"You were there," Janet said.
"Of course I was there," Kemp said. "In a room whose window faced that alley. That dog's yapping drove me nuts."
"So you moved the garbage sled," Janet said, "and the dog bit the little girl, whose parents complained to the police, who had the dog put to sleep. And you, of course, were a great comfort to the grieving widow, who was perhaps in her early forties."
"Her late thirties," Kemp said. "But that's not how it happened."
"What happened?" Janet asked.
Kemp said, "One night, in the cafe, the dog had a stroke. A number of people claimed to have been responsible for scaring the dog so badly that they caused his stroke. There was a kind of competition in regard to this in the neighborhood. They were always doing things like creeping up to the cafe and hurling themselves against the windows and doors, shrieking like huge cats-- getting a frenzy of bowel movements out of the frightened dog."
"The stroke killed the dog?" Janet asked, hopefully.
"Not quite," Kemp said. "The stroke paralyzed the dog's hindquarters, so that he could only move his front end and wag his head. The widow, however, clung to the life of this dog as she clung to the memory of her late husband, and she had a carpenter design and build a little cart for the dog's rear end. The cart had wheels on it, so the dog just walked on his front legs and towed his dead hindquarters around on the little cart."
"My God," Janet said.
"You wouldn't believe the noise of those little wheels," Kemp said.
"Probably not," said Janet.
"I couldn't think," Kemp said. "The rolling sound was so pathetic, it was worse than the dog yapping at the little girl. And the dog couldn't turn a corner very well without skidding. He'd hop along and then turn and his rear wheels would slide out beside him, faster than he could keep hopping, and he'd go into a roll. When he was on his side, he couldn't get up again-- and since I was the only one to see him, I was always the one who went into the alley and tipped him upright again. As soon as he was back on his wheels, he'd try to bite me," Kemp said, "but he was easy to outrun."
"So one day," Janet said, "you untied him, and he ran into the street without looking. Excuse me: he rolled into the street without looking. And everyone's troubles were over."
"Not so," said Kemp.
"I want the truth," Janet said, sleepily. "What happened to the damn schnauzer?"
"I don't know," Kemp said. "I moved."
Janet, giving in to sleep, knew that only her silence might get Kemp to reveal himself. She knew that this story might be as made-up as the other versions, or that the other versions might be largely true-- even that this one might by largely true. Any combination was possible with Kemp.
But Janet was already asleep when Kemp asked her, "Which story do you like better?"
He pulled back the covers and watched Janet sleep; then he covered her again. He went to Pete's room and watched him. Roger was sleeping at a friend's house, and when Kemp shut his eyes he saw a glow on the suburban horizon, which he imagined was the house of Roger's friend-- in flames.
He watched little Pete, and this calmed him. Then Kemp lay down beside Pete and smelled the boy's fresh breath, remembering when Roger's breath had turned sour in that grown-up's way. It had been an unpleasant sensation for Kemp, shortly before Roger turned six, to smell that Roger's breath was stale and faintly foul in his sleep. It was as if the process of decay, of slowly dying, had begun in him. This was Kemp's first awareness of the mortality of his son. There appeared with this odor the first discolorations and stains on Roger's perfect teeth. Perhaps it was just that Roger was Kemp's firstborn child, but Kemp worried more about Roger than he worried about Pete-- even though a five-year-old seems more prone than a ten-year-old to the usual childhood accidents. And what are they? Kemp wondered. Being hit by cars? Choking to death on peanuts? Being stolen by strangers?
There was so much to worry about when worrying about children, and Kemp worried so much about everything; at times, especially in these throes of insomnia, Kemp thought himself to be psychologically unfit for parenthood. Then he worried about that, too, and felt all the more anxious for his children. What if their most dangerous enemy turned out to be him?
He fell asleep beside Pete. But Kemp was a fearful dreamer; he was not asleep for long. Soon he was moaning; his armpit hurt. He woke up suddenly, Pete's little fist was snagged in Kemp's armpit hair. Pete was moaning, too. Kemp untangled himself from the whimpering child, who seemed to Kemp to be suffering the same dream Kemp had suffered, as if Kemp's trembling body had communicated the dream to Pete.
But Pete was having his own nightmare. In Pete's dream, the child saw the great abandoned Army truck, more the size and shape of a tank, guns and inexplicable tools and evil-looking attachments all over it, the windshield a slit no bigger than a letter slot. It was all black, of course.
The dog tied to the truck was the size of a pony, though leaner and much crueler. He was loping, in slow motion, toward the end of the alley, his weak-looking chain spiraling behind him, hardly looking strong enough to hold back the dog. At the end of the alley, with his legs all buttery and stumbling over himself, hopelessly clumsy and unable to flee, little Pete bumbled in circles. But he couldn't seem to get himself going-- to get away from that terrible dog. When the chain snapped, the great truck lurched forward as if someone had started it, and the dog was on him. Pete grabbed the dog's fur, sweaty and coarse (his father's armpit), but somehow he lost his grip. The dog was at his throat, but Pete was running again-- into the street, where trucks like the abandoned Army truck rolled heavily past, their massive rear wheels in rows stacked together like giant doughnuts on their sides. And because of the mere gun slits, the drivers couldn't see, of course-- they couldn't see little Pete.
In Kemp's dream, he and Roger had been riding on an airplane. Roger had to go to the bathroom. Kemp pointed down the aisle; there were doors down there, a little kitchen, the pilot's cabin, the lavatory. Roger wanted to be taken there, to be shown which door, but Kemp was cross with him. "You're ten years old, Roger," Kemp said. "You can read. Or ask the stewardess." Roger crossed his knees and sulked. Kemp shoved the child into the aisle. "Grow up, Roger," he said. "It's one of those doors down there. Go on."
Moodily, the child walked down the aisle toward the doors. A stewardess smiled at him and rumpled his hair as he passed by her, but Roger, typically, would ask nothing. He got to the end of the aisle and glared back at Kemp. Kemp waved to him, impatiently. Roger shrugged his shoulder helplessly. Which door?
Exasperated, Kemp stood up. "Try one!" he shouted down the aisle to his son. People looked at Roger standing there; he was embarrassed and opened a door immediately-- the one nearest him. He gave a quick, surprised but uncritical look back to his father before he seemed to be drawn through the door he'd opened.
The door slammed itself after Roger; the stewardess screamed; the plane gave a little dip in altitude, then corrected itself. Everyone looked out the windows; some people fainted, some threw up. Kemp ran down the aisle, but the pilot and some other official-looking people prevented Kemp from opening the door.
"It should always be kept locked!" the pilot shouted to the sobbing stewardess.
"I thought it was locked!" the stewardess wailed.
"Where's it go?" Kemp cried. "God, where's it go?"
He saw nothing written on any of the doors.
"I'm sorry, sir," the pilot said. "It couldn't be helped."
But Kemp shoved past him, smacked the stewardess out of the aisle. When he opened the door, Kemp saw it went outside-- into the sky-- and before he could cry aloud for Roger, Kemp was sucked through the open door and into the open heavens, where he flew helplessly after his son.
THE END
