|
|
A possible apocryphal episode which explains some of Uncle Jake's antipathy toward loose-living, licentious and lily-livered long-haired liberals, as well as bringing in yet another cousin safely into the fold.
Santa Fe, July 1956
"He's gone, Mama!" Cassie sobbed on her mother-in-law's shoulder. "He-he said he couldn't get out of this hick town soon enough. He said he was going to go to the big city, where there were bright lights and excitement and something to live for! He said he didn't lo-love me anymore!"
"Now, now," Mama Katie murmured, patting her daughter-in-law's back.
"And I don't care! I don't care if he ever comes back! I can run this ranch, with you and Papa Steven helping! I can raise our children by myself!"
"Oh, sweetie, of course you can... but don't you think..."
"I don't care! I don't..." She collapsed in a great gout of sobbing, rocking back and forth, moaning. "Mama, mama, how could he do this to me?"
"There, there, child. There, there."
Greenwich Village, New York, November 1956
Jake Michaels leaned back against the lumpy, orange plaid cushions in the artist's loft, Sunshine held loosely in one arm. The barefoot, skinny little waif gazed up at him adoringly, her pupils enormous. "Oh, Jake," she whispered, nibbling languidly at the magic mushroom laced with LSD that had been passed around last. The smoke of incense that was not incense billowed and grew thick, concealing the others in the room. "'s cool, daddy-O. So cool..."
"You said it, baby," Jake said, taking a long pull out of his paper bag of whiskey. This was the life. No more puritanical, small-town morality for him. He was free. No parents, no kids, no weak and whining wife to pull him down. A man with a truck and no over-abundance of scruples could make a tidy sum hauling this and that. No questions asked...
"Oh, Jake," Sunshine giggled as he lowered her to the floor. Other moans and sighs came out of the dizzying smoke, but all Jake knew was the warm and willing flesh beneath him now.
Santa Fe, March 1957
"He's not coming back, Mama Katie," Cassie said dully. "He's never coming back."
"Now, sweetie..."
"It's funny. If he came back, I would never fight with him again. I would support him, I would obey him without question for the rest of my life. But he's not coming back."
"There, there, sweetie. There, there."
Greenwich Village, August 1957
"Sunshine!" Jake stood at the door to his apartment, nonplused. "What're... I mean, how you doing?"
"I needed to see you, Jake," she said with quiet dignity.
"Oh, well, I guess it's been a while... Hey, you lost some weight!" About time. If there was anything he hated, it was girls who let themselves go. "Looking good! Uh... I'm just on my way out..."
"Jake, take him. He's yours, too." Sunshine handed him a cloth-wrapped bundle. Jake took it, uncomprehending.
"Girl, what have you been smoking? What the hell are you..." He glanced down and froze. All his troubles... the Teamsters who'd been hassling him, the mob boys who'd vandalized his truck, his by now chronic money worries, the women who'd dumped him before he could dump them, the crummy apartment that was all he could afford and the nasty case of the clap he'd managed to pick up somewhere... all of it vanished as he stared down at the bundle, shocked, horrified and revolted to the depths of his being.
It was a baby.
It was hideously deformed. Like nothing he'd ever seen. Like nothing human.
It was... furry.
Every single iota of Jake Michaels' big-city bravado left him in that instant. Screaming like a woman, he dropped the bundle, grabbed his keys and left the apartment, the city and the state. He was last seen at the New Jersey turnpike, heading west.
Sighing, Sunshine picked up her baby off the floor. She wasn't quite sure what to do now. Maybe she'd wander down towards St. Vincent's hospital, and think about it.
New York City, August 1987
Writing in his diary, Vincent paused, his giant fur-covered and clawed hand holding the pen as delicately as a feather. "It has been almost thirty years exactly since that night when I was found, abandoned, near St. Vincent's hospital," he wrote. "By all rights I should be the loneliest of men. Yet, somehow, I feel, here, below the city's heart, that the best is yet to come, that I am surrounded by friends, and that men I have never met are somehow... my cousins."