Stud Rites

over the United States, to the site of our annual gathering of the cult, which, like the cult of Saint Hubert, was the cult of the dog, although in our case, not just any dog of any breed or none discernible, but the cult of the living relic of the ancient peoples of the Kotzebue Sound, dog of dogs, breed of breeds, the highest link in the Great Chain of Being Canine, the noble and glorious Alaskan malamute.
    But I exaggerate. Only a few people had come from overseas. Many proud breeders, their vans and RVs packed with dogs, had come from Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Wisconsin, Texas. With or without dogs, some had flown. Scores had driven for hours or even days to this little town in Massachusetts. I’d lucked out. I was a fifty-minute ride from home and could have driven from Cambridge to Danville and back each day. Instead, I’d been saving up for a year to splurge on a room at the show site itself, the Danville Milestone Hotel and Conference Facility. There wouldn’t be another Alaskan Malamute National Specialty in New England for ten more years. Damned if I was going to miss a second of the five days, the first of which, Wednesday, October 30, had already elapsed when my story begins, and the last of which would fall, as celestial design would have it, on Sunday, November 3, the Feast of Saint Hubert, the French patron saint of dogs, whose principal relic, as I’ve explained, was a miraculous garment.
    Now, at eleven o’clock on the morning of Thursday, October 31, twenty-four hours after my arrival, I stood behind the Alaskan Malamute Rescue Booth in the exhibition area, the heart of the show, as Sherri Ann Printz presented me not with Saint Hubert’s stole, of course, but with a relic of equally legendary association.
    The Presentation of the Lamp was not, I might mention, any kind of re-creation or reenactment of Saint Hubert’s consecration. I, the recipient, was merely a follower of the cult, no founder, no leader. Besides,
    I’m a woman. And I’m no saint. The donor, Sherri Ann Printz, didn’t fit my image of the Virgin, either, whom I imagine as having a clear, radiant complexion, whereas Sherri Ann’s was pale, lumpy, and doughy, like a yeast batter in need of punching down. Indeed, I found it impossible to envision Sherri Ann as even the lowliest and most improbable of angels, whom I see as akin to the Alaskan malamute in the sense that both breeds exhibit considerable natural variation in size, shape, and coloration, but are never marred by coarseness or, in Sherri Ann’s case, outright dowdiness. A national specialty is an Occasion, with a capital O. Consequently, most of us had made an Effort, with a capital E, in the manner of appearance. Sherri Ann’s capital E Effort had, alas, produced a lowercase effect. Her gray hair was cut painfully short, and a heavy perm had given it so dense and wiry a texture that her coiffure resembled a small terrier victimized by overenthusiastic plucking and stripping. Sherri Ann wore what I think is called a duster, the sort of loose, knee-length blouse with buttons down the front in which persons quaintly known as ”housewives” were once apparently encouraged to drape themselves so that they wouldn’t need to wear bras and thus wouldn’t have any to burn. But, as I’ve said, Sherri Ann had made an obvious, if lowercase, effort: The robe was of a heavy pseudo-satin in the particular shade of pale rose-red that does a splendid job of camouflaging malamute undercoat.
    So I was no saint, and Sherri Ann was neither the Virgin nor one of Her messengers. As a stand-in for the sanctuary in which Saint Hubert was consecrated, the exhibition hall was, however, approximately the right size: larger than a chapel, if smaller than the interior of a cathedral. Exposed steel beams elevated the ceiling toward the heavens, and the industrial carpeting w as a deep stone gray. I seem to recall that early medieval churches didn’t necessarily have pews. I’m positive, however, that even Saint Hubert’s didn’t devote most of the empty floor space to baby-gated show rings.
    The event taking place here, however, the competition known as the Futurity Sweepstakes, did suggest a satisfying timelessness in spiritual theme: the Hereafter, the world to come. The Futurity actually was a bet on the future, an innocent flirtation with organized gambling. The long, complex process of nominating the teenage pups now in the ring had begun before or soon after they