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EPISODE 50

Howard was standing in the cemetery... his wet and muddy shoes implanted in a freshly upturned grave. Around him loomed a vista of tombstones and, at his back, casting a moon-shadow, an enormous, owl-topped monument.

The tombstone was covered with writing. The fluorescent moon above... so close he could almost reach out and touch it... gave off light without heat, by which Howard turned and began to read...

"We... befriend... catastrophe?"

Betty shook his shoulders.

"Please... let's go... oh Howard, Howard Slack, what are you thinking about?"

Howard kept reading the slogans on the tombstone, pushing aside some green stuff that concealed the words.

"A noeity? A vaccine against the random?

"That tombstone... oh my God, jump out... that's poison ivy!"

This awakened Howard from his trance and he leaped away from the grave. Now he could see the landscape and, in the distance, the fire at what had been Waldo's house. He lifted a finger, pointing at the slaves salaaming before the distant fire.

"How long since they've seen the sunlight in its full and awful splendor. Betty... what will they do in the morning?"

She took his arm. "Shall we go home?"

"I'd love to but... what about Timmy? His home has been burned to a crisp! And the slaves... we can't just leave them here..."

He looked out again. In the distance Timmy shouted with glee and Spot barked as they played tag in the cemetery, rolling in and over graves. Howard shrugged and looked at his watch.

"Gosh... it's only just a little past eleven-thirty!"

Betty smiled. "Just like in a dream!"

"Yes." Then Howard dropped his wrist and turned his face away. "But the dream is over. Just half an hour to midnight and we're waking up. Tomorrow will be here, and we'll get up just as always, while the others won't. It's almost like a poem... something on the radio. You know... we'll be on the radio tomorrow, on the morning news. Others will share in the dreams we have awakened.

"Well, I don't know about that," Betty said, and her nose wrinkled. "I still intend to ask Waldo about that blue champagne. And don't you dare try to stop me!"

"Betty, you know how I hate arguments..."

"Then we won't have one," Betty promised. "Even when you told me that you bought that policy... I understood. And we have so much forgiving to do..."

"Yes," Howard said and held her close. "Isn't it wonderful?"

A long moment later, they began to walk back through the tombstones, which sprouted from the earth like flowers of a mysterious marbled garden. Angels, gargoyles, cherubs... Roman Senators and animals with granite faces frowned or beamed upon them as they passed.

"Look!" Betty said.

A distant radio played Nat King Cole as Betty pointed out a tombstone, heaped with roses. Paradise! Howard reached and picked up one of the roses, but it was dead and crumbled in his fingers as the music changed to Elvis Presley.

"Howard... there!" cried Betty.

And she pointed to a line of four unfilled and waiting graves, each with an attendant mound of dirt at its head. Atop each mound - a hat, belonging to a salesman for the Waldo Gray Insurance firm. A lone star zigged and zagged across the sky... a shooting star, which plummeted towards the horizon of distant fire. Timmy and Spot arrived, out of breath and happy, as the sirens roared and small, red lights circled the orange glow like angry, shining planets.

Timmy pointed.

"Look! The fire engines!"

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