Black Ribbon

by Susan Conant

  When he succumbed to my cajoling by placing all four paws on the planks, his resistance diminished, and I had no trouble in leading him to the end, where I stood and surveyed the lake. As I’ve mentioned, the day had been outright hot for Maine in late August. The evening, although warm for Maine, was cool by ordinary standards; before taking Rowdy out, I’d pulled on a sweater. Consequently, when I noticed the swimmer, my first thought was that it must be someone with a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. All I could see was an unidentifiable head and the slight wake left by arms and legs silently stroking beneath the surface. If the lake had been a tidal river, I’d have assumed that the head belonged to a seal. I remembered how hot Maxine had looked at dinner. Her face had been damp, its veins prominent.

  Goody-goody believer in the buddy system, I disappointed Rowdy by settling down on the dock. Refusing to follow suit, he turned to face the shore and whined softly. “Shh!” I whispered.

  Far out on the lake, a boat putted. Although sound carries and echoes over water, I heard nothing else until the lone swimmer coughed, lightly at first, as if a few drops of water had gone down the wrong way, then deeply and loudly, with involuntary force. The head dipped, legs kicked, and arms flailed. How far out? No farther than Elsa and I had swum that morning, no distance at all to a lifeguard gifted with buoyancy, as many yards as a powerful man can toss a rubber toy. But the Red Cross course I’d flunked had cautioned even the buoyant against impetuously plunging in. A flotation device should have been mounted somewhere on the dock. None was. Dragging Rowdy after me, hollering, I dashed to land, onto the little pebble beach, and to the first of the upended canoes—only to remember that the paddles were stored in the main lodge. Even so, I reached in, fished around, and found what I needed—a seat cushion, a flotation device.

  Croaking out pleas for help and calling to the swimmer, I stumbled back over the rough rocks and jumped onto the dock, Rowdy bounding beside me. Only when I reached the end, maddeningly close to the helpless, frantic swimmer, did the problem hit me: What was I going to do with Rowdy? The flat dock hadn’t been designed for mooring boats; it offered not a single upright or cleat to which I could fasten a leash. Furthermore, the flex lead, with its long cord and bulky plastic handle, was meant exclusively for dog walking, not for tying out. If I reached under the dock, I’d presumably find one of the wooden legs on which it sat. I could pull out a length of cord and, working underwater and in the dark, loop the cord around a support, knot the cord, and …

  “Rowdy, down! Gooooood boy!” I removed his lead, yanked off my shoes, and showed Rowdy the palm of my hand. “Stay!” I’d done the best I could. If Rowdy broke, if he took off after a wild animal or another dog, or if he followed his nose to the kitchen of the main lodge or even into Rangeley in search of the golden with the come-hither scent, at least he wouldn’t get fouled up by the flex lead. And if you’re wondering why I didn’t trust Rowdy, let’s just say that if forced to choose between obeying me and zipping off after a raccoon or a porcupine, he’d act like a malamute every time.

  With the seat cushion clutched in my hands, I jumped feet first off the end of the dock, bobbed up, kicked, and fought the weight of the sodden clothes that dragged me down. No wonder I’d flunked Red Cross. But the cushion was buoyant, the swimmer near. Too pumped to mind the cold, I frog-kicked hard.

  How long was it, really, between the time the lone swimmer first sputtered and the moment that cold, strong hand grabbed the cushion from my grasp? As I’ve worked it out, approximately the length of the long sit in Novice obedience, what I’d heard kind judges, Phyllis Abbott among them, refer to as the “one-hour long sit,” an exercise that lasts precisely sixty seconds. I’d dashed to the canoe, grabbed the cushion, run back, downed Rowdy, removed his lead and my shoes, hit the water, and kicked like hell. One minute? Certainly less time than the Novice long down. Objectively three minutes; subjectively, forever.

  Minutes or hours, my relief in reaching the drowning swimmer was so great that when those powerful hands snatched at the cushion, I shoved it into them. Kicking to stay afloat, cold now, deeply chilled, weighted down by the sweater and the loose khaki pants I’d worn to dinner, eager only to head for shore, I missed the cues. The coughing and flailing had stopped. Choking, spitting out water, gasping for air, uselessly beating the lake’s surface with frantic arms, my all-but-rescued victim had recovered all too soon, impossibly soon, had found breath never really lost, calmed feigned terror, and caught me unaware. Rigid fingers gripped my hair, dug into my scalp, and shoved me under. In some last-second reflex, I opened my mouth. Sucking for air, I breathed water that filled my nose and swelled in my throat. Stunned by the attack, bewildered by the underwater blackness, I kicked out blindly, fighting less for the surface than for some sense of where it was.

  The hands gripped my head, but as I sank under a great weight, I finally fought back. My fists bounced off a heavy body. Sharp nails raked across my face. Bending my legs frog-fashion, I aimed, kicked, missed, and succeeded only in tightening the grip on my hair. Momentarily releasing it, freeing my scalp from that excruciating yank, the hands grabbed again and, this time, delivered a sharp snap that sent hot pain rushing down my neck. In that last moment, nothing passed before my eyes, not my own death, certainly not my life. I neither saw nor heard nor thought a single thing. To die by drowning means, I think, to leave this world as we enter it: wet and helpless, all feeling.

  WITH THE STUPIDITY of panic, I kicked and strained. Finding my head inexplicably above water, I struggled to raise my entire torso, as if elevating my rib cage would somehow enable oxygen to enter my lungs through skin and bone, thus bypassing my impenetrable nasal passages and clogged trachea. Failing in my efforts to dodge nature’s plan, I was saved by a single full-body blow, a powerful whole-torso Heimlich maneuver delivered from somewhere underwater, a massive WHAM! that knocked the wind out of me and, with it, the water.

  The lake around me boiled and churned like the wake at the stern of some phantom powerboat, a ghostly Chris-Craft, the classic inboard, sleek and beautiful above, dangerous below, where the propellers slashed and drilled, slicing the water, grinding it up, disgorging it in twin waves of white-capped turbulence. My attacker thrashed and surged, bobbed, reappeared, lashed out, tried gliding under my rescuer, slipping around him, barging past him to regain that grip on me, shove my head beneath the water, and hold it there—this time—until I drowned.

  He hated water, loathed it, always had—avoided even shallow puddles, balked at a walk in the rain, shrieked in the bathtub—but now, his big snowshoe paws transformed to whirling blades, his heavy-boned legs ripping through the water, the big guy blocked my attacker’s every move.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Help!”

  Cries from shore answered mine. The beam of a big lantern flashlight played over the lake. From the dock, Cam’s voice called, “What’s going on there? Are you all right?”

  Shaking and numb, I managed a feeble breaststroke toward shore. His combat finished, Rowdy chugged at my side until I reached the sharp rocks of the beach. Seconds later, I was on the dock, and Ginny was ripping off her warm, dry sweatshirt, pulling it over my head, chastising me, issuing orders: “What did you think you were doing? You could’ve drowned! You’re shaking all over. What you need is …” And on and on, as if I were a naughty puppy.

  Frantic to rid his coat of water, Rowdy was zooming around in elongated loops and figure eights, zipping past the cabins, vanishing into the night, reemerging, veering, dashing toward the lodge, whirling, passing through the lights outside the cabins and pausing only occasionally to convulse himself in audible efforts to decontaminate himself.

  Her corpulence illuminated by the light mounted outside my cabin, my assailant stood on the slope above the dock. A towel in those strong hands, she rubbed vigorously. Although she addressed Cam, she spoke to me as well. Her tone was light, amused, and all-forgiving: “I inhaled a few drops of water, and while I was still coughing it up, Holly jum
ped to my rescue, and Rowdy leaped in after her.” The note of surprise was utterly genuine. After a light, brittle laugh, she went on to elaborate: a total misunderstanding, a minor fiasco, a comedy of errors.

  In emerging from the lake, two dissimilar creatures thus performed kindred rituals: In shaking off water, Rowdy was like an Orthodox Jew who’d been forced to consume trayf. Phyllis Abbott had also set about purifying herself. Phyllis, however, was concerned about her reputation; Rowdy, about his soul. Her superficial task was easier than Rowdy’s, and of the two, she was the more successful. In Cam’s position or in Ginny’s, I’d have accepted her account as unquestioningly as they did. There was, after all, no reason to doubt Phyllis’s word, especially in the presence of dripping proof that some fool had stupidly tried to play lifeguard.

  I’ve wondered, of course, what would have happened if I’d spoken up. Phyllis lured me in, I could have proclaimed, and then she tried to drown me! Cam, I predict, would have raided her own or someone else’s veterinary first-aid kit, administered a mastiff-size dose of acepromazine, packed me into an airline-approved Vari-Kennel, and assured me that I’d feel a lot better when the trip was over; and Ginny would’ve made sure I had a soft, clean crate pad and a bowl of fresh water.

  I said nothing except a few words of thanks to Ginny, who had given me the sweatshirt off her back and, more importantly, caught the errant Rowdy by credibly baiting him with a fistful of imaginary liver.

  Back in our cabin, even before I got into the shower, I treated him to the real thing. “Rowdy, I know what you did, big boy, and that’s all that really matters.” I stroked him gently, with the respect he deserved. The guard hair, his water-shedding outer coat, was almost dry, but his woolly undercoat remained damp. Since he was in no danger of contracting a serious chill, I let him enjoy the mal-deliciousness of being half frozen while I stood under the hottest shower my skin would tolerate and wished that I’d had the wisdom to stash a bottle of brandy among the extra leads, dumbbells, brushes, and other equipment I’d packed for Rowdy. My body turned a shade of red that reminded me of Phyllis Abbott’s hair and Nigel’s matching coat. In my rush to rescue her, I’d gone in fully dressed. My only visible wounds were the scratches she’d inflicted on my face, minor abrasions readily blamed on Rowdy. In a moment of petty nastiness, I hoped he’d raked Phyllis’s exposed body with his thick claws. I even regretted having given his nails a recent trimming.

  When I got out of the shower, I wrapped my head and body in the resort’s thick red towels and stood under the red-bulbed heat lamp that was mounted in the ceiling. When I’d gently combed my hair, I plugged in my blow dryer, bent from the waist, trained warm air on my sore scalp, and hoped that I was simultaneously facilitating the flow of blood to my brain. Phyllis Abbott had had no reason to drown me. If she’d been trying to protect herself, the attack had been entirely misguided: Until it occurred, I’d seen Phyllis as only one of the people who could have murdered Eva Spitteler. Had Phyllis tried to kill me for the same reason she’d actually murdered Eva Spitteler? And why had she done that?

  At least momentarily, we’d all had motives. If I read Craig correctly, he was a dog snob in the making; and in insulting Craig’s dog, Lucky, Eva had hurt Joy, Craig’s vulnerable child bride. She’d insulted Michael’s Akita, Jacob, she’d ridiculed Rowdy, and she’d undoubtedly demeaned a lot of other dogs as well. If Everett Dow had really blamed the death of his wife on the death of the pet shop pup he’d bought for her, and if he really believed that Eva’s business was a pet shop that sold dogs, he’d had a motive, too. Eric and Ginny, though, had had even stronger motives. Eva had slandered both of them. In spreading the malicious rumor that Judge Eric Grimaldi performed butchery to correct a common show fault, Eva had threatened Eric’s ability to get what he wanted most—judging assignments—and in so doing, she’d constituted a threat to his identity as an AKC judge. Eva had also maligned Ginny, a tracking judge and a breeder with a reputation to protect, a reputable breeder who had tried everything to get Bingo away from Eva—everything but murder. In trying to spoil camp by seeding it with pet sympathy cards, material on pet funerals, and scary clippings, Eva had annoyed the campers. In doing our best to ignore her harassment and in avoiding direct confrontation and accusation, most of us, I thought, had had the sense that in failing to give Eva the attention she evidently sought, we were dealing with her as effectively as possible; we’d followed the advice we’d have offered to anyone who wanted to eradicate unwelcome behavior in an untrained dog. In theory, Eva had constituted an economic threat to Heather and Sara as well as to Maxine. She’d almost certainly have done a better job of planning, organizing, and administering a camp than Max had managed; and she’d have drawn campers who wanted a more varied program than Heather and Sara would offer. In doing her best to make Maxine, Sara, and Heather look bad, and in recruiting campers at Waggin’ Tail, she’d tried to steal business from Maxine and, potentially at least, from Heather and Sara. But I’d never been able to envision the agility people as Eva’s killers. Among other things, the personal animosity between Eva and Heather had centered on Heather’s role as fecal inspector, and I couldn’t really believe that Eva had been murdered because of her failure to clean up after her dog. Mainly, though, I was convinced that tampering with the A-frame or with any other agility obstacle was the last method that either Sara or Heather would have chosen; on the contrary, either would almost have died herself to protect the reputation of her sport.

  But Eva’s murder had obviously required knowledge of agility—not expertise, not general information about it, but a detailed understanding of the construction of Heather and Sara’s A-frame. Anyone could have heard Eva announce her intention of going to the agility area at one A.M., but not everyone could have planned the murder. Don Abbott, for instance, would have had no idea that pins ran through the hinges or that raising the obstacle would require going under it to adjust the chains. The murder had had an obvious second requirement: the ability to predict Bingo’s behavior. In a sense, when Myrna had joked about Bingo being the obvious murderer, she’d been right: Whoever had killed Eva had been able to predict that, left on a down-stay while Eva adjusted the A-frame, the Lab would break, head for the obstacle, miss the contact zone, land hard, and send it crashing down on Eva. Maxine hadn’t attended agility: She was thus exonerated, as was Everett Dow. Cam met the requirements, and she also had the organizational skills to carry out the murder, a requirement that Maxine so demonstrably lacked. But if Cam had decided to murder anyone, she’d have used a neat, sure method. The uncertainty of this one bothered me, as I was sure it had bothered Phyllis Abbott. What if, for once in his life, Bingo had obeyed? What if he’d broken his stay before Eva reached the obstacle? What if …? Phyllis Abbott was not a sloppy person. My hair dry, my body warm, I wondered what Phyllis’s backup plan had been: for Eva Spitteler. For me, too.

  IN DIMINISHING the momentous by magnifying trivia, death gives rise to vain, self-serving thoughts. I first noticed the phenomenon just after my mother died. Whenever I went to the bathroom sink to bathe my swollen eyes, I’d look in the mirror and admire the haircut I’d gotten the day before. Worse than this evidence of my coldhearted conceit was the jarring sense of self-congratulation that accompanied it, as if I’d anticipated the funeral and deserved credit for my cleverness and practicality. By chance, I wore new underwear that day. The panties had lace trim. The prettiness seemed important. I was young. At the time, these observations led me to conclude that I was a horrible human being. I have since learned to forgive myself for rejoicing in tokens of my own survival.

  Tonight, I dressed with absurd care: new underwear, as on the day my mother died; navy socks with red toes and red stripes; a matching sweater, navy with a red sled dog team racing across my breasts; hiking boots tightly laced. It must have been midnight. The legendary loyalty of dogs extends beyond us to our daily routines. True to bedtime, Rowdy slept curled in his crate, its door open. As aware of Phyllis Abbott’s
presence on the other side of the cabin as if she’d been a corpse laid out there, I took a seat at the desk and pawed through the materials still strewn on its surface: a pen, legal pads, notes, magazines, lists of AKC transgressions, copies of rules, regulations, and guidelines, the Holy Writ applying to registration, dog shows, obedience trials, and AKC judges, the Word, the Commandments, all of it spread out where Judge Phyllis Abbott had seen it when she’d stopped in to say that Leah had called.

  I ran my eyes over the written rules in search of one that Phyllis Abbott might have violated: attempting to obtain judging assignments, looking at a catalog before the judging was complete, smoking in the ring, dressing in clothes that offended the dictates of good tastes. Phyllis Abbott? I tried to picture her in a low-cut satin top, a brass-studded leather miniskirt, and fishnet stockings, one high-heeled foot fetchingly propped on a baby gate, a catalog in her hand, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth as she brazenly solicited assignments. I found it impossible to imagine her as anything but a model of judicial propriety and responsibility. Like every other obedience judge in the country, she probably got letters of complaint from OTCH people about such momentous matters as half-point deductions for sits that looked perfectly straight from one angle and ever so slightly crooked from another. I felt certain that she handled such routine griping with her usual courtesy and authority. Phyllis knew the regulations, followed the procedures, and met the requirements; and she did so with admirable fairness and impartiality. Neither on nor off show grounds would she ever have abused a dog, uttered obscenities, or done anything else I could think of to merit even a mild reprimand from the AKC. Phyllis’s self-appointed priest, I examined her conscience and found it clean of sin—except, of course, that she’d murdered Eva Spitteler and then tried to drown me.