by Susan Conant
“Some people, I grant you,” Gabrielle replied. “Horace Livermore, for instance. Norm really did have a grudge against Horace. How can you blame Norm for that? Now, I have no complaints about Horace in terms of Molly. Horace is a wonderful handler. But Norm paid Horace a great deal of money to campaign Isaac and presumably to take the best possible care of Isaac, and Norm was just as sick as I’d have been in the circumstances when he realized what had been going on.” She lowered her voice. “Horace had been giving arsenic to Isaac, you know. To make Isaac’s coat pretty. Professional handlers do that sometimes. Not all of them, of course. And it really isn’t as dangerous as you might imagine, but when Norman found out, he was livid. He wasn’t content with just firing Horace. He really did want to make more trouble for him. He intended to! He wanted revenge. That’s what Holly’s doing here.”
Effie looked frantic. “Gabbi, stop talking about dogs!”
Rowdy and Kimi perked up at the word dogs. For once, I ignored them. “Gabrielle,” I asked quietly, “what does Horace Livermore look like?”
“Oh, Horace is—” Gabrielle started to say.
Effie had had enough. “Gabbi, this has nothing to do with dogs! Nothing, nothing, nothing! Why do you always have to relate everything to dogs?” Quint tried to hush her. She barreled on. “It has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with dogs!”
My mind silently collided with yet another solid object. This one was a personal axiom: a self-evident truth. Everything, I thought, has something to do with dogs. Everything!
Self-evidence is, however, more a matter of self than of evidence. “Norman Axelrod,” Effie raged at Gabrielle, “wished you ill, and he wished a lot of other people ill, and one of his grudges, which is a gross understatement, was against the Beamon Reservation and against everything else that had anything to do with protecting the environment in general and Maine in particular. In case you’ve forgotten, Gabbi, he went out of his way to buy Idaho potatoes! He made a big point of it!”
In Maine, that’s a heretical act.
“You know,” Wally commented, “one thing I noticed about Norm was that he was a pretentious, name-dropping, celebrity-seeking blowhard, and he was a troublemaker, but if you kept your eye on him, you’d notice that often enough, he was right. Take Idaho potatoes. I prefer them myself.”
“You would,” Effie told him fiercely.
As Effie and Wally engaged in this stupid interchange about spuds, my father caught my eye. Having done so, he turned his head to the side, stuck one arm in front of him and the other in back, bent his elbows, and stuck out his flattened hands at some weird angle. Another collision: My father was not just embarrassing. No such luck! No, he was outright mortifying. I couldn’t imagine what he doing this time. His face wore an odd little smile. Reading my look of incomprehension, he exaggerated the peculiar posture. Just as I finally decoded his ludicrous effort to pantomime an ancient Egyptian, he quit. Now, still looking at me, he rapidly used both hands to sketch something in the air. Buck, I should note, loves charades. I hate the game. Still, I understood: What he meant was pyramid.
It seemed to me that Buck’s foolish performance would kill his romance with Gabrielle; he might just as well have pulled out his handgun and shot Cupid dead. I was wrong. As it turns out, Gabrielle adores charades.
Politely ignoring the potato dispute and Buck’s lunacy, Quint said, “The point Effie was starting to make is that although Norman was deliberately oppositional, he genuinely did not support environmental causes. And he did not believe in charitable giving.”
“He didn’t even understand it,” Effie said. “Entirely lacking the philanthropic impulse himself, he simply couldn’t identify it in other people. All he saw were reflections of his own selfishness and spite.” She paused. “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” she finished.
With no hint of playing charades, Buck took a mighty step forward. Effie had broken his command to speak English. He wasn’t actually going to shoot her for it, was he? Honi soit qui mal y pense, I thought. Evil unto her who evil thinks.
Chapter Twenty-six
DUCK DIDN’T DRAW HIS GUN. Effie was, I suppose, as disappointed as I was relieved. I am convinced that she longed to see him shoot a developer or, failing a developer, almost anyone else. Still, my father shot from the hip. He had the advantage of being bigger than everyone else. Everything about him, from his oversized skull to the deep resonance of his voice, made him the kind of dominant presence that Rowdy is in the show ring, at least on the days he wins. My dogs, I might note, had been taking an interest in the human snarling and growling, but neither had shown a sign of feeling or wanting any personal involvement. The Alaskan malamute, the most hierarchical of breeds, is, however, exquisitely sensitive to the emergence of an alpha leader in any pack, canine or human. When Buck took that step forward, Rowdy’s and Kimi’s ears alerted, and I could almost feel surges of strength radiate from their bodies. Suddenly, the action had something to do with them.
Perhaps the shift in power did. The content didn’t. “Let me get this straight,” my father said. “Norman Axelrod never invested a cent in the Pine Tree Foundation.”
No one replied.
“Did he or didn’t he?” Buck demanded.
Now everyone answered all at once. For a change, everyone agreed. Certainly not!
“A ninety percent return in six months,” Buck said.
Malcolm Fairley smiled proudly. Heads nodded.
Buck said, “So here’s Axelrod, surrounded by people who were getting rich quick.”
“That’s not how we prefer to think of it. Our primary purpose is charitable,” Malcolm Fairley hastened to correct him.
“God Almighty,” Buck said, whether to God, himself, or no one, I don’t know. Then he addressed Fairley. “But he could’ve gotten in on it.”
“Norm?” Fairley asked.
“I didn’t mean God,” Buck said. “His rate of return is half decent without your help.”
“I invited Norm,” Gabrielle said. “So did Malcolm.”
“You didn’t!” Effie exclaimed. “Gabbi, how could you?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Gabrielle said in self-defense. “I knew that he didn’t share the beliefs and goals of the Pine Tree Foundation, but his investment would still have benefitted the environment. And it didn’t seem fair to leave him out.”
“Norman Axelrod was outright uncharitable!” Effie spat. “And he hated trees!”
“That’s something I don’t understand.” My voice was weak and timid. “Everyone agrees that Norman Axelrod hated the outdoors, hated exercise, and was not exactly physically fit. So, what was he doing on a hike? And not just a hike, but a hike that goes straight uphill?”
“We’ve discussed this already. There’s hope for everyone,” Malcolm Fairley said inadequately. Then he seemed to gather his forces. “And for all that the stepped trails blend with the natural landscape, they are man-made structures, as Quint reminded us. They aren’t trees, and at the same time, they’re a powerful, persuasive argument for conservation and preservation.”
“But they’re already in a national park,” I pointed out.
“Conservation and preservation have many facets,” Malcolm Fairley countered. “Here, where we stand right now, solidly within the park, this beautiful trail was deliberately left to deteriorate, but thanks to the generous volunteers who are donating their time and labor, we are saving what is, in effect, a magnificent symbol of man’s ability to live in harmony with the wilderness in a give-and-take relationship with universal benefit.”
I wished Buck would speak up. He didn’t. “What’s special about Malcolm’s approach,” Gabrielle told me, “is that he sees positive opportunities everywhere. Who else would’ve imagined that Wally and Opal would throw themselves into working on a trail?”
“At the Pine Tree Foundation,” said Malcolm, as if reading from a piece of promotional literature, “we believe in conservation from the ground up.”
Instead of
what? I wondered. Conservation from the ground down? From the air up? Down? The slogan was, I decided, meaningless. Fairley, however, seemed to like it. In fact, he repeated it. “Conservation from the ground up! And from that point of view, you see, no one is a lost cause. There’s always something out there that someone can relate to in a personal, meaningful way. Even Norm Axelrod. If you want to make progress, you have to act on that assumption. That was the idea of inviting Norm to come and see the stepped trails for himself. To tell the truth, I was surprised myself when he accepted. If I hadn’t mentioned the inconsistencies in the trail signs, he wouldn’t have. In retrospect, I can see that I was wrong, not in terms of the general principles, but in terms of the specifics. In hindsight, it’s clear that Norm was more unfit than I realized. I’ve had to ask myself whether he was outright unwell.”
Others murmured in agreement. “Vertigo,” someone suggested. “He’d never have admitted to it,” someone else said.
“Whatever it was,” Fairley said, “I should never have suggested the hike to him in the first place. And once we were up here, I should never have let him out of my sight. I blame myself for taking too much for granted. The rain. We’re all used to hiking in rain. Norm wasn’t. Wet stone. We’re all used to it. Norm wasn’t. And the trail was slippery. I came close to slipping myself once or twice. It’s the most common accident in the park, of course, falling on rocks.” How many times had he said that? Hundreds! “Most of all, we take our own strength for granted. We’ve all learned a hard lesson from this.”
Buck moved in again. “Nothing weak about Holly,” he said. “Nothing unfit about her.”
“As I said,” Fairley replied evenly, “I came close to falling myself.”
“Holly learned to crawl on the rocks on the coast of Maine,” Buck proclaimed with the kind of parental pride that makes any sane human being cringe. Had I really? If so, what on earth had my parents been thinking? The rocks on the coast of Maine are slippery and treacherous. Furthermore, they’re thick with barnacles. And I’d been allowed to crawl on them? “She’s been handling big dogs since she took her first steps,” my father went on. I said silent prayers that Buck would not, please, please not, launch into stories of my childhood. “In and out of the ring,” Buck bragged, “there’s never been a damned thing wrong with her footwork.” Gabrielle and Steve, of course, understood him. Malcolm, Anita, Wally, Opal, Quint, and Effie, I’m sure, had no idea what he meant by either ring or footwork. They probably thought that we were a family of trapeze artists and that I’d grown up in a circus. Oblivious to their bafflement and my embarrassment, Buck elaborated by comparing me to a champion in a sport entirely unknown to most of his listeners: dog agility. “As lithe as a Border collie whipping through the weave poles,” he proclaimed. “As swift and surefooted as Jean MacKenzie’s Brownie on the A-frame.”
“Does he mean you were a Girl Scout?” Effie whispered to me.
“No,” I whispered back. “Brownie is a dog.”
“This story of how Holly lost her footing and cracked her head? Holly didn’t trip and fall on a tourist trail on this glorified anthill!” After a brief pause, Buck concluded with one of his favorite expletives. “God’s balls!”
“What a peculiar expression,” Effie muttered to me. “I didn’t know you’d hurt your head. Are you all right?”
I shrugged my shoulders. After Buck’s paean, I didn’t know whether to cry or bark. Everyone else was as silent as I was, probably because of universal puzzlement at what, if anything, Buck was driving at. Eventually, Gabrielle spoke. “Buck, are you suggesting that Holly was pushed? Deliberately? Holly, if that’s the case, why didn’t you say something? You could’ve—”
“Because she doesn’t remember,” Buck said. “Yet. But she will.” Having made an appropriate, supportive, hopeful, and confidence-building remark, he reverted to normal, which for Buck means knocking himself out to win an eccentricity contest without realizing that he’s the only contestant. Glancing up at the clear sky, surveying the trees, and running admiring eyes over the admittedly beautiful landscape, he announced, “Perfect day for a hike in the park! A few steps up, cut to the left, bushwhack no distance at all, and we’ll hit the Emery Path, and then it’ll be no distance at all to the top of the Ladder Trail.”
Peculiar though the proposal was, it came as a relief to me, mainly because I was starting to suffer from an irrational sense of being trapped on that small stretch of the Homans Path. The sense of entrapment stemmed, I suppose, from the recognition that Buck was leading up to something. I felt increasingly impatient to have him stage his finale and be done with it.
Malcolm Fairley, however, objected. “We have work left to do here. This is, after all, a trail crew, not a hiking club. But don’t let us stop you.”
“Stop me? I’m just getting started. You know,” Buck told him, “unlike you, I’m just a regular guy.”
“We’re all regular guys here,” Malcolm said condescendingly.
Buck smiled in a way that alarmed only me. “A regular guy’s idea of good return on an investment is like this: You pay a hefty stud fee, and in return, you get a litter of pups that get out there and win for you.”
“Oh, is that so?” Fairley replied.
I wanted to kick Fairley. Of course, I wanted to kick Buck, too. And Steve Delaney, who kept his distance so effectively that he might as well not have been there.
“But if a regular guy’s got some extra cash sitting around even after he’s paid the stud fee,” my father continued, “he knows better than to sink it into something that sounds too good to be true. Sound investment strategy for anyone. Norman Axelrod for example. He subscribed to it.” Like a dog persistently returning to the same half-buried bone, he said, “You invited him to invest in the Pine Tree Foundation. Invited him. And he turned you down.” “The more fool he,” Opal muttered.
Buck went on. “I’d’ve done the same thing. You see? I’m a regular guy.”
Even Gabrielle was losing patience. “Buck,” she said sternly, “those of us who invest in the Pine Tree Foundation are just like the next person. There is positively nothing irregular about us, as you know perfectly well. What’s special in this situation is that the benefactors are not, uh, regular guys. And that changes everything.”
“Outside the scope of most people’s experience,” Malcolm Fairley agreed. “Well put, Gabbi. Regular guys is precisely what they are not. Wonderful human beings, of course. Generous almost to a fault.”
“Anonymity,” I said. “Keep your name out of it.”
“What was that?” Fairley asked.
Ignoring Fairley’s question, Buck asked one of his own. “Has anyone ever met these wonderful human beings?”
The foundation’s investors were quick to repeat the usual explanation: The benefactors preferred to remain anonymous.
“People in high places,” Malcolm said. “Let’s leave it at that.”
“Malcolm, don’t be silly,” Gabrielle said. “It’s not too hard to guess. We all know, after all. Just who’s been generous to the island? Think of the carriage roads! For a start.”
“Rockefeller,” Buck said. “You know, that’s not the name that keeps ringing in my ears. The name that does is Ponzi. Charles Ponzi, was it?”
Very softly and alluringly, Gabrielle whispered to him, “Buck, please! Let it go!”
“Stand by and watch you get fleeced?” he shot back. “Not on your life! Fairley? You! Hit the trail!”
Weirdly enough, Malcolm Fairley obeyed. In fact, he led the way. My father stomped at his heels. The rest of us trailed after Buck. To my surprise, Opal and Wally were directly ahead of me; I’d expected them to go stomping off instead of risking further insult.
“Who on earth is this Ponzi person?” Opal asked Wally. “Have I met him?”
“I hope not,” Wally answered. “I hope I haven’t, either.”
“Who is he?”
“Was he,” Wally corrected her.
“Stop being
mysterious! You are getting on my nerves!”
“A Ponzi scheme,” Wally grimly told her, “is a scheme to bilk investors out of their money. The man is suggesting that we’ve been taken for a ride. That’s why he was talking about pyramid schemes.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Opal said. “If the Pine Tree Foundation is sound enough for the Rockefellers, it’s sound enough for us.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE STEPS OF THE HOMANS PATH abruptly ended. Ahead lay the sad and ugly remains of slaughtered trees. If bushwhackers, trail phantoms, or animals had beaten a path around or through the extensive barricade of thick trunks, Malcolm Fairley and my father took another, tougher route. In describing this steep, miserable trek, Buck had been blase; no distance at all, he’d promised. Sweating from the exertion, I belatedly realized that, as usual, he’d spoken from the viewpoint of big, strong dogs. In that sense, he’d been right. Rowdy and Kimi longed to bound through the obstacle course. I clung to their leads and cursed. “Easy!” I ordered the dogs. “Easy!” Ahead of me, Wally struggled to keep up with Opal, who scrambled energetically over and under the felled trees. At first, I tried to match the pace of those ahead. I could hear Wally gasping for breath. He and Opal began quarreling about whether to turn back. He wanted to; she refused.
I resigned myself to being a straggler. The dogs were far too strong and eager for me, and the combination of restraining them while bushwhacking uphill over rough terrain was more than I should have tried to manage. If we ever reached the damned trail, I’d let Rowdy and Kimi haul me along; here, they’d send me crashing into a log or decapitate me as I crawled under one. Before setting out, I should have turned one or both dogs over to Buck, or even to Steve, damn him, but I was now too far behind to make the request without screaming for help, something I absolutely would not do. Not in front of Anita Fairley! Buck had accused me of rolling belly-up, hadn’t he? He’d been wrong. I didn’t intend to prove him right.