Black Ribbon

We know what it takes out of you to lose a dog! At any rate, at that point, the poor man fell completely to pieces. If it hadn’t been for Maxine...”
    I found it hard to imagine what anyone could have done to help. “What did Maxine...?”
    Phyllis’s voice became light and brittle. “Well, this Everett started drinking quite heavily.”
    I hadn’t seen Don Abbott take a drink in the daytime, but evenings were another matter.
    Skipping quickly on, Phyllis added, “You can hardly blame him, after what he’d been through, but there you have it. And then he got himself fired from his job. And as if that wasn’t enough, he got drunk one night and drove all the way to this pet shop, wherever it was, and started throwing bricks through the window! Not that they didn’t deserve it for selling him that sick puppy, but someone saw him, and he got arrested. And that’s when Maxine came in like a guardian angel. She got him a lawyer, and she got him into counseling, and she really grabbed him by the bootstraps and hauled him back on his feet!”
    I made the obvious comment: “That was very kind of Maxine.”
    “It was also very ingenious,” Phyllis said. “Who else would’ve thought about getting him hooked up with the agility people? She got him some other work, too, handyman things here and there, work here at the resort, but, you see, he’d been building things his entire life! Docks, picnic tables, benches, all sorts of things like that! And what Maxine realized was that this man could make A-frames and dogwalks and so forth, which really aren’t all that different, at very, very competitive prices.”
    “And Maxine knew the people who’d want them.”
    “Precisely.”
    “But,” I said, “it doesn’t... It doesn’t exactly sound as if Everett has a reason to hate dog people, does it? He could hardly hate Maxine, could he? And agility? If anything, you’d think he’d be all for it.”
    “Yes, of course,” Phyllis conceded. “Even so, it’s something to think about, isn’t it? And you do remember what the dogs thought of him, don’t you?” She stroked Nigel’s head pensively. “They rose against him. They were obviously trying to tell us something. But perhaps it’ll all turn out to be just what it seems. What a terrible, terrible shame.” She shook her head.
    “I wish I’d been kinder to Eva,” I confessed. “All I can think of now is how desperately unhappy—”
    “—how unhappy she made everyone in her vicinity!” Striding up from the direction of the main lodge, Don Abbott finished my sentence for me.
    “Donald, really!” Phyllis protested.
    Conflict interests Rowdy. In fact, he’s a connoisseur. Within seconds, he was on his feet. Although Phyllis was the last one who’d spoken, Rowdy stared at Don, who said, “The damned shame of it is what this is going to do to Maxine.” Lowering his voice, he added, “The truth is, this is nothing short of disaster for her. The economic consequences of this are going to be something even Maxine just can’t get herself out of.” Eyeing both Phyllis and me, he said sourly, “But that’s going to be the last thing to cross the feminine mind.” The blood rose to my face. I live in Cambridge; I’m spoiled. Cambridge is a place where an African-American Jewish lesbian octogenarian encounters no discrimination at all— provided, of course, that she speaks in an educated voice and unfailingly remembers to renew her subscription to The New York Review of Books. You think I’m joking? I’m serious. I love Cambridge. It’s a place where we try hard not to go around making the blood rise to other people’s faces. The surprise I felt was a great luxury.
    Jabbing a well-manicured hand in the direction of the lodge, Don said, “There’s a hullabaloo up there about some pins.”
    “Pins?” I asked. “Oh, hinge pins.” The feminine mind at work. A man, of course, would immediately have thought of sewing pins. “They secure the hinges,” I told Don. “They’re sort of thick, heavy pins that go through the hinges.” He still looked bewildered. “At the top of the A-frame.”
    “Well, these agility women are all agitated about it,” Don said. “They got taken out of there for some reason or other, and there’s some question about where they found these pins —whether they would’ve slipped out when this thing collapsed on her.”
    “Or?” I asked.
    “Well, what it boils down to,” Don said, “is basically that. Did