Animal Appetite (Dog Lover's Series #10) by Susan Conant

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I first encountered Hannah Duston on a bleak November Sunday afternoon when my car died in the dead center of Haverhill, Massachusetts. A handsome woman of monumental build, Hannah towered above me. She wore a long, flowing dress with sleeves to the wrists. Her hair fell in waves over broad shoulders and down a muscular back. With her right hand, she maintained what looked like a familiar grasp on a hatchet. Her left arm was outstretched to point an index finger of apparent accusation at my two Alaskan malamutes, who were relieving themselves within the precincts of the Grand Army of the Republic Park. The dogs ignored her. Rowdy, my male, continued to anoint a nearby tree, and Kimi, in the manner of dominant females, lifted her leg on a Civil War cannon directly ahead of Hannah, who stood frozen in her rigid, athletic pose. Although Hannah had every right to object--my dogs were, after all, on her turf--she said nothing. Finding her bland expression impossible to read, I studied the massive stone base on which she stood:

HANNAH DUSTON WAS CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS IN HAVERHILL THE PLACE OF HER NATIVITY.
MAR. 15, 1697

A bas-relief showed a house from which two women were being led by a pair of men depicted as just what the words said, Indians, as opposed, for example, to Native Americans.

With the dogs now on short leads, I moved to Hannah's left, directly under her pointing finger. Here, eight children clustered behind a man on horseback. He aimed a gun at a half-naked and befeathered figure. I read:

HER HUSBAND'S DEFENSE OF THEIR CHILDREN AGAINST THE PURSUING SAVAGES.

Continuing my counterclockwise circuit, I found beneathHannah Duston's back a trio of people in colonial dress, two women and a boy, and on the ground outside a wigwam, ten prostrate forms rendered in a manner that would not have pleased the American Indian Movement. The words cut into the stone were:

HER SLAYING OF HER CAPTORS AT CONTOOCOOK ISLAND MAR. 30, 1697 AND ESCAPE.

The last bas-relief, the one located under Hannah's hatchet, simply showed two women and a boy in a canoe. The engraved words, too, were simple:

HER RETURN.

In 1697, Hannah Duston had been captured by Indians. She had slain her captors. She and two companions, a woman and a boy, had come back alive. I felt immediately drawn to Hannah: In her place, I thought, my own Kimi, my dominant female, would have done the same. I felt ashamed to find myself the helpless damsel who waited for Triple A under the shadow of Hannah's bronze figure. My shame increased when my deliverer diagnosed the problem: The fuel gauge had broken. My car had run out of gas.

That same evening, when I'd finally reached Cambridge, fed the dogs, and unloaded half the firewood I'd been hauling back from my father's place in Owls Head, Maine, my friend and second-floor tenant, Rita, and I sat at my kitchen table splitting a pizza and drinking her contribution, an Italian red wine far better than anything I could have supplied, meaning, at the moment, anything costlier than tap water.

"It did seem to me," I told Rita, "that I was getting awfully good mileage." I chewed and swallowed.

As you'd soon have guessed if you'd listened in, Rita is a clinical psychologist. A Cambridge psychotherapist. I train dogs. I also write about dogs, not just for fun but for a pittance that Dog's Life magazine passes off as money. Perhaps you've read my column? Holly Winter? So Rita and I deal with identical problems--mismatches, lost love, inappropriate conduct, needless suffering, failures of communication, and all the rest--but Rita gets paid more than I do because her job is a lot more complicated than mine. In Rita's profession, everyone is always fouled up. In my work, it's usually clear right away that an emotional block, a lack of moral fiber, or, in most cases, fathomless ignorance is causing the owner unwittingly to reinforce undesirable behavior in a potentially perfect dog, which is to say, almost any dog at all. In other words, even deep in her heart, Rita has to suspend judgment. I, too, can't go around voicing blame. Instead, I mouth the same shrink dictum Rita does: "It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility."

But I digress. This story is supposed to have almost nothing to do with dogs. So let's magically let you peer at us again and conclude what you will of us. Can you guess that I have a mad crush on my vet? That he, Steve Delaney, is my ardent lover? And that Rita, in her prolonged longing for a human male soul mate, constitutes consummate proof of the unutterable density of men? If you are perceptive, perhaps yes.

So, with European delicacy, Rita was carefully transferring morsels of crust from her fork to her mouth and, as usual, listening to my complaints, which moved from my foolishness about the gas gauge to the advanced age of my Ford Bronco to the failure of the proud yet humble profession of dog writing to pay enough to feed one human being, never mind myself and two big dogs. What I expected her to say in reply was the kind of thing she always says: She'd interpret dog writing as a symbolic representation of a withholding maternal imago, demand to know whether I'd been abruptly weaned, or inquire about some other such developmental crisis that it was thirty plus years too late to fix.

But she didn't. In fact, Rita astonished me by putting down her knife and fork, looking me directly in the eye, and asking a radically practical question: "Holly, has it ever occurred to you to take a
break from dogs and, for once, write about people instead?"

A large lump of mozzarella stuck in my throat. To save my life, I was forced to wash it down with a big slug of wine. "Well, yes, of course, Rita, but it's like what Robert Benchley said about exercise--sometimes I feel the impulse, but then I lie down, and the feeling passes."

"Has it ever occurred to you," Rita demanded, "that you are selling yourself short?"

I was suitably insulted. "Of course not!"

"Or that, by your own account, the book you want to write about the sled dogs of the Byrd expeditions will take you ten years to finish and will have a maximum possible readership of maybe two hundred people?"

I inched my chair back from the table. My eyes drifted to Rowdy and Kimi, whose ancestors went with Byrd to Antarctica. I looked back at Rita. "It's still worth doing."

"Or," she persisted, "that, in fact, your only practical alternatives are--"

"A real job," I finished. "No!"

"Or," Rita said gently, "economic dependence on someone else."

"I am NOT getting married! You are worse than Steve! And even if I did marry him, I would never, ever even think about marrying him or anyone else for--"

"Money," Rita said.

"Money," I echoed. "Rita, really! I am staggered that you would even suggest--"

"I was not suggesting anything, Holly. I was merely pointing out your options."

"Well, that one is totally unacceptable."

"Then," said Rita, swallowing a sip of wine, "you'd better get serious about expanding your readership."

"I am serious now!" I countered. "And I do not appreciate your condescending hints to the effect that I need to grow up!"

"What you are," Rita informed me, "is afraid you can't do it."

"Can't do what?"

"Write about people. Or, for that matter, anything else that has nothing whatsoever to do with dogs."

I dug my incisors into a juicy slice of pizza. When I'd finished ingesting it, I daubed my mouth with a paper napkin, drank more wine, and said defiantly, "That is not true! I write about dogs because, in case it isn't overwhelmingly obvious, dogs are what I'm interested in. Furthermore, as you know, I happen to be a person with a mission, namely, animal welfare."

Rita sipped her wine, cocked her head, and sighed lightly. "Well, isn't this just wonderful! Tell me, all of a sudden, are all of us free to earn our livings by pursuing our interests and following our missions? Do I, for example, get to cancel all tomorrow's patients and spend the day researching whatever takes my fancy?"

"You think"--I divided the remaining wine between Rita's glass and mine--"that just because I love my work, I don't really work at all."

"What I think," said Rita, "is that you are failing to actualize your potential."

"My potential, Rita, is strictly canine."

"You're scared," she whispered. "You're afraid you can't do it."

"I can write about any damned thing I choose." After emptying my glass, I added, "Even including, if need be, people!"

"I bet you can't!"

"How much?" I demanded.

"Five hundred dollars. Plus, of course, whatever you get paid for whatever it is you write. If, of course, you do."

I stretched my right hand across the table. Rita reached out with hers as if we were going to arm wrestle. If we had, the outcome would have been immediate and unambiguous. Rita has one Scottie, and I have two Alaskan malamutes. I'd have won hands down. Instead of arm wrestling, however, we shook on the deal.

"Five hundred dollars," Rita said, "for anything that has nothing to do with dogs."

"Nothing whatsoever," I replied. "Five hundred dollars." Then I rashly described the statue in the center of Haverhill.

And that's how I came to write about Hannah Duston.