flag-draped knotty pine casket pulled by two brown
mules, and behind the casket a flower-festooned truck carrying Dr.
Measely's spotlight, which occasionally came to life without warning,
swinging this way and that, sending hot 1250° beams willy nilly
among the mourners, and causing them to scatter frantically. A
large model of a black hole was pulled by a U.S.P.S. delivery jeep
to symbolize Sir Horton's greatest discovery of all, the black hole
in the Newark Bulk Mail Center. His son and heir, Bill Measely,
walked quietly along, accompanied by a small group of pig-nosed macaques,
and sometimes stopped to wipe his face with a red check handkerchief.
A gravelly voice boomed
suddenly over the hills and headstones. Horton Measely
was a man whom we knew, and who knew us, and who knew that we knew
him. Horton Measely was a man, and he knew it. The ceremony
went on that way, brief but poignant, filled with glowing accolades
from colleagues and detractors alike.
Eventually people
grew bored and began to drift off. The sun broke through the clouds
as the final vigilant slipped silently away. Light breezes ruffled
the petals of the flowers on the great man's grave. A dog picked
up a wreath in its mouth and carried it off. It began to rain. |