Fortune Smiles: Stories

by Adam Johnson

  Nonc and Relle call him rascal, G, G-Ron, Nimo, things like that, because he can’t understand his full name, let alone say it. That should tell you what kind of guy Nonc was back when Marnie told him she was pregnant. “Geronimo,” he said in that fuck-it way, like someone jumping from a plane. He didn’t say it in a birth-certificate way, at least he thinks he didn’t. Marnie moved to New Orleans, had the boy there, and once she figured out how to garnish Nonc’s wages, there wasn’t much need to talk. Yet here they are, one mean delivery team—Nonc belted the boy’s high chair to the jump seat, and the changing station folds down from the rear doors. So Nonc’s surviving, it’s been five weeks already, and Marnie’s vacation from parenthood can’t last forever. Hurricane or no, there are only so many places to hide in Lake Charles.

  The utility crews have cut a primitive path down Lake Street. The shrubs have been trimmed by sheets of flying glass, and the trees are shot through with the cotton candy of insulation. The weird thing isn’t the destruction—you expect to see the corpselike bloat of swamped mattresses or refrigerators that have exploded. What’s unnerving is the way clothes hang in the limbs of trees, making it look, out of the corner of your eye, like folks are up there watching you. It’s spooky the way, instead of seeing yourself in the windows of passing houses, your reflection falls into their dark rooms.

  Up ahead are a few City of Tulsa trucks and a command van. Some linemen are working their way down the street in a halo of sawdust and two-stroke smoke, while the electricians, T-shirts on their heads, sit in fold-up fishing chairs in the shade of a sailboat on its side. You can tell these guys have been living out of their rigs—milk crates of rations are everywhere, half-washed clothes flap from the outriggers of a boom truck. They’re probably scavenging new frying pans every time one gets dirty, and crapping in five-gallon buckets. It’s easy to live out of your vehicle, though. Once you accept your situation, your shit gets tight real quick.

  The package he’s delivering isn’t some exotic engineering part or anything. When Nonc pulls the box off the shelf, the label reads Amazon. Nonc climbs down with it while Geronimo follows with the DIAD—it’s his job to get the signatures. An electrician wearing a flipped-up welder’s hood descends in a cherry picker to direct them toward a man sitting on the only surviving dock, reading blueprints.

  He’s an older guy, in his fifties probably, wearing a green boonie-rat hat and some serious binoculars, the kind with orange lenses. Nonc and the boy make their way over, Nonc calling out the address label, “Bob Vollman, City of Tulsa Utilities, care of Lake Charles, Louisiana.”

  “That would be me,” Vollman says. “Thank God for Amazon—and UPS, of course.” With a folding knife, he unwraps Snyder’s Guide to the Birds of the Gulf Wetlands.

  “People mostly shoot at birds around here,” Nonc says.

  Geronimo holds up the DIAD, and the engineer takes notice of him, pulls off his hat. With his hand, like a puppet, he makes the floppy hat talk like Yoda. “A signature is wanted, hmm?” the hat asks. “And here we have what, hmm, a child, a boy child, have we, yes?”

  Geronimo nears the hat and stares into its folds as if trying to determine its intentions.

  Yoda scrunches his face. “Serious, this one is, hmm. Much turmoil has he seen.” The engineer glances at Nonc for confirmation. “All around is uncertainty.” The puppet looks up and down the street, but Geronimo doesn’t follow. “Broken are many things, yes, and not in their proper places.” Vollman has the puppet take the stylus and, mumbling as if its mouth is too full to talk, sign the DIAD. That gets a laugh.

  “Got a boy exactly his age,” Vollman says. “Two kids off to college, and then along comes Henry.”

  “Cajuns call that lagniappe,” Nonc says. “It means getting more than you were bargaining for.”

  “I tell you,” Vollman says, tousling Geronimo’s hair. “It sure is hard to leave them.”

  Nonc has tried to imagine that moment Marnie put the boy in the van—if only he could think up what she said to him when she left, maybe he’d know where she went, when she might be coming back for him.

  “What did you tell him,” Nonc asks, “you know, when you left?”

  “Henry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I said, ‘I’ll be right back.’ Kids this age, they don’t understand time. They don’t know what a month is. Plus, they don’t remember. I made some mistakes, parent-wise, believe me. At this age, you got some wiggle room.”

  “This is all just temporary,” Nonc says. “The boy’s going back with his mama soon.”

  “The hurricane turned some lives upside down,” Vollman says. “Obviously, you two are in some kind of situation, but seriously, the boy can’t be running around in his jammies. Look at the glass and nails. He needs some boots and jeans, something.”

  The pajamas are actually a custom tracksuit that Relle made for the boy, but Nonc doesn’t say anything.

  Vollman lifts up his new field guide. “Amazon has tons of kid stuff.”

  At the sight of the book, Geronimo says, “Bird.”

  “That’s right,” Vollman says. “Let’s check out a tweety bird.” He lifts the binoculars and invites Geronimo to share, each peering through one of the lenses. Squinting, they do a sweep of the lake. “Saw a blue macaw this morning,” Vollman says. “Not exactly Louisiana wildlife, but quite a sight. It was sitting on an upturned barge, right out there on the water, a big bell pepper in its beak.”

  “Macaw,” the boy says.

  “That’s right,” Vollman says.

  “Big bird.”

  “That’s right, she was one big bird.”

  Standing above them, Nonc, too, looks out on the water. With the outbound tide, all the refuse in the lake is dog-paddling back toward them, across three miles of brown chop. Shielding his eyes, Nonc makes out roof timbers, recycling bins, logged couch cushions and all the garage-filling crap a human could own. Out there slowly turning, as if from a logroller, is a black septic tank, and from the water, like a shark, a boat hull rises, flashes its keel and vanishes. Nonc had been picturing those kids tossed from the bridge dropping into blue lake water. He imagined their eyes open, their hands reaching for one another, and the knowledge that at least they had each other. But here it is, dark, entangling, a roil of propane tanks, plywood sheets and fifty-five-gallon drums.

  —

  Nonc takes the long way around the lake, past abandoned ice trucks with their bellies dripping, past livestock gone blind from drinking salt water, past a church whose marquee reads, “The Eye of the Storm Is the Peace of Christ.” Here on the far side of the lake is the Southwest Louisiana Visitors’ Center, which is where Relle works. Instead of handing out brochures for “The Cajun Riviera,” Relle now spends her time drawing maps for relief workers to where towns like Gueydan and Grand Chenier used to be. Hurricane or no, the state is flush from gaming, so everybody still gets a souvenir bottle of Tabasco, a Sportsman’s Paradise ball cap and a string of Mardi Gras beads draped on by a pretty girl. Relle is the pretty girl.

  Through the window, Nonc can see her talking to some government types, guys with that carefree look that comes from being able to walk away. They’re wearing like six strings of beads each, and they’re all smiling and laughing, with Relle pausing at their punch lines to fan herself with a coupon book. Nonc flashes his lights at her, points across the street to a roadhouse that Marnie used to haunt back in the day. He flips across the street, hits his hazards and jams a straw into a juicy box. “Baby drink juice,” Nonc tells the boy, and snags his cell. “Nonc be right back.”

  Geronimo lifts his arms and strains at his bouncy chair. “Bway,” he says. “Bway.”

  “Look,” Nonc says. “Nonc’s got business.”

  Inside the roadhouse, he does a quick survey, then checks out a wall of beer mugs. If you hang out long enough, they put up a mug with your name on it. The wall’s a regular “Who’s Not Who” of South Louisiana, but no Marnie. The bartender looks like a tuf
fdick on leave from an oil rig. He asks, “What’ll it be,” and when Nonc says, “Nothing, thanks,” the bartender raps the bar twice with his knuckle, which is what riverboat dealers do to point out a lack of gratuity.

  All casual, Nonc asks, “You know a Marnie Broussard, ever see her come around?”

  “You trying to make some kind of small talk?” the bartender asks. “You want a drink or what?”

  “This girl,” Nonc says. “She used to come in here, got dark hair, deep-set eyes.”

  The bartender drafts a beer, sets it in front of Nonc like it’s the last one on earth. “Hurricane relief,” he says. “On the house.”

  Nonc opens his phone, finds a weak signal and scrolls to the doctor’s number. He doesn’t really know what he’s going to say to the guy, but he calls. Just when it seems like no one’s going to answer, the phone picks up, but no one’s there. And then Nonc can hear the valve in his father’s trach tube clicking. Nonc hears that thing in his sleep. The history of that sound, of its wet, wheezy rhythm, is like a country song, it’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  If that doctor’s right, Nonc’s dad is going to die for sure this time. But the truth is, it’s just an event. Life’s full of events—they occur and you adjust, you roll and move on. But at some point, like when your girlfriend Marnie tells you she’s pregnant, you realize that some events are actually developments. You realize there’s a big plan out there you know nothing about, and a development is a first step in that new direction. Somebody drops a kid in your lap—that’s a development, you’ve just been clued in. Your ex–old lady disappears—you can’t shrug that off. It’s a serious development. Sometimes things seem like big-time developments—you get your wages garnished, your old man takes your car when he leaves town, you get evicted, your possessions get seized—but in time you adjust, you find a new way and you realize they didn’t throw you off course, they didn’t change you. They were just events. The truth is, the hurricane didn’t change Nonc’s life one bit. Neither will the death of his father. The tricky part, Nonc has figured out, is telling the difference between the two.

  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.