Programmed for Peril

camp every summer. The camp had a farm where we did the chores.” The sun flashed off his lenses, and he raised his face in laughter. “So they paid a Sreat deal of money to turn us rich kids into poor farm boys.”
    “Berry?” She held one up to his lips. He bit it. The juice oozed onto her fingers. He licked it off. From his box he selected a huge, squarish berry, so deep red that the yellow seed flecks glowed in it like crumbs of gold. He leaned forward across the matted tangle of plants. She opened her mouth hesitantly. He pressed the monster berry against her teeth.
    Her memory flashed like an artillery battery blowing away the present, replacing it with a moment years and states away.... She lay on her back, blindfolded, her ears plugged with Play Doh, arms out and tied. On the enameled chisels of her teeth Carson split grapes, kiwis, chunks of fresh pineapple, letting juices rim where they would. The sticky rivulets teased her chin, dribbled back onto her tongue’s rough buds. Then, as always, he went beyond the expected. She had to guess at the taste and texture of ice, raw meat, eggs, still worse things that made her squirm and roll her deaf, blind head in powerless revulsion. What had begun as a daring diversion ended with her howls of repulsion. And still he pressed on, lashing her with the rod of her submission....
    She rolled her head away from Foster’s offered berry, turned her eyes to the azure sky. Tears of sorrow burned for what she had once allowed to be done to her. How much resisting the past was like shoving a boulder up an incline! She despaired, because she hadn’t nearly the strength of Sisyphus. She begged Foster’s pardon and hurried away down the row. When she had regrouped she returned to his side with an apologetic grin and too-shiny eyes.
    Sunday Foster asked Trish and Melody to go with him, as he often did, to visit his enterprise, Lake Country Kennels. One of the east’s highly regarded sources of pedigreed English mastiffs, it provided quarters for fifty of the huge dogs, mostly youngish animals and pups. Among the full-grown specimens were Gog and Magog, Foster’s own dogs. Their pointy-eared heads reached well above Trish’s waist. While Foster talked business with Doris, the manager, Melody and Trish played with the animals in the fenced field behind the two low buildings. Gentle, patient, and protective, they let Melody try to ride them like horses. They rolled over to expose tan flanks to her enthusiastic if not skillful brushing.
    Melody continued her so far unsuccessful pleadings for “a dog of her own,” a phrase she had gleaned from a book or TV. “Every girl should have a dog of her own, Mom!” she said. “I’ll take good care of him.”
    “We don’t have room for one of these kind-hearted monsters, sweet. Never mind feeding it chow in bulldozer scoop lots.”
    “Mom!”
    “Foster’s nice enough to let you play with Gog and Magog. You can have the fun without the responsibility. That doesn’t happen often in life, I can assure you.” Melody frowned but knew better than to dare to whine. She went racing across the field, the dogs loping easily beside, as though daring her to put on some red speed.
    Trish squinted against the midday brilliance, watching her child gambol with her two protectors. She wanted this moment frozen in plastic like a boardwalk trinket. She would hang it around her neck and never have to worry about her own or her daughter’s safety. They would stand forever as they did now, on secure turf fenced by sturdy Cyclone wire, guarded by faithful animals. She wondered at the sources of her impossible longing.
    Some of it originated with bellowing Lester O’Day, his business laid low by a virus whose source had to be her loaner PC. Who had been following Leftover Lewis as he made his van rounds? Who had urged her to “reconsider,” and what had to be reconsidered? Something business-related, surely. At the bottom of it all lay Rocco DeVita. Somehow she would have to confront him and exert some leverage, if she could find out how to do it.
    She succeeded in shaking off shadowy intuitions for the rest of the day, thanks to Foster, who took them both to a dockside lobster restaurant. There they ate from spread newspapers, gobbled steamers and com, and attacked the red shells with nutcrackers and picks, showing the zeal of berserk brain surgeons.
    After Melody was in bed she sat with Foster on the! screened porch’s old wooden swing.