Dead and Doggone Read online

  he doubts the existence of evil itself. To Buck, dog allergies are simply the rhinolaryngeal stigmata

  branded on by the devil to mark his own. Sissy obviously didn’t share his view.

  “Well, good luck on Sunday,” I said.

  Just as I was about to open the gate, Max must have smelled or spotted a bird. If you’ve even

  once seen a beautiful dog on point, you know what Max did. Pointing is sudden and dramatic.

  Max’s whole body tensed up, he lifted his right forepaw, he pointed his nose toward whatever he’d

  identified as game, and he froze in that posture. Other breeds — German shorthairs, setters,

  Vizslas, mixed breeds, lots of dogs — point, too. But one look at Max showed which breed had

  perfected it.

  -2-

  From the way my father bellows into the phone, you’d guess he looks like a moose. You’d be right.

  The point of his roaring was a request that I didn’t need, at least not a mere two hours after

  Rowdy’s fight with Max. he and Clyde were arriving in Cambridge on Saturday. Could I put them

  up?

  Most of Buck’s wolf hybrids are kennel dogs, but if you ask Buck, he’ll swear that each one has a

  turn as house dog at least once every few weeks. By coincidence, every time I showed up in Owls

  Head, it just happened to be on Clyde’s day in the house. A born gentleman, Clyde was unobtrusive,

  neat, undemanding, and, in short, the perfect houseguest. Even if he hadn’t been, I would never

  have made Buck feel unwelcome, and not just because he insisted on giving me the down payment

  for this house when I couldn’t find an apartment in Cambridge that would take dogs. I mean, Buck

  is my father. The bad news wasn’t Buck himself, anyway, or Clyde, but the purpose of the visit, or

  rather, the consequences for me. It’s fine if Buck wants to barnstorm for wolves at dog shows. I just

  don’t want him around when I’m in the ring, and he was coming to town to do his wolf exhibit at

  Sunday’s Masconomet Dog Show, for which I’d registered Rowdy about six weeks before. There

  went my fat registration fees.

  After I hung up, I wished Rita were there so I could talk t her about it, but she was on vacation

  and wouldn’t be home until a week from Saturday. The problem wasn’t that Buck can be

  embarrassing to be seen with at a dog show where everybody knows he’s your father. Of course, he

  can be embarrassing. He goes around buttonholing all the American Kennel Club delegates about

  getting the AKC to recognize wolf dogs, but I’m used to it, and everyone else is used to it. Everyone

  remembers my mother, and everyone except Buck realizes that it’s just his lost cause.

  The real problem is that he loves to watch me handle a dog in the ring, and he will not believe

  that he makes me nervous. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t have to.

  Naturally, since he doesn’t do anything wrong, he can’t understand why I don’t want him there. My

  mother can’t understand why I don’t want him there. My mother always showed her own dogs in

  breed and obedience. She was a better handler and a better dog trainer than I’ll ever be. I’m not

  trying to compete. And Buck has never once made the comparison. Out loud. In fact, he just stands

  there towering over everyone else with his oversize features scrunched up in the kind of stupid grin

  that parents reserve for the accomplishments of their offspring. In the previous three or four years,

  I’d managed never to register a dog for a show Buck was going to attend, and when I registered

  Rowdy for Masconomet, I’d had no idea Buck would be there.

  Rita was away. I called Faith Barlow. Faith breeds and handles malamutes. I’d hired her to

  handle Rowdy in breed, the type of competition that’s sometimes called conformation. The winners

  are supposed to be the dogs that conform best to the official breed standard. I love obedience, but I

  hate showing in breed. It’s the most viciously competitive sport in America. I hate it, and that’s why

  I’d hired Faith. But I was worried about obedience, not conformation. No way was I going to handle

  Rowdy n the ring under Buck’s watchful gaze. I told Faith just that.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like a jerk.” Faith does not have the makings of a

  good therapist. “You’re pulling a dog because Daddy’s going to be there? What is this crap? How old

  are you?”

  “It’s just a policy I have,” I said. “And please don’t mention it to him.”

  “I won’t have to. He’ll read it in the catalog.”

  She was right. Rowdy’s name and mine would be right there, under “Novice B Obedience.”

  “He won’t necessarily buy a catalog,” I said. Hah. “Besides, I’m not sure Rowdy’s ready.”

  Her only response was the silence I deserved.

  “Faith, I’m just pulling him out of one show. What’s the big deal?”

  Faith is tough. She gave me a long argument about how gorgeous Rowdy was and how I owed it

  to him, to her, to his breeder, and to myself to show him. She pinned me the way Rowdy had

  pinned Max. But no one turned a sprinkler on her. What she said next may sound innocuous, but

  anyone in the world of purebred dogs will recognize it as the ultimate weapon. Faith is half

  malamute. I told you they went for a kill.

  “You owe it to the breed,” she said.

  She won, of course.

  -3-

  In my family, the dog was the sacred animal, like the cow in India. Remember, God spelled

  backward is dog. Thus, my affair with my vet, Steve Delaney, should have felt like the seduction of a

  high priest. Maybe it did.

  If you met him, you wouldn’t blame me for having succumbed to temptation. Maybe it’s sexist or

  old-fashioned, but I like tall men, and I don’t find weak men attractive. Anyway, you could tell to

  look at Steve that he could heft Great Danes and Irish wolfhounds onto the exam table without

  straining himself. His eyes got to me, too. I liked that sleepy look that came from getting up in the

  middle of the night to answer the phone when a panicked owner called him. And I also liked his

  curly brown hair and the color of his eyes, deeper than Siberian-husky blue except when those

  baggy surgery greens picked up the flecks in the irises.

  If Steve hadn’t been a terrific vet, Dr. Draper wouldn’t have sold him the practice when he

  retired. His only problem taking over from Dr. Draper was that lots of the female human clients

  started inflict psychosomatic ailments on their pets to have an excuse to see him. Persian cats with

  headaches. Brussels griffon bitches with menstrual cramps. I ask you.

  With this background in mind, you may find it hard to understand how I could have forgotten

  about Saturday night, but I had. The reason wasn’t the occasion. Not everyone thinks of the annual

  dinner of the Massachusetts Society of Veterinarians as a big date, but, of course, I did. The dress

  was one reason I forgot.

  “So, what’d you find?” Steve’s low, gentle voice rumbled over the phone.

  I don’t like shopping for clothes except from the L.L. Bean catalog, and L.L. Bean dresses are mostly shirtwaists made, I think, of the same plaid as the cedar dog-bed covers. Of course, the

  shops in Harvard Square have dresses that don’t coordinate with dog linens, but Rowdy’d been with

  me every time I’d been in the square lately. The shops don’t allow dogs, and I didn’t trust him alone

  there, even tied
up. People steal dogs, and he’d have gone with anyone.

  “Oh, still trying to decide,” I said. It wasn’t easy to decide how to tell Steve that Buck would have

  to come with us. “I’ve got four days left. And guess what? My father’s going to be here. He’s

  bringing Clyde. They’re doing an exhibit at Masconomet on Sunday.”

  “I, uh, hadn’t planned on going. And I’ve seen the exhibit. Remember?”

  Did I remember? At the Museum of Science, Buck and Clyde had been a big hit with everyone,

  including Steve. The trouble had begun afterward at my place. With no intention of provoking an

  argument, Steve had remarked that for the average person, a golden retriever makes a better pet

  than a wolf dog hybrid. Did I ever remember.

  “Yes,” I said. “You liked the exhibit. You said that Buck was well informed. And he doesn’t have

  any hard feelings. He likes you.” Buck doesn’t hold grudges.

  “Good,” Steve said flatly. He wasn’t giving me a lot of help.

  “I can’t just exclude him,” I said. “I mean, he is my father.”

  “I know,” Steve said. “You’ve mentioned that before from time to time.”

  “He’ll have a lot in common with everybody. He knows a lot about dogs. He won’t embarrass you.

  If they serve oysters, he’ll use the right fork. He knows not to drink out of finger bowls. He’ll know

  to leave Clyde home.”

  “Did I say Clyde couldn’t come? Bring Clyde. Bring your cousin Janice’s twelve fox terriers I

  vaccinated free.”

  “Really, Steve. I know Janice wasn’t very gracious, but she appreciated it a lot. I promise he’ll behave.”

  “No,” he said. People who train dogs have a special way of uttering that word when they really

  mean it. They don’t shout it. They don’t drag it out. The don’t hesitate, and they don’t make it sound

  like a question. They just say it.

  “How could I explain it to him?” I asked. “He just would not understand.”

  “He’ll have to try.”

  “No,” I said. I train dogs, too, of course.

  By the time I hung up, I was glad I hadn’t wasted money on a new dress. That was when the

  moving van pulled into my driveway. Something else I’d forgotten.

  My house is a barn-red wood-frame triple-decker. The first floor, which I occupy, hasn’t been

  renovate yet, just spiffed up, but I gutted the other two apartments and did them over when I

  bought the building. Rita has had my second-floor apartment for ages, but the third floor had been

  vacant for the past month, ever since Alison Moss and her two cats moved out. I was sorry to see

  the three of them go. Alison was reliable. The rent from the apartments pays the mortgage, so I

  can’t afford tenants who don’t pay, and I can’t afford vacancies. Especially if you consider that I

  allow pets, my rents aren’t unreasonable, but all Cambridge rents are high. “Ah, but it’s worth it,”

  people say. “Harvard is just around the corner.” In my case, if you count the new Observatory Hill

  town houses, it’s right across the street.

  I’d met David Shane when he was standing, leash in hand, on the sidewalk eyeing the new

  buildings. I was walking Rowdy home. The dogs introduced each other. (Lonely? A flashy dog beats

  a singles bar any day and smells better, too.) Shane said what a beautiful malamute I had. Most

  people call him a husky or a husky-shepherd cross, but Shane knew right away. I said what a

  beautiful Irish setter Shane had. He said her name was Windy. I said it suited her. It did. The

  breeze was rippling her long red fur. I’m partial to Irish setters, anyway, but she was a beauty, good

  bones, an ideal head, and a lively air, maybe a little high-strung, but with no sign of real

  nervousness. Shane said he was an assistant professor and I told him about my job at Dog’s Life. He

  said he’d look for my byline in the next issue.

  That’s how he ended up as my third-floor tenant. His looks an finesse had nothing to do with it, and neither did the fight with Steve After all, I had met Shane and offered him the apartment two

  weeks before he moved in — that is, two weeks before that phone conversation with Steve — but the

  fight probably is what made me comb my hair when I heard the moving van.

  Whether Rowdy heard the van, smelled a new dog moving in, or thought I was taking him for a

  walk I don’t know, but he was bouncing up and down by the back door with such irresistible

  enthusiasm that I snapped on his leash — about a dozen hang on the hooks by the door — and took

  him with me. The van was a professional one. I was surprised to see it. Most people here move

  themselves with U-Hauls. A Mercedes of dyed-to-match Irish-setter burgundy pulled up on

  Appleton next to the driveway. Shane and Windy got out.

  “Welcome,” I called. Snappy, huh? No wonder he fell for me.

  “Holly Winter!” he said. “And Rowdy the Wonder Dog.” You could hear the capitals in his voice.

  Some guys really, know how to sweet-talk a girl.

  The man was not stupid. Or ugly. And although he was not much more than thirty, he had none

  of Steve’s sleepy boyishness. There was nothing rumpled about him. He was thinner than Steve,

  who’d always seemed to me more lean than thin, but he didn’t look weak. Brown eyes and blond

  hair are an appealing combination. Even so, he wasn’t really handsome, I thought his face was

  better than that, asymmetric, angular, with high cheekbones. He was wearing one of those

  expensive leather aviator jackets over a white turtleneck that I think was cashmere. I didn’t run up

  and touch it to find out. Rowdy was at least as delighted to see Windy as I was to see Shane, even

  though, when I’d asked Shane, he’d said she’d been spayed. Rita’s old dachshund, Groucho, isn’t

  altered, and neither, of course, is Rowdy — if he were, I couldn’t show him in breed — so, I just

  can’t have an unsprayed bitch in the house.

  Anyway, attraction between dogs is sometimes just friendship, and that’s what Rowdy seemed to

  be making noise about. Once every three or four months, he’d bark like a normal dog. Ruff. Bow-

  wow. I’d also heard him yip, growl, snarl, whine, and howl. Most of the time, though, he talked the

  way he was talking to and about Windy: “Woo-woo, ah woo, woooooo.”

  I was used to it. If we’d been alone, I’d have answered back. Since Shane knew enough to know

  Rowdy was a malamute, he must have heard it before, too, but he laughed, anyway, and so did the

  moving men who’d opened the rear door of the van and were lugging out a seven-foot white leather

  couch. No claw marks showed on it. The leather hadn’t been chewed, and the white was all white

  with no red hairs. It takes a brave an to have an Irish setter and a white leather couch.

  The Mercedes. The couch. David Shane looked more than good for his rent, and it was hard to say which was more a purebred, I thought, Shane or his Irish setter.

  -4-

  “Just what did you think you were doing? Did you think I wouldn’t know who did this?” I shoved

  the handful of banana peels in front of Rowdy’s nose, where he couldn’t avoid smelling them. “

  There’s no one here but you and me, buddy. Was I supposed to think I ate the bananas myself

  and threw the peels under the table?”

  It was Wednesday morning, and I’d run him twice around Fresh Pond, exactly twice the distance

  I enjoy running, and while I was in the shower afterward, he stole the bananas from the
kitchen

  counter, devoured them, then slunk off to play innocent. I found him curled up on the floor by the

  bay window in my bedroom, where the window seat is going to be someday.

  “I know who did this,” I added, shaking the peels again. Banana peels are slimy, anyway, and

  these were covered with dog drool, too. “You are a very bad boy.”

  He had the serious expression of the falsely accused, and without even bothering to lift up his big

  head, he raised his eyes and looked right at me as if to ask what I could possibly be going on about,

  but he also flattened his ears down. He knew what “bad boy” means. He’d heard it before.

  “Don’t you ever do this again,” I said emphatically. “You be a good boy!”

  he knew those words, too, and I knew he knew them. I rubbed the top of his head. After you

  speak your mind to a dog, it’s important to let him know you forgive him. Besides, it was half my

  fault. I should have put the bananas away.

  At ten Faith Barlow picked Rowdy up and took him to a handling run-through. I spent the rest of

  the day finishing a column for Dog’s Life, then tried working on a story, but it didn’t go well. I’d

  been trying to do something with no dogs, just people, but every time I thought I had it, a Pekinese

  would spring up in someone’s lap or a stray Lab would meander across a lawn.

  With no dogs and no story, either, I quit at four and went outside to scrape paint on the north

  side of the house. It’s just about impossible to get these old wooden houses to hold a paint job. You

  have to think of painting, like dog training, as a process, not a task to start and finish. It was one of

  those warm, humid days we sometimes get in the spring, which is to say, one of the four or five days a year when the temperature in Cambridge isn’t above eighty-five or below thirty. I spent two

  mindless hours developing lead poisoning and thinking about loss. I reached a couple of

  conclusions. First, if you have to lose someone, better a good vet than a good dog. Second, if you

  have to lose a parent, better not to think about which one it should have been. Then a bee landed on

  my right hand and delivered one of those feeble early season stings. My week.

  After Faith returned Rowdy and dashed off, I fed us both — not the same thing — and told him to