Black Ribbon (4 page)

KIMI? IMPOSSIBLE. Her face appeared in my mind’s eye. As intensely as ever, she fixed her gaze on me. My heart pounded. I live with many ghosts. The dogs who wait for me keep permanent watch. Don’t they trust me? Of course they do. So why the scrutiny? It’s a reminder, that’s all, a necessary and even comforting reminder that I have no real cause for grief. The worst has not happened and never will. My dogs have merely died. They have not stopped loving me.

This is a grotesque mistake
, I thought. The sentiment felt hideously familiar. My last golden, Vinnie, died of cancer, or would have if I hadn’t stopped her pain first. Even so, her death felt like some vicious practical joke.
Okay, enough!
I kept wanting to shout.
Hah-hah! Very funny! See what a good sport I am? Very clever! Sure had me fooled, you did. And now? Game’s up! Did you hear me? Enough, I said! Give her back, do you hear me!
Then my pitiful whisper:
Please, please give her back. Give me back my dog. Give me back my wonderful dog.

I groped for reality. Kimi was young and healthy. Vinnie’s death had felt like a horrible mistake; this sympathy card must
actually be one. Maxine McGuire had wanted to offer condolences to some other camper who’d just lost a dog, but in her nervous frenzy about the opening of camp, she’d forgotten to sign the card and left it in the wrong cabin. Besides, if, God forbid, I really had lost Kimi, someone would have told me in person; leaving me an unsigned sympathy card would have been no one’s ludicrous idea of a gentle way to break the news.

I shoved the card in a bureau drawer, slipped Rowdy’s training collar over his head, attached a six-foot leather lead, and set out for the main house in search of a telephone so that I could call Leah, make sure that Kimi was all right, and issue dozens of warnings about hazards to dogs that I’d failed to mention in the countless diatribes on the subject that I’d been delivering almost nonstop since my decision to entrust Kimi to my cousin’s care.

The door of my cabin opened onto a deck that faced the lake. Originally, I thought, the cabin must have been a single unit with an old-fashioned screened porch. When decks came in vogue, did bugs go out? But the deck was bigger than the porch must have been; it extended about ten feet toward the lake and wrapped itself across the front of the cabin and around the sides, where it ended in stairs. The effect was chalet-like and spacious; the wooden railing that divided the deck in half left plenty of room on both sides for twin sets of red-painted Adirondack chairs and big pots of scarlet geraniums in garish bloom. On the side of the deck that wasn’t mine, a vaguely familiar-looking, round-headed man was sitting in one of the chairs doodling on legal pad and talking intently into a portable phone. I couldn’t help overhearing.

He spoke impatiently. “No,” he said. “That was in the Board’s modified recommendation. This was in the Ad Hoc Committee on Committees recommendations. Their own Delegate Committee presented the whole thing in full.” English? A dialect thereof. AKC, actually, which is a kind of
reverse
Mahlemut.
Remember
Mahlemut?
Succinct. Not so AKC. I understood every word he said, and if you did, too, well, God help us both. If you didn’t, don’t let it bother you. Except to the extent that the man was discussing the politics of the nation’s largest dog registry, he wasn’t talking about dogs at all. He wasn’t looking at dogs, either. From the long, narrow dock that stretched out into the lake directly in front of my cabin, the Chesapeake bitch I’d noticed earlier took an energetic dive into the water. Rowdy’s feet sounded on the deck. His tags jingled. The bitch was as good a Chesapeake as Rowdy was a malamute. Even when Rowdy wagged his tail and rested his big, handsome head on the railing that divided the deck, the man’s eyes never left his legal pad.

“Rowdy, this way.” I patted my thigh and shortened the leash. “Let’s go call Leah.”

The Mooselookmeguntic Four Seasons Resort Lodge and Cabins occupied the shores of a deep cove. Viewed from the lake, the buildings consisted of the main lodge, a vast two-story log cabin with low, motellike wings; and double rows of small cabins along the lake shore on both sides. From that watery perspective, the long dock by my cabin was to the left of the lodge, directly in front of which was a long, narrow stretch of rocky beach. On the pebbles to the far right of the beach rested ten or twelve upturned canoes painted the same fiery red that brightened the doors and window trim of the buildings. Gaudy geraniums bloomed in pots on the decks and in baskets that hung from the eaves of the unscreened porch of the main house. Each double row of little cabins consisted of six set directly on the water with another six staggered in back to assure a view of the lake. In the state of Maine, and perhaps elsewhere, the distinction carries considerable economic and social weight.
Right on the water
is definitely the place to be; a mere
view
is worse than second best because glimpsing the lake or the ocean from an aqueously disadvantaged spot requires the viewer to take in the superior places of
those who can afford to be
right on the water
, and the result is, of course, envy, jealousy, and spite far worse than any landlocked, no-view vacation spot could possibly engender.

“Right on the water,” a woman spat. “I don’t call this
right
on the water.” In her left hand was a doughnut. She gave it a vicious bite. Her right fist gripped the boxy black-plastic handle of a retractable lead. With no regard for the hefty yellow male Lab at the other end of the lead, she shook her fist at the cabin from which Rowdy and I had emerged. Her gesture thus encompassed us as well.
“That’s
right on the water.” The woman bore so remarkable a physical resemblance to an obese bulldog that I must have stared at her. From the official bulldog standard: “heavy, thick-set, low-slung body, massive short-faced head, wide shoulders, and sturdy limbs.” With regard to temperament, however, the standard goes on to specify an “equable and kind” disposition and a demeanor both “pacific and dignified.” Also, according to her red-and-white pin, she was called Eva, which seemed like a funny name for a bulldog, and her accent was definitely Long Island with a rock-hard
g
, whereas a self-respecting bulldog would have uttered nothing less than pure Oxbridge and would have done so in low, self-effacing tones. Bullbaiting was no upper-crust sport, but the breed long ago overcame its rough origins. Eva had obviously not done likewise.

The embarrassed-looking recipient of Eva’s outburst was a very young woman with short blond curls and careful makeup. She wore a neatly ironed outfit, shorts and a sleeveless top in a shade of bright pink that matched her fingernails. According to the words emblazoned on her pink tote bag, she loved Cairn terriers. Cradled to her breast was what I gathered was supposed to be one, a little gray dog with an almost incredible number of glaring deviations from the standard of the Cairn terrier: a very narrow skull, a long, heavy muzzle, an undershot bite, big yellow eyes, gigantic ears, a silky coat, and a flesh-colored nose. Other faults were presumably covered by
the loving hands and forearms of his owner. According to the woman’s name tag, she was Joy, or so I assumed; the pin on her bright pink blouse read “Joy and Lucky.”

“Craig and I are just
so
happy to be in a cabin,” Joy told Eva. “He was afraid we’d get stuck in the bunkhouse.” She nodded toward a large structure visible through a stand of pines and white birches. Despite cedar siding, red trim, and yet more geraniums, the building retained the look of a small sawmill, and the only shore on which it sat belonged to the parking lot. “And then we would’ve had to decide whether to come at all,” said Joy. As Rowdy and I approached, she added in quiet tones of deep shock, “It’s coed, you know!
Men
and women! And with shared bathrooms.”

Horrors. I was beginning to suspect that Joy did not belong to the fancy. Our members aren’t necessarily crazy about sharing bathrooms, but we aren’t bothered by human nakedness and other such secular trivia. An Order is, after all, for Higher Things. What worries us is that someone won’t clean the tub after bathing the dog. We ourselves don’t mind showering with fur underfoot, of course; in fact, we’ve learned that a nice, thick abrasive layer of guard coat acts as a natural sole-smoothing callus remover, a sort of woofy loofah; but hotel managers, innkeepers, and the like always object, and we live in perpetual fear that our careless brethren will drive the proprietors thenceforth to ban the Sacred Animal from comfortable lodging establishments near popular show sites.

As if to confirm my suspicion about her noninitiate status, Joy took a look at Rowdy and cried, “What a beautiful husky!”

When I first got Rowdy, I welcomed these displays of ignorance as happy opportunities to spread the Good Word. “Thank you,” I’d say, “but he is an Alaskan malamute.” Then I’d pin the ignoramus in a corner and deliver a two-hour lecture on Otto von Kotzebue, Scotty Allen, Arthur Walden, Short Seeley, the Byrd expeditions, Paul Voelker, the reopening
of the stud book, the key differences between the Kotzebue and M’Loot lines, the Husky Pak formula, Sergeant Preston and Yukon King, the breed standard, and the particulars in which Rowdy epitomized the ideal and thus looked nothing whatsoever like a Siberian husky. At that point, my exhausted victim would gasp something like, “Well, like I said, lady, nice dog,” and vanish, never again to admire any dog at all. Bit by bit, however, I began to delete key points of the original malamute vs. Siberian discourse; these days, unless the call of the wild rings in the admirer’s eyes, I sometimes limit myself to an inadequate word of thanks.

And was about to do just that when Rowdy caught sight of the doughnut in Eva’s left hand, perked up his ears, and wagged his tail. There was nothing aggressive about the posture; Rowdy intended to beg for the doughnut, not to steal it; he falls back on theft only when charm fails. Maybe Eva’s big-boned yellow Lab misread Rowdy, or maybe he was looking for an excuse for a fight. In either case, he growled viciously, and lunged toward Rowdy and me so fast and so unexpectedly that I barely had time to haul Rowdy back and spoil the fun. As apparently unprepared for the Lab’s attack as I’d been, Eva flung the doughnut aside, and, instead of using the flex lead to reel in her dog, adopted a stiff pose, put on a deadly serious expression, and commanded in the stern tones of old-fashioned formal obedience, “Bingo,
come!”
Bingo was no dope; he completely ignored her. Impressed? Take heart. Your dog, too, can easily learn not to come when he’s called. Just look and sound as if you’ll kill him when he gets in striking distance. Works every time. But don’t count on teaching a Labrador retriever to lunge at other dogs. The typical Lab needs to be prevented from kissing everything on four paws.

By then, I’d retreated out of the radius of Bingo’s retractable lead and had Rowdy sitting politely at my left side with his attention fixed on my face and his mind intent on the intriguing question of whether my mouth did or didn’t contain
a lump of cheese or a bit of hot dog that would sail his way if he kept watching. If I haven’t mentioned it already, let me say that Rowdy honestly is a good dog.

As I was telling him so, Eva finally had the sense to start reeling Bingo in. As the Lab turned his attention from Rowdy, however, he spotted the remains of Eva’s discarded doughnut, which rested on the ground about midway between Eva and Joy, who had dashed away and clutched the frightened-looking Cairn, Lucky, in her arms. Or I think that’s what happened; I’m giving Bingo the benefit of the doubt. When he headed full tilt toward Joy, I think that he just wanted the doughnut; I don’t think that he meant to attack Lucky. Even so, Joy can’t be blamed for screaming and turning tail. And Bingo can’t really be blamed for going after her, either; in the eyes of a dog, a person who shrieks and runs becomes interesting prey. What we advise kids in dogwise courses is to “be a tree.” Then some bright kid always pipes up and says, “But I’ll get peed on!” and we say, “Sure, maybe you will, but what’s worse, getting peed on or getting bitten?” Gets ‘em every time.

Fortunately, though, despite Joy’s distinctly nonarboreal dash for safety and despite Eva’s ludicrous repetition of the reliably useless “Bingo,
come!”
the Lab eventually found the doughnut, and while he was gulping it down, Eva finally managed to reel him.

“Good boy, Rowdy,” I said. “Okay!” That’s his release word. The one that triggers the rapt attention is “Ready!” Why
ready?
The sacred rites of the obedience ring require the judge to ask each exhibitor two ritual questions, the second of which is, “Are you ready?” One acceptable answer is, of course,
yes
, but as an attention-triggering word, it has obvious disadvantages. A second acceptable answer does dual service as a reply to the judge and a cue to the dog: “Ready.”

Awakened from his trance, Rowdy became a normal malamute again; he eyed Bingo, and his hackles rose.

Eva addressed Joy, not me. “That’s a malamute, not a husky. Malamutes are part wolf.”

My own hackles rose higher than Rowdy’s.
Be a tree
, I thought. “All dogs are descended from wolves,” I said quietly. I’d barely arrived at camp. We’d be here for a week. I didn’t want a fight. My smile encompassed Eva and Joy. “I’m Holly Winter. And this is Rowdy. I’m sure the dogs will do fine once they get used to each other. They’re bound to be a little nervous. The new setting and everything?” I hate to have Rowdy watch me roll belly-up, but I continue to retain a remote sense of human diplomacy—as opposed to malamute diplomacy, a form of negotiation with a single rule:
Never back down.

“Lucky is just beside himself,” Joy said with relief. “We drove all the way from Oregon, and he’s been cooped up in the car, and now all these dogs! He’s totally overwhelmed.” It seemed to me that if I were clutched in someone’s arms as nervously as the Cairn was in Joy’s, I’d lose a little self-confidence, too, but I didn’t say so.

Eva did. “Put him down. You’re making him nervous. The way you grab him like that, he thinks he can’t stand up for himself.”