Black Ribbon

Not just England, either! Taken together, the British Isles constitute a devout Bible-belt of fervent canine fundamentalism, country after country, county after county, district after district pledged to the Irish setter, the Irish wolfhound, the Scottish deerhound, the pointer, the foxhound, the Border collie, the Welsh corgi, both Cardigan and Pembroke; terrier after incredible terrier, Irish, Welsh, West Highland White, Norwich, Norfolk, bull, Bedlington, Dandie Dinmont, Staffordshire, Kerry blue, soft-coated wheaten, Skye, Sealyham, Manchester, Lakeland, and the others, present and past; the Old English sheepdog, of course, and the collie, smooth and rough, the Shetland sheepdog, and the toys, too, the Yorkie, the English toy spaniel, and, speaking of spaniels, the Sussex, the Welsh springer, the English springer, and... Well, if I haven’t gotten to your breed, sorry, but the list is almost endless and, even if complete, wouldn’t tell me what I didn’t know, which was, of course, the particular breed favored by Wordsworth, he of late and soon. But I knew what mattered: I knew that when Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon,” he meant that he’d had it with human beings and was desperate for the company of dogs.
    As was 1.1 almost ran back to the cabin, and as soon as I got inside, I practically yanked the latch off Rowdy’s crate in my eagerness for contact with his pure-hearted goodwill. Never lived with a malamute? Well, according to the official standard, the Alaskan malamute is “playful on invitation, but generally impressive by his dignity after maturity,” a description that illustrates the divergence of Dog English from what is absurdly called Standard English, as if there were anything normal, or, God forbid, desirable about stripping the language as a whole of the rich phraseology of the fancy. But as always, back to the Alaskan malamute, Rowdy, in this case, quintessence of the standard, “playful on invitation, but generally impressive by his dignity after maturity,” meaning in Standard English, that after maturity, which is to say, in advanced old age and beyond, he’ll display an air of noble reserve, but that until then, he’ll fool around at absolutely anyone’s invitation, including his own, which is to say that Rowdy bounded from his crate with a furry toy whale in his mouth, gave it a hard shake, dropped it, rose on his hindquarters, rested his snowshoe paws in my outstretched hands, and cleansed my face and soul of that icky residue, the grime of too much with us, late and soon.
    “You want to go out?” I asked him. “Go for a walk?” Rowdy doesn’t fetch his leash the way Vinnie did, but he understood what I meant and headed for the door. I snapped on his flex lead.
    At the end of the dark afternoon, the sun had set by swelling to ten times its former size, turning a garish shade of raspberry, and exploding into the tops of the mountains like a flambéed dessert blowing up in the faces of the gods. Now, hours later, the moon’s balm soothed the bums. Low to the ground, twin sets of lights twinkled, nighttime safety collars around the necks of what looked like little phantom dogs. The air was fragrant with pine. Enforcer of the buddy system, I wandered to the dock, led Rowdy to the end, looked, listened, and nowhere found a sign of a swimmer. Strolling toward the main lodge, I saw the burning cigarettes of three or four people sitting on the stairs. Like a patriotic cartographer intent on charting unknown land and claiming it for his own, Rowdy marked tree after tree.
    “Could we get down to business here, buddy?” I asked him.
    “Be a good boy! Hurry up!” Code words, those. Kimi obeys them. Rowdy does, too, but not at the cost of cutting short a good walk. Or maybe he knew that there was no real hurry. He wasn’t due in the show ring, and my only appointment was with a soft pillow. I liked the feel of the night air, and I liked letting Rowdy mark his trees. He was a dog being a dog. Maxine passed nearby, the massive Cash on lead. I said hi and moved on. Here and there, other dog walkers meandered, some in silence, some in small murmuring groups. I missed Kimi. With only one dog, I felt unbalanced, incomplete. But I missed no one’s company but hers, not even Steve Delaney’s. When Rowdy had charted our route away from the lake and back to the wooded stretch that separated the cabins from the bunkhouse, I heard a couple of cabin doors