Creature Discomforts by Susan Conant Read Free Book Online

pair of binoculars and a field guide to birds with my name written on the flyleaf. Stacked next to the binoculars were books about Acadia National Park: Trails 1 of History, Mr. Rockefeller’s Roads, several photographic v essays about Mount Desert Island. Two or three big maps of the island and several different guides to the park’s hiking trails also bore my name. On the desk by the answering machine I found a thick pile of bulging manila folders, some steno pads, and three large notebooks. I leafed through the pads and notebooks, and skimmed a few of the loose sheets of yellow legal paper in the folders. The handwriting was almost illegible; I found it hard to tell where words began and ended, and the characters might as well have come from the Cyrillic alphabet as from the ABCs. The thickest of the file folders was, however, ominously labeled Arsenic. In addition to yellow sheets covered with Cyrillic gobbledygook, the folder bulged with copies of articles. I skimmed a few titles: “Toxicology of Arsenic,” “Herbal Horror Stories,” “World Health Group Tackles Arsenic Poisoning.” In case the World Health Group was devoting itself to Mount Desert Island, I scanned a couple of paragraphs. In certain areas of India, I learned, arsenic-contaminated wells provided the only source of drinking water. The chronic poisoning caused cancer, leprosylike skin lesions, and, ultimately, death. How monstrous! But why had I collected this material? What had it meant to me?
    I was losing sight of the plan. Step one had been to get cleaned up. Task completed. Step two had been to discover the real names of the Lone Ranger and Big Boy. On the dining table was a medium-size green notebook neatly labeled Hiking. Next to the notebook, as if I’d been writing in it that morning, was a pen. Underneath the notebook was a book entitled A Guide to Backpacking with Your Dog, by Charlene LaBelle. What seemed to be the final page of a typewritten letter served as bookmark. I read:
 
a chance to see for yourself how bossy Gabbi can be! But she is really very sweet and such a contrast to Malcolm. No matter how headstrong or overbearing and difficult Malcolm was, he was charming, too, and we still miss him.
Hugs to Rowdy and Kimi.
    Fondly,
    Ann
    P.S. Did you know that a Trophy Edition is a Bentley?
     
    In the margin, for reasons I couldn’t guess, I’d scrawled in big letters GOD SPELLED BACKWARD!!! Ann was evidently a friend of mine who also knew Gabrielle Beamon and the man named Malcolm whom Gabrielle had mentioned. She’d wanted Malcolm to have a chance to get together with my father. I liked the idea of family friends. In our brief encounter, Gabrielle hadn’t struck me as particularly bossy, but she had been perfectly sweet. My own forgotten opinion of Malcolm might also differ from this Ann’s. I might not view him as in the least bit headstrong and difficult. He might not charm me. And maybe my other car really was a Bentley! But the great news the letter conveyed was, of course, the names of my dogs.
    “Rowdy!” I called. Both dogs came flying. “Kimi!” I exclaimed. Both sets of eyes gleamed. Both wagging tails picked up the tempo. “Rowdy! Kimi!” I repeated. Both dogs sat. Which was which? Rowdy was probably the male, Kimi the female. My hiking notebook confirmed the guess. For reasons I didn’t understand, I’d kept a log of hikes. I’d study it later. Now, I found what I sought almost immediately. My penmanship here was better than the foreign-alphabet speed-writing on the papers in the folders. I’d obviously cared about this hiking diary; I’d wanted to make sure I’d be able to decipher it. One of the last entries was dated September 9. It opened with a complaint: “Clear, hot day with the sky an unrelieved blue! Carriage road up Day Mountain, then trail down.” My notes went on to specify the weight each dog had carried. Rowdy had packed fifteen pounds, Kimi twelve. “Fifteen was nothing for him,” I