Nop's Hope

by Donald McCaig

  When Penny crawled out of her camper, she wore the jeans and shirt she’d worn the night before. One knee was smeared black, the seat of her pants was dirty and an elbow was out of her shirt.

  Although Hope whined to be let loose, she ignored him, carried a suitcase to Ethel Harwood’s camper and asked could she come inside and change.

  “Sure, honey. You want a shower? I filled up the tank last night. You feelin’ all right, you look awfully pale?”

  Penny washed her face and brushed her hair and said no, she didn’t want any coffee, would it be all right if she used the toilet. After she closed the door, Ethel heard her retching.

  She was paper white when she came out.

  “Hope feeling ready this morning?”

  “That’s up to him, isn’t it? It’s been one year today,” Penny said. “Since Mark and Lisa died.”

  Ethel wanted to hug her, but Penny held her body so brittle and aloof.

  Penny brought Hope on a lead, like he was a wild dog, a pet dog, a dog that didn’t know any better. She led him across the irrigation ditch to do his business, which he did, facing away from her. He didn’t paw dirt over his scat, didn’t trot away, tail in a plume, didn’t look at her, said nothing. “Hope, come to me. Hope! You come to me, you!”

  One step at a time, like he was dragged; his chest rose and fell with each breath.

  “I’m sorry, Hope. I, just don’t know how I … God, I’m sorry.”

  Hope snuffled a tumbleweed, lifted his leg.

  “You’re gonna be fine, aren’t you? Soon as you go out on that course, it’ll be you and me, just like we always was. Hope, I wasn’t there when my baby died. I couldn’t stand it if I hurt you too.” She gripped his head and tried to look into his eyes but he jerked away from her.

  “A very nice job by Dodie Green” the announcer said. “Just a little trouble at the shed. Next up, Charles O’Reilly, from Red Wing, Minnesota, with his fine dog, Shep, trying to work these wild Wyoming sheep out here on this tough, tough course. Every one of the dogs that runs today is already a champion.”

  It was a brilliant day, the last fine day of Indian summer. Behind the grandstands, Basque children danced the dances their parents brought when they’d come to this strange country to be shepherds. Accordian, fiddle, four children in green and black folk costumes. Camera flashes blinked in the sunlight.

  A few handlers removed their dogs’ collars before they walked onto the course, telling the dog the connection between them had nothing to do with leather and steel. Empty dog collars dangled from the fence while great dogs made their try.

  Cowboys and ranchers watched from pickups or in the bleachers or perched on the fenders of their cars. The sheep were going well, the two days of qualifications had accustomed them to dogs and the dogs had learned their ways, and despite the enlarged course size, things were going smoothly.

  “Congratulations,” Lewis Burkeholder said to his daughter. She looked blank. “For winning best newcomer. Honey, I’m proud of you.”

  And Penny dropped her head and hurried right by. Lewis couldn’t remember when he’d seen Hope on a leash.

  Penny and Hope hid out in the clubhouse. The silent auction had failed to draw many bids, and only a few of the artworks bore tiny red SOLD stickers. One painting depicted a dog with Hope’s markings approaching two lost lambs while, the sheepherder followed the dog from horseback. The artist had known dogs and sheep and loved them, and Penny wished somebody had put a bid on it, but love and skill don’t necessarily mean very much, she thought, it’s luck you need. Hope faced into the corner, where nothing or nobody could get at him. “The work will put you right,” Penny said aloud, and a woman inspecting the paintings turned, startled, and Penny put on a ghastly smile and said, “Talkin’ to m’dog.”

  The woman had a weather-beaten face, and her jeans and her shirt were fresh and her boots so new the soles still had their original finish. “You run that dog in this trial?” she asked.

  “I got started a year ago.”

  “We bought our first dog six months ago. We handle cattle from horseback but we needed a dog for the goats. You just can’t rope a goat.” She grinned. “Honey, you okay?”

  Penny went into her pocket for her red and black checked handkerchief. “I was thinking of something else,” she said. “But I can’t think about that right now, I got to get through this Final today, then I’ll be okay.”

  The cowgirl was older than Penny, ten years or so. “Here I am pestering you and you want to be alone, you and your dog. Hell, I’m sorry.”

  Penny said, “No, it’s not that. You got kids?”

  The woman sighed and looked out the clubhouse windows. Bar X Ropes had a roping dummy outside its tent that kids were trying to lasso. “Hank and me, we can’t have kids,” she said. “He’s got a daughter from a first marriage but I had an infection and got my tubes tied. Daughter comes up and visits us in the summer months. She left last week to go home to California to learn how to shop. I surely miss that child.” She paused, “You?”

  Penny shook her head. No, she didn’t have any children, never had had a daughter named Lisa. “What I got is this dog.”

  “That’d be too lonesome for me,” the woman said. “I go to bed, it’s snowing outside, I like to crawl right up against my Hank. Maybe he doesn’t shave often as he should and sometimes his breath stinks of whiskey but, by God, he’s warm.”

  Penny blew her nose. “Thanks.” She said, “I enjoyed talking to you. I got to go now, check out the course.”

  “You really okay, honey?”

  Penny glared. “ ’Course I am. Me and Hope, we gonna win this goddamned thing.” And she gave a jerk on the lead and Hope followed her out of the clubhouse like a barge after a tug.

  “I’ll be rootin’ for you,” the cowgirl called after her.

  On the course Ransome Barlow was having the run of a lifetime. He got a tremendous round of applause when he and Bute walked off the course, and Ransome swept his black hat to the earth in thanks. Of 120 possible points, on that big course, he’d managed 104. Ransome felt like he weighed about twenty pounds, like he literally might float off the earth, and he scarcely heard the congratulations as he walked toward his pickup.

  “All the dogs here today are champions,” the announcer said, “but the dog who wins this today will be a champion of champions. Don’t forget we’ve got folk dancing in front of the clubhouse. Go on over and give the kids some support.”

  Ransome had good intentions when he approached Penny. “Sorry about last night,” he said. “If I’d known those sheep were that rank, I wouldn’t have invited you.”

  Penny said, “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  Hope was at the fence, bored, as if nothing on the course interested him in the slightest.

  Ransome winced. “To him it does. Did you see the way Ol’ Bute did that second lift? Ever seen anything so pretty?”

  Penny shrugged.

  “I suppose you’re gonna beat us?”

  And she faced him with her red-rimmed eyes and said, “Why not? Me and Hope been whippin’ you all summer.”

  It was like somebody kicked Ransome in the stomach. Suddenly he was so overwhelmingly angry that he turned away. He knew, in that instant, why it is that guns kill people: because they are quicker than our remorse. “I don’t suppose you’d like to put your money where your mouth is,” he said.

  “You never paid me for my half of the pickup.”

  Ransome breathed in and out, in and out. “Okay,” he said. “That’s the way you want it. Dog against dog. You go out there and get a better score than Bute—that’s today—no cumulative score, just today, and I’ll sign his registration over to you. I beat you, I take Hope.”

  And suddenly, alarmingly, she smiled, and it was a sunny smile, no hurt in it, the smile of a young girl who sees nothing wrong in the world because she has found love. She knelt down beside the dog. “How about it Hopey? Can we beat those two? Just like always—we’l
l go out there and do it?” Her joy beamed over Ransome. “Hopey says ‘sure.’ Hopey says he can do it. You just go get your papers ready, because we’re going to go out there and make everything right.”

  Ransome felt sick to his stomach—all that adrenaline pulsing through him—and his heart stuffed his throat so full he couldn’t talk. He nodded to seal the bargain.

  AT NOON, they broke for half an hour. The announcer talked. He talked about the sponsors; the Cowboy Roundup Sheepdog Committee who were putting on this great trial; the fact that every dog here was already a champion; how useful these dogs were on ranches and farms. But as he was talking, the news of Ransome’s wager flashed through the handlers; heads turning to listen, twosomes and threesomes forming and breaking up. Lewis closed his eyes and the fellow who’d given him the news asked, “Lewis, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Oh, mercy.” Lewis turned as his wife of so many years hurried toward him.

  “Lewis, what is that girl trying to prove?”

  “I believe she’s bettin’ the pot,” he said.

  It was one-thirty on a shadowless September afternoon when Penny Burkeholder and Hope walked onto the course of the most important sheepdog trial in North America. They’d worked all year to get here, ran trial after trial, learning the arts and trust of trailing. They had a ten-point lead going in and would win today if the spread between them and Ransome Barlow stayed the same, though of course, they had to beat him outright today to win her bet.

  Big as the field was, it was easier to see the mounted cowboys putting out sheep than the sheep themselves.

  Penny walked as if each step was being scored. Hope followed dolefully on his lead, looking at the ground. She stooped and unclipped him, and Hope jumped ten feet away. She called him and laid him down and leaned over him, talking and talking and talking. One rancher asked when she was going to begin and a handler said, “The clock doesn’t start running until she sends him.”

  On the sidelines, Lewis Burkeholder could not look away. At his side, his good wife had her head bowed and her eyes closed. Lewis felt fragile. He remembered a verse the preacher had read at Mark and Lisa’s funeral service, how life is labour and sorrow, we are soon cut off and we fly away.

  The dog sailed out to the left, just fine and the announcer—who’d heard about the wager—covered the mike with his hand, “Might be that girl’ll have two dogs to take home tonight.”

  Out he went, out, out, and Penny poised at the handler’s stake, ready to guide him or give advice whenever he might need it. The crowd could see the cowboys on horseback trotting away from the sheep and then, the sheep came, and for the first bit it was fine, but then the sheep started to speed up, and Penny blew her whistle, “Hope, take time!” but the sheep came on quicker, at a gallop now, this dog right at their heels and no telling what he had in mind. Once again, Penny told Hope to take time, but on came the sheep, legs stretched in a gallop in a mob, and a mob can’t all fit through the gates and Penny told Hope to STOP, to LIE DOWN and on they came, around the side of the gate. Hope laid down. The sheep slowed and drifted of their own accord to the spot where they should be. Next the handler is supposed to send the dog to a second bunch, half a mile out, ninety degrees west. The double lift has been called a crisis of faith, and it is. For a dog it’s like changing careers in midlife.

  Penny told Hope to LOOK BACK! Hope ignored her, concentrated on the sheep he had and started pushing them across the course, thud, thud, thud, deliberate as a locomotive. Penny whistled him down. He ignored her. She whistled him down. He ignored her. His feet like pistons, up down, up down.

  She whistled him down. She whistled him down. She whistled a recall a “That’ll do, here!” She whistled him down.

  The sheep marched away from the crowd, the pickups, the judge, the woman, toward the Bighorns.

  “Hope there’s a fence out there,” someone said.

  “Christ,” someone else said.

  Ransome Barlow turned his back.

  Penny Burkeholder cried, “Lisa, don’t!”

  A Wyoming rancher turned to a Virginia handler. “I thought her dog’s name was Hope,” he said.

  The Virginian said, “That’s right.” He added, “I think it’s time to get a cup of coffee. You want one?”

  The judge was standing on the very edge of his stand. Sometimes you saw this sort of thing with young dogs at nursery trials, but this was the National Finals.

  Penny had quit commanding, stood silent as a strange dog did whatever was on its mind.

  Hope thought, “I am not Hope, I am not him. Move woolies.”

  The president of the Handlers’ Association hurried onto the judge’s platform and the two men conferred. The judge called out, “That’ll do, Ms. Burkeholder. Call your dog.”

  Hope pushed the sheep relentlessly west.

  A second time, the judge called, “Ms. Burkeholder, that’ll do. Will you please fetch your dog?”

  The announcer chimed in, “Well that’s tough luck for Penny Burkeholder and her dog, Hope. Disqualified for going ‘off course.’ Next handler will be Bill Berhow with Nick. Bill’s from Lavina, Monatana, not many miles from here …”

  As the pickup man sent his dog out to get Hope’s sheep, Lewis Burkeholder jogged onto the course. Lewis wrapped his jacket around his daughter’s shoulders.

  When the pickup dog came around Hope’s sheep, Hope whipped to the far side to cancel the other dog’s effort and the sheep kept on drifting in the same direction, more nervously, since now there were two dogs.

  Most country people are deeply polite and nobody was waiting for Penny and her father at the gate except Beverly. Nobody was standing nearby; the nearest handlers faced away, deep in private conversations, and the Burkeholders passed invisibly.

  Two more pickup dogs were trying to bring the sheep off but Hope, darting back and forth, balanced fifteen sheep and three good dogs and kept the sheep marching toward the Bighorns.

  From the judge’s platform, the president called: “Lewis, didn’t this dog used to be yours?”

  “I’ll take care of Penny,” Beverly said, and mother and daughter passed to the motor home through a crowd of sudden strangers.

  On the course, three dogs and one cowboy were working to bring the sheep in, but Hope was a whirlwind, and what was meant to be the most serious test of the sheepdog’s art was threatening to turn funny. Some of the cowboys on the sidelines were rooting for Hope: underdog.

  And in its own crazy way, it was beautiful: one dog defying fifteen sheep, three dogs, a man on horseback, and now three men on foot. And he was quicker than the men on foot, more agile than the rider, who was being loudly advised to “dab a loop on him, cowpoke.” And the cowboy was reaching for his lariat when Lewis arrived, said “Hope, that’ll do.”

  And Hope followed Lewis off the course, wagging his tail like “Haven’t I done good, wasn’t that fun?” Foolish as a puppy.

  The crowd applauded Lewis and maybe Hope too, but Lewis didn’t doff his cap because he was ashamed and didn’t see anything funny at all.

  He fastened Hope to Penny’s truck and the dog squirmed underneath.

  When Lewis rapped at his motor home door Beverly stuck her head out and gave him the look that meant “not now,” so Lewis waited in Ethel Harwood’s motor home.

  A full hour later, Beverly knocked and Ethel said, “I guess I’ll go get me something to eat, you hungry?” Which they weren’t, nor was Ethel particularly.

  “She cried herself to sleep. I didn’t think she’d ever stop. Lisa, how she blames herself. If she’d been there with her, maybe she could have got Lisa out. She blames Mark too, for taking Lisa with him that day and having the accident. You know what is worst for Penny? How afraid Lisa must have been, underwater, her daddy holding her up in the air and his arms losing their strength. We prayed together, for Lisa and Mark. Penny said she ruined her dog. Can you do that, Lewis, can you really ruin them?”

  “Reckon you can.”

  “Penny sa
ys she wants to go home with us.”

  “Well, that’s what we wanted.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I do.”

  Lewis took a sip of ice tea and said, “I believe she truly loves that dog.”

  Beverly said, “Maybe you can find her another one.”

  “There’s only one.”

  So Beverly asked Lewis what was on his mind, and when he told her she said, “Fine, that’d be fine, if you think there’s a chance.” There is no one so surprising as a good woman. They’d been married thirty years and still sometimes it embarrassed Lewis how much Beverly loved him.

  That Texan, Oren Wright, was standing outside, hands jammed into his hip pockets. Lewis wondered if he’d looked so young back when he was courting Beverly.

  “Penny. She gonna be all right?”

  “She’s sleeping now. It’s a year ago today her daughter and husband were killed, you probably heard of it. They went off the road into a pond. Most years there’s not much water in it, but we’d had a wet fall.”

  A handler paused then to say it was too bad about Penny’s run, everybody admired how she’d brought Hope along and he’d been thinking of breeding his bitch to Hope.

  “These things happen,” Lewis said. “You seen Barlow?”

  Ransome was by himself on the top row of the grandstand with his chin in his hand. Tommy Wilson was on the course with Roy.

  Lewis sat beside him and after a minute he said, “Tommy’s laying down a good run. I’ve always like that Roy dog.”

  As Roy went out for his second lot of sheep he crossed over. A groan went up in the grandstand, and Florence Wilson, Tommy’s wife, winced, visibly.

  “He can’t catch me now.” Ransome stood, no longer interested.

  “Sit down,” Lewis said. “I got something to say to you.”

  Ransome said, “I don’t like what happened any better’n you do. Was a time I thought that maybe me and Penny might have a chance together. Havin’ her travel with me has brought dissatisfaction into my life and maybe I owe her for that. I don’t like what happened to that dog either. Listen to him.” A muffled howling, wild as a plains coyote. “I’m not sure I can put that dog back together again.”