Black Ribbon

only a few hundred yards from where Eva had died felt uncomfortably like dancing on her grave. Perhaps my objection seems senseless. I don’t really like the idea of tutued ballerinas pirouetting on the sod over my own remains, but I take comfort in advance from the vision of happy teams of handlers and dogs parading above while I’m down below—provided, of course, that the handlers insist on tight heeling and quick sits, and that the dogs invariably come when called. But remember! No forging, no lagging, no sloppy work at all, or the ground beneath your feet will rumble and shake, and you’ll know that Holly Winter will keep rolling over until that dog shapes up.
    But Rowdy and I went to drill team nonetheless. Janet, our instructor, conducted herself and the activity with admirable dignity. She omitted the music. What piece could we have used? The Dead March from Saul? With an air of brave determination to carry on, Phyllis Abbott took her position at the center of the line, moved briskly, and paid what must have been close attention to Janet’s cues. I had the feeling that Mrs. Abbott was concentrating on setting a good example. The AKC would even have approved of her apparel, knitted coordinates that would have looked dowdy on a young woman, tailored pants and a matching twin set in a muted, demure shade of spruce, clothing too warm for what had become a July-hot day. As attentive as his handler, Nigel kept his bright dark eyes on her face. His task couldn’t have been easy. Phyllis was a big, tall woman, so it was a long way up to her face from Pomeranian level, and the jut of her bosom must have blocked Nigel’s view. From Rowdy’s face to mine was no great distance, and my anatomy presented no natural obstacles to eye contact, but he remained as unfocused on me as I was on the pattern we were supposed to be following. Although we were practicing what we’d learned the day before, I kept forgetting the next move, turning in the wrong direction, and failing to keep tabs on the other handlers and dogs, thus throwing us as out of sync with everyone else as we were with each other. By the time drill team finally ended, I felt sorry I’d gone to it at all, not because we’d displayed any disrespect for Eva or for her memory—we hadn’t—but because I’d literally misled Rowdy, who had deserved all my attention or none at all and had received a confusing mishmash of the two. To make amends, I stayed for flyball, which Rowdy had loved the day before and which, at his beginning level, required very little from me. Focused on the flyball box and on the tennis balls that sprang from it, Rowdy must have found the inanimate objects more responsive than I’d been during the previous hour. Except to cheer Rowdy on, I spoke little. Avoiding my friends, I exchanged a few aimless words with people I didn’t really know: the couple with the beautiful English setters, Ms. Baskerville, the owners of the handsome basenjis, the woman named Jennifer with the obedience Doberman, Delilah.
    Walking Rowdy back to our cabin, I had a sudden attack of homesickness. I missed Kimi so sharply that tears came to my eyes. With a leash in only one hand, a dog on only one side, I felt oddly unsafe. When we reached the cabin, I gave Rowdy a bowl of water. When he’d finished slurping it up, I presented him with a big dog biscuit. He didn’t have to sit, give his paw, drop, watch me, or do anything else to earn the reward; it felt important to me to give him a simple gift. Furthermore, although I’d laughed at the presence of an air conditioner in a cabin in God’s country, I turned the silly thing on and settled Rowdy under it. When he’d wrapped himself up in his classic heat-conserving sled dog position, tail curled to cover his nose and thus warm the frigid air, I sat at the desk and covered its surface with some of the material I’d used in drafting my article: copies of AKC rules, regulations, and guidelines; a couple of old issues of the Gazette; and pages of notes scribbled on yellow legal pad. Like everything else I write by hand, the notes were almost totally illegible, even to me. I was a prescient child, convinced that penmanship exercises were a Waste of time. It’s clear to me now that I foresaw the invention of the personal computer. I wished now that my clairvoyance had had a practical bent: A psychic pragmatist would also have divined the means to afford a laptop. With complete foreknowledge that unless I