The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

THE WONDERFUL DOG SUIT Donald Hall

Lester was terribly intelligent and only nine years old. He was especially good at mathematics. “Hey, Lester,” his father would say to him, “if

Lester would come back with an answer, quick as Jackie Robinson.

So when he graduated into the fifth grade at the head of his class, his Uncle Fred gave him a dog suit. It was the best dog suit you ever saw, and it fitted Lester perfectly. The minute he put it on you’d swear it wasn’t Lester at all but some big fat mongrel.

Lester worked over his dog act until he was very good. He taught himself to shake hands, roll over, play dead and everything. Then he learned how to bury a bone, lift a leg against a bush and chase cars. When he was perfect, he showed his parents and they were impressed. “You are a Wunderkind, Lester,” said his father.

“Bow wow,” said Lester.

Now when his parents had company, they asked Lester to get into his dog suit and fool everybody. He imitated a dog’s nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh so that grown-up ladies would clap their hands and exclaim, “Oh, listen! He’s trying to talk.” He frisked and romped and they rubbed his ears. Then he would unzip his dog suit and step out of it, and everyone would be very surprised.

He liked his dog suit so much that he no longer studied all the time. “Lester is more of a normal boy now,” said his mother sadly. He took to putting on his dog suit after school and going out to play with the kids in the park. He chased balls or sticks for them. Sometimes he played tag or ran around the bases or wrestled. It was a lot of fun for Lester, who had never belonged to a group before. The kids thought he was a smart dog and petted him all the time.

One day in the park Lester heard some kids talking about him.

“Hey, this mutt doesn’t belong to nobody,” said one.

“What do you want, a reward?” his companion answered.

“Nah, I’m going to take him home.”

Lester thought it would be great fun to surprise the kid and his family when they took him home, so he went along. He played all the way, pretending he saw cats and things, and when he got to the kid’s slum-clearance project, it was someplace he had never seen before. He was lost.

The kid took him upstairs and into a kitchen. “Hey, Ma,” he said. “I brought home a mutt.”

“You get that frigging mutt out of here before I cut you open,” said the kid’s mother absentmindedly. Lester slunk off into another room with his tail between his legs. In the other room there was a man drinking out of a bottle who kicked Lester in the side.

Lester went out into the hall. He decided he didn’t like it here and that he ought to get out of his dog suit.

But the zipper was stuck!

He tried and tried, but he couldn’t make it budge. What could he do? Maybe if he went home his Uncle Fred could take him back to the factory. Anyway his mother could always call the fire department. But he didn’t know how to get home. He would have to ask the kid and his mother for directions.

He padded back to the kitchen. He laughed to himself as he thought how surprised they would be to hear him talk! As he came into the room he heard the mother say, “Okay, okay, okay. But he’s got to eat garbage and nothing but garbage.”

He said, “I realize this will come as a shock to you, but I am not a dog at all. I am a boy named Lester and I live at 2331 Hummingbird Crescent and I am entering the fifth grade next autumn. Uncle Fred gave me this dog suit but the zipper is unfortunately stuck. May I inquire directions to my house? I want to see my mother and father again.

The mother clapped her hands together and said, “Listen, he’s trying to talk!”

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