Black Ribbon

where hungry campers were filing into the dining room. Stuck in the bottleneck, I glanced at the bulletin board, still propped on its easel. Prominently displayed at the top was a copy of Waggin’ Tail’s release and waiver of liability. In the ones mailed to us, however, the sentences about Maxine’s right to expel a camper for almost any reason had not been highlighted in bright yellow. The board had another change. The announcement of CGC testing had been replaced by a big red-lettered list of the new Canine Good Citizens and their presumably proud owners.
    Stepping up behind me, Heather, our Chief Fecal Inspector, murmured, “What bullshit! Passed! Bought it is more like it.”
    As the line moved, Heather expanded on the topic by citing examples of dogs that finished their AKC championships because their owners hired professional handlers and entered the dogs hundreds of times, if necessary, until the judges got so sick of looking at the same awful dogs that they put them up just so they’d never have to see them again. As I was about to pipe up in defense of judges, Eva Spitteler came barging up, shoved ahead of me, and accosted Ginny with, of all things, the suggestion that they sit together at dinner.
    “Miss Social Skills,” I whispered to Heather, who grimaced. At a normal pitch, I said, “Look, I agree that titles shouldn’t be up for sale, and, yes, there are a few people who abuse the system—”
    Before I could finish, Eva butted in. “A few? The whole thing stinks. Hey, Holly, you ever thought about writing about that business with fixing gay tails? Because if you ever want to do it, I can tell you—”
    As I’ve admitted, my Danny had a gay tail, one that’s carried above the horizontal, a position that’s fine in some breeds, faulty in others. The malamute’s glorious over-the-back plume could, I suppose, be considered the ultimate in canine caudal gaiety, but the dog person who says “gay tail” is usually talking about a golden retriever or maybe a Chesapeake with a tail carried too high for the breed standard. As published exposes had reported, a few sleazeball professional handlers would perform surgical butchery to correct the fault; and according to widely-circulated rumors, so would a few AKC judges. They’d do it for less than a vet would charge, and they’d leave no written record, of course. Anesthesia? Hey, forget it. After all, these are just dogs we’re talking about, right? Show dogs, which is to say, objects brought into this world to do one and only one thing, and that’s win, win, win.
    “People have written about that before,” I told Eva. “I’ve heard rumors—so has everyone else—but you can’t publish rumors.”
    Eva leaned so close to my ear that for a crazy second, I thought she meant to kiss me. “Eric Grimaldi,” she whispered. “Eric Grimaldi.”
    Almost like a vision, Elsa’s image appeared to me, the joy in her eyes, the beautiful head, the deep chest, the powerful shoulders and hindquarters, the whole put-together look of a very typey bitch, and that ultra-Chesapeake expression that always seems to me to indicate an exceedingly high and perfectly justified regard for the intelligence and judgment of the Chesapeake Bay retriever and a correspondingly low opinion of everyone else’s. Oh, and Elsa’s tail, too. Elsa’s correct Chesapeake tail.
    “Eva,” I said, “I’ve been in dogs my whole life. And one of the things I’ve learned is that if you listen long enough, sooner or later you’re going to hear everything about everyone, including yourself.”
    I must have spoken more loudly than I’d intended. Myma, the raucous New Yorker who’d been at my table the night before, caught my words. “You can say that again,” she boomed. “Half of what you hear from some of these people,” she added, glaring in Eva’s direction, “half of it, you gotta take with a grain of salt.”
    Yes, I thought. But which half?
     

 
    THE MASONIC SHTICK is no joke. Take blackballing. As I understand it—maybe I’m wrong-—in Freemasonry, blackball is no figure of speech. If you want someone in, you cast a white ball; if not, black. That’s cast as in cast a ballot, or so I assume. As far as I know, in casting their secret votes, the members just slip table tennis balls, white or black, into some sort of container, probably something more or less like a flyball box stripped of the pedal and the resulting ball toss, of course. Unless I’ve