Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

Nonc’s just kind of sitting there, staring at the phone, when Relle walks into the bar. She always wears these sexy tracksuits — satiny, falling across her body — that she sews herself.

“Who you talking to?” she asks.

“It’s my old man,” he tells her.

Startled, she says, “I thought he was dying.”

Nonc shrugs.

“Did you call him, or did he call you?” she asks, but she can see the answer on his face. “What did you tell him?”

“I don’t know. What’s there to say?”

“What’s there to say? You hardly shut up about him.”

“Me? You’re the one who always brings him up. You never even met him.”

“I don’t need to meet him.” She reaches for the phone. “I know all about him.”

Nonc knows he shouldn’t hand it over — in Relle, there is a cold, truthful streak — but he does.

Just to be sure, she asks Nonc, “You’re positive he can’t talk, right?” When Nonc nods, she smiles. It’s the smile she flashes when a dude lowers his head to receive a string of beads. “Mr. Richard,” she says into the phone. “I’m Cherelle. I’m a friend of Randall’s, and I’m going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a man who lived only for himself. He used up his family, making the most of them the way you’d make the most of a single square of toilet paper. He stole his son’s car, and finally, he was gone, which is the happy ending. What could he possibly want now?”

When she hurts his father for him, Nonc feels a shiver of fear and satisfaction. Still, he says, “Ouch, did I mention he’s fucking dying?”

She flips the phone shut. “Where’s the G-Man?” she asks.

“He’s chillin’ in the rig. I can’t believe you just said that shit. You were talking to my dad, you know, not yours.”

Relle takes ahold of the beer, has a drink. “He had his chance.”

Nonc takes a drink, too. “You think they’ll cremate him?”

“Who’s they ?” she asks.

“You know, California.”

“Like the state government? No way, sunshine. That shit’s expensive. You’re going to have to go all the way out there and bring him back. You got to have a funeral, it’s the law.”

“You know what I’d love to do?” Nonc asks. “I’d love to take his ashes and scatter them on my mother’s lawn. Wouldn’t that freak her shit out?”

“I think your only chance is to go out to California, and when they lift the sheet, when you have to identify him, you say it’s not your dad. Then it’s the government’s dime.”

Nonc takes a hard look at Relle. “Where do you get this shit?” he asks her. “This isn’t about money.” He can tell she wants to say something smart about that, about how Marnie garnishes his wages, but Relle checks herself.

By way of sympathy, she says, “You’ll never see that car again.”

“I know,” he says. It was only a Toyota, but those things run forever.

Then she pulls out a photograph and slides it to him. It’s a blurry image of a woman on a table.

“You checking morgues now?” Nonc asks.

“No,” she says. “FEMA’s got a cadaver book you can flip through.”

“Sorry to break it, but this isn’t Marnie.”

“Did you look at it? Five foot four, bottle blond, bit of fetal-alcohol to the eyes.”

“Don’t say shit like that.”

“Did Marnie have a C-section?”

“How should I know?” he asks.

“Look, I don’t want this to be her,” Relle says. “Nobody wants nobody dead. I mean, that little boy needs a mom big-time.”

“Marnie’s not dead,” Nonc says. “She’s on a little vacation from parenthood, that’s all. Actually, this is just like her, pulling something like this.”

Relle shrugs. “Then why not go to Beaumont and see? If it’s not her, great. Nothing’s changed. If it is her, nothing’s changed, except now you can plan, now you can take steps.”

Nonc slides the picture back. “You don’t know Marnie. She’s not the kind to drown in a Quick Mart in Texas. She’s going to come out of this hurricane better than ever.”

“Lighter, at least,” Relle says.

“She probably got some FEMA money and is living it up. When that’s gone, she’ll be back.”

“Who ditches their kid in the good times and comes back in the bad?”

Nonc doesn’t have an answer for that.

Relle opens her purse and digs inside. “Why don’t you want to find her?” she asks.

Nonc takes one more drink and sets the beer aside. “I’m looking just as hard as you.”

From her purse, Relle removes a big Q-tip, sealed in plastic. “I almost forgot,” she says.

“Forgot what?”

“Open wide,” she tells him.

“What for?”

“Just open up,” she says, removing the wrapper. When Nonc does, she jabs the thing in his mouth, right in his gums, and twirls it.

“What the hell was that?”

“It’s a swab.”

“A swab of what?”

Relle takes a slug of beer and puts the swab in a plastic tube. “We better check on the little man,” she says. “ ’Cause I have to roll.”

Outside, crunching through the bottle caps and shale of the parking lot, they can hear Geronimo in the van. He’s saying, “Up, up.” When Nonc sticks his head inside, he can see the boy has managed to get the lid off one of the foam coolers. There are crawfish running around everywhere, and Geronimo, in terror, is dancing in place.

“Whoa,” Relle says. “Party for one.”

She moves to climb inside, but Nonc tells her, “It’s okay. I got this.”

“You pissed off?”

“No,” he says. “We’ll talk about it tonight.”

“At A.A.?”

The boy is trying to climb the cords of his bouncy chair.

“Where the hell else?” Nonc says. “Look, I gotta take care of this.”

But instead of leaving, Relle steps inside the van. “He is so adorable,” she says. “One day we’re going to have a little boy just like him.” Then she sticks a swab in his mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“It’s just a test,” she says, then scrambles out of the van. “FEMA does it for free, to reconnect family members.”

Nonc comes after her. “Are you crazy?” he asks. “This is my boy. Right here, he’s mine.”

“You don’t know that,” she says, and then, in her tracksuit, she bolts across the frontage road.

When Nonc climbs in the van, the crawfish are all clicking their pinchers, and he realizes Geronimo has the hiccups, which he gets when he freaks.

“Up, up,” the boy says. He’s kicking his legs and straining the cords of the bouncy chair.

It gets Nonc to see him like that. “Hey, hot rod,” he says. “Don’t be scared of those guys. Nonc’s here, okay. Nonc will protect you.”

He unhooks the cords, and the boy latches on. He’s totally shaking, snot all over his face. Even though he’s not dirty, Nonc takes him into the back of the van for a diaper change. That always soothes him. “Relax, relax,” Nonc whispers, and lays him back on his changing pad. The boy’s looking around for the crawfish, eyes going this way and that.

“Nonc’s back, okay. Nonc always comes back.” But there’s no way to explain it to the kid. Right now, when he’s afraid, he thinks fear lasts forever, that it is everything.

Nonc shimmies off Geronimo’s pants, then unfastens the diaper. He tosses the thing away, even though it’s perfectly fine, not wet or anything. Geronimo starts to chill when Nonc slides a fresh diaper under him. Nonc keeps saying hush, and when he asks the boy to lift his legs, Geronimo quietly obeys, holding them up and keeping them there. That’s when Nonc does his favorite part. Nonc takes the baby powder and raises it high. Very lightly, he lets it snow down. The stuff is cool and sweet-smelling. He shakes the thing, and his son’s eyes follow the dusty white powder as it slowly floats down. The boy can watch it forever.