Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

“I can’t speak for your boyfriend,” Nonc says, “but maybe he’s thinking, thanks for the hand, but he’s on top of it. Maybe he doesn’t need any help right now.”

Even though it’s anonymous, everyone turns to look at Nonc. He can read their minds— Dude, they’re thinking, take the help.

Astonished, Relle says, “You saying my boyfriend doesn’t want my hand?”

“Take the hand,” James B. calls out. He looks up. “Lord, help him take that hand.” It’s clear the man is imploring the Creator Himself, and it puts weird gravity in the room.

Nonc says, “I’m just saying maybe your boyfriend’s doing okay. He’s surviving, right? He’s putting one foot in front of the other, he’s making it.”

Linda Tasso chimes in with a “One day at a time.”

“Maybe that’s what my boyfriend thinks,” Relle says. “But he’s stuck, and going nowhere is going backward. I’m making plans, you know. I’m trying to bring him with me.”

“What makes you think you know what’s best for him?”

“Because he’s in my heart,” Relle says. “And because I know him better than he knows himself.”

Wearily, people turn to look at Nonc. They’ve had about enough of tonight’s episode of the Cherelle Show, but Nonc doesn’t care. “If this guy’s in your heart,” he says, “then so are all his mistakes, you know — so is his kid.”

Relle leans forward in her chair. “I am making you,” she says. She looks into Nonc’s eyes. “Nobody ever made you, no one ever cared enough. Take my hand, let me make you.”

That’s when James B. points toward the rafters. “The roof is weak,” he says, and everybody looks up. “Lord, let it be weak, let me find where.”

There is a silence, and James B. stands. He really doesn’t look very good.

“I used to plot out every single drink,” he says. “I used to plot the liquor store, now you got to plot away from it, from the glow of it. Why would the Lord make a liquor store glow? Now you got to plot out a folding chair, a cup of coffee.” He looks at his coffee like he’s never seen coffee. “You got to plot a toilet, a bus, a single slice of pizza. Take the dogs off the chain.”

Nervously, Jim Arceneaux says, “Okay, I think we’ve all been where James has been.”

“Seize the knife from that table, you will need it,” James B. says, and he’s talking like a man from a Bible story, like he’s one of the guys spelled out in the stained glass above.

Jim Arceneaux stands. Fake-laughing, he says, “Hey, no knives, please.” He looks at Bill Maque like he should stand, too. “James B., we can hear your hurt,” Jim says. He has a Bible. He opens his arms. “Would you like some personal fellowship?”

“Prepare for the dark,” James B. says. “The water’s at your feet, your knees, ribs. All day long I used to breathe for a drink. Close my eyes, and I’d still see the glow — Budweiser blue, Coors yellow. Take your knife to the ceiling, plot your way through the attic. Beware that insulation floats. A bottle you hid long ago. Take the dogs please take my dogs off the chain. In that small space, insulation will swarm you. You got to plot the roof. Please let it be weak. Cut till you see the glow, in the dark water look for the glowing. Make yourself small, scrape through. Lord unhook the chain off the porch or else they do drown.”

—

After the break, Nonc has Cherelle’s legs high, and he’s inside her. The van smells of baby wipes and crawfish. From the chapel comes the sound of scales on the organ. The notes are aimless and mechanical, someone trying and trying to do better. Relle’s thing is that she looks right at you when you’re doing it, she never unlocks her eyes. It’s kind of unnerving, but Relle says she can’t help it, and she reminds Nonc that she comes every time. She reminds him how well their bodies fit, the fold of his arms around her shoulders, the way her legs figure-four his waist. Sometimes, though, Nonc gets the distinct feeling she’s trying not to come, like she doesn’t want to let go of something. Maybe it’s more like she’s trying to delay it, be in control of it as long as she can. Nonc can feel her fight what’s building, and when she finally gives in, when she lets herself be swept, that’s when she closes her eyes.

The result is that, with her glaring at him, Nonc tends to close his own eyes, and that puts him in his own world. Then it’s easy for his mind to wander. It’s easy to start thinking about James B. and what happened to those people in New Orleans. He’d been imagining Marnie freeloading a ride to town to drop off Geronimo in some kind of vacation from parenting. But it’s clear some shit went down in N.O. to Marnie, to the boy.

Relle reaches down, grabs his hips and stops him. Sometimes, when she’s in a bad mood, she’ll stop him and make him put on a condom right in the middle. But she doesn’t seem mad.

“You heard what I said in there, right?” she asks. “I’m trying to put myself in your heart.”

“You’re already there.”

“Then I need you to act,” she says. “Act that way.”

“Okay, I’ll go to Beaumont — I’ll go see if it’s her.”

Relle reaches into her bag. “It’s not her. I called after lunch. Turns out it was some other dead girl.” She pulls out a powder-blue debit card from FEMA. “I’m acting,” she says. “I’m making a future for us. The thing is, as decisions need to be made, as options materialize, I need to know you’re with me.”

Nonc’s seen a thousand of these cards, all the evacuees have them. The trouble is they don’t help you survive, because there’s nothing for sale — the only thing they’ll buy is your way out of Louisiana. “Where’d you get this?” he asks.

“There’s five grand on it,” she says. “It’s a small-business grant. They’re giving ’em away.”

“Small business?”

Relle reaches into her bag and pulls out a brochure for “Nonc’s Outfitters.” On it are images of bird dogs and ducks, along with a scan of Nonc’s high school photo and a Google map on the back to some property her father owns to the south. “Not bad, huh?” she asks. “I made it on the computer at work. All those hunting dogs and shit? I pulled those pictures off the NRA website. We spend the money on a four-by-four, and there you have it, there’s our business. Maybe we’ll build a hunting lodge someday. Or whatever, we can spend the money on whatever.”

Nonc could remind her that he doesn’t know anything about duck hunting, and neither does she. He could mention that her father raised greyhounds, not bloodhounds, that this is technically a crime, that his wages are already garnished. But it’s his picture he can’t stop thinking about. In it, his smile is a mix of optimism and relief, as if now that high school is over, the hard part is done. It’s the sucker’s look that people had on their faces when they got off the buses from Katrina, when they didn’t know Rita was on the way.

“At the Visitors’ Center,” Relle says, “I get all these calls looking for hunting guides. I’m supposed to take turns recommending the guys on the list. And then it hits me. The answer is right there.”

“This kind of shit doesn’t bother you?” he asks.

“What?” Relle asks. “The hunters are stockbrokers and shit. We just drive them out there. They’ve got fancy rifles and gold-plated whistles.”

“Shotguns,” Nonc tells her. “You hunt birds with shotguns. And you know what I’m talking about.”

“You wanna know what bothers me?” she asks. “I’m bothered by living with crazy people for my room and board. I’m bothered by having to go to A.A. to get a date with you.”

He looks at the map to the property Relle’s father owns. The guy used to run a racing kennel there. The whole thing was a fiasco, and everybody knows, though nobody will say, that there are dogs buried everywhere. Whenever Nonc feels bad about having his loser dad skip town, he just thinks of Relle and what it’s like to have him stay. The truth is that Relle’s not about schemes and money but about wiping her slate. For someone who grew up the way she did, Relle’s the best possible version of herself.