by Adam Johnson
“How’s my boy?” she asks.
“He’s fine,” Nonc says. “So, what happened to you?”
“This is all a mistake, this is going to get cleared up.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing, I said it’s a mistake.”
“Did you try to scam FEMA or something?”
Marnie holds up a hand. “Hey, step off. You know what it’s like in here? Half of New Orleans is in here. There’s no showers, I’m sleeping on a cafeteria table. Men and women are together in here, Randall, fags and rapists. They sent our asses to Jena State Medium for a while.” She stares at him to let that sink in. “There were some freaky bitches out there.”
Beside them, a convict father is trying to reassure his wife and daughter, who, Nonc realizes, are listening with great trepidation to Marnie.
“What is happening?” Nonc asks.
“Look,” Marnie says. “I was with this guy, and I didn’t know what he was into. And they caught me up in that. I’d be out right now except for the backlog, there’s like a thousand cases before me. I haven’t even been arraigned.”
“Arraigned for what?”
“I told you, nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
“I’m here every day, Marnie. You could have let me know. I could have used your help.”
“You’re doing fine, and I’ll be out before you know it. He’s a good kid, no instructions necessary.”
“Oh, yeah,” Nonc says. “Tell me what bway means.”
She laughs. “Are you serious? What do you think it means?”
“I have no idea.”
“It’s the magic word, Randall. Bway is please.”
“The boy says eyeball—what’s that mean?” Nonc asks.
“He says eyeball?” she asks. “Why would he say that?”
Nonc shakes his head. “What about the initials M-O?”
“Jesus, Randall, are you shitting me? Try reading to him. I left a book called Elmo’s Big Vacation.”
“He said the word narc.”
“You better fucking believe it,” she says.
Nonc can feel a vibration in the cyclone fence. He turns and looks past the hands of other visitors. In the distance, a team of trusties is using a backhoe to straighten sections of the fence leaned over from Rita.
Nonc asks, “You think it’s best for him to see you like this?”
“He’s here? You got my boy and you been keeping him from me?”
“I’ve got some questions, Marnie, and I got to know the answers.”
“Don’t be a prick,” she says. “Where is he?”
Nonc just stares at her.
“You’re a prick,” Marnie says. “The only thing I did wrong was let Allen use my phone. That’s it, I swear. He was into some shit, and I didn’t know about it.” She keeps trying to put her hands in her pockets, but she doesn’t have any pockets.
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.”
&
nbsp; “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?”
Enrique asks, then comes back. “ ‘I got a few cars—whatever they’re worth, they’re yours. I was gonna leave ’em for the lepers.’ ”
That’s a phrase Nonc hasn’t heard since he was a kid, back when people used to leave old furniture out on the docks for the supply vessel to Carville Island, where the leprosarium was. Harlan would joke that you never really owned anything, the lepers just let you borrow it a while. Harlan hasn’t laughed since he lost his vocal cords—all that remains is a widening of the eyes, a thinning of the lips—but Nonc remembers him laughing with affection at the fate of the lepers, as if they were the closest to the Cajuns on the evolutionary tree.
“He doesn’t sound like he’s dying,” Nonc says. “You think he’s dying?”
“You ask him,” Enrique says. “He wants to talk to you.”
“What?”
“He’s been practicing his talking.”
“On the computer?”
“No, talking talking. You can’t understand him, but you get what he’s trying to say.”
Nonc steadies the phone, speculates on what his father wants to talk about—battles he ran from, how he’ll be remembered, where he should be buried. But when Harlan comes on the phone, when Nonc hears a hoarse, wet crackle from deep in the esophagus, he can tell it’s about the boy. Nonc imagines his father’s mouth open, like the door to one of those roofless houses, and though the sound is nothing Nonc can make out, he knows it’s about a grandson, a hurricane and the year ahead.
—
Nonc drives to his old house, where he grabs the keys and the cash and the wallet off the couch. Amid the junk on the floor, Nonc notices a small pair of binoculars, like you might take to a football game, and all the way to Dr. Gaby’s, the boy stares at the world through a single lens. When Nonc pulls up and parks on the grass, the dream team is assembled in folding chairs on the porch, with Relle slowly reading them the entire membership roster of the Louisiana Psychological Association. She reads a name, studies their faces for a reaction, then reads it again before moving on. Geronimo races from the van and joins them in an empty seat.
The day has become stagnant, baked over with clouds, and all of them listen expectantly to Relle’s voice as if she is calling their names, as if at any moment, they will be chosen to join the ranks of the known.
Nonc walks up the wheelchair ramp. Relle stands and drops the printout on her chair. “I thought you’d never get here,” she says. “Mississippi Psychological Association is next.”
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“Are we really going?” As if to test reality, she adds, “I mean, what about your job? Won’t you get fired?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe they’ll blame it on the hurricane.”
She gives him a measured, appraising gaze. “Okay,” she says.
Inside, they find Dr. Gaby in the kitchen, folding an assembly line of sandwiches into plastic wrap. Geronimo fetches a mixing bowl from the cupboard, waits expectantly by it.
As if she knows why Nonc is there, Dr. Gaby doesn’t turn to face him. She asks Relle, “Any response from the list?”
“They don’t even know your name,” Relle says.
“They don’t have to know any names,” Dr. Gaby answers. “Just recognize them.”
Nonc speaks up. “We’re going to California,” he tells her.
“When are you leaving?” Dr. Gaby asks.
“Right now.”
“And how are you getting there?”
“The van.”
“You’re taking your work truck to California—they’re okay with that?”
Nonc shrugs, but Dr. Gaby doesn’t see this. She’s carefully placing each sandwich in the center of a plastic square. She folds one side, then the other, then twists the ends together.
“You can’t take the boy,” she says. “Not in a stolen van. You don’t even have a car seat.”
“I know,” Nonc says. “That’s why I’m here.”
She wheels around to look at him.
“Dr. Gaby,” he says. “I did what you said, I chose. I chose, and I’m going to be the right kind of father. All my dad’s bullshit, all that he did to people, there’s a chance to make something good of that. I’m only asking for a week. It’s not in the boy’s interest to take him. I knew that’s how you’d think about it, what’s in his interest.”
Relle says, “We’re going to bring back a four-by-four.”
Dr. Gaby asks, “Do you know what you’re getting into? You’ll have to have a death certificate, out-of-state registration, insurance, and that’s just for a title transfer. God forbid there’s probate.”
Nonc says, “We’re going to get there before he dies.”
Dr. Gaby turns to Relle. “Is she going to drive this vehicle back? What if it’s a stick shift? Will she drive the van?”
“This is about more than a four-by-four,” Nonc says.
Relle says, “Quit trying to undermine this. We haven’t even got out the door.”
Dr. Gaby hands Relle the sandwich platter. “Please, will you pass out lunch?”
Instead, Relle goes upstairs to finish packing.
“Helping with the child, that’s not the issue,” Dr. Gaby says. “I have a heart for the boy. The issue is this: name one person who left Louisiana a
nd came back.”
“Me,” Nonc says. “I’m coming back.”
“Are you listening to yourself? You don’t commit to a child by leaving him.”
“It’s only a week,” he says.
Dr. Gaby thinks about this. She wheels to the fridge for milk, then pours Geronimo a Dixie cup of vitamin D. “You know my philosophy on these matters, right? You understand that if you leave this boy with me, I’ll have to do what’s best for him. That’s what will make the decisions.”
“That’s exactly what I want,” Nonc says. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Did you find the mother?”
“She’s in the Calcasieu Parish jail, ma’am.”
Dr. Gaby takes a breath and looks at the boy. “Can you give me a contact out there? If your cell phone breaks or loses service, is there someone I can get ahold of?”
“No,” he says.
“And can you tell me exactly when you’ll be back?”
“I’m figuring a week. Two days out, two days back, two days for the paperwork. A day for unknowns.”
“I’m sorry I have to be like this, Randall. Can we agree on an exact time of your return?”
Nonc looks at her with sudden distrust. “Well, the situation is fluid. There are unknowns. I suppose no is the answer, if you’re being exact.”
“I’m going to have to make a note of that, okay, that you can only guess at your return?”
Nonc lowers his brow in a look of betrayal.
“Randall,” Dr. Gaby says. “Do you know what you’re doing? You don’t have to go, you know. You have a job, I can help you. Do you want me to choose you? I will. I’ll do that.”
“Come on, Dr. Gaby,” Nonc says. “It’s just a week.”
Dr. Gaby sets a blank sheet of paper on the counter, then searches for a pencil. “You’ll have to write me a note giving me guardianship. If there’s an emergency or a medical decision has to be made, I’ll need that.”
“Temporary guardianship.”
“Of course,” she says. “Temporary.”
Quietly, Dr. Gaby pulls out a small cooler for their trip. While Nonc writes the note, she puts sandwiches and diet sodas inside, with some blue ice to keep them cold. The words come easy for him, but when he’s done and tries to read them, his mind can’t put them together.
