Ruffly Speaking

appeared with a dead squirrel in his mouth just to prove that he was a normal dog after all. When my envious surge abated, I took a good look at Ruffly and realized that I didn’t entirely trust his consistent display of faultless behavior. In other words, I felt the way I usually do when I’m watching a poodle in the obedience ring. As a big fan of poodle antics, I’d become pretty good at predieting when an apricot mini was going to ruin a 200 score by leaping up into the handler’s arms, or when a black standard heading for high in Open B was going to turn the Retrieve on Flat into tug-of-war by refusing to part with the dumbbell, but Ruffly didn’t show the devilish glint in the eye or the little telltale wiggle in the gait. The tilt of his head? Although it was Ruffly who was Stephanie’s Victrola, her canine ear trumpet, he might have copied the bewitching angle from the old RCA ad. Only when I’d worked my way down the full length of the dog did I finally spot the cue: Almost imperceptibly, the very tip of Ruffly’s tail drummed a minibeat of deviltry.
    Before I could decide what to make of that observation, however, Stephanie asked me to explain our discovery to Doug and announced that she was going to make a preliminary search of the kitchen, where the majority of Ruffly’s episodes had occurred. Then she would examine her bedroom. In case the shots of ultrasound were fired from outside the house, she also wanted to close the windows and the big sliding glass doors. Ruffly, of course, followed her inside.
    “A crise of some sort?” Doug asked.
    “With luck, a resolved one.” I went on to explain. Then I casually asked whether Morris had ever happened to buy anything like the Yap Zapper.
    Although I’d tried to be tactful, Doug was insulted. Had I ever even heard Morris so much as raise his voice to his dogs? Had I already forgotten what Morris was like?
    “Doug, I had to ask, just on the off chance, and ultrasound is really not an instrument of torture, but I’m sorry. And, no, I have not forgotten what Morris was like. Whenever I’m here, I keep half expecting to have Morris show up and tell me all about his wins, and then make me taste whatever he’s been cooking, and the more different everything looks and sounds and smells here, the more I miss him, and—”
    “God, it’s awful,” Doug said. “How I loathe being here. I can hardly endure walking up the stairs to the second floor. It’s like going through it all over again, walking in that morning, and going up there, and finding him like that.” The lilt in Doug’s voice, the exaggerated emphases, the whole gay speech pattern sounded entirely unaffected; everything gay about Doug felt like a genuine expression of solidarity with Morris. “I have this terrible fear about being here.” Doug pulled a terry cloth sweat-band from one of the pockets of his white shorts and vigorously wiped the palms of his hands.
    “Fear of—?”
    The July sun was beating down on the deck, and Doug’s face was damp from the heat, but instead of mop-ping his forehead, he kept scrubbing his hands. It had been warm under the big striped tent at the Essex County show, and with Nelson about to enter the Bedlington ring, Doug had been keyed up. It’s possible that the thick dog-show odors of grooming spray, canine perfume, and exhibitors’ nerves had blunted my sense of smell or masked whatever odor came from Doug, but I hadn’t caught so much as a whiff of after-shave. Now, though, the heat of the sun and the sweat of Doug’s body activated Ivory soap and diffused it so effectively that I wondered whether Morris’s backyard would ever again smell like fresh -cut grass.
    Doug went through the motions of wringing out the sweatband, but no drops of moisture hit the wooden deck. He glanced around, and when he spoke, his voice was oddly flat. “Have you ever been afraid of seeing someone w ho wasn’t there?”
    I knew exactly what he meant. “My mother,” I answered. “After she died.” I’d been terrified of seeing her ghost. A somewhat similar phenomenon plagued me after Vinnie died. The difference was that I’d have welcomed even the most hazy, protoplasmic shade of Vinnie. I could have made this confession to Morris. To Doug? I didn’t entirely trust him. Not everyone understands about being scared of seeing your mother, but feeling eager to greet the great obedience dog of your life in whatever form she chooses to materialize.
    “It