Short Stories

The Callimores

October 7, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments

The father, Jim, worked at S&M Milling for minimum wages, unloading and loading hundred-pound burlap sacks of grain hauled in by farmers for milling and mixing into animal feed. Jim and his wife had sixteen children, according to rumor. I knew only three, Billy, Freddy and Jean. Read more

Suspicion Unconfirmed

September 26, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments

Fred Barnes was a watcher. Little got by him. For the last two years he had been watching John Payne, a professional pointing dog handler, and his scout, Willie Blevins. Fred judged field trials a lot. Why? Because he had horses and a truck-trailer rig to haul them, and if he committed he showed, and he appeared to be without favorites among handlers or owners, pointers or setters. He was pleasant enough, stayed sober in daylight hours. Accepted only gas money to judge. He watched constantly the dogs under judgment. Did not chat or gather wool while judging. Rode every brace at the same pace. Read more

One Course Fiascos

September 16, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments

Most of us got our start with bird dogs foot hunting on farms where we grew up. For my generation there were hunt-able populations of quail on farms from Florida north to Indiana and grouse above and in mountains west of that, and of course quail and pheasants to the west. For the small percent of us attracted to pointing dog trials, it was the on-foot fun trials with a bird field and then the weekend one-course horseback trials that first captured our imaginations. Read more

Two Farmers, the Buck and the Boy

September 10, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Jake Todd and Buck Read had been adjoining farmers all their adult lives. Each was now approaching eighty. Blood enemies as well, most of those years. Why, you ask, and the question tells me you have no experience with their situation. To adjoin is to irritate, irk, agitate, infuriate. No myth is so untrue as that of rural tranquility. It exists only in the imagination of delusional city dwellers. Rural inhabitants know better. Read more

Advice to a Young Lawyer (continued)

June 5, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

It had been two years since Ben and Sam met with Rob Smith to discuss his next career move following his second judicial clerkship. Rob had decided to join a big Atlanta-based firm and become a litigator. Now he had asked to meet again with the curmudgeons. He had not told Joanne for what, and the curmudgeons as they waited for Rob to arrive we’re speculating. Read more

Advice to a Young Lawyer

May 16, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach had followed with interest the career of Rob Smith since his days as a high school student in Albany where he had been valedictorian and captain of the baseball team. He had gone on to Ben’s Alma Mater, University of Georgia, and from there to Harvard Law where he had done well. He’d landed a clerkship with a Federal District Judge and was finishing that year when he called Ben and asked to see him for advice on his next career move. Read more

The Odd Couple

May 1, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments

They were known in the field trial fraternity as the Odd Couple. Mike Trent was a classic Type A Competitor, perennially among the Top Ten Amateur handlers in horseback All-Age competition, as serious as a heart attack about winning, and as skilled as most any professional in developing and handling prospects. Bill East was as inept as Mike Trent was competent, but he too loved to run his dogs in competition, though he hardly ever placed a dog of his own. Read more

Pet Peeve

April 23, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD shared several pet peeves. First on Ben’s list was the practice of prosecutors, especially federal prosecutors, in pressuring minor offenders to testify against target alleged serious offenders in exchange for leniency. What Ben disliked was the temptation for the prosecutor to suggest what the testimony should be, and the inevitable willingness of the witness to testify as suggested (or demanded) whether true or not. The practice had become widespread, fueled by long mandatory sentences for drug-related offenses, even relatively minor ones involving marijuana, a drug legalized under state law in many states and in Canada. Read more

Run Off?

April 15, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories, Uncategorized | Comments

Once again Ben Reach had been drafted to fill in for a no-show field trial judge. This time it was in an invitational championship (not The Invitational Championship run every Thanksgiving weekend at Paducah but a copy-cat for another category). The handlers were amateurs, and so were Ben’s judging partners. They were enthusiastic and for their years in the game quite successful as handlers in their home venues where trials were run on released birds. Read more

A Sales Job

April 4, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ron Spears had called Joanne on Monday and asked for an appointment to see Ben Reach. She had set the appointment for 4:00 the next day, knowing, without asking, that Ben would want it then. Spears was the long-time manager and bird dog man on Twisted Pine Plantation, recently sold by the Yankees who had owned it a century to a Silicon Valley Venture capitalist said to be “richer than Croesus.” (When Joanne had heard that at her beauty parlor she’d Googled “Croesus” to find he was the King of Lydia in 560 BC and was plumb rich. Lydia, Google said, was now part of Turkey.) Read more