The Dogs of Littlefield by Suzanne Berne Read Free Book Online Page B

psychologically policed and probably well-medicated population?
    Over the next months, she held lengthy discussions with Dr. Awolowo, her department chair, who, after some hesitation, approved a sabbatical and helped her obtain a fellowship at Warren College. It had been hard to leave her mother, who was getting old and melodramatic, and who had objected strenuously to that year in Azcapotzalco. Still harder had been leaving Dr. Awolowo, whom she loved silently and hopelessly (not even her mother knew how she felt about Dr. Awolowo) but with dignity, allowing herself a single expression of her feelings: adopting a turban headdress after overhearing the department secretary mention that Mrs. Awolowo wore a turban. But by the beginning of August she had sublet her apartment, packed two boxes of books, along with a set of curtains and several embroidered throw pillows to re-create a homelike atmosphere, also a rubber plant she had nursed through two blights, said farewell to her mother (who turned up the volume on her TV and pretended not to hear over a rerun of America’s Most Wante d ), and drove east with Aggie the dog to Littlefield.
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    She’d begun visiting the Forge Café after the first dog was poisoned, deducing that she might listen discreetly to conversations in such a central location. Earlier she had attempted to eavesdrop on a small group at the park and felt herself observed. The goal was to blend in with the local population, difficult in her case. Aside from a scattering of black faculty and students at the college, the only black people she had encountered in Littlefield so far had been a cashier at Walgreens, a bagger at Whole Foods, a small covey of Metco children descending from a school bus in front of the elementary school, and two young men in coats and ties who were going door to door with copies of The Watchtower .
    According to a brass plaque beside the cash register, the Forge Café had been owned and operated by the Jentsch family since 1953). Coffee was served in thick white china mugs; hamburgers and club sandwiches came on thick white china plates, with a side of potato chips, whether you wanted them or not, and a pickle spear. In a Lucite container on the counter sat thick hand-cut doughnuts, glaze hardening throughout the day. The Forge Café was neither as clean nor as efficient as Starbucks across the street, and some people said the coffee tasted like scorched bicycle tires, yet older businessmen and even a few of the aldermen considered it necessary to spend half an hour or so every week perched on the rounded stools at the gold-flecked linoleum counter, eating Mrs. Jentsch’s hand-cut doughnuts. Though the doughnuts were no longer made by Mrs. Jentsch, who now lived in Boca Raton, but by a Pakistani law student who came in at five in the morning.
    Equilibrium was what Dr. Watkins was hoping to investigate, so by the second dog poisoning, which prompted a torrent of outraged and worried letters to the Gazette, she was concerned about her fieldwork. After the third dog, which elicited so many letters to the Gazette that an extra page was added to that edition, she e-mailed Dr. Awolowo asking for advice.
    I am afraid, she wrote, that the population, which I was counting on to be contented, is instead becoming frightened.
    Fear and doubt may elevate the quality of your work, he wrote back. He advised her to follow the inhabitants around, not ask questions but simply listen to them talk about themselves. He also reminded her that anxiety manifests itself differently in different populations. Consider this a lucky stroke . The village was under an assault of some kind and she was ideally positioned to study its coping mechanisms and apparent laws.
    It was another stroke of luck, she now realized, to have moved in next door to the Downings, whom she could monitor unobtrusively at close range, especially Margaret Downing, who was so often at home.
    Margaret played the