My dad’s uncle, Grandma Cason’s brother,
was the town drunk. He had a job as school janitor,
and lived at the school, in a shabby room. When he was passed-out,
Dad would do the clean-up for him. In the mornings before school.
When he was a boy. It was like something out of Dickens. Also, Dad’s father
was a Marine who died in WWI. Grandpa Cason married Grandma, his widow.
With an infant son. Then they had their own child, named after my grandfather.
Van Jr. They called them Junior and Brother. The true blood heir and
the red-headed step-son. He was like Cinderfella. Jerry Lewis and Ed Wynn.
House of Wax. Vincent Price and Charles Bronson. Carolyn Jones as Cathy Gray.
In The Bachelor Party she played The Existentialist. Ha ha, beatniks.
Ha ha, jazz musicians. Thelonious Monk with a goatee and shades.
A lambskin hat. His inscrutable aphorisms.