Free Creature Discomforts by Susan Conant Page B

or could be marked by another male. With males, one and one doesn’t equal two; it equals competition. Human beings? Well, yes, certain trivial interspecies differences exist. A male dog, for example, isn’t going to keep turning around to ask the loser in the you-know-what contest whether he wants to call it quits. He’s just going to... Well, never mind. Sorry. Talk about bias! For all I knew, Malcolm Fairley’s dedication to Guatemala, the rain forests, and the global environment extended to the social environment of his own species. Maybe the two men had strolled cooperatively up the trail. Still, Ann’s letter had used the word overbearing. And there’d been a third person, hadn’t there? A man or a woman whose voice hadn’t reached me. An anonymous third person.
    “I still don’t understand why Norman was there at all,” Effie said vehemently, “and why he was there with you, Malcolm. He hated exercise, he hated trees, and he was more than slightly antagonistic to the Pine Tree Foundation.”
    “There was no personal animosity,” Malcolm Fairley replied. “Norman disapproved of the Beamon Reservation, too. He needled Gabbi mercilessly about it, if you remember. But they remained friends.”
    “Was it his idea to go hiking?” Effie demanded. “Or yours?”
    “Mine.” Fairley looked a little embarrassed. “What can I say? I’m an incurable proselytizer. I’m convinced that if you can make the environment real and meaningful to people, they’ll make good decisions. And the old stepped trails up Dorr make a better argument than I can for conservation.”
    “They’re man-made,” Quint objected. “They aren’t a natural part of the environment.” He paused. “Oh, I get it. So there was a chance that Axelrod might actually like them.”
    Fairley smiled. “The truth is, I offered him a lure in the form of something to complain about. If you remember, one of his gripes with the park was about signs. He wrote letters about how there weren’t enough signs, they were confusing, and—”
    Gabrielle gave a peal of glee. “And the trail signs on Emery and Kurt Diederich and that whole area really are confusing if you don’t already know your way. Isn’t Diederich misspelled on one of them? And it’s hard to keep straight what’s the Emery Trail or the Emery Path or the Dorr Mountain Trail or the East Face Trail. Very clever, Malcolm! Well done.” She caught herself. “Well, in retrospect, not precisely.”
    “They’re typical Acadia trail signs,” said Quint, graciously covering Gabrielle’s enthusiasm for a tactic that had ended in Axelrod’s abrupt demise. “There’s nothing wrong with them if you use a map. They’re traditional old-style signs.”
    A brief discussion about the merits and failings of the trail markers on Dorr ensued. Everyone eventually agreed that Norman Axelrod would’ve leaped on the inadequacies of the small wooden markers as a fresh cause for public complaint.
    “Something really ought to be done about the markers near the summit,” Malcolm Fairley said. “That’s where we were headed. On a foggy day, it’s easy to lose your bearings up there and get yourself twisted around a hundred and eighty degrees. When I told Norman about that, he wanted me to take pictures. I said he had to see for himself. Damn! For once, he was right.”
    Night had fallen. Everyone but the mosquitoes had finished eating. Although Gabrielle provided aerosol cans of bug repellent, the creatures were feasting on us. To help drive them off and to give some light, Wally Swan had transformed the site of the clambake into a campfire. As he tossed a piece of driftwood onto the fire, I heard Effie whisper, “Quint, please! Make him stop.”
    “It’s Gabbi’s business, not mine,” Quint whispered back. “It’s her reservation.”
    “We’re the caretakers,” Effie argued softly. “It’s not right. She’s your aunt! You speak to her! Honestly, a blazing fire! And aerosol