World's End

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Flo was smiling at him, beaming at him.

  “Is that some kind of, of afterbirth or something?”

  “He’s darling,” she said.

  He looked again. And at that moment, as if already there were some psychic link between them, the baby waved its arms and snapped open its eyes. It was a revelation. A shock. Depeyster’s eyes were gray, as were his father’s before him, and Joanna’s the purest, regal shade of violet. The baby’s eyes were as green as a cat’s.

  For a long while, Depeyster stood there in the hallway. He stood there long after Nurse Deitz had left him and gone home to her supper, long after the other proud fathers had come and gone, so long in fact that the janitor had to mop around him. He watched the baby sleep, studied its hair, the flutter of its eyelids and the clenching of its tiny fists as it drifted from one unfathomable dream to another. All sorts of things passed through Depeyster’s mind, things that unsettled him, made him hurt in the pit of his stomach and feel as empty as he’d ever felt.

  He was a strong man, single-minded and tough, a man who dwelt in history and felt the pulse of generations beating in his blood. He had those thoughts, those unsettling thoughts, just once, just then, and he dismissed them, never to have them again. When at long last he turned away from the window, there was a smile on his lips. And he held that smile as he strode down the corridor, across the lobby and through the heavy front door. He was outside, on the steps, the cool sweet air in his face and the stars spread out overhead like a benediction, when it came to him. Rombout, he thought, caught up in the sudden whelming grip of inspiration, he would call him Rombout. …

  After his father.

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to thank the following people for their assistance in gathering material for this book: Alan and Seymour Arkawy, Mitchell Burgess, Richard Chambers, Chuck Fadel, Ken Fortgang, Rick Miles, Jack and Jerry Miller and the crew of the Clearwater.

  Footnote

  1Shortened from Mohewoneck, or raccoon skin coat, a reference to the only garment he was seen to wear, winter or summer. Apart, of course, from his breechclout.

  2 Leaf-eye.

  3 Literally “sitting in the pickle.”

  By the Same Author

  Novels

  When the Killing’s Done

  The Women

  Talk Talk

  Tooth & Claw

  The Inner Circle

  Drop City

  A Friend of the Earth

  Riven Rock

  The Tortilla Curtain

  The Road to Wellville

  East Is East

  Budding Prospects

  Water Music

  Short Stories

  Wild Child

  Tooth and Claw

  After the Plague

  The Human Fly

  T.C. Boyle Stories

  Without a Hero

  If the River Was Whiskey

  Greasy Lake

  Descent of Man

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 1987 by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The following is an historical fugue. It bears small relation to actual places and

  events, and none whatever to people living or dead. It is pure fiction

  Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the

  following copyrighted works:

  ‘Gerontion,’ from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by

  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted

  by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited.

  Desire Under the Elms, from The Plays of Eugene O’Neill. Copyright © 1924,

  renewed 1952 by Eugene O’Neill. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

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  printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the

  publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication

  may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 7475 2934 7

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