“I mean honest in the sense that they are in touch not so much with their inner child as their inner Sigmund Freud. Sexuality is always going on, and people like Hunny and Art are just more aware and comfortable with the phenomenon than most of us.

And they’ve learned not to be afraid of it but to have fun with it. They’re more like the Thais in that respect, except in Thailand people are not so crude about it or so insistent.”

“Exactly. They have a sense of proportion. They may be in touch with their inner child, but they are also comfortable with their outer grown-up.”

“Well, Hunny and Art’s way of life is a part of gay culture that I hope never disappears. The self-destructive parts of it I could do without — all the alcohol especially — but the gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may spirit makes a lot of sense for getting people through this…I don’t want to say vale of tears. For most of the lucky ones like you and me, it’s not that at all.”

“‘Cockeyed caravan of life,’” Timmy said. “I think that’s what you mean, especially in Hunny’s case. Preston Sturges in the script for Sullivan’s Travels talks about our passage on this plane of existence as ‘the cockeyed caravan of life.’ The cockeyed caravan does seem to be thriving in one of its most esoteric and at the same time least inhibited forms over on Moth Street.”

“I just hope,” I said, “that Hunny can survive his more-hectic-than-most expressions of unassimilated queerdom. It’s a life that though it has its rewards for some people, it also takes a toll.”

“A price must be paid.”

“I’ve made some mild stabs at getting Hunny to moderate his behavior, but he has a way of making me feel like Aunt Polly to his Tom Sawyer.”

154 Richard Stevenson

Timmy said, “That corn must be done.”

“Right.”

“Donald, I have a lot of trouble thinking of Hunny as a character out of Twain. Boyd MacDonald maybe. Or William S.

Burroughs.”

“Oh no, not Burroughs. Hunny is alert, alive, and I think I can even say truly happy.”

My cell phone went off, and when I saw that it was Hunny calling I was tempted not to answer it. But I guessed that it was some new awful mess that Hunny had created or stepped in or had land on him, and I was right.

ChAPteR twenty-two

The Brienings were at it again. They had phoned Nelson and told him that they had read on somebody’s Internet blog that Rita Van Horn’s disappearance was a hoax, just as Bill O’Malley suspected it was. Mrs. Van Horn, the blogger reported, had been spotted in a motel in the town of Lake George where she was staying under an assumed name. Obviously, Arletta Briening told Nelson, this was all part of a scheme to delay or even avoid paying the Brienings the half billion dollars they were owed. When Nelson insisted that the Van Horns knew nothing of this, Arletta said she was sure the report was reliable because the information came from one of her fPAAC friends and they were honest people.

“Did the blogger give the name of the motel?” I asked Nelson.

I was back at the house on Moth Street, where Nelson and Lawn had arrived in person to deliver news of the new threat from the Brienings.

“No, he didn’t. I asked Arletta and she said no.”

“This is probably somebody’s malicious imagination at work.

Do you have the blog uRL?”

Hunny said, “What’s a uRL? Is that like ‘you are luscious’ in e-mail language?”

“No, Uncle Hunny, it isn’t.”

Nelson had the address at blogspot, and while Lawn sat by the kitchen phone scanning the Financial Times, Art, Hunny, Nelson and I went upstairs to Hunny and Art’s room, where they kept their computer on what might have been somebody’s boyhood desk. Hunny and Art had a double bed with a veneer headboard that looked like Richard Widmark might have slept in it in Kiss of Death. Clothing was heaped around the room and tumbling out of closets. A bookcase contained only a few books — some paperback movie guides and a glossy photo book called Butt Boys of Budapest. The flat-screen TV was nearly identical to the one in 156 Richard Stevenson

the living room downstairs.

Art went online and found the blog called Blood of Tyrants, a right-wing anti-Obama bilge-fest. It was the work of someone calling himself Tom In Paine. In addition to the flag-draped anti-tax and pro-gun screeds, there were stories on “typical” gays as child molesters and links to ex-gay ministries.

A posting from that morning described Bill O’Malley’s

“expose” of “Huntington Van Horn’s gay lifestyle” and the fPAAC

suit against the lottery for spreading “perversion and immorality.”

Tom In Paine credited O’Malley for first revealing that a missing persons report involving Hunny’s mother was actually a publicity stunt concocted to obtain a TV reality show contract, like the recent balloon-boy hoax. The blogger stated that Mrs. Van Horn was in hiding at a Lake George motel. She had been spotted coming and going by an fPAAC member who had seen her photo on the O’Malley show when Hunny was waving it around. The motel was not named.

I said, “There must be dozens of motels in Lake George.

Tom In Paine had to know that this would be hard for us or anybody else to check out and refute.”

“Mom enjoys Lake George,’ Hunny said, “but I think this is just a pack of lies.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Uncle Hunny. Most of the stuff on these right-wing blogs is pure fiction. But I know Mother and Grandma used to go up to Lake George and ride around on a paddleboat and stay at a place near the lake where they liked the stuffed haddock at the restaurant across the street. It might be a good idea if somebody rode up there and just took a look.”

I asked Nelson if he knew the name of the motel.

“No, but Mother would know.”

“Antoine doesn’t go in to work till four o’clock tomorrow, so maybe he and the twins could ride up there. Tyler and Schuyler could work on their homework in the car.”

‘Well, we really have to do everything possible to get Grandma Rita back quickly,” Nelson said. “Arletta reiterated to me that CoCkeyed 157

their deadline is Wednesday for the half billion to be turned over.

In fact, she said noon Wednesday, not a minute later.”

Hunny flicked an ash from his lit cigarette into the ashtray on top of the computer, whose keyboard was brown with nicotine stains. “Oh Lord, all we need is for the Brienings to distribute letters out at Golden Gardens calling Mom a crook right before she walks in the door out there or she is found in a hospital in New Jersey waking up from a coma.”

“Why New Jersey?” I asked.

“Because that’s where Karen Ann Quinlan was in her coma.”

“New Jersey, the coma state,” Art said. “It’s on the license plates.”

“I am thinking more and more,” Hunny said, “that maybe I should just give the Brienings the half a billion dollars. That money isn’t even real to me anyways. I would never miss it. And then we could just concentrate on getting Mom back and not have the Brienings hanging over our heads and breathing down our necks.”

“That is what Mother prefers,” Nelson said. “But that’s easy for her to say, because she and Dad have nice pensions from the county. No, I think you’ve been right, Uncle Hunny, to try to keep the money away from those terrible people. Lawn has some ideas on how you can invest it that he wants to discuss with you, but of course that can easily wait until we have resolved the situation with Grandma Rita.”

“I am just so grateful,” Hunny said, “that that poor old lady over in Nassau wasn’t Mom. I never imagined Mom dying like that. Out in the woods, I mean. She doesn’t like nature as much as she likes comfy and cozy and a good time. She’s always preferred town over country.”