Black Ribbon

bang lightly. A distant voice said something I couldn’t really hear.
    The next sounds I couldn’t miss: the yelp of a dog in sudden pain, a female scream of fright, and the unmistakable cursing of Eva Spitteler. The light outside her cabin, hers on one side, Joy and Craig’s on the other, showed something of a classic postdogfight tableau, two groups, each bending over to check the wounds of the canine combatants. At the first sound of the fight, Rowdy had yanked out the entire length of the retractable lead and, convinced that he was missing the greatest camp activity yet, a spectacular dog battle that he’d undoubtedly win, had tried to haul me into the center of the fracas. You know who Carol Lea Benjamin is? That’s not a digression. Really it isn’t. Carol Lea Benjamin is a genius dog writer who captured in a few words the whole point of the Alaskan malamute from the breed’s own point of view, and I quote her: “The Malamute, the one with the big ‘S’ on his chest.” Rowdy doesn’t need a phone booth. He doesn’t believe in kryptonite, either.
    By the time I’d hauled him in, Bingo was quiet, and so was Joy’s little sort-of Cairn, Lucky, who, to my amazement, had inflicted the only visible damage. In the light from the cabin and the beam of Eva Spitteler’s flashlight, I could see blood flowing from one of Bingo’s ears. Little Lucky, though, was unscathed. From the cock of his head, he was pretty proud of himself. The dogfight was over. The human fight was just beginning. It, too, ended quickly.
    “Bingo’s bleeding!” Eva yelled. “He’s going to need plastic surgery, and you’re going to pay for it!”
    With boldness as surprising as Lucky’s, Joy replied, “It was your fault for dropping that food right in between them. If you didn’t have to go around all the time stuffing your fat face—”
    Craig tried to intervene: “Joy—”
    “You bitch!” Eva shrieked. “Look what that little rat of yours has done to my beautiful show dog!” Lowering her voice only slightly, she added, “Vicious little pet-shop mutt.”
    How to hurt a man? How to hurt a woman, too. Joy scooped up Lucky, hugged him, and began to sob. Craig wrapped protective arms around both of them. From the opposite side of the circle of light, Maxine McGuire suddenly spoke. “Eva,” she said, sounding as calm as Cash looked, “that will do. You are out of line. You can stay here tonight, but in the morning, you pack up and get out. This is my camp, and I want you out of here by eight A.M. Read your contract. Out you go.”
    “Not on your life,” Eva screeched.
    I missed whatever followed. I didn’t want to hear it. With the dogfight over, Rowdy had lost interest. We went quietly to our own cabin. As I stood on the deck trying to regain the peace Eva had spoiled, I heard Phyllis Abbott. She was using that distinctive voice that people reserve for the telephone. “Greatly exaggerated?” she asked with outrage. “Why does everyone keep saying greatly exaggerated? It’s a total fabrication!”
     

 
    EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the unseasonably hot sun beating on the dead-calm lake inspired me to join Eric Grimaldi and Elsa the Chesapeake for what proved to be a frigid swim. Impervious to the cold, Eric stood waist-deep in the water and kept tossing out Elsa’s blue-and-white rubber retrieve toy. To generate internal heat, I engaged in hot competition with Elsa, racing her for the toy, losing, and again pitting my inadequate flailing against her effortless surge.
    Heather and Sara may have made their discovery as Elsa and I were sprinting toward the rubber toy. Perhaps it happened while I was clambering over the sharp rocks at the edge of the lake in a dash toward my towel. Maybe I was standing terry-wrapped on the dock, smirking at Eric’s efforts to bribe Elsa out of the lake with a dog biscuit and at her gleeful refusal of what she clearly saw as a bad bargain. At about the same time that I was fooling around with Elsa, Sara and Heather made an early check of their colorful canine playground in the woods, where they discovered a body pinned beneath the collapsed ramps of the massive A-frame. The fallen ramps covered the head and torso, but the clumsy sandals could have belonged to no one except Eva Spitteler. No one else would have worn the clunky things at all, certainly not over camouflage-patterned socks. The ugly military-green trousers were recognizably Eva’s, too. Touching the flesh between a