Jim Harrison - The Ancient Minstrel

Catherine had gone on a three-day trip to Chicago with her the year before. It was hard to wedge in everything that needed eating from delicatessen food to outsize rib steaks. Catherine had to pass on the last dinner and it was a full week at home before she had fully recovered. That last evening alone had been lovely. It was April and stayed light fairly late. They had a small suite at the Drake and she could see wondrous Lake Michigan out three different windows. She had always meant to drive around it. She merely sat in an easy chair gazing at it until she slept.

They sat and chatted, Liz explaining the technical aspects of conception from zygote to blastocyst. When the doctor mentioned eggs Catherine was visibly startled.

“What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t thought consciously about my eggs since high school.” It unnerved Catherine to know that the eggs she hadn’t appreciated might now prevent her from having a baby.

They laughed but Catherine felt a nonspecific unrest that continued as she drove home. Before she went into the house she fed the chickens a goodly amount of late afternoon scratch. She didn’t want to think about eggs so she naturally thought about eggs. She thought about eggs through a long sleepless night. At 5:00 a.m. she poured herself a big clear glass of wine and sat by the window and waited for the reassurance of dawn. Her father’s doctor called as early as was permissible to say her father had died in the night. She felt nothing. The death didn’t stop her from thinking about eggs and she was beginning to feel cursed so she took a very long walk at dawn. At the far end of the west pasture there was a good-size rock pile that reminded her of a heap of eggs from a distance. Eggs again. She thought of riding on the stone boat behind Grandpa’s team gathering rocks years before.

On her way back to the house she admonished herself for this silliness about eggs. That helped as recognizing absurdity lightens its load. She pondered the brutal simplicity of the human body, at the same time its intricacy. Liz had said that her only religious feelings came directly from her work. How could it all be an accident? Catherine couldn’t relate. She had prayed back during the Blitz that a bomb wouldn’t land on her head and it hadn’t. It seemed fair to pray for others but not yourself. She had prayed back in Sunday school that her father wouldn’t hit Robert but that prayer hadn’t been answered. She had so dreaded his funeral that she was tempted to call the funeral home to say she was ill and couldn’t attend. No one would be there except the divorcée and a few old hunting friends, she had thought. Then she remembered that it was the opener for trout fishing and the weather was fair so those men would likely be fishing. It saddened her that her father had had so few people to draw around him.

She was having a rough day and napped for a half hour after her long walk. Unfortunately a nightmare came with the long nap. She was in a great marble hall and the floor was covered with eggs. The floor was tilted slightly and the eggs were rolling slowly and gently toward an altar she must reach. She stepped on a few and the crackle under her feet was repulsive to her in her sleep. She slipped and fell and broke a dozen more.

She awoke in a sweat and quickly dismissed the idea of making an egg salad sandwich for lunch. Farm people were forever trying to use up their extra eggs, even in their potato salad, but not today. She drew a chuck patty from the freezer and also a rib steak to thaw for dinner. The beef came from a prime steer they had butchered last December. The meat was wonderful and she split it with Clyde and his wife and children who were thrilled. Truly fine beef is out of nearly everyone’s range. Her butcher had space to hang the carcass for forty days which increases flavor and all the shrinkage is only water. She was still full of agita about eggs which gave rise to the idea of getting a hysterectomy and living and dying childless. Instead she called her travel agent and booked a plane passage to England for March, to see her putative lover. He certainly didn’t think of himself that way.

She was getting forgetful as if she were far older than she was. She had reserved a puppy and then neglected to pick it up at the owner’s. She knew she should have waited until she got home from England to get the pup but she also knew the owner wouldn’t tolerate further delay. She had read altogether too much on the subject of puppy raising and she knew she should be present for the first few weeks to properly imprint it but then she wanted a dog not a science project. She would have accepted her father’s Belle but he had left the dog to a sporting friend.

When she got to the dog owner’s house the pups were in a small pole barn to protect them from rain. The mother wagged her tail in friendly greeting but Catherine’s choice, a male, rushed out as if to tear them apart. He was defending his two little sisters, or so he thought, against humans. The man picked him up and gave him a little shake, then held him for a minute. He handed the dog to Catherine and he growled lightly then flopped back in her arms and closed his eyes, another male sucker for a hugging.

“I’ve been calling him Hudley or Hud. You know, after the movie when Melvyn Douglas says to his son Paul Newman, ‘Hud, you’re no damn good.’ Of course now he’s your dog so you can call him what you like.”

“I think Hud is a good name,” she said. She was a little embarrassed because the dog was getting a tiny erection.

“He never does that with me,” the man laughed. “It’s interspecies love.”

Hud resisted being put in the crate for the ride home and wailed when they were in motion. About a mile down the gravel road she pulled over and let him out. He scrambled into the front seat and glared as if to say, “This is where I belong.” She could already see he wasn’t going to be easy though he sat on the front seat like a gentleman, short of snarling at some cows they passed. At home she fed the chickens which he ignored. The owner had had chickens and said that he had been trained to leave them alone. The exception was that the rooster strutted up and pecked him in the ass. This meant war. Hud growled and attacked. The rooster escaped by flying over the fence and landed at the edge of the water trough. She grabbed the pup, swatted him on the ass, and said, “No” loudly. He lay in the dirt obviously feeling wronged. She took him to the pump shed attached to the back door of the house which she had planned as his quarters. There were several old blankets and pillows arranged in a corner. She fed him a large bowl of puppy chow which he wolfed then arranged him on his bed. He promptly went to sleep as if he had done a long day’s work.

She made her own dinner of fried breaded pork steak with cayenne and garlic in the flour. It was a distinctly lower-class dish which she had always loved. She also made broccoli in penance but did it Oriental style which made it nearly edible. Later that evening she was rereading some Evan S. Connell when Hudley starting howling on the back porch. She went out and said, “No” and slammed the door. Soon enough he resumed his howling and she called the owner in desperation. He admitted that all the pups had regularly slept on his daughter’s bed. “You’re going to have to gut it out,” the owner insisted, and he would finally learn to sleep alone. The owner put Catherine on the line with his daughter which led to nothing. The daughter finally said, “What’s wrong with Hud sleeping with you? You aren’t married, are you? He wants companionship. Don’t you?” Catherine let that one pass. The pup howled intermittently until midnight when Catherine quit reading and decided on bed. Tomorrow she would take Hud on a very long walk and tire him out. She would exhaust him and then he would sleep normally.