Flo was smiling at him, beaming at him.
“Is that some kind of, of afterbirth or something?”
“He’s darling,” she said.
He looked again. And at that moment, as if already there were some psychic link between them, the baby waved its arms and snapped open its eyes. It was a revelation. A shock. Depeyster’s eyes were gray, as were his father’s before him, and Joanna’s the purest, regal shade of violet. The baby’s eyes were as green as a cat’s.
For a long while, Depeyster stood there in the hallway. He stood there long after Nurse Deitz had left him and gone home to her supper, long after the other proud fathers had come and gone, so long in fact that the janitor had to mop around him. He watched the baby sleep, studied its hair, the flutter of its eyelids and the clenching of its tiny fists as it drifted from one unfathomable dream to another. All sorts of things passed through Depeyster’s mind, things that unsettled him, made him hurt in the pit of his stomach and feel as empty as he’d ever felt.
He was a strong man, single-minded and tough, a man who dwelt in history and felt the pulse of generations beating in his blood. He had those thoughts, those unsettling thoughts, just once, just then, and he dismissed them, never to have them again. When at long last he turned away from the window, there was a smile on his lips. And he held that smile as he strode down the corridor, across the lobby and through the heavy front door. He was outside, on the steps, the cool sweet air in his face and the stars spread out overhead like a benediction, when it came to him. Rombout, he thought, caught up in the sudden whelming grip of inspiration, he would call him Rombout. …
After his father.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the following people for their assistance in gathering material for this book: Alan and Seymour Arkawy, Mitchell Burgess, Richard Chambers, Chuck Fadel, Ken Fortgang, Rick Miles, Jack and Jerry Miller and the crew of the Clearwater.
Footnote
1Shortened from Mohewoneck, or raccoon skin coat, a reference to the only garment he was seen to wear, winter or summer. Apart, of course, from his breechclout.
2 Leaf-eye.
3 Literally “sitting in the pickle.”
By the Same Author
Novels
When the Killing’s Done
The Women
Talk Talk
Tooth & Claw
The Inner Circle
Drop City
A Friend of the Earth
Riven Rock
The Tortilla Curtain
The Road to Wellville
East Is East
Budding Prospects
Water Music
Short Stories
Wild Child
Tooth and Claw
After the Plague
The Human Fly
T.C. Boyle Stories
Without a Hero
If the River Was Whiskey
Greasy Lake
Descent of Man
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 1987 by T. Coraghessan Boyle
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The following is an historical fugue. It bears small relation to actual places and
events, and none whatever to people living or dead. It is pure fiction
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the
following copyrighted works:
‘Gerontion,’ from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted
by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited.
Desire Under the Elms, from The Plays of Eugene O’Neill. Copyright © 1924,
renewed 1952 by Eugene O’Neill. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7475 2934 7
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