Fortunate Son

The boat is so small that the man can only carry one with him across the river at a time. But if he takes the corn, the fox will eat the rooster, and if he takes the fox, the rooster will eat the corn.”

“Then he should take the rooster ’cause the fox won’t eat corn,” Thomas said with a smile.

“Then what?” Elton asked.

“Then he could come back for the . . . the fox.”

“But if he leaves the fox on the other side when he goes back to get the corn, the fox will eat the rooster,” Elton said with a sly smile.

Watching his father’s smile, Thomas forgot the riddle. This was his father he was looking at. His father like Dr. Nolan was Eric’s father. He had the same black skin that Thomas had and the same kinky hair.

“Stop bothering him, Elton,” Branwyn said, feeling that Thomas was confused by being cross-examined like some criminal.

“I’m just doin’ what a father’s s’posed t’be doin’, Brawn,”

Elton said. “Helpin’ him to understand how hard the world is to see sometimes. Is he a li’l slow in school?”

“No.”

“I mean, it’s just a child’s riddle really,” Elton continued.

“Just a trick.”

He looked at Thomas hopefully, but the small boy only stared at him, the foxes and chickens and grain gone from his head. He was wondering if Elton would come live with them in Dr. Nolan’s big house.

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After lunch Branwyn went back to the flower shop and cried. She sat on a stool at the back of the big orchid refrigerator. Thomas stood next to her and held her hand.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“I’m just happy, baby,” she said, choking on every other word.

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Sometimes people cry when they’re happy.”

“What made you so happy?”

“Seeing you and your father together at the same table, talking and telling each other things.”

“Uh-huh.”

Branwyn turned to her son and looked into his eyes.

“Would you want to live with your father if you had the chance?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Would he come an’ stay at our house?”

“No. We’d have to move away from Minas and Eric.”

“Could Eric come live with us?”

“No. He’d have to stay with his own father.”

Thomas thought and thought, standing there in the refrigerated room. He thought about his new father and his brother, Eric. He thought about his mother crying and wished that she didn’t have to be so happy.

“Maybe Daddy could come and visit sometimes,” he said at last. “And then I could still go to school with Eric and read with Dr. Nolan.”

A f ew we e k s after Thomas had broken the greenhouse window, Eric came down with the flu. It was a bad flu, and he had a fever of 105. Minas was worried, and Ahn kept boil-ing eucalyptus leaves and bringing the steaming pots into the 3 5

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

boy’s room. Eric was shivering and crying all through the night. He was in pain, and only Branwyn’s company would calm him. She sat up with him for most of three days. At the end of that time, Eric was laughing and playing and Branwyn was very tired, and so she went to bed.

The next afternoon, when Thomas and Eric got home from first grade, Thomas went to his mother’s room and found her still in bed.

“You tired, Mama?” Thomas asked.

“Very much, baby. I sat up so long with Eric, and now all I want is to sleep.”

Thomas and Eric spent many hours at her side that afternoon and evening, both of them trying to make her laugh.

She kept her eyes open as long as she could, but more and more she just slept. Minas wanted her to go to the hospital, but she refused.

“Hospital is just a death sentence,” she told him. “All I need is rest.”

On the third day Branwyn was not better. Eric heard his father tell Ahn that Branwyn had agreed to go to the hospital in the morning.

The blond tank rumbled up to his brother’s room and said,

“They’re taking Mama Branwyn to the hospital in the morning. We should pick flowers for her so her room’ll be pretty.”

“The hospital?” Thomas said.

Thomas hated the hospital. He’d been there half a dozen times that he could remember. Twice for pneumonia that had developed after he’d come down with chest colds, twice for broken bones, once for a cut when he fell down on a broken bottle, and one time when he fainted in school for no apparent reason. Every time he went they gave him shots, and twice he’d had to spend the night. He knew that people 3 6

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sometimes died in the hospital, and so when he went to bed later that night, he couldn’t go to sleep. He sat up remembering the stories of how his mother came every day and they looked at each other through the glass bubble. He believed that she had saved him by being there, and he wondered who would be there for her if he was at school.

Thomas went to her room after midnight. Branwyn stayed in her own bedroom when she was sick. She needed everything quiet and “no man kicking around in the bed.”