A Dog's Tale

 Anyone who has read the books in the Paws & Claws series knows what a soft spot I have for dogs. I have read dozens of books about dogs and books with canine characters in supporting rolls. That includes novels such as White Fang (1906), Greyfriars Bobby (1912) and The Incredible Journey (1961). That also covers quite a few novels that were, to be honest, dogs, and innumerable collections and anthologies with stories that ranged from absolutely the best to you gotta be kidding. This affection even extends to commercials. I sit/stay for the dog-tested/dog-approved commercials from Subaru.

Wildside Press is one of my favorite publishers because of the work they've done to keep in print the work of Golden Age SF & Mystery writers, many of whom have been unfairly forgotten these days. In addition to their "Megapack" collections, they also publish individual shorter works, generally novellas and novelettes, but also some superlative short stories. A case in point is "The Keepers of the House" by Lester del Rey.

Available where e-books are sold

Lester del Rey (1915-1993) is the pseudonym of Leonard Knapp. A major author during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, he is known for such classics as Nerves and Helen O'Loy. He became an influential editor and publisher when he and his wife Judy Lynn del Rey, founded Del Rey Books in 1977, now an imprint of Random House.

In "The Keepers of the House," we meet King, a dog who has been wandering a long time in a world that seems devoid of people. It also seems devoid of land animals since King spends most of his time along rivers catching fish. We begin to understand King is no ordinary dog as he recalls scenes and instances from decades past. If you know dogs at all, you know that one of the cruelest truths of dog ownership is that dogs do not live nearly long enough. The legendary Levi, my pal Skipper and the incomparable Mr Yoda all crossed the Bridge after 19 years, an extraordinary length of time in the canine world, but all too short for me.

In the course of the story, King returns to where it all began for him, the source of his dreams for the past thirty years. It is the campus of a university within a dead and silent city. One of the problems in any apocalyptic science fiction story is relaying information to the reader in a way that is not confusing or boring. That is hard enough when you have an omniscient narrator and/or human characters. The problem here is compounded because, even though there is third-person narration, everything has to be filtered though the limitations and sensibilities of a dog's intellect and experience. However, del Rey does an excellent job, giving us just enough background while never letting us forget that King is just a dog, albeit an extraordinary example of his species.

"The Keepers of the House" was first published in the January 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe Science Fiction magazine. Two years later, it was reprinted in the July 1958 (#73) issue of the British periodical New Worlds Science Fiction. The term "keepers of the house" was probably puzzling to readers at the time, and is apparently just as puzzling to modern readers as well. Few have encountered it except the context of the 1964 novel of the same name by Shirley Ann Grau, a multi-generational saga with themes of racism and hypocrisy in the Deep South. Unfortunately, the true meaning of the phrase is lost in the themes and controversies of the story.

Actually, the term is taken from Ecclesiastes 12:3 in the Bible:

"In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened..."

Del Rey's interpretation of the verse is more in keeping with its darker original meaning, though, of course, it is filtered through the tropes of science fiction. In the story, the "keepers of the house," essentially the humans who were given stewardship of the world, have failed in their appointed task. They have failed in the eyes of God, failed in their responsibilities to each other and themselves, and have utterly failed King. 

I don't know when I last felt so affected by a story. I doubt it would have affected me so deeply had the protagonist been a human. Though humans often portray themselves as victims of others, there is always the underlying truth that we are actually victims of our own choices, right and wrong, and our fates are ultimately in our own clumsy hands. King's fate -- and this is true of all pets -- is in our hands, and in that we failed him, doomed him to wander, just as the government doomed thousands of war dogs abandoned in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Dogs may be Man's best friend, but, more often than not, it is a one-sided loyalty, and we are mostly undeserving of that loyalty. That, perhaps, is the best lesson to take away from "The Keepers of the House."