“Hello, Grandfather,” she said.
He hesitated for a moment. But then he helped her to her feet “Come in,” he said. “Come in, come in.”
Dr. Swain did not know at that time that he had sired a son during his withdrawal from tri-benzo-Deportamil in Urbana. He supposed that Melody was a random supplicant and fan. Nor did he bring to that first encounter any daydreams of having descendents somewhere. He had never much wanted to reproduce himself.
So, when Melody gave him shy but convincing arguments that she was an actual blood relative, he had a feeling that he, as he later explained to Vera Chipmunk-5 Zappa, ” had somehow sprung a huge leak. And out of that sudden, painless opening,” he went on, “there crawled a famished child, pregnant and clasping a Dresden candlestick.
“Hi ho.”
Melody’s story was this:
Her father, who was the illegitimate child of Dr. Swain and the widow in Urbana, was one of the few survivors of the so-called “Urbana Massacre.” He was then pressed into service as a drummer boy in the army of the perpetrator of the massacre, the Duke of Oklahoma.
The boy begat Melody at the age of fourteen. Her mother was a forty-year-old laundress who had attached herself to the army. Melody was given the middle name “Oriole-2”, to ensure that she would be treated with maximal mercy, should she be captured by the forces of Stewart Oriole-2 Mott, the King of Michigan, the chief enemy of the Duke.
And she was in fact captured when a six-year-old – after the Battle of Iowa City, in which her father and mother were slain.
Hi ho.
Yes, and the King of Michigan had become so decadent by then, that he maintained a seraglio of captured children with the same middle name as his – which, of course, was Oriole-2. Little Melody was added to that pitiful zoo.
But, as her ordeals became more disgusting, so did she gain increasing inner strength from her father’s dying words to her, which were these:
“You are a princess. You are the granddaughter of the King of Candlesticks, of the King of New York.”
Hi ho.
And then, one night, she stole the Dresden candlestick from the tent of the sleeping King.
Then Melody crawled under the flaps of the tent and into the moonlit world outside.
Thus began her incredible journey eastward, ever eastward, in search of her legendary grandfather. His palace was one of the tallest buildings in the world.
She would encounter relatives everywhere – if not Orioles, then at least birds or living things of some kind.
They would feed her and point the way.
One would give her a raincoat. Another would give her a sweater and a magnetic compass. Another would give her a baby carriage. Another would give her an alarm clock.
Another would give her a needle and thread, and a gold thimble, too.
Another would row her across the Harlem River to the Island of Death, at the risk of his own life.
And so on.
– Das Ende –