Ruffly Speaking

really.”
    “What was Matthew supposed to do? Put a training collar on Ivan and bind him to his left side until—”
    “Bernie Brown is not meant to be taken literally,” pronounced Leah. “The roaches should’ve been locked up.”
    “Listen,” I said, “could we get something straight? First of all, Bernie Brown would take one look at Ivan and find that kid a good home and get himself a better prospect. Second, the no-force method isn’t about how to correct behavior problems. It’s about how to score two hundred instead of a measly one ninety-nine, okay?”
    Two hundred?Perfection. Let’s start from the Beginning, 1933, when Mrs. Whitehouse Walker returned from England and, instead of issuing the usual complaints about the lousy British food and the warm beer, said, “Let there be light.”
    And there was light.
    There were, however, neither apples nor serpents, no original sin at all, and, really, it’s a religion of endless forgiveness, too. Every time you enter the ring, you start out with all two hundred points. Your only task is to stay perfect. I should warn you, though, that strait is the gate that leads in and out of the obedience ring. And narrow the way. What did you think canine cosmology was? Some quack religion?
     

15
     
     Here’s proof that I am less dog-obsessed than is commonly supposed. Kevin Dennehy had been my friend and next-door neighbor for quite a few years before I noticed his almost unbelievably precise conformation to the American Kennel Club standard for the Mastiff. Amazingly enough, I never made the connection at all until I was researching an article on the breed. Then, all of a sudden, the words hit me. “Forechest should be deep and well defined.” Kevin’s forechest. “Shoulder and Arm —Slightly sloping, heavy and muscular.” To say the least. “Legs straight, strong and set wide apart, heavy-boned.” Kevin’s own-But here’s the clincher: “General Character and Symmetry —Large, massive, symmetrical, and well-knit frame. A combination of grandeur and good nature, courage and docility.” Kevin’s hair is even an acceptable color, for God’s sake! Well, the standard says “apricot,” not the word Kevin would choose, but his hair is a light enough red so that no sensible judge would disqualify him, and, all in all, Kevin Dennehy really is the ultimate Mastiff.
    What impeded my recognition of Kevin’s essential Mastiffness, so to speak, is that in the flesh, my next-door neighbor looks nothing whatsoever like a dog, and if he did, the probable breed would be an Irish terrier, Irish wolfhound, or Irish anything else. As it is, Kevin looks like exactly what he is: a Cambridge cop, a lieutenant, in fact. The original purpose of the Mastiff? Watchdog. I can’t imagine how I missed it for so many years.
    “ Accidental death,” I told Kevin. It was early on Sunday afternoon, one day after the show-and-go (Kimi, 185; Rowdy, don’t ask) and Kevin and I had both found excuses to hang around outside and enjoy the combination of warm sun and a cool breeze that occurs in Cambridge about once every thirty years. Kevin was massacring the barberry hedge that separates his mother’s property from my driveway. I was washing my Bronco. “Everyone has been assuming that Morris died of AIDS,” I continued, “or some AIDS-related illness, but then I heard someone call it a terrible accident. Morris died on the night of May eighth or maybe early on May ninth. I remember, because it was my grandmother’s birthday. Late Friday night or early Saturday morning. He was found on Saturday. You know anything about it?”
    “What was the guy’s name?”
    “Lamb. Morris Lamb. Winer and Lamb, in the Square?”
    “Guy pulled a lady out of the Charles a couple of years back?”
    “Yes! So—”
    “He’s dead?”
    “Yes. I was wondering... This woman, Stephanie Benson, the woman who’s renting his house... I just Wrote an article about her. She’s an Episcopal priest. She bas a hearing dog. Anyway, she just casually mentioned something about Morris’s accident. So I wondered. But maybe it was AIDS after all.”
    “Deaf lady.” Kevin jabbed the shears at the hedge. “Over on Highland.”
    “Yeah.” My sponge made big swirls of soap on the side of the car. “She’s renting Morris Lamb’s house. It’s that sort of glass cube, right next door to the run-down one that looks a little like the Longfellow House.”
    “Crackpot House.” Kevin’s voice