Fortunate Son

“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.”

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“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 5 2

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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.

Th e ne xt morn i ng 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.”

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“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.

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“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.