Blameless in Abaddon Read Free

ramshackle farmhouse and adjoining barn at 22 Flour Mill Road in Chestnut Grove. Located three miles north of Abaddon Marsh, the couple’s estate comprised over six acres, more than enough for furtively growing
Nepeta cataria.
That April they sowed the seeds together, pausing periodically to make love in the apple orchard, and by June the crop was in bloom, introducing dozens of local felines to a level of self-indulgence that seemed excessive even by the standards of a cat.
    Corinne’s love for animals went far beyond catnip farming. She was a devout vegetarian whose Ford Ranger sported bumper stickers proclaiming MEAT IS MURDER and I’D RATHER GO NAKED THAN WEAR FUR. For her livelihood she managed All Creatures Great and Small, a Perkinsville establishment specializing in gourmet food for dogs, cats, and—most profitably—the horses owned by the adolescent girls of Abaddon Township’s wealthiest settlement, the posh and sylvan community of Deer Haven. Corinne’s own taste in pets ran decidedly toward the outre. The creatures with whom Martin was forced to compete for his wife’s affections included not only an iguana named Sedgewick but also a tarantula named Hairy Truman and an armadillo called Shirley—a misanthropic beast whose entire behavioral repertoire consisted of eating, sleeping, and, every day at two P.M. , creeping from one corner of the basement to the other, depositing a pile of ordure as she passed.
    On the evening of their first anniversary, Corinne looked Martin squarely in the eye, raised her second glass of Cook’s champagne to her lips, and said, softly, “It was the lobsters.”
    â€œThe lobsters?”
    â€œFrom Super Fresh.”
    The case to which Corinne was evidently alluding had appeared on Martin’s docket early in their courtship. Shortly after eleven P.M. on September 19, 1996, a young woman named Nancy Strossen had broken into a Super Fresh grocery store in Fox Run and transferred all the live lobsters from their display case to a holding tank. Later that night Strossen drove the tank across New Jersey, parked on a deserted Cape May beach, and released each and every lobster into the North Atlantic. Presented with the facts of Strossen’s escapade, Martin had sentenced her to two days in jail, but he declined to make her pay any damages. Instead, he told the Super Fresh management their lobster trade was manifestly inhumane, and they would do well to abandon this business of torturing crustaceans.
    â€œIt was the lobsters that won me over,” Corinne continued. “You let the defendant off with a slap on the wrist, and I said to myself, ‘Look no further, dear.’”
    â€œLovely lobsters,” said Martin woozily, finishing his third glass of champagne. “Lovely, lovely lobsters.”
    Eighteen months into the marriage Corinne got the idea of setting up the canine equivalent of the celebrated Make-A-Wish Foundation. She solicited contributions through
Dog Fancy
magazine, rented a one-room office in downtown Kingsley, and hired her dim-witted but saintly cousin Franny as chief administrator. Within half a year the Kennel of Joy had become a going concern, sustained through a mixture of charitable donations and Corinne’s take-home pay. Thanks to the Kennel of Joy, a dying Manhattan dachshund finally got to chase a Wisconsin rabbit into its warren; a diabetic bloodhound from Newark joined three other dogs in finding a child lost in the Great Smokies; and a leukemic golden retriever born and bred in the parched Texas town of Tahoka spent the last weeks of her life swimming in the Rio Grande.
    Had Martin not been crazy about Corinne, he would have regarded the Kennel of Joy as a dreadful waste of money, and the organization would probably have occasioned screaming matches of the sort that had characterized the terminal phases of his previous relationships. But love does strange things to a man’s sense of