Black Ribbon

told were the usual souvenirs and favors provided by
    Dog Days and the other competing camps: no penknife embossed with the camp name, no gift certificate for the camp store, no Waggin’ Tail ID tag for Rowdy’s collar, not even a bumper sticker.
    With only a few minutes left before dinner, I skimmed the red legal-size sheet that showed the schedule of activities and quickly picked out agility, advanced obedience, and a workshop on flawless heeling for the competition dog. I intended to take the course on canine first aid and CPR, and I thought I’d let Rowdy try flyball and maybe lure coursing, too. He’d hate nothing more than the daily swimming lessons and the workshop on water rescue, and I’d keep him as far away as possible from herding, which would obviously involve sheep, live sheep, of course, unless Rowdy got them first. Hunting was also out. If there’d been any seals around, Rowdy might have located their blow holes, but I couldn’t imagine his learning to point to birds for someone else to kill or bringing them back for someone else to eat. Doggy square dancing? Breed handling? Dog tricks? Carting, yes. And definitely the Friday workshop on sled-dogging. No tattoo, though. Rowdy had his AKC registration number on one inner thigh and my social security number on the other. Even my protectiveness had limits.
    I’d lost track of the time. I hustled Rowdy into his crate, took off for the lodge, and had the bad luck to arrive at the stairs just behind Eva Spitteler, to whom Joy was babbling about Lucky. “He swam! And he really loved it! I held him, and then Craig called to him, and he swam right to Craig!” Joy’s dainty hands mimed the Cairn’s accomplishment. Her childish face glowed. “And you could tell Lucky was kind of scared at first, because he wasn’t used to it, but he went right ahead! And he was so proud of himself! Wasn’t he, Craig?” At Joy’s side, beaming at his wife exactly as she had beamed at her dog, was Craig, who had the general appearance that Hollywood has persuaded me to associate with F.B.I. agents: the crew-cut blond hair, the cheeks slightly reddened from over-close shaving, the babyish features, and a body that looked artificially enlarged by persistent work with free weights. Craig’s head seemed to have been grafted to a big man’s neck, and the neck to a giant’s body. Joy wore a skirt and her husband wore pants, but their blue-and-rose-red madras plaid shirts were identical. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t a razor that explained Craig’s red face.
    The upper half of Eva Spitteler’s compact bulk was shrouded in an unironed man’s dress shirt, and as she lumbered up the stairs, I got a close-up opportunity to realize why no one who weighs well over a hundred and fifty pounds should ever wear Bermuda shorts. On her feet were clunky leather sandals evidently fashioned from recycled bits of harness or dog leash.
    “Well,” Eva told Joy loudly, “at Dog Days, you’d’ve got a tag for his collar for that. The first time your dog swims, you get a tag. It’s got a picture on it, and it says he’s a certified swimmer, and it’s really cute. You didn’t get one, did you?” Joy’s face fell. “No. Should we have?”
    “Not here,” Eva pronounced. “Too cheap to pay for them.”? I felt irked at Eva, who’d succeeded in transforming Joy’s pride to a sense of having been shortchanged. The too-cheap crack did, however, point to a unifying theme in the contents of the registration packet: Nothing in it had cost Maxine a dime.
    “And,” Eva relentlessly continued, “at Dog Days, there’s something going on every minute. Here, take tonight. After dinner, there’s nothing. We drive all the way here to the middle of nowhere, and then we wait all this time for something; to eat, and then afterwards all there is to do is sort of hang around and twiddle our thumbs.”
    Rangeley was, admittedly, a long drive from New York or New Jersey or wherever it was Eva came from, but it actually » was what most other tourist areas merely tried to be: a year-round resort where you could hunt, bird watch, swim, water ski, canoe, sail, sit and enjoy the mountains, hike the Appalachian Trail, or even pan for gold. In winter, Rangeley had sled dog racing and skiing, downhill and cross-country. Spring did, of course, bring black flies, but it also brought fish, and the fall foliage was as good as anything in New Hampshire and Vermont. And the town itself was a