Animal Appetite

Great and General Court of Massachusetts on the grounds, I guess, that after all Hannah had been through, what she needed was a good drink. The tankard was engraved with delicate decorations. Its shiny pewter could almost have passed for silver. The tankard looked like the kind of trophy I’d be proud to take home from a dog show.
    The truly freakish object on display was, however— and I swear to God I am not making this up; go to Buttonwoods and see for yourself—the third in a series of historical bottles sponsored by the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission and produced by Jim Beam Distillers. The bottle stood more than a foot high and took the form of the Hannah shown in the Boscawen statue, but with her nose and hatchet intact. Also, the bottle was in gaudy color. Hannah’s skin was pale. The scalps were red. The bottle looked as if it had never been opened. Hannah’s cold-bloodedness had been pretty obvious all along. It had never occurred to me that what coursed through her veins was actually Jim Beam.
    After I left Buttonwoods, I took a back route across the Merrimack to a rural section of Bradford, where I stopped in at Janet Switzer’s. When I arrived, Janet was in the kennel area just in back of her tiny blue Cape Cod house. Parked in the driveway were her tan RV, tan house trailer, and tan Chevy wagon. The rear ends of all three vehicles were plastered with bumper stickers, including a new one: Monotheism: The Belief in One Dog, the Alaskan Malamute.
    A few years earlier, when Janet had had breast cancer, she’d taken a break from breeding. Her face had looked a little haggard, and she’d lost some weight. Today, I noticed, her weathered face had regained its former fullness. Through her short mass of gray-streaked brown waves you could see her scalp.
    To avoid causing a commotion, I left Kimi and Rowdy in the car. At a minimum, Janet would’ve said hello to them and shaken their paws. Without greeting me, she announced, “I might want to use Rowdy at stud.”
    “I thought you weren’t breeding anymore,” I said. The statement was as close as I’d ever come to asking about her health.
    “I’ve got a bitch here that ought to be bred. Victoria. She’s finished”—AKC champion—“and she’s OFA excellent.” OFA: Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, an organization that examines and rates hip X rays to determine whether dogs are clear of hip dysplasia. Buying a puppy of any medium, large, or giant breed? Oh no you’re not. Not until you see proof in writing that both parents are OFA good or excellent, or that they’ve both cleared something called PennFlip.
    Walking over to Victoria’s kennel, I said, “She’s nice. She has a beautiful head.”
    Victoria, who knew we were discussing her, licked my fingers through the chain link, She had lovely dark eyes, good pigment, decent bone, and small ears. Color and markings aren’t all that important in malamutes, but Victoria was Rowdy’s color, dark wolf gray, with shadows under her eyes and a trace of a bar down her muzzle. I opened the kennel door and entered. You can’t do that at just any kennel, but Janet’s dogs have excellent temperaments. I ran my hands over Victoria and checked her mouth. Her bite was good, and she wasn’t missing any teeth. “She’s out of...?”
    “Denny and Lucy. His eyes have been checked?” Janet demanded.
    I nodded. “Clear.”
    “Run a brucellosis test,” Janet ordered me. Before you can get a marriage license, you need a syphilis test. Before you breed dogs, you check for brucellosis. Except that no one had yet accepted the proposal. As you’ll have gathered, Janet’s idea of tactful negotiation was to state outright what she was going to do.
    I cleared my throat and asked Janet for a cup of coffee. Seated in her kitchen amid forty-pound bags of premium dog food, water buckets, chew toys, and stacks of dog magazines, I raised no questions about whether the breeding should take place. With anyone else, I’d have put up an argument. I’d have wanted my opinion solicited. I wouldn’t have followed orders. With Janet, all I did was ask when she expected Victoria to come in season. It seemed to me that I was playing Mary Neff to Janet’s Hannah Duston, except, of course, that we’d be bringing life into the world, not taking it away. Spurred by the thought, I told Janet all about what I’d been doing in Haverhill. Janet knew who Hannah was; I didn’t have to explain. “The book I wanted