Paws before dying (21 page)

Although Leah and I had assembled a tentative list of trials to enter, we hadn’t made any definite decision or completed the entry blanks yet. Jeff joined us in reviewing the possibilities, and he and Leah made the final selections. Then I showed both of them how to complete the forms, did Rowdy’s myself, and wrote out our checks. Meanwhile, Lance maintained a perfect down-stay, his intelligent head resting on his forepaws, those mesmerizing eyes vigilantly monitoring us and whatever we did. Someday, if I’m ever mature enough to handle that all-seeing 8aze, I have to have a border collie. I wondered for a moment about the difficulties of kidnapping one who’s been trained not to cross an invisible, torturous boundary. It seemed to me I could surmount them. It also seemed to me that I could be caught and arrested, and that the court would find against me. “Holly?” Leah startled me. “Are you with us? Are you here?” My mother’s voice and face, with Leah’s own tone and cast, brought me back to earth. “Daydreaming,” I said. “Are we all set?”

“We are all hungry,” Jeff said cutely. “We are all hungry for pizza, and we are all going to bring it in for you, and we are all getting a movie if Rita will let us use her VCR.”

As I may have mentioned, I liked the kid a lot.

Chapter 22

“HER jumps,” Steve said over Tuesday morning breakfast at my kitchen table.

Most people look their best when they’ve had eight hours of sleep, but exhaustion becomes him. As soon as he has another veterinarian in the practice with him, his eyes will probably lose that green hue and turn ordinary blue. Their clear, sad expression will get murky and flat. He’ll have time to shave. He went on: “What happened to Rose Engleman’s jumps and hurdles? They’d have nails.”

In case you’ve never trained beyond Novice, I should mention that for Open, you need a high jump and a set of broad-jump hurdles, and for Utility, both the high jump and a bar jump. Until a few years ago, all jumps were made of wood, and the regulation ones used in trials still are.

“They were those PVC practice jumps,” I said. “Plastic. You want another English muffin?”

“Just coffee,” he said. “Thanks.”

I filled his cup. I don’t always pop up and down to wait on him, but he’d been up since three a.m. removing the chewed pieces and metal squeaker of a cheap rubber toy from the intestines of a collie.

“So they were plastic,” I said. “I know that’s what Rose used, because someone was asking about whether the PVC ones were any good. Someone said Rose used them, and she liked them.”

“And they’re what? PVC pipe?”

“For the high jump and the bar jump. And the broad-jump hurdles are—I guess it’s PVC. Some kind of plastic. I’ve seen them. In fact, I need to get some. They’re totally plastic, except for the canvas used instead of boards on the high jump. They weigh practically nothing. You just throw them in the car or under your arm and go practice wherever you want. There’s not a nail in them, nothing metal at all. PVC wouldn’t do anything, would it? Even if lightning had struck.”

“So we’re back to—”

“Yeah, we’re back to,” I said. “And I suppose the easiest way to get a good look at one is to buy it.”

He looked unhappy, but I went to my study, rummaged around, and found some catalogs. The cover of one showed an array of my favorite breeds: a malamute, a border collie, two pointers, and a golden.

“This is the one I hate most,” I said. I opened it to the order form. “There’s a thirty-day trial period,” I said, looking up. “One of us could rush-order one or go to a dealer and buy it, and then we could take a look at it and return it.”

“Which one of us did you have in mind?” Steve asked placidly.

“Does it matter?” I said. “Whichever one of us has the money, I guess.” Depending on the breed, you can buy one or two purebred dogs for the price of a fancy high-tech shock collar. “You don’t have an extra person to feed for the summer, so you’re probably less broke than I am.”

“You know, Holly, the truth is, I just don’t feel comfortable about it.” His wonderful, tired eyes looked straight at me. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not do it.”

“If you order it, you don’t have to put D.V.M. after your name, if that’s it,” I assured him. “Or don’t use your own name. Or pay cash. And we
are
going to return it. They give you all your money back. It’s not as if they’d profit from it. We won’t be supporting the industry.”

“But, uh, it indicates interest. It’s a statement that it’s okay-Doesn’t it seem like that?”

“So you’d rather I...?”

He shrugged.

“Well, the truth is, I don’t feel like it, either,” I said. “But we do need one, if we want to be really sure. I mean, how easy
are
they to tamper with? The other things we can try with a regular collar, I guess, if we have to. We can figure out how to fasten it to the gate. And see if we can rig it so we can retrieve it from far away, or if we have to go back and get it.”

“Any chance of borrowing one?”

“I guess. We must know someone who has one. Well, Heather does, although Abbey was the one who told me about using it. I mean, she didn’t say outright that they have one, but she all but did, and I could ask one of them. In fact, I can ask around tonight, at Nonantum. So what’d you find out about Don Zager? Did he call you back?”

Serious people smile better than the rest of us. Lines appeared around Steve’s sleepy eyes, and the pupils glittered.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “What does he sound like?”

“The question is where,” Steve corrected me. “The answer is California.”

“Ah, acupuncture. Alternatives. Okay. It’s Cambridge enough, though.”

“He isn’t. Cambridge is not, uh, mellow.”

Cambridge is quick and sharp. It is less strident than New York, but there is nothing soft, gentle, or ripe about it.

“Is Newton?” I said.

“No. But the rents are better.”

“So you did get to that! Great. And what did he say?”

“He wasn’t too articulate. He doesn’t exactly rush to the point of things. He proceeds real slow.” This from a person who customarily leaves a two-second pause after every word.

“He sounds brain-injured,” I said. I grew up in Maine, but I’m acclimating myself to the intellectual climate here, where any sign of relaxation is considered pathological or lazy. If you don’t take work with you on vacation, people eye you as if you ought to see a neurologist.

“He’s just, uh, calm,” Steve said. “He’s had good conventional training. I don’t know if there’s anything in the rest, but he’s real sincere. Friendly. He doesn’t sound like a bad guy. Just, like I said, California.”

“So what about the rent? Did you get anything else?”

“I said Cambridge was a real interesting place, and he said the rents were high.”

“Is that all? Everyone says that. Did he sound as if he wanted you to send him patients?”

“Who doesn’t? But he also says he’s there temporarily.”

“On Washington Street? In Newton?”

“No, he’s staying in Newton. He knows people. He grew up there. He’s moving to some place in Newton Comer. It isn’t ready yet.”

“So the financial motive
is
there. If it isn’t ready yet, it’s new. Or it’s being fixed up, right? He did sound as though he’s moving up, didn’t he? He sounded happy about it?”

“Oh, yeah. He said he’ll be real happy to show me what he does, but he wanted me to wait until he’s moved. Yeah, it’s definitely a move up.”

An hour or two after Steve left, Marcia Brawley called about the article I’d rashly proposed writing about her. Larry, her husband, had photographed the Akita wall hanging before the people picked it up. She had a print of that picture for me as well as a couple of others that I just
had
to see. Should she mail them to me? I thanked her, but said that I had a dog training class that night at the park across from her house. I’d pick them up.

In the afternoon, Leah, Emma, Miriam, and Monica went into Harvard Square. Leah returned with an embossed leather cowboy belt she’d found in the markdown bin at Ann Taylor, but the other three had big plastic bags of cotton sweaters, shorts, and pants from the summer sales and darker, heavier back-to-school clothes as well. Was the contrast hard for Leah? I watched and listened in, but her lovely, happy face showed no sign of envy, and her voice was as enthusiastic as if the new clothes had been her own. Then they took over the bathroom to do each other’s hair to the accompaniment of a station that every five minutes accurately announced itself as the Blast of Boston. Kimi, Rowdy, and I escaped to the Stanton Library for a few hours of silent work on my column.

When we returned, I wanted to inform Leah that a mere ten minutes of the time she’d devoted to personal vanity would have rid poor Kimi of the worst of the undercoat that was rapidly forming ugly, woolly lumps on her shoulders, loins, and rump, but I’d adopted a new strategy: Say nothing, and let Leah see for herself just how rapidly her pretty Kimi would turn into a shaggy mess. In the meantime, Kimi wouldn’t suffer. Blowing her coat didn’t bother Kimi. And if I worked her over with a shedding blade when I groomed Rowdy, it wouldn’t bother Leah, either. (A shedding blade, by the way, is a loop of serrated metal attached to a handle. If that’s news to you and you have a dog that sheds, I’ve just saved you about a million hours of brushing, combing, and vacuuming.) On Sunday morning before the match, Leah had perfunctorily gone over Kimi with a finishing brush that hadn’t touched the undercoat. No one had groomed her since, and she looked like hell. We had dog training that night. I was counting on Heather Ross or some other soul of tactlessness to remark what a neglected-looking fright Kimi had become.

By the time we left for dog training, Kimi’s coat looked even worse than it had in the midaftemoon. Loose white and pale gray guard hairs and undercoat clung to every surface of her body, and the fur she’d already dropped had revealed the lean, muscled, wolflike contours usually softened by her thick, rich coat. When she moved, escaping fur surrounded her as if she were some skinny spirit dog passing through this reality in a ghostly cloud. The dark wolf gray on her head, back, and tail had paled, and, worst of all, the shining almost-black on her face had faded, washing out the full mask—the cap, the Lone Ranger goggles, the bar down her nose. Even to me, she looked almost like someone else’s malamute, some stranger’s pale gray dog.

But I said nothing to Leah about grooming Kimi. On the drive to Newton, I made small talk.

“Nice shirt,” I said. “I haven’t seen that before.”

“Thanks. It’s Emma’s,” she said. I didn’t point out that Emma wouldn’t be happy to have it returned with an angora coating. “Hey, is it okay if I go to Emma’s after class?”

“I guess,” I said. “But how will you get home?”

“With Jeff.”

“Sure. Just be home by eleven or so.” It isn’t easy to set a firm curfew for the reincarnation of your own mother. “Eleven-thirty at the latest.”

Chapter 23

WE arrived at the park a few minutes late. I hoped Marcia Brawley wasn’t in a talkative mood, but as it turned out, I didn’t see her at all. I’d told her I’d stop by for the pictures up at seven. When I got to her front doer, she’d left, but a note taped to the mailbox said she’d had to run to the store. It directed me to a big manila envelope that rested behind the screen door. I picked it up and started toward the Bronco, but then saw Leah waving at me. In fact, she was lifting her right arm and bringing her hand to her chest. It’s a dog-training signal usually reserved for the dog, but I knew what it meant: “Come!” I crossed the street, and, when I got close enough, heard her call, “Holly? They’ve started already, and I don’t have any money.”

With both dogs on leash, she was standing by a card table where a bald, skinny guy from Nonantum was seated on a folding chair and checking people in.

“I do,” I said. “Thanks for getting the dogs out. I’ll take Rowdy.” Then I added to the guy at the desk, “I’ll pay for her. Leah Whitcomb, for Bess’s class, and I’m Holly Winter, for Tony’s.”

With no warning, Rowdy suddenly hit the ground and crawled a foot or two, and from under the card table, a ferocious snarl broke out.

“Patton, that’ll do,” the bald guy told a Rottweiler crouched at his feet where I hadn’t noticed him.

“Rowdy, be good,” I said, hauling him backward. I handed Leah the envelope. “Here, take these. I need both hands. And watch it. Don’t bend them. They’re photographs. Rowdy, heel.” He did. Patton retreated with all the compliant goodwill of

the original George S. I dug into my purse, fished for cash, and paid.

I don’t understand anything about dogs. Malamutes are an Arctic breed, and Rowdy was the first creature of any species I’d ever met who loathed hot weather as much as I did. Yet that evening, Rowdy didn’t seem to notice the ninety-degree temperature and the thick, moist air that was crushing my chest. He heeled as pertly as if he’d been enjoying the midwinter chill that invigorates us both. I wouldn’t have asked him to jump, but his eyes were pleading.

The sight of a beautiful, athletic dog soaring through the air, independently searching out and taking his dumbbell, then flying back over the jump is breathtaking. That night, Rowdy performed perfectly. When I tossed the dumbbell, I could feel his eagerness, but he waited for the command, and when it came, he took two fluid strides, sprang, cleared the top board, and landed gracefully. He made instantly for the dumbbell, grasped it cleanly by the center bar, flew back over the jump, and ended up directly in front of me, where he sat perfectly straight and waited with infinite patience for me to take his dumbbell, which he hadn’t tossed or mouthed once. And his performance on the other exercises was almost as good, if less flashy. I forgot the heat. I wasn’t in that park in Newton. I wasn’t in Massachusetts. I was off in Rowdyland, which is another name for paradise.