“Look, I don’t know anything about weaving,” I said. “Is it all right? Can you do something with it?”
“Of course.”
I was happy that my fur—well, Rowdy’s and Kimi’s—had passed inspection. We discussed the dimensions and design of the scarf and settled on a price that seemed reasonable enough, especially if you consider that the raw material was going to arrive really raw, fresh off the dogs.
Finally, since a profile of a weaver who’ll card and spin what your pet sheds is exactly the kind of piece that Dog’s Life will always buy, I asked Marcia how she’d feel about an article. She was Battered, even though Dog’s Life isn’t exactly The New Yorker. The big difference is that New Yorker profiles focus on people, whereas the Dog’s Life reader wants mainly to read about dogs. As you can imagine, then, I hoped that Rascal, her border collie, was photogenic and personable. I hadn’t even met him. I asked where he was.
“He was with Zeke,” she said, going to the window and pulling open one of the curtains. “My son. Maybe they’re back. Yeah, there’s Rascal.”
“Your yard’s fenced?” Newton has a tough, enforced leash law. I assumed that the dog wasn’t wandering loose. Marcia didn’t say anything, and I went on. “I love Cambridge, but most of the yards are so small. I always feel guilty about my dogs when I see one with lots of room.”
“Yeah. Actually, we used to live in Cambridge. Before.” In Newton, that means B.C.: Before Children. “We moved here for the schools. Just like everyone else.” She looked apologetic. “We’ve been here, um—Zeke was four, so it’s five years. You get used to it.”
“I’ll bet,” I said as Marcia walked me to the door. “And a big fenced yard for your dog. That must be more than a little compensation. I mean, if you’ve got enough room so you can even think about having sheep, too. Nice.”
Just as Marcia opened the front door, her telephone rang. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got to get that.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll call you about the article.”
The first thing I did when I stepped outside was to look around for the fence so I could peer over it or open the gate to see what the dog looked like and say hello to him. As I was crossing the lawn, though, a rather small, mostly black male border collie with a lowered head dashed around a corner of the house, stopped abruptly, and stared at me. Maybe you’ve never been held in the gaze of a border collie. Have you ever been hypnotized, entranced, overtaken, and fixed in place? Same thing. I wasn’t sure how to read this guy. He wasn’t barking at me, but I was pretty sure he didn’t want me to approach him, either. Well, I guess that says it: The effect of a border collie is to make you ask yourself what he wants you to do. They’re small dogs, at least in the eyes of someone with malamutes, and they’re fine-boned and fantastically agile, not burly or tough-looking, but they have an air of intense, authoritative intelligence. Goldens are the top obedience dogs in terms of raw numbers of titles, but there are lots of goldens and few border collies. If you take the numbers of dogs into account, the border collie is the unequaled, unbeatable great obedience breed.
I wondered whether I was supposed to say something, but this border collie, unlike the others I’d known, didn’t issue the usual clear directions. Did he want me out of his yard? And what was he doing loose? Well, damn it, I thought. I should’ve known. He’s so perfectly trained that they don’t keep him tied up or fenced in. On the other hand, hadn’t she said that he was neurotic? Or getting neurotic? I didn’t return the stare, but I watched him out of the comer of my eye and began to edge my way toward the street. He maintained a steady three-yard distance from me until I reached the sidewalk, where he came to a peculiar, rapid halt, backed up, and barked.
A boy with Marcia’s fair coloring came running around the side of the house and told him to quit it. He did. “He doesn’t bite,” the kid assured me. “And he doesn’t go out of the yard.”
“Ever?” I asked. “That’s amazing. Border collies are such smart dogs. Did you train him?”
The kid shook his head no.
“But he’s your dog? You’re Zeke?”
He nodded.
“My name is Holly Winter. I’ve just been visiting your mother. She’s going to make a scarf for me. A present for my
father. Are you ever lucky to have a border collie! They’re great dogs.”
He smiled and patted Rascal’s head.
“You go to school here, right? I forget the name of it. The one around the corner.”
“Case,” he said.
“Case. Did you have Mrs. Engleman?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She died.”
“I know,” I said. “She was a friend of mine.”
“She was a friend of mine, too.”
It seemed like a strange thing for a boy of nine or ten to say about his kindergarten teacher. He reminded me of Rascal. They were both hard to read.
“I miss her,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, taking the dog by the collar. “I gotta go.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Bye.”
I didn’t notice the collar until Zeke wrapped his hand around it. I still didn’t understand Zeke, but I knew why Rascal didn’t move beyond the lawn, why no ugly chain link marred the pretty landscape. Here’s how it works. Around the perimeter of the yard, you bury a wire that transmits a radio signal that’s picked up by a receiver on the dog’s collar. Whenever the dog crosses the boundary, he hears a warning beep. Warning? Oh, yeah. If he doesn’t back up instantly, the collar gives him an electric shock. A system like that isn’t cheap, but, as I’ve said, it doesn’t mar the pretty landscape.
Chapter 14
AS soon as I got home, I kicked Leah, Jeff, and some of the Seths and Emmas out of the kitchen, sat down at the table, buried my toes under Rowdy’s nonelectrified chin, and did a column about electronic training. My editor, Bonnie, had rejected my previous columns and articles on the topic because the subject “is not of interest to the readers of Dog’s Life. ” The readers she had in mind were mostly advertisers, not subscribers, but she’s right that some of our readers do use electronic trainers and might not be happy to read that they ought to quit. As I told Bonnie after the last rejection, St. Paul’s editor probably told him that the Epistles were not of interest to the Corinthians, either. Bonnie replied rather sharply that Pm hired to write about dogs, not to spread the gospel. Then she hung up. I felt angry and perplexed. I mean, I wasn’t trying to suggest anything weird or radical.
Anyway, the column wrote itself, and when it was done, I outlined another on tips for removing dog hair from carpeting and upholstery.
“So probably I won’t even bother mailing it,” I told Rita, who stopped in when she got home from work. “And Bonnie’ll love Holly’s Household Hints, and she won’t be mad at me, and I’ll spend the rest of my life telling people how to get woven-in dog hairs out of the furniture. Christ! Here I am feeling like St. Paul, and I end up Heloise. Honest to God, I feel ashamed of myself. Just what you want to hear now, right? It’s probably the first time today that anyone said that to you. I’m sorry. Scotch or gin?”
“Gin,” she said, “if you have limes.”
Because Groucho has never won anything at a fun match or an obedience trial—he’s never so much as been to one pre-Novice class—Rita has to buy serving trays, pottery sets, goblets, mugs, mint dishes, fruit bowls, candle holders, and compotes. Her tumblers and shot glasses are not engraved with pictures of hurdles and names of kennel clubs. Even so, she manages to contain her envy if I pour generously and refrain from reminding her that I could set a banquet table with the booty my dogs and my mother’s have brought home over the years. When I’d dropped in ice cubes and lime, I added enough gin to clear the high jump.
“So how many patients did you see today?” I handed her the glass.
“Clients,” she corrected me. “Eight.”
“So what’s one more? Because I have this feeling sometimes that I’m being driven crazy.”
“So does everyone else,” she said, “except the people who are.”
“Would you mind listening?”
“I can’t. I cannot listen. I am listened out. So talk, anyway. Just don’t expect a response.”
“Just one thing,” I said. “When I feel like this? You know what I feel like? I’m in ancient Rome. Okay? And everybody says, ‘Hey, it’s been a stressful week, so let’s go down to the Coliseum and have a few beers and watch the lions maul a few Christians.’ Right? Well, there must’ve been a few people—there must’ve been a few, at least, mostly women, I bet—who said, ‘But I don’t want to. I think it’s cruel.’ So people said, ‘What’s wrong, with you?’ Here is this thing that is obviously cruel, and sometimes I feel like the only person who wants to yell, ‘This is barbaric!’ ”
“You’re yelling it right now,” Rita said.
“Yeah, and at you. You see? It’s pointless. You don’t need to hear it. And what else do I do? I sit down and write a column that says that shock collars are great, and here’s a whole new way to use them. You take the collar and put it around your own neck. Every time the dog does something you don’t like, you push the button. Okay? Fair is fair. Who taught him to do whatever he did? Obviously, you did, so you’re the one who gets jolted. I could probably think up a vicious name for my remote training method and market it. Maybe Marcia Brawley would buy that. I could make it really expensive. Marcia Brawley is this woman... She’s a perfectly nice woman except that she gives electric shocks to her dog. Otherwise, she’s a nice, civilized person. When in Rome. It makes me feel crazy.”
Rita looked sad and shook her head. Then she drank some gin and licked her lips. “None of this is new to you,” she said. “That there’s a lot of cruelty? This is not new. And most of the time, you can step back and say, ‘Well, why would someone do this? And how can I help her find a better way to get what she wants?’ But today you write this adolescent essay about people putting shock collars on themselves. And you regress into this semi-grandiose vision, where the rest of us are sort of casual, decadent sadists and you’re the only sensitive person on the planet.”
“Grandiose,” I said. I was glad I hadn’t mentioned St. Paul. Rita is really amazing. She can spend all day with her patients or clients or whatever she’s calling them at the moment and then still find the right words and, not only that, say them so you can hear them. “Yeah.”
“You ever use a choke collar?”
“Yes. Everyone does, practically.”
“Is it cruel? Does it seem that way to people?”
“Okay! Yes. The more I train, the less I use the training collar, and the more I use rewards. Okay. But I get the point: Judge not. If I have to correct a dog, I do, and there are people who’d say I’m cruel. And for all I know, the damned collar was her husband’s idea. Maybe she objected, and they had a fight, and she lost. So now she feels ashamed. Probably she hates it. Or she doesn’t know what else to do. Probably she’s doing the best she can.”
“Most people are,” Rita said.
Among the people doing the best they could was Jack Engle-man, who called me the next morning to ask me to stop in because he wanted some advice. I am not St. Paul, and there are a lot of kind people out there besides me. And, oh, yes. I am not always kind. But the fact is that Jack wanted my advice about yet one more act of cruelty in this kind world that is not— I repeat, not—ancient Rome. The cruelty was not, of course, Jack’s and certainly not directed at Caprice, who was dancing and bouncing around as we sat at Jack’s kitchen table drinking good coffee with real cream.
“Caprice looks good,” I said. “You haven’t let her put on weight.” I’d been wondering whether Caprice was the reason he wanted to see me. It seemed hard to believe that she’d developed some kind of behavior problem, but dogs feel loss, too, and maybe she was showing it.
“She’s fine, except she keeps bringing me her leash. Rose taught her to fetch it. Vera did the same thing. Rose’d say, ‘Come on, let’s do some work!’ and Caprice’d go and get the leash and carry it to her. And now she’ll just go get it, all on her own, and jump around all excited and look at me.” He shrugged. “And I’m supposed to know what to do? I’m supposed to know where to begin? So I take it, and I tell her ‘Good girl,’ and maybe I take her out for a walk or I get her to dance or roll over or something, and then I give her a cookie, but she knows. She knows.”
Cookie, by the way, is what a lot of old-time handlers call a dog biscuit. Don’t ask me why, but they do, and the word reminded me of Rose, who always used it. My mother did, too. I hoped Jack also knew the right kind of cookies to buy, not those mushy supermarket ones, but the expensive, really hard ones that remove tartar.
“Jack, I know everyone must be saying, ‘If there’s anything I can do...’ But is there?” It occurred to me that he might ask me to work with Caprice, to train her and handle her, or, preferably, from my point of view, to help him find a professional to do it. “Do you need any help with Caprice?”
He shook his head slowly and smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “She’s no trouble. The only trouble is she’s still looking for Rose. And Heather Ross offered. She offered to handle her. But I don’t think Rose would’ve liked that.”
“I don’t think so, either,” I said, and then tried to make it clear that, unlike Heather, I wasn’t fishing for a chance to handle Caprice. “I didn’t mean... I mean, if you decide you want someone to handle her, I can find you someone, but I’m not a professional handler.”
“Oh, no, no, I wasn’t asking,” he assured me. “No, no. Maybe sometime, but... No. What I want is... From time to time, you do some rescue work?”
Caprice gave a sudden bound and landed in Jack’s lap. He rubbed the black curls on her head. I stared at both of them. It had never occurred to me that he’d want to get rid of her.
I must have looked horrified, but I nodded. “A little. Hardly any. Mostly a few malamutes. You want...? But you don’t need...” If he didn’t want Caprice, he could sell her. The poodle rescue league, like all the others—for Akitas, goldens, malamutes, Dobermans, shelties, you name it—ends up with some wonderful, perfectly trainable dogs, but nobody but nobody hands over a dog like Caprice to a rescue league.
But I’d misread Jack. It was the first time since Rose’s death that I’d heard his rolling laugh. “You should see your face!” It was probably red. “I couldn’t imagine, but...”
Then he turned serious. “Let me show you something. Caprice, move.” She hopped to the floor. He got up, opened a cabinet, pulled out a photo developer’s envelope, and came back to the table. “Rose was the world’s worst photographer,” he said. “Every picture she ever took had a tree sticking out of someone’s head, or people had their eyes closed, or it was out of focus. But take a look at this, anyway.”
In the photograph he handed me, the only object in sharp focus was the tall Norway maple between his house and the Johnsons’. The man and the dog to the right of the tree and some distance behind it, in the Johnsons’ yard, were too blurred to identify with any certainty. The man’s hair was blond, but he was even more out of focus than the dog, probably because he’d been moving. The dog looked like a shepherd, but I couldn’t tell for sure which one. The man could’ve been either of the sons I’d seen. He seemed to be hitting the dog with something, maybe a baseball bat, but even the action wasn’t entirely clear.
“Rose took this,” I said. “Did she say who it is? And which dog?”
Jack shook his head. “Never said a word.”
“Why?”
“The why’s the one thing I know,” he said, patting his thigh to call Caprice. She ran toward him and leapt into his lap. “Good girl.” Then he seemed to change the subject. “You want to know something about a good marriage? I’ll tell you a secret. You want to find a good husband, you find somebody who’ll always give you a good argument. Religion, politics, anything. Whatever else you do, Holly, if you want to stay married, you don’t marry yourself. You have
to agree to disagree. And maybe nobody likes it, and nobody understands why you did such a crazy thing, but forget it. You do.”
I wasn’t sure I understood, but I nodded, anyway.
“So about any kind of trouble—causing any kind of trouble, stirring things up—Rose and I did not always see eye-to-eye. I wanted peace. I still do.”
“With the Johnsons.”
“With the Johnsons. And now? This is my home.” He stretched a hand in the direction of their house. “Theirs is theirs. I want to stay, I live with them. We coexist.”
“So when Rose took the picture, she just did it, and she had it developed. And she didn’t say anything to you.”
He nodded. “But she did talk about... You remember that case? She followed that very closely.”
“The man who was convicted.”
Jack nodded again. Practically everyone in Massachusetts knew about the case. A guy had been convicted and sent to jail sometime the previous winter or early spring because a smart, caring neighbor didn’t just run out screaming and yelling when the guy was beating his dog with a board, but carefully took a whole series of photographs. The neighbor’s photographic evidence was crucial.
“So,” I said, “she knew that pictures would do it, that if she got it on film, she could really get him. It’s a little hard to tell in this picture, but why else would she’ve taken it? She saw whoever it is beating a dog, and she remembered the case. So she got the camera. This is the only one? The only picture?”
“She was a terrible photographer,” he said affectionately. “Yeah.” It was impossible to disagree. I nearly asked him whether he’d been keeping an eye on the Johnsons’ house and yard, but I stopped myself. He’d had other concerns. “Obviously, this isn’t enough. I wonder if... At a match, not so long ago—Rose was there—the middle brother, Dale, showed up with his dog, and he started hitting him, right there. There was sort of a scene. But... from what I can tell, this looks... Is this still going on?”
Paws before dying Page 10
