Fortunate Son

“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.

5 5

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

“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?”

5 6

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

“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.”

A f te r tak i ng M ade l i ne 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 thresh-old, 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.

5 7

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

“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.”