The Wicked Flea

tight-laced spell checker on my word processor purses its prissy lips when I write bitch. Instead of having the guts to come right out and order me to quit talking dirty, it expresses its prudish disdain by suggesting a ludicrous euphemism, namely, arrogant woman. In dog circles, bitch is clean. In feminist circles, arrogant woman is dirty. Ain’t life strange.
    Where was I? Oh, yes, as I told Dr. Foote, my malamute arrogant woman and I were on our way home from a freestyle obedience workshop when we stopped at S & I’s Burgerhaven, a hamburger joint in one of Boston’s western suburbs. Freestyle, as I explained to Dr. Foote, is dancing with dogs. It’s fun. To return to the incident, the lawn next to the parking lot had picnic tables, and since it was a warm day, a few lone people and one big family were sitting at the tables enjoying the late afternoon sun. Arrogant women don’t use ladies’ rooms. Consequently, I was walking Kimi toward the designated pet exercise area when our route took us close to the table occupied by the family, whose large order of paper-wrapped burgers, french fries, and cold drinks was still piled on a tray. Worse, instead of sensibly occupying the center of the table, the tray rested at one end and not just any old end, either, but the end within easy leaping distance of Kimi, who took one whiff and squeezed her own trigger, as it were, thus shooting a large and wolflike gray bullet at the target, which she hit dead center. Bull’s-eye! Not to brag or anything, but Kimi’s aim is incredible, and is she fast! Rowdy is a perfectly decent food thief, but Kimi is extraordinary. When this sport makes it to the Olympics, the U.S. Food Filching Team is going to consist mainly of Alaskan malamutes and Labrador retrievers, and even against that class of competition, Kimi will be a shoo-in for the gold. When she shows off like this around malamute people, I try to be modest, but it’s difficult because they exclaim at her prowess and speed, as did the family at the picnic table, but not in quite the same tone of gasp. In brief, they were irate.
    The family consisted of five people: a bedraggled mother, an oleaginous father, two neglected-looking little girls, and a vigorous old man with keen blue eyes. Individually and collectively, they exuded a heartrending air of poverty. With the exception of the old man, they looked as if they might have started out bright and vivid, but had repeatedly been run through the wash until their fabric was faded and threadbare. The mother’s hair was in brush rollers, and her face was pitifully thin. Her husband was all grease, inside and out, big gut, sausage-shaped arms and fingers, lank hair, and oily skin. The little girls were maybe four and five. They still had baby teeth, the front ones brown with decay. Their identical outfits, dresses and coats, must once have been party wear. The cloth had originally been shiny, I thought, and, at a guess, baby blue. The old man was attired entirely in gray, but his expression was alert, and although the entire family was in an uproar, he seemed to be the only one with enough extra blood in his veins to redden his face. Especially since my switch from golden retrievers to malamutes, my dogs had stolen food from me and from a lot of other people on dozens of occasions. Never before, however, had one of my dogs stolen food from people who really needed it.
    I was mortified. “I’m so terribly sorry,” I said. “It was all my fault. I’ll replace everything. This is horrible. She should never have done such a thing. Just tell me what you had, and I’ll go order it.” Unappeased, the father continued bellowing. “Damn it! Damn it all! Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Meanwhile, the old man was swearing, and the malnourished girls were wailing. Tears and mucus ran down their pinched faces. Glaring at me, then exchanging glances with the men, the mother exclaimed, “Everything always goes wrong!”
    “I’ll fix it,” I insisted, referring to this incident, of course, not to everything. “Just tell me what to order. Please! Double portions. With dessert. Anything!” So far, no one had responded to my offer. The restaurant’s menu was limited to hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fried clams, french fries, and the like, so the original order couldn’t have been complicated. In an effort to pry the information out of someone, I addressed the children. “I’m really sorry that my dog ate your food. Maybe she scared