Our dogs, George and Martha—both of them boys—were named such because our parents were literature—not history—buffs, and were narcissists and sadists and had kids (2!)  so that we—my brother and I, that is—had no idea why/how we were the brutal transferences of their lives. We grew up saying painful things as if a game. Maybe it is. Was. But Martha—that is to say, Mother—was the best of all. Or worst. She once told my brother his hair stank! of Eye-talian salami after a half-hour of running her fingers through his locks, that sort of thing—then screaming for him to go wash. Out spot, Out! George—that is to say, Father—was only slightly better. He once ordered me inexplicably to dig a trench—I’d hoped perhaps for his corpse, and maybe it was—and when I was done, he had me fill it back in and took me alone to Carvel and insisted he buy me a whole goddamned ice cream cake. That sort of thing.

Why am I telling you this? I’ll tell you: in case you might learn. Martha and George, Brother and I, having lived a life of noisy deprivation, died altogether in an automobile accident on our way home from a roadhouse. We—I—never gave thought about an afterlife. It seems fun in retrospect that we—I—might have given it consideration. I won’t tell you what it’s like—the afterlife, if there is one—other than to say I can perpetually hear Martha—that is to say Mother—scream to George—that is to say Father—“HEY, SWAMPY!” as I search for my two boy dogs—that is, our dogs—so that I might say to them: Oh you dear ones, this could be heaven.