Black Ribbon

incidents in the same way.
    As I was working my way through the first of the fish fillets, Everett Dow and the cop were talking about the Celtics and the Bruins, and also those inevitable Rangeley topics, fishing and hunting. Neither Everett nor his companion said anything about Maxine McGuire or Waggin’ Tail. I wondered what Everett made of dog camp. I wished he’d say. About the time I finished the fillet, the men stood up to leave. Everett nodded to me. I smiled and nodded back.
    For once, I did not clean my plate. I didn’t even come close. My stomach pressed up against my rib cage. I felt disgusted with myself for ordering a lumberjack’s lunch and equally disgusted with myself for leaving most of it. I paid my bill. I left a big tip. I think I must have been trying to persuade the waiter that despite my wastefulness, I was a decent human being.
    When I left Doc Grant’s, the sky was the deep slate of an old New England gravestone, the kind that’s carved with a death’s head and a no-nonsense message about earth and bones, and the recurrent warning, as if the buried dead forever spoke:
     
Stranger stop as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I,
As I am now, so you shall be
Prepare for death, and follow me.
     
    I scanned the cloud cover for the shape of a skull or an hourglass or maybe the figure of a scythe-wielding Father Time. I wondered whether I might be getting my period. It occurred to me that some of those unknown Colonial tombstone carvers might have been women with PMS or men with an extraordinary capacity for empathy.
    I’d left Rowdy in the Bronco, which was illegally parked in the deep shade under the pine trees by the State Liquor Store. The windows were rolled down enough to give him air, the temperature had dropped about fifteen degrees since the heat of the morning, and he had a bowl of water. Even so, I crossed Route 4 to check on him. Universal dilemma of the real dog person: You leave the dog home, you worry that something will happen to him while you’re out. You take the dog with you, you worry that something will happen to him while he’s alone in the car. You roll the windows down a little, you worry that he won’t get enough air. You roll the windows down a lot, you worry that he’ll somehow get out or that someone will steal him out of his crate. The solution, of course, is to keep the dog at your side twenty-four hours a day every day, but then you worry that your constant presence is making the dog neurotically dependent, and besides, you can’t go anyplace that doesn’t allow dogs, so you can’t go to work or get your hair cut or go to the dentist. And then, of course, you feel guilty because, after all, doesn’t your wonderful dog deserve a better owner than this poverty-stricken, shaggy-headed slob with decayed teeth? Meanwhile, the dog doesn’t worry about anything. Why should he? That’s what he has you for, and for obvious reasons, he trusts you completely.
    Rowdy was fine, if a little disappointed that I didn’t immediately let him out of the car, but merely glanced at him and headed for the Pine Tree Frosty, a dog-memorable establishment that Rowdy had apparently failed to remember from previous trips to Rangeley. Or maybe he did remember it. He probably did. How could any dog forget the Fido Special? Cherry ice cream garnished with dog biscuits. Maine: The way life should be. Actually, I didn’t know what had inspired the Fido Special—maybe a beloved pet of the owner, maybe the sled dogs that visited Rangeley for the annual race, maybe the hunting dogs there for bird season.
    Fido Special in hand, I returned to the Bronco and, to avoid having the interior splashed with ice cream and dog slobber, led Rowdy to the picnic area at the rear of the Pine Tree Frosty, a collection of tables and benches on the edge of Haley’s Pond. Habitually fed bits of hot dog and hamburger roll, dozens of mallards clustered around, and as soon as Rowdy had finished his treat, he took a lively interest in them as a possible second dessert. Seated on a bench licking a chocolate ice-cream cone, Everett Dow also watched the ducks and perhaps entertained thoughts similar to Rowdy’s. The reflected light of the pond revealed Everett as weirdly old and young. The lines and hollows in his face looked peculiar without the age spots that should have accompanied them, and the hand wrapped around the ice-cream cone lacked the gnarls of age. Even at the temples, his hair showed no