Stud Rites
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Black Ribbon
Ruffly Speaking
Bloodlines
Gone to the Dogs
Paws Before Dying
A Bite of Death
Dead and Doggone
A New Leash on Death
and coming soon in
Hardcover from Doubleday
Animal Appetite
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
STUD RITES
A Bantam Book / Published by arrangement with Doubleday
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday hardcover edition published June 1996
Bantam paperback edition / March 1997
Excerpts from the script of the Showcase of Rescue Dogs held at the 1993 Alaskan Malamute Club of America National Specialty reprinted by permission of the Alaskan Malamute Protection League.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by Susan Conant.
Cover art copyright © 1997 by Daniel Craig.
Library of Congress catalog Card Number 95-44439.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Doubleday.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as ”unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this ”stripped book.”
ISBN: 0-553-57300-4
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words ”Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
OPM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
To Virginia, in memory of her beloved husband, Howard Devaney, whose caring and generosity were the foundation of the Alaskan Malamute Protection League
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Jean Berman, Judy Bocock, Fran Boyle, Gail Castonguay, Virginia Devaney, Dorothy Donohue, Grace Franklin, Judy Kern, Roseann Mandell, Amanda Metzger, Devin Scruton, D.V.M., Jan and Rocky Smith, Geoff Stern, Margherita Walker, and Wendy Willhauck. I am also grateful to my husband, Carter Umbarger; to my muses incarnate, Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk, C.G.C.; and Frostfield Perfect Crime, C.G.C.; and to an editor to kill for, my beloved Kate Miciak.
For the appearance of American and Canadian Champion Williwaw’s Kodiak Cub, R.O.M., the inimitable Casey, I want to thank his breeders and owners, A1 and Mary Jane Holabach, and his co-owners, Frank and Lynda Sattler. Special thanks to A1 Holabach for handling Casey in my fictional ring. I also want to thank Robin Haggard, Jim Kuehl, and Cathy Greenfield, D.V.M., for the appearance herein of Champion Poker Flat’s Rainman, C.D.X., T.D., W.W.P.D., W.T.D., C.G.C., known as Joe; and Robin and Jim for joining Joe in my book and for letting me borrow Champion Poker Flat’s Paper Chase, C.D., W.T.D., W.L.D., W.W.P.D., W.P.D., C.G.C., Champion Poker Flat’s Snow Flurrie, C.D., W.T.D., C.G.C., Poker Flat’s Risky Business, W.T.D., W.W.P.D., and Poker Flat’s Hell’s Belle. Jim has given me permission to mention the underground video classic known as ”Poker Flat Presents: Malamute Obedience Bloopers.” Vanderval’s Tundra Eagle, C.D.X., W.P.D.X., W.L.D., in whose eyes I see the brilliance of my beloved first malamute, Tasha, reappears in this series with the permission of her breeder, owner, and handler, Anna Morelli. In real life, as in this book, rescue malamute Czar is owned and handled by Lorraine Rabon.
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Jenkinson
request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Crystal Marie
to
Mr. Gregory Philip Lofgren
on Saturday, the second of November
at three o’clock Okalani Banquet Hall
Danville Milestone Hotel and Conference Facility
Danville, Massachusetts
and afterwards at the reception
R.S.V.P.
LATE IN THE EVENING on a narrow street in Providence, Rhode Island, the handsome woman catches a stiletto heel in the antique-brick sidewalk. As she regains her balance, the diamond on the third finger of her left hand refracts the inadequate light of a pseudo-gas lamppost. She curses aloud. A phrase comes to her: one little candle. Better to light one than to curse the quaintness. She smiles. She has gained in wit far more than she has lost in looks. Besides, in preparation, she has shed forty pounds. Her rings are loose on her finger: the diamond and its friend, the platinum band. Her legs are as good as ever, and the tweed suits packed in her leather suitcase will serve their intended dual function of proclaiming her essential, if adopted, Englishness while disguising the dog hairs she is bound to pick up. Blocks ahead of her, a dog walker pauses to let a little terrier mix lift a leg on a tree. Owner and dog move on, turn a corner, vanish. The woman’s eyes search for what she has been told are the interior lights of her hired Porsche, her rental car, as it is called on this side of the Atlantic. An American car, she reflects, would have come equipped with some sort of automatic device, bells or whistles to warn her that she had flipped the wrong switch or failed to close the door all the way. The Porsche itself, an intelligent and subtle machine, may have issued an elusive caution that, if heeded, would have spared her this late-evening nuisance of running out to make sure that the battery did not drain. As it was, an anonymous neighbor had rung up her cousin, who could hospitably have volunteered to dash out instead of sending a long-lost relative on this bothersome errand.
This dark street, however, threatens none of the famous violence in America so beloved by the British press. This is a safe street in a charming neighborhood. Except for the click of her heels on brick, the swoosh of autumn leaves, and the distant hum of traffic on some unseen thoroughfare, the handsome woman hears nothing. Reaching the Porsche, she is more irked than alarmed. Fumbling with the key, she peers through a window in the hope of spotting a low glow of light, a sign that she will not, after all, need to delay her morning’s departure to have the wretched battery recharged. She is eager to arrive at the final destination of her journey. She looks forward to hearing that she is as beautiful as ever, that she hasn’t changed at all. Her last feeling is one of mild irritation. Her last thought is that the miserable battery has, after all, gone dead. The blow is swift, powerful, and fatal. As her body falls, the dim light again catches her diamond. Hurried hands slip the rings from her finger. Frightened eyes do not see the woman as handsome. In the murderer’s view, she has not aged well.
More than twenty-four hours later, in a poorly lighted parking lot on a second dark night, the old man impatiently awaits his companion. What can be taking so damned long? The pollen count must be high. The air is damp and thick. Breathing is difficult. The old man is in a foul mood. His position entitles him to respect. His gnarled hands pat his pockets in search of cigarettes. He never coughs. Rather, he admits to a frequent need to clear his chest. The sound could be mistaken for the low rumble of a big dog. Hearing it now, the murderer is not deceived. This blow, too, is swift and powerful. This blow, too, is deadly.
RELICS: venerated remains.
Buddha’s tooth, snatched from his funeral pyre.
The shroud of Turin.
If not Christ’s image, whose?
The stole of Saint Hubert. Presented on the occasion of his consecration by an angel of the Virgin Herself, it was a narrow, yard-long band of silk interwoven with gold, but of incomparably greater spiritual than commercial value. Sacred coin, it was bound to appreciate. And so it did! When Saint Hubert died in a.d. 727, he bequeathed the stole to his budding cult; and for a thousand years, from all over France, vast hordes of pilgrims trudged in haste to a small abbey deep in the Ardennes in search of the miraculous healing that flowed from the Donor through the saint to the sacred relic. The need of the pilgrims was great. In the stole lay their only salvation. All, you see, had been bitten by dogs.
As had we—Heaven preserve us!—the hundreds of souls who’d made the pilgrimage across the globe, from Great Britain, from Holland, from Japan, from Canada, and from all over the United States, to the site of our annual gathering of the cult, which, like the cult of Saint Hubert, was the cult of the dog, although in our case, not just any dog of any breed or none discernible, but the cult of the living relic of the ancient peoples of the Kotzebue Sound, dog of dogs, breed of breeds, the highest link in the Great Chain of Being Canine, the noble and glorious Alaskan malamute.
But I exaggerate. Only a few people had come from overseas. Many proud breeders, their vans and RVs packed with dogs, had come from Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Wisconsin, Texas. With or without dogs, some had flown. Scores had driven for hours or even days to this little town in Massachusetts. I’d lucked out. I was a fifty-minute ride from home and could have driven from Cambridge to Danville and back each day. Instead, I’d been saving up for a year to splurge on a room at the show site itself, the Danville Milestone Hotel and Conference Facility. There wouldn’t be another Alaskan Malamute National Specialty in New England for ten more years. Damned if I was going to miss a second of the five days, the first of which, Wednesday, October 30, had already elapsed when my story begins, and the last of which would fall, as celestial design would have it, on Sunday, November 3, the Feast of Saint Hubert, the French patron saint of dogs, whose principal relic, as I’ve explained, was a miraculous garment.
Now, at eleven o’clock on the morning of Thursday, October 31, twenty-four hours after my arrival, I stood behind the Alaskan Malamute Rescue Booth in the exhibition area, the heart of the show, as Sherri Ann Printz presented me not with Saint Hubert’s stole, of course, but with a relic of equally legendary association.
The Presentation of the Lamp was not, I might mention, any kind of re-creation or reenactment of Saint Hubert’s consecration. I, the recipient, was merely a follower of the cult, no founder, no leader. Besides,
I’m a woman. And I’m no saint. The donor, Sherri Ann Printz, didn’t fit my image of the Virgin, either, whom I imagine as having a clear, radiant complexion, whereas Sherri Ann’s was pale, lumpy, and doughy, like a yeast batter in need of punching down. Indeed, I found it impossible to envision Sherri Ann as even the lowliest and most improbable of angels, whom I see as akin to the Alaskan malamute in the sense that both breeds exhibit considerable natural variation in size, shape, and coloration, but are never marred by coarseness or, in Sherri Ann’s case, outright dowdiness. A national specialty is an Occasion, with a capital O. Consequently, most of us had made an Effort, with a capital E, in the manner of appearance. Sherri Ann’s capital E Effort had, alas, produced a lowercase effect. Her gray hair was cut painfully short, and a heavy perm had given it so dense and wiry a texture that her coiffure resembled a small terrier victimized by overenthusiastic plucking and stripping. Sherri Ann wore what I think is called a duster, the sort of loose, knee-length blouse with buttons down the front in which persons quaintly known as ”housewives” were once apparently encouraged to drape themselves so that they wouldn’t need to wear bras and thus wouldn’t have any to burn. But, as I’ve said, Sherri Ann had made an obvious, if lowercase, effort: The robe was of a heavy pseudo-satin in the particular shade of pale rose-red that does a splendid job of camouflaging malamute undercoat.
So I was no saint, and Sherri Ann was neither the Virgin nor one of Her messengers. As a stand-in for the sanctuary in which Saint Hubert was consecrated, the exhibition hall was, however, approximately the right size: larger than a chapel, if smaller than the interior of a cathedral. Exposed steel beams elevated the ceiling toward the heavens, and the industrial carpeting was a deep stone gray. I seem to recall that early medieval churches didn’t necessarily have pews. I’m positive, however, that even Saint Hubert’s didn’t devote most of the empty floor space to baby-gated show rings.
The event taking place here, however, the competition known as the Futurity Sweepstakes, did suggest a satisfying timelessness in spiritual theme: the Hereafter, the world to come. The Futurity actually was a bet on the future, an innocent flirtation with organized gambling. The long, complex process of nominating the teenage pups now in the ring had begun before or soon after they were born. Now that the future had arrived, the payoff would be in cash.
In place of shrines and confessionals, booths lined the four walls. A few concessionaires offered all-breed, any-breed goods or services, but two or three vendors whose wares I’d only glanced at sold dog sleds, harnesses, dog packs, snow hooks, gang lines, and expensive three-wheeled rigs that looked like giant tricycles. Artisans stood behind tables piled with hand-knit sweaters, hats, mittens, wooden carvings, weather vanes, mailboxes, silver earrings, pewter pendants, and a bewildering number of other items that paid tribute to the object of our annual rites and, with few exceptions, did so with unusual accuracy. The depictions, for once, showed Alaskan malamutes that looked neither like Siberian huskies nor like mixed-breed sled dogs, but could only have been our Arctic bulldozers: big, heavyboned sledge dogs with blocky muzzles, smallish ears set on the sides of the head, and plumy tails sailing over the back.
On display at our national breed club’s booth lay dozens of items that would be auctioned on Saturday night after the banquet that would follow the Best of Breed judging: Copenhagen collector’s plates, oil paintings of malamutes, books autographed by authors’ dogs, framed photographs of puppies, drawings in charcoal and pastels, decorative little wooden dog sleds, and a battered old board with faded paint and the words ”Cleo, BAE I,” a relic of the Chinook Kennels, the lower forty-eight home of the Alaskan malamute, the very sign that had proclaimed the name of a veteran of Byrd’s first expedition to Antarctica. It was a treasure I couldn’t begin to afford. But someone could! The high bidder would pay dearly. And rightly so! Ceremonies don’t come cheap! Ever paid for a wedding, a bar mitzvah, a lavish wake, or even a modest funeral?
Ever paid vet bills? Behind the Alaskan Malamute Rescue booth, I was filling in for Betty Burley, who was the national vice president of the organization, which has nothing to do with the search-and-rescue dogs that sniff out earthquake victims, but is a combination dog-rehabilitation-and-adoption agency and cult-within-a-cult that devotes itself to the malamutes that no one else wants. More often neglected than actively abused, some rescue dogs are given to us by their owners. Others have been abandoned at shelters or just found wandering. Before placing the rescue dogs with adopters, we check out their health and update their shots, and to avoid creating additional business for ourselves, we have them spayed or neutered. In rescuing dogs, that’s what costs: the rehab. Our booth consisted of two long tables laden with issues of our newsletter, an album bulging with photographs of dogs we’d placed, reprints of gruesome articles about the puppy mills that mass-produce the dogs sold in pet shops, and the numerous and varied items donated to our silent auction, not to be confused with the post-banquet live auction to be held on Saturday night. How many auctions? Two. One silent: ours. Rescue’s. One live: Saturday night’s, when Alaskan Malamute Rescue would be allowed to include ten valuable items among the scores donated to raise funds for our national breed club. And Sherri Ann’s lamp would certainly number among Rescue’s ten valuable items on Saturday night.
T
he lamp’s height, from the bottom of the base to the top of the hand-painted shade, must almost precisely have equaled the length of Saint Hubert’s stole: thirty-six inches. The stole, however, a two-inch band of silk and gold, must have been a cloud in the hand, whereas the lamp base alone, a massive slab of polished pink granite, felt like the rock that it was. Also, had the gold threads of Saint Hubert’s stole been interwoven with the silk to depict row upon row of miniature auric Scotties or, perhaps, the image of a single stretched-out dachshund, history would have bequeathed us a sketch of the canine motif, and I myself might even have been wearing a miraculous-stole T-shirt with the pattern flowing across my breasts.
The lamp, in contrast, was about as representational as a lamp can get. It took the form of a massive ceramic Alaskan malamute atop the pink granite slab. Extruding from the middle of its back was a shiny brass post on which perched a shade of skinlike material that bore a red, white, and black painting of a sled dog team and, in bold scarlet letters with a black exclamation point, the word ”Iditarod!”
Sherri Ann pointed a puffy hand at the thick gray-and-white fur glued all over the body of the ceramic dog, and declared, ”That’s Comet’s!”
The lamp’s full weight shifted from Sherri Ann’s hands to mine. Awakened to its reliquary value, I took special care not to drop it. Northpole’s Comet was a famous show dog, a long-dead legend, an Alaskan malamute, of course; and, in Sherri Ann’s eyes, her gift to Alaskan Malamute Rescue was a sort of inverted shrine lovingly fashioned not merely to display but to illuminate what was no trivial keepsake of Comet, but furry tufts of his venerated remains. The holy human dead also get spread about. They have to, really. It’s a matter of supply and demand. Saints and martyrs being lamentably scarce, they don’t leave enough to go around, and what there is get divvied up: a skull here, a hand there, a tooth, a lock of hair, disjointed bones and scraps reverently dispersed in what isn’t exactly a watering of the spiritual soup, but is nonetheless a transparent effort to make a transcendent little go a long way.