Creature Discomforts

that. Enough said! Holly, do you have a folding bowl with you? Because I don’t. This was quite careless of us.”
    “Pardon me, Gabbi,” Opal said sternly, “but this is not just a family matter. Wally and I took your word—“
    “1 personally assure you,” said Malcolm Fairley, “that—”
    “You personally assure us?” Wally cut in. “Let me tell you that I for one don’t give a sweet shit about personal assurance. What we assumed we had was impersonal assurance, and we assumed that Gabbi had gotten it. Now, did you or didn’t you, Gabbi?”
    My father did not seize the opportunity to shoot a developer. Wally’s profession had nothing to do with it. As Buck later told me, Wally could’ve been “a seaweed-gumming ecologist, for Christ’s sake.” Furthermore, Buck didn’t shoot anyone, even—here I quote—“the stinking son of a bitch who had the fucking balls to talk to Gabrielle like that. Did the little bastard think I was going to stand there and listen to that horseshit?“
    In brief, with no warning, Buck lunged toward Wally and delivered one ferocious blow to the solar plexus. My father is violent, but not stupid. If he’d allowed gravity to drop Wally to the granite, the result might have been a serious injury. As it was, Buck caught Wally on his way down and, with remarkable gentleness, lowered him to the ground. Meanwhile, Effie descended, or maybe ascended, into frenzied ecstasy. “He hit him!” she cried out. “He hit Wally! He hit him, he hit him, he hit him!”
    Hysterics is bad enough in a man. In a woman, it’s intolerable. Ugh. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether Effie’s husband ever made her feel that good.
    “Effie, we saw what happened,” Gabrielle told her, “although I think Wally’s just had the wind knocked out of him. That’s right, isn’t it, Steve?”
    With the prone Wally glaring up at him, Steve was checking the man’s pulse and palpating his rib cage. In almost no time, however, Wally caught his breath, sat up, and declared that there was nothing wrong with him. Furthermore, he insisted with shameful ingratitude and blatant inaccuracy that he didn’t want to be examined by a horse doctor. Steve is a small-animal vet: dogs, cats, birds, and, of course, lizards and other household pets, not horses. Rudely dismissed by his human patient, Steve rummaged in his fanny pack, produced a fabric dog bowl, and handed it to Gabrielle, together with a bottle of water that he had removed from the waistband of the pack. Driven by the absence of a third arm, Gabrielle put Molly on the ground and watered her. Then, as I watered Rowdy and Kimi, who exchanged rivalrous growls about having to share a single bowl, the human bickering threatened to resume.
    “So the truth is,” Quint said to Gabrielle, “you didn’t have your people check it out.”
    “They aren’t my people, Quint. I don’t own them! Their services are not free. And I saw no need.”
    Buck intervened. “Here’s the situation. Fairley here offers Gabrielle the chance to invest in this foundation. They’re both involved in conservation on the island. Here’s a way Gabrielle can support a cause she’s committed to anyway, and make money at the same time. The foundation’s lawyer is Anita here, and Gabrielle knows her. Gabrielle hears about these philanthropists. No names! Just hints. The carriage roads. So Gabrielle doesn’t do the usual research. She assumes it’s been done. By someone else. By the carriage roads, let’s say. Out of the kindness of her heart, she lets her friends and relatives in on the deal. Wally and Opal. Quint and Effie. Lots of other people?”
    “Oh, yes.” Gabrielle nodded. “Naturally, all the investors wanted to share the opportunity with their friends and relatives, too.”
    “Norman Axelrod must’ve just eaten this up,” Buck commented.
    “On the contrary,” Effie said. “He couldn’t have been more hostile. We’ve already said that.”
    With an evil grin on his face, my father clarified his meaning. “Axelrod must’ve eaten up the prospect of blowing the whistle on this whole scheme. Profit motive masquerading as charity? Keep Maine green! The color of money. And the Rockefellers. Let’s not forget them. And Fairley, don’t give me this anonymity crap. Axelrod must’ve been drooling over that one, especially if Wally here is right. Axelrod would’ve loved blowing the whistle on a con that took in the Rockefellers.” Buck paused. “So,