All Shots

He looked too slight to handle a frisky Chihuahua.
    “He’s trained, isn’t he?” Omar said.
    “Yes,” I began, “but—”
    Teller cut me off. “Omar’s a pro.”
    The sound of my father’s characteristic bellow distracted me. Glancing toward him, I saw that he and Gabrielle were still talking to Lewis Van Zandt. Actually, Gabrielle and Van Zandt were silent; Buck was doing all the talking, and he was doing it loudly enough so that everyone within a mile must’ve heard every single word he was saying. I listened in horror.
    “Growing marijuana!” Buck exclaimed. “My wife! Who’d ever have thought? It was all in the Ellsworth American. We had a visit from the DEA. That’s the Drug Enforcement Administration. Pleasant young fellow. You’d never guess to look at Gabrielle, would you? Looks as—”
    “Teller,” I said hastily, “you’ll have to pick up the armbands. Rowdy’s in this crate.” I pointed. “I’ll see you... I’ll see you later.”
    Lewis Van Zandt had no sense of humor. What’s more, he was none too bright. To make matters worse, he was a dreadful rumormonger. And Buck was baiting him with some ludicrous tale about Gabrielle, marijuana, and the DEA? While simultaneously spreading the story himself at top volume? Buck knew exactly how gossipy shows were; and gossip being the distorting phenomenon that it is, word would be out that Buck and Gabrielle had been freebasing cocaine or dealing heroin at this very show.
    Without actually leaping over crates, I managed to reach Van Zandt, Buck, and the maligned Gabrielle in what must have been seconds. “He’s only joking,” I assured the old cheek-pincher. “You know Buck. He can never resist the temptation to—”
    To my horror, Gabrielle said, “No, no, it’s perfectly true! Not that I’ve been growing marijuana, of course, but we did have a visit from a DEA agent. It was all very exciting! He belongs to a special team. We thought he sounded very proud of it, just as if he played for the Red Sox. He told us all about drugs. It seems that this kind of marijuana patch is much more common in southern Maine than it is in our part of the state, although I have to wonder whether it isn’t just a matter of where people get caught. It could be the climate, too, I suppose. But these DEA teams aren’t all that interested in marijuana, anyway. The one they’re worried about is... Buck, what’s it called?”
    “Methamphetamine.”
    “That’s it! He was telling us that as it is, there’s not a lot of it in Maine. Holly, do you know that these terrible people mail it to Maine from Arizona and places like that? They mail it! Or they use UPS or FedEx. Just like L.L.Bean! But in reverse! So, the purpose of this team is to make them stop. And to stop them from making it. It’s quite easy to, uh, brew, I suppose you’d say. All you—”
    “There was obviously some mistake,” I said to Lewis Van Zandt. “Gabrielle is the last person who’d do anything illegal. Maybe it was someone with the same name.”
    “No, they had the right person,” Gabrielle insisted. “And it was my land.”
    “A wood lot in Washington County,” Buck said.
    “In the Unorganized Territories,” Gabrielle added. “Isn’t that a wonderful expression? It makes Maine sound like the wild frontier!”
    To Van Zandt, I said, “It means that the state of Maine collects the real estate taxes for areas without organized townships. What must’ve happened was that Gabrielle owned some land that someone else used to—”
    “I’m far from sure that I like this image of myself as a Goody Two-shoes,” Gabrielle said.
    As I was struggling to find a way to impress precisely that image of her on Lewis Van Zandt without simultaneously offending Gabrielle, my father said, “We’re going to miss the judging if we don’t get going.”
    Damn it all! He was right. If I’d missed the judging entirely, it would’ve been his fault. Van Zandt didn’t accompany us to the ring, either because he didn’t want to be seen with a family of notorious drug dealers or because he could hardly wait to spread the word of our notoriety. I was relieved to be rid of him and also happy to have a few moments to remind Buck of the dog-show maxim that says, keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.
    Unchastened, Buck said, “Well, the old fool didn’t pinch your cheek today, did he?”
    As we made our way to the ring where malamutes were about to be judged, Buck expanded on