Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

Elton hadn’t counted on two things. The first was Eric’s powerful lungs. The boy shouted so loudly that everyone stopped what they were doing to see what was happening. The second mistake Elton made was trying to take Branwyn’s son from Ira Fontanot’s place.

Elton was a big man, six feet and a little more, but Ira was six foot seven in silk socks, and he had hands like catcher’s mitts and arms made (as he used to say) from four hundred years of hard labor. Ira grabbed Elton by one shoulder and squeezed so hard that the would-be mechanic went down on his knees.

“Let the boy go,” Ira commanded.

“He’s my son,” Elton hissed through the pain.

“I don’t care what he is to you; you put him down or I put you down.”

Elton released Thomas. He ran to Dr. Nolan, who had just come from inside the restaurant.

Fontanot released his grip, and Elton rose to his feet, rubbing the sore shoulder.

“He’s my son,” Elton said again.

“Then why he live up in the doctor’s house?” Ira asked. “Why the doctor pay for his clothes and food?”

“He’s mine and he belongs with me.”

“The courts might agree, but you can’t take a boy from his mother’s funeral and not even let him settle his affairs. You gotta do somethin’ like that right, not like some wild fool just grab a child and run.”

Elton took a step toward Ira, shouting, “You don’t have the right to take my boy!”

“And you wouldn’t wanna make him a orphan,” Ira said softly. “Back down and do this right or I will break you in two.”

Elton turned to Dr. Nolan and said, “This ain’t ovah by a long shot,” and then he walked away.

Thomas was holding on to Dr. Nolan’s leg.

“Is it okay, Daddy?” he asked his mother’s lover.

“Yes, son,” Dr. Nolan replied.

For the next week Thomas spent all of his time on his knees in his room when he wasn’t at school or eating with Dr. Nolan, Ahn, and Eric. He’d close his eyes and think about becoming a part of the house, and he’d feel his mother’s presence. He couldn’t speak to her, but somehow he knew that if he kept his eyes closed she’d be standing there next to him, smiling.

One night Eric came into his room after everyone else was asleep.

“Tommy?” the big six-year-old said into the darkness.

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“What were you doin’?” Eric asked as he climbed up onto the bed.

“I was thinkin’ that Mama was standin’ in the corner makin’ sure that I was asleep, and so I had my eyes closed so that she would think that I was.”

“Do you think that she comes into my room too?” Eric asked.

“Of course she does. You’re the one never go to sleep at his bedtime anyway. She’d have to come look at you.”

“But I never see her.”

“That’s because she only comes in after we’re asleep so that she doesn’t wake you and then she can kiss you good night.”

“Did she kiss you tonight?”

“Not yet. She was still seein’ if I was asleep.”

“Do you ever see her?” Eric asked, his big eyes glittering in the nearly lightless room.

“Only if I open my eyes real quick and I see her white dress and then she’s gone.”

“Why doesn’t she stay and talk to you?” Eric asked.

“Because she doesn’t want to scare us,” Thomas told his brother. “She wants to make sure that we’re okay, but she knows that you’re not supposed to see people after they’re dead.”

Eric took this in and put it away. He often didn’t quite understand the things that Thomas told him, but he knew that his brother understood things that he could not and so he always listened and never made fun of him.

When they went on walks in the woods or down at the beach, Thomas would always find the most beautiful shells and stones. Eric could run faster and do almost everything better than Thomas, but the smaller boy paid closer attention to any space they entered. Often, after a day trip, Eric would come to Thomas’s room and ask him about what he had seen.

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened today,” Eric said, broaching the subject he had come to discuss.

“What?” Thomas asked.

“You know... those boys that pushed you.”

Still under the spell of his mother’s watchful gaze, Thomas had to concentrate to remember.

“Oh, yeah. Uh-huh,” he said. “Billy Monzell.”

“You don’t believe what they said, do you?”

Three boys led by Billy — Young William, as Mr. Stroud, the first-grade teacher, called him — had cornered Thomas on the playground and called him nigger and pushed him down. Before Thomas could do anything, Eric had run up and pushed Billy down. Young William got up, but Eric pushed him down again.

“You leave my brother alone,” Billy told all of them. He was the biggest boy in the class, and even the three bullies were afraid to take him on.

“He’s a nigger so he can’t be your brother,” Billy said. “Black and white can’t ever be brothers.”

Eric hit Billy in the mouth, and Dr. Nolan had to come and take him home for the rest of the day.

“No,” Thomas said. “He’s just ignorant. You’re my brother. Mama always said so.”

“Can I stay here in your room?” Eric asked then.

“Uh-uh,” Thomas said, shaking his head in the darkness. “I wanna go to sleep. But I’ll come down and wake you up in the morning.”

Thomas didn’t want to tell him that he was afraid that if they slept in the same bed, Eric might die like their mother did. He had come to believe that he was unlucky for the people he loved.

The next morning Dr. Nolan kept Thomas home when Eric went off to school.

“There’s something we have to do,” Minas told the black child he regarded as his son.

“What, Dad?” Thomas asked.

The doctor took a deep breath and sighed.

“Your grandmother and father are coming at ten,” he said. “They want you to come live with them.”

“But I don’t wanna.”

“I don’t want it either, Tommy. I told them that you want to be here with me and Eric and Ahn but Madeline says that she and your father are your closest relatives... and, well, they are.”

“But I don’t wanna live with Grandma Madeline,” Tommy said again. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Why you makin’ me?”

“I spoke to a man,” Nolan said, his shoulders sagging, his gaze on the floor. “A lawyer. He told me that because your mother and I never married that Madeline and your father have legal guardianship.”

“But why didn’t you get married?”

“I asked her, Tommy. I asked her every month. But she always said no.”

Thomas thought about the lunch he had with his mother and father. Elton had kissed Branwyn on the mouth before they left. At first she seemed to be kissing him back, but then she pushed him away and after that she spent the day crying.

Looking up at Minas Nolan’s sad face, Thomas knew somehow that he was the reason they could not marry. This knowledge was perfectly delineated by the dimness in his eyes.

“That’s okay, Daddy. I know she loved you. She told me so.”

“She did?”

“Uh-huh.”

Dr. Nolan coughed and turned away.

Ahn made tea and hot chocolate and said very little. An hour later the doorbell rang. Madeline Beerman and Elton Trueblood were admitted, and everyone sat together in the downstairs living room drinking coffee and talking.

Thomas perched on the hassock in front of the big chair where Minas Nolan sat.

“Thomas is always welcome to come visit,” the doctor said.

“Maybe after a while,” Madeline replied. “But first he has to get used to livin’ with us.”