Fortunate Son

He climbed up quietly on the bed and stared into his mother’s face. At first he planned just to look at her as she’d told him she’d done when he was asleep in the ICU.

“Didn’t you wake me up?” he asked her.

“No, baby. You needed to sleep to get better and so I just sat there, but I’m sure you knew I was there in your dreams.”

Thomas planned to do the same thing, to sit so close that his mother’s dreams would drink him in. But after a few minutes he worried that maybe she had died. She was so quiet, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

“Mama?”

She opened her eyes and said, “Yes, baby?”

“I know how to answer the story.”

“What story?”

“The one Daddy said.”

“What is it?”

“First you take the rooster to the other side an’ leave him there. Then you come back and get the fox and bring him to the other side. Then you put the rooster back in the boat and take him back and leave him on the first side and you take the corn over to where the fox is. Now the corn and the fox are together but that’s okay, and so you can go back an’ get the rooster.”

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Wa l t e r M o s l e y

“You’re so smart, Thomas. Your father will be very happy.”

“Will you be okay now that I said it?” the boy asked.

“Why you cryin’, honey?”

“Because you’re sick and I don’t want you to die.”

Branwyn sat up. Thomas crawled up close to her and leaned against her slender shoulder.

“Are you scared ’cause I’m goin’ to the hospital?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s only for some tests,” she said. “Will you do what Dr.

Nolan tells you while I’m gone?”

“Yes.”

“And do you know that I will always be with you through rain and shine, thick and thin?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not gonna die, baby. I’m gonna go in there and stay for a day or two and then I’ll be back here and wide awake.”

“But sometimes people die in the hospital,” he insisted.

“Sometimes,” she agreed. “But even when they do they don’t really die.”

“What happens to’em?”

“They just change. They’re still here in the hearts of all the people that loved them. Your grandmother says that she talks to granddaddy every night before she goes to bed. He’s still there for her whenever she gets sad.

“But you don’t have to worry about that. I’m still strong and healthy. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. You know that, right?”

“I guess.”

“Come here and lie down next to me,” she said. “Sleep with me in the bed tonight.”

And Thomas nestled up next to his mother, and they whis-3 8

F o r t u n a t e S o n

pered secrets and little jokes until he finally fell asleep in her arms.

Th e ne xt morn i ng Thomas went to wake up Minas Nolan in his bed.

“Mama won’t wake up,” he told his mother’s lover. “But she said that it’s okay ’cause nobody never dies.”

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3

Ahn set up a cot in Eric’s room for Thomas—not for the sake of Branwyn’s son but for the doctor’s boy. Eric was desolate over the death of the woman who was the only mother he ever knew. He understood that she was sick, but he never thought about her dying. Thomas, on the other hand, thought about death all the time. The dead bugs and small animals that he’d find in the garden fascinated him. And his many months of isolation in the intensive care unit had often been the topic of conversation between him and his mother.

“What would have happened if Dr. Nolan didn’t say for you to take me out of there?” he’d ask.

“Then you would have stayed small and gotten smaller,”

Branwyn told him. “And if you stayed long enough you would have probably died.”

“And then would you come to the cemetery to visit me?”

“Every day for my whole life.”

At night Eric sobbed in his bed, and Thomas would come sit next to him and tell him stories about their mother.

“She was always talking about having a small house near the desert where we could grow watermelons and strawberries,” Thomas said.

“Just you and me and her?” Eric asked.

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F o r t u n a t e S o n

“Uh-huh,” Thomas replied. “And Dr. Nolan too. And maybe Ahn if we were still little.”

“How come you don’t call Daddy ‘Daddy,’ Tommy?”

“Because I have a father, and he’d be sad if I called another man that.”

“Are you gonna go live with your father now that Mama Branwyn’s dead?”

Thomas had never thought of this before. Would they make him go live with the man that taught him the riddle?

He didn’t want to go. And he couldn’t see why they’d make him if he just said that he wanted to stay with his brother and Dr. Nolan and Ahn.

“I sure miss Mama Branwyn,” Eric said.

Thomas put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“She’s not gone away . . . just in her body, she is. But she’s still in the world lookin’ at us and smilin’.”

Th e f une ral was three days later.

By then Eric had recovered from his deep sadness. Thomas sat up with him every night telling him all the things about Branwyn he never knew, or at least never paid attention to.