Creature Discomforts

representative consulted her computer listings of items this customer had previously ordered, asked whether he’d gained or lost weight recently, and suggested garments suitable for creating a positive impression on a woman of taste during a fall weekend on Mount Desert Island. It soon became apparent that Buck wanted choices rather than suggestions. Therefore, she chose. Instead of having the order shipped, he arranged to pick it up. He hates paying shipping costs.
    “Hire a professional!” Buck trumpets to Mandy. The thought of a professional handler reminds him of Horace Livermore. And this image leads, as does everything these days, to Gabrielle Beamon. “Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition! And if you want to win, hire a professional!”
    Instead of driving directly north from Owls Head to Bar Harbor, Buck therefore heads south, reaches Freeport, swears at the traffic, and finally finds a place in the L.L. Bean lot. Ignoring such temptations as brightly colored canoes and kayaks in which he pictures Gabrielle gracefully paddling, he follows the friendly L.L. Bean representative’s instructions for finding the customer service desk, where his order awaits him: the monogrammed dog bed, shirts in chamois cloth and Royal Stewart flannel, a fleece anorak, chinos, lightweight hiking boots, and a piece of soft-sided luggage to replace his army-green duffel bag, which appears moth-eaten but has actually been chewed by mice. He bears left and looks upward at the familiar moose head mounted above. He pauses a moment. Several customers observe him. They smile at the sight of this craggy moose of a man gazing happily upward an apparent replica of his own head.
     

Chapter Nineteen
     
    THE ENCOUNTER WITH MY FATHER felt like another head injury.
    But I have leaped ahead. Before I bounce back, let me point out that these sequencing problems are well documented in cases like mine. Actually, I’m lucky. The persistent sequelae could be far worse than they are.
    Anyway, my reaction to Buck was perfectly normal; my father has a concussive effect on everyone. Take Quint and Effie, who hailed me as I slowed to a crawl before turning left at the Beamon Reservation parking lot. Effie had a dazed look. “Your father’s here!” she exclaimed, her manner suggesting the breaking of astounding news, as if she’d located a supposedly dead birth parent for me and wanted to prepare me for the shock of an imminent reunion.
    Cracks on the head or no cracks on the head, memory is an unreliable faculty, so maybe I’d better remind you that Effie was not an adoption-reunion professional, but the young potter and weaver married to Gabrielle Beamon’s nephew, Quint O’Brian, both of whom I’d met at Gabrielle’s clambake. By sunlight, they still radiated New Age wholesomeness. What I could see now was that although Effie’s long, French-braided hair was a deep chocolate brown and her husband’s curls cherubic blond, the couple had identical skin, fair and dewy. The sameness of skin may, of course, have been a meaningless coincidence or a minor source of their initial attraction to each other. Still, I found myself seeing that moist freshness of countenance as the result of a shared regimen of whole-grain loaves, exotic vegetables, and dietary supplements with unpronounceable names in combination with the use of peppermint-scented health-food-store liquid soap.
    Quint and Effie were apparently engaged in fulfilling one of their duties as caretakers of the Beamon Reservation: Both had binoculars slung around their necks. If you work for a wildlife preserve, then birding isn’t just the relaxing pastime it is for everyone else, is it? No, it counts as work, not exactly as hard work, if you want my opinion, but work all the same, even though Quint was, of course, Gabrielle’s nephew. A cushy job gained through nepotism is still, after all, a job. Did I want the O’Brians to collect welfare instead? Furthermore, in contrast to most of the activities pursued by the guests at the clambake, looking at native fauna through binoculars at least didn’t violate any of the reservation’s multitudinous don’t-you-dares posted nearby.
    “I have to tell you,” Effie said breathlessly, “that if that bumper sticker of his is supposed to be a joke, well, violence is not my idea of a suitable subject for humor. And it’s not Quint’s either.” She’d stuck her head through the window of my car and almost into my face. Up