Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

Nonc and Marnie didn’t date but two months, though he remembers clearly a gaze she’d sometimes get that he thought spoke of possibility. She gets that look now, only it’s obvious that she wasn’t looking toward the future but away from the past.

“Look, they think I was the person who delivered the stuff. Like I got all night to be driving eight balls of speed around. I’ve got a kid. I got responsibilities. I never even touched an eight ball.” Marnie covers her eyes as if to shield herself from some great absurdity. “Jesus Christ, Allen is so stupid. I should have stuck with you,” she says, and then laughs a miserable, self-reproaching laugh that says that would be the only way to make her life more wretched.

Nonc thinks of James B. and the way he shook. Of the way James B. couldn’t believe God would make a liquor store glow.

“I got a question,” Nonc says. “And no games, okay? Is Geronimo his real name?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m asking what’s the boy’s birth name?”

“Are you kidding?” she asks. “You named him.”

“I never saw a certificate or anything.”

“Where do you come up with this shit?”

“I was just thinking about that woman,” he tells Marnie. “You know, the one who threw her kids off the bridge. She’s probably in here. Hell, you probably know her.”

“Oh my God,” Marnie says, laughing away pain. “You fucking prick.”

“What?”

“I can’t believe you. You asshole. I love that boy more than you will ever know.”

“What’d I say?”

“I know what you’re getting at, and you’re a prick for it. Just go ahead and say it. Say what you’re thinking.”

Nonc backs away. He backs toward the van, where he takes up the boy, strokes his hair. Nonc puts the drawing of the macaw in his hand, says, “Give this to Mama.” They start to walk across the lot, but before long, the boy breaks into a run. Nonc holds up, keeps his distance. He watches his boy clasp the fence. He can see Marnie start crying, wiping the tears with shaky fingers. It’s a pure thing, it’s anguish. It’s not a woman who thinks she’s seeing her boy in a week, it’s the opposite of that, and it’s suddenly clear to Nonc that he’s going to have that boy a long time.

—

Chuck E. Cheese is filled with body odor and booth campers, yet there’s no place else to go. The little light inside Geronimo is dim, so Nonc puts him on all the rides, making a slow loop of the playroom. The ghostly thing, the thing Nonc can’t get out of his head as he drops token after token into the hoppers, is that he doesn’t know who put the boy in his van. It didn’t really sink in until he was driving away from the jail, but the thought of a stranger’s hands, it makes the pizza burn in his stomach.

Nonc kneels down to Geronimo — perfect cheeks, wide-set teeth, eyes bayou black — going like one mile an hour on a chuck-wagon ride. “Who brought you to me?” he asks the boy.

Nonc lifts his hand and passes it through the boy’s gaze, but Geronimo will not track it. It’s as if by not focusing, he doesn’t see the place where his mother constantly isn’t. Nonc touches the child on the earlobe, looks in his eyes. If the kid would just cry, Nonc would know what to do. When a kid cries, you give him an affectionate shake and then swat him on the butt.

Nonc pours some tokens into the ride, then calls Relle. When she answers, he says, “Are you serious about this outfitter thing, about making that work? Because I need to know — no bullshit.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Did something happen?”

“Tell me this lodge thing is for real, tell me that’s going to happen. Raising my son in the back of a van, this has got to end.”

“Of course it can happen, if you want it to. You’ve seen the geese out there. It’s ducks galore. We get a vehicle, then we turn the kennel into a lodge, and the next thing you know, we have a chef and a sauna. Before you know it, people are coming for their honeymoons.”

“I can get a four-by-four, but if this is some move of yours—”

“People are sending their deposits,” she says. “And when have I not been on your side? I’m the only one in the world on your side.”

Nonc watches Geronimo for a moment, slowly spinning in a teacup. “No more talk of DNA tests, okay? He’s my son, that’s final. And I don’t want to hear about Marnie ever again.”

“You’re right,” Relle says, “I shouldn’t have done that test. That kid’s your blood, it’s obvious. The thing about blood is that your kid’s always going to be yours, no matter what happens to you, no matter where you go.”

“That’s more like it,” Nonc says. “I’m going to make a call, and you need to pack.”

“What about the boy?”

“From now on, we do everything right.”

Nonc wipes his face with water from a red plastic cup. He puts his wet hand on the shoulder of the boy, then dials California. When his father answers, Nonc says, “Get somebody. We need to talk.”

In a minute, an orderly is on the phone. “ Hola, ” he says. “Enrique aquí .”

“Enrique,” Nonc says. “Can you help me talk to my father?”

“Hey,” Enrique answers. “You the guy who had his girlfriend call? Because I heard about that. That business is cold-blooded.”

“That was somebody else,” Nonc says.

“Good, good,” Enrique says, “ ’cause your old man cracks me up. My dad, he was one crusty hombre, you know. Your dad reminds me of him.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s dead,” Enrique says.

“He’s dead?”

“Yeah, died last year. Wait, are you talking about my dad or yours? I thought you were asking about my old man.”

“You fucking with me?” Nonc asks.

Enrique doesn’t answer. Nonc hears him call out, “It’s your boy, he wants to know how you doing.” Then he tells Nonc, “We gotta wait while he types.”

“What’s he got, a laptop?”

“The hospice ward is Wi-Fi,” Enrique says. “On the computer he can talk, you know.” Then he reads slowly as Harlan types: “ ‘Saw the hurricane on the TV. All okay?’ ”

Nonc’s not sure who all is supposed to be, but he says, “Yeah, tell him a lot of folks are missing, but we made it through.”

Enrique repeats this, then reads again. “ ‘Very hard on a boy. I was six when Audrey struck. They said that’s what stunted my growth. That year after Audrey.’ ”

Nonc’s heard all the old-timers talk about Audrey, the storm surge pushing in twenty miles, right to the ballsack of Lake Charles, how there was no warning, how the alligators slept under the trees, waiting for the bodies to rot out of the branches. But Harlan has never mentioned it.

“ ‘If I’d have stayed in Lake Charles,’ ” Enrique reads, “ ‘the storm would have taken me. That’s where I should have been. That’s how a Cajun’s supposed to go.’ ”

“Tell him I got his package,” Nonc says.

Enrique passes this along, then responds, “ ‘The numbers in my wallet are Internet poker accounts — that’s my bank. No taxes, no traces. Wire cash in, wire it out.’ ”

“Ask him,” Nonc says, “does he have a four-by-four?”

“Hey,” Enrique says, “how about some small talk. You guys are acting like next of kin instead of family.”

“What’s his answer? Does he?”

Enrique asks, then reads the response, “ ‘What’d you name the boy?’ ”

“Geronimo,” Nonc says.

“You named your kid Geronimo? That’s fierce. You’re going to have a fierce kid. Names are destiny that way. My real name is Maximillian.”

Nonc says, “Ask him is it an SUV or pickup, you know, what’s the mileage?”