Grandancestor

In concluding this sketch, it affords the writer much pleasure to state that the time-stained pages of the old record shows not a single case of theft, petit larceny, forgery or perjury on the part of the grandancestors of our old Norfolk families.

One more thing then I’ll stop dear parents on your mountaintop I and my fellow animal-creatures down here in the swamp are as closely related to the extraterrestrials over your heads as the rats to the stars and beyond where ancient grandancestors call the tune of the words of the singer I would croon if I had the cords […]

Nick takes a stick and pushes it into the sand of a blue-and-white vase so that the strand of smoke drifts up toward a portrait of some of Poppy’s grandancestors, stiff in Qing Dynasty brocades, as flat and anonymous and ornate as Elizabethan portraits.