Maddie Temple awoke abruptly at three-thirty a.m. with a warm, wet tongue searching her nose. “Okay, Beastface. Hold your . . . well, hold everything. I’m coming,” she said with a moan as her feet hit the floor and a furry body used her legs as a ramp. Nikon, a black and tan German Shepherd, barely ten weeks old, sat his tiny rump on each stair and hopped behind her like a cartoon frog. Then he bucketed through the kitchen, out the patio door and onto the deck, propelled by flying nun’s ears. Once a night was an improvement, and he hadn’t flubbed since she’d caught him in mid-stream by the dishwasher and drop-kicked him outside in a communication infinitely more powerful than words.
Keeping him in bed for house training had been a calculated risk. Her neighbor Ed King claimed that sleeping together made the pet a littermate, disturbing the proper hierarchy. The dog bible assured that it speeded the process: “An animal prefers not to soil the place he lies. A pup is too small to reach the ground from a bed and will wake you with its restlessness.”
Hours later at the dawn’s light, Maddie padded to the kitchen, swam through waves of programmed coffee aroma, and spooned mashed carrots into a cup of puppy chow. Halfway through Nikon’s wolf act, she removed the bowl and dried wet streaks from under his eyes. “Eats until he cries. You’re not going to die of bloat like your brother,” she said, ignoring his abused look. Bred for deep chests, GSDs needed to be monitored against bolting food or exercising too soon after meals. The stomach could twist like a sausage and lead to a painful death. After her coffee and a croissant with melted cheddar, she tossed Nikon a rawhide strip digestif and took herself to the bathroom.
At a time when many women welcomed makeup, Maddie had long abandoned the charade. Greasy eye shadow, crusty mascara, pore-clogging foundation and powder. Why wake up with a stranger? Life is too short. Dress as you please. Eat what you want. Don’t talk with bores. In a hundred years we’ll all be dead. She peered into the mirror, blessing the kindness of myopia. Separate reading and distance glasses were awkward, but last time she had tried bifocals, she had nearly fallen down the stairs. As she blinked to shift aggravating floaters, she winced, then grabbed a razor, swiping a dry run across her chin and around her mouth. Secondary sex characteristics. A soft, downy blonde beard. And would that period ever give up the ghost? Hot flashes or power surges?
“I don’t care if grandmothers are popping babies right and left,” she muttered to the intelligent wolfish eyes staring up from her feet. “At fifty-two it’s a biological joke.” Nikon sat primed for instruction in the steady concentration of the breed, only a flicker of his tail signaling separation anxiety.
Getting dressed, she appreciated another perk of the casual nature of university teaching, comfortable jeans, along with a red silk shirt. Few enough opportunities for delicate fashions in the Michigan Upper Peninsula with three hundred inches of snow and four seasons: nearly winter, winter, still winter, and construction. Soon enough she’d switch to wool pants, cords, or lined jeans until March. Desultory brushing arranged her short auburn hair, shading gradually into gray.
As she entered the hall, she spied a tiny molar on the carpet and added it to a miniature incisor she kept in a jewelry box for sentimental reasons. A whine from the dog reminded her that he needed to be confined against chewing instincts. “New regime, Nikon. Mom has to go to work,” she said in the kitchen as she ushered him into a metal cage nearly the size of her first car, a ‘63 VW Beetle. “Look out the patio door to the backyard. Act One: squirrels, followed by chickadees and maybe Ed’s cat Peep.” He sank onto the thick foam mattress and placed his head on his large paws. Blackmail.
Snatching a canvas tote bag, she walked out the front door of the small Cape Cod white frame house on Prospector Road, only one neighbor in half a mile. The ‘95 blue Ford Probe squealed like the academic version of Torquemada’s rack. Year twenty-two at Copper University. Too young for retirement and too old to bank on a second wind. Would anyone interesting join the department this fall? Not tenured, of course, just sessionals. No one permanent had been hired in years, and even junior faculty were quaking at the cutbacks. Though “lean and mean” seemed odd words for a university, the Ivory Tower had become Babel itself.
Maddie drove into Stoddard, once a proud company town of over forty thousand when trainloads of Finns, Germans, Cornishmen, and other hopeful Europeans swelled its dusty streets. The village had been founded when the Babcock Mining Company had struck its premier lode in 1859. The original boomtown wooden structures had perished in a fire a few decades later. Rebuilt from the bottom up when fortunes were flush and architecture was lavish, the municipal buildings, churches, and banks reflected a systematic Old World charm. The mines had been closed for half a century, but diversification in light industry, tourism, and a reliable quota of students had given Stoddard a second life and a steady population of about thirty thousand.
Surrounding the university were acres of boreal forest protected from the ax. The wrought iron gates and shaded entrance road opened into a plain where the campus stood like an armory of civilization in a wilderness. When Cece Babcock had endowed the college in 1888, he had insisted on brick buildings. The complex gave a firm sense of place and time, terra cotta window lintels, hammered copper cornices, and the handsome bell tower of the administration building. Once the ornately carved bracket pairs and modillions had been painted as brightly as Roman statues. Copper University, with seven thousand students, maintained an excellent teaching ratio. Until lately, Maddie’s classes had been under twenty. Now, cost-cutting measures were filling rooms to capacity, canceling less-efficient seminars, and loading senior English faculty with a basic grammar or introductory lit course.
She pulled into the staff lot, swerving to avoid a minefield of potholes. Couldn’t Maintenance afford a load of hot asphalt? Shaking off the increasing evidence of a Third World country, Maddie headed for Denney Hall. After a quiet summer, a fresh start was invigorating, a tabula rasa begging for inscription. Today was Registration, no classes, but the campus surged with confident seniors, hesitant freshmen finding their paths, and all the gradations. A lilting carillon in the bell tower, operated by a wag from the music program, played “White Christmas.” She stepped faster as she waved to former students. The balmy weather seemed more like June than September.
Maddie entered the foyer of Denney Hall, stopped for a drink at the fountain, then looked for cover as vapors of Estee Lauder snaked around the corner like a spoor. Florence (“Do not call me Flo”) Andrews. Regarding teaching as an unnecessary anathema, she had been angling for an administrative job for years. In the meantime, biding time at forty-two, Flo settled for the coordinator position, few classes, extra cash, but petty details. Flo loved counting pennies, pushing a Scottish background to the northernmost Hebrides. Once Maddie had seen her in the campus bookstore, furtively grabbing fistfuls of free welcome packs for freshmen. Later, she watched the woman stripping them at her desk like a corn husker, discarding the coupons and advertising inserts to snatch lone sticks of Trident gum.
Dressed in a teal blue double-breasted suit, Flo had chosen a beige blouse with a paisley scarf knotted in variation seventy-four. A regular at staff aerobics, with the double application of shoulder pads onto her slim figure, Flo resembled a tiny quarterback. After an elaborate series of checks on her customary clipboard, she gave a pregnant cough. “At last you’ve arrived. All the syllabi are ready except for Victorian Poetry. I hope you adhered to the new paradigm.”
Maddie sighed. Anyone who used “paradigm” and “syllabi” should be locked inside a closet of thesauri. What an officious little woman. At first glance, her makeup was tasteful, the mascara improving her skimpy lashes. Yet behind the jewel-winged glasses rose thin, plucked eyebrows, perpetually surprised, belying the craft within. And only an ichthyologist praising the ruthless efficiency of the lamprey eel might have admired the razory white teeth framed by a blood-red mouth. “Of course I followed the new . . . format. But I didn’t give it to Nancy because of a last minute book change. The master is in my bag. I’ll run it off on the copier.”
“It’s down. You’ll have to go to Morrow Hall.” Flo pursed her mouth and flicked a speck from her lapel. “Make sure you have them for your first class. Our clients must be served according to their needs, not yours. That’s our mission.” And then she trotted off, an exercise bag in tow.
Maddie felt wet under her arms. Flo could spark hot flashes in a refrigerator, inventing problems to justify her job. “Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence,” she muttered. Sister Florence, not Brother Lawrence. More obnoxious than Browning’s hypocritical friar. As if Madame Coordinator cared about quality education, the sophist, playing whatever tune worked. In departmental meetings, she pushed her agenda by verbally outlasting the group. Malcolm Driscoll, the chairman, had a laissez-faire approach, preferring to write limericks and espouse unpopular causes.
Maddie reached her office a minute later, grinning at the sign on the door: “I’ve gone out to look for myself. If I should return before I get back, please ask me to wait.” Students would understand, especially freshmen. She fumbled for her key, wiggling it in the lock, and entered a sauna. The ancient radiators were pumping, oblivious to the Indian summer weather. Another politically incorrect word? She turned the knob, then forced open the window, sneezing at dust motes rising in the air. The circle she had drawn on the filthy glass in a fit of pique last spring was still there. More support staff cutbacks. She made a mental note to bring Windex, paper towels, and lemon polish, but knew that she’d probably forget. Cleaning at home was bad enough.
Her bag landed beside the creased leather chair with lion’s claw feet rescued from an auction of bank furniture, an immovable object, but so comfortable. The small room contained a battered oak desk and computer with Internet access, a tippy roller chair with arms, three mismatched cabinets, and a wall of bookcases with the wisdom of the ages, or what used to pass for it. Near a reproduction of Rossetti’s The Blessed Damosel were Turner’s The Fighting Téméraire, a pen and ink rendition of Gloucester Cathedral, and a plaster copy of Victoria and Albert dressed as Saxons, each wearing an armband with the other’s name. Maddie gave her course outline a final proofread, juggling reading glasses onto her nose. Her eyes were smarting again. From the dust, perhaps.
Then she walked next door to Morrow Hall, the Geology Building. Constructed from stones representing each Michigan county, Morrow stood out in muted rainbow eccentricity. With a wave, Maddie saluted the collection of fellow-fossils in the turret room off the foyer, an eight-foot giant sloth clawing a tree her personal emblem of the department. Revving up the ancient copier deep in the basement, she ran off fifteen copies. How long would she be teaching cozy seminars if enrollment kept dropping? Twelve percent fewer students majoring in English this year, and no wonder. Jobs were scarce. Graduates were tired of waiting for the expected retirement of the boomer teachers. Demand went in cycles. Maddie remembered a smarmy letter she had received decades ago. “Barring a visitation of the black plague, there will not be an opening at Balderdash University until after the Millennium arrives.”
A coffee would be welcome, she thought, returning to Denney. Just one, though. Some metabolic quirk was giving her the shakes if she exceeded her limit. She made her way to the Common Room, a quiet refuge with curtained windows, scattered armchairs and tables, and bookcases loaded with the musty donations of former colleagues. After filling a cup from the urn, she sat at a long oak table with Marie Tressler, Medieval and Old English professor, gat-toothed as the Wife of Bath herself. Bumping along the halls like a pack mule, ironclad in shapeless wool dresses whose varying thickness suited the seasons, her hips saddlebags of toys, she provided comic relief from the academic stuffiness. Only the fact that she kept adopting children from Latin American countries kept her from retiring. At sixty plus, never married, she still had two in high school and two in eastern colleges. Her creased and time-worn face, stern when necessary, hid a warm and generous soul. Marie stabbed a stout finger on a well-thumbed copy of Old English grammar. “Canceled this year. Instead I’ve got two Lit Surveys. Guess I’ll be munching hay in pasture soon like an old plow horse.”
Maddie laughed weakly. “I’ll bet I have a hundred for Bonehead Grammar 100. And my Victorian novel course is on life support. Ten books and they’re floored.” She spread out her hands in pure bewilderment. “I could read a Dickens a day. Still, you’d think that any English major—”
“Remember the consolation of those wise odes.” A wistful smile crossed the craggy old face like an echoing childhood song. “Deor, the wandering minstrel who dreamt of sharing warm firesides with his master. ‘Thas ofereode. Thisses swa mae.’ That passed and so shall this. Or in our vernacular, that which does not destroy me, makes me fatter.” She pressed a shiny wrapped toffee into Maddie’s hand and bounced off.
Getting up from his armchair in the corner underneath a tarnished brass standing lamp, George Zulandt joined her, a feisty bantam of a man, in charge of Restoration and Eighteenth century. “Pass me Yorick’s skull, so that I may better brood upon my life,” he said. “My Swift seminar has been canceled. I’ve been shoved into Bardstown, and I don’t mean Kentucky. Guess whose idea?” His neat black moustache bristled at the insult while his small hands kneaded a rolled newspaper.
Maddie passed the toffee to George. She’d pulled out enough fillings. “Not Malcolm. He knows how dedicated we are to our specialties. Why do you have to teach Shakespeare?”
“Flo is our Renaissance man, but with her duties as coordinator, no classes this semester. And Willy is more popular than ever, all those Hollywood pretty boys playing Hamlet.” He gave a low growl, then slapped the table. “What’s next? I suppose she’ll ask me to teach all thirty-five plays in one week, or get holograms made and run without us. Virtual university.”
“Come on, George. You’ll get the course back next year,” she said, trying to summon an absent conviction. A far cry from the halcyon days when they’d had three more full-time faculty. Cliff Cardinal, the modern British professor, was on sabbatical, his courses postponed with hardly a ripple. She’d been hired strictly for the Victorian period, yet her domain had been extended to include the Romantics.
One more stop. Reserving a selection of reference books for the seminar. Otherwise, some overzealous student might check out key texts for weeks. Minutes later she was crossing the Oval, a grassy expanse which centered the university. Ahead was Collier Library, circa 1890, six stories of sandstone and brick, capped with a leaded roof and twined with Virginia creeper ivy ripening into a brilliant carmine. Round-arched windows on the bottom floor surrounded reading and reference rooms, above, the windows of the stacks. Flanking the wide steps, two recumbent stone lions stood guard below the university crest of a crossed pick and shovel: “Semper Utilis.” Since it was Frosh Week, the big cats’ toenails wore a coat of purple poster paint. From somewhere came the rich strains of a cello. The sky brightened and Maddie blinked at the sudden light, wishing that she had brought sunglasses. She was reviewing whether to have chili or stew for dinner when she heard a scream.
Chapter Two
Bouncing back and forth among the buildings that ringed the Oval, the cries echoed in the sultry afternoon air. Maddie stood in confusion. Her middle distance vision wasn’t sharp, and in the periphery, people ran from all directions on the footpaths which crossed the green. Leaning against the War Memorial obelisk, a cello at her feet, a plump student in a Copper t-shirt pointed with the bow, weakening sobs spurting from her guppy mouth. Behind a hedge close to the library lay a small figure, a pile of discarded clothes at first glance.
“God. That sound. Hitting the ground.” The girl began to retch and dropped to her knees.
Hardly hearing what she said, Maddie headed forward in reflex action. She slowed in the last steps, fearful at the prospects, finding instead a quiet tableau. A girl lying on her back, fine blonde hair streaming like a crumpled halo, her neck at a twisted angle. She’d landed on the spongy turf, missing a concrete utility pad by inches. No blood stained her delicate skin. Still, what internal injuries she might have, Maddie did not like to speculate. With gentle fingers, she touched one wrist, warm and supple. No pulse, and the eyes were wide open. Images of literary deaths flashed across her mind. Not Ophelia, floating in billowing garments down a weedy stream, hands gesturing in stylized beseechment. Here was a broken figure. Porphyria, strangled by the unnamed groundskeeper by the cheerless grate she had made blaze up (“No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain”). As if following Browning’s poetic clues, Maddie considered the neck, obscured by a bright blue scarf. Something about the girl’s face called forth a vague memory.
Ben Jones, one of Copper’s superannuated security guards, limped up, hot and flushed from the effort. He took great gulps of air as he looked at Maddie, who shook her head. Still, he stooped with an arthritic grunt and tried for a pulse. “Couple of fellows came after me in the office. Ambulance on the way. Doesn’t look like it’ll do much good. Poor kid. How’d she . . .” With a groan, he set back his cap and gazed up to an open window.
Maddie rose slowly and called out, “Where is the girl who screamed?”
The student stepped forward, wiping her mouth with a tissue. “I didn’t see her fall. Just heard the, the . . .” Her voice trailed off and a woman in a track suit hugged her, offering supportive words.
A lean, muscular boy in Spandex shorts spoke out as he parked his bicycle. “They’re all sitting at the windows today. It’s hell inside. Turn the goddamn heat on in this weather.”
Maddie stared at the body. Who was she? What were her dreams? Her clothes were the standard jeans and t-shirt, in casual contrast to the shapely almond-polished fingernails. Above one breast a silvery angel pin winked. The shoes were the same Nike model as Maddie’s. How perverse to think about such banality. Something drew her back to the eyes, liquid and almost alive, as if asking one final question. Guided by early photography theorists who believed that final images remained on the retina like a negative, British police had photographed the eyes of Jack the Ripper’s victims.
As the ambulance drove onto the green, horn blaring, followed by a police cruiser, the crowd fanned out politely, whispering and gesturing. Then while the gurney was wheeled in efficient silence, Maddie averted her gaze from the activity and looked up. Fourth floor, the literature stacks. Copper had over two hundred English majors, in addition to those taking a course as an Arts requirement.
“Professor Temple?” Ben was shaking her arm gently. “You’ll have to give your report now.” Behind him, two officers rushed up the library steps.
Maddie turned to face a redheaded woman in a Stoddard Police uniform, smiling, neat, and starched to perfection. The officer opened a small notebook and asked her name.
With a dissociative calm which surprised her, Maddie reviewed what she had seen, giving her address and phone number. Covering those pitiful and decisive seconds didn’t take long. Then somehow she found herself standing in a trance inside the library foyer, hardly realizing how she had arrived. Only the sharp click of passing heels on the cold streaked marble snapped her back to reality. Too much strong coffee? In a mist again.
Decorative Corinthian pillars reaching to a ceiling painted with gauzy murals of the Nine Muses recalled times when money had been generous at Copper. Caroline Majuscule, the Head Librarian, called from the entrance to her office near the circulation desk, where no book left the library without passing through a metal detector trellis. “What’s happening? I heard a siren. Then two officers ran in without a by-your-leave and disappeared. Those freshmen must be up to more mischief. Yesterday we had a dog running through the stacks. Wearing a little cape with the school colors. Can you imagine?”
Maddie said quietly, “It’s serious. A girl fell from the fourth floor.”
“Fell! My God! Those windows should never be open. We don’t have the staff anymore to check regularly. She wasn’t—”
“Yes, I’m afraid she’s dead. A grim start to the semester.” As they spoke, a slender figure approached a loaded cart behind the desk. One arm hung pendulum loose at the man’s side, but the other busied itself organizing books with a mind of its own. Ian Macdonald, sporting his trademark tartan tie, was a senior professor of American history who had suffered a debilitating stroke over a year ago. A rather prickly character, he had few close friends. Maddie knew him only by reputation. What was he doing here? Had the administration in its miserly stance refused his disability? Forced him to take a job on the support staff? Unions had difficulty at universities mobilizing efforts for what was perceived as a blue-collar concept; as the faculty’s only protection, the Senate was a grumbling bunch of impotent fools.
Embarrassed at approaching, Maddie made a pretense of consulting a sheet announcing the library’s new reduced hours. Ian had lost the ability to speak, except for the word “yes.” Imagine being limited to the affirmative after all those assertiveness books about learning to say Carlyle’s “Everlasting No.” What a prison.
The gray head peered up like a centennial tortoise stretching folds of skin. “Hello, Ian,” Maddie said, her voice cracking as she confronted personal fears about the ravages of age, the pitfalls around each corner.
Wise old eyes glimmered with quiet intensity and a thin-lipped mouth contorted slowly as if struggling to remember primal patterns. “Yes.” Then the tall body regrouped as the cart was shuffled off, pushed by one unerring arm and a persistent foot.
Caroline followed Ian’s progress. “He is a brave one. As part of his therapy, he comes in every week to shelve books,” she said with a womanly cluck. “I wouldn’t have the gumption. Probably hole up in my bed with talk shows and chocolates, and wait to die.”
Maddie nodded. “His research on William Jennings Bryan nearly won a Pulitzer Prize. Now I hear that he can’t even write.”
The woman sharpened a pencil until the point pleased her, poking it in her bun along with three others in a Cio-Cio-San effect. “He’s keen enough inside, God love him. Come a long way the last few months. Don’t underestimate the man. If there’s something important to communicate, Ian will find a way.”
Maddie dropped off the list of books at the Reserve Desk around the corner, then picked up a fresh selection of magazines in the Periodicals Room. National Geographic, Ms., even People, anything to take her mind off what she had seen on the Oval. As she was passing the elevator, something made her punch the fourth-floor button. It might have been that she wanted to check a reference to Tennyson’s connection of “Morte d’Arthur” to Prince Albert.
The door opened and a smiling maintenance man greeted her, a smear of grease on his pug nose. He had the inside panel removed. “Going up?” he asked. “Guess it’s okay to take passengers. Police have left. Had to check the floor where that girl fell. Looking for witnesses.”
“Did they find anyone?”
“No, ma’am. See, this is the only way out, fire exit alarms on the stairs and all. And I’ve been here for the last hour fooling with these confounded Braille signs. Almost got her done.” His battery-powered screwdriver buzzed, and he reached for a small square of pressed metal.
When she stepped onto the floor, Maddie forgot her pretext, gauging her location until she found the window, now tightly closed. The air was stale, the temperature stifling. On such a hot day, who would choose to study here unless he needed to consult the books? The carrel, merely a desk with an eye-level locked metal container for valuables, bore no sign of activity. Maddie surveyed the nearby shelves. PR, the American literature section. On an empty row sat a copy of Jay Martin’s Harvests of Change, American Literature 1865-1914, open and face down. She picked it up. The chapter concerned a Frank Norris. Perhaps the girl had been an English major. One of their own.
On the way down, the elevator stopped suddenly. Aware of the problems, she waited patiently. No sense in pushing the red emergency button like a hysterical woman. On the wall were scrawled several rude messages about professors, none in her department. Another sign of their inconsequence. She finished correcting the spelling when the elevator jerked back to life.
* * * * *
Home at last to a caged dervish, Maddie busied herself with Nikon’s training regimen, ten sits and downs, a couple of fetches in the yard rewarded by a pocket of liver snack treats, and a walk down the road. Ed King waved his John Deere cap at her. For a moment she felt like telling him what had happened at the library, but decided against it. She wanted to relax and forget. And he’d probably read about it soon enough.
“Fall’s a nip away. Mid-September already and no frost,” he called, digging up dahlia tubers, knocking them free of dirt, and enfolding them in newspaper with a loving hand. “See them leaves redding on the maples? First to go. Others line up like soldiers.”
Maddie wouldn’t dream of correcting him, though she sometimes felt like playing Midnight Grammarian with other neighbors. Their expensive routed signs could be traced to an illiterate vendor at the local mall. “The Jackson’s.” “The Smith’s.” Those misbegotten apostrophes begged her to wield a paintbrush some dark, concealing night. Yet she shrugged off the stereotype of a crabby, self-righteous schoolmarm. Inside her flagging, middle-aged body was a ten-year-old eager to jump the fence. “I’ll need more tulip bulbs to fill my bed. The few that showed their faces died of loneliness. Hope those moles enjoyed a free lunch.”
“Got some jim-dandy stuff at Miller’s Greenhouse. Critter Ridder. All natural, mostly black pepper oil and capsacin. Harmless to dogs.” He tickled Nikon’s hairy chin. “Don’t worry about those ears. They’ll take their time. My brother’s Sam was six months before they perked up.”
“Looks are fine in a man, but I prefer obedience,” she said, giving the dog a tug for attention when he jumped at a squirrel chattering in the cedars.
“Don’t I know it.” Shoving the wrapped tubers into a garbage bag, he winked lively green eyes at her like the rogue he pretended to be. A trim sixty with a lion’s mane of silver hair, he had recently retired from contracting. There wasn’t a leaking faucet he couldn’t seal, a sheet of drywall he couldn’t patch, or an electrical short he couldn’t locate. In the yard, Ed was an artist with a chainsaw. After a messy divorce five years ago, he had moved next door, and his reassuring presence provided security without compromising privacy. “Got a different BP med last week. Nothing left to buy but the champagne.” He added a thumbs-up gesture.
New Year’s Eve. Even if the prescription didn’t work its magic, there was comfort in custom, a bond surpassing the dewy fresh skin and flexed sinews in her classes, lovely though they were. “I’m looking forward to it.”
She turned and headed for the end of the road. For some reason Nikon had been reluctant to leave the property. The dog whimpered against the tyranny of the small leash, running sideways until he fell on his nose. A sense of territoriality was fine, but this was embarrassing. Her last dog, Honey, had passed on just as the bright May sun coaxed the lilacs into lacy bloom. The thirteen-year-old had lurched with arthritis, hind end outstripping the front, like a city bus with accordion middle. The pup was the same, struggling for authority over ungainly legs. Soon he would grow strong and fine as he showed Maddie the world through new eyes. Around the turn, he became distracted and ceased mewling, snatching unsteadily at a blue bead lily, which she extracted from his inquiring mouth. To him the cobalt fruit resembled his favorite blueberries, but lilies were toxic, at least to humans.
They took a path through the bracken and second-growth maples and poplar, emerging at the crest of a hill overlooking the azure platter of Lake Superior, a glorious and humbling vista which defied all concept of distance. “Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are,” said Ortega y Gassett. Today was deceptively calm, but locals, aka Youpers, awarded it a respect born of experience. Every year unwary ships sank into the icy graveyard, from the legendary Edmund Fitzgerald to an errant tourist canoe setting out north of the Sault, fooled by the lapping waves behind sheltering islands and finding out too late that death lay beyond. Life jackets were useless toys in that frigid water. Hypothermic within minutes and dead in half an hour, victims floated along shoreline currents for miles instead of washing up on the beaches.
By the time they returned, Nikon was trotting demurely at the heel, one black-tipped ear flopping like a Victorian lady’s morning cap. Lately he had skewed in front, and she had taken fancy steps to avoid him, afraid to injure a small paw, but the bible warned that this behavior signaled domination, so she plowed into him a few times, deaf to the yips.
