Ruffly Speaking (21 page)

“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—”

“Gypsum!” Alice Savery’s loud, dictatorial tone made the noun sound like an imperative verb.

Stephanie looked bewildered.

“Gypsum,” I interjected. “It helps undo salt damage. It’s worth a try.”

Alice Savery’s icy gaze was wandering somewhere in back of us, but I assumed that she was listening, because she snorted. Before that, I’d always thought that snorters pursued their hobby strictly in private, but Alice Savery actually managed to agitate the air in her nose in some Way that produced a remarkably loud and scornful noise. If Stephanie hadn’t been there, I might even have asked her to teach me how she’d done it, just out of curiosity, of course. Scorn isn’t a reaction I often need to express, and when the occasion arises, words suffice.