Ruffly Speaking

by Conant, Susan

  The cookbooks on the lower shelves still showed the same old dog-gnawed spines, and Nelson and Jennie had left permanent tooth marks on the legs of the table and chairs. But the counters were now almost bare, and there wasn’t a Nylabone or a ball in sight. No one was singing, and the smell was so unpromising of dinner that if I’d been blindfolded, I’d have been unable to guess which room I was in. On a counter under the bracket that had held Morris’s wall phone sat an answering machine and a big white phone with oversize buttons.

  The light from the windows and doors and from recessed spots set everywhere in the ceiling was as bright as ever, and when I knelt down to say hello to Ruffly, I got a good look at him. I didn’t really expect to find some diagnostic clue that Steve had missed, but if Ruffly happened to be showing one, I wasn’t about to forgo the chance to observe it, either. My close-up inspection revealed only that Stephanie took beautiful care of her dog. Ruffly’s black-and-tan coat felt as smooth, clean, and healthy as it looked. His eyes were clear, his nails neatly clipped, his teeth free of tartar. His giant ears had been recently swabbed. I ran my hands Over the dog, talking softly to him as I did so.

  “Doug’s out back planting things.” Stephanie was uncorking a bottle of wine. She paused to gesture toward the deck.

  I smiled. “I saw his car out front.”

  “I asked him to stay for dinner—I thought you wouldn’t mind?—but he says he can’t.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Wine is all right, isn’t it? White. But if you’d prefer something else...”

  “It’s fine,” I assured her.

  Stephanie wore a loose dress of some unbleached homespun material. When she raised her arm to pour the wine, the dress looked like the ceremonial costume of some ancient religion. To my surprise, she said, “Doug is still so guilt-ridden.”

  “He’s very conscientious. He fusses about details. But I wouldn’t say he’s—”

  “It’s the garden.” She spoke very softly. “You do know about Morris?”

  Answer yes to a question like that, and you already know as much as you’re ever going to. “Sort of,” I said.

  “Well, it was Doug who... I’ll show you later.” Stephanie handed me a goblet of wine. “Now probably isn’t the best time. Doug... Well, the garden is... It’s a box, really, with the dirt inside. A raised bed. He built a whole elaborate little miniature garden. There are hoops that go over it, and there’s plastic that goes over the hoops, so you can turn it into a little greenhouse, and there’s some kind of underground heating and watering system. But the point is, Doug built this little garden as a gift for Morris. And they planted... I don’t know a thing about gardening—and not much more about cooking! But all sorts of edible flowers and exotic greens, salad greens, and that’s where Morris must have begun gathering— But what a thing to start talking about! We’re having a salad! I don’t...” She faltered.

  “That’s fine,” I assured her. “I’m not—”

  “I bought everything. After, uh, after what happened, Doug tore out everything in the raised bed. That’s what he’s out there doing now, planting it with lettuce and something or other. He bought little lettuce plants. It was just an empty box of dirt, rather depressing, not that there was any real danger, but, even so, he’s so guilt-ridden....”

  Whatever the true cause of Morris’s death, Stephanie clearly accepted Doug’s account. I was about to say something about Mr. Winer, Doug’s father, when Doug tapped lightly on one of the open glass doors of the deck and walked in. The tapping set Ruffly to work, but as soon as Stephanie reminded him that Doug was a welcome visitor, Ruffly calmed down.

  At Stephanie’s insistence, Doug accepted a small glass of wine, and the three of us moved outdoors to the deck, taking seats on the tan pipe-and-canvas lawn chairs that had been torn and scratched by Morris’s dogs. The raised garden, located a few yards beyond the deck, was clearly visible to all of us. As soon as Stephanie caught sight of the rows of lettuce and some orange marigolds that Doug had just planted, she said a polite and appropriately subdued thanks. Although the lettuce would immediately bolt and turn bitter in the July heat, I should probably have added a quiet word of admiration, but after a quick glance, I averted my eyes. Mounds of earth are what they are; one pine box looks pretty much like another; and Morris Lamb really was dead. What threw me into near tachycardia was that, at first glance, the elements suggested the grave site of a giant recently interred by a lazy undertaker who’d only half buried the coffin, but had piled the raw earth with flowers nonetheless.

  When I recovered, Stephanie was inquiring about how things were going at Winer & Lamb, and Doug was telling her all about the expansion of the mail-order side of the business and the preparation of the new catalog. “Our old ones!” he exclaimed in disgust. “Did you ever...? No, of course not, why would you? You don’t really cook, do you? Either of you? Not to speak of? Or collect? Well, you wouldn’t have had any reason to see our old catalogs—it’s a very specialized clientele—and, frankly, the way I felt when I looked through our last catalog was, well... I wished they’d all been lost in the mail! That nasty, cheap paper and the typographical errors! No sense of design whatsoever—nothing but a horrid little list. It was so amateurish that it made me sick.”

  Stephanie pointed out that knowledgeable collectors were probably satisfied with a simple list, and I added that the dealers who specialized in used and rare dog books relied on catalogs that were far from color glossy, but Doug said that we both sounded just like Morris, who hadn’t understood that to survive the threat posed by the megabookstores, they had to expand the mail-order business. Morris hadn’t wanted to be bothered with the tremendous work required to turn out a thoroughly professional product—speaking of which, he must fly! In taking leave, Doug thanked his hostess, told me what a pleasure it had been to see me again, and otherwise displayed an updated version of Mr. Winer’s gentlemanly manners.

  After Doug left, Stephanie and I returned to the kitchen, where she overbroiled two salmon filets and prepared a big salad that we eventually ate at the big glass-topped table on the deck. Dessert was a pastry cream and fresh fruit tart from the combination bakery, cheese shop, and gourmet take-out on Huron near the corner of Appleton. Instead of blurting out something like, “Oh, I’ve bought this, too!” I tactfully limited myself to exclaiming about how wonderful the concoction looked and tasted, but, to her credit, Stephanie made no effort to pass it off as her own and immediately told me where it had come from. After dinner, she made the inevitable French decaf. As we sat on the deck drinking the coffee and talking, Stephanie amazed me by asking whether I’d mind if she smoked.

  “Not at all,” I assured her.

  “Matthew has forbidden me to smoke in the house, but every once in a while, I give in to the old urge,” she explained. “You’re sure?”

  “Really,” I said.

  She went indoors and returned with an ashtray, cigarettes, and a big red lighter. I honestly didn’t mind. I was merely surprised. Wine, sure, but tobacco? Not exactly biblical. Also, if Stephanie had been a lawyer or a professor instead of a priest, smoking would still have seemed out of character.

  Throughout the preparations for dinner and the meal itself, as Stephanie and I spoke lightly about Cambridge, Doug, and Winer & Lamb—and rather heavily about Rita and Ivan the Terrible—Ruffly had been a model hearing dog. When Stephanie had put the salmon under the broiler, she’d set a timer, and Ruffly had performed his sounding-working dance in response to the buzzer. While we ate, he lay peacefully under the table at Stephanie’s feet. By the time we’d both emptied our coffee cups and she’d finished her cigarette, I was convinced that Ruffly was the most problem-free dog I’d ever met. Stephanie had graciously turned my dog-watching visit into a social occasion, and dinner had been a success, but my real purpose had been to witness one of Ruffly’s odd episodes, and, in that, I’d once again failed completely. As I was helping Stephanie clear the table, I wondered whether Ruffly�
��s problems, far from being serious, were nonexistent, entirely imaginary, the product of the human mind. In referring a psychotherapist to Ruffly’s owner, maybe I’d done things the wrong way around. On the other hand, maybe Steve and I were both missing something—maybe there was something terribly wrong with the wonderful little dog.

  21

  Rita’s audiologist had presented her with a self-help book about hearing loss that Rita and I agreed was largely a sales pitch for hearing aids. Both the audiologist and Rita’s ear-nose-and-throat specialist had sold Rita on the benefits of wearing two hearing aids, and the book offered the same arguments about the joys of binaural hearing. Having paid for both aids, Rita insisted on wearing both. According to the experts and the book, two aids produced sharp stereo sound that one little amplifier couldn’t even begin to match. Rita didn’t dispute the claim. Far from it. The unbearable racket was precisely what bothered her most. Mainly, however, Rita hated the book because it reminded her that she had a hearing loss.

  My complaint was different from hers. Let me say that I like to read. I enjoy every volume published by Denlinger’s, Howell, and T.F.H. If I had the money, I’d own every item in the catalogs of 4-M Enterprises and Direct Book Service. I like James Herriot and Donald McCaig. After The Call of the Wild, my favorite novel is Flush. I’m convinced that Love on a Leash is the funniest story ever written and that Helen Thayer’s Polar Dream is the most thrilling. Strictly between us, though, my opinion of almost every other book I’ve ever opened, from The Brothers Karamazov to Roget’s Thesaurus, is that it would have been all right if only it had had a little more to say about dogs. So my objection to the hearing-loss guide was nothing new.

  But can you imagine? Close to two hundred pages about how to deal with hearing loss? And not so much as a single sentence stating that hearing dogs even exist. Dostoyevsky was pushing it, but, look: What choice did he have? Mitya buys a Cherrybrook franchise, becomes the first authorized Bil Jac distributor in Moscow, and eventually adds a successful U-Wash-Em pet grooming facility. Ivan Fyodorovitch breeds borzois, pursues lure coursing, and cheers up. Alyosha, D.V.M., joins a lucrative upper-crust small-animal practice. Happy family of real dog people. Nothing to moon or bicker about. Ergo, no plot. But this hearing-loss expert? What was his excuse?

  The deceitful book was, however, where I learned to make sure that Stephanie was looking at me when I began talking to her. For instance, instead of addressing Stephanie while she was stowing the leftover fruit tart in the depths of the refrigerator, I transferred my attention to Ruffly—not that it ever wanders far from the nearest dog—and had just begun to move toward him when, WHAM—all at once, his big ears folded flat, and he jerked his head as if he’d been walloped. What I saw looked exactly like hand shyness.

  But where was the invisible hand from which Ruffly shied? Alien spacecraft hovering over Highland? And, no, Morris Lamb’s house had not been built on the site of an ancient pet cemetery. To judge from the way Morris’s glass cube was awkwardly jammed against Alice Savery’s yard, it had probably been erected on the site of nothing more ominous than a delphinium border, so relax. Holly Winter, not Stephen King. And in case you’ve forgotten —or maybe never knew before—dogs really do hallucinate. A particularly weird form of the disorder occurs in the King Charles spaniel; the affected animals persist in trying to catch imaginary flies. Isn’t it interesting to be a dog writer? And you thought Stephen King was strange. But does Stephen King know about hallucinatory fly chomping in the King Charles spaniel? Probably not. Stephen King is strictly make-believe. If you’re after the truly freakish, check out reality.

  That’s where I started. As I’ve mentioned, Ruffly looked like a mix of a lot of different breeds, but the King Charles spaniel wasn’t one of them, and Ruffly just didn’t strike me as a dog who’d had a momentary brainstorm. Canine distemper can produce a fly-biting syndrome, but the immunized Ruffly had just passed one of Steve Delaney’s exhaustive neurological exams. Besides, Ruffly was wincing, not snapping at insects.

  The episode lasted only a few seconds. When it ended, Ruffly’s head returned to its normal position, but he kept his ears pinned flat, and he acted vaguely confused or disoriented. He moved first toward one of the glass-paneled doors, then scuttled to Stephanie, who was closing the refrigerator door. When he reached her, he trained huge, puzzled eyes on her face and pawed at the skirt of her dress as if he wanted to tell her something.

  I shouted, just the way the book said not to. “Stephanie, it happened! Ruffly... Stephanie, this dog is reacting to something.” During the episode, I’d had my eyes exclusively on Ruffly. If I remembered correctly, he’d been watching Stephanie. But I wasn’t positive. And I might have missed some stimulus that had triggered that dramatic response. “I’m going to look outside,” I said hurriedly. “It’s possible...”

  With that, I went tearing out to the deck and down the stairs to the backyard, where I paused a second to get my bearings. Floodlights illuminated the lawn and the raised bed, but the rhododendrons and azaleas at the sides and the rear of the property were big, dark lumps that could have been anything. I held still and listened. A car passed on Highland. I tried to remember whether I even knew the layout of Morris’s yard. What separated his cube from Alice Savery’s colonial wedding cake, it seemed to me, was, first, a narrow walk that led to his yard and deck, then a thin row of tall bushes—lilacs, maybe—and then, beyond the bushes, perhaps ten feet of grass and flowers that belonged to Miss Savery. Just as I headed for the walkway, bright floods suddenly came on; a motion detector had sensed my presence.

  Faith in the crime-deterrent powers of light always amazes me. If you were a burglar, a mugger, or a murderer, would a little harmless illumination send chills down your spine? Does a stupid little light bulb really calm your fears? Of course not. So if you’re scared, quit assuming that every criminal is Count Dracula! Get a dog! Get a great big dog!

  Still unconvinced? The motion sensor did for me precisely what it would have done for an intruder— lighted my way and sped my progress. As I dashed down the walk, I heard nothing but the slap of Reebok soles on concrete, but when I reached the street and slammed to a halt, Highland suddenly burst into sound. From somewhere between Alice Savery’s house and her prize fence, a childish imitation of a rebel yell rang out, followed almost immediately by whoops, giggles, and a rapid-fire series of firecracker pops that emanated, it seemed to me, from the far side of her property. Simultaneously, Alice Savery’s front door opened, and Stephanie and Ruffly emerged from Morris’s house. Despite the recent slap by the invisible hand, Ruffly began to bark, and I suppose that he must have run toward the source of one of the sounds, too, but I didn’t watch him. Instead, I sprinted after the little boy who’d just dashed out of Alice Savery’s yard and was heading down Highland, away from Morris’s house and toward his whooping and giggling companions, who’d set off the cherry bombs and promptly fled.

  When I reached the end of Alice Savery’s fence, Ivan—unmistakably, inevitably Ivan—was briefly visible under a streetlight ahead of me, but by the time I’d passed the next two houses, I’d lost him. I jog with Rowdy and Kimi, but I’m no real runner, especially by comparison with a pack of adrenaline-powered little boys who knew every twist and turn in the maze of driveways, paths, and through-the-yard shortcuts of Highland Street. On the street and sidewalks ahead, I saw nothing, and the only sound I heard came from behind me: women’s voices. Showing Alaskan malamutes in obedience has forced me to become a good sport. I hate losing as much as ever, of course; all I’ve really learned is to behave myself.

  The path of humility led back to Alice Savery’s house, where Stephanie Benson and Miss Savery stood about a yard apart in the pool of light thrown by a globe over the front door. Alice Savery held herself rigid. With her arms tightly folded across her chest and her fingers digging into her biceps, she reminded me of a petrified first-time Novice A handler during the Long Sit and Down. A steel beam planted near Miss Savery would
have looked comparatively warm and relaxed, but Stephanie’s posture and manner conveyed solicitousness as well as ease. In trying to calm Miss Savery’s fears, she was engaged in what seemed to be a familiar task. When Stephanie presented me to Miss Savery, I stretched out a polite hand. Miss Savery responded with nothing but a cursory nod. Mostly because I needed something to do with my rejected right hand, I quickly crossed my arms. In the absence of a malamute, I’m a confident handler. Besides, I’d shown under judges a lot meaner than Alice Savery. Neither she nor I acknowledged that we’d met before.

  “The kids have vanished,” I reported.

  “They’ve left a little something behind.” Stephanie held up an object so anomalous that for a moment I didn’t even recognize what it was: a canister of iodized table salt.

  “What...?”

  “It kills grass, apparently,” Stephanie explained.

  At the end of October, I would’ve caught on immediately, but this was the beginning of July. Once I under-stood, I wondered whether I needed to explain. I decided that I did, for Stephanie’s sake, anyway. People from Manhattan are capable of not knowing the most astoundingly ordinary things. The first time Rita saw a raccoon in Cambridge, she honestly did not know what it was, and when I told her, she assumed that it must have escaped from a zoo.

  “It’s an old Halloween trick,” I said. “Is the box empty?”

  “Yes,” Stephanie said, “and there’s at least one other empty one on the lawn.”

  “Usually they write things.” I felt oddly embarrassed, as if my explanation of the details of the childish prank somehow made me a participant. “Swear words. Then when the salt kills the grass...” I stopped. The rest was obvious.

  Stephanie was outraged. “What a cruel thing to do! And how incredibly silly! But, really, they couldn’t possibly have understood how hard Miss Savery works in her garden, or they’d never have done such a terrible thing.” Stretching out a robed arm toward Miss Savery, she continued. “I am so sorry that—”