He hung up.

He went out to wipe the dishes. His wife looked at him and he looked at the dishes, rubbing them with a towel.

"What"s it like out tonight?" he said.

"Nice. Not very chilly. Stars," she said. "Why?"

"Nothing."

The phone rang three times in the next hour. At eight o"clock the company arrived, Stoddard and his wife. They sat around until eight-thirty talking and then got out and set up the card table and began to play Gin.

Herb Thompson shuffled the cards over and over, with a c.l.i.ttering, shuttering effect and clapped them out, one at a time before the three other players. Talk went back and forth. He lit a cigar and made it into a fine gray ash at the tip, and adjusted his cards in his hand and on occasion lifted his head and listened. There was no sound outside the house. His wife saw him do this, and he cut it out immediately, and discarded a Jack of Clubs.

He puffed slowly on his cigar and they all talked quietly with occasional small eruptions of laughter, and the clock in the hall sweetly chimed nine o"clock.

"Here we all are," said Herb Thompson, taking his cigar out and looking at it reflectively. "And life is sure funny."

"Eh?" said Mr. Stoddard.

"Nothing, except here we are, living our lives, and some place else on earth a billion other people live their lives."

"That"s a rather obvious statement."

"Life," he put his cigar back in his lips, "is a lonely thing. Even with married people. Sometimes when you"re in a person"s arms you feel a million miles away from them."

"I like that," said his wife.

"I didn"t mean it that way," he explained, not with haste; because he felt no guilt, he took his time. "I mean we all believe what we believe and live our own little lives while other people live entirely different ones. I mean, we sit here in this room while a thousand people are dying. Some of cancer, some of pneumonia, some of tuberculosis. I imagine someone in the United States is dying right now in a wrecked car."

"This isn"t very stimulating conversation," said his wife.

"I mean to say, we all live and don"t think about how other people think or live their lives or die. We wait until death comes to us. What I mean is here we sit, on our self-a.s.sured b.u.t.t-bones, while, thirty miles away, in a big old house, completely surrounded by night and G.o.d-knows-what, one of the finest guys who ever lived is-"

"Herb!"

He puffed and chewed on his cigar and stared blindly at his cards. "Sorry." He blinked rapidly and bit his cigar. "Is it my turn?"

"It"s your turn."

The playing went around the table, with a flittering of cards, murmurs, conversation. Herb Thompson sank lower into his chair and began to look ill.

The phone rang. Thompson jumped and ran to it and jerked it off the hook.

"Herb! I"ve been calling and calling. What"s it like at your house, Herb?"

"What do you mean, what"s it like?"

"Has the company come?"

"h.e.l.l, yes, it has-"

"Are you talking and laughing and playing cards?"

"Christ, yes, but what has that got to do with-"

"Are you smoking your ten-cent cigar?"

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, yes, but . . ."

"Swell," said the voice on the phone. "That sure is swell. I wish I could be there. I wish I didn"t know the things I know. I wish lots of things."

"Are you all right?"

"So far, so good. I"m locked in the kitchen now. Part of the front wall of the house blew in. But I planned my retreat. When the kitchen door gives, I"m heading for the cellar. If I"m lucky I may hold out there until morning. It"ll have to tear the whole d.a.m.ned house down to get to me, and the cellar floor is pretty solid. I have a shovel and I may dig-deeper. . . ."

It sounded like a lot of other voices on the phone.

"What"s that?" Herb Thompson demanded, cold, shivering.

"That?" asked the voice on the phone. "Those are the voices of twelve thousand killed by a typhoon, seven thousand killed by a hurricane, three thousand buried by a cyclone. Am I boring you? That"s what the wind is. It"s a lot of people dead. The wind killed them, took their minds to give itself intelligence. It took all their voices and made them into one voice. All those millions of people killed in the past ten thousand years, tortured and run from continent to continent on the backs and in the bellies of monsoons and whirlwinds. Oh Christ, what a poem you could write about it!"

The phone echoed and rang with voices and shouts and whinings.

"Come on back, Herb," called his wife from the card table.

"That"s how the wind gets more intelligent each year, it adds to itself, body by body, life by life, death by death."

"We"re waiting for you, Herb," called his wife.

"d.a.m.n it!" He turned, almost snarling. "Wait just a moment, won"t you!" Back to the phone. "Allin, if you want me to come out there now, I will! I should have come earlier . . ."

"Wouldn"t think of it. This is a grudge fight, wouldn"t do to have you in it now. I"d better hang up. The kitchen door looks bad; I"ll have to get in the cellar."

"Call me back, later?"

"Maybe, if I"m lucky. I don"t think I"ll make it. I slipped away and escaped so many times, but I think it has me now. I hope I haven"t bothered you too much, Herb."

"You haven"t bothered anyone, d.a.m.n it. Call me back."

"I"ll try. . . ."

Herb Thompson went back to the card game. His wife glared at him. "How"s Allin, your friend?" she asked, "Is he sober?"

"He"s never taken a drink in his life," said Thompson, sullenly, sitting down. "I should have gone out there hours ago."

"But he"s called every night for six weeks and you"ve been out there at least ten nights to stay with him and nothing was wrong."

"He needs help. He might hurt himself."

"You were just out there, two nights ago, you can"t always be running after him."

"First thing in the morning I"ll move him into a sanatorium. Didn"t want to. He seems so reasonable otherwise."

At ten-thirty coffee was served. Herb Thompson drank his slowly, looking at the phone. I wonder if he"s in the cellar now, he thought.

Herb Thompson walked to the phone, called long-distance, gave the number.

"I"m sorry," said the operator. "The lines are down in that district. When the lines are repaired, we will put your call through."

"Then the telephone lines are down!" cried Thompson. He let the phone drop. Turning, he slammed open the closet door, pulled out his coat. "Oh Lord," he said. "Oh, Lord, Lord," he said, to his amazed guests and his wife with the coffee urn in her hand. "Herb!" she cried. "I"ve got to get out there!" he said, slipping into his coat.

There was a soft, faint stirring at the door.

Everybody in the room tensed and straightened up.

"Who could that be?" asked his wife.

The soft stirring was repeated, very quietly.

Thompson hurried down the hall where he stopped, alert.

Outside, faintly, he heard laughter.

"I"ll be d.a.m.ned," said Thompson. He put his hand on the doork.n.o.b, pleasantly shocked and relieved. "I"d know that laugh anywhere. It"s Allin. He came on over in his car, after all. Couldn"t wait until morning to tell me his confounded stories." Thompson smiled weakly. "Probably brought some friends with him. Sounds like a lot of other . . ."

He opened the front door.

The porch was empty.

Thompson showed no surprise; his face grew amused and sly. He laughed. "Allin? None of your tricks now! Come on." He switched on the porch light and peered out and around. "Where are you, Allin? Come on, now."

A breeze blew into his face.

Thompson waited a moment, suddenly chilled to his marrow. He stepped out on the porch and looked uneasily, and very carefully, about.

A sudden wind caught and whipped his coat flaps, disheveled his hair. He thought he heard laughter again. The wind rounded the house and was a pressure everywhere at once, and then, storming for a full minute, pa.s.sed on.

The wind died down, sad, mourning in the high trees, pa.s.sing away; going back out to the sea, to the Celebes, to the Ivory Coast, to Sumatra and Cape Horn, to Cornwall and the Philippines. Fading, fading, fading.

Thompson stood there, cold. He went in and closed the door and leaned against it, and didn"t move, eyes closed.

"What"s wrong . . .?" asked his wife.

NO NEWS, OR WHAT KILLED THE DOG?.

IT WAS A DAY OF HOLOCAUSTS, cataclysms, tornadoes, earthquakes, blackouts, ma.s.s murders, eruptions, and miscellaneous dooms, at the peak of which the sun swallowed the earth and the stars vanished.

But to put it simply, the most respected member of the Bentley family up and died.

Dog was his name, and dog he was.

The Bentleys, arising late Sat.u.r.day morning, found Dog stretched on the kitchen floor, his head toward Mecca, his paws neatly folded, his tail not a-thump but silent for the first time in twenty years.

Twenty years! My G.o.d, everyone thought, could it really have been that long? And now, without permission, Dog was cold and gone.

Susan, the younger daughter, woke everyone yelling: "Something"s wrong with Dog. Quick!"

Without bothering to don his bathrobe, Roger Bentley, in his underwear, hurried out to look at that quiet beast on the kitchen tiles. His wife, Ruth, followed, and then their son Skip, twelve. The rest of the family, married and flown, Rodney and Sal, would arrive later. Each in turn would say the same thing: "No! Dog was forever."

Dog said nothing, but lay there like World War II, freshly finished, and a devastation.

Tears poured down Susan"s cheeks, then down Ruth Bentley"s, followed in good order by tears from Father and, at last, when it had sunk in, Skip.

Instinctively, they made a ring around Dog, kneeling to the floor to touch him, as if this might suddenly make him sit up, smile as he always did at his food, bark, and beat them to the door. But their touching did nothing but increase their tears.

But at last they rose, hugged each other, and went blindly in search of breakfast, in the midst of which Ruth Bentley said, stunned, "We can"t just leave him there."

Roger Bentley picked Dog up, gently, and moved him out on the patio, in the shade, by the pool.

"What do we do next?"

"I don"t know," said Roger Bentley. "This is the first death in the family in years and-" He stopped, snorted, and shook his head. "I mean-"

"You meant exactly what you said," said Ruth Bentley. "If Dog wasn"t family, he was nothing. G.o.d, I loved him."

A fresh burst of tears ensued, during which Roger Bentley brought a blanket to put over Dog, but Susan stopped him.

"No, no. I want to see him. I won"t be able to see him ever again. He"s so beautiful. He"s so-old."

They all carried their breakfasts out on the patio to sit around Dog, somehow feeling they couldn"t ignore him by eating inside.

Roger Bentley telephoned his other children, whose response, after the first tears, was the same: they"d be right over. Wait.

When the other children arrived, first Rodney, twenty-one, and then the older daughter, Sal, twenty-four, a fresh storm of grief shook everyone and then they sat silently for a moment, watching Dog for a miracle.

"What are your plans?" asked Rodney at last.

"I know this is silly," said Roger Bentley after an embarra.s.sed pause. "After all, he"s only a dog-"

"Only!?" cried everyone instantly.