Stud Rites

competitor is not rotten luck. It’s a damned disaster.
    If Sherri Ann really believed that Bear would have won under Hunnewell, she must have suspected Duke Sylvia, whose name Betty Burley also let drop. ”I know you think a lot of him, Holly,” Betty told me, ”but you haven’t been around as long as I have, and there’s plenty about Duke Sylvia that you just don’t know.” What I did know was that Mal-O-Mine Ironman, the big male that Duke co-owned, was supposed to be a strong contender under Mikki Muldoon. While I’m on the subject of Duke Sylvia, let me pass along my impression that in a sense Duke alone held himself above suspicion. Duke had such quiet confidence in his own handling and in Ironman, I thought, that it wouldn’t have fazed him to discover that the change had been from James Hunnewell to Mikki Muldoon to the Great
    Last Judge. As to who had murdered James Hunnewell, Duke Sylvia rose above suspicion by becoming the one person at the national who really didn’t seem to care at all.
    Sherri Ann Printz publicly lamented the loss of Bear’s now-certain victory. With considerably less modesty than Sherri Ann displayed, Timmy Oliver, too, grieved for the honor that Hunnewell would most certainly have bestowed upon Z-Rocks. It seemed to me, though, that Sherri Ann rejoiced in the stolen glory a little more than she lamented its loss; and that she considered the man, James Hunnewell, no loss at all. Timmy Oliver’s face, however, bore the rawness of recent sorrow.
    I have digressed. What begat my ”begat”s was not suspicion, but Timmy Oliver’s sad, anxious look. Had I ever seen him in daylight before? At an outdoor show, perhaps, where almost certainly, my attention had been fixed exclusively on the dogs. Today, just outside the exhibition hall, my gaze wandered. I blamed the weather, which was startlingly clear and bright, as if God had finally gotten around to washing our windows. What I saw in Timmy was a life history of incompleteness: coitus interruptus, premature birth, and delivery by a hurried obstetrician who’d rushed off elsewhere leaving the umbilical cord half-tied. Today, only the collar and sleeves of Tim’s shirt had been pressed. His hair was longer on one side than on the other, as if he’d bolted out of the barbershop midway through his last haircut or been abandoned in favor of an important customer. His razor had missed a thin patch on his left cheek, and he’d certainly fled the breakfast table before wiping his mouth.
    ”I don’t know whose generator it was,” he told Freida Reilly, ”but it wasn’t mine, and I’m fed up with this crap of everyone saying it was. The damned thing woke me up, too, and I’m pissed about it, just like everybody else.”
    Freida, accompanied by a brace of broad-shouldered men, had cornered Tim in an angle of the building just outside the big, wide door. Our show chair pointed the red nail of her right index finger straight at his belt. I almost expected her to make a loud bang-bang. She didn’t. What she said was, ”You’re pissed? Pissed? First of all, Timmy Oliver, let me tell you that I do not appreciate having that kind of gutter language directed at me. And second, if someone else has been accusing you of anything, that’s not my problem, because all I did was ask you one simple question, which was whether it was your generator, and if it wasn’t, all you had to do was to say no. But did you just say no? You did not! What you did was, you got yourself all in a huff, and you know what that makes me wonder? I see somebody puff up like that and start sputtering all about how it was all somebody else’s fault, and I have to ask myself in all honesty if Fm not dealing with someone who’s got something to hide.” Her arms folded against her chest, she glared at him. Her pewter malamute jewelry almost seemed to mirror the expression.
    ”Honest to God, Freida, it woke me up, too.”
    Undaunted, Freida demanded to know where Tim had spent last night, but before he had time to respond, she accused him of staying in his camper.
    ”Jesus, Freida, I tried to get a room, but they’re all booked up, and I couldn’t find anyone to room with. Ask anyone! I must’ve asked a dozen people. Ask Duke! But, hey, you know, I wasn’t the only one, and I didn’t have a choice, and, you know, it’s not like I—”
    ”Enough! I have heard all I want to hear,” Freida sliced in. ”Just a word to the wise, Tim. One more violation,