The Hazards of Good Breeding Read Online Free Page B

incompetence—what kind of man has he become, that he doesn’t collapse into the immobilizing embrace of a deep slumber?
    This morning, Jack has a crick in his neck from having spent the night with his head propped against the bedside table. He is beginning the day early, because he has two missions to accomplish before he goes to Eliot’s performance. He has to swing by Colby Kesson, the poorly managed publishing business his company, Amerithon, is in the process of buying out, and bring his dog Caesar to the breeder’s. He has cleared the rest of his appointments before lunch. It is unfair, after all, that just because she divorced him, his ex-wife should be the only one to see their son in his end-of-the-school-year performance.
    When they arrive at the breeder’s, Caesar waits obediently for Jack to let him out, watching with bright, almost catlike eyes as a squirrel races up the trunk of a maple over Jack’s shoulder. He is a good hunter for a blue heeler: he has caught two rabbits and a crow in the last three months—a feat Brutus, the smaller and more timid of Jack’s two dogs, could never have accomplished. Jack loves his dogs, who are both descended from the first blue heeler in America, who belonged to Jack’s grandfather. Part shepherd, part Border collie, part dingo, there is a real animalness about them that is missing from so many breeds. Jack admires their firmness of intent and purpose. He trained them himself, and they are good dogs—obedient, watchful, and well behaved. He can feed them from the same dish, one at a time, and they won’t squabble as they did when they were puppies. Instead they will sit back, licking their chops, waiting their turns with patience.
    With Caesar trotting at his heels, Jack crosses the Ridgeways’ lawn to the side door of the house, which opens into a small concrete-floored room, off which Jim Ridgeway has several kennels. Jim is the biggest Australian cattle dog breeder in New England and he loves Jack’s dogs, whose height and speed and intelligence make their genes an excellent supply for local bloodlines. Jack lets Jim use them free of charge. The favor works both ways; Caesar especially is better behaved when he has mated. Neuter them, for Christ’s sake , Jack’s daughter Caroline says. Why do they need to be such stallions? But Jack has no intention of acting on this suggestion.
    Jim comes to the door promptly at Jack’s knock and takes the leash, pats Caesar on the shoulder. “He limping?” he asks, watching the dog nose along the baseboards of the room. Jack is impressed; the limp is almost gone. He himself can barely see it.
    â€œStepped on a thorn,” he says. Jim pulls his mouth down at the edges. He is a man of few words, which Jack admires. He does not engage in the smarmy innuendos and elbows in the ribs that Jack has found such deals often inspire. Nor does he make small talk about the weather, the price of Science Diet, or the prevalence of hip dysplasia among retrievers. He never offers Jack an obligatory cup of coffee. This morning the whole exchange is complete in less than four minutes.
    From the Ridgeways’, Jack makes his way to Colby Kesson. Colby Kesson is a company with the kind of New Age, self-actualization bent that makes it exactly the sort of business Jack resents including in the Amerithon umbrella. It sells educational “kits” on-line to disgruntled pharmacy clerks looking to become telephone switchboard operators, overweight secretaries with a yen to practice aromatherapy, Burger King fry boys who’ve always wanted to be shoe salesmen, and any number of other individuals with lateral-movement career ambitions which the “kits” will take no nearer to fulfillment than they already are.
    There was a time when Jack dreamed that Amerithon would be the Tiffany’s of American history textbook publishers. That it would build on the dignified