The day Michael Jacoson died it was early summer and I stood in front of the seafoam garde-manger putting away cans of Ro-tel canned tomatoes when I got the call. It came via the Cajun Net, that is, my dad had gotten the information via text message via TMZ (don't ask), so I guess it was via the Internet via the Cajun Net, and relayed it, via my mother, to me, all the way across the fields of Evangeline and St. Landry Parishes. The information exasperated me. I knew that the Cajun net was usually more accurate than the Internet (only slightly) and wasn't he mistaken? Wasn't it the 70's beauty Farah Faucet who had died today in sunny California? Surely it was not Michael Jackson, icon of our youth, The King of Pop, gone? I flicked on the television.
I remembered sitting in the floor with my cousin Geneo at my grandparents old house before the fire. We, both toddlers were in front of the brown console television set, plopped in a nest of brown shag carpet watching the yellows and blacks of the Thriller video on repeat (by some early 80's magic, they had a recording of it! That was just before the house and everything in it burnt and it took the youngest uncle with it.
