The World According to Garp

10. THE DOG IN THE ALLEY, THE CHILD IN THE SKY

WE'VE got to get Duncan out of that mad woman's house,” Garp told Helen.

“Well, you do it,” Helen said. “You're the one who's worried.”

“You should have seen how she drove,” Garp said.

“Well,” said Helen, “presumably Duncan isn't going to be riding around with her.”

“She may take the boys out for a pizza,” Garp said. “I'm sure she can't cook.”

Helen was looking at The Eternal Husband. She said, “It's a strange book for a woman to give to another woman's husband.”

“She didn't give it to me, Helen. She threw it at me.”

“It's a wonderful story,” Helen said.

“She said it was just sick,” Garp said, despairingly. “She thought it was unfair to women.”

Helen looked puzzled. “I wouldn't say that was even an issue,” she said.

“Of course it isn't!” Garp yelled. “This woman is an idiot! My mother would love her.”

“Oh, poor Jenny,” Helen said. “Don't start on her.”

“Finish your pasta, Walt,” Garp said.

“Up your wazoo,” Walt said.

“Nice talk,” Garp said. “Walt, I don't have a wazoo.”

“Yes, you do,” Walt said.

“He doesn't know what it means,” Helen said. “I'm not sure what it means, either.”

“Five years old,” Garp said. “It's not nice to say that to people,” Garp told Walt.

“He heard it from Duncan, I'm sure,” Helen said.

“Well, Duncan gets it from Ralph,” Garp said, “who no doubt gets it from his goddamn mother!”

“Watch your own language,” Helen said. “Walt could as easily have gotten his “wazoo” from you.”

“Not from me, he couldn't have,” Garp declared. “I'm not sure what it means, either. I never use that word.”

“You use plenty just like it,” Helen said.

“Walt, eat your pasta,” Garp said.

“Calm down,” Helen said.

Garp eyed Walt's uneaten pasta as if it were a personal insult. “Why do I bother?” he said. “The child eats nothing.”

They finished their meal in silence. Helen knew Garp was thinking up a story to tell Walt after dinner. She knew Garp did this to calm himself whenever he was worried about the children—as if the act of imagining a good story for children was a way to keep children safe forever.

With the children Garp was instinctively generous, loyal as an animal, the most affectionate of fathers; he understood Duncan and Walt deeply and separately. Yet, Helen felt sure, he saw nothing of how his anxiety for the children made the children anxious—tense, even immature. On the one hand he treated them as grown ups, but on the other hand he was so protective of them that he was not allowing them to grow up. He did not accept that Duncan was ten, that Walt was five; sometimes the children seemed fixed, as three-year-olds, in his mind.

Helen listened to the story Garp made up for Walt with her usual interest and concern. Like many of the stories Garp told the children, it began as a story for the children and ended up as a story Garp seemed to have made up for Garp. You would think that the children of a writer would have more stories read to them than other children, but Garp preferred that his children listen only to his stories.

“There was a dog,” Garp said.

“What kind of dog?” said Walt.

“A big German shepherd dog,” said Garp.

“What was his name?” Walt asked.

“He didn't have a name,” Garp said. “He lived in a city in Germany, after the war.”

“What war?” said Walt.

“World War II,” Garp said.

“Oh sure,” Walt said.

“The dog had been in the war,” Garp said. “He had been a guard dog, so he was very fierce and very smart.”

“Very mean,” said Walt.

“No,” Garp said, “he wasn't mean and he wasn't nice, or sometimes he was both. He was whatever his master trained him to be, because he was trained to do whatever his master told him to do.”

“How did he know who his master was?” Walt asked.

“I don't know,” Garp said. “After the war, he got a new master. This master owned a cafй in the city; you could get coffee and tea and drinks there, and read the newspapers. At night the master would leave one light on, inside the cafй, so that you could look in the windows and see all the wiped-off tables with the chairs upside-down on the table tops. The floor was swept clean, and the big dog paced back and forth across the floor every night. He was like a lion in his cage at the zoo, he was never still. Sometimes people would see him in there and they'd knock on the window to get his attention. The dog would just stare at them—he wouldn't bark, or even growl. He'd just stop pacing and stare, until whoever it was went away. You had the feeling that if you stayed too long, the dog might jump through the window at you. But he never did; he never did anything, in fact, because no one ever broke into that cafй at night. It was enough just having the dog there; the dog didn't have to do anything.”

“The dog looked very mean,” said Walt.

“Now you've got the picture,” Garp told him. “Every night was the same for that dog, and every day he was tied up in an alley beside the cafй. He was tied to a long chain, which was tied to the front axle of an old army truck, which had been backed into the alley and left there—for good. This truck didn't have any wheels.

“And you know what cinder blocks are,” Garp said. “The truck was set on blocks so it wouldn't roll an inch on its axles. There was just enough room for the dog to crawl under the truck and lie down out of the rain and the sun. The chain was just long enough so that the dog could walk to the end of the alley and watch the people on the sidewalk and the cars in the street. If you were coming along the sidewalk, you could sometimes see the dog's nose poking out of the alley; that was as far as the chain would reach, and no farther.

“You could hold out your hand to the dog and he would sniff you, but he didn't like to be touched and he never licked your hand the way some dogs do. If you tried to pat him, he would duck his head and slink back into the alley. The way he stared at you made you think it would not be a very good idea to follow him into the alley, or to try very hard to pat him.”

“He would bite you,” Walt said.

“Well, you couldn't be sure,” Garp said. “He never bit anyone, actually, or I never heard about it if he did.”

“You were there?” Walt said.

“Yes,” Garp said; he knew that the storyteller was always “there.”

“Walt!” called Helen; it irritated Garp that she eavesdropped on the stories he told the children. “That is what they mean by “a dog's life,” Helen called.

But neither Walt nor his father appreciated her interruption. Walt said, “Go on with the story. What happened to the dog?”

The responsibilities loomed for Garp, every time. What is the instinct in people that makes them expect something to happen? If you begin a story about a person or a dog, something must be going to happen to them. “Go on!” Walt cried impatiently. Garp, caught up in his art, frequently forgot his audience.

He went on. “If too many people held out their hands for the dog to sniff, the dog would wall back down the alley and crawl under the truck. You could often see the tip of his black nose poking out from under the truc. He was either under the truck or at the sidewalk end of the alley: he never stopped in between. He had his habits and nothing disturbed them.”

“Nothing?” Walt asked, disappointed—or else worried that nothing was going to happen.

“Well, almost nothing,” Garp admitted, and Walt perked up. “Something bothered him: there was just one thing. It alone could make the dog furious. It was the only thing that could even make the dog bark. It really drove him crazy.”

“Oh sure, a cat!” cried Walt.

“A terrible cat,” said Garp in a voice that made Helen stop rereading The Eternal Husband and hold her breath. Poor Walt, she thought.

“Why was the cat terrible?” Walt asked.

“Because he teased the dog,” Garp said. Helen was relieved that this was, apparently, all that was “terrible.”

“Teasing isn't nice,” Walt said with knowledge; Walt was Duncan's victim in the area of teasing. Duncan should be hearing this story, Helen thought. A lesson about teasing is clearly wasted on Walt.

“Teasing is terrible,” Garp said. “But this cat was terrible. He was an old cat, off the streets, dirty and mean.”

“What was his name?” Walt asked.

“He didn't have a name,” Garp said. “Nobody owned him; he was hungry all the time, so he stole food. Nobody could blame him for that. And he had lots of fights with other cats, and nobody could blame him for that either, I suppose. He had only one eye; the other eye had been missing for so long that the hole had closed and the fur had grown over where the eye had been. He didn't have any ears. He must have had to fight all the time.”

“The poor thing!” Helen cried.

“Nobody could blame that cat for the way he was,” Garp said, “except that he teased the dog. That was wrong; he didn't have to do that. He was hungry, so he had to be sneaky, and nobody took care of him, so he had to fight. But he didn't have to tease the dog.”

“Teasing isn't nice,” Walt said again. Very definitely Duncan's story, Helen thought.

“Every day,” said Garp, “that cat would walk down the sidewalk and stop to wash himself at the end of the alley. The dog would come out from under the truck, running so hard that the chain wriggled behind him like a snake that's just been run over in the road. You ever seen that?”

“Oh sure,” Walt said.

“And when the dog got to the end of his chain, the chain would snap the dog's neck back and the dog would be tugged off his feet and land on the pavement of the alley, sometimes knocking his wind out or hitting his head. The cat would never move. The cat knew how long the chain was and he would sit there washing himself with his one eye staring at the dog. The dog went crazy. He barked and snapped and struggled against his chain until the owner of the cafй, his master, would have to come out and shoo the cat away. Then the dog would crawl back under the truck.

“Sometimes the cat would come right back, and the dog would lie under the truck for as long as he could stand it, which was not very long. He'd lie under there while the cat licked himself all over out on the sidewalk, and pretty soon you could hear the dog begin to whimper and whine, and the cat would just stare down the alley at him and go on washing himself. And pretty soon the dog would start to howl under the truck, and thrash around there as if he were covered with bees, but the cat would just go on washing himself. And finally the dog would lunge out from under the truck and charge up the alley again, snapping his chain behind him—even though he knew what would happen. He knew that the chain would rip him off his feet and choke him, and throw him on the pavement, and that when he got up the cat would still be sitting there, inches away, washing himself. And he'd bark himself hoarse until his master, or someone else, would shoo the cat away.

“That dog hated that cat,” Garp said.

“So do I,” Walt said.

“And so did I,” said Garp. Helen felt herself turn against the story—it had such an obvious conclusion. She said nothing.

“Go on,” Walt said. Part of telling a story to a child, Garp knew, is telling (or pretending to tell) a story with an obvious conclusion.

“One day,” said Garp, “everybody thought the dog had finally lost his mind. For one whole day he ran out from under the truck and all the way up the alley until the chain jerked him off his feet: then he'd do it again. Even when the cat wasn't there, the dog just kept charging up the alley, throwing his weight against the chain and heaving himself to the pavement. It startled some of the people walking on the sidewalk, especially the people who saw the dog coming at them and didn't know that there was a chain.

“And that night the dog was so tired that he didn't pace around the cafй, he slept on the floor as if he were sick. Anyone could have broken into the cafй that night: I don't think that dog would have woken up. And the next day he did the same thing, although you could tell his neck was sore because he cried out every time the chain snapped him off his feet. And that night he slept in the cafй as if he were a dead dog who'd been murdered there on the floor.

“His master called a vet,” Garp said, “and the vet gave the dog some shots—I guess to calm him down. For two days the dog lay on the floor of the cafй at nighttime and under the truck in the daytime, and even when the cat walked by on the sidewalk, or sat washing himself at the end of the alley, that dog wouldn't move. That poor dog,” Garp added.

“He was sad,” Walt said.

“But do you think he was smart?” Garp, asked.

Walt was puzzled but he said, “I think he was.”

“He was,” Garp said, “because all the time he'd been running against the chain, he'd been moving the truck he was tied to—just a little. Even though that truck had sat there for years, and it was rusted solid on those cinder blocks and the buildings could fall down around it before that truck would budge—even so,” Garp said, “that dog made the truck move. Just a little.”

“Do you think the dog moved the truck enough?” Garp asked Walt.

“I think so,” Walt said. Helen thought so, too.

“He needed just a few inches to reach that cat,” Garp said. Walt nodded. Helen, confident of the gory outcome, plunged back into The Eternal Husband.

“One day,” Garp said, slowly, “the cat came and sat down on the sidewalk at the end of the alley and began to lick his paws. He rubbed his wet paws into his old ear holes where his ears had been, and he rubbed his paws over his old grown-together eye hole where his other eye used to be, and he stared down the alley at the dog under the truck. The cat was getting bored now that the dog wouldn't come out anymore. And then the dog came out.”

“I think the truck moved enough,” Walt said.

“The dog ran up the alley faster than ever before, so that the chain behind him was dancing off the ground, and the cat never moved although this time the dog could reach him.” “Except,” said Garp, “the chain didn't quite reach.” Helen groaned. “The dog got his mouth over the cat's head but the chain choked him so badly that he couldn't close his mouth; the dog gagged and was jerked back—like before—and the cat, realizing that things had changed, sprang away.”

“God!” Helen cried.

“Oh no,” Walt said.

“Of course, you couldn't fool a cat like that twice,” Garp said. “The dog had one chance, and he blew it. That cat would never let him get close enough again.”

“What a terrible story!” Helen cried.

Walt, silent, looked as if he agreed.

“But something else happened,” Garp said. Walt looked up, alert. Helen, exasperated, held her breath again. The cat was so scared he ran into the street without looking. “No matter what happens,” Garp said, “you don't run into the street without looking, do you, Walt?”

“No,” Walt said.

“Not even if a dog is going to bite you,” Garp said. “Not ever. You never run into the street without looking.”

“Oh sure, I know,” Walt said. “What happened to the cat?”

Garp slapped his hands together so sharply that the boy jumped. “He was killed like that!” Garp cried. “Smack! He was dead. Nobody could fix him. He'd have had a better chance if the dog had gotten him.”

“A car hit him?” Walt asked.

“A truck,” Garp said, “ran right over his head. His brains came out his old ear holes, where his ears used to be.”

“Squashed him?” Walt asked.

“Flat,” said Garp, and he held up his hand, palm level, in front of Walt's serious little face. Jesus, Helen thought, it was Walt's story after all. Don't run into the street without looking!

“The end,” said Garp.

“Good night,” Walt said.

“Good night,” Garp said to him. Helen heard them kiss.

“Why didn't the dog have a name?” Walt asked.

“I don't know,” Garp said.

“Don't run into the street without looking.”

When Walt fell asleep, Helen and Garp made love. Helen had a sudden insight regarding Garp's story.

“That dog could never move that truck,” she said. “Not an inch.”

“Right,” Garp said. Helen felt sure he had actually been there.

“So how'd you move it?” she asked him.

“I couldn't move it either,” Garp said. “It wouldn't budge. So I cut a link out of the dog's chain, at night when he was patrolling the cafй and I matched the link at a hardware store. The next night I added some links—about six inches.”

“And the cat never ran into the street?” Helen asked.

“No, that was for Walt,” Garp admitted.

“Of course,” Helen said.

“The chain was plenty long enough,” Garp said. “the cat didn't get away.”

“The dog killed the cat?” Helen asked.

“He bit him in half,” Garp said.

“In a city in Germany?” Helen said.

“No, Austria,” Garp said. “It was Vienna. I never lived in Germany.”

“But how could the dog have been in the war?” Helen asked. “He'd have been twenty years old by the time you got there.”

“The dog wasn't in the war,” Garp said. “He was just a dog. His owner had been in the war—the man who owned the cafй. That's why he knew how to train the dog. He trained him to kill anybody who walked in the cafй when it was dark outside. When it was light outside, anybody could walk in; when it was dark, even the master couldn't get in.”

“That's nice!” Helen said. “Suppose there was a fire? There seems to me to be a number of drawbacks to that method.”

“It's a war method, apparently,” Garp said.

“Well,” Helen said, “it makes a better story than the dog's being in the war.”

“You think so, really?” Garp asked her. It seemed to her that he was alert for the first time during their conversation. “That's interesting,” he said, “because I just this minute made it up.”

“About the owner's being in the war?” Helen asked.

“Well, more than that,” Garp admitted.

“What part of the story did you make up?” Helen asked him.

“All of it,” he said.

They were in bed together and Helen lay quietly there, knowing that this was one of his trickier moments.

“Well, almost all of it,” he added.

Garp never tired of playing this game, though Helen certainly tired of it. He would wait for her to ask: Which of it? Which of it is true, which of it is made up? Then he would say to her that it didn't matter; she should just tell him what she didn't believe. Then he would change that part. Every part she believed was true; every part she didn't believe needed work. If she believed the whole thing, then the whole thing was true. He was very ruthless as a storyteller, Helen knew. If the truth suited the story, he would reveal it without embarrassment; but if any truth was unsuccessful in a story, he would think nothing of changing it.

“When you're through playing around,” she said, “I'd just be curious to know what really happened.”

“Well, really,” said Garp, “the dog was a beagle.”

“A beagle!”

“Well, actually, a schnauzer. He was tied up in the alley all day, but not to an army truck.”

“To a Volkswagen?” Helen guessed.

“To a garbage sled,” Garp said. “The sled was used to pull the garbage cans out to the sidewalk in the winter, but the schnauzer, of course, was too small and weak to pull it—at any time of the year.”

“And the cafй owner?” Helen asked. “He was not in the war?”

“She,” Garp said. “She was a widow.”

“Her husband had been killed in the war?” Helen guessed.

“She was a young widow,” Garp said. “Her husband had been killed” crossing the street. She was very attached to the dog, which her husband had given her for their first anniversary. But her new landlady would not allow dogs in her apartment, so the widow set the dog loose in the cafй each night.

“It was a spooky, empty space and the dog was nervous in there; in fact, he crapped all night long. People would stop and peer in the window and laugh at all the messes the dog made. This laughter made the dog more nervous, so he crapped more. In the morning the widow came early—to air out the place and clean up the messes—and she spanked the dog with a newspaper and dragged him cowering out into the alley, where he was tied up to the garbage sled all day.”

“And there was no cat?” Helen asked.

“Oh, there were lots of cats,” Garp said. “They came into the alley because of the garbage cans for the cafй. The dog would never touch the garbage, because he was afraid of the widow, and the dog was terrified of cats; whenever there was a cat in the alley, raiding the garbage cans, the dog crawled under the garbage sled and hid there until the cat was gone.”

“My God,” said Helen. “So there was no teasing, either?”

“There is always teasing,” Garp said, solemnly. “There was a little girl who would come to the end of the alley and call the dog out to the sidewalk, except that the dog's chain wouldn't reach the sidewalk and the dog would yap! and yap! and yap! at the little girl, who stood on the sidewalk and called, “Come on, come on,” until someone rolled down a window and yelled at her to leave the poor mutt alone.”

“You were there?” Helen said.

“We were there,” Garp said. “Every day my mother wrote in a room, the only window of which faced that alley. That dog's yapping drove her nuts.”

“So Jenny moved the garbage sled,” Helen said, “and the dog ate 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,” Garp said. “But that's not how it happened.”

“What happened?” Helen asked.

“One night, in the cafй,” Garp said, “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 cafй and hurling themselves against the windows and doors, shrieking like huge cats—creating a frenzy of bowel movements by the frightened dog.”

“The stroke killed the dog, I hope,” Helen said.

“Not quite,” Garp 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 wretched dog as she clung to the memory of her late husband, and she had a carpenter, with whom she was sleeping, 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,” Helen said.

“You wouldn't believe the noise of those little wheels,” Garp said.

“Probably not,” said Helen.

“Mother claimed she couldn't hear it,” Garp said, “but the rolling sound was so pathetic, it was worse than the dog's yapping at the stupid 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. It seemed I was the only one to see him in this predicament—at least, 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,” Garp said, “but he was easy to outrun.”

“So one day,” Helen said, “you untied the schnauzer, and he ran into the street without looking. No, excuse me: he rolled into the street without looking. And everyone's troubles were over. The widow and the carpenter were married.”

“Not so,” said Garp.

“I want the truth,” Helen said, sleepily. “What happened to the damn schnauzer?”

“I don't know,” Garp said. “Mother and I came back to this country, and you know the rest.”

Helen, giving in to sleep, knew that only her silence might get Garp 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 be largely true. Any combination was possible with Garp.

Helen was already asleep when Garp asked her, “Which story do you like better?” But lovemaking made Helen sleepy, and she found the sound of Garp's voice, going on and on, enhancing to her drowsiness; it was her most preferred way to fall asleep: after love, with Garp talking.

This frustrated Garp. At bedtime his engines were almost cold. Lovemaking seemed to rev him up and rouse him to moods of marathon talk, eating, all-night reading, general prowling about. In this period he rarely tried to write, though he would sometimes write messages to himself about what he would write later.

But not this night. He instead pulled back the covers and watched Helen sleep; then he covered her again. He went to Walt's room and watched him. Duncan was sleeping at Mrs. Ralph's; when Garp shut his eyes he saw a glow on the suburban horizon, which he imagined was the dreaded house of Ralph—in flames.

Garp watched Walt, and this calmed him. Garp relished having such close scrutiny of the child, he lay beside Walt and smelled the boy's fresh breath, remembering when Duncan's breath had turned sour in his sleep in that grownup's way. It had been an unpleasant sensation for Garp, shortly after Duncan turned six, to smell that Duncan's breath was stale and faintly foul in his sleep. It was as if the process of decay, of slowly dying, was already begun in him. This was Garp's first awareness of the mortality of his son. There appeared with this odor the first discolorations and stains on Duncan's perfect teeth. Perhaps it was just that Duncan was Garp's firstborn child, but Garp worried more about Duncan than he worried about Walt—even though a five-year-old seems more prone (than a ten-year-old) to the usual childhood accidents. And what are they? Garp wondered. Being hit by cars? Choking to death on peanuts? Being stolen by strangers? Cancer, for example, was a stranger.

There was so much to worry about, when worrying about children, and Garp worried so much about everything; at times, especially in these throes of insomnia, Garp 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 soon fell asleep beside Walt, but Garp was a fearful dreamer; he was not asleep for long. Soon he was moaning; his armpit hurt. He woke up suddenly, Walt's little fist was snagged in his armpit hair. Walt was moaning, too. Garp untangled himself from the whimpering child, who seemed to Garp to be suffering the same dream Garp had suffered—as if Garp's trembling body had communicated Garp's dream to Walt. But Walt was having his own nightmare.

It would not have occurred to Garp that his instructional story of the war dog, the teasing cat, and the inevitable killer truck could have been terrifying to Walt. But in his dream Walt 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 was a slit no bigger than a letter slot. It was all black, of course.

The dog who was tied to the truck was the size of a pony, though leaner and much more cruel. He was loping, in slow motion, toward the end of the alley, his weak-looking chain spiraling behind him. The chain hardly looked 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 Walt bumbled in circles but he couldn't seem to get himself going—to get himself 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. Walt 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 Walt 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 (for windshields) the drivers couldn't see, of course; they couldn't see little Walt.

Then his father kissed him and Walt's dream slipped away, for now. He was somewhere safe again; he could smell his father and feel his father's hands, and he heard his father say, “It's just a dream, Walt.”

In Garp's dream, he and Duncan had been riding on an airplane. Duncan had to go to the bathroom, Garp pointed down the aisle; there were doors down there, a small kitchen, the pilot's cabin, the lavatory. Duncan wanted to be taken there, to be shown which door, but Garp was cross with him.

“You're ten years old, Duncan,” Garp said. “You can read. Or ask the stewardess.” Duncan crossed his knees and sulked. Garp shoved the child into the aisle. “Grow up, Duncan,” 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 her, but Duncan, typically, would ask nothing. He got to the end of the aisle and glared back at Garp: Garp waved to him, impatiently. Duncan shrugged his shoulders, helplessly. Which door?

Exasperated, Garp stood up. “Try one!” he shouted down the aisle to Duncan, and people looked at Duncan standing there. Duncan 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 Duncan. 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. Garp ran down the aisle, but the pilot and another official-looking person prevented Garp from opening the door.

“It should always be kept locked, you stupid bitch!” the pilot shouted to the sobbing stewardess.

“I thought it was locked!” she wailed.

“Where's it go?” Garp cried. “God, where's it go?” He saw that nothing was written on any of the doors.

“I'm sorry, sir,” the pilot said. “It couldn't be helped.” But Garp shoved past him, he bent a plain-clothesman against the back of a seat, he smacked the stewardess out of the aisle. When he opened the door, Garp saw that it went outside—into the rushing sky—and before he could cry aloud for Duncan, Garp was sucked through the open door and into the heavens, where he hurtled after his son.