Ice’s wisdom, her instinct, obeying the queen as they ran up and down, hither and yon, across a region that spanned four states, southern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois.
You galloped.
You lived. You ran like lightning. You weren’t going to die.
But in America, in 1957, the gun barrels were always there, tracking you.
Ice ran. Sumer did not. Sumer busied herself caring for her children in a clean and spacious cage that had been specially made for her. She moved lethargically, offering her pups her teats. She helped her newborns eliminate their waste. She was dignified, relaxed. She had the majesty of an earth goddess, the confident glow that was the sign of her productivity, her fertility. And this was the perfect environment for raising her pups, it was kept utterly clean, uncontaminated, and every last one of her children was pure as well. Perfect German shepherds, every one.
In the world Sumer inhabited, of course, mongrels were abhorred.
There was no reason, in its value system, for a mongrel to be born.
You, Sumer, do not run. You are waited upon. The owner of the kennel you live in—its owner as well as yours—lavishes attention upon you because you are the mother of her future champions. She places enormous value in your existence. You are cared for. You care for your children, and the woman who ought to be your master but is instead your breeder and handler, she cares for you.
Because you give birth to a beautiful elite.
Because you give birth to dogs of the highest quality, a second generation that is gorgeous above all else, possessed from birth of the qualities necessary to meet even the most stringent dog show standards and to remain unfazed by the judges’ stern, appraising gazes.
The puppies milled around your teats.
And then, when they had drunk their fill, they frolicked and tangled in the shadow of your protective aura.
Until 1957, when at last fate began playing its tricks with you.
What happened? Your master did something she shouldn’t have. Your master and the master of your fellow dogs, and of your children, the owner of your spotlessly clean kennel, she did something unclean, morally contaminated. Her patience had finally reached its limit. She wasn’t taking the trophy. She had been breeding all these dogs with the sole aim of winning the highest title, and here she was, her aspirations still unfulfilled. Her dogs always took second, not first, place. Yes, they had won repeatedly in group judging, totally overwhelming the other dogs. But none had ever been Best in Show. Not one had managed to ascend to the pinnacle, to become the Number One Doggie in the United States. Your master had once been described as “the queen of the postwar American dog show universe” for her utterly masterful handling, her ability to become one with her dogs. But she didn’t have the crown. She was a celebrity who appeared regularly in dog magazines. But without the crown. Each time she became the focus of attention as “a young—and beautiful!—woman handler,” her self-esteem soared; each time the Best in Show ribbon slipped from her grasp, she was more spectacularly wounded. And now, to make matters worse, she was losing her youth. And so your master tried to bribe the judges. It didn’t work. Well then, what if she spread her legs for one of the bigwigs who ran the show? She tried, but she wasn’t young enough; the association chairman couldn’t get it up. I’m way too old, she thought. I’m running out of time. And once she had convinced herself of this, she got so overwrought that she began to lose it. Take your age, Sumer, for instance. Before long you would be too old to give birth, past the age when so-called “late pregnancy” was possible, and all of a sudden that came to seem, in her mind, like some sort of sign—a revelation. It was now or never. And so your master tried a third trick: she went into the paddock and slipped poison to all the other candidates for Best in Show—a Doberman pinscher, a cocker spaniel, a Scottish terrier, a boxer, an Afghan hound, a toy poodle—and then, just to be absolutely sure that everything was all right, put poison in their owners’ lunches too. Four dogs died and two of the owners were hospitalized. Her transgression was discovered with almost hilarious ease, and she was immediately found guilty and shipped off to prison.
Now, Sumer, there was no one to maintain your kennel.
The