Animal Appetite

meditative activity. On most of the logs, which were already cut to fireplace length, I used a big, sharp metal wedge that I drove in with a short-handled sledgehammer. The small pieces of birch just needed to be split with an ax. From time to time, I’d stop to stack the split wood under the flight of wooden stairs that leads up to the back door. I knew almost nothing about city rats. I hoped that, unlike chipmunks, they weren’t attracted to woodpiles.
    At four-thirty, Violet Wish returned my call. As I’d guessed, she’d been at the show in Fitchburg. One of her papillons had finished his championship. After offering congratulations, I asked Violet whether she remembered a guy named Jack Andrews. “Eighteen years ago, maybe more. He had a golden named Chip. Chipper. You did a portrait of the dog.” Violet’s name stamped on the back of Chipper’s photograph was the reason I’d called her. I’d been surprised. Violet had always specialized in show dogs. I’d wondered how a pet owner like Jack Andrews had known of her existence.
    “Oh, yeah. I sort of remember him. You used to see him at shows with that tall girl. What was her name?”
    “I have no idea. I don’t remember him at all. I didn’t even know he showed.” Showed dogs, naturally. What else?
    “He was a nice guy, but he kind of stayed in the background. I only knew him, really, because I did those Portraits. That was a long time ago. The girl was the one who handled. She finished Chip for him.” (Translation: handled the dog to his championship.) “That’s when he had the portrait done. What was her name? Tall girl with short brown hair. If you want to know about Jack, she’s the one you ought to ask.”
    Do you know how I’d get hold of her?”
    “I haven’t seen her for ages. Geez, Holly, it might even be eighteen years. Maybe more.”
    When we hung up, I made myself a cup of coffee and took it, together with Violet’s portrait of Chip and Jack’s graduation picture, out to the fenced side yard, where the dogs had been safely confined while I split wood. My goldens would’ve kept me company as I worked. When Vinnie was on a down-stay, nothing but the sound of my voice would persuade her to budge. Rowdy and Kimi might have held their stays, too. They might also have torn off after a squirrel, rounded the corner of Appleton, and ended up in the traffic on Concord Avenue. As obedience dogs, malamutes have many strengths: They’re highly motivated, especially by food. They learn quickly. They have a long attention span. They work hard. They’re lively and fun. In fact, the only thing wrong with them as obedience dogs is that they’re, well... disobedient. They are, however, incredibly intelligent. I was hoping to absorb some of Rowdy’s and Kimi’s brain power by osmosis. But if they had any brilliant insights about Jack Andrews and Chip, they kept their thoughts to themselves. When I went back inside, the dogs followed me.
    “Not quite yet,” I said, meaning dinnertime. Then, armed with the knowledge that Chip had been a show dog, I started to tap my extensive network for information about Jack Winter Andrews. To my annoyance, an infuriating number of people, including my father, had only vague memories of Jack. He’d owned two or three dogs, they thought. Yes, all goldens. The person I should be talking to, I was told over and over, was that tall girl. She dropped out of dogs a long time ago. What was her name? Tracy something, I finally learned. No one came up with a last name. Jack’s family hadn’t known about his dogs, a few people told me. No one— no one in dogs—was supposed to call him. His family had thought Chip was just a pet.
    The handwritten note found on Jack’s desk? It takes more than the absence of faults to make a winner. I hadn’t read an idiosyncratic meaning into that sentence after all; Jack Andrews hadn’t been writing about himself— he’d really been writing about a dog.
    Jack Andrews, I concluded, had led a double life. His family had known nothing about his existence in the world of dog shows and show dogs, which is to say, in my own world. John Winter Andrews had had golden retrievers. The life he had kept secret felt weirdly like my own.
     

Nine

     
    On Sunday afternoon, Steve and I and our four dogs piled into his van for what proved to be a dismal trip to the island in the Merrimack where Hannah Duston had been held captive three centuries ago. Saturday’s blue sky had turned