Stud Rites

certainly not Ironman himself—seemed to see the dog as any kind of threat. I believe that he was none.
    I felt sorry for the hotel manager. Although human beings lack the Alaskan malamute’s exquisite sensitivity to even the most subtle shifts in hierarchical position, the man must have known that in taking Duke’s cash, he’d acknowledged Duke as master, himself as cur. Later, panicked in retrospect by his own apparent loss of sanity, he’d have waking dreams of Ironman, visions of the jaws and teeth of the huge dog with the cold eyes. Poor man! He couldn’t have known that Duke Sylvia never, ever lost control—of a dog or of himself.
    But that’s just what Timmy Oliver had tried to provoke Duke to do. Timmy’s object, as I see it now, was to cast a halo of guilt around Duke. At the time, I was mystified. As perhaps I haven’t made plain, neither Freida’s accusation nor Duke’s immediate proffering of cash nor the admirable condition of Ironman’s coat led me to suppose that Duke had precipitously decided to give Ironman a last-minute bath and foolishly left a hairy, stopped-up tub for a chambermaid who was bound to complain. The dripping-wet dog in the parking lot that morning had been Z-Rocks; the interior of Timmy’s camper had been very dirty and equally dry; and Duke had regretted a favor. What escaped me at first was Timmy’s cold-blooded calculation. Falsely charged with a demeaning offense, Duke could be counted on to take full responsibility for something he hadn’t done. The pattern, I suspected, was lifelong. As a kid in school, Duke would’ve silently accepted punishment before he’d have stooped to pointing a finger at the real culprit. A whiny I didn’t do it—he did? Not from Duke Sylvia. Not then. Not now.
    Only when Timmy and Z-Rocks lined up directly in back of Duke and Ironman in the aisle behind my seat did I realize that Mikki Muldoon had also figured in Timmy’s plan. Discovering that Z-Rocks came right after Ironman in the Best of Breed entries, Timmy had known (as I hadn’t) that Mrs. Muldoon judged in catalog order and, consequently, that Z-Rocks and Ironman, Timmy and Duke, stood a good chance of ending up as they were now: with Z-Rocks and Timmy right behind Ironman and Duke.
    Since the dogs were just behind my seat, I was perfectly positioned to overhear Duke’s predictable demand to Timmy for reimbursement for the damage payment he’d just made to the hotel. I would’ve overheard it, too, except that a nearby seal-and-white male kept repeatedly bleating an oddly ovine version of woo-woo-woo. Besides, Duke spoke quietly. He talked so softly that he didn’t even need a big stick. That little-boy Duke who’d’ve taken the punishment for another kid’s crime? The same little-boy Duke who’d’ve stayed after for detention and then gone out and beaten the shit out of the poor sucker who hadn’t known better, but learned fast.
    Timmy’s reply to Duke’s request for reimbursement was loud and brash: ”Your room, man, your problem.” There was a pause; Duke must have spoken. Then Timmy said, ”No can do! If I had a dime, I’d have my own room. Go ahead and try, but you can’t get blood out of a stone.” If Crystal was telling the truth, only yesterday she’d paid Timmy two hundred dollars. According to Betty, he’d probably already spent it. Or he was lying.
    A hand descended on my left shoulder. Even before I saw whose it was, I flinched. Leaning across Z-Rocks, Timmy breathed into my ear. He reeked of aftershave and peppermint. ”Too bad about that back there. These things’ll happen. Nobody’s fault.”
    As an alpha, I’m strictly self-made. I envied the naturals: Duke Sylvia, Rowdy, Kimi, Casey, Betty Burley. My mother, too. She’d have acted by instinct. But once I worked out what to do—not a damned thing—I knew I’d hit on the true alpha attitude. In my world, Timmy Oliver did not exist.
    And that’s alpha: Does God swat flies?
     

 
     
    UNABLE TO OUTRUN his predators, the horned lizard relies on crypticity and spines: He is hard to see and even harder to swallow. For canids, he reserves a unique defense: His lids swell, and out of minute openings in his eyes squirt fine streams of noxious and repellant blood. I am a sort of horny toad in reverse. Regardless of my surroundings, I stand out as a dog person, and far from sticking in the throats of dogs, I readily slip inside their skins. Confronted with a dog, I become all eyes. Into