Ruffly Speaking

groomed as Morris always kept them. I hoped he was admiring them. In fact, I hoped that Morris never took his eyes off his dogs. Doug held Jennie’s lead, but I wasn’t sure that Morris would be pleased to see that the human end of Nelson’s lead rested in the hand of the waiter, Fyodor, whose striking eyes focused lovingly on Doug. Doug’s parents were not there. They were alien to the part of Doug’s life that had included Morris and now apparently embraced Fyodor.
    Ivan Flynn-Isaacson didn’t go to St. Margaret’s, and neither did Steve Delaney, who is a devout member of the veterinary profession and regularly attends the services of the American Kennel Club, as does his shepherd, India, who was at Steve’s left at the far side of Lady, Steve’s timid pointer. Leah had been reared to believe primarily in Harvard and only secondarily in God, but her parents perceived no difference between the two, so at any Cambridge assembly, she fit right in.
    Most of the other people there seemed to know one another. They were, of course, Stephanie’s parishioners, and they’d brought with them an astounding variety of creatures great and small, the great on leash, the small in carriers, cages, and containers of water: two gerbils, a lop-eared rabbit, several noisy guinea pigs with long black coats, a Siamese fighting fish, a bowl of goldfish, a parakeet, a small snake, a newt, a Burmese cat, two kittens that were part Abyssinian, a handsome tabby, a Great Pyrenees, a show-quality German shorthaired pointer, two beagles, the Scottie who’d provoked Willie, a golden retriever, and four or five dogs for which the politically correct term used to be mixed-breed but is now random-bred, meaning God only knows what, and She does, too, and loves them eternally.
    Stephanie called us together. She had us gather in the kind of circle of people and animals that was perfectly familiar to me from the rites of the Cambridge Dog Training Club, except, of course, that Roz seldom has us bow our heads.
    I expected a vague ecumenical blessing. Stephanie’s was not. She spoke formally. “O merciful Creator, Your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us always thankful for Your loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of Your good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with You and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
    For the children, I think, Stephanie translated the prayer into simple English. Then, with Ruffly prancing at her side, his miraculous ears still scanning heaven and earth, Stephanie made her way slowly from animal to animal, blessing all with equal dignity, newts and snakes and all. When Stephanie and Ruffly reached us, I was astounded to see that she had not merely been resting her hand on the bowls and on the cages and on the animals themselves as she murmured her prayers. Gently placing her fingers on the crown of Rowdy’s head, she drew in his dark, furry cap what was unmistakably the sign of the cross.
    I felt shocked and guilty, but if gerbils, newts, and snakes could be blessed, so could we: Stephanie Benson, Alice Savery, Doug Winer, Morris Lamb, Fyodor, Ivan, Bernadette, Steve, Rita, Leah, and even the godless Matthew. As for Holly, Rowdy, Kimi, and the sign of the cross? Instead of dispatching hideous little gray aliens to abduct me and stick needles in my innards, the firmament had sent beautiful wolf-gray companions to steal nothing but my heart. There might well be Christian breeds, I thought, but the Alaskan malamute was not one of them. Malamutes believe in food, sex, and social hierarchies. So do I. I also believe in the Alaskan malamute and in all dogs, which is to say, in all-forgiving love. I felt heathen. I felt absolved.
     

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
     
    Susan Conant, the 1991 and 1992 recipient of the Dog Writers’ Association of America’s Maxwell Award for Fiction Writing, lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two cats, and two Alaskan malamutes. Her work has been published in Pure-bred Dogs/American Kennel Gazette and DOGworld. She is a member of the Alaskan Malamute Club of America, The American Crime Writers League, the Authors Guild, the Dog Writers’ Association of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime; and is the state coordinator of the Alaskan Malamute Protection League.