Jack doesn’t want, or need, to hear her answer, though it runs silently through her mind.

Since Dad died, why hasn’t anyone come around? Not even Hungry Hank. Don’t you think thrift is some kind of death? Ask yourself. Is Jack disappointed by his mother’s poverty of imagination, her lack of nerve in the face of life’s gambles, her continued belief in the budget-conscious, off-brand caution that’s gotten her exactly nowhere? He is. What have I done, how exactly have all the sacrifices I’ve made, all the dinners I put together out of nothing and ate hardly any of myself, how exactly did I raise you to be this cavalier and unreliable, could you please explain that to me, please? Is Jack’s mother upset when he strides back into the house, holds out his hand, and shows her what he’s gotten for the cow? She is.

They drop out of vocational school because they can see, after a semester or two, that it’s a direct path to loserdom- better to live in their childhood bedrooms, temporarily unemployed, until fame and prosperity arrive. They DJ at friends’ parties, believing a club owner will wander in sooner or later and hire them to spin for multitudes. They have a great idea for a screenplay-they just need, you know, someone to write it for them. Boys who prefer the crazy promise, the long shot, who insist that they’re natural-born winners. Jack is the boy who says, Wow, dude, magic beans, really? Maybe they’ll turn into the seven deadly sins, and buzz around him like flies for the rest of his life. Maybe they’ll transform themselves into seven beautiful wives for him. He doesn’t even ask what variety of magic the beans supposedly deliver. The guy claims they’re magic beans, and that, it seems, is enough for Jack. We’re talking about a boy who doesn’t get halfway to town with his mother’s sole remaining possession before he’s sold the cow to some stranger for a handful of beans. Never mind asking him to sell the cow, when he and his mother are out of cash, and the cow is their last asset. This is not a kid who can be trusted to remember to take his mother to her chemo appointment, or to close the windows when it rains. This is not a smart boy we’re talking about. In the accompanying interview, Cunningham chats with Michael Merriam about what happens after “happily ever after.”

The following is an excerpt from A Wild Swan, due out next week from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Yuko Shimizu created the original illustrations that accompany Cunningham’s tales in A Wild Swan.

Sins of the Fathers by Will Cunningham