Ruffly Speaking

plate, fed it to Rowdy, and nearly lost her fingers. My eyes darted to Ruffly. He was lying on the floor a yard or so away from Stephanie, his head resting rather forlornly on his forepaws, his immense ears as close to drooping as I’d ever seen them. I wondered whether he remembered the promised leftovers he hadn’t received.
    While Stephanie was still shaking the fingers of her hand and exclaiming happily, Ruffly abruptly jumped to his feet, barked, ran to Stephanie, pawed at her, fled through the dining room, and raced back, the perfect picture of the hearing dog at work.
    “The phone,” Stephanie explained. “Excuse me.” Rising, she headed for the kitchen. Rita reached up to adjust the volume of her aids. Doug, Steve, Rita, and I looked at one another. Doug asked whether the phone had rung.
    “It’s very soft,” I explained. “Before Stephanie got Ruffly, Matthew had had about all he could take of really loud phones, so now they keep it just loud enough for Ruffly to... Steve, where are you—?”
    He was taking big strides toward the kitchen. “I’m going to see for myself.” I didn’t understand his smile. Curiosity sent Rita, Doug, and me after him.
    Stephanie stood by the counter. Her left hand clamped the receiver of the big white phone to her ear, but she spoke to us. Her voice was angry and frightened. “As usual. Nothing but a dial tone.” As she hung up, she automatically reached into the jar of treats. Steve moved in fast. He took the jar, put it on the counter, knelt down, and gently wrapped his big hands around Ruffly’s little head. Two pairs of intelligent eyes stared at one another. “Gotcha,” Steve told Ruffly. “But no hard feelings. While it lasted, buddy, it was a real good game.”
    And then Steve spelled it out: Consistently rewarded with treats for working the sound of a ringing phone, Ruffly had cleverly discovered that his performance yielded the same happy result when the phone didn’t ring. Stephanie’s perfect hearing dog had mastered the trick of working a nonexistent sound.
     

32
     
     In the next ten minutes, I decided that the Being who’d applied the no-force method to Morris and Stephanie was the Supreme Trainer who binds us all in perfect heel position. Morris Lamb had died because he’d been foolish. If Morris had had a heart attack or if he’d perished in a plane crash, Doug would still have inherited Morris’s estate, and Morris’s obviously natural or accidental death would still have banished Doug’s worry that Morris would slip up and inform the elderly Winers that their son was gay. Stephanie would still have everything she wanted. She had received no crank phone calls. The ultrasound device, if it existed at all, was a malfunctioning Yap Zap-Per that Morris had tucked away somewhere, or a neighbor’s long-range kennel silencer never aimed deliberately at Ruffly’s sensitive ears. Alice Savery was not trying to rid Highland Street of dogs; Ivan was not playing Robin Badfellow outside Stephanie’s windows; and Matthew was not trying to drive away the mother who had left his father to follow him to college. Standing outside the ring, I had discerned an elaborate heeling pattern where none existed. What I’d been observing were not, after all, the exercises of my own sport, but random drawings in a lottery that Morris Lamb lost.
    “Matthew is probably murdering those helpless moths,” Stephanie was saying. “I hope he isn’t asking Leah to watch.”
    My mouth tasted like bitter coffee. With his uncanny ability to read my intentions, Rowdy stood up and made a brief request that consisted mainly of rrr and www. Ruffly’s head turned. His eyes brightened. He bounced from his perch on Stephanie’s lap, and his wiry black-and-tan body shot across the room and vanished. Rowdy’s bulk followed.
    “Not again!” Stephanie laughed. “The phone isn’t...?”
    “No,” Doug assured her.
    I looked at Steve. He shook his head. “Not a sound.”
    “I’d better find out what he wants.” Stephanie rose.
    “Shouldn’t Ruffly be barking?” Rita asked. “He isn’t, is he?”
    “No,” I said, “he isn’t. He does his whole routine if it’s one of his sounds. Otherwise, he might just show some kind of interest. That’s why Stephanie’s supposed to watch him.”
    “Probably the fireworks,” Steve said. “From the Esplanade.”
    Stephanie’s voice reached us from the kitchen. She was conversing with a partner different from herself