some kind of military uniform. Another frame enclosed a lighter, slighter young man, no doubt the younger son; he beamed with pride in a college cap and gown. Following a progression of pictures, Nick jumped through the daughter’s life, each shot a stepping stone in the stream of time. The laughing, gap-toothed girl became the starry-eyed bride in the space of seconds.
Erasmus Balzar had entered the room before Nick noticed him. He asked his guest to have a seat. Dora brought him a Dr. Pepper and some freshly baked cookies. Erasmus was lighter skinned than his wife, considerably overweight for his five-eight frame, and in poor health. He explained, in short breaths, that he’d worked at the local poultry plant until it closed without warning five years ago, and since then the family had lived on his small Army disability pay, his wife’s meager earnings as a seamstress at a store in town and as a freelancer for certain wealthy white women, and on various other government benefits. A heart attack, diabetes, a lifetime of smoking, and high blood pressure had taken a toll on his activities. The worry showed in the hollow bewilderment of his eyes, and echoed in the pensive silences between his sentences.
“Now, my grandpa in there, watching the TV. Erasmus the Second–we just call him ‘Twice,’ you know, because of the two after his name. Sometime we call him three times.” He laughed up some phlegm at this old family witticism.
“Rasmus,” Dora Balzar said, “Lord have mercy, don’t be talking about Twice that way. It’s shameful.” She left the room shaking her head, but smiling nevertheless.
Erasmus the Third continued: “He don’t have nothing wrong him, ’cept he can’t all the time remember things too good. But he’s ninety-two. Yes indeed. Ninety-two.” He seemed to lose his way, but then added, “Don’t guess I’ll make that.”
“Do you know anything about your ancestor, Ivanhoe Balzar?” Nick asked.
“He was my great-great-grandpa, I think. They say he cut hair way back when, over in a shop downtown. Somehow the building got named after him, so he must have been a pretty good barber. I used to hear that a white man shot him down over the price of a shave. They did that in them days, the white folks, you know. What’s this book you workin’ on? It gonna be a movie of the week, or what?”
Nick searched his small stock of frontier lore and came up with some convincing questions, making a show of writing down Erasmus’s answers. Erasmus gradually grew to like the idea that his great-great-grand might have lived an exciting life in the Wild West.
“Come on in here and let’s try and get Twice to remember something,” wheezed Erasmus with sudden enthusiasm.
Twice sat on a slipcovered couch before a large, rather new television. He gripped the changer tightly in one bony hand and rested the other limply beside him. They couldn’t get cable out here, and there was no money for a satellite dish, so they had to do with the grainy over-the-air signals from Shreveport, Alexandria, and Monroe.
Looking at Twice, Nick thought he could see Ivanhoe himself, and beyond him, Hyam and Mulatta Belle. Just a few pinches of the human clay, just a layer or two more or less of watery beige tint, would do the trick. He was strikingly thin and bent into angles like a grasshopper, though he was probably six-and-a-half feet stretched out. His skin was vitreous, like a piece of glazed old china, relatively unwrinkled and surprisingly youthful looking, with a sandy darkness deep down. Nick imagined he would shatter into a million pieces if touched too hard. His eyes were milky with cataract; Nick doubted he could see much of the show he watched, or even understand it. There were a few curlicues of gray hair around his sunken temples. He was dressed neatly, by Dora certainly, in a light-blue button-down shirt and a crisp pair of work jeans.
Nick rapidly figured the relationships: if Ivanhoe was Erasmus III’s great-great-grandfather, and Twice is his grandfather, then…
“Twice, can you tell me about your grandfather, the man named Ivanhoe Balzar?” Nick began, sitting down next to the old man on the sofa. “Did your grandmother or your father ever speak of him? Maybe tell you if there were any important family papers put away somewhere?”
Nick was thinking of that letter Ivanhoe had mentioned, all the while feeling guilty because the diary really belonged to these people.
Well, I’ll share the royalties when I