They were
organized by idiosyncratic subject categories, and alphabetical by
author within those categories.
Alan's father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine -- he
kept a roof over their heads and she kept their clothes clean. His
brothers were: a dead man, a trio of nesting dolls, a fortune teller,
and an island. He only had two or three family portraits, but he
treasured them, even if outsiders who saw them often mistook them for
landscapes. There was one where his family stood on his father's slopes,
Mom out in the open for a rare exception, a long tail of extension cords
snaking away from her to the cave and the diesel generator's three-prong
outlet. He hung it over the mantel, using two hooks and a level to make
sure that it came out perfectly even.
Tony helped Alan install the shallow collectibles cases along the
house's two-story stairwell, holding the level while Alan worked the
cordless powerdriver. Alan's glazier had built the cases to Alan's
specs, and they stretched from the treads to the ceiling. Alan filled
them with Made-in-Occupied-Japan tin toys, felt tourist pennants from
central Florida gator farms, a stone from Marie Laveau's tomb in the
St. Louis I Cemetery in New Orleans, tarnished brass Zippos, small
framed comic-book bodybuilding ads, carved Polynesian coconut monkeys,
melamine transistor radios, Bakelite snow globes, all the tchotchkes
he'd accumulated over a lifetime of picking and hunting and digging.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49