“I hear nature calling,” Dode was now excusing himself. He headed off not toward the timber, though, but to a rock outcropping about forty yards away, roughly as big as a one-story house. When Dode climbed up onto that I figured I had misunderstood his mission; he evidently was clambering up there to look along the mountain and check on Pat’s progress with the sheep.
But no, he proceeded to do that and the other too, gazing off up the mountain slope as he unbuttoned and peed.
Do you know, even as I say this again I see Dode in every particular. His left hand resting on his hip and the arm and elbow kinked out like the handle on a coffee cup. His hat tilted back at an inquiring angle. He looked composed as a statue up there, if you can imagine stone straddled out in commemoration of that particular human function.
My father and I grinned until our faces almost split. “There is only one Dode,” he said. Then he cupped his hands and called out in a concerned tone: “Dode, I hope you’ve got a good foothold up there. Because you sure don’t have all that much of a handhold.”