The Wicked Flea

moments threatened to become awkward. The day I’d first met Wilson, he’d given me the impression that he knew Mrs. Waggenhoffer. Now, it was clear that he merely knew who she was. I quickly introduced the two. Wilson looked painfully intimidated, as if he were being presented at the Court of Saint James’s and not to the president of the Micmac Kennel Club. Instead of just saying that he was happy to meet Mrs. Waggenhoffer and then immediately making some socially appropriate remark, in other words, almost anything about dogs, he stammered a shy, formal, “How do you do?”
    The silence lasted only a few seconds. I was about to break it, but didn’t have to, because the elder Mr. Trask did it for me. Navigating his way between the rows of crates that formed the aisle and around grooming tables, gear bags, jugs of water, coils of electric cord, and other dog-show accoutrements, he was trailed by Tim, Brianna, and the little girls. Pointing an accusatory finger as Mrs. Waggenhoffer, he abruptly demanded, “You! Are you Winifred?”
    As I knew perfectly well, Winifred was Mrs. Waggenhoffer’s first name. I was probably old enough to call her by it. I never did. She wouldn’t have liked it.
    Sounding more arrogant than she intended, I think, Mrs. Waggenhoffer responded with a question. “And who might you be?” Mrs. Waggenhoffer, as I hope I’ve suggested, is not the sort of ruffian who growls, Yeah, and who wants to know? But that was what she meant.
    Instead of making sure that she was who she was, and instead of answering her question, George Trask pulled a sheet of paper from one of the pockets of his shabby jacket and began to shake it in the air and pelt her with questions. “Do you know what this is? And do you know how much my son paid for this dog? Is this your idea of fair? Is this—”
    Mrs. Waggenhoffer blinked. Then she smiled in a way that people who didn’t know her must have seen as condescending. I saw it as an effort to make light of an unpleasantness. But, of course, I’d known her all my life. “How could I possibly tell what that is when you’re waving it around like that?” she said. “What in heaven’s name is all this about?” By now, to my annoyance, she’d taken a step forward and was blocking my view. Still, her tone of voice suggested that rather than speaking directly to George Trask, she was addressing some distant personage far superior to the man right in front of her.
    George Trask finally quit shaking the piece of paper. Peering around the bulk of Mrs. Waggenhoffer, I got a quick look at the paper and easily identified it as a pedigree. I also got a glimpse of the rest of the Trask family. Tim, now standing next to George, wore a sullen, bullish expression. Brianna’s face was pale and pinched. The girls were peering through the wire mesh door of a Vari-Kennel. I hoped they knew better than to stick their fingers into the crate of an unfamiliar dog.
    Feeling sorry for the Trasks, although far less sorry for George than for the others, I intervened. ‘These people, the Trasks,” I said, “have a dysplastic golden. Naturally, they’re very—”
    “Pissed!” Tim Trask finished my sentence, although not quite as I’d intended. “Damn straight we are! Rightly so! And we’re not stupid, you know! My father went to the library and looked it all up in books and on the computer, the Internet, and this isn’t supposed to happen.”
    Mrs. Waggenhoffer was all sympathy. “Hip dysplasia is a real heartbreaker,” she agreed. “But the good news is that in many, many cases, there’s lots to be done about it. I can give you the name of an absolutely marvelous orthopedic surgeon, not that I’ve ever needed his services. Not with my lines.” She paused. “Where did you get the dog?”
    George Trask still had the pedigree in his hand. He thrust it at her. Unfortunately, she held it where I couldn’t see it. In a few seconds, she said, “Now, I find this really quite odd. Timothy Trask?”
    “That’s me,” the father said.
    “But that’s your dog’s name!” Mrs. Waggenhoffer crowed.
    Tim Trask was red faced. He looked even oilier than ever, but the shininess of his face seemed now to result from perspiration. “That was a mistake,” he muttered. “The dog’s name is Charlie.”
    His father sprang to his defense. “All that’s beside the point. The point is that you people let these goddamn breeders get away with this, that’s what the point is.