Short Stories

The Agency

November 15, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach and Sam Nixon, MD, ran a secret agency. It was sometimes an employment agency and sometimes a housing agency, and often both, but its customers and patrons never realized it. They thought the curmudgeons just by coincidence ran across opportunities to help folks, their friends, sometimes clients, sometimes patients, sometimes strangers, sometimes a combination. They did not charge for their services but gathered much personal satisfaction from rendering them. Read more

The Moment

October 26, 2022 | Field Trials, Short Stories | Comments

There comes a moment in every good field trial bird dog’s life when it realizes its purpose: to win field trials with its handler. To that moment, it may understand its handler’s desire to have it do his or her will, but not the purpose of the handler’s desire. But the moment a dog comes to understand what it and its handler are trying to accomplish together, is the magic moment. Read more

New Professions

October 11, 2022 | Short Stories | Comments

Thanks to Booty Blevins’ smart planning, he and Ike Eanes were now employed on Bent Pine Plantation, Ike as Manager and head dog and horse man and huntsman, Booty as Ike’s assistant. They were replacing others who had accepted similar positions on other Yankee quail plantations in the Spring Shuffle of 2024. Richard Brammer had one unfulfilled ambition, to gain membership in the Georgia-Florida Field Trial Club, an exclusive by invitation club for owners of quail plantations between Albany and Tallahassee. Richard had great influence in financial circles everywhere, having led leading venture capital and private equity firms based in Boston before his retirement. But in two years living retired at Bent Pine he had yet to gain membership. He was recently told by a sage of the quail belt that his best chance at admission lay in a large contribution to Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy Foundation for its endowment. Read more

Bound to Happen

October 5, 2022 | Ben Reach, National Championship | Comments

After Ben Reach read it on the internet he said to Sam at Breakfast next morning at Millie’s Diner, “It was bound to happen eventually. I wonder if it has happened before and no one ever knew.” The “it” was this. And the “it” has a long and short version. The short one: the National Champion bird dog of 2023 was discovered to be an impostor. Read more

FWF

September 29, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben and Sam often reflected over drams of The Macallan on FWF, their acronym for Families Will Fight. Their venerable practices of law and medicine had long been windows on human nature, sometimes heartening, often depressing. In their professional practices, both curmudgeons instinctively fought to mitigate FWF, with varying degrees of success. One thing they knew: no one won family fights. An apparent victory always became a defeat or at best a draw. Read more

Hunting Companions

September 8, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

A covey lifted at Cyrus’s feet and flew out bunched and low. Cyrus fired quickly and Ben and Sam on the wagon saw a bird fall. At the moment of the blast all heard a yelp. The pointing dog’s bracemate had been backing from heavy cover thirty-five yards ahead in the line of Cyrus’s hasty shot. Cyrus had broken another of Sonny Eanes’ recited rules of the hunt: “Know where every one and every animal is before you shoot.” Read more

The Key

August 25, 2022 | Short Stories | Comments

The Sunday following Thanksgiving, Paducah, Kentucky. The six handlers of the twelve entries gathered at seven am at the clubhouse of the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area. Rain poured down relentlessly, as it had through the night. There would be no morning running, likely no afternoon. Breakfast was being served by a local church group. The handlers filled their plates, quickly emptied them, then gathered around the roaring fireplace, glad of a day’s rest for their entries and themselves. Read more

The Bad Summer

August 16, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

For 130 summers they had trekked north in July to the northern prairies with their young bird dogs. They sought relief from the brutal southern heat, and the game birds that thrived on the vast open lands. For two months they worked their pupils early mornings and long late afternoons. The effect could be magic on a talented pupil, transforming a gangly pup into an accomplished all-age derby performer, that performer every trainer-handler sought but seldom found. Read more

Diss and Ace

August 2, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

“What does diss mean?” Ben asked Joanne. “Disrespect, or a put down. Kids say it a lot.” “That clears things up,” Ben said. He had just got off the phone with Fred Carter, a bird dog trainer-handler worried about getting sued. He’d said an owner had dissed his scout, and that was maybe the cause of the incident that could get him sued by the owner. Later that day, Ben drove to Fred’s little farm to get more facts. He was greeted by ten kennel runs of barking bird dogs. Fred and his scout, Benny Blevins, were cleaning runs and preparing the evening’s feed for the dogs. Read more

Three Men and a Dog

July 11, 2022 | Short Stories | Comments

Billy Bowles arrived at the Ames Plantation Saturday at noon and took his lone entry to the Trapp Memorial Kennels where he had reserved a run and two stalls nearby for his mounts. He heeled the pointer Rip from his truck to the run after hanging his own water bucket inside the door and putting fresh hay in the plastic barrel. (Rip as always had traveled from Georgia in the truck’s front seat beside Billy). Read more