Creature Discomforts

by Susan Conant

  Water! Helen Keller’s first word, right? Magic! The key to everything else. I fill the dogs’ water bowl. I congratulate myself: I am beginning to reacquire my native language.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AT TWO IN THE MORNING, when loud banging dragged me from a stupor, I was in the thick of a guilt dream about forgetting the dogs’ water. The source of the sound that awakened me could not, however, have been the metal water bowl. The bedside light revealed Kimi stretched on top of the covers and Rowdy on the floor in a sled-dog tuck, tail curled over his nose. I stumbled to the kitchen, switched on the bug light, and flung open the back door. The noise had stopped. The bun-gee cord and cinder block were securely in place on the plastic barrel. Still, I prayed aloud for divine retribution against every raccoon in the state of Maine. Back inside, I opened the refrigerator for some milk, and the dogs bounced into the kitchen. Alaskan malamutes are superb watchdogs, ever on the alert for the whisper of a refrigerator door. They watch you open it, they watch in case you accidentally leave it ajar, they watch you eat whatever you took out, they watch for crumbs you might drop. Watch, watch, watch! The bathroom cabinet yielded a bottle of ibuprofen tablets. I swallowed three and went back to bed.

  Comforting reflections lulled me to sleep. This infatuation of mine with the vet? With Anita Fairley’s boyfriend? If looked at in the right light, by which I meant, I suppose, the black of night, it could easily be seen as a sign of recovery. Love, romance, passion? The emotions of robust life! Furthermore, it wasn’t as if my affections had fixed on some grotesque, repellent, or unsuitable object. On the contrary, Steve Delaney appeared to be altogether attractive and admirable. Women probably fell for him all the time. And it wasn’t as if he were married to Anita Fairley, either, I reminded myself soothingly. That bitch! Bitch, bitch, bitch! I fell asleep.

  The analgesic may be why I felt less horrible in the morning than I’d expected. After two cups of killer coffee, I felt almost human. Yesterday’s aching and buzzing were nearly gone. What remained was localized physical soreness centered on the lump on my scalp. My only new symptom was so ordinary that it may not even count as a symptom at all. A song was running through my head. Over and over. Neurologists probably have a technical term for the irksome phenomenon, which is probably some sort of benign synaptic event. Anyway, what ran through my head wasn’t just a tune, but a song with words, a line from an old hymn: I love to tell the story of unseen things above. Oddly enough, although I remembered the rest of the verse, melody and all, the running-through-my-head part stopped there. In the hope of ridding myself of this musical mental poltergeist, I caroled aloud:

  I love to tell the story

  Of unseen things above,

  Of Jesus and His glory,

  Of Jesus and His love:

  I love to tell the story

  Because I know ’tis true;

  It satisfies my longings

  As nothing else can do.

  Trivial discoveries about Holly Winter: This poor woman really, really can’t sing. She switches keys. Her tunelessness makes a yowling cat sound like Maria Callas. Important discovery about Rowdy and Kimi: They love this woman so much that in their ears, she is Maria Callas.

  After breakfast and a quick still-in-my-bathrobe out-and-in with the dogs, I felt seized by the impulse to return to Dorr Mountain. Sleep, far from alleviating fear, had sharpened it; obligation seemed to jab at my solar plexus. Unseen things above, I kept hearing. Meaning what? Forgotten things above? Things seen on Dorr and now forgotten? Things I might now remember?

  Floundering around on Dorr would accomplish nothing. I needed a plan. Hadn’t I formulated one? Yesterday? If so, it had disappeared. Before dashing off to wander aimlessly in hundreds of acres of parkland, I needed to slow down.

  Fighting the urge to do something, I made myself go over the material I’d briefly surveyed yesterday afternoon. My material possessions seemed to fall into two classes: dog gear and the printed word. I examined the contents of the large zippered bag I’d noticed yesterday: dumbbells, scent articles, a shoelace, an aerosol can of spray-on cheese, a box of liver treats. I even remembered the uses of some of this stuff. The shoelace, for example, prevented anticipation. You looped it unobtrusively around the dog’s collar in place of a leash and, if need be, held on to it to stop the dog from bolting into an exercise in advance of your command. The aerosol cheese was handy for teaching the retrieve; a bit of the gooey stuff smeared on a dumbbell was a great motivator. You could also use it for the “go-out,” as I knew the exercise was called; a cheesy daub could make a dog happy to leave you and go out to the far end of the ring. Every item in the bag was, in effect, a piece of sports equipment. The sport was dog obedience training. No clue there.

  A close examination of my wallet showed that I was a card-carrying member of the Cambridge Dog Training Club and the Dog Writers Association of America. Ah-hah! My elusive profession. My checks were in my name only. I wore no rings. My father, Gabrielle’s hero, was Buck Winter. I was Holly Winter. Single? Married and liberated? Separated? Divorced? Separation felt plausible. The idea meshed with a gnawing sense of loss.

  A few novels piled on the night table by the bed had my name handwritten in the front. Stacked on the coffee table by the fireplace were the various guides and maps I’d noticed yesterday. A few of the books about Acadia National Park belonged to me. Mr. Rockefeller’s Roads turned out to belong to my father. On the front page, he’d inscribed his name in oversize capital letters: BUCK WINTER. He had also, I discovered, defaced page after page with outraged marginal annotations. In a section about Rockefeller’s commitment to preserving the land from the depredations of the automobile while encouraging the public to explore the beauty of the wilderness, my father had commented, “If it has ROADS, it isn’t wilderness!!!!” A book called Trails of History was also his. On the pages about the paved road leading to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, he’d printed in vehemently emphatic capital letters, “PLOW THE G.D. THING

  UNDER AND PLANT TREES !!!”

  Settling at the table with a cup of fresh coffee, I tackled the notebooks and the bulging manila folders that I, in my previous existence, had left by the answering machine. As I’d seen yesterday, the folder marked Arsenic was jammed with articles about the legendary poison. The amount of information was more than my feeble brain could process. Arsenate was less toxic than arsenite. What was the difference between the two? Arsenic deficiency caused death in lactating goats. The skin lesions caused by arsenic were easy to confuse with leprosy. And…? The thousands of facts about arsenic gave no hint about why I’d amassed them.

  Two other folders, however, explained my interest. One, uninformatively labeled Coat, contained copies of what I now effortlessly recognize as e-mail. In contrast to the folder of facts about arsenic, this one was crammed with claims, insinuations, and as I soon discovered, conflicting reports and opinions. “Old-time handlers,” one page informed me, “used to use the stuff all the time, including on coated Hounds, but especially on Poodles.” Another person wrote that she’d been in dogs for forty years and had never heard of anyone using arsenic on a dog; the stories of its use as a coat enhancer were nothing but old wives’ tales. On another page, someone said, “I’ve heard it’s used by Poodle handlers to improve coat color in apricots.” My head reeled. Apricots? Oh, apricot-colored poodles. Okay. Person after person said, in effect, Well, I’ve certainly never heard of anyone with my breed dosing a dog with such dreadful, horrible, dangerous stuff and went on to suggest that I ask handlers of other breeds, including shelties, bichons, Gordon setters, Pekes, and dozens more. A knowledgeable-sounding paragraph declared that arsenic had no effect on the color of a dog’s coat; rather, the substance produced a desirable texture. Someone else claimed that it reliably caused thick, luxuriant growth. And where would a dog handler get the stuff? At any health food store, I was advised. At any pharmacy. At a shady pharmacy. At a feed and grain store. From any vet. From a disreputable vet. An obviou
sly sensible person pointed out that years earlier, arsenic had been the principal ingredient in the medicine given to dogs to prevent heartworm infection. A scrap of memory came to me: Arsenic was still one of the drugs used to treat heartworm and certain other infections in dogs.

  What should have been the really informative folder was labeled Axelrod. Unfortunately, its contents, two pages torn from a yellow legal pad, had been scrawled in Russian or Arabic. Furthermore, the pages seemed to have been chewed by dogs. At a guess, I’d taken notes on phone conversations with Norman Axelrod. I’d printed his name at the top of the first sheet in the folder. “Wants expose. Says handler dosing dog with arsenic.” Here, I’d had the foresight to print the handler’s name: Horace Livermore. “Mini poodle, apricot, Isaac. Says has proof, hair, nail samples. Dog on circuit with Livermore, finished, U.S., then Canada, etc. Contraband? Livermore smuggling to Canada. What?”

  At the bottom of the page, I’d drawn a big, wobbly arrow that I had no trouble in deciphering as personal shorthand for a conclusion I’d reached or an action I intended to take. After the arrow, I’d scribbled, “Ask Buck re Livermore.”

  On the second page, I’d written, “MDI? Insists must go there, but not the soul of hospitality.”

  After the arrow on that page, I’d written, “Call Bonnie re hiking article, Natl Pk that allows dogs, exposé???”

  Okay. Norman Axelrod had called to try to persuade me to write an article about his professional handler, Horace Livermore, who was supposedly dosing Axelrod’s apricot mini poodle, Isaac, with arsenic. Axelrod maintained that he had proof obtained from samples of the dog’s hair and nails. He also believed that Livermore was smuggling some kind of contraband into Canada. I’d made a note to ask my father about Horace Livermore. I’d also intended to ask Bonnie, the voice on the answering machine, about articles I might write: one about hiking with dogs, one about Acadia—the National Park that allowed dogs—and possibly—three question marks—the article Axelrod had proposed, an expose about a professional handler who had dosed a client’s dog with arsenic.

  I’d evidently acted on my own orders. Here I was, on Mount Desert Island. Yesterday my dogs and I had been hiking in Acadia National Park. I’d been reading about arsenic and gathering scuttlebutt about its use as a coat enhancer for show dogs. As I’d intended, I must have spoken to the mysterious Bonnie about it. Hence the strange message she’d left on the answering machine. As to Horace Livermore, did I know him? Had I, in fact, asked Buck about him and about the supposed contraband? If so, exactly what had I asked Buck? Have you ever heard of a handler named Horace Livermore? Or maybe a question that assumed familiarity, something like, Ever heard any rumors about Horace Livermore? I knew Steve Delaney, and, as Ann’s letter had informed me, I knew Gabrielle Beamon and Malcolm Fairley, too, and I hadn’t recognized them, hadn’t remembered them at all. Might I also know Livermore? Norman Axelrod had constituted a threat to Livermore. Axelrod had plunged to his death. Nearby, I’d taken a bad fall.

  As I finally showered and dressed for the return trip to Dorr, the annoying hymn continued to pester me. Those “unseen things above”? Things I’d seen and forgotten? Could Horace Livermore have been one of them?

  Chapter Fifteen

  LIKE VISITORS TO THE BEAMON RESERVATION, Rowdy and Kimi confront a horrendous list of prohibitions. The dogs need not, however, be enjoined to enjoy themselves; except in the presence of noxious stimuli, they always do. Now, for instance, while I am senselessly exposing myself to what Rowdy deems the most noxious stimuli of all—shampoo and running water—he and Kimi take advantage of the delightfully contingent nature of the rules that human beings impose on dogs. Human beings state these rules as moral assertions: Good dogs do not filch and devour greasy sponges from the sink, never think about hiking their legs indoors, and would not dream of chewing on junk mail and strewing the cottage with damp lumps of sweepstakes promotions and offers for overpriced software. Translated into dog, however, these rules are practical if-then statements about context, act, and consequence. Or so I suppose.

  Kimi. If the human being does not have her eye on me, then the consequence of snatching the sponge from the kitchen sink is the ambrosial taste of rancid butter mixed with bits of fried egg. As to the consequence of regurgitation, if at first the morsels of buttery, eggy sponge refuse to stay down, try, try again! Flat on the floor, the sponge in her jaws, Kimi glares at Rowdy and, in a low growl, addresses him. Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!

  Rowdy. Ineffectively masked by the reek of furniture polish, one leg of the dining table radiates the almost irresistibly tantalizing scent of the aged urine of another male dog. Flirting with the urge to overmark, Rowdy executes a series of swift passes. No one is watching. Therefore, no one will yell, as has been yelled before, “Don’t even think about it!” Thinking about claiming that table leg as his own pleases Rowdy mightily: Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine!

  Anthropomorphism? The sin of attributing human characteristics to animals. Well, if you don’t think a dog can think Mine, mine, mine, then you don’t know much about dogs.

  Anyway, having savored the pleasure of thinking about lifting his leg indoors, Rowdy strolls to the weathered wooden basket next to the fireplace where Gabrielle and her guests dump newspapers, magazines, catalogs, and direct-mail junk to be used in starting fires or tossed into the flames. At home, Rowdy regularly noses through a somewhat different basket, a large wicker one filled with fleece dinosaurs, tug ropes, chewmen, and dozens of other canine playthings that usually emit the delicious reek of his very own household. Now and then, these items briefly disappear and mysteriously reappear stinking of Ivory soap. The contents of this away-from-home toy basket, in contrast, exude the bouquet of ink, the intriguingly sweaty scent of many pairs of human hands, and, best of all, a divinely animal aroma that induces olfactory visions of aged road kill and yummy, yummy leather. The unopened letter he selects from the pile would, if opened and read by Gabrielle, inform her that a local bank has preapproved her for a home-equity line of credit. The printed word says nothing to Rowdy. What speaks to him is the glue on the envelope. Chew me! it urges him. Tear, rip, and swallow! Bon appétit!

  Chapter Sixteen

  IN CLICHÉD NEW ENGLAND CONTRAST to the day before, this one was sunny and dry. Consequently, the tourists who’d spent the previous day wandering through gift shops in Bar Harbor were getting to the real point of vacation by checking out the gift shops within Acadia’s boundaries. Or so I decided when I tried to park the Bronco where I’d found it yesterday, in the lot near The Tarn on Route 3. The lot turned out to be full. The closest place to get indoors and spend money was near where I ended up parking, in the big lot serving the complex consisting of the Nature Center, the Wild Gardens of Acadia, and the Sieur de Monts Spring. Many of the cars, vans, and tour buses had undoubtedly transported people who would visit the Nature Center shop and, incidentally, stroll through the Wild Gardens of Acadia and glance at the Sieur de Monts Spring before resuming the wilderness-by-asphalt approach to seeing everything the park had to offer. The grandly named Sieur de Monts Spring is housed in a gloomy little building with dirty windows that allow visitors to peer down at a depressing puddle and ask, This is the spring? It is. According to a sign posted outside the Nature Center, the most common cause of injury to park visitors was falling on rocks. After Norman Axelrod’s fatal fall, the warning felt like a timid and vaguely sick understatement, a bit like the fabled warning of the Fall River, Massachusetts, mother who told her children to stay away from Lizzie Borden’s yard because Miss Borden “wasn’t very nice to her mommy and daddy.”

  As Ms. Wilderness by Foot, I got off to an unpromising start. Yesterday, when the dogs had found me, Kimi had been wearing her two-piece pack, and although Rowdy had lost his saddlebags, he’d still been wearing his vest. When I’d removed the dogs’ vests, I’d paid no attention to how they were fastened. Now, with Rowdy still in the car, I struggled mightily with Kimi and the pieces of her pack b
efore finally realizing that I was trying to put everything on backward. This evidence of my incompetence unnerved me. I didn’t even remember my lost competence; I’d inferred it from what my former self had written in her—my?—hiking diary, which I’d studied before leaving Gabrielle’s cottage. According to the diary, the dogs and I had arrived at M.D.I. only four days before my fall. Kimi, I learned, had been carrying rice in her pack not because I harbored a morbid fear of starvation, but because I was conditioning the dogs for backpacking by systematically increasing the amount of weight they carried. The entries for all hikes, including quite a few in the Berkshires and in conservation land in Boston’s western suburbs, specified how much weight each dog had packed and how far we had hiked. The main point to emerge from my notes was my considerable experience in hiking. The final entry, made the day before yesterday, was for an eight-mile hike that had taken us to the summits of Sargent, Cedar Swamp, and Penobscot mountains and down something called the Deer Stream Trail, which I’d described as a “damned steep riverbed of rocks.” I’d added, “Rough footing, but more unpleasant than challenging. No blisters.”

  A few days ago, I’d hiked down a steep, rocky trail. If I’d commented on my escape from blisters, wouldn’t I have noted any problems I had encountered? Rough footing, fell twice? Throughout the diary, the only remarks about anything remotely like injury or discomfort were tediously frequent complaints about hot weather: “Great hike except for broiling sun. No shade! Sweat bath! Goddamned global warming!” And on and on. Furthermore, several entries made within the past six months contained positive reports about a new pair of Fabiano hiking boots: “Weigh a ton, but excellent on rock.” Yesterday, hiking in the cool weather I liked and wearing those excellent-on-rock boots, I hadn’t just skinned a knee or twisted an ankle, but had taken a fall that might have proven fatal. How had it happened?