Stud Rites (4 page)

”I still can’t understand it,” Pam said.

”Splintered vote,” I volunteered. ”Or name recognition. That’s what Janet Switzer thinks. Hunnewell’s name is in all the breed books.”

Janet is Rowdy’s breeder and one of my mentors. ”And if they’d known Hunnewell,” she’d continued, ’they’d have scooped up the little piece of fecal matter and deposited him in the Doggie Dooley where he belongs.”

James Hunnewell had drawn a surprisingly large entry: Since no one had even seen him for a long time, few exhibitors harbored resentments about losses under him or had any memories at all about how he’d conducted himself in his ring. Janet had advised me to enter. ”The old coot’s got to be on his last legs,” remarked Janet, who isn’t on her own first. ”Who knows? He might kick the bucket any day, and you could luck out with a substitute judge.”

Faith Barlow, Rowdy’s handler, had taken Hunnewell’s election as a personal challenge. ”There’s not a judge on earth that can intimidate me,” she’d bragged. ”There are a few I won’t show under on principle, but otherwise, if it stands in the ring and hands out ribbons, I’ll show under it; and if it growls at me, I’ll growl back.”

Betty Burley, though, had angrily refused to enter under James Hunnewell and had urged me to do the same. Betty’s attitude, I thought, must date to some ancient injury or insult, a nasty remark that Hunnewell had made twenty or thirty years ago, an unkind word about her dogs, perhaps, or a mean-spirited comment about Betty’s early rescue efforts.

I ignored Betty’s advice and entered both dogs. Kimi was just beginning her career in conformation. I entered her in Open bitches. She’d be handled by my cousin Leah. I entered Rowdy, my champion, in Best of Breed. He’d be handled by Faith Barlow. Neither of my dogs would be in the ring until Saturday. Consequently, I had all day tomorrow to observe how Judge James Hunnewell treated those who’d complimented him by paying entry fees for his opinion of their dogs. If I didn’t want my teenage cousin in his ring, I could pull Kimi or, over Leah’s protests, no doubt, find another handler. Faith could take care of herself. I took her at more than her word: If Hunnewell bit her, she’d bite back.

ACCORDING TO MYTH, the New England colonists fled the British Isles in search of religious freedom. In truth, they were extradited—summarily booted out of the homeland of dog worship following a little-known incident, an act of heresy, if you will, that took place at the famous Canterbury Cathedral. There a rebellious clique of Brewsters, Bradfords, Carvers, and Winslows refused to join their fellow worshipers in what would otherwise have been the unequivocally fervent rendering of ”All Creatures Great and Small.” As everyone knows, the involuntary expatriates first sought refuge in Holland. In the course of a barge tour of Amsterdam, however, one of their number—a Stan-dish, I believe—uttered a very loud and extremely rude remark about a Keeshond, thus causing the previously hospitable Dutch to toss the future colonists over the dikes and into the cold seas of the Atlantic, where they drifted for many months before finally washing up on shore in the vicinity of a large rock on which many of them deservedly cracked their heads. Fable? Fact: The

New England colonists attached dire theological significance to the backward spelling of
d-o-g.
The black mass: the litany backward. The dog: the creature of Satan.

What leads me to the topic of the New England colonies is not the hotel’s decor, which was Hawaiian, but my conviction that somewhere on Maui, the Milestone chain has erected a hotel and conference facility structurally identical to the one in Danville, Massachusetts, but adorned with Ye Olde New England materials and motifs. The building itself is, I believe, the same as this one: the two-story motel-hotel at one end, the exhibition hall at the other, with the space between devoted to a large lobby, a bar, two restaurants, a variety of meeting, assembly, and banquet rooms, and the center consisting of a cavernous mock atrium that does not open to the sky and contains some droopy-looking trees that obviously wish it did and many others that, being plastic, don’t care. Through the center of the atrium at the Maui Milestone flows a miniature artificial trout stream spanned by a tiny replica of a genuine New England covered bridge. Unwary guests trip on the legs of spinning wheels, regain their balance, set down drinks on cobbler’s bench tables, and order refills from service personnel garbed for a grammar-school reenactment of the First Thanksgiving.

The Milestone chain being a microcosm of a balanced universe, here in New England the equally cavernous atrium, the Lagoon, was, as its name suggested, a sort of South Seas grotto, the focal point of which was a tropical lava-rock waterfall overhung by artificial coconut palms and set near a plastic-mahogany bar shaped like an outrigger canoe. The walls, papered in what I think was grass cloth, were festooned with exotic-looking paddles, feather headdresses, bunches of fake bananas, and so many ukeleles that if strummed in unison their strings could have drowned out the music being piped into the lobby: a Muzak version of ”As Time Goes By” with the synthesizer set to the sound of Hawaiian guitars.

My room, however, was luxurious, and even if it hadn’t been, the Danville Milestone possessed the one advantage that offsets anything from outrigger bars and ukeleles to bathrooms with rusty baseboards and no hot water: It allowed dogs!

Such was the gist of the violent complaint currently being lodged with the hotel manager by a red-faced man who brandished a clenched fist at the innocent-looking black announcement board built into the wall of the hotel lobby. The white plastic letters stuck into the grooves spelled out:

Thursday, October 31

The Danville Milestone Hotel

and Conference Facility

Aloha!

Alaskan Malamute National Specialty

—Oahu Room

Luncheon and Meeting—Wahiawa Room

Lofgren-Jenkinson Wedding Party

Bachelor Dinner—Kailua

Room Bride’s Dinner—Wahiawa Room

”Crystal plans her wedding,” boomed the man, ”a full goddamn year in advance! She checks out restaurants, she visits historical houses, she goes to hotels, museums—and she picks
this
place! And her mother comes and sees it, and then she drags Greg out here, and they drag
me
out here, and frankly, all this South Seas shit puts me off, but, hey, they’re going to Hawaii for their honeymoon, and Crystal’s crazy about the |dea... And this is the middle of
last
winter! Booked m advance! For
three
goddamn days! We got two dinners tonight, and we got the rehearsal tomorrow, and we got the rehearsal dinner, and then we got the wedding breakfast, and then we got the wedding and the reception, and NOW! Five minutes ago! Now, we pull in, and what do we find? This place booked
ten
months ahead of time, and you, you sneaky little son of a bitch, did not see fit to inform us that Crystal and Greg’s
dream
wedding was gonna happen in the middle of a fucking
dog show!”

I found the sentiment as shocking as the language. To
have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part?
You’ll never convince a real dog person that those words were written about a human relationship.

”Daddy, please! Mummy, make him stop!” The bride-to-be, Crystal, wore numerous layers of loose-waisted, flowing garments. Even so, it was obvious that at any moment, her father might have reason to regret his present loud display of temper: In terms of experience at whelping boxes, our national specialty was as good as a convention of midwives, and when it came to familiarity with multiple births, far, far, better.

Daddy did not stop. And Mummy, a midforties, nonpregnant Crystal, with the same pert features and the same long blond hair, didn’t make him.

The manager was heroic. ”Now, Mr. Jenkinson, let me assure you that there will be no conflict whatsoever. The two, er, events are scheduled for entirely separate and distinct facilities; and dogs are never under any circumstance permitted in the undesignated areas of this hotel.” As he spoke, he must have been employing some nonverbal technique he’d mastered in the Milestone’s management-trainee program, which, I became convinced, was staffed by Scottish shepherds, because, as effectively as a Border collie, the manager cut the bridal party out of the crowd in the lobby and herded together in a far corner the six members of the nuptial flock: Crystal, her parents, another couple about their age? and a young man who looked so frighteningly like a Ken doll that if Crystal’s condition had not suggested otherwise, I’d have wondered whether anatomy would permit him to consummate the marriage.

As if preparing to flee the pen, Crystal lurked on the periphery of the group with her back toward the others. Catching sight of the only genuinely four-legged creature in the lobby, she stamped a foot and announced to everyone and no one that she, for one, didn’t mind at all, because she, for one,
liked
dogs.

”Greg? Greg! Greg, look!” She tapped life-size bridegroom Ken on the shoulder. ”That’s what
I want!”
Pointing to a malamute bitch so dirty that I’d have been ashamed to take her to the local park, the bride-and-mother-to-be announced,
”I
want a husky! Greg? Greg, that’s what we should’ve asked for! We should’ve asked for a baby puppy!”

Greg began to move his lips, but before sound emerged, his mother, as she obviously was (Ken in drag), intervened. ”Crystal, dear, you’re forgetting that Gregory is allergic to dogs.” As if pausing to permit a thought to travel across Crystal’s mind, she let five or ten seconds elapse before adding, ”And cats.”

Folding his arms across his chest, Greg mumbled. I caught only one word. The syllables were distinct and prolonged:
Mommmmmeeeee.

Had the celebrants at my own rites been united not by a passion for dogs but by a mania for vipers, for instance, or stamps, coins, antiques, first editions, the French language, or the topic of alien abduction, the crowd in the lobby might have thinned. As it was, what held me held the other dog people. Crystal’s adamant
I want!
Mr. Jenkinson’s raised hackles? The challenge to another male, the dominant individual’s swift restoration of order, the maternal protectiveness, the whine of the young male... Oh, and the unplanned breeding, too. Dog people all, we’d seen and heard it before.

Some of those in the lobby, of course, had business there: People waited in line to check in. The man with the dirty malamute wasn’t in line and didn’t have a suitcase. His name came to me: Tim Oliver. And his reputation: sleazy. I couldn’t remember whether we’d met or whether he’d just been pointed out to me. Perhaps in the hope of being mistaken for an American Kennel Club judge, Tim Oliver wore a navy blazer, but judges are usually tidy, and they don’t go around shedding dandruff flakes all over our nice clean dogs.

As I was wondering whether to say hello to Oliver, the hotel door opened and in strode Duke Sylvia. He was a big, tall man who handled mostly Working Group breeds, a lot of Akitas and Danes, Siberians, Samoyeds, malamutes, boxers now and then; and mainly to show off, I’d always thought, also handled an unusually wide variety of other breeds when he got the chance—ridgebacks, bulldogs, and once in a while a toy, a Maltese, or a papillon. Duke was an ungodly gifted handler, one of the best I’d ever seen. Put Mario Andretti behind the wheel of an old VW bug, and maybe it becomes a Maseratti. Hand Duke a dog’s lead, you got a whole new animal. People swore that one time, on a bet, Duke Sylvia not only walked into the Pomeranian ring with a long-haired ginger cat, but won, too. The story must have been apocryphal. Watching Duke handle, you could still believe it. That’s how good he was.

Duke didn’t have a dog with him now, just a leather suitcase in one hand and a metal tack box in the other. Although he was what my father calls ”a regular guy,” he was also what my grandmother calls ”a dandy.” He wore starched shirts, flashy ties, jackets fresh from the dry cleaner’s, creased pants, polished shoes, and heavy male jewelry: big rings, tie tacks, lapel pins, an ID bracelet, and a wristwatch with a wide metal band. His age? Over forty. Under sixty? He had thick gold-yellow hair streaked with white, like the mane of an aging lion, but treated with some kind of grooming product, maybe one of those conditioners that promise to eliminate tangles, mats, snarls, and static electricity while simultaneously moisturizing dry skin and imparting a pleasant nondoggy odor. As advertised, the effect was more controlled than greasy, and Duke’s hair matched the rest of him. He had broad features. Like a lion’s, his head was too big for his body.