Fortunate Son

Eric was jubilant. He broke glasses and windows, the dog’s leg, and three bed frames just being a “force of nature,” as Branwyn said. Meanwhile, Thomas made his way quietly through the large house, watching his foster brother and other wild things, like insects and birds and trees.

Thomas didn’t cry much, and he always stood aside when Eric came hollering for Branwyn. He got colds very often, and even the least exertion made him tired. Eric pushed him sometimes but that was unusual. As a rule the big son of Minas Nolan showed kindness to only Branwyn and Tommy.

It wasn’t that he was mean to his father or others but merely that he took them for granted. People were always bringing him gifts and complimenting his size and handsome features.

He learned things easily and dominated other children on the playground and later at school.

Thomas loved his brother and mother. He was also very fond of Ahn, who often sat with him when he was sick, and Minas Nolan, who liked to read to him from the red books on the top shelf in the third-floor library.

Eric had scores of cousins, four grandparents, and more uncles and aunts than either he or Thomas could count. At 2 2

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least one of these relations brought Eric presents every week.

They never gave Thomas anything, nor did they pay much notice to the little black boy.

He didn’t seem to care though. He’d spend hours wandering through the flower garden finding rocks and sticks that he’d bring to his mother. There in her room, they would make up stories about what kind of treasure he’d found.

Afterward, when Eric’s family had gone, the robust blond child would ask Thomas about what he and Branwyn had done. He’d sit on his tanned haunches listening to the soft words that Tommy used to tell about his adventures with pebbles and twigs.

Every now and then Branwyn’s mother, Madeline, would come over for lunch, usually when the doctor was away.

“Does that man ever intend to make a honest woman outta you?” Madeline would say to her daughter, and before Branwyn could answer, “Not that I think you should marry a man like that. A man that takes a woman to his bed not even six months after his wife has died an’ gone to heaven. But here you are so far away from family an’ friends, an’ they treatin’ your son like he was a servant’s child. And you do so much for him, and then he makes you work at that flower shop. That’s not right, Branwyn. You shouldn’t put up with it. Either he should marry you or at least put something away for your future an’ your boy’s future. Here he have you all to himself so that you can’t meet no eligible man, an’ he ain’t doin’ nuthin’ for you either.”

The first few times her mother said these things, and more, Branwyn tried to argue. She didn’t want to marry Minas.

They had different lives, and there was no need. He was a kind man, and no matter what his family felt, she and Tommy were always at the table for dinner and he never went anywhere without asking her and her son to come along.

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“I want to work and to make my own money,” Branwyn said. “And Tommy’s special. He needs a lot of attention. His growth was so slow after that long time in the hospital. I can’t ask Minas to be responsible for another man’s child.”

But Madeline never seemed to care. In her eyes the doctor was taking advantage of her through her daughter.

“White people like that,” Madeline would say, “just like that arrogant boy that’s got Tommy runnin’ after him like some kinda slave.”

“The boys love each other, Mama,” Branwyn would argue.

“That white boy just run roughshod over Tommy, an’ you cain’t even see it,” her mother retorted. “He treatin’ Tommy like his property, his slave.”

This last word was Madeline’s worst curse. She would take Thomas in her lap and call him “poor baby” and tell him that he could come live with her whenever he wanted.

Thomas would look up at his grandmother and smell her sweet rose scent. He loved her, but he didn’t want to leave his mother. And he didn’t understand why she was always so angry. He would bring her green pebbles and seed-heavy branches that he sculpted to look like snakes. But this just seemed to upset Madeline more.

“Here he livin’ in Beverly Hills an’ all he got is sticks for toys,” the Mississippi-born Madeline would cry.

And what could Branwyn say? Any toys that she or Minas bought for Tommy wound up in Eric’s room. Whenever the blond Adonis would want to play with Tommy’s trucks or handheld electronic games, Tommy always handed them over, and after a while both he and Eric forgot who the original owner was.

One day Minas went into Eric’s room and gathered up all of Tommy’s toys and put them into a box. Eric bellowed and 2 4

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