He wept. He missed everything of his old life. Not only his father anymore but the articulate parts and pieces of everyday. The things he had not even known he could count upon. It was beautiful weeping: quiet, absent of self-pity. He took it as a measure of rightness that his dogs no longer grew alarmed when he wept. They were a comfort except for the fact that he also felt they were clear-headed judges. His old dog took her head off his thigh and tucked it down into her own shoulder. Likely only cold. He reached down and stroked her.

There was a final cigarette in the box that had belonged to his father. He wanted it but did not smoke it. He sipped again and corked the bottle and slid it behind the headstone and rose to walk to the wall and gaze down over the speckled meadow as he peed, Glow leaning to sniff where his pee steamed. He buttoned his flies and traced his way along the rough wall, one hand running up and down over the uneven hard-laid slabs. Came to the gate into the pasture and looked down at the quiet farm. The dogs out before him, ranging easy in the pasture dark. He went down the hill.

Another afternoon he lifted out the backseat of the Chrysler and removed the L.C. Smith from its case, ran a rag with a fine smear of oil over the gun and put a handful of shotshells in his coat pocket. He hiked up the woodsroad through the old sugarbush and began to climb up through the mixed hardwood and evergreen draws, the dogs both out before him now, serious, quartering back and forth the ground before him, tails working, heads out like drawn bows. Time to time he could hear one or the other pulling air in great snorting bursts, eating scent off the air like food. As the cover thickened they began to bust birds. He waited until Lovey locked up a bird and Glow slammed up behind her mother, honoring the point. He spoke a soft warning to both dogs, stepping past them. The partridge went up, a sudden burst of speckled animation that hit a long going-away glide down the mountain and he passed the splendid moment where his mind left him and was all out ahead of him, pinned down only on the flying bird as the gun came up. Then there was a pinwheel of feathers and both dogs broke past him and he was back. He knelt and took the partridge from Lovey’s mouth gentle as lifting an egg. He spread the tail: a young cock. He held it between both hands for Glow to bury her nose in the feathers. Only for a moment. Then stood, reaching behind him to put the bird in the pouch on the back of his coat. For a few feet Glow stayed behind him, bounding to bounce her nose against the bulge in the coat. He said nothing, just walked on. Lovey already back out hunting. Soon enough Glow went after her.