Fortunate Son: A Novel (5 page)

Elton was a big man, six feet and a little more, but Ira was six foot seven in silk socks, and he had hands like catcher’s mitts and arms made (as he used to say) from four hundred years of hard labor. Ira grabbed Elton by one shoulder and squeezed so hard that the would-be mechanic went down on his knees.

“Let the boy go,” Ira commanded.

“He’s my son,” Elton hissed through the pain.

“I don’t care what he is to you; you put him down or I put you down.”

Elton released Thomas. He ran to Dr. Nolan, who had just come from inside the restaurant.

Fontanot released his grip, and Elton rose to his feet, rubbing the sore shoulder.

“He’s my son,” Elton said again.

“Then why he live up in the doctor’s house?” Ira asked. “Why the doctor pay for his clothes and food?”

“He’s mine and he belongs with me.”

“The courts might agree, but you can’t take a boy from his mother’s funeral and not even let him settle his affairs. You gotta do somethin’ like that right, not like some wild fool just grab a child and run.”

Elton took a step toward Ira, shouting, “You don’t have the right to take my boy!”

“And you wouldn’t wanna make him a orphan,” Ira said softly. “Back down and do this right or I will break you in two.”

Elton turned to Dr. Nolan and said, “This ain’t ovah by a long shot,” and then he walked away.

Thomas was holding on to Dr. Nolan’s leg.

“Is it okay, Daddy?” he asked his mother’s lover.

“Yes, son,” Dr. Nolan replied.

4

F
OR THE
next week Thomas spent all of his time on his knees in his room when he wasn’t at school or eating with Dr. Nolan, Ahn, and Eric. He’d close his eyes and think about becoming a part of the house, and he’d
feel
his mother’s presence. He couldn’t speak to her, but somehow he knew that if he kept his eyes closed she’d be standing there next to him, smiling.

One night Eric came into his room after everyone else was asleep.

“Tommy?” the big six-year-old said into the darkness.

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“What were you doin’?” Eric asked as he climbed up onto the bed.

“I was thinkin’ that Mama was standin’ in the corner makin’ sure that I was asleep, and so I had my eyes closed so that she would think that I was.”

“Do you think that she comes into my room too?” Eric asked.

“Of course she does. You’re the one never go to sleep at his bedtime anyway. She’d have to come look at you.”

“But I never see her.”

“That’s because she only comes in after we’re asleep so that she doesn’t wake you and then she can kiss you good night.”

“Did she kiss you tonight?”

“Not yet. She was still seein’ if I was asleep.”

“Do you ever see her?” Eric asked, his big eyes glittering in the nearly lightless room.

“Only if I open my eyes real quick and I see her white dress and then she’s gone.”

“Why doesn’t she stay and talk to you?” Eric asked.

“Because she doesn’t want to scare us,” Thomas told his brother. “She wants to make sure that we’re okay, but she knows that you’re not supposed to see people after they’re dead.”

Eric took this in and put it away. He often didn’t quite understand the things that Thomas told him, but he knew that his brother understood things that he could not and so he always listened and never made fun of him.

When they went on walks in the woods or down at the beach, Thomas would always find the most beautiful shells and stones. Eric could run faster and do almost everything better than Thomas, but the smaller boy paid closer attention to any space they entered. Often, after a day trip, Eric would come to Thomas’s room and ask him about what he had seen.

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened today,” Eric said, broaching the subject he had come to discuss.

“What?” Thomas asked.

“You know . . . those boys that pushed you.”

Still under the spell of his mother’s watchful gaze, Thomas had to concentrate to remember.

“Oh, yeah. Uh-huh,” he said. “Billy Monzell.”

“You don’t believe what they said, do you?”

Three boys led by Billy—Young William, as Mr. Stroud, the first-grade teacher, called him—had cornered Thomas on the playground and called him nigger and pushed him down. Before Thomas could do anything, Eric had run up and pushed Billy down. Young William got up, but Eric pushed him down again.

“You leave my brother alone,” Billy told all of them. He was the biggest boy in the class, and even the three bullies were afraid to take him on.

“He’s a nigger so he can’t be your brother,” Billy said. “Black and white can’t ever be brothers.”

Eric hit Billy in the mouth, and Dr. Nolan had to come and take him home for the rest of the day.

“No,” Thomas said. “He’s just ignorant. You’re my brother. Mama always said so.”

“Can I stay here in your room?” Eric asked then.

“Uh-uh,” Thomas said, shaking his head in the darkness. “I wanna go to sleep. But I’ll come down and wake you up in the morning.”

Thomas didn’t want to tell him that he was afraid that if they slept in the same bed, Eric might die like their mother did. He had come to believe that he was unlucky for the people he loved.

THE NEXT MORNING
Dr. Nolan kept Thomas home when Eric went off to school.

“There’s something we have to do,” Minas told the black child he regarded as his son.

“What, Dad?” Thomas asked.

The doctor took a deep breath and sighed.

“Your grandmother and father are coming at ten,” he said. “They want you to come live with them.”

“But I don’t wanna.”

“I don’t want it either, Tommy. I told them that you want to be here with me and Eric and Ahn but Madeline says that she and your father are your closest relatives . . . and, well, they are.”

“But I don’t wanna live with Grandma Madeline,” Tommy said again. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Why you makin’ me?”

“I spoke to a man,” Nolan said, his shoulders sagging, his gaze on the floor. “A lawyer. He told me that because your mother and I never married that Madeline and your father have legal guardianship.”

“But why didn’t you get married?”

“I asked her, Tommy. I asked her every month. But she always said no.”

Thomas thought about the lunch he had with his mother and father. Elton had kissed Branwyn on the mouth before they left. At first she seemed to be kissing him back, but then she pushed him away and after that she spent the day crying.

Looking up at Minas Nolan’s sad face, Thomas knew somehow that he was the reason they could not marry. This knowledge was perfectly delineated by the dimness in his eyes.

“That’s okay, Daddy. I know she loved you. She told me so.”

“She did?”

“Uh-huh.”

Dr. Nolan coughed and turned away.

Ahn made tea and hot chocolate and said very little. An hour later the doorbell rang. Madeline Beerman and Elton Trueblood were admitted, and everyone sat together in the downstairs living room drinking coffee and talking.

Thomas perched on the hassock in front of the big chair where Minas Nolan sat.

“Thomas is always welcome to come visit,” the doctor said.

“Maybe after a while,” Madeline replied. “But first he has to get used to livin’ with us.”

“Will you tell Eric where I am?” Thomas asked Nolan.

“Don’t interrupt, Tommy,” Elton told him. “Grown-ups are talkin’.”

“Which one of you will Thomas be staying with?” Minas asked Madeline.

“Where Tommy lives ain’t none of your business, man,” Elton told him. “I should have called the police on you when you took him out of that restaurant. He’s my boy. Maybe I didn’t do right by Brawn, but I intend to be a father to Tommy.”

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Trueblood,” Minas said softly. “I have a son too. But you see, Tommy has lived in this house ever since the day after he came home from the hospital. I know that you’re his father, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel concern.”

“You can be concerned all you want,” Elton said. “But he is my son. Here you talkin’ like you care so much. If you loved them so much how come you a doctor and she died right here undah yo’ roof?”

“She . . . I, I wanted her to go to the hospital,” Dr. Nolan whispered. “I tried to convince her.”

Elton stood up and so did Madeline. Ahn kissed Thomas and whispered, “You remember what I told you about running, running.”

Dr. Nolan knelt down and hugged Thomas hard.

“I love you, Tommy,” he said for the first time that Thomas could remember.

“That’s enough now,” Elton said, and Thomas found himself being dragged from the house and out to a shiny green car that smelled like cigarettes.

They drove for a long time, with Thomas sitting in the backseat and Elton driving.

“You don’t have to be scared, Tommy,” Madeline said. “Elton’s got a nice house too, and he’s your real father.”

“He don’t have nuthin’ to be scared about anyway,” Elton complained. “He’s lucky he got a real father to come and take him. You know, I don’t have to do this. I could leave you up there with those white people. I didn’t have to take you and make you a real home.”

“The boy’s scared, Elton,” Madeline said. “You don’t have to shout like that. He’s used to that house, and he thinks about those people like family.”

“More than me,” Elton agreed. “Here they got their pet niggah grabbin’ me by the shoulder until it almost break, an’ Tommy didn’t even say to let me go. Here I am his real father, and he don’t even say a word when that man was crushin’ my bones. If I seen somebody do
my
father like that, I’d run at him with a two-by-four.”

Thomas didn’t know what a “toobifor” was, but he understood that his father thought that he should have fought with Fontanot. He tried to imagine fighting the giant, but all he could think of was Eric running at him. Then he wondered what Eric would do when he found out that he was gone.

“Do you hear me?” Elton said. “Tommy!”

“What?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“I was thinking,” he said.

“Thinkin’? I’m talkin’ to you.”

“What did you say?”

“Goddamn, the boy is retarded.”

“Don’t say that,” Madeline chided. “He was born sick and couldn’t get enough oxygen. And Branwyn was alone and did the best she could.”

“That’s not my fault,” Elton said in a softer tone.

“An’ it’s not Tommy’s fault either.”

AFTER TAKING MADELINE
to her apartment on Denker, Elton brought Tommy to his rented house on McKinley. It was a small square building with chipped white paint and a flat green roof. There was an elevated porch and a tattered screen door.

Elton carried Tommy’s little suitcase to the door and pulled the screen open.

“Why the hell is the front do’ unlocked?” he yelled into the house as he stomped inside. Tommy ran up to the threshold, hesitated for a moment, and then followed.

The house smelled of foods and cigarettes, something sweet and something else that made Thomas think of water.

They were standing in a sitting room, where there was a TV turned on in front of an empty black couch and a brown recliner. There was a low white coffee table between the couch and the TV, and a carpet underneath it all that was dark purple.

People on the television chattered away and the sun was bright outside, but this room would never be light. Thomas felt his new darkened vision would fit well in this dim, uneven room.

“Hi, Daddy.” A woman came running out wearing pink cotton pants over a black leotard. She had dark skin and wore a blond wig of thick hair that did a flip in the back.

“Ooooo,” the big curvy woman cried. “Is this li’l Tommy?”

“Why the hell was the do’ open for any thief to come in here?” Elton barked.

The smile on the black blonde’s face shriveled, and suddenly Thomas was afraid.

“I opened the goddamned do’ when I heard yo’ rattletrap car comin’ down the street,” she said through curled lips and bared teeth.

“But you wasn’t at the do’,” Elton said. “You was up in the house someplace where any niggah could’a come up in here an’ steal me blind. Shit. I know people go out for a piss an’ come back to find they TV gone.”

“You think there’s some fool out there gonna break his back for that big pile’a shit you call a TV?” The woman was getting louder. Thomas felt the threat in her voice.

“You’idn’t call it no hunk’a shit when I brought it home now did ya? Did ya?” Elton’s voice was also dangerous.

Thomas had trouble understanding what either one of them was saying. Their voices sounded a little like his mother’s though, and he wondered if she was somehow trying to communicate through them.

“I ain’t got nuthin’ t’say,” the woman said.

“You bettah shut up,” Elton agreed. “An’ as long as I’m payin’ the rent you bettah keep that goddamned do’ shut too.”

“Talkin’ ’bout the rent, Mr. Sanders came down lookin’ fo’ the check this mornin’. He said that if he don’t have it by six they gonna kick our ass out.”

Elton balled up fists and raised them to his chest.

Without thinking, Thomas fell to the floor. His heart was racing, and he thought about running out the door before they could close it.

“Look what you doin’, Elton,” the woman said. “You scarin’ the boy.”

“Get up from the flo’, boy,” Elton told his son. “Get up!”

Thomas tried to comply. He wanted to get up before Elton used those big scarred fists on him. But he was so frightened that he couldn’t move.

“Get up!” Elton took a step toward Thomas, and the boy crawled away.

“Get up!” he cried again.

Then he grabbed Thomas by the arm and heaved him into the air. He tried to put him on his feet, but Thomas’s legs turned to rubber every time his toes touched the ground. There were tears coming from his eyes, and his nose was running.

“Dammit,” Elton said, curling his lip in disgust.

He let go of the boy’s arm and Thomas fell with a thump onto the purple rug.

“Elton!” the blond black woman cried. “The boy’s scared.”

She leaned over and picked Thomas up in her arms.

“What’s he got to be scared about? I’m his father. He bettah not be afraid’a me.”

“If you his father then act like it,” she said. “Tell him you happy to have him here. Buy him some ice cream.”

“I’m his father,” Elton said. “He should know I’m happy. Why the hell I take him away from them people ain’t no blood to him if I didn’t love him? Why I’m’a add his mouth to the ones I’m feedin’ if I didn’t want him?”

The woman sucked on a tooth, making a loud crackling sound.

“Don’t you have sumpin’ to do?” she said. “Me an’ Tommy gonna get acquainted.”

With that she carried the small boy back through the door she’d come from. They went down a long hall and into a large kitchen that was painted gray and lit by a bulb shining through green glass.

They heard the front door slam, and Thomas breathed a sigh of relief that his father had gone.

The woman carried Thomas to a wooden chair at a table in the center of the big room. She sat with him nestled in her lap.

Thomas liked her soft warmth and sweet odor. When she put her hand to the side of his cheek, he pressed his head against her palm.

“You a sweet boy, huh?” she said, hugging him closer. “My name is May. I used to know your mother a long time ago, before you were born.”

“I thought Daddy said that you moved away?” Thomas said then, remembering the conversation at the hotel restaurant.

“He did? When did he say that?”

“When we had lunch.”

“You had lunch with him before today?”