Creature Discomforts by Conant Susan

Author:Conant, Susan [Conant, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

EAGER TO EXAMINE THE AREA where Norman Axelrod had met his death, and where I’d perhaps come close to meeting mine, I started along the gentle beginning of the upper portion of the Ladder Trail. To my annoyance, the dogs and I had covered only a short distance when we came upon a lone hiker taking a break just off the stretch of trail that, according to my estimate, ran directly above my Rock of Ages. The hiker, a man I guessed to be in his late twenties, had the admirable combination of dark skin, dark hair, and vivid blue eyes. It’s a combination admired by me, anyway, especially, as in the case of the hiker, when the guy has attractive, somewhat exotic features and is altogether the picture of muscular perfection. His short-sleeved white T-shirt and khaki shorts revealed lean, strong arms and legs. He had on woolen socks and heavy leather hiking boots. The shorts and boots had a comfortable, broken-in look, as did the unzipped black day pack that rested next to the hiker, who was sitting on the ground drinking from a plastic bottle. As maybe I need to spell out, this wasn’t some fleshy tourist who’d just finished expensively costuming himself at one of the outdoor outfitters’ shops in Bar Harbor. This was the kind of fanatic who trains for through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, speeding along the Pacific Crest, or frisking on the glaciers of Denali by dashing around Acadia making everyone else feel fat, slow, and morally inferior.

The hiker smiled and said a pleasant hello that included the dogs as well as me. When I’d returned his greeting, he eyed the dogs and said, “The steep part begins ahead. You don’t hit the first ladder until below some steps.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We don’t do ladder trails, or at least the dogs don’t. I just wanted to see what the beginning of the trail was like.”

To my relief, he did not admire my “huskies,” ask why they didn’t have blue eyes, or joke about making Kimi do all the work. Instead he asked, “You show them?”

Normal enough question, to which there must be a hundred normal answers, such as Yes, No, Sometimes, Once in a while, All the time, Not anymore, and I retired them after they took Best of Breed at Westminster in successive years. The only idea that came to mind was the grossly abnormal truth, namely, that if I did I had no memory of it. Before I had a chance to say anything, normal or abnormal, however, the hiker made it clear that he’d been stating the obvious rather than asking a question. He rose gracefully and tucked his right hand into the pocket of his shorts. As any show dog knows, that’s where the liver lives. Rowdy and Kimi shifted into show mode: Tails wagging over their backs, ears up, eyes sparkling, they posed for an invisible judge. With no recollection of how I knew anything about anything, including the dialect of the dog fancy, I felt pleased to watch them free-stack so beautifully.

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