A Fountain Filled With Blood

After the service, she checked the calendar. Two premarital counseling sessions today and another three next week. Whoever said Generation X was not interested in marriage hadn’t been looking in the Adirondack region. And the MacPherson-Engals wedding rehearsal Friday evening. She underlined that. She left a note for Lois, the church secretary, asking her to contact the organist, and another for the sexton, reminding him to unlock the door by eight o’clock Saturday morning to give the florist time to arrange the wedding flowers. Then she dashed back to the rectory next door and changed into an outfit that compromised between the weather and her customary clerical uniform: a long, loose-fitting shift in black linen, with a collar attached by hand.

Outside, it was promising to be another ninety-degree day, but the storm last night had cleared the air. The light, dry breeze reminded Clare of the best sort of weather at her parents’ home in southern Virginia. She had dropped the top of her convertible, and once she had taken care of Paul’s dogs, she might have time for a little spin through the countryside before the first of her two counseling sessions that afternoon.

The first hitch in her plans came when she got to Emil and Paul’s handsome old farmhouse. For some reason, she had pictured little dogs, Jack Russells or toy poodles perhaps. The pair that bounded out of the attached barn were big. Really big. Big, hairy, bouncing, barking black-and-white Bernese mountain dogs. She turned around and looked at the minuscule backseat, which would have been a snug fit for Jack Russells. She looked back at the dogs, which were excitedly tearing along the limits of an invisible fence. “Oh…shoot,” she said.

The dogs were ecstatic at meeting her. As she crossed from the driveway onto the lawn, they leapt and wiggled against her, pawing at her ankle-length dress and frantically licking at her hands. “Not exactly standoffish, are you?” she said. They discovered her sandal-clad feet and immediately began licking her toes. “Stop!” she shrieked. “Sit!” They plunked down, looking up at her hopefully, their tails thumping hard against the grass. She fished for their collar tags among handfuls of silky hair. “Okay, Gal and… Bob?” The dogs thumped more energetically. “Who names a dog Bob?” She sighed. When he had mentioned the dogs while they were waiting in the emergency room, Paul had said their bowls and leashes were in the barn. “C’mon, then,” she said. “Let’s get your things. Then we’ll try to fit you into my car.”

She wound up squeezing Gal, who was the slightly smaller of the two, across the backseat, the dog’s head out one side of the car and her tail out the other. Bob sat in the passenger seat, his dinner plate–size paws precariously balanced on the very edge of the smooth leather. Clare’s trunk lid barely shut over leashes, bowls, fifty pounds of dog chow, and an assortment of squeaky toys the dogs had brought and dropped in her way while she was loading the car.

The second hitch came at the Clover Kennels. “I’m sorry, Reverend Fergusson,” the plump, blonde owner said. She vigorously scratched the dogs’ heads. “All of our big dog runs are booked up through next week. It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and lots of folks are traveling.” She crouched, running Gal’s floppy ears through her hands and kissing her nose. “And we can’t fit these two into anything smaller. You wouldn’t be able to move, would you, you sweet thing?” She looked up regretfully at Clare. “There are a couple kennels over to Saratoga, of course, but I’d call first before going over. It’s going to be hard to find any spaces this weekend. Maybe some friends could watch them?”

And so Clare found herself taking her spin through the countryside with two hundred pounds of dog packed in the car. The only friends of Paul and Emil she knew of were the two Paul had mentioned last night, the owners of the Stuyvesant Inn. Maybe they would take the dogs off her hands. Bed-and-breakfasts were supposed to have cats or dogs hanging around.