because taped up behind that freezer motor, in the last place on earth anybody would look, was a worn leather collar and a little tin, and I knew right away what a man hides there.
I got it loose and unwrapped it on the garage floor. A dog collar, old, the leather gone soft, a brass tag on it worn smooth but you could still read the name. Duke. A small sealed tin, heavier than it looked, the kind a place gives you back ashes in. A few photographs, a big rangy bird dog in every one, in a field, in the back of a truck, curled at a mans boots by a woodstove. And a note, in pencil, folded small.
Best dog I ever had. Best friend, more like. Fifteen seasons we hunted together and he never once let me down. I could not put him in the cold ground and I could not set him on a shelf to look at every day. So he rides here, behind the cold, where he is comfortable and close. Good boy, Duke. Wait for me.
The man who sold me that freezer for forty dollars had lost his hunting dog, and it broke him the way a good dog breaks a man who lives alone. He could not bury Duke and he could not bear to display him, so he did the only thing that made sense to a heart like his. He kept the dog behind the freezer, in the cold, close, riding along, the way that dog had ridden along in his truck for fifteen years. And when he sold the freezer, in the churn of getting old or moving on, he plain forgot that Duke was still back there.
I hunt. My dog is asleep at my feet as I write this. I did not need one second to understand that man, or to know I could not keep going like nothing was there.
I found him. He is in a little apartment now, too old to hunt, no room for a dog, and when I told him what I had found behind the freezer he went quiet a long time on the phone. He thought Duke was gone for good. He thought he had lost his best friend twice.
I drove Duke back to him myself, the collar and the tin and the photographs. That old man held that worn collar and cried like it was fresh, and then he laughed, because Duke was home.
We buried him proper, the two of us, under a big oak behind the mans apartment building where the fellow can see it from his window. We put the collar on top and a marker with his name. Duke. A good dog does not belong behind a freezer motor forgotten. He belongs in the ground under a good tree with his man able to visit, and now he is.
I bought a freezer to hold the meat come fall, here in Marquette. What I really carried home was one old hunters best friend, and the chance to bring him back where he was loved. Any dog man alive would have done the same.