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EPISODE 33

         

            Girded with information, the Slacks addressed the anarchy efflorescing in Waldo Gray's living room.

          "People!" Howard declared. "People, there is something you must know!"

          The attention of the guests shifted to Howard. Words that he would speak welled up, marched through his mind... erect, noble, motivating. He cleared his throat, preparatory...

          A commotion broke out at the top of the stairs, and Spot descended into the living room, covered with drifting suds.

          "Mad dog!" Harvey shrieked, retreating to a corner, covering his genitals with both hands... a toothpick of rolled-up ham still dangling from two fingers like a pink, fleshy cigarette. The panic-stricken guests began to scream and run in circles.

          "Someone open the front door," said Beatrice.

          Spot found the noise and running stimulating. He rolled his eyes and howled, and drifting soapsuds circled him like malevolent little planets which, of course, the salesmen took to harbor the most dreadful diseases. Finally, Mrs. Harwood edged the front door open. Spot dug all four feet into the rug and gave a mighty shake, sending soapy water flying furiously toward every corner of the living room, and over each of the frightened guests. Exclamations of disgust and lamentation quickly followed.

          "Don't let him get out!" begged Timmy, racing down the stairs. "He'll just roll in that graveyard dirt... and get dirty again."

          But it was too late. Nobody dared approach the door, or even express disapproval at Timmy's mention of the bad place. Then, Spot was gone.

          Wayne finished brushing suds from his sleeve and took command. "Don't worry, sonny, we'll bring him back. Me and the boys. We'll form a posse."

          "Not me!" Harvey excused himself. "That's a mad dog."

          "And you're a yellow slob," retorted Karyl Shea.

          "If you weren't eating all the time," Betty tried to moderate, "people would like you better."

          This angered Harvey, and he fairly flew out of his corner. "Like me?" he screeched, voice cracking like a parrot's. "Nobody likes me... least of all my wife, and all her hoity-toity relatives. Ice cream, cookies and spaghetti never judge," he affirmed. The guilty hand, already fondling its pithed tube of pressed ham, plunged into his pocket, emerging with a crust of bread which Harvey devoured, speaking through a spray of crumbs and soap and ham.

          "And now, you all want to see me get killed. I know! Alright, I'll go! I'll find your damned mad dog. Who's with me?

          He picked up an empty bottle and stalked to the hatrack, snatching up his hat.

          "Nobody goes off on their own," ordered Wayne. "This is going to be a strategic operation.

          "Who made you general?" Jacob complained.

          "Nobody! So if you don't like it, you take charge!"

          Ferdinand gravely removed his hat from the hatrack. "It's every man for himself," he said, in the voice of a doomed Lieutenant, third-banana in a movie about the First World War. "That's the way that it always ends up with us, anyhow!"

          "Guess so," shrugged Jacob. "Howie, are you gonna just stand there, all pompous and stupid, or are you coming with us. A boy has lost his dog!"

          Howard shrugged back, the spectres of his warning words retreating like a line of fallen Presidents. He trailed along behind the others to retrieve his hat from Waldo's hatrack.

          "Listen to that wind!" said Beatrice, standing by the door. "Winter is surely coming."

          Waldo's chair rocked briskly on the porch. The salesmen filed out, past it, then stood in a confused knot in the driveway, next to the cars, watching black clouds scud across a luminous, fluorescent moon. Crouching, malignant shadows beckoned from the bad place and the country. None of them had noticed the rented beatnik hang behind and, once they'd left, guide Karyl towards the library.

          "Dog?" called Harvey, hopefully. "Dog? Hey, dog..."

          "Gosh, that wind is strong," Ferdinand marveled. He clenched a hand to his hat as dead brown leaves swirled past them, up the steps and into the house... a fall fantasy unlikely, ever, to be found on sale at Wohl's.

          "No more excuses!" Wayne commanded. "Forward!"

          Betty, glancing backwards as the dead leaves brushed her ankle, saw Karyl's back disappear and the door to Waldo's library, with its big fish, close softly.  Its lock clicked.  She went to the closet, taking Howard's cigarettes out of his overcoat pocket, and shaking one from the pack. On the portch the rest of the wives, and the Widow Harwood, too, were smoking... watching their men march about fitfully and then, finally, wander off in different directions. Their calls of "Dog?" and "Spot?" grew fainter. The wind gained force.

          Presently, five brown hats were seen to rise and whirl up, briefly silhouetted against the moon, before flying off, as a group, towards the bad place. The wives stared outwards and smoked in silence. Shortly, the defeated salesmen began to appear; stunned and hatless, trudging up the steps and back inside Waldo's house.

          "Your hat!" Betty reminded Howard.

          "Gone," he shrugged her off. "It doesn't really matter, people are giving their hats up more and more, these days. It's a sign of the changing times. No more hats… and no more milk deliveries. Times change, and we change with them, even when that change is for the worse."

          "We didn't see him anywhere," Jacob confessed to Timmy.

          "But don't be sad," Betty suggested. "He's just gone out for exercise, and he'll be back as soon as he gets tired of the bad place."

          "Why don't you call it what it is?" said Mrs. Harwood, so quivering with outrage that blue champagne dripped over the lip of her glass and spattered the dead leaves on the rug, producing purple, sizzling smoke and brown slime. "My Henry is there, so it can't be all bad, or was something wrong with him? It's the cemetery... admit it! That dog probably has found a nice, fresh, stinking grave to roll around in."

          And she began to sob.

          "She's right," Howard snapped. Betty's chin sagged. "I have changed my attitude tonight," he added, "Spot's in the cemetery."

          And the lights went off again... but, just as quickly, flashed back on.

          So Howard and the rest of the salesmen set to brushing cemetery dirt and leaves from their cuffs, patting down their disheveled hair and, as they did, three men trooped in from the kitchen and dining room, laughing and hoisting toolboxes. Trailing behind them were the smug, rented beatnik and a listless Karyl Shea. The newcomers, in greasy overalls reeking of ozone, peered through clear, plastic goggles at the guests as if they were some new, large class of insects. Abruptly, each dropped its toolbox, and a rattle of their metal sprockets, wires and wrenches wrenched the salesmen with more rasping premonitions of tribulations still to come.

          "Are you the Grays?" the insect leader chittered through its mask and goggles. None of the guests answered. "Well, I guess not, but you just tell them that their power's all OK now. No more problems! We'll send the bill," he added

          And, with that, the electricians opened the door, again, to moon and wind, and trooped outside. That vandal wind re-disheveled all the salesmen's hair and, further now, ruined the careful, prideful permanents of all the wives, as well. They stepped off of the porch and out into the world with its new, electrical situations and, behind them, the wind... like an avenged and satiated tide... sucked Waldo's door shut without the necessity of any human hand to do the deed.

          "Well," Howard summed up, "they're gone!"

 

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