Creature Discomforts

or toney magazine. Loose pages of the Times and The New Yorker drifted through empty brain space. Each page prominently displayed my byline. Recovering from this little fit of journalistic grandiosity, I realized that Fairley might not have been speaking literally. For all I knew, my publications, like the late Norman Axelrod’s, consisted of crank letters printed on the editorial pages of local weeklies.
    Fairley went on to suggest otherwise. Playfully wagging a finger at me, he said, “I hope that Tiffany hasn’t been giving any secrets away.” To Tiffany, he added, “Holly’s here because Norman promised her a story. A scoop? Is that still the term, Holly? So we need to watch what we say to her, or it’ll all end up in print!” Fairley sounded pleased at the prospect: You ’re not going to write about ME, are you? Are you?
    Another bit of knowledge. I was evidently a writer, a Rachel Carson type, perhaps, whose subject was the environment, pollution, conservation, ozone, global warming, and all that sort of thing. Ah-hah! The mysterious message on the answering machine about the arsenic front! Norman Axelrod’s promise of a story! The pieces interlocked. I, Holly Winter, famed chronicler of environmental issues, had been summoned by Norman Axelrod to prepare a special report on arsenic contamination at Acadia National Park. Scandal! Millions of innocent park visitors each year exposed to the notorious toxin! Thousands of M.D.I residents! Not to mention everyone who ate a Maine lobster! Well, no wonder I suffered from this dreadful sense of mission! And Norman Axelrod? Although I remembered nothing about him, what I’d heard this evening suggested a man who’d never have voluntarily started down a ladder trail on his own, especially not on a wet, foggy, slippery day. Rather, he’d been a man on the verge of exposing mass arsenic pollution at one of the nation’s most cherished national parks. But before we’d gone public with our revelation, poor Norman Axelrod had fallen to his death.
     

Chapter Ten
     
    PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN about something the cat or dog dragged home have obviously never met human children. All of a sudden, a pigtailed girl of seven or eight dashed into the light of the campfire. Dangling a stinky, repulsive length of what appeared to be bubble wrap encrusted with the rotting corpses of sea creatures, she ran up to Quint and demanded, “What’s this?”
    Far from being put off, Quint showed the eagerness appropriate to the caretaker of a nature preserve. “This is a curious find, isn’t it?” he told the child. He pulled out a flashlight and shone the beam on the loathsome thing.
    “Is it an animal?” the child asked.
    “How about we take it up to the house,” Quint suggested, “where we can look at it in good light?”
    Skipping after Quint, the child babbled happily. “Roberta said it was just an old piece of junk,” she gloated. “But Roberta was wrong!”
    “Sisters often are,” Quint said sympathetically. “But they usually outgrow it. Roberta probably just didn’t get a good look at this specimen. It’s pretty dark here. Once we...” His voice trailed off.
    Was the repulsive thing an animal? I had no idea. Worse, I had no desire to find out. As a conservation biologist or a famous science writer, I seemed to be on a par with the scorned Roberta. Scratch that hypothesis. So, why had the late Norman Axelrod summoned me here? I could hardly beg Quint and the little girl to play scientific detective by deducing my vocation in the fashion of Sherlock Holmes. Malcolm Fairley apparently knew the answer to my question. Still, I could hardly catch his eye and remark, even in an offhand way, Say there, Malcolm! You’ve piqued my curiosity about how I earn my living. Do you suppose you could fill me in?
    Trying to dream up a subtle probe, I idly ran my fingertips down Rowdy’s throat, as if a bright idea wedged in his vocal cords might transmit itself to my nervous system and eventually excite my enfeebled cerebrum. I studied him. In daylight, Kimi’s dark facial markings had made her the more wolflike of the pair. Now, by the light of the fire and the torch flames, each was as primeval as the other. Huddled around the remains of the clambake, glutted with the flesh of oversize undersea insects, we human beings looked none too civilized ourselves. With their dark, heavy coats, blocky muzzles, neat little ears, and intelligent eyes, my dogs had the advantage of