«Lucky?!» Roger Bentley opened his eyes and turned. «Yes! You know what we are―»
«The science fiction generation,» offered Rodney, lighting a cigarette casually.
«What?»
«You rave on about that, your school lectures, or during dinner. Can openers? Science fiction. Automobiles. Radio, TV, films. Everything! So science fiction!»
«Well, dammit, they are!» cried Roger Bentley and went to stare at Dog, as if the answers were there amongst the last departing fleas. «Hell, not so long ago there were no cars, can openers, TV. Someone had to dream them. Start of lecture. Someone had to build them. Mid-lecture. So science fiction dreams became finished science fact. Lecture finis!»
«I bet!» Rodney applauded politely.
Roger Bentley could only sink under the weight of his son's irony to stroke the dear dead beast.
«Sorry. Dog bit me. Can't help myself. Thousands of years, all we did is die. Now, that time's over. In sum: science fiction.»
«Bull.» Rodney laughed. «Stop reading that junk, Dad.»
«Junk?» Roger touched Dog's muzzle. «Sure. But how about Lister, Pasteur, Salk? Hated death. Jumped to stop it. That's all science fiction was ever about. Hating the way things are, wanting to make things different. Junk?!»
«Ancient history, Pop.»
«Ancient?» Roger Bentley fixed his son with a terrible eye. «Christ. When I was born in 1920, if you wanted to visit your family on Sundays you―»
«Went to the graveyard?» said Rodney.
«Yes. My brother and sister died when I was seven. Half of my family gone! Tell me, dear children, how many of your friends died while you were growing up. In grammar school? High school?»
He included the family in his gaze, and waited.
«None,» said Rodney at last.
«None! You hear that? None! Christ. Six of my best friends died by the time I was ten! Wait! I just remembered!»
Roger Bentley hurried to rummage in a hall closet and brought out an old 78-rpm record into the sunlight, blowing off the dust. He squinted at the label:
«No News, Or What Killed The Dog?»
Everyone came to look at the ancient disc.
«Hey, how old is that?»
«Heard it a hundred times when I was a kid in the twenties,» said Roger.
«No News, Or What Killed The Dog?» Sal glanced at her father's face.
«This gets played at Dog's funeral,» he said.
«You're not serious?» said Ruth Bentley.
Just then the doorbell rang.
«That can't be the Pet Cemetery people come to take Dog-?»
«No!» cried Susan. «Not so soon!»
Instinctively, the family formed a wall between Dog and the doorbell sound, holding off eternity.
Then they cried, one more time.
The strange and wonderful thing about the funeral was how many people came.
«I didn't know Dog had so many friends,» Susan blubbered.
«He freeloaded all around town,» said Rodney.
«Speak kindly of the dead.»
«Well, he did, dammit., Otherwise why is Bill Johnson here, or Gert Skall, or Jim across the street?»
«Dog,» said Roger Bentley, «I sure wish you could see this.»
«He does.» Susan's eyes welled over. «Wherever he is.»
«Good old Sue,» whispered Rodney, «who cries at telephone books―»
«Shut up!» cried Susan.
«Hush, both of you.»
And Roger Bentley moved, eyes down, toward the front of the small funeral parlor where Dog was laid out, head on paws, in a box that was neither too rich nor too simple but just right.
Roger Bentley placed a steel needle down on the black record which turned on top of a flake-painted portable phonograph. The needle scratched and hissed. All the neighbors leaned forward.
«No funeral oration,» said Roger quickly. «Just this.» And a voice spoke on a day long ago and told a story about a man who returned from vacation to ask friends what had happened while he was gone.
It seemed that nothing whatsoever had happened. Oh, just one thing. Everyone wondered what had killed the dog.
The dog? asked the vacationer. My dog died? Yes, and maybe it was the burned horseflesh did it. Burned horseflesh!? cried the vacationer. Well, said his informant, when the barn burned, the horseflesh caught fire, so the dog ate the burned horseflesh, died.
The barn!? cried the vacationer. How did it catch fire? Well, sparks from the house blew over, torched the barn, burned the horseflesh, dog ate them, died.
Sparks from the house!? shouted the vacationer. How-?
It was the curtains in the house, caught fire.
Curtains? Burned!?