The Far Edge of the World

Story by L.B. Benton

Photography by Trevor Reichman


Rusty was a digger of holes . . . and an optimist. From the beginning, as a young pup, he traced that back-and-forth pattern all pointers know, mystic in its rhythmic choreography, hypnotic, mesmerizing, deliberate, keeping his nose to the ground in search of birds or buried treasure. In our backyard, he always obeyed this instinctive blueprint, always running, sniffing, testing every possible location, then stopping and pawing the hard clay furiously with both front feet for some hidden object lying untouched beneath the surface. Sometimes he’d find something: car keys, an old screwdriver, or maybe even a bone. Usually, there was nothing; he’d just make a little shallow place in the yard. Still, Rusty knew there’d be another hole.

He was happy, optimistic, always moving. We loved him, my brothers and I. We’d sit on the back steps, and he’d bring us something he’d dug up or lead us to one of his treasures. It was his avocation, one of his prime reasons for being, a second career, of sorts, after bird hunting. He performed his dance, an awkward, hound-dog-like shuffle, in wide arcs across the yard, a joyful commotion, a determined adventure—one that compensated him with glorious expectations, if not loot. But he didn’t care because he was sure the next hole would pay off. He just knew it.

We lived “out a ways,” as they say, with a nice securely fenced backyard for Rusty to search over. The place still had the smell of wildness, having only recently been wrested from the prairie and converted into city dirt; wild grapes grew along the back fence, mesquite and scrub oaks just beyond. When we moved onto the place, the ground was hard and dry, and Rusty fell in love with it. It smelled of strange and exotic things—wild animals had recently scurried over it, strange plants still grew there, and Rusty reveled in it, he hunted them all.

So, on that morning many years ago when my younger brother and I rounded the corner of the house carrying shovels and picks and buckets, Rusty’s head popped up from his hangout under the Camellia bush, and he immediately came alive. We were coming, not just to pet or to feed; no, we were coming with digging tools. Something was up, and Rusty knew it. This was gonna be big, and Rusty wanted to be part of it. He danced in circles, almost tripping over himself, dancing the dance of joy, sniffing the air, sniffing the shovels as if their smell would reveal their purpose. He ran ahead of us, loping this way and that, stopping to look back now and then just to make sure we were still coming.