Cockeyed - Stevenson Richard - Страница 17

I was not quite old enough to have been there, but I sometimes wondered where I would have stood on that June night that ignited the post ‘50s and ‘60s gay rights movement, had I been present. Would I have joined the drunken kick line that sang

“We are the Stonewall girls” and hurled bottles and debris at the rampaging cops? Fat chance. Or would I have been among the contemptuous better-heeled gay bystanders across the street muttering about how grossly impolite and impolitic the rebellion was? I’d like to think I would have been among the organizers who moved in, in the following days, to set up more focused and orderly protests, and who initiated the legal challenges that led to the police and other reforms of the seventies and eighties. But maybe I would not yet have been sufficiently clear-headed about myself and brave enough to do even that.

Hunny said, “We’re in touch with a couple of the old Stonewall gang, but that all feels like ancient history when what you’re basically thinking about is getting up every day and going to work and making the car payments and dealing with mom and maybe getting a little man-nookie once in a while.”

“Hourly,” Art said.

“You guys seem to have a really busy and varied sex life,” I said. “Or is a lot of that just talk? Or wishful thinking?”

“We try not to let it be,” Hunny said. “It does keep a girl on her toes making sure her tubes remain cleared. Artie and I manage, though, don’t we, girl?”

I asked, “And this way of life has not been problematical?”

Art looked puzzled. “In what way?”

“Oh, the usual. Disease. Legal difficulties. Getting involved with people who turn out to be crazy or dangerous.”

“Oh, girl! All of the above. Why else would you be sitting here, Donald?”

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This reminded me that I still had to check out a few of the blackmailers and extortionists who had turned up late in the week. I had told Hunny and Art that I had not gotten far with the Brienings during my visit to Cobleskill, but that I had learned of a letter they had sent to Rita Van Horn. Hunny called his friend Antoine at Golden Acres and asked him to make a discreet search of Mrs. Van Horn’s room and to pocket the letter and bring it to Hunny after work. Antoine called back and said he had the letter and would deliver it around four-thirty.

The phone rang and Hunny snatched it up. After a moment, he said, “Well, thank you, dear. No, no word yet. Okay, you stay in touch, girl.”

He hung up and said, “That’s my cousin, Wesley Bump. He checked with Aunt Joycelyn, and Mom never called her. She doesn’t seem to have contacted anybody in the family about what she’s up to. Oh Lord, I just know that poor Mom has been having one of her days where she’s not all there, and she’s probably somewhere where people think she’s a local derelict. But what gets me is, why don’t people see this old lady going around in her bathrobe and call the police? Why can’t they see that she is in need of assistance?”

The phone rang several more times over the next half hour, and at one point Hunny had a Cnn producer on call-waiting while he talked to a reporter from Albany’s Channel Ten. He told all news people the same thing: Mrs. Van Horn was still missing and he begged anyone who knew of her whereabouts to contact the East Greenbush sheriff ’s office. He described his mother as “the sweetest old gal you’d ever want to run across” and a “real live wire” who everybody thought the world of.

Just after four-thirty, Antoine arrived and Hunny and Art both leaped up to hug him.

Hunny began to weep, and said, “Oh Antoine, girl, I am trying to hold out hope, but I’m afraid I might be losing it. I don’t know how much more of this suspense I can take. I feel like Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much. I keep wanting to sing ‘Que Sera, Sera’ and then wait for Mom to join in from upstairs somewhere, CoCkeyed 75

where she’s being held captive. But we already looked in all the rooms on the second floor and up in the attic, and we’re certain that Mom isn’t here in the house.”

“Oh, Hunny, honey, you can’t lose it, girl! You have to be a tower of strength. Now, not to worry. The fire department, they’ve got about thirty folks out combing the woods and fields, and they have two church groups coming over in a little bit, Baptists and your sister Miriam’s Methodist ladies. The Presbyterians all went home to start supper, but some of them who got word will be praying for your mom. I am sure that dear lady is going to turn up any minute now, and we’re all going to just howl at the stories she has to tell.”

“I want to believe that. I want so badly to believe that.”

Art said, “Did you bring the letter?”

“I hope this is the right one. Hunny, you said it was from Cobleskill, and the one I brought is the only one with a Cobleskill return address. I didn’t look inside, as you said you preferred that I don’t. Anyway, how come? Is it blackmail or something?”

“Why would you ask that?” Hunny said.

“I don’t know. You’ve got all sorts of shady stuff in your past.

Maybe your mom does, too. Like mother, like son.”

“Where would you get that idea?”

“Hunny, honey, I’m not saying it’s the same thing. That your mom has sucked half the dicks in Albany County, plus Schenectady and Rensselaer, too, or like that. It could be something else.”

Hunny looked stunned, and Art said, “Antoine, the way you talk!”

Then suddenly they all burst out laughing, and this led to another group hug and some more cackling.

“Girl, just hand me that letter. As a matter of fact, it is blackmail. Mom embezzled some money many years ago. She paid it back, but these puke-heads from Cobleskill, this skanky bitch and her annoying husband, they’re trying to get more money out of her since I got rich, and this letter has something 76 Richard Stevenson

to do with all that long-ago crapola. But don’t tell anybody at Golden Gardens. Mom is over being a criminal — it was after Dad died and she was distraught — and nobody at the home has to worry about her filching anything.”

Antoine shook his head and grinned. “Well, that Rita! Who would’ve thought. Did she do time?”

“No, the police don’t know. That’s how she got blackmailed.”

Antoine produced an envelope from his back pocket. “I sat on it, so it’s squished.”

Hunny opened the envelope and laid the contents on the kitchen table. We all bent down and studied it. The letter itself was brief. It had been typed on a word processor, and it read: Hello Rita,

Congratulations to your homosexual son for winning the Instant Warren lottery. I suppose he will now be able to indulge in many types of illicit activities that would turn the stomach of the average taxpayer.

However, we must now invoke the clause in your contract with us that triggers a higher compensatory award based on your family’s ability to pay.

We have demanded half a billion dollars from your son Huntington. If this amount is not paid by next Wednesday, we will go to the police. Also we will notify Golden Gardens and the Mount Zion Methodist Church.

Maybe you had better talk Huntington into coming to his senses and pay up. In return for your cooperation in this matter, we will return the original agreement to you and we will consider this unfortunate business, which has been so painful to all of us, closed.

Yours truly,

Your Disappointed Former Employers, A&C B — — — — .

Along with the letter were three photocopied pages of single-spaced typing in the form of a document. There were numbered items, lettered clauses, and subclauses with Roman numerals.

The gist of it seemed to be, Rita Van Horn admitted stealing CoCkeyed 77