Black Ribbon

Spitteler.
     

 
    IF YOU’RE A REAL DOG PERSON, you’ll join me—and not for the first time, either—in reflecting on the vast superiority of the average dog to the average dog owner. Consider Rowdy and me, not that Rowdy is even remotely average, of course, but then neither is any other beloved dog in the eyes of his companion biped. So, failing a truly ordinary dog, I’ll offer him up, and myself, too, such as I am, which is to say, except in the dog-trivial matter of vision, virtually senseless by comparison with Rowdy, who, in any case, cares little for how things look —how they appear to be—but zooms in on how they are —how they reek and ring and vibrate, where they’ve been, and what they portend. Although my auditory and olfactory senses function adequately for those of a mere human being, compared with Rowdy I hear almost nothing and suffer from advanced anosmia, my nose dead where his is quick, my brain, too, as slow as my feet. And in matters practical—food, hierarchies—he outruns me every time.
    By comparison with dogs, you see, every human being has profound special needs, and every dog is an assistance dog, a hearing dog, a smelling dog, but most of all, a superb guide to uncommon sense. I have lived with dogs all my life, yet learned pitifully little from their example. In my place, for instance—my place at the table—Rowdy would have kept his priorities straight: First, he’d have cleaned his plate. In fact, if he’d actually been sitting next to me in the dining room watching me attend to human blather while neglecting my food, his patience with human senselessness would have run out, and he’d have leaped up in front of me and wolfed down my untouched dinner. But as I’ve said, Rowdy is no average dog: He’s an Alaskan malamute. Food thief? Now and then. But a rotten little sneak? Never. Besides, if Rowdy waited until I turned my back, how could he be sure that he’d succeeded in teaching me the lesson in survival that I so obviously need? Kimi teaches the same lesson, the legacy of the Arctic: Food is precious. Eat it while you can.
    With Rowdy and Kimi in mind, I thus turned to my cold and glutinous Newburg, and was inserting a glob into my mouth when the unseen force struck again, this time leaving my midriff unharmed, but driving my fork and its contents dangerously close to the back of my throat, as if Eva Spitteler were practicing a sort of reverse first aid: Having already performed a crude Heimlich maneuver, she was only now going to make me choke. In fairness to Eva, though, let me point out that strife among dog people would be greatly reduced if some of us, myself included, were thus randomly yet regularly rendered speechless. The intervention could, of course, be milder than Eva’s, and the agents of the talk-stopping squads could be perfectly polite. Indeed, courtesy to the silenced would be an essential part of their AKC training. Upon graduation, they’d get official badges—logo and all—to wear while walking their beats at dog shows, pausing briefly here and there to tickle eyelids and ears, stopping now and then to clamp mannerly hands under exhibitors’ jaws, thus subtly reminding us of what to keep open and what to lock firmly shut.
    I’m serious. Those know-nothing know-it-alls who stand outside the rings saying awful things about other people’s dogs? There’s got to be something to do about them! And now there is. Squads. AKC delegate, are you? Propose the plan at the next meeting. And if you’re embarrassed, explain that it wasn’t your idea. Blame it on me. I’ll take full responsibility. In this case, however, Eva had reverse-Heimliched the wrong victim: I wasn’t on the verge of saying anything about anyone or about anyone’s dog, either. The probable troublemaker was, of course, Eva herself, who might’ve repeated the ugly rumor about Eric’s butchering dogs with gay tails, or might have come right out and accused Ginny of running a puppy mill. More likely, she’d have got in a few sneaky digs at one or both of them; Eva was no malamute. In one respect, however, she acted as Rowdy or Kimi would have done: She took off in search of food, in this case, dessert.
    Shortly after Eva’s departure, while Maxine and the Abbotts were going for dessert, and people were milling around from table to table, Michael appeared beside me. Looming over me, he said, “Could I ask you a question?”
    Michael was a sweet guy, and not bad looking,