Dogged Pursuit Read online

  The All Fours enclave is quite a bit more snug than I left it, due to several new arrivals. One of them is another novice competitor, Diane, who’s here with her giant schnauzer, Annie. I don’t see Carl or Kim, and for a moment I think I may need a new personal rival for the day. Despite the size of her dog, Diane just doesn’t work for me. She’s a lean, elegant lady with cascading salt-and-pepper hair, who makes everything she wears look like couture. This just doesn’t square with the ideal adversary I’ve visualized—and who after last night looks a lot like Russell Crowe. Fortunately, Carl pops up from around the corner, bearing something from a vending machine, and I’m absolved from having to get all harsh on someone wearing Anne Klein.

  Dee, as usual, is functioning as the master of the revels—she’s slung low in her folding chair, gripping a big plastic cup of soda and entertaining those ranged around her with the story of how her husband, Keith, stepped in and ran Kaleigh for her when she had a broken ankle: “Oh, he did fine in standard, because—well, let’s face it, all you have to do is say the name of an obstacle and Kaleigh’ll go for it. So he came off the course all puffed up, like, ‘This agility thing is no big deal’—just, y’know, a little condescending to me for going on and on about it all these years. And I was like, ‘Right, fine,’ but all the while I was thinking, ‘Wait till you get to jumpers.’ And of course he was a train wreck there. He’d say ‘over’ and his hand and his butt and his shoulders would be pointing to three separate jumps, so Kaleigh just decided which one she liked best, and after that she was off on a tear and Keith just stood there with his head spinning around, like, ‘What, what? What?’ He spent the entire run chasing her down. Anyway, we were supposed to go out to dinner afterward, but he barely made it back to the hotel. He collapsed on the bed and was zonked out for hours. With me sitting there in my cast, helpless and hungry. Nice.”

  Roars of laughter. Dee is a gifted storyteller, with a typically midwestern deadpan delivery seasoned by an occasional girlish squeak. And when she delivers a particularly juicy riposte, she jerks her head so that her ponytail swings in counterpoint. It’s the perfect kicker and notches up the merriment every time.

  But beyond her ability as a raconteuse, this story seems particularly geared to get a laugh from her present audience. Quite a few agility devotees are coupled, but usually to someone outside the sport; pairs like Carl and Kim are the exception rather than the rule. And there’s an undercurrent of tension—slight but significant—when spouses are mentioned, the implication being, “Here I am again, spending a weekend with all of you instead of him/her, and what a shame he/she just doesn’t get it.” In this way, I suppose agility people are no different from bowlers or boaters or garage-sale aficionados or others whose hobbies continually call them away from their families—sometimes hundreds of miles away. I know a woman whose fiancé runs a marathon every month, sometimes two. He has to travel all over the country and occasionally even abroad to manage it. And when he’s not competing, he’s training. She pretends to shrug it off good-naturedly, but you can tell it chafes, and of course as a listener you sympathize—his behavior sounds obsessive and crazy. But being in this kind of community—hearing Dee tweak her husband for “just not getting it” to gales of appreciative laughter—I can see the other side. No doubt Marathon Man and his buddies spend a lot of time joking about their significant others who just don’t get it—who spend their free time, how, shopping? Going to movies? Lying on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars? Just letting the globe keep on spinning beneath them, ticking away the precious hours of their lives without ever once getting up, balling their fists, and hurling themselves at the biggest available challenge while screaming, “Cowabunga, baby!” Yeah, okay. I can see that side. I’m a little surprised that I do, given that only a year ago it was utterly alien to my nature; but now I completely understand the compelling urge to conquer.

  Unfortunately, it isn’t all about conquest. In fact when you factor in the down time at any given trial—hours and hours of it, dwarfing the six or seven minutes you’ll actually find yourself in active competition—the daredevil aspect of the sport seems less prominent an attribute. But here’s where another of its attractions comes into play: Fellowship. Camaraderie. The company of like minds. All those spouses who just don’t get it—you can laugh about them here with impunity, because you are among your own kind. The hours spent in the crating area, slouched in your canvas chairs, ankles crossed, spines relaxed, chatting away about nothing while noshing endlessly on the cheapest food imaginable—this is all part of the sport’s siren allure. What it amounts to is hanging out.

  And this is where I face my own Everest. I’ve never been any good at hanging out. At least not in this kind of setting. Living on the North Side of Chicago, surrounding myself with friends who share my slightly rarefied perspective on life and how to live it, I forget just how far outside the mainstream I really am. But I can’t forget it here. I’m a blue-state guy in a red-state world, and it seems every syllable I utter baldly reveals it. I try to pass as one of the gang, but I don’t know how. Everywhere around me are people who follow American Idol; me, I’ve got a box at the Lyric Opera. They read Tom Clancy; I read Tom Stoppard. They tack up posters of Brangelina; I’ve got a framed portrait of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the “veuve” of Veuve Clicquot.

  This was all fine when I was an agility tourist, showing up with Carmen like a visiting dignitary to run my two courses and then sail away. No doubt I was just another amusing blip on the fringes of the sport—the fancy man who actually used words like albeit and notwithstanding and who brought along vials of balsamic vinegar to dress his lunch. Not much different from the slender, pale youth whose body was covered with unambiguously violent tattoos or the woman whose enormous breasts, when she ran, made the exact slap-slap-slap of helicopter blades.

  But I don’t want to be a visiting freak anymore. I want to fit in. I want to be a member of the group in full and in earnest. Hell, I’m wearing the damn shirt! Which, I now notice, no one else is. Not that they need to; they all incontestably belong. Just listen to how their conversation weaves together, forming a seamless tapestry of anecdote and observation. I believe this is what’s called “shooting the breeze.” I can’t do it. I can hold forth for twenty minutes on Italian neorealist films or the failures of FEMA, but I can’t do this. I get restless. I shift; I squirm.

  And, inevitably, I bolt. Which I prepare to do now, as their amiable banter whizzes over me like Molotov cocktails. When someone lobs a comment into my lap, I can only stare at it in terror. Sometimes I do manage to think of the right thing to say—but usually about two beats too late. Timing is everything in casual chatter, and the pace is both relentless and unforgiving. Quips fly; and so, now, do I.

  I snap up copies of the novice courses I’ll be running and take them outside to study; a happy plan, as it allows me both to use my time productively and to spend it out of doors (and away from the possibility of revealing—to myself if no one else—how ill suited I am to be part of anything that might remotely be called a “gang”).

  Like a woman holding up two possible outfits before a mirror, it’s the kind of day that can’t decide what season it wants to be; forehead-prickling sunshine is laced with cool autumnal breezes, while swirls of puffy seedlings are provided a soundtrack by the skittering of dead leaves across the concrete.

  All very picturesque, certainly. But there’s no place to sit down. There’s the parking lot, and there’s the big stucco building itself, bluntly and mercilessly demarcated like two incompatible states of being. Living in the city, where the streets and parks are filled with places to stop and pass the time, I always forget this quirk of the suburbs: the way the outdoors is treated merely as space between the indoors. You cross the exterior expanses only to get from one interior space to another. I can imagine the looks of bewilderment on the faces of my colleagues if they happened to find me out here. Why in God’s name would I come all the way to the Crystal Lake Regional
Sports Center and then not go inside? It’s a basic dichotomy between urban and rural mind-sets. Trapped in crowded neighborhoods, living on top of one another, city folk can’t wait for the weather to allow them to step outside of their confinement and breathe whatever fresh air filters down through the canyons of steel. Suburbanites, situated in enormous houses with rec rooms and home entertainment centers, and with the full weight of the natural world bearing down on them mercilessly from all sides, must dream of the day when they no longer have to go outside at all.

  I suppose I could sit cross-legged on the tiny patch of lawn by the door; I’m still more than limber enough. But such a pose would be injurious to middle-aged dignity, unless you happen to be a middle-aged swami. I could also go sit in my car, but that would seem an admission of fear.

  Still, it’s fear I’m feeling. Why not say so? Social terror, is what it is. The inability to be at ease in a group of my chosen peers; the anxiety of not knowing what is expected of me.

  It occurs to me that this is almost exactly one of Dusty’s pathologies. Is it possible he caught it from me? Can he have picked up my nervousness, my urge to flee in such situations, and learned from it? I’ve made a vow to whip him into shape, to turn him into a champion, but he’s only part of the team here. As his handler, I have to set the tone for our partnership.

  I have to whip myself into shape too.

  And that means facing up to my fear. It means turning back and rejoining my colleagues and sitting in my folding chair and risking maybe not getting some of their jokes and maybe saying something unwittingly pretentious and causing everyone to pause for a moment and exchange glances, and maybe accidentally saying something that offends one of them.

  Then again, maybe I’d rather sit in the car after all.

  No no, back I go. I’ve got a responsibility to Dusty, if not to myself.

  Astonishingly, I find many of the group on their feet and headed away from the crating area—Carl, Kim, Diane, Sue. All the novices. “Jumpers walk-through,” Diane tells me as she passes. I’ve been granted a reprieve!

  I walk the course—another, more-lopsided figure eight, sixteen obstacles in toto—rehearsing my attack till I can close my eyes and run the course in my head.

  And what do you know—Dusty’s magic out there! He stays right with me, he heeds every command, he has only one refusal—it’s like we’re on fire.

  I’m almost hyperventilating when I come off the course. Two of the excellent-class competitors, Betsy and Cyndi, are standing right by the exit gate; I can’t understand why they don’t look more excited.

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  Cyndi happily nods. “He was really focused,” she says. “It’s great the way he’s coming along!”

  Coming along? What is she talking about? He was perfect. “Well, let me tell you,” I say, giving Dusty a bear hug, “I’m really proud of him! This is his first Q!”

  “Oh, he didn’t Q,” says Betsy.

  I blink. Twice. “He didn’t?”

  “Oh, no,” she says, as if explaining the law of gravity to someone flapping his arms and trying to fly. “He was over time.”

  “Way over,” Cyndi chuckles with a roll of her eyes.

  As it turns out, they aren’t exaggerating. When the tallies are posted, I see to my horror that we were too long by almost twenty seconds. A small eternity. By the time we finished, some spectators must have needed a shave.

  My only consolation is that Carl doesn’t qualify with Fletcher either. But, like me with Dusty, he does disturbingly better than he did yesterday. A fact enthusiastically pointed out to him by the others, so that he can’t stop smiling. It’s becoming distressingly clear that Carl is a natural. He’s totally in the zone. His focus on the game isn’t distracted by panicked flights from the building, and he is unfazed when the group spends thirty minutes talking about highway accidents they’ve seen, instead of about Camille Paglia or The Tale of Genji.

  I mutter the words, “Carl is my bête noir,” but the very fact that I choose this term to describe the relationship is a good indication of why I need to choose it at all. Never mind, Loki may yet vanquish Thor; THRUSH could still make U.N.C.L.E. say uncle.

  By the time my standard run comes around, I’m so conscious of time that I keep glancing up at the clock, which is just enough of a break in my concentration that I lose Dusty several times. At one point I find myself pivoting around on my heel like a music-box ballerina, trying to locate him. It’s pretty much a calamity.

  I return him to his crate; he creeps to the back and lowers himself onto his stomach with a sigh. I know how he feels; this entire day hasn’t been much fun for either of us. And isn’t fun supposed to be the whole point?

  I stop at the vending machine to grab a Coke—though what I’m really craving is a vodka and tonic—and return to the standard course to watch my teammates run. As I arrive, Kim is on the line with KC. She starts off well enough but loses KC early and has to start calling her name to retrieve her. “KC, come! KC, come!”

  I turn to where Carl is waiting in “the hole” (as they call the space just before the start gate), and just as it happened yesterday, the sound of Kim’s voice immediately sets Fletcher off. “This is eeeexcellent,” I hiss, all but stroking my fingers in anticipation of disaster.

  Carl has increasing trouble keeping Fletcher in place. The dog wants to bolt, find his mom. I may leave this trial with nothing to show for it but embarrassment and abashment, but so will my adversary. That will be some comfort. I begin to back away so that I might gloat from the shadows, like Gollum.

  And then I hear the note of real desperation in Carl’s voice—“Fletcher, c’mon, boy; Fletcher, sit”—and I think, “What the hell is wrong with me?” This is an actual human being in actual distress here, not some cartoon character in my head. And it occurs to me that the manufacture of conflict where no conflict exists is a problem Dusty has as well. Again, have I been the source of it? Are the pathologies I so lament in him the very ones I’ve bred in him by my own behavior?

  Time to put a stop to all that. After all, might I not have better luck finding a place among these people if I stopped creatively visualizing myself as their nemesis? I walk up and say, “Hey there, Fletcher! Hey there, boy!” and scratch his head, immediately drawing his attention away from Kim, whose shouts are still all too audible from the ring. “Hey, Fletcher,” I say, making my voice shrill and fluty. “Hey, guess what? Fourscore and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth a new nation, conceived in liberty and someone’s in the kitchen with Diiiinah”—switching to a falsetto croon to keep him off-guard—“someone’s in the kitchen I know-whoa-whoa-whoa . . .”

  I’m up to fee-fi-fiddley-eye-oh by the time Carl is called out to the start line, and between us we’ve managed to divert Fletcher’s attention from Kim. He shoots me a quick “Thanks” as he heads into the ring.

  I join the All Fours team members on the sidelines and take a seat next to another excellent competitor, Alise, a willowy blond who smiles and starts making small talk; but she keeps one eye on the start, where Carl has just put Fletcher in a sit-stay. He then turns and walks out past the first jump, past the second jump, and then turns back to give Fletcher the command to go.

  Alise stops in midsentence and coos admiringly, “That is a sexy lead out!”

  Sexy it may be, but it almost ruins the run: Fletcher dips around the first jump and Carl has to double back and get him over it, so there’s a refusal right off the bat. But give the man credit: he gets his dog in hand and takes him through the course pretty much flawlessly. And in damn good time.

  Carl and Fletcher have Q’d.

  Carl’s beaming with well-earned pride when he bursts through the gate and is immediately met with—if not outright buffeted by—congratulations. “Nice run, great job,” I blurt before I’m shunted aside by other admirers. And as I retreat, I think with some satisfaction, “I had a bit of a hand in that.”

  “Well, boy,” I sa
y to Dusty as we drive home, our first trial now behind us, “what have we learned this weekend?” In the rearview mirror I can see his ears pivot attentively, but he offers no response. I’m disappointed, but what did I expect, for my dog to sum up the life-lessons I’d taught him?

  Something inside me sloshes, and I feel a sudden sharp pressure against the walls of my bladder.

  “What we’ve learned,” I tell him, suddenly snarling, “is always to use the men’s room before getting on the goddamn interstate.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Doubt and Distraction

  It’s almost a month before our second trial. I can never seem to remember that you have to apply for these things well in advance, and what with the growing popularity of the sport, slots tend to fill in pretty quickly and latecomers like me are shut out. It seems to me that future champions shouldn’t have to bother with tedious paperwork, but apparently the rest of the world begs to differ. All right then. I’ve managed to squeak us on to the rolls of an outdoor trial held in Belvidere, Illinois, a place whose name I’ve never heard mentioned in all my years of living in this area. It must be one of those spots on the map in a point-size you need to be a fruit fly to read.

  The day arrives and the CD I’ve chosen for the trip is Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé suites performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with André Previn conducting. It’s heady stuff, exotic and undulating, though it ends up reminding me of Star Trek. I muse a bit on the way rhythms and melodies of this kind are still being used to illustrate the lives of mythical constructs—except that the myths have shifted from shepherds and pirates to starship captains. I’m just wondering whether the occasional appearance of togalike costumes or Hellenic architecture in mid-sixties science fiction is a subconscious reflex or a conscious tribute to the genre’s forbears, when it occurs to me that if any of my agility colleagues knew this was how I spent my time they’d think I was stone crazy.