Alan's
life was full of mysteries, and he'd long since learned to keep his
mouth shut about his home life when he was at school.
He attended all three births, along with the smaller kids -- Bill and
Donald (Charlie, the island, was still small enough to float in the
middle of their father's heart-pool) -- waiting on tenterhooks for his
mother's painful off-balance spin cycle to spend itself before
reverently opening the round glass door and removing the infant within.
Edward was fat, even for a baby. He looked like an elongated soccer ball
with a smaller ball on top. He cried healthily, though, and gave hearty
suck to their mother's exhaust valve once Alan had cleaned the soap suds
and fabric softener residue from his little body. His father gusted
proud, warm, blustery winds over them and their little domestic scene.
Alan noticed that little Edward, for all his girth, was very light, and
wondered if the baby was full of helium or some other airy
substance. Certainly he hardly appeared to be full of *baby*, since
everything he ate and drank passed through him in a matter of seconds,
hardly digested at all. Alan had to go into town twice to buy new
twelve-pound boxes of clean white shop rags to clean up the slime trail
the baby left behind him. Drew, at three, seemed to take a perverse
delight in the scummy water, spreading it around the cave as much as
possible.
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