Creature Discomforts

other breeds, the Border collie, for example, that I had the bulk and muscle to handle. In conclusion, he said, almost in passing, “You did get the vet to take a look.” The remark was ludicrously perfunctory. He sounded exactly, and I mean exactly, as if the first thing any sensible human being would do in response to a crack on her skull would be to rush to the nearest veterinarian. It is hideously possible that in the forgotten days of my infancy, my doting parents immunized me against numerous dog diseases that people can’t catch. Of course, if my relationship with Steve Delaney had been different from what it was, I’d naturally have had the common sense to get him to check me out.
    “I’ll be all right,” I said evasively.
    “How bad was this crack on the head?”
    I shrugged.
    “Where did this happen?”
    “Dorr. Near the top of the Ladder Trail. And no, I didn’t take the dogs on the ladders.”
    “I’m not worried about the dogs,” he said, probably for the first time in his life. “Are you seeing double?”
    “No. My vision is fine.”
    “No bones broken.”
    “No.”
    “How bad is this memory loss?”
    The relief of having someone else recognize and acknowledge it was so tremendous that I couldn’t help smiling. “I can’t even remember what I’ve forgotten,” I said lightly.
    “This slimy bastard,” he said. “Malcolm Fairley.”
    “If he’s a slimy bastard,” I said, “it’s news to me.”
    “Everything about him ought to be news to you, young lady. You just met him. He just met you.”
    “No. That’s not so. We have, uh, friends in common.”
    “What friends?”
    “Gabbi. And Ann. I have a letter from Ann that says how sweet Gabbi is.” I omitted the bossy part. “Ann thinks Malcolm is difficult. And charming. They miss him.” Buck’s expression was frighteningly serious. “No mention of Bentley?”
    1 was smug. “You see? We do know Malcolm. Yes, Ann says that a Trophy Edition is a Bentley. I didn’t quite get that part.”
    “Jesus Christ!” Buck exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I just did.”
    “Holly, let me see the letter.”
    When I’d found it and given it to him, he skimmed it and said, “Why’d you think you’d written this in the margin? God spelled backward?
    “I had the feeling it was a, uh, family saying.”
    “It is. But why’d you think you’d written it here?”
    “ Force of habit?”
    “Oh, Christ, you poor kid. Holly, you wrote it there because this letter’s not about Gabbi Beamon and Malcolm Fairley. It’s from your friend Ann Ratcliff, and what it’s about is her malamutes! You never even knew Malcolm. He died before you met Arm and Bruce. The ones you know are Gabbi and Bentley.”
    “I thought maybe I drove one,” I said pitifully.
    “Drove what?”
    “A Bentley. Never mind. But I see what you mean. New people with the names of my friends’ dogs. God spelled backward.” The rest of the world, of course, would’ve said, Weird coincidence.
    “So, what else have you forgotten?”
    I burst into tears. “Everything! I read the dogs’ tags, and I didn’t even recognize my own name. I forgot Rowdy and Kimi! Daddy, I didn’t even know they were my dogs.”
    I always call him Buck. Always have. But not now.
     

Chapter Twenty-two
     
    I DID MY BEST to tell Buck everything I’d observed and discovered since I’d awakened yesterday on the mountain: my injuries; my sense of mission; Malcolm Fairley’s account of Norman Axelrod’s fatal fall; my fragmentary recollection of Fairley’s conversation with someone; Bonnie’s message and my notes about arsenic; Axelrod’s belief that Horace Livermore was not only dosing the show dogs he handled with arsenic, but was smuggling some unknown contraband to Canada; the dead man’s antagonism to the Pine Tree Foundation and to environmental causes in general; the almost universal gratitude to Malcolm Fairley for combining charity and profit in satisfying the Pine Tree Foundation’s investors; Axelrod’s habit of needling Gabrielle about using the Beamon Reservation as a tax dodge; the flouting of the rules at the Beamon Reservation; Gabrielle’s friendship with everyone, including Axelrod and even Opal and Wally Swan, the developers; Fairley’s recruitment of Wally and Opal as volunteers on the Homans Path reclamation project; Quint and Effie’s mistrust of Wally and Opal; my evidently false impression of acquaintance with Malcolm Fairley; Anita