Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

“Nurse’s aide.”

“Is he dying?”

“They don’t exactly write that on the chart,” she says. “But this is hospice.”

“Nobody leaves hospice, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“How long have you known my father?”

“I just came on shift,” she says, then begins reading the note in a clipped, mechanical voice. “ ‘I know I haven’t given you much, Randall. I haven’t always had much to give. It’s funny. All the things I have to say to you are all the things you already know. I have some things to transfer to you. You may find them useful. The doc says—’ ”

“Put him on,” Nonc tells her.

“It may take some getting used to,” she says. “But he’s lost the ability to speak.”

“Please,” he says. “Hand him the phone.”

When Nonc hears the wheeze and click, he says, “Here’s your grandson,” and hands the phone to Geronimo. “It’s your grandpa,” he tells the boy, but the boy just sits there, the blue buttons of the keypad casting a glow on his cheek. He doesn’t even say eyeball. Grandpa is a word, Nonc realizes, that the boy has probably never heard. Nonc whispers, “It’s Grover.”

“Grow grow?” the boy asks. “Grow grow?” Then he starts mumbling his way through the entire Grover ABC song. His eyes stare blankly into space as he singsongs, and it occurs to Nonc that the boy may never have seen the Sesame Street characters, just heard their voices on that one endless CD.

After a while, Nonc takes the phone back. “You got to talk to your grandson — that’s not too shabby, huh? Not every grandpa gets that. Look, Dad, you should know there are no grudges here. There’s no blame in me. I want you to tell yourself you did your best — then let things go. When the time comes, don’t be looking over your shoulder, okay?”

Nonc closes the phone and pulls the cargo door shut. Then he kicks his leg out from under the sheet and leaves it exposed to lure mosquitoes away from his son, and before the timer on the dome light has extinguished the glow, Geronimo is snoring his baby-fat snore, and they are out.

—

The next morning is a blur of Brown know-how. After saddling up some sippy cups and sandwiches, they swing east through Welsh, Iowa, Lacassine, where the newly emptied hog lots speak of the sausage plant’s return to glory. There is a shipment at Chennault airport, then they turn toward Calcasieu Parish jail, passing the equipment dealers and the boys’ home, and finally turning off where the bail bond trailers line the road.

The Calcasieu jail is operating at triple capacity with all the prisoners from New Orleans, and in the parking lot, the evacuated families of evacuated prisoners have set up camp outside the perimeter fence, which is serving as a temporary visitation room. In the bare sun, a line of parents and wives lock fingers in the fencing, while on the other side, under guard, the inmates keep their distance and do what inmates always seem to do: affirm and reassure, make the future seem doable. Prisoner, visitor and officer alike are surviving off Red Cross kits, so everyone has the same Scope breath, the same hotel soap smell, the same ring of aluminum around their armpits. Nonc has delivered everything from video games to wedding tuxedos to this jail, but today, as he wheels a hand truck around folks strewn on the sidewalk, he brings quick cuffs, stab vests, and a box from a company called SlamTec.

Waiting in line for security, Nonc leans against those boxes and checks out an inmate tracking station the jail has set up. For the hell of it, maybe — he can’t put it into words — he walks up and says he needs to see Marnie Broussard, that he’s her brother, Dallas. The guard fingers through stacks of tracking sheets, makes a call on the radio. “If they’ve got her,” she says, “they’ll bring her out.” Nonc finishes his delivery, buys a soda, then waits in the van with Geronimo, reading the newspaper while that one CD loops. There is an article about the lady who threw her kids off the bridge. It says there’s no record of the kids, no birth certificates or anything; she probably had them at home, in the projects, then never took them to school or even a doctor. The weird thing is that she claims not to remember their names. For the life of her, she just can’t come up with them. Nonc wonders if that’s possible, that there can be no record somebody ever existed. Maybe if your life is screwed up enough, maybe if you’re living way out on the edge.

Finally, through the windshield, he sees Marnie led out, hands up against the bright light. All kinds of people have been shuffling around in different-colored jumpsuits, but when he sees her in one, it’s a shocker.

“Lo and behold,” Nonc tells his son, then steps down from the van and crosses the lot.

When Nonc, too, clasps the fence, Marnie shakes her head at the sight of him. “I should have known,” she says. “My brother would never come see me.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Nonc asks. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“How’s my boy?” she asks.

“He’s fine,” Nonc says. “So, what happened to you?”

“This is all a mistake, this is going to get cleared up.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, I said it’s a mistake.”

“Did you try to scam FEMA or something?”

Marnie holds up a hand. “Hey, step off. You know what it’s like in here? Half of New Orleans is in here. There’s no showers, I’m sleeping on a cafeteria table. Men and women are together in here, Randall, fags and rapists. They sent our asses to Jena State Medium for a while.” She stares at him to let that sink in. “There were some freaky bitches out there.”

Beside them, a convict father is trying to reassure his wife and daughter, who, Nonc realizes, are listening with great trepidation to Marnie.

“What is happening?” Nonc asks.

“Look,” Marnie says. “I was with this guy, and I didn’t know what he was into. And they caught me up in that. I’d be out right now except for the backlog, there’s like a thousand cases before me. I haven’t even been arraigned.”

“Arraigned for what?”

“I told you, nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m here every day, Marnie. You could have let me know. I could have used your help.”

“You’re doing fine, and I’ll be out before you know it. He’s a good kid, no instructions necessary.”

“Oh, yeah,” Nonc says. “Tell me what bway means.”

She laughs. “Are you serious? What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea.”

“It’s the magic word, Randall. Bway is please .”

“The boy says eyeball —what’s that mean?” Nonc asks.

“He says eyeball ?” she asks. “Why would he say that?”

Nonc shakes his head. “What about the initials M-O ?”

“Jesus, Randall, are you shitting me? Try reading to him. I left a book called Elmo’s Big Vacation .”

“He said the word narc .”

“You better fucking believe it,” she says.

Nonc can feel a vibration in the cyclone fence. He turns and looks past the hands of other visitors. In the distance, a team of trusties is using a backhoe to straighten sections of the fence leaned over from Rita.

Nonc asks, “You think it’s best for him to see you like this?”

“He’s here? You got my boy and you been keeping him from me?”

“I’ve got some questions, Marnie, and I got to know the answers.”

“Don’t be a prick,” she says. “Where is he?”

Nonc just stares at her.

“You’re a prick,” Marnie says. “The only thing I did wrong was let Allen use my phone. That’s it, I swear. He was into some shit, and I didn’t know about it.” She keeps trying to put her hands in her pockets, but she doesn’t have any pockets.