of which there were two. These were, as the two the Curmudgeons had predicted, by Harvey Grant and Fred Lee. Read more

The Blue Hen ~ Part I

July 31, 2020 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Harry Ganes got the bad news from his doctor as a total surprise. What he thought a minor scalp irritation was a melanoma, far advanced, result of too much unprotected sunshine, a common problem for those in his profession, pointing dog field trial trainer-handler. He now knew his days on earth were short, and he set to planning best he could for his wife Mary’s future without him. Read more

Callin’ in Some Chips

July 19, 2020 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Allen Collins called on his cell phone from North Dakota on July 15. “Mr. Ben, I got a problem.” Allen had just finished successfully a two-year program at a community college. This summer he would decide whether to go on for a bachelor’s degree or take a job in the quail plantation economy where he had grown up as the son of a plantation manager. He was torn between the two futures, for he had worked beside his father since childhood and loved everything about the quail plantation world, especially the dogs and horses. Read more

The Prenup

July 4, 2020 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben learned from Sam that Buck Branch had left Minnie, his wife of thirty years, for a younger woman, how much younger was a matter of speculation by the curmudgeons as they cast popping bugs for bream on the pond at Mossy Swamp Plantation. It was March 1 and the smell of smoke from controlled burns filled the soft spring air. “She says she signed an agreement that says she gets nothing before they were married.I told her she should consult you,” Sam said. At these words, Ben’s temper flared. “You mean nothing, no alimony or share of marital property?” Ben asked. Read more

Preacher

May 28, 2020 | Danny Bardwell, Short Stories | Comments

Everyone called him Preacher. That’s all I had ever heard. So I asked Mr. Turley what Preacher’s real name was. “Gene Turner,” Mr. Turley replied. “Hahaha. I’ve got to say, he got it honest. Was the beat’nist thing I ever saw. Faith, that’s what it was. Maybe not in God, but faith none the less.” Read more

Joe and Denny and Me — and Lucky

April 1, 2020 | Short Stories | Comments

In the summer of 1973, when I was thirty-five and a striving Richmond lawyer, I got an amazing gift from a more striving life insurance salesman hoping for referrals from me, an introduction to his brother, Joe Prince, perhaps Virginia’s most striving grain farmer, and after his crops of wheat, peanuts, soybeans and corn were up, most striving quail hunter. Read more

The Trip

March 5, 2020 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach was breakfasting alone in Millie’s Diner when his old friend Fred Eanes entered and accepted Ben’s waived invitation to join him. Fred farmed near Camilla in partnership with his son. Like Ben, he had been a life-long lover of big going bird dogs, trial and hunting. He and Ben had often judged together, but not for the last decade. Read more