Creature Discomforts

by Susan Conant

  As to my devotion to animals, observation of my own behavior suggested that my reflexes knew a lot more about my dogs than my brain remembered. For example, after I’d listened to the unknown Bonnie’s arsenical phone message, the dogs had performed an energetic song-and-dance routine that hadn’t fooled me one bit. In response to the performance, which consisted of prancing around while emitting unearthly yet identifiably Arctic yowls and yips, I had not mistakenly decided that the three of us were a vaudeville team. Rather, my legs had taken me to the kitchen, where I’d automatically checked the clock over the stove to make sure that it was after five and thus canine dinnertime. More importantly, I hadn’t just naively doled out dog food. Without pondering the matter at all, I’d led the incredibly gorgeous male—what the hell was his name? I knew it better than my own!—to one of two large Vari-Kennels in the bedroom. Having incarcerated him, I’d then filled two dog bowls, replaced the food bag on the top of the refrigerator, put the beautiful female’s dinner on the floor, and dashed back to the male’s crate, where he quit screaming and thrashing the second I fed him. In other words, empty though my head was, my body wisely expressed a practical knowledge of the malamute vocabulary. It is a lexicon that does not extend to the word share.

  What the hell were their names? How could I have forgotten?! What ingratitude! There I’d been, exposed on a mountainside like a doomed female infant, when these ungodly beautiful dogs had materialized from the mist. Here I was now! Still astounded at heaven’s bounty in blessing me with this massive, furry evidence of hope and strength in an otherwise bewildering and menacing universe! And what had I done in return? Failed to recognize my saviors as my own dogs! Effaced their names from my witless so-called intellect!

  Having staged my own internal revival meeting and confessed myself a sinner before the altar of Almighty Dog, I resolved to atone. I longed with religious fervor to know the dogs’ names. What drove me was, among other things, the conviction that the ability to call the dogs by their own names would somehow release me from the fear that still gripped me.

  Before ransacking the cottage for rabies certificates, dog snapshots, or other artifacts of my lost past that might bear the magic names, I made myself slow down, breathe calmly, and carefully check both dogs for subtle injuries. Neither was limping or bleeding. Still, the female, with her Lone Ranger mask and her air of acute self-possession, struck me as too proud to whine about pain; and the male, with his soft, glowing expression and his debonair charm, seemed capable of ignoring a bodily injury if it competed with his zest for the joys of the here-and-now. I began with the female. She readily sprawled tummy-up on the floor as I ran my fingertips over her, extended and flexed her legs, and peered closely at the pads of her feet. Despite a rivalrous gleam in his dark eyes, the handsome boy suppressed what I suspected was an incipient rumble of complaint about having to watch his chum get all the attention.

  “Okay, Big Boy,” I finally told him. “Your lady friend seems fine. Let’s take a look at you.” Eager to join the game, he dropped to the floor and rolled over, tucked in his chin and forepaws, and let me repeat the examination on him. As I did so, his companion remained on her back, and the two sets of warm, almond-shaped eyes stayed fixed on my face. Finding nothing alarming, I finished by giving the two massive chests and tummies a simultaneous and vigorous rub.

  “I swear to God,” I promised, “that somewhere in this house is something with your names written on it. In the predicament we’re in right now, the crucial thing is to have a plan, right? So, here’s the beginning of it. First, I am going to get myself cleaned up. And then I am going to find out who you two are. And then we’ll take it from there.”

  So, after I’d showered, toweled myself off, and dried my hair with what felt like someone else’s hair dryer, I examined Holly Winter’s clothes, which consisted almost exclusively of jeans, T-shirts, and sweatshirts. The jeans and a couple of fleece tops were free of adornment, but almost every T-shirt was embellished with a team of sled dogs, the head of an Alaskan malamute, the logo of the Cambridge Dog Training Club, a boast about what Big Dogs did or didn’t do, or some other blatantly canine motif. Furthermore, although a queen-size bed, a dresser, and the big dog crates occupied almost the entire floor space of the cottage’s one small bedroom, I’d managed to cram the space available for storage with dog gear. In an open alcove that served as a closet were a set of portable PVC obedience hurdles and a large duffel bag jammed with leashes, dumbbells, scent articles, white work gloves, and other paraphernalia that I didn’t bother to explore. In one corner of the room, fleece animals, thick ropes, and hard chew toys formed a neat mound. Only the two top dresser drawers held human clothing. The bottom drawer contained wire slicker brushes, undercoat rakes, and other grooming supplies. All were neatly sealed in heavy plastic bags.

  It came as a relief to find that I did have a few respectable possessions of my own and at least a few interests other than dogs, albeit not many. The coffee table by the fireplace held a pair of binoculars and a field guide to birds with my name written on the flyleaf. Stacked next to the binoculars were books about Acadia National Park: Trails of History, Mr. Rockefeller’s Roads, several photographic essays about Mount Desert Island. Two or three big maps of the island and several different guides to the park’s hiking trails also bore my name. On the desk by the answering machine I found a thick pile of bulging manila folders, some steno pads, and three large notebooks. I leafed through the pads and notebooks, and skimmed a few of the loose sheets of yellow legal paper in the folders. The handwriting was almost illegible; I found it hard to tell where words began and ended, and the characters might as well have come from the Cyrillic alphabet as from the ABCs. The thickest of the file folders was, however, ominously labeled Arsenic. In addition to yellow sheets covered with Cyrillic gobbledygook, the folder bulged with copies of articles. I skimmed a few titles: “Toxicology of Arsenic,” “Herbal Horror Stories,” “World Health Group Tackles Arsenic Poisoning.” In case the World Health Group was devoting itself to Mount Desert Island, I scanned a couple of paragraphs. In certain areas of India, I learned, arsenic-contaminated wells provided the only source of drinking water. The chronic poisoning caused cancer, leprosylike skin lesions, and, ultimately, death. How monstrous! But why had I collected this material? What had it meant to me?

  I was losing sight of the plan. Step one had been to get cleaned up. Task completed. Step two had been to discover the real names of the Lone Ranger and Big Boy. On the dining table was a medium-size green notebook neatly labeled Hiking. Next to the notebook, as if I’d been writing in it that morning, was a pen. Underneath the notebook was a book entitled A Guide to Backpacking with Your Dog, by Charlene LaBelle. What seemed to be the final page of a typewritten letter served as bookmark. I read:

  a chance to see for yourself how bossy Gabbi can be! But she is really very sweet and such a contrast to Malcolm. No matter how headstrong or overbearing and difficult Malcolm was, he was charming, too, and we still miss him.

  Hugs to Rowdy and Kimi.

  Fondly,

  Ann

  P.S. Did you know that a Trophy Edition is a Bentley?

  In the margin, for reasons I couldn’t guess, I’d scrawled in big letters GOD spelled backward!!! Ann was evidently a friend of mine who also knew Gabrielle Beamon and the man named Malcolm whom Gabrielle had mentioned. She’d wanted Malcolm to have a chance to get together with my father. I liked the idea of family friends. In our brief encounter, Gabrielle hadn’t struck me as particularly bossy, but she had been perfectly sweet. My own forgotten opinion of Malcolm might also differ from this Ann’s. I might not view him as in the least bit headstrong and difficult. He might not charm me. And maybe my other car really was a Bentley! But the great news the letter conveyed was, of course, the names of my dogs.

  “Rowdy!” I called. Both dogs came flying. “Kimi!” I exclaimed. Both sets of eyes gleamed. Both wagging tails picked up the tempo. “Rowdy! Kimi!” I repeated. Both dogs
sat. Which was which? Rowdy was probably the male, Kimi the female. My hiking notebook confirmed the guess. For reasons I didn’t understand, I’d kept a log of hikes. I’d study it later. Now, I found what I sought almost immediately. My penmanship here was better than the foreign-alphabet speed-writing on the papers in the folders. I’d obviously cared about this hiking diary; I’d wanted to make sure I’d be able to decipher it. One of the last entries was dated September 9. It opened with a complaint: “Clear, hot day with the sky an unrelieved blue! Carriage road up Day Mountain, then trail down.” My notes went on to specify the weight each dog had carried. Rowdy had packed fifteen pounds, Kimi twelve. “Fifteen was nothing for him,” I had noted, “and Kimi could easily have taken more, but gravel on the damned carriage roads is brutal on the dogs’ feet.” So, fifteen was nothing for him? For Rowdy! And Kimi could have carried more. She could have. Big Boy: my Rowdy. The Lone Ranger: my Kimi.

  Holly, Rowdy, Kimi. Mount Desert Island, Maine. By now, I knew what day it was, too. Fastened to the refrigerator with a lobster-shaped magnet was Gabrielle Beamon’s invitation to the event for which she was picking up lobsters. The invitation had been photocopied onto cheery yellow paper. “Come to a clambake!” it read. “In honor of Malcolm Fairley and in celebration of the Pinetree Foundation for Conservation Philanthropy! Wednesday, September 13!” The invitation went on about the time, 7:00 P.M., and the place, the Main House, and the phone number for obeying the request to R.S.V.P. In the same lovely script I’d already seen in her letter to me, Gabrielle Beamon had added a note at the bottom. “Holly, do come! Bring your beautiful dogs! Gabbi.” So, as my correspondent, Ann, had written, Gabrielle—Gabbi for short—was bossy and sweet. If Malcolm was headstrong and difficult, why give a party in his honor? Because of his charm?

  The kitchen clock read 6:30. I congratulated myself. Besides knowing who I was and where I was, in a minimal way, I knew the date and the time. I’d pass a mental status exam! An undemanding one. But a short time ago, I’d have flunked hopelessly. “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” Ah yes! Gauguin’s painting. Three questions. I now had two answers. We come from Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are an injured, vulnerable, frightened woman and her two ungodly powerful dogs. We are a trinity destabilized, for the moment, by its weak human element. As to the third question, the dogs have faith either in themselves or, God help them, in me. They do not worry about where we are going. Kimi has retrieved a fleece ball from the heap of toys in the bedroom. She lies with her belly on the cool floor, her toy globe immobile between her forepaws. The world is hers to chew and sniff. Rowdy has been rummaging in a pile of newspapers, magazines, and junk mail in a wooden basket by the fireplace. He parades around with a treasure in his mouth. It is an envelope. Intuition tells me that a certain magic word will persuade him to relinquish his plunder to me. Intuition stops just there. The magic word is in eclipse. I manage, however, to see that the envelope is addressed to Current Resident. Therefore, it is my envelope. It is mine to give to my dog. “Good boy, Rowdy,” I say, simply for the joy of speaking his name. “Good girl, Kimi.” For the same reason, of course.

  Where are we going? I am not going to a hospital, because we would not be admitted. The idea skips across my mind that I might consult a veterinarian. I decide I must be temporarily insane. Consequently, we are not going home. Massachusetts is a long way from Bar Harbor, Maine. The trip is too long to be undertaken by a mad person unwilling to put her dogs at risk. Besides, I am convinced that there is something here I must do. Must tell someone? Must, at a minimum, remember.

  I concoct a theory: As I was about to die, my whole life passed before my eyes and out of my memory. As my life returns, my lost mission and I will reunite. In the meantime, we must hunt for it: my hunting dogs and I.

  Chapter Six

  SOON AFTER ROWDY, KIMI, AND I had been introduced to the other canine and human guests at Gabrielle Beamon’s clambake, I started to worry about what I mistook for a bizarre new neurological symptom caused by my recent fall. The particulars: Having been introduced to Pacer, Demi, Isaac, and twenty or so human beings, I exhibited an instantaneous case of perfect recall for everything about every dog and immediately forgot the names of all the people. I now recognize the phenomenon as spiritual rather than medical. Heaven knows that there was nothing new about it! But at the time, instead of feeling appropriately relieved to discover that the core of my being was intact, I fell prey to mental hypochondria: Ridiculous though it now seems, a lifelong sign of God’s grace seemed to represent the unhappy effect of a brain injury. Also, I was frightened. And preoccupied with arsenic.

  All this is to excuse my inability to give an entirely reliable and coherent account of the evening. If you’ve ever looked in a looking glass at yourself looking in a looking glass and so forth forever and ever, you won’t require my apology. Instead of reflections of reflections of reflections, of course, I have recollections of recollections of recollections. Memory: It’s all done with mirrors.

  Remarkably enough, I remember why I decided to accept Gabrielle’s invitation. The reason was fear. Was I in real danger? If so, my best course must be to carry on as usual, to the extent that I could guess what usual was. If I holed up in the guest cottage, I was certain to make no progress. Only by venturing out did I have a chance of discovering what it was that frightened me. Furthermore, the persistent fear evidently disinterred my buried knowledge of predators and prey. If I screamed, ran, flailed around, and revealed my injuries, I’d mark myself as an easy victim. Flight invited attack. The alternative to flight was fight. But fight what? Or whom? What was the conflict? And which side was I on? I might not know whose human side I was on, but the dogs, miraculously, my dogs, were as strong as I was weak. I was on their side, and they would stay at mine. I dismissed the worrisome thought that despite the presence of the dogs, something terrible had happened to me today. My fall, I told myself, had been an accident. I could have been running from something. I could just have tripped.

  I made myself as presentable as I could. The scratches on my face and the bruises on my right hand were impossible to disguise, but a pair of almost-new jeans, a long-sleeved blouse, and a purple fleece pullover covered the remainder of the damage. As the dogs and I walked along the well-worn road, I decided that the best camouflage for my mental bruising would be pleasant, neutral silence. “We’ll keep our eyes and ears open,” I told Kimi and Rowdy, “and our mouths shut.” The resolution should have sounded familiar. It embodied the advice I was always giving myself and other people about how to avoid trouble in the sometimes gossipy and always hypersensitive atmosphere of a dog show. My memory of the context had, however, vanished. I’d also forgotten that having sworn not to utter a word, I always ended up chattering at least as much as everyone else at a show.

  According to the map Gabrielle Beamon had sketched on the sheet of directions, the dirt road that ran past the guest cottage soon ended at her house, which sat on a small peninsula that jutted into what she had marked as Frenchman Bay. As the map had promised, we quickly reached Gabrielle’s house, a sprawling three-story version of the yellow clapboard guest cottage. Like the cottage, it had green shutters and trim. The road ended at a wide parking area at the back of the house. Five or six SUVs were parked there. The doors of a two-car garage were closed. Gabrielle’s white Volvo had been pulled onto the rough lawn near the back door of the house. What I noticed now was that each of the Volvo’s headlights had its own tiny windshield wiper. Headlight wiper? That’s understated luxury for you: a minor feature no one needs and most people can’t even name. There was nothing flashy about the house, either. It probably had its original kitchen, old baths, and a mere ten or fifteen other rooms. Location, location! Prime. On Mount Desert Island. Smack on Frenchman Bay. On how many totally private acres? With how many zillion feet of deep-water frontage? Abutting conservation land, too: the Beamon Reservation.

  “This lady,” I said under my breath to the dogs, “is a
class act.” It was a stupid thing to say. I mean, Rowdy and Kimi were the ultimate class act. The misfit was…

  “Holly! Oh, wonderful! You have brought the dogs.” Gabrielle sailed out the back door. She wore old jeans and boating shoes. The source of the nautical effect was a loose off-white muslin blouse trimmed with a few unobtrusive ruffles. At first glance, I mistook the ruffles for something they were not, namely, lace. Old lace. As in arsenic and… That was it! Not old ladies. But the ruffles were just ruffles. Gabrielle’s little white dog, Molly the bichon, was still where she’d been the last time I’d seen her, apparently joined to Gabrielle at the middle in the manner of a Siamese twin. Rowdy and Kimi behaved themselves a lot better than they had at our last encounter, only because I’d taken the precaution of stuffing my pockets with cubes of cheddar cheese I’d found, already diced, in a plastic bowl in the cottage refrigerator. I’d felt a stab of guilt. Was I chronically guilty of bribing my dogs? But I was weak and desperate, and the cheese worked wonders.

  “Wally is taking care of the lobsters for me,” Gabrielle went on. She threw one arm toward the side of the house. With the other, she supported Molly, who showed a happy interest in every word Gabrielle spoke. “I can’t bear to murder them, especially slowly. It’s one thing to plunge their heads in boiling water—you know they can’t survive long—but this is different. Grisly. Although, when you think about it, they’re just big insects. But I still don’t like doing it. And there are clams and corn and potatoes, and that’s going to be it, except for a salad and dessert. You can let the dogs go. The other dogs are running around. We’re all down at the water.”