Fortunate Son

Pedro spent the next two hours hauling cinder blocks out of the apartment building to the lonely corner where Alicia (Thomas had already named her) lay. Together the boys lined four of the cement bricks down either side of her small and slender body, then placed one at her head and another at her feet. Then they bridged more blocks over her. When they were done, they had constructed a long cement-colored pyramid over the dead girl.

“May you go to heaven and meet your maker,” Thomas 1 4 9

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said, paraphrasing words he’d heard his grandmother saying about her friends that died.

“Amen,” Pedro chimed. “Man, I’m tired after all that. You think you could get me a peanut butter sandwich?”

Later that day Thomas covered the coffin with leaves and branches so that nobody would see it. He put a small crate near the mound so that he could sit next to Alicia’s makeshift tomb and talk to her. At these times his mother’s voice would come to him, and they would all talk about living and dying.

Thomas doubled his efforts at cleaning up the alley because he didn’t want Alicia’s graveyard to be littered. This was a lot of work because many of the neighbors threw cans and bags of garbage over the fence. For them it was their private junk-yard, not a holy place meant to house the dead.

Whenever Thomas filled up a trash bag with garbage, he’d climb up into his “church tree” and drop the bag into their open Dumpster.

Ag e s s i x , seve n, and eight were good for Thomas, but nine was not so great.

The first thing that happened came out of a conversation he’d had with Pedro. They’d been talking about how Pedro’s family hated him. And he hated them too. Thomas said that he loved his family. He started talking about his mother, and then about Eric and Ahn and Dr. Nolan. He told Pedro how much he missed them.

“Why don’t you call’em?” the bright-eyed boy suggested.

“You know his name is Nolan and that he’s a doctor and he lives in Beverly Hills. All you got to do is call information.”

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Thomas tried this when May was out one weekday morning.

He got the number and scrawled it on an unopened gas bill.

After many nervous moments, he decided to call.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said cautiously.

“Ahn?” Thomas said, his heart quailing.

“Who this?”

“It’s Tommy.”

Silence.

“It’s Tommy, Ahn. Don’t you remember me?”

“What do you want?” she asked in a slow, metered voice.

Thomas didn’t know what to say. He wanted so much: his mother back alive, his brother living on the floor below, the elementary school where he knew everybody from kindergarten and where the sun wasn’t too bright. He wanted to sit with Dr. Nolan and talk about the heart and blood vessels and muscle and blood. Thomas wanted his room back and the floor where he learned to be quiet and to feel the world become one with him.

“Don’t call here anymore, Tommy,” Ahn said. “It’s not good for you. You stay where you are and things are better.”

Then she hung up.

Thomas cried for the first time since he could remember.

He had dreamed for years about being reunited with Eric and Ahn, but now all of that was over. They didn’t want him even to call. He blubbered there on the couch next to the pink phone. He was crying when May came home.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

“They don’t love me,” the boy cried. “They told me not to call.”

May thought that he was talking about some friends at school. She took him in her arms and assured him that she 1 5 1

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and Elton loved him very much. And so did Madeline and lots of other people too.

But Thomas would not be consoled. He had lost something that day that could never be replaced. He was sorry that he’d called. At least if he hadn’t he never would have known the truth.

A h n was al s o desolate over Thomas’s call. She sat in her small room, at the back of the big empty house, wringing the blood-spattered T-shirt that she’d kept from childhood. She didn’t want to hurt Thomas — she loved the little boy — but by now she was certain that Eric was cursed. He was a danger to anyone who threatened him or loved him. Thomas was safer where he was.

Th re e days a f te r the phone call to the Nolan household, Elton came home in the middle of the day. May and Thomas were sitting in the kitchen.

“May!” Elton yelled.

They could tell by the way he slammed the door that he was in a bad mood. His father’s heavy footfalls down the hall brought Thomas to his feet. If he’d had a moment more, the boy would have ducked into the back porch.

“What the hell are you doing here, Lucky?” Elton said when he came in.

“He’s sick, Elton,” May said, thinking quickly. “They send him home.”

“Huh. That’s me too. They send me home too. Said I cracked the block on that fool’s Cadillac. I’idn’t do shit, but 1 5 2

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