Gone to the Dogs

by Susan Conant

  “So, look,” I said, tactfully keeping this vision to myself, “about the tail—”

  Buck does know more about dogs than I do, and he’s always loved to pontificate about them, but ever since Dog’s Life hired me, he’s gotten worse than he was before. I’ll spare you most of the lecture on the six principal features that distinguish Chinooks from all other dogs. Among them is the distinctive structure of the tail, which consists of a thick section that abruptly narrows about four inches from the base.

  “Sixth,” Buck finally said, “and you can’t miss this one, their front teeth interlock. So the result is that you look into a Chinook’s mouth, and what you see isn’t like a dog’s mouth at all. Looks just like a bear’s. If you bother to look.”

  The accusation was fair enough: I hadn’t examined Bear’s teeth. Yes, Bear. Most of the other distinctive features weren’t readily observable, either, but the general description fit perfectly: the beautiful, thick, tawny double coat, the size, the overall look of the dog. So how had I missed it? Oh, haven’t I mentioned this? In 1966, the Guinness Book of World Records listed the Chinook as the world’s rarest breed of dog. There were only about a hundred and twenty-five purebred Chinooks then. Later, the population dropped to about twelve breedable dogs, then rose again. I’d seen small pictures of Chinooks in atlases of rare breeds and faded old photos of the team Walden took to Little America, but there are hundreds of rare breeds. Although I’d’ve picked out a fila Brasileiro, a dogue de Bordeaux, or a Leonberger, I probably wouldn’t have spotted a Fell terrier, a New Guinea singing dog, or a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, either, and I can’t even pronounce Owczarek Nizinny, Owczarek Podhalanski, or Xoloitzcuintli, never mind recognize one. I still should have known Bear, though, especially because Rowdy and Kimi were Kotzebues, the strain of Alaskan malamute that originated at the Chinook Kennels. Arthur Walden didn’t develop the malamute, of course. Either he sold the kennels in 1930 when he returned from Antarctica; or, according to some accounts, his wife sold them while he was still there. In any case, it’s a poor excuse. The Chinook is a sled dog, too.

  John Buckley’s dog was a Chinook, and John was grieving for a bitch he’d lost, Bear’s mate. Cliff Bourque owned what Jackie had called “some weird kind of sled dog,” and Bourque had lost a bitch, too, the one that died the night Patterson vanished. A “weird” breed of sled dog? A rare breed. Not a malamute, not a Siberian, not a Samoyed. A Mackenzie River dog? So far as I knew, the breed was extinct. An American Eskimo dog? An Alaskan husky? Not exactly rare, not like a Chinook. Two men with unusual sled dogs who’ve lost two different bitches? Maybe. But the owner of a gorgeous Chinook who deliberately passes off this stellar rare-breed specimen as a shepherd mix? As a mutt? Well, in case you reside outside the land of purebred dogdom, let me welcome you to the shameless kingdom of brag, brag, brag. Mutt was John’s word, not mine. Mutt? Are you kidding? Never. Never in purebred dogdom. Well, never without a good reason. And it seemed to me that John Buckley had a very good reason. So did Cliff Bourque, I thought. The same reason? More than that. The same man. But it was only a guess.

  An hour after I’d finished talking to my father, Geri Driscoll knocked on my front door and, as I discovered later, shook about half of the needles off the Yuletide swag I’d fastened there. My front door has a bell. She didn’t use it. Have I ever told you that Vinnie could press doorbells? Golden retrievers have great aptitude for that trick. Vinnie, I might add, not only could announce our arrival in a civilized fashion, but often did.

  Let me add that from the moment I first saw Geri Driscoll standing there on my front porch, I felt small. I also felt ashamed of my kennel clothes—a stained sweatshirt, ragged jeans, and running shoes with holes in the toes. In retrospect, though, I’m quite sure that Geri didn’t notice what I had on. In fact, within an hour after she left, she’d probably have been unable to pick me out of a lineup.

  “Holly Winter?” Geri didn’t ask. She told me my name.

  She was dressed entirely in black, and her skin was thick and creamy. Like Oscar Patterson, she had wavy dark hair, but hers fell to her shoulders, and, in all other respects, she and Patterson had obviously consisted of a dog of one breed and a bitch of another. Geri had a massive head, a wide, deep chest, prominent haunches, and sturdy, strong-boned arms and legs. Standing next to her, Patterson must’ve looked like her pet chihuahua.

  I invited her in. Refusing my offer of coffee, she strode into the living room, seated herself in the center of my couch, and arranged her black draperies. She glanced briefly around at the fireplace, the Christmas tree, and the absence of furniture. She admired nothing and made no small talk. I should have brought in a kitchen chair for myself, but I made the mistake of sitting on the floor facing Geri. I felt about six inches tall.

  Have I mentioned that Geri was beautiful? She had immobile features, a wide mouth, and dark eyes with long, thick lashes and overplucked brows. Her voice was like her skin, thick and creamy. “I read your column,” she said, without adding what she thought of it.

  “I didn’t know you had a dog,” I said eagerly.

  “Died.” I was about to offer condolences and ask what breed, but she firmly switched to the topic she apparently wanted to discuss. “Delaney says you’re writing a story about us.”

  I realized that I was kneeling in a pose easily mistaken for a posture of worship. I shifted around, but didn’t have the sense to stand up. “My editor asked me to write something.” I understated Bonnie’s insistence. “She wants a story about Oscar Patterson.”

  Although Geri looked only about my age, her presence made me feel not only undersized but juvenile. She wore a strong, musky perfume with an unnaturally ancient odor, and she reminded me of those prehistoric statues of faceless pagan earth mothers. I almost expected to see her features dissolve. If they had, her face would’ve expressed as much feeling as it did now.

  “I don’t have to write the story,” I went on, “but my editor wants it, and if I don’t do it, someone else probably will.”

  Her voice was strong, commanding rather than pleading, when she said, “Leave me out of it.”

  I’d never intended to do more than mention her, if that. “I can try,” I said. I pulled my shoulders up high. Holly Winter, girl dog reporter. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, and I’ll do my best with the story. You’re probably better off with me than with—”

  She interrupted me, but her question sounded almost casual. “You know what everyone’s saying?” Her eyes showed a hint of pain.

  “If someone disappears, people are going to talk about it,” I said.

  “The joke’s gone far enough. I don’t want to see it in print.” Geri’s expression was impossible to read, but her voice sounded false.

  Even so, I don’t like to be ordered around. “Could we get something straight?” I said. “I don’t write a gossip column.” One of my readers should have known that, it seemed to me. “And when I do articles, including articles about people, they aren’t about gossip, either. Anyway, most of the talk is about this client, Cliff Bourque—the guy whose dog died that night.”

  She waved a hand in dismissal. “That’s bullshit. I know Cliff Bourque.”

  Yes, I thought, but I don’t know you. And I’m not exactly getting to know you, either. I looked up at her. “Then why did Bourque run away? I heard that as soon as the police started questioning him, he disappeared.”

  “I know Cliff,” she repeated impatiently, as if her word should have been good enough the first time or as if I’d misunderstood her. “You can forget Cliff Bourque.” She leaned back, raised her arms, and embraced the back of the couch.

  As I’ve mentioned, I don’t like being told what to do. “The other thing people are saying is that Oscar Patterson might’ve been, uh, interested in someone else,” I said. Geri’s face showed nothing, but I’ll swear that if she’d had hackles, they would have risen. “I’ve heard people say that he might’ve run off with someone. So no
w that Jackie Miner’s left Lee—”

  Geri interrupted me, but she spoke languidly. “Let me tell you something. Oscar was a born sniffer, and he could smell a bitch in season from a mile away, and they could smell him.” She removed her arms from the back of the couch, dropped her wide shoulders, lifted her chin, elongated her neck, and ran the long red nails of one hand lovingly down her throat. She had what’s called a “dry” neck, no loose skin and no wrinkles. “Oscar might’ve been sniffing around, and Jackie might’ve been sniffing around. You can’t blame her. You can bet she wasn’t getting any at home. Myself, I like a male with all his organs intact.”

  Unless I’m assembling a chorus of male sopranos, I do, too, but I don’t usually announce my preference to strangers. I thought about Jackie Miner and Oscar Patterson. Jackie irked me, but there was nothing crude or distant about her. And Jackie Miner and Oscar Patterson were both small, physically suited to one another, it seemed to me. Jackie wouldn’t have made Patterson look—or feel?—like a lap dog.

  As if Geri had read my mind, though, she added, “Oscar’s always liked big women.” She lowered her voice. “And, in case you wondered, I like small men. They try harder.”

  If Oscar Patterson had been a male malamute I was considering as a prospective stud for Kimi, I wouldn’t have hesitated to ask whether he was an ardent male with all his organs intact. If I’d had any doubt, I’d have checked with my own eyes and hands. As it was, I felt embarrassed, more for Geri than for myself.

  “Geri, you said something about how the joke had gone far enough. I don’t understand the joke part.”

  “Let me tell you a story about Oscar.” Geri fixed her huge dark eyes on the ceiling above my head. “This is something that happened when Lee Miner first got there. The poor little shit. You had to feel sorry for him. Lee’d hardly settled in when Oscar sent him out to one of the farms. Shit.” She was staring with apparent pleasure at the overhead light fixture, which is too ugly to please anyone. “First of all,” she went on, “if there’s one thing a veterinarian’s got to not mind, it’s dirt. And on top of that, it turns out, Lee’s scared to death he’ll get kicked. So Oscar goes and sends him out to this farm.” She paused, glanced toward me, and resumed her study of the ceiling. It’s possible that she wasn’t ignoring me or avoiding eye contact. Probably she was just performing a throat-beautification exercise, the secret of that dry neck. She continued: “What happens is, there’s this bull. That’s the animal Lee’s supposed to look at. And the bull gives him a kick, and he ends up in the manure pile.” She paused, lowered her head, and moved it slowly back and forth. Her beautiful mouth formed a wide, rich smile, and her eyes danced. “And, of course, the guy that owns the bull is standing right there.” She chuckled. “And he thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Shit. And so the last thing he does is keep it to himself. Everyone up there knows about it.” She looked vaguely in my direction.

  “Well, it seems to me that you do have to feel sort of sorry for Lee,” I said. “But, yeah, it happens. If you work with animals, you’re going to get kicked and bitten and scratched, and they’re going to make a fool of you. Lee Miner should’ve known that.”

  Geri leaned forward, toward me, and said in low, knowing tones, “But Oscar did. He knew when he sent Lee there. He knew the bull kicked, and he knew where the manure pile was. He knew everything.” She narrowed her eyes and brought her hands together as if in prayer.

  I wished she’d come right out and say she was pregnant. “So,” I said, “this is, uh, a joke at your expense?” I waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, I added, “Only the joke’s gone far enough? Or too far, I guess, since Jackie left.”

  Geri raised her right hand, brought it to her mouth, stuck in her thumb, and sawed the thumb nail back and forth across her bottom teeth. “I don’t enjoy being the one that ends up in the shit. I’m three months pregnant, and I’ve been through that other before. I’m not exactly wild about going through it again.”

  Geri seemed younger now and a little less like a statue. I still didn’t like her, but I did feel sorry for her. She was pregnant, of course, but that was only part of it. Mostly, I pitied her because of how she explained her lover’s disappearance: She assumed that Patterson had vanished as a way of doing something mean to her.

  I finally got to my feet. I took a step forward, looked down at Geri, and asked, “Where do you think Oscar is?”

  “You ever hear of a book called On the Road?” she said scornfully.

  Of course I had. Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, which happens to be—what did I tell you?—on the Merrimack River. “Sure,” I said. “Jack Kerouac. Oscar is, uh, on the road?”

  “Shit,” she said. I expected her to continue, but she said nothing and paid no attention to me. Instead, she began to buff the nails of her left hand with her right thumb.

  I wanted to offer her some explanation of Patterson’s disappearance that would have nothing to do with her. “Geri,” I said, “Cliff Bourque was there that night. From what I’ve heard, he loved his dog. Isn’t it possible that when the dog died, he really went berserk?”

  Now that I was standing up, she was looking downward. She shook her head. “Cliff? He might’ve started blubbering, but when Oscar lost that bitch, he probably started blubbering, too. Then they both decided they needed a good stiff drink.”

  “And then?” I folded my arms and waited. Once again, she ignored me. I don’t like the sense that in someone else’s eyes and ears, I’m not there. Dogs pull that sudden-deafness ploy all the time, of course. Rover, come! Rover ambles away sniffing the ground. ROVER, COME! Rover continues to meander away, nose to the ground. Unfortunately, Geri didn’t happen to be wearing a training collar attached to a long leash. I raised my voice and asked, “Geri, is Oscar’s car gone?”

  I must at last have sounded like a person who expects to be answered. “No,” Geri said, “but that doesn’t mean a damn thing. He probably borrowed one from one of the farmers, or more likely a truck.”

  “Would a farmer just …?”

  “Oscar does a lot of trading back and forth,” she said. “If a guy owes him, and Oscar shows up and wants a truck? There must be twenty guys’d let him have one and keep their mouths shut. They all owe him.” She sighed. Now she looked weighted down.

  I moved toward her and took a seat at the end of the couch. I looked for redness in her eyes, enlarged pores, a white hair or two, any sign of imperfection, but even up close, she remained distantly beautiful. “Geri, if he’s really playing a joke on you,” I said, “it’s not a very funny one.”

  She studied her hands, but her face gained some animation. “Well, if he’s not back by New Year’s,” she said, “the joke’s on him.” She leaned back and rubbed her abdomen. “Would you believe he wants to deliver this kid himself? With his own hands?”

  “Really?” I wasn’t surprised, of course.

  “Yeah, really,” she said, mocking me. “But if he’s not back by New Year’s, the joke’s on him. There won’t be any kid to deliver.” She gave a low, gloating chuckle and patted her belly. “You seen Jackie Miner lately?” she asked casually.

  For a second I thought she was suggesting that Jackie, too, was pregnant. Then I realized that Geri had arrived at the real point of her visit. Before Jackie Miner vanished, Geri had thought that Patterson was letting her squirm and that he’d be back. Now, despite her protestations, she was convinced that he’d left her for Jackie.

  “No,” I said, “not since Monday. I haven’t seen Jackie since she left Lee. I don’t know where she is.”

  “I just wondered,” Geri said. “She ever talk to you about Oscar?”

  “She mentioned him,” I said.

  “Delaney must be some stud.” Geri’s expression was flat, her voice was matter-of-fact. “Jackie ever show any interest in him?”

  “No,” I said truthfully.

  “In Oscar?”

  “No,” I said.

  Geri must ha
ve realized that I knew nothing. As she rose to leave, I asked her about Cliff Bourque’s dogs.

  She confirmed my guess. “Chinooks, they’re called,” she said. “Chinook dogs.”

  As soon as Geri Driscoll left, I opened a window to let in air and to let out the musky scent of her perfume, and I brought Rowdy and Kimi in from the yard. For once, though, the dogs were no help at all. I didn’t know exactly what to make of Geri, and even if Rowdy and Kimi had met her, they wouldn’t have known, either.

  I once had a friend who could have helped me to understand Geri. Her name was Elaine Walsh. She died not all that long ago. Maybe you’ve heard of her? She wrote books. She was a radical feminist. She owned Kimi before I did. Anyway, Elaine believed that all marriage is slavery, and she’d certainly have defended Geri’s right to an abortion. She would have had a lot of other things to say about Geri, though. I wanted to ask Elaine why Geri assumed that Patterson’s disappearance was a cruel joke he was perpetrating on her. Then I knew what Elaine would have answered: Because that had been Geri’s experience of men. And why had Geri treated me as if I weren’t really there? Because that’s how Geri had been treated, Elaine would’ve said, like an object whose voice wasn’t heard.

  14

  Geri Driscoll’s theory that Patterson was deliberately letting her squirm had the paradoxical effect of convincing me that he was dead. Patterson might have found the prospect of a family uncomfortably bourgeois, but I couldn’t believe that he’d have risked losing the opportunity to deliver a human baby with his own hands. He’d known Geri for years; he’d have known that to take to the road was to run that risk.

  But I cared more about Cliff Bourque—John Buckley—than I did about Oscar Patterson. I called Hope, who had temporary charge of the battered old wooden file box that contains the Cambridge Dog Training Club’s current records. She checked the index cards for the beginners’ class and found one for John Buckley. In place of an address, he’d written “Moving.” If I’d had all day, maybe I’d have started to search the streets of Cambridge for my lone ranger, but I had an appointment late that same afternoon with that famous dog behavior consultant, Dick Brenner, and I intended to keep it.