by Peter Martin
There was never another dog in Florida who would befriend Perth. How could she carry on with dogs who were never allowed out of their premises? She reverted to solitary exploration. Occasionally we took her to inland Florida where she coursed through swamps, frightened white herons and even sneaked up on otters on a cattle ranch. She succeeded in avoiding poisonous snakes, including rattlesnakes, water moccasins and coral snakes, not to mention alligators sunning themselves on banks. Other than that, we all endured Florida as well as we could, and as the weeks moved on and the summer holidays approached, we realized we needed to travel to England for several months, where I yearned to do some research.
A research trip to England, however, posed obvious problems. In the first few years of teaching, I had not written enough about my field. My heavy teaching schedules had left me little time for writing. And when I had time, I was often too exhausted. Yet, to write about literature was something I very much wanted to do. Not so that I could obtain tenure, keep from “perishing” in the academic marketplace and get a higher salary, but simply because I wanted to immerse myself in the subject. If I was unable to do that, I knew I would be very unhappy. Teaching, which I loved, was not enough.
For me, England was the place to do the research, the “El Dorado” of literary scholarship. And yet, how could we set off overseas and leave our dear Perth for three months? It would be expensive and impractical to take her with us, but if we left her behind it would be a betrayal of trust. We would no longer be worthy of her. She could even permanently lose faith in us. The bond between us might be broken. Perhaps I should just give up all thoughts of scholarship and writing. It seemed an insoluble dilemma. Endless nights we could not sleep for worry over it.
Painfully, at last, we decided to leave her with some close friends who loved her and with whom we knew at least she would be safe and well cared for, if not happy. Our remorse over leaving her behind would last the whole summer.
6
THE TERM ENDED IN MAY and though we parted gloomily from Perth, leaving Florida was like returning to the real world. Florida had by now become our personal “heart of darkness,” a place far away from the real world, where we felt shut off from mainstream culture and events. At Kent State University, students had actually been shot dead on campus demonstrating against the Vietnam War, yet that news in our Florida cocoon scarcely stirred the placid waters of my university. The ominous drumbeat of a cultural revolution seemed to have started up north, with young people questioning authority at every level, yet in our part of Florida it all seemed irrelevant.
The summer passed quickly and profitably. Our reunion with Perth in September was one of those rich moments in earthly existence when everything seems right and complete again. There was general rejoicing. We found her safe but plump. Too much food and no exercise had taken its toll. Her eyes, too, had a glazed look to them from staying inside so much, keeping cool in the air-conditioning. Afraid of something happening to her, our friends had done what they thought best by keeping her strictly controlled. Her main excitement had been watching raccoons through a window. With hindsight, I thought it was a miracle she hadn’t torn the place apart. It was our friends’ love and kindness, I think, that kept her calm. Soon we were home, though, and Perth was racing along the beach and molesting the mansions once again. For nine more months we repeated the enervating Floridian cycles of our first year there. Then the next summer was suddenly upon us, and again we had to go to England, for the same reason. There was the same wrench, but this time, our more imaginative search for Perth’s temporary home would turn into the Big Adventure of all our lives.
We were determined not to leave her in Florida with the heat and bugs. If we could not take her with us to England, at least we could salve our consciences somewhat by finding somewhere up north where we knew she would be cool, out of the sticky Floridian humidity, and in rolling countryside that would beckon to her adventurous spirit. Instead of flying directly to London from Miami, therefore, we drove northward one thousand miles, hoping to find in Ohio responsive old friends with short memories who could be prevailed upon to take her for the summer. Failing that, we could push on eastward to Cazenovia and search there. All being well, we would then fly from Boston where Cindy’s parents, the Peters, lived in a high-rise apartment block in the Back Bay area, next to the Prudential Center. The journey would also be for us a symbolic migration backward in our married life, back to our original landscape in Cazenovia, our Garden of Eden, where the world seemed simpler and more innocent.
Ohio was certainly no Eden for Perth, but we were desperate. We failed there completely. Perth’s reputation lingered. She looked immensely relieved. We failed in Cazenovia, too, even with our old college friends the Lammes, who had bought a beagle from the same kennel where we bought Perth. Perth had an excited reunion with Frederick, bouncing off him and bathing in his saliva as of old, and we spent several nights in our old garage apartment courtesy of the owners, where she sprang off immediately to rediscover the sights, smells and sounds along the lake that for four years had lived only in her memory. But we were deeply worried. We had no idea where we could find a pleasant home for her for the next three months. Someone suggested a kennel, but we shuddered at the horror of the idea. We had run out of options and almost out of time. Our plane left Boston for England in a week.
We sat one evening on the little boat pier by the edge of the lake, in a bittersweet mood. This was the very spot where several years earlier as a puppy she had courageously swum after our canoe and we had realized we had a special dog on our hands. The sun was still above the horizon, casting streaks of yellowy silver light across the lake. The water lapped at our feet and Perth in almost a heavenly dream-like state looked out over it. It was almost as if she herself were seeking an answer out there in the dying light. After a while she trotted off silently along the shore.
“Peter,” Cindy whispered to me, “can’t we cancel our plans this summer and just stay here? We would be so divinely happy. Perth, you and I, here in this lovely place where we began our lives together. We could rent our old apartment. Perth would be in bliss. Life would be so easy. Could we do that?”
There was nothing I wanted to do more. No stress or strain. Swimming, boating, romping about with Perth, playing tennis with Cindy, reading, day after sunny day for the whole summer. It would all be so heavenly for Cindy and me. But I thought of my half-completed book, of the crucial additional work I needed to do in English libraries, of the lure of England in general.
“Darling, there’s nothing I’d like more than to stay here. I feel the soul of things here, with you and Perth. But if I could just finish the work this summer, we wouldn’t need to leave Perth again. If we postpone the trip until next summer, we would face the same problem then, wouldn’t we? And I do so want to get this albatross of a book over with. It’ll only be three months and then we’ll be together again. I’ll have my book under my belt and, who knows, on the strength of it we might be able to move to a better university in a more beautiful part of the country. In New England, maybe. Think how Perth would love life there!”
Cindy looked disappointed, but she took a deep breath and said, “I know, dear, it’s difficult. I understand. Don’t worry. It will work out right in the end.”
Perth reappeared out of the shadows, preceded by sounds of her paws gently splashing along the water’s edge. She looked content, too, ready for anything. We walked silently back to the apartment.
There was a glimmer of hope the next morning. The Lammes had just seen an advertisement in the paper for the Agnes Roy Camp for Girls in Vermont. Why not phone Agnes Roy, the owner, and ask if she would be interested in a bright beagle as a mascot for the girls? The idea was brilliant. The camp seemed tailor-made for Perth, located deep in a pine forest next to a lake in the high country of the Green Mountains. Summer in Vermont is pleasantly warm by day and cool by night. It would be idyllic. She could have the run of the place and the little girls would love
her.
“Oh, let’s try it,” Cindy shouted. “What have we got to lose?”
I phoned the camp at once and asked Mrs. Roy if she could see her way to taking Perth for the entire summer. I could be forgiven for describing Perth as all good, with no imperfections.
“She is loyal and affectionate, Mrs. Roy,” I began. “She’s up for any excursion into the wilds that you take with the girls, and she’s no bother at all. She’ll walk and run for hours, swim, sail in boats, and make no nuisance of herself begging for food. The girls will adore her. She may even protect them at night by raising an alarm if she hears strange noises outside the cabins. She’ll be a comfort to the ones who are homesick, too.”
I held my breath. Bless her heart, Mrs. Roy did not say no, but she wanted to meet us and see Perth first. I thought I detected that she liked the novelty of the idea, a camp pet to feature perhaps in the next year’s camp newsletter. If the dog proved to be wonderfully affectionate, something for the girls to make a fuss over, Mrs. Roy could advertise the camp as a homey and cozy place. For us it was the eleventh hour. If she took a dislike to Perth, we were lost. After traveling to the Green Mountains on a wild goose chase, we would have time left only to find a kennel, somewhere near Boston. Or we would have to leave Perth with Cindy’s parents in their apartment and fly off, leaving it to them to find a place for her. They would surely not be too happy about that even in the short run because there were strict rules against pets in their building. Nor did the Prudential Center like dogs. They fouled up the sidewalks.
We rushed on to cover the two hundred miles from Cazenovia to Vermont, to a village called Pittsfield on the edge of the mountains. We had never before been to Vermont, and its beauty took our breath away. Lush green meadows spread themselves over the countryside, interspersed with woods and the purest of lakes. Soft, velvetlike, undulating hills and the lofty Green Mountains graced the landscape. There were stone walls as in the English Lake District, which I had not seen anywhere else in America, and the houses were attractive white and yellow wooden-framed and often gabled structures that made us think of witch trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables and an assortment of idealized New England pastimes. In a way, I wish we had been there in the autumn when the colors are raging in the trees, apple cider is flowing, and every other person in the New World woodsman mode is chopping wood for the winter. In mid-June we traveled instead through the richness of summer green. From Pittsfield, we took directions and continued on for about twenty miles, climbing north up into the mountains, through twisting, graveled, dusty lanes, up and down steep hills and through meadows and woods. We were aiming for a camp near the famous Long Trail, a hiking route that extends from the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts up into and through the length of the Green Mountains at heights of close to 4,000 feet. It is wild country.
It was exciting, but we were nervous. Perth was stirred up that we were on a mission to find her a summer home. She accepted the fact as a result of what her master and mistress needed to do during the summer. And this looked more promising than being cooped up all summer in an air-conditioned house in Florida. So she was straining with her head stretched far out of the window and her front legs hooked over the glass. She sniffed madly and breathed hard. The riot of unfamiliar and delectable smells that passed through her nose almost drove her mad. The road was becoming very bumpy and muddy, with large puddles all along it. We had just begun the final two-mile ascent to the mountaintop where the camp was perched. Then suddenly I stopped the car. A real, potentially dangerous problem struck me.
I turned to Cindy. “What’s to stop Perth from coming after us if we leave her at the camp? I think we should do something to prevent her from tracking us, and we should do it now because I wouldn’t put it past her to be memorizing this route right now.” In my mind’s eye I could see her showing up in Boston a few days later. I really did think she was capable of doing this.
Cindy agreed, but neither of us was sure what to do. Then I had an idea. “Well, we could blindfold her and close the windows so she can’t smell anything outside. That might confuse her just enough to deter her.”
“I sometimes think you’re as crazy as she is,” Cindy replied. “But let’s do it.”
I had never tried to blindfold a dog before. It wasn’t easy because of the shape of Perth’s head. She did not mind my doing it, but my handkerchief kept slipping off her ears. I finally managed it by taking a scarf and wrapping it around her head several times, like a massive bandage. She looked as if she had an enormous toothache.
“Never mind, Perth, it’s just for a few minutes.” She may not have heard me because the scarf entirely covered her ears as well as her eyes.
Pleased with my ingenuity, I drove on. Perth stopped jumping around and breathing hard. She waited and we stopped talking. There was just the sound of the car and birds and the sight of the occasional deer.
As we drove up into the lonely camp, we saw that it was comfortably laid out with several small, neat buildings dotted around. The camp was in a wilderness but not much roughing it went on there. It was a favorite of wealthy parents in New York and Boston who were happy to deliver their daughters from the noxious vapors of the cities to this Vermont paradise for several weeks. It looked well run, in a state of ready anticipation for this year’s crop of girls expected in a couple of days. I removed Perth’s blindfold and we made for what looked like an office. The three of us walked in. Busy at her desk was Mrs. Roy, who was welcoming, but not that welcoming. She did not have much time to spare for us. To our profound relief Perth seemed to pass the test, though Mrs. Roy scarcely looked at her. With a wave of her hand she suggested we spend the night with Perth in one of the log cabins and part of the next morning introducing her to the surroundings. She wrote down Cindy’s parents’ phone number and that was it, all in about ten minutes. One of the counselors led us to a cabin and we settled in for the evening. After a walk down to the lake, we called it a day and were soon asleep. Perth looked content as she stretched out on Cindy’s bed.
The next morning was warm and sunny, a perfect day for Perth to explore her summer home along the large lake and among the trees. The three of us took a canoe out for an hour, then hiked down into a treeless valley, full of wild flowers.
Cindy bubbled with pleasure. “She’ll love it here! In fact, why don’t we scrap our trip to England and stay here ourselves as camp counselors. This paradise is made for us. We’d have a great time.”
“Swap England for Vermont? You’ve got to be kidding!” I absolutely had to do research in London, but more than that I had a love affair with England going. My father was born in England, my dear aunt still lived there, and I had a hunger for all things English, from its literature, to its lovely old timbered and stone cottages, to its pastoral beauty. On our two previous visits, Cindy had come to love it, too. I even had a passion for English grass, its softness and sweet smell. There is nothing quite like it in America, not even in Vermont. And there are no pestilential bugs in England, no poison ivy or wickedly nasty snakes. It is a benign country. I was not going to be sidetracked in Vermont, though I was delighted for Perth. She would eat this place up.
Then the usual demon of remorse set in. We began to feel terrible about leaving her, even here, for the summer. It began to feel like betrayal again to abandon her for yet another summer, a breach of family faith, a violation of the bond between us. I really did not believe we deserved her. I imagined that by now she must feel unwanted and unloved, that she was thinking she would never leave us like this if the tables were turned. Maybe she was in turmoil inside, pained and dejected. I looked at her looking at me with her large round eyes. What tore at me was that they were so full of love. She would not make a big commotion, but I was sure she was devastated.
At this point, an hour or so before we left, I fell apart and behaved unforgivably. My behavior would later bring on me an overwhelming sense of guilt and suffering for weeks on end. In my wretchedness
, I reasoned that it would be much better for Perth if she did not miss us too much, or even if she did not love us so much. In the hour I had left, therefore, I tried to make her dislike me at the same time as I felt like hugging her. I spoke to her harshly and refused to pet her. I turned away from her. Not even Cindy knew this at the time, but worse yet I pushed her aside with my foot brusquely several times. I was moaning inside as I did it. She was terribly confused and ran around me, trying over and over to get close to me. But I drove her away. We would not see each other again for three months, yet still I was treating her cruelly like this. Perth never whined in her whole life and she did not do so then. But she must have felt like it.
On my instructions, a counselor held her on a leash as we climbed into the car to leave. She sat down and looked at us quietly as we drove off. The breeze blew through the leaves, the birds sang and life went on. But what had I done? Would Perth hate me forever? Did I deserve such a dog?