Fortunate Son

“When you put it like that,” Minas said, “it doesn’t seem fair. You’d think that the law would protect young people.”

“But it don’t, doesn’t,” Thomas said, correcting his street language with the way he’d learned to speak in Minas’s house years before. “All the kids I knew were in trouble or makin’

trouble. And when I was livin’ on the street, the cops was the last people you wanted to see.”

“How did you manage to survive living like that?” Minas asked.

Thomas could see by the way the doctor winced that he was afraid of the answer.

“It was pretty much always the same,” Thomas said. “You needed food and shelter mostly, and money to buy stuff like toothpaste or Band-Aids. You’d stay in one place as long as you could, but you had other places in mind in case the cops or somebody moved you out. But once you had what you needed, then you could read a book or talk to somebody or think. I liked to think.”

“What would you think about?” Minas asked.

“You an’ Ahn an’ Eric,” Thomas said, “and my mother. I used to have a blank book and I’d write in that. I wrote mostly about nice things that people did for me and sometimes about why people was so mean. One man once told me 2 8 4

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that he thought that people were mean to the homeless because we were so poor. He said that people hate poor people in America . . . Oh, oh, yeah.”

“What?” Minas asked.

“I just remembered what I wanted to tell Eric when I got shot.”

“What’s that?”

“I was lookin’ at a book that had the word America written down on it. And I was lookin’ at it, and then I saw that E-R-I-C was right in the middle of it. Eric was in the middle of America.”

Minas put down his drink and lowered his head, pondering the words from his stepson.

“You want to go to the Rib Joint for dinner?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

I n th e past six years Thomas had shambled past the restaurant from time to time. Fontanot had bought the buildings on either side of the original eatery and added a second floor to the primary structure — you could smell barbecue smoking for three blocks in any direction. But Thomas never went in to say hello. The place was too big, and he doubted that his mother’s tall friend would remember him. And even if Fontanot did remember, Thomas knew that no one would let him just walk in. People dressed for street living were blocked from entering any place fancy, like restaurants or department stores.

Fontanot knew Thomas at first sight. He folded the young man in his arms and kissed his cheek.

“Boy, you are a sight for sore eyes,” he bellowed. “Look just like your mother. You sure do.”

They crowded into the kitchen and ate catfish and 2 8 5

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sausages. Thomas couldn’t eat too much, but he was happy at the loud entrepreneur’s special table.

Ira had married a big Texan girl named Coretta.

“Got some meat on her bones,” he told the doctor and his son. “But she ain’t fat. No, no — just bullheaded. When she told me she wanted to live together, I said that I wasn’t ready for that, so the next night when I got home she had all her stuff already moved in. I tried to th’ow her out an’ she rassled me to the floor. I couldn’t break her grip ’cause I was laughin’ so hard. Now, you know if a girl gonna make you laugh like that then it’s all ovah. We got married in Vegas the next weekend.”

Thomas didn’t remember ever feeling so happy or so safe as he did in Fontanot’s kitchen.

“Mr. Fontanot?” Thomas said after many stories.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you might have a job here that I could do? I have washed dishes for men’s shelters before, and I know how to clean up.”

“I could use a good man on my smokers,” the big man said. “You know, I only put men I could trust out in the backyard.”

“You can trust me.”

“Then you can start tomorrow.”

That n i g h t Th omas was sitting on his old bed (Eric had moved back to his original bedroom) thinking about working for Fontanot. At the Rib Joint he felt that he could make a new life and maybe things would be all right. He’d have a job, and no one was looking to put him back in jail; he could get a license to drive and maybe even get a used car. That way 2 8 6

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he’d have an ID with a picture and an address. And then he could take a train back East and visit Clea at NYU when Fontanot gave him vacation. Maybe even Monique’s husband would shake his hand and smile.

The knocking at his door was very soft.

“Come in,” he said, knowing that it was Ahn.

The nanny-turned-housekeeper had on a boy’s blue jeans and T-shirt. She also wore round wire-rimmed spectacles.

Thomas glanced at the hem of the T-shirt to see if there were old bloodstains there, but all he saw was bright white cotton.

“Hello, Tommy,” she said, leaning forward slightly with just a hint of a bow.

Tommy moved toward the end of the bed, and she sat next to him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m going to work for Mr. Fontanot. I’m gonna be a rib smoker.”