Gwen, in Green

“God, the cure is worse than the ailment,” she moaned, coming back to life slowly with a tall glass of ice water on top of coffee and V-­8 juice.

That was the day Mandy died.

Feeling yucky and slightly suicidal, the usual after too much booze, she put on her private sun-­bathing bikini and lounged on the balcony over the clear pond, letting the sun help, her sweat out the booze.

The dogs drank from the clear pond. This had worried Gwen at first, but George had sampled the water himself and declared it “fittin’.” He’d even sent a sample off to the state lab to have it analyzed. It showed a few harmless bacteria and some phosphates, which explained the clear green color, but it was pronounced harmless to livestock. So the dogs drank there and played there. Mandy, part hound with, perhaps, a bit of Labrador, loved the water and went into it often with great, bounding splashes. She was a loving dog, always full of spirit. So when Gwen noticed her staggering toward the clear pond, her atten­tion was engaged immediately.

The big, black dog drank endlessly, and then staggered, feet crossing, to vomit into the sand. Gwen called her. The dog lifted her head but fell weakly. Gwen hurried to her. The dog’s eyes were large, the pupils dilated. As Gwen neared, she saw the dog squat to urinate and then stagger back to drink from the pond.

Gwen half-­carried the animal to the balcony, where she petted her, talked to her, and offered sympathy. When the dog’s rapid breathing slowed early in the afternoon, Gwen thought she was recovering, but the breathing lessened until, just before Gwen ran in to dress, it was painfully infrequent and the dog seemed almost comatose.

Gwen strained to lift the dog into the back of the pickup truck, drove hurriedly into town, and stopped by the repair shop to tell George that Mandy was terribly sick. Mandy died on the way to the nearby small city, convul­sing and then going into a coma from which she did not recover.

“Do you have any neighbors who don’t like dogs?” the veterinary asked.

“No neighbors at all,” Gwen said, having dried her tears.

“I hesitate to suggest it,” the veterinary said, “but the way you describe her symptoms makes it sound like poison. Do you put out rat poison or anything?”

She shook her head.

“All I can do, Mrs. Ferrier, is perform an autopsy,” he shrugged. “If you care to go to that expense.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’d like to know, at least.” She was searching her mind, feeling vague guilt. Had she or George left out some poison? She could think of none. She drove home slowly, saddened. A brief letter arrived from the animal hospital three days later. Mandy, said the report, had apparently eaten of Datura stramonium, known as jimson-­weed or Thornapple. The autopsy had found con­siderable amounts of hyoscyamine, atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscine, alkaloids common to the nightshade family of plants. It was, the vet reported with obvious pride, a rare case. It would probably be written up in a veterinary journal, since dogs seldom ate the poisonous weed, the few reported cases of jimson-­weed poisoning in the state having been confined, in the past, to cattle and sheep.

“I’ll be damned,” George said. “We’re harboring killers on our estate.” He was touched by Gwen’s sadness, but, man-­like, he would not admit his own feeling of loss over a mere dog. “I’ll take my trusty mower and lop off the heads of all the jimson-­weed killers I can find.”

Gwen spoke quickly, without thinking. “They were only trying to—”

“To what?” George asked, looking at her questioningly.

“—to warn us,” she finished, with a weak little shrug and a smile.

“They who?”

“Oh, forget it,” she said. It was so silly. She could not understand why she had said such a foolish thing.

For days Gwen kept Sam, the surviving outside dog, in the house. He was fretful and restless, wanting to be out­side to chase squirrels and enjoy the spring sun. She for­got to call him back from a morning outing and he once again roamed the woods, barking at the elusive tree dwellers and looking for Mandy.

Satan, the black ex-­tom, was also an outdoor animal in warm weather. He showed off by climbing trees. He stalked birds with murderous intent but, fortunately for the birds, hunted with a casualness bred of good food and lazy living.

Meanwhile, Pine Tree Island’s own Paul Bunyan felled a forest of small brush. He worked in the evenings, be­coming hard and muscular with the exercise, and cleared more and more as he moved around the house toward the clear pond. He planned his clearing as a general would plan a battle, walking ahead of his operation to consider the situation and the terrain before axing his way slowly through the brush.