Nigel Pembrick was, by all accounts, a perfect British gentleman. He had a modest yet efficient white house on Masters Lane, eight miles outside of the London city limits. The house was complete with a white picket fence, a perfectly manicured lawn of brilliant green grass, and an almost-new Volvo sedan which was not very attractive to look at, but had one of the highest crash-test safety ratings in its class. He used this Volvo for his daily commute to the city--approximately twenty-two minutes and fifteen seconds total, barring any unforeseen traffic or weather conditions--where he worked as a personal director in a modest yet efficient department store that specialized in affordable and stylish ladies' formal wear. He trimmed his fingernails at least twice a week.

It is also significant to note that Nigel was, in fact, adopted by a nice middle class couple from Louisiana who had moved to England shortly after his fourth birthday. The fact that the perfect British gentleman was not even truthfully British was a wry irony which was not completely lost on Nigel.

* * *

Roots, those were the important thing, to be sure. Told you where you had been, predicted where you might be going. Pieced together the puzzle, you might say.

These were only some of the thoughts that passed through Nigel's modest yet efficient brain as he sped through the hot Louisiana sun in the vulgar Dodge Neon that the rental company had provided him. The tiny car felt flimsy, as if it had been hastily thrown together from scraps of plastic, imitation leather and cheap air fresheners. Nigel shuddered to think what would happen if the Neon were to be involved in an accident, but he had a pretty good idea that it would involve his mangled body parts somewhere in the equation. Now his Volvo--that was a safe mode of vehicular transportation! The thing had been practically bulletproof, a great growling beast that was capable of chewing through screeching steel if provoked. He reminded himself once more to stay in the right lane, as alien as it seemed.

But roots . . . yes, they were definitely important. Somewhere out there--somewhere close--there were two people whose combination of genetic material had produced him. The possibilities for radical insights were limitless. If the old adage was true--the one that said most boys grow up to resemble their fathers and marry women who resemble their mothers--then Nigel might in fact be getting a glimpse into his own future! The thought was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

There were no songs he recognized on the local radio stations, so he made up songs in his head. He had a rather strong tenor voice, and his songs tended to be fairly bombastic in nature. He sang along as he smoked his cigarettes and watched for road signs.

Louisiana was a dirty, dingy-looking state.

* * *

The adoption agency had originally been reluctant to give out the names of his birth parents, but it was remarkable what a sympathy story involving a fictional hereditary medical problem could accomplish. The rather hefty bribe had probably also helped, he had to admit.

* * *

Nigel stared in dismay. He checked and rechecked the address on the sheet with the hand-painted number on the mailbox. He felt sick to his stomach. It had to be a mistake.

Just drive away, a small voice in the back of his head whispered. Put the car in reverse and get out of here.

He didn't, of course. Roots were important, after all.

But--God!--the house! A dirty ramshackle hut with broken windows and a crumbling front porch. And--Bloody hell!--the trucks! Trucks in the driveway, trucks in the yard. Trucks with wheels and windows and paint jobs, trucks without. Trucks looking like refugees from some cheap B-movie about post-nuclear war wastelands full of scruffy antiheroes and physically-deformed villains. And then--Christ!--there was the barn, if that was indeed what it had one been, a rotting hulk of dirty plywood and dust, teetering precariously on the verge of a squealing collapse.

Nigel put the car in drive and inched the Neon up the dusty driveway. To him, it looked like the mouth Hell itself.

* * *

The first thing Nigel noticed when the man opened the door was his teeth. Or rather, his conspicuous lack of teeth. It was impossible to describe what Nigel took in next, because every feature seemed to assail him at once. The dirty brown hair, the caveman brow, the yellow-but-probably-used-to-be-white tee-shirt, the beady little eyes, the fact that the man had no thumbs . . . The man seemed to be about thirty--only a few years older than Nigel himself--but . . . God! Christ! Bloody hell!

Nigel stared. The man stared.

"You the fertilizer guy?"

It seemed like a ridiculous question to Nigel, so perhaps he can be forgiven for having no idea how to reply. His best effort: "What?"

"The fertilizer guy. You him?"

"Err, no. I . . . that is, to say . . . " Run away! You've seen Deliverance! You know what happens in places like this! He forced the shrill voice in his mind to be silent. Roots, roots, roots, he repeated, a sort of mental mantra to the God of all well-bred Brits.

"Are you Robert McClump?" he finally managed.

"Who?" The man's brow furrowed for a moment, then a look of dim recognition appeared. "Oh, you mean Pa! Naw, I ain't him." There was a pause, then he added in a confidential tone: "Nobody never calls him Robert, though." Nigel nodded his head as if this were perfectly logical.

"Well, um, my name is Nigel Pembrick." The man seemed unimpressed, so he continued. "But my name used to be . . . Wally McClump."

Wally. Such an ugly, undignified name, the type one might give to a cheerful and utterly stupid pet rabbit. His adoptive parents had replaced the name as soon as they could, of course. Not all roots were worth preserving.

There was a moment of cautious silence on the porch.

Then the man threw him a toothless smile of rapturous stupidity. "You're my baby brother!" he yelled, enveloping Nigel in an enthusiastic bear-hug which smelled vaguely of cheap liquor and unwashed hair. Nigel stood straight and perfectly rigid, his arms at his side. He wasn't much of a hugger, and he didn't particularly enjoy the way the man's shirt stuck to his chest.

The man, who introduced himself as Big Bob, promptly invited Nigel inside. The inside of the house was no cleaner than the outside. There was a large stack of punctured tires piled in the corner of the foyer, which Nigel found somewhat inappropriate. A combination of smells assaulted his nose, none of them too pleasant. A mangy-looking mongrel was chewing on what looked like a dead rabbit. The dog immediately dropped the rabbit and padded over to him. It stared at him blankly for a second, then promptly began to have sex with his leg. Nigel was naturally quite embarrassed, and he attempted to fend off the dog's advances.

Big Bob grinned. "Aw, that's Bitch. Horny as hell, ain't she?"

Bitch stared at Nigel with pleading eyes as she continued pumping back and forth against his leg.

Big Bob turned and walked down the hallway. "Hey, y'all, Wally's back!"

"Uh, it's Nigel, actually."

Big Bob obviously heard him, but he grinned and bellowed out, "Wally!" again, which seemed rather rude.

Then an enormously fat woman with a blotch-covered moonface and a gigantic pair of breasts was rushing down the hallway, knocking Big Bob aside, displacing Bitch with one surprisingly-agile kick, and finally sweeping Nigel up into her arms. "My baby!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "My baby's back! Praise Jesus!"

"Uh, hullo, mother." It was not quite the dignified and emotional greeting that he had been fantasizing about giving, but it was the best he could come up with.

She couldn't hear him, of course. "My baby, my baby, my baby!" she shrieked.

Her grip was terrifyingly powerful. Nigel could feel it crushing the air out of his lungs. He tried to say something, but found himself unable to draw enough breath. His legs kicked weakly in the air, suspended a few feet about the ground. Tiny black droplets of void began to swim before his eyes.

"Put him down, Ma," Big Bob said reproachfully. "You're gonna hurt him."

"My baby!" she shrieked at Big Bob angrily. He quickly backed away, a look of fear in his eyes.

Nigel's head lolled backwards. Everything was slipping away. Bitch made a well-timed jump and latched onto his leg, where she hung suspended, humping it as frantically as she could before she lost her grip. His mother's breasts engulfed him like dueling waterbeds, and he could faintly smell chicken on her breath.

Unconsciousness seemed like a pretty good alternative.

* * *

Nigel awoke to find a pug-faced girl of about sixteen lightly shaking him. She had muddy blond hair, a heavy patch of freckles on both cheeks, and no shirt on. Her breasts swung back and forth as she shook him. He realized with some alarm that the girl was straddling him.

"Finally," she grinned at him. "Thought you were never gonna wake up."

"What happened?" he asked groggily.

"Mama said that you got too excited to see her and you just plum fainted. Like a girl or something." She gave a high-pitched titter and ran a finger lazily across Nigel's chest.

"Who . . . who are you?"

"I'm Lucy Sue. I'm your baby sister." She leaned forward again, exposing the plump swells of her freckled breasts, and Nigel thought that baby wasn't really the most appropriate term.

He groaned. His head was throbbing. "How long have I been out?"

She shrugged, playing with the buttons on his shirt. "Dunno. Hour or two." Her hand moved down towards his crotch and began to play with his zipper as she spoke. Nigel, quite understandably, completely panicked. He leaped off the couch with a yell of surprise, spilling Lucy Sue to the floor. She hit the ground hard.

Nigel was instantly miserable, apologizing even as he moved to help her up. She looked up at him angrily, her mouth curled in a little snarl, and she punched him squarely in the testicles.

Nigel passed out again.

Unfortunately, this time he was only unconscious for a matter of minutes before someone was shaking him awake. He opened his to a grizzled old man with a squashed nose and a lazy eye that slowly rotated in its socket as he spoke.

"Wake up, Wally," the man said. "You been sleeping long enough, and we wanna fucking eat already."

And so this was how Nigel-now-Wally met his father for the first time.

* * *

Goddamn British decorum. He couldn't just apologize and walk out of there. Get in his car, get in the plane, get the hell back home. He simply couldn't do it. It would be rude and improper, and Nigel was never rude and improper.

And after all, roots were roots.

* * *

They sat around the dinner table, passing steaming bowls of gray meat and even-more-gray mashed potatoes. Whiskey seemed to be the drink of choice.

Nigel was introduced to the two final members of the McClump clan. Bobby was a boy of about nine with a high-pitched voice and the start of what appeared to be a very nasty nervous tic. The youngest, who had the imaginative name of Bobby Joe, was a fat three year old with a round, demonic face and a tendency to conspicuously pull down the front of his shorts and play with himself at the dinner table. Bobby Joe seemed very fond of cursing, usually as loudly as possible and to nobody in particular. Bitch lay on the floor between the tangle of legs, desperately chewing on the table leg. A pile of mangy dead rabbits lay on the floor beside her, completely ignored.

Pa dumped a large glob of potatoes on his plate, scowling across the table. "Jesus Christ, Lucy Sue, where's your shirt at?"

"Yeah, you can't fuck Wally," Big Bob chimed in with utter seriousness. "He's your brother, you know."

"Fuck Wally!" Bobby Joe screamed, beating his fists against his high chair for emphasis.

"Shut up, jerkoff!" Lucy Sue punched Big Bob in the arm as hard as she possibly could. Her face had turned dark red. "I took off my shirt because I was hot."

"Well, go put it back on," Pa told her. "It ain't decent for the dinner table."

Bobby Joe twanged his tiny penis as if in agreement.

Ma was staring across the table at Nigel, a rapturous look on her face. "My baby's back," she kept repeating softly.

Nigel gave her a weak smile. "Um, I certainly am."

She nodded at him. "My baby's back."

He attempted to change the subject, turning toward Lucy Sue. "Well, we've got Big Bob, Bobby, and Bobby Joe, huh? I'm surprised that you're not named Roberta." It was a feeble attempt at humor, which generated dead silence from his new family.

"She's named after a pig," Bobby ventured.

Nigel gave him a stern look. "Now that's not a very nice thing to say about your sister!"

Bobby looked confused. "But it's true!"

The rest of the family nodded in agreement.

"She was a damn fine pig," Pa said softly and sadly.

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Bitch took the opportunity to come over and begin having sex with Nigel's leg again. He pushed the dog away, then took a bite out of the meat on his plate--rabbit? quail? squirrel? nosy neighbor? who knew?--and promptly chipped his tooth on a buckshot pellet.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered softly, rubbing his mouth.

The rest of the family stared at him.

"Son of a bitch!" Bobby Joe echoed. He began to masturbate furiously.

"So, what's England like?" Bobby ventured.

"It's . . . different," Nigel told them truthfully.

Lucy Sue leaned forward across the table. She was still sans shirt. "I think English accents are really sexy," she purred.

"Um . . . thank you. I guess."

"Son of a bitch!" Bobby Joe screamed again. He threw his fork across the room and began to devote his attention entirely to his penis.

Nigel let out a weak chuckle. "Quite a mouth on the little guy."

"Yeah." Pa shook his head mournfully. "We hate that fucking kid."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Oh," Nigel said.

They ate in silence for several minutes. The room echoed with the sounds of grunting, chewing, and belching. Nigel picked at his food delicately, desperately wishing for a napkin.

"Would it be terribly improper for me to ask a question?" he finally ventured.

"Is it 'bout me?" Lucy Sue asked hopefully.

Nigel stared at her for a moment. "Err . . . no," he said. "Actually, I've always wondered why you put me up for adoption."

Pa shrugged. "Didn't have money to keep ya."

Nigel was confused. "But . . . but . . . but what about Lucy Sue and the others? They were younger than me, and you kept them!" He knew he sounded slightly petulant, but he didn't care.

"Few of our pigs were dead by then," Pa said matter-of-factly. "We had more money."

Nigel could feel the veins in his forehead beginning to throb, which probably wasn't a good sign. "But . . . why?" he stammered. "Why didn't you sell the pigs in the beginning instead of giving me away?"

Pa's one good eye stared at him sharply, as if this were blasphemy. "I liked them pigs a lot," he growled.

Nigel found that he had no way to respond to this.

"It doesn't matter now," Ma said dreamily. "My baby's back."

"Shut up, Ma." Pa tore a chunk of meat off the bone and slurped it down. His lazy eye did a complete 360. "He ain't staying."

She stared at him with wounded eyes. "You're not staying?"

Nigel shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Well, um . . . "

"'Course he ain't staying!" Pa said. "He's got a job and a house and all of that shit back in England! Why would he stay here?" He stabbed his potatoes for emphasis. "Besides, if we couldn't afford him the first time, we sure can't afford him now! Probably eats a lot more and everything."

Nigel was speechless.

"But you're staying for a while, right?" Lucy Sue asked.

"But he's my baby . . . " Ma seemed to be having a hard time understanding all of this.

"You're staying for tonight at least, right?" Lucy Sue's voice was desperate.

"I don't know how long I'm staying," Nigel said miserably.

"You've got to stay for a few days. See if you like it here." Ma's gigantic chin was trembling. "Maybe you'll even decide that you like it here so much that . . . " Her voice trailed off hopefully.

"If he stays the night, he's got to help with chores tomorrow," Pa declared firmly.

"He can help me with the milking," Lucy immediately volunteered.

"Just one night," Ma begged. Her eyes were swimmy silver droplets, and her voice was on the verge of cracking.

Regretting the words even as they left his mouth, Nigel said that he guessed it might be okay if he stayed for one night. The family nodded in agreement, then went back to their meals. Bitch stared at him with insane doggy eyes from beneath the table.

"Cocksucker!" Bobby Joe declared to nobody in particular.

* * *

Since the McClumps didn't own a telly, everyone went to bed right after dinner. The dinner dishes were placed on the floor for Bitch to lick clean, a prospect which made Nigel feel sick to his stomach. The family accompanied him up to the guest room, which was actually the bathroom with a sleeping bag thrown on the floor.

"See you tomorrow. Four a.m." Pa paused at the threshold of the door. "It's . . . good having you back, boy."

Nigel forced a smile. "Good being back . . . Pa."

"So long, bro," Big Bob walked out of the room, carrying Bobby Joe in his armpit like an American football. Bobby Joe managed to get out one last, "Fuck Wally!" before he was gone.

Lucy Sue asked him if he needed help getting tucked in. She looked disappointed when Nigel reassured her that he was fine. After Ma shoved the girl out of the room, Lucy Sue's head popped back around the corner.

"I'll see you later," she said softly, running her tongue along her lower lip.

Nigel began to massage his temples. He had a terrible headache.

Ma stood in the doorway a moment longer. "My baby's back," she said with a content smile. She turned off the light and closed the door.

The house was silent for a moment.

Nigel opened the bathroom window and jumped out of it.

* * *

He would have made a clean getaway if he had not landed on a pile of empty beer cans. He stumbled to his feet, feeling pain in every corner of his body, and began to hobble towards his car. Behind him, he could hear voices from the house.

"Fuck was that noise?"

"Get the gun, Big Bob. Goddamn 'coons are in the garbage again."

Lucy Sue chimed in, "Wally's not in his room! I just checked!"

Nigel ran as fast as he possibly could, but he had injured his hip and tiny lances of pain shot through his leg with every step. Why had he parked so far away from the house?

The front door opened and the family filed out, one after another. Inbreds on Parade, next on BBC! Wally thought crazily, and he felt like braying laughter. He saw that Big Bob was carrying a shotgun. Big Bob was going to shoot him and then they were going to carry him back inside and either rape him or eat him, he was positive of this fact, and for some reason it all seemed very funny to him.

Ma stopped dead when she saw Nigel racing for his car. "Where is Wally going?" she asked softly.

Pa grinned, a tiny, cruel grin. He gave a short whistle and Bitch appeared at his side. "Fetch," he said, pointing at Nigel. Desperate to please, the dog bounded away.

"Walleeeeeey!!!" Ma bellowed, a distressed bovine lowing at the moon.

"I'm dreadfully sorry!" Nigel cried over his shoulder. "So very, very sorry!"

"Dickface poop!" Bobby Joe screamed from behind him. He had taken off his tiny pants and was now standing naked on the porch, gyrating his hips back and forth in a circle, attempting to twirl his little penis like a lasso. He appeared to be having a great time.

Bitch caught Nigel as he was fumbling in his pockets for his car keys. She leapt for him, snarling, and he braced himself for the attack. Instead, she latched onto his leg.

"Not again," he muttered. It was just too much, a final ridiculous touch on the worst night of his life.

But for the first time, the dog was not attempting intercourse with his leg. Instead, she merely held on to him, staring at him with pleading eyes. In that brief moment, an electric flash of understanding passed between Nigel and the dog. Get me out of here, her eyes said. It was a sentiment that Nigel could heartily endorse.

"What are you doing, Bitch?" Pa stared at them from the porch, confused. "Bite him!"

The dog stared at him for a long moment.

"All right," Nigel said. He threw open the car door and Bitch bounded in. He followed her.

"He's stealing Bitch," Pa said softly. He looked like a man whose heart had just been broken. "He's stealing my Bitch."

The Neon sputtered to life, and Nigel threw it into gear. The car raced down the bumpy driveway. Nigel looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that the entire family was in hot pursuit. Big Bob and Pa were sprinting furiously, waving their arms wildly, their shotguns apparently forgotten on the porch. Ma was lumbering after him like an overweight dinosaur in freefall. Bobby Joe was riding on Bobby's shoulders, screaming obscenities into the night air. Lucy Sue's breasts bounced in the moonlight.

Then Nigel turned the corner and raced down the road, the accelerator pressed to the floor. The McClump farm became a distant dot behind him and finally disappeared from sight altogether.

Nigel was shaking. He didn't know if he was supposed to laugh or to cry. He felt like doing both. He glanced in the backseat to see what Bitch was doing. The dog was furiously humping his seven-hundred dollar tweed jacket with a blissful expression on her face. Nigel found that it really didn't bother him.

He turned on the radio and found a song that he could actually sing along to. He had a rather strong tenor voice.