Walter Mosley - Fortunate Son

He opened the door to find Raela standing there. She seemed taller and more beautiful than before. It was as if she had been a child when last he saw her, Eric thought, and now she was a woman. He wondered if she had grown or if he had diminished since losing Christie.

“Hi,” she said.

Eric felt his heart skip and hated himself for an instant.

“I can’t know you, Raela,” he said.

“It’s too late for that now,” she replied, her bearing both solemn and serene.

She walked into the house, and he closed the door behind her.

She went into the living room as if she had always lived there. She sat and so did he.

“We killed them,” he said.

“We aren’t gods,” she retorted.

“I didn’t love her, but I asked her to marry me.”

“You had a child together. What else could you do?”

“I could have been a man and done what was right.”

“What’s right?” she asked him. “What can anybody do?”

“My brother did what was right,” Eric said with conviction.

“Maybe. But he’s special. You aren’t him.”

“I don’t love you, Raela.”

“I know that. I don’t care about love. I just know that we have to be together. We have to be. You know it.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I do.”

“What about Michael? What will happen with him?”

“He’s my brother and he loves me,” the raven-haired beauty answered. “Show me upstairs.”

Eric and Raela became lovers that afternoon. He wasn’t worried about getting into trouble. He wasn’t concerned that she was too young. Staying away from her had killed Drew and Christie. Maybe even Thomas would die because of his refusal to be with her.

Raela had felt alone for her entire life. Her stepmother was more like a servant than a relative. Her brother loved her, but he couldn’t comprehend what was in her heart. And Kronin was just a big bear who wanted her to pay attention to him. No one had ever gotten close to understanding her until she met Eric.

He too was alone and unable to love. His heart was as disconnected as hers. They could at least understand each other. Maybe there could be more.

In the weeks that followed, Eric found himself laughing often and intrigued by the way the woman-child thought. She beat him at swimming, though he was her master at tennis. She could sprint past him in any short race, but he could run for miles and she couldn’t or wouldn’t — he was never sure which.

After her last class in the afternoon, she would meet him in Thomas’s hospital room, and they’d sit together holding hands and waiting.

Meanwhile, Thomas traveled among the dead. In the depths of his coma he convened with Tremont, the drug dealer, and Bruno, his best friend. The lost puppy, Skully, scampered about at his heels while Alicia (whom he had never known in life) made them all tea and biscuits served on her tomb in the alley valley that he always thought of as his one true home. They all spoke different languages and used signs to make themselves understood. Sometimes other guests would come. RayRay shambled in one day and asked — with wordless, elaborate apologies — Thomas to forgive him. Pedro climbed down from the fire escape and handed Thomas his gun. By this he meant that he would never kill himself again.

One day Thomas said good-bye to Tremont and Bruno. Then he and Alicia started out on a walk to the far end of the alley valley. It seemed to Thomas that he had never gone to the absolute end. The valley stretched for miles and became very wide. Trees grew tall and full above them. There were strawberry fields and orange groves along the way. Skully brought them beautiful stones and fish and tools when they needed them.

Alicia and he made love in the evenings. It was the way it had been with Monique, only instead of Lily they had Skully the dog, and because they were the same age they could have sex. The sun was bright, but Thomas didn’t mind it. The valley seemed endless, but neither one of them cared.

One day Thomas woke up to find that Alicia was gone. He knew that she was off taking care of her own unfinished business, something about the people that killed her and dumped her in Thomas’s valley. He didn’t worry about her; they would be together again.

The next day Skully didn’t come when Thomas whistled. But that didn’t bother him either. Traveling alone down the wide valley that started behind his father’s home, Thomas knew that he was getting somewhere.

One day — after many, many days of walking — Thomas heard a strange bird cry. It was a high, burplike noise. The call intrigued him, and so he began to climb up out of the valley because that was where the birdsong came from. Climbing up the slope, he began breathing hard. He fell to his knees and struggled through the brush. The bird’s odd song got louder and louder. And the louder it got, the more he wanted to see the animal that made that sound.

Maybe it wasn’t a bird, he thought. Maybe it’s a frog or a wolf or a man. Maybe it’s some new kind of talking tree.

As he climbed the foliage became thinner and the sun shone brighter. It got brighter and brighter, louder and louder, until Thomas was at the crest.

He opened his eyes and saw the beeping machine against the far wall of his hospital room. Next to his bed was a chair in which sat a black-haired girl.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“I am?”

“You’ve been in a coma... for six months.”

“What’s a coma?”

“Deep sleep. So deep that no one can wake you up.”

“I don’t feel tired now.”

“I should get the doctor.” The girl leaned forward, preparing to stand.

“No. Don’t go away.”

She smiled, and Thomas felt a tingle of happiness.

“Where have you been?” she asked him.

“In my coma?”

“No. Before. Eric said that you went away to live with your father and grandmother but ended up on the street.”

Thomas felt good in his bed. He sat up, and an electric whistle began to sound. He thought about his life in terms of the girl’s question, leaving the house he was raised in and then ending up on the street.

“Is Eric going to come see me?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’d be here now, but he had to take Mona to the doctor for a rash on her forehead.”

“Are you Eric’s girlfriend?”

Raela nodded solemnly.

“Oh my God!” the nurse coming into his room exclaimed. “You’re awake.”

Doctors and nurses bustled around him soon after that. They hurried the girl away and rolled Thomas into a room where they examined him from head to toe. The chief doctor probed his body with her fingers and kept asking how it felt. They looked into his eyes and ears and talked to one another, expressing surprise.

Finally the woman explained that he had experienced severe trauma to his system. He’d been in a coma for nearly six months, and it would be a while before he would be able to walk or take care of himself.

“Where’s my cart?” he asked when the doctor had finished.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“My shopping cart. That’s where I got all my stuff.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the police took it after the shooting. That was a wonderful thing you did.”

After a while they wheeled him back into his room. He had hoped the girl would still be there, but she wasn’t.

“Would you like me to turn the TV on, hon?” a plump redheaded nurse asked while pulling the blankets up to his chest.

“No thanks. I don’t like TV too much.”

“I wish my kids felt like that,” she said. “All they do is watch that thing. Between the one-eyed monster and video games, they don’t have the sense to come in outta the rain.”

When she left, Thomas thought about his books and the look in the doctor’s eye when she complimented his bravery.