Fortunate Son

by Walter Mosley

  Very slowly, the closet door opened. And then Branwyn stuck her head out, smiling at her son. He stayed perfectly still and silent so as not to scare her away. She moved her head around, looking to see if there was anyone else there.

  “You alone?” she asked.

  She came out of the closet wearing her white slip and the cream-colored satin slippers that Dr. Nolan had bought her in Chinatown.

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  Smiling broadly, she knelt down in front of her son and ran her fingertips along his brow.

  “What have they done to you, baby?” she asked.

  Thomas began crying again, as he had in Mr. Meyers’s room. Branwyn sat in the dust and took him on her lap. They rocked there in the middle of the floor, both crying in separate sadness and combined joy. After a long time the mother lifted her boy’s chin and looked deeply into his eyes.

  “The birds and crickets and hornets and spiders have all been telling me that they see you looking for me.”

  Thomas nodded and kissed her hand.

  “You don’t have to look so far, honey,” she said. “I’m right here in your heart whenever you want me. Just whisper my name and then listen and I will be there.”

  Thomas raised his head to kiss his mother’s lips and came awake in the bed kissing the air.

  Ribbet, came the call of a frog.

  Ribbet.

  It was late in the night. The house was dark. The neighborhood was dark. And two sociable frogs were talking about their day.

  Thomas took their calls for proof that his mother had been there and that she would always be there with him — inside, where no one could ever take her away again.

  “N o I w i l l not walk you to school,” Elton told him the next morning.

  They were sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast.

  Thomas was eating Frosted Flakes and toasted English muffins with strawberry jam. Elton had instant coffee while he smoked a menthol cigarette.

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  Wa l t e r M o s l e y

  “It’s not that I don’t have the time neither,” Thomas’s father continued. “I could walk ya if I wanted to, but you got to learn to stand up for yo’self.”

  Slowly, Thomas made his way toward the front of the house.

  “Tommy,” his father said before he entered the long hallway that led from the kitchen to the front room.

  “Yes, Dad?”

  “Come here.”

  Thomas obeyed. He walked up to his father’s chair and stood before him, looking down at the floor.

  “Look at me.”

  Thomas raised his head, afraid for a moment that his father was going to hit him.

  Elton did reach out, but it was only to put a hand on his boy’s shoulder.

  “You don’t have to flinch from me, boy,” he said. “I love you. Do you know that?”

  Thomas stared at his father, trying to understand.

  “I know you mad that I took you outta that white family’s house. I know you want me to walk you to school. But you have to understand that everything I’m doin,’ I’m doin’ for you. You need to be with your own blood. You got to learn to stand up for yo’self. Do you understand that?”

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I’m scared.”

  “I’m scared too,” Elton replied.

  “You?”

  “Scared to death every day I climb out the bed,” he said.

  “You know, a black man out here in these streets got a thousand enemies. Men want his money, his woman, his life, and he don’t even know who they are. That’s why I took you, Tommy. I want you to learn what I know. Do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you?”

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  “If a rabbit sees a lion he gets scared and runs,” Thomas said, remembering a story that Ahn had told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “If a rabbit sees a lion he gets scared and runs,” the boy said again. “But then if a lion sees a elephant he runs ’cause the elephant could step on him an’ break his back.”

  “The lion is the king of the jungle,” Elton said, his tone angry and not angry at the same time.

  “I know. But he’s still afraid of the elephant.”

  Father and son stared into each other’s eyes for a moment.

  Elton had the feeling that he’d missed something, but he had no idea what that something was.

  “Go on to school now, boy,” he said at last.

  O n th e f ront step of the shabby box-shaped house, Thomas looked both ways, watching for the big boys that he’d run into the day before. He didn’t see anyone except an old woman across the street sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. Thomas hurried down the pavement, almost running on his way to school.

  Three houses down a hidden dog jumped out, lunging at him. The dog growled and snapped, but the chain around its neck stopped him from getting at the boy.

  Thomas froze, thinking that the dog would get away somehow and chase him down. But the restraint held.

  Thomas sighed. He took three steps toward school.

  “Hey you, mothahfuckah,” a familiar voice called from behind.

  They surrounded him quickly. Three of them were dressed in signature white T-shirt and jeans. One boy wore a jean jacket and black pants. All of their tennis shoes were white.

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  Wa l t e r M o s l e y

  Thomas noticed these things, categorizing, listing, and hoping somehow the knowledge would save him from another beating, still knowing that nothing would save him.

  Nothing ever would.

  “You got money in yo’ pocket, suckah?” the tall eight-year-old leader asked.

  Thomas breathed in through his mouth and shook his head — no.

  The backhand stung his left cheek. He felt a trickle of blood come out of his left nostril.

  “Empty yo’ pockets, man,” another boy said.

  Thomas looked at all eight eyes staring angrily at him. Years later he would wake up from a nightmare about those eyes, not in fear of violence but from the sad memory of their hatred.

  Fight ’em back, he heard his father say. And then he turned to run. But his feet got tangled up, and he fell right there in front of his enemies.

  “Kick his ass!” a boy shouted.

  Thomas rolled up like the gray-shelled pill bugs he would watch in the garden. He closed his eyes and made ready to count the blows, but instead he heard a girl shouting. He wondered if the boys had attacked somebody else, somebody behind him.

  He opened his eyes and raised his head.

  A very large black girl (who looked somehow familiar) was punching the ringleader of the gang in the face. The other boys rushed at her, but she slapped one, punched another, and kicked the third, one, two, three times. The first boy she hit was crying. Thomas hadn’t believed that those mean boys could cry. The other three were running.

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  “Git!” the big girl yelled, and stamped her foot on the concrete.

  The crying boy let out howling.

  “You show’em, girl,” the old woman from across the street called. “Show them li’l niggahs a thing or two.”

  The girl turned her head toward Thomas, and the boy quailed. He thought that she would destroy him now with her fists and feet and loud shouts. But instead Bruno ran up from nowhere and held out his hand.

  “Come on, Lucky,” the jolly first-grader said. “Git up.”

  The girl reached down too. For a moment Thomas felt weightless, and then he was standing on his feet.

  “This Monique,” Bruno said in the way of an introduc-tion. “My sister. She’s twelve, in junior high.”

  “Hi,” the big girl said. She smiled. “That li’l Alvin Johnson need somebody to kick his butt ev’ry mornin’. That’s the on’y way he evah gonna do right.”

  “I told Monique about you, Lucky. I told her you talked funny but you might get lost on t
he way to school. So she walked me ovah here.”

  Thomas was very happy. He laughed, and big Monique smiled down on him.

  “Don’t you know the secret way to school?” she asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “Com’on,” Monique said, and with a wave of her hand she led them down the driveway of the house with the leashed dog.

  When it barked at her, she got down on her knees and held out her hand. The dog growled, then sniffed, then licked her fingers.

  Thomas knew that if he tried that the dog would bite his whole hand off.

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  Wa l t e r M o s l e y

  Behind the house was a fence with a hole in it that led to the blocked-off alley behind Elton’s house. Back there sapling trees grew in profusion and birds sang and small creatures scuttled. There were pools of water with bright-green algae growing over them and an old redbrick incinerator that housed a large rodentlike creature.

  “This alley was blocked off a long time ago,” Monique was explaining. “An’ it go all the way to the end of the block. All you got to do is climb through the fence next to the church and cut through the back’a there an’ you across the street from the school. Not so many other kids do it ’cause the hole is too small.”

  “Thank you, Monique.”

  “What’s your real name?” she asked.

  “My name is Tommy, but everybody calls me Lucky.”

  “You right, Bruno,” Monique said. “He do talk funny.”

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  7

  Eight years after Thomas met Monique, a fourteen-year-old Eric Nolan was getting ready to play a match on a public tennis court above Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He was set to play against an older boy from his school, Hensley High, which was known as the Yale of private high schools. The boy, Drew Peters, was a seventeen-year-old twelfth-grader who had already been accepted to three Ivy League schools for the following year.

  Drew had called Eric’s class a bunch of pussies, and then he pushed around Limon, a delicate Peruvian boy who was also in the tenth grade. Eric told Drew that he couldn’t even play tennis and challenged him to a match. Eric agreed that if he lost he’d pay Drew a hundred dollars and carry him around the track on his back. But if Drew lost he’d have to go down on his knees and ask Limon to forgive him.

  Both classes showed up for the match, which took place at 4:00 p.m. on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. The upperclassmen came into the bleachers all cool and superior. The sophomore class was loud and cheering. And even though Eric was a year younger than most of his classmates, he was the best of them, and they loved him for daring to challenge a boy who was almost four years older. Drew was in the California Junior Tennis League and had placed second in the statewide tournament.

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  Wa l t e r M o s l e y

  In the front row of the senior side of the bleachers sat Christie Sadler, whose father, it was said, owned a riverfront block in Paris. Christie was the prettiest girl in any class at Hensley. She looked like a woman already, tall and lithe with violet eyes and skin that defied comparison. Mr. Mantel, the English teacher, had been fired midyear for suggesting to Christie that she would get the grade she was looking for if they could go out on a date.

  Christie and Drew were the perfect couple at school.

  They’d be king and queen of the prom. They were definitely having sex.

  Eric wasn’t thinking about any of that when he came out onto the court. He liked playing tennis. It was a sport where he didn’t need clumsy teammates who competed with one another. He liked things one on one or, even better, sports where he could excel without competition, like diving or running.

  But Drew had roughed up Limon, and Limon was the closest thing to a friend that Eric had. Not that they were really friends. Limon talked too much, and he always wanted advice about how to be more popular and better in school. He wasn’t satisfied with his life, and Eric looked down on that.

  Don’t you mind it when you lose at tic-tac-toe? Eric had asked Thomas sometime before his brother disappeared forever.

  Nuh-uh.

  Why not?

  I’ont know, Thomas said. I guess it’s just fun to play. And anyway, if you win and you’re my brother, then in a way I win too.

  The day of the match was cloudy and cool. So was Drew, with his light-gray tennis clothes and serious brow.

  Drew’s father had offered to judge the match. Mr. Peters 1 0 0

  F o r t u n a t e S o n

  was hale and tall. He had red hair everywhere and skin that had seen a lot of sun. The Peters family made their money in construction. He was a hard man, and Eric was confident that he wouldn’t cheat to favor his son.

  But even if he did, Eric expected to win the match anyway. He always won when it was important. He was, as his Episcopalian minister, Uncle Louis, always said, “born in the circle of light.”

  Eric hadn’t told his father about the match. He never wanted Minas or Ahn to be anywhere where he was the center of attention. Something about that talk with Ahn the night after Lester Corning was scarred had made him leery of the trouble he might cause. For the next few weeks after the accident, Eric asked about his real mother and what had happened.

  She succumbed after childbirth, Minas had said in simple doc-torese.

  Having me, Eric said.

  It wasn’t you who killed her.

  But having me killed her.

  But . . . Minas couldn’t say any more.

  Eric could tell that his father blamed him, not angrily, not wishing that his son had died instead, but simply knowing that Eric’s being born had killed Joanne. Between mother and son Eric had won the coin toss.

  While Eric was thinking about his luck, Mr. Peters cried,

  “Heads up.”

  Drew served, and Eric returned with an easy backhand. He felt weightless on his toes out there, predicting where every volley would land. He watched Drew’s effortless movements and saw that this was a kindred spirit on the court. Here they both ruled. Who cared who won? They were one, the same 1 0 1

  Wa l t e r M o s l e y

  side of the coin. And while Eric watched Drew, Christie found that her gaze, more and more, drifted toward the sophomore Adonis.

  She noticed his strong legs first and then the careless preci-sion with which he returned each volley. Where Drew had an angry, snorting demeanor, Eric was neither angry nor glad.

  The sophomore moved freely, not worrying when he lost a point or even a set. He flipped his blond hair out of his face naturally, with no posing or apparent knowledge of his beauty. He only got serious when he saw a hole in Drew’s defenses. Then he came down on the ball like a predatory feline clamping down on the throat of a fawn.

  Christie felt her heart skip when she thought that Eric might miss a return. She found herself, for no reason that she could name, hoping that Eric won the game — or, at least, that he didn’t lose. She clutched her hands and watched the carefree youth make her boyfriend run back and forth like a gerbil cornered by the devil-pawed tomcat that lived on her family farm in Santa Barbara.

  No one knew what the high school beauty was thinking.

  The match was very close. No matter who was receiving there was something to worry about.

  On Eric’s final match point, Drew lobbed the ball to the back of the court when Eric was playing the net. Christie gasped loudly as Eric ran toward the foul line swinging at the ball with his back turned. He connected, but the ball flew high and slow. The exertion made Eric stumble and fall. The senior class let out a loud whoop (except for Christie, who was inexplicably near tears). At that moment the clouds parted, and a shaft of concentrated sunlight shone in Drew’s eyes. He swung wildly, hitting the ball so hard that it flew off the court and into the park beyond.

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  F o r t u n a t e S o n

  “Game!” shouted Mr. Peters.

  “No!” screamed his son.

  The tenth-graders leaped and hollered for their her
o. Even some of the seniors applauded the incredible play.

  The only incident that scarred the game was Drew’s rage at the sun. He was so angry that instead of going to the net to shake Eric’s hand, he threw his racket at the victor. But Eric merely held up his own racket, deflecting the force of the missile, then catching it handily by the haft.

  Eric walked to the net, holding out the racket as if Drew had merely dropped it.

  “Take it,” Drew’s father commanded.

  The audience had gone quiet.

  Christie felt a tremor between her legs that her boyfriend had never made her feel.

  Drew was taken off the court by his father. The sophomore class put Eric on their shoulders and carried him three blocks to the Beanery, the coffeehouse that, until that day, only the senior class inhabited.

  As Christie watched him float away on the shoulders of his class, she felt an ache inside her that she feared might never completely subside.

  “ E ri c ? ” M i nas sa i d outside the boy’s half-open door.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “Phone.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A girl.”

  Girls called sometimes, but they soon gave up because Eric had become a loner in his teenage years. He learned how to dance but never went to parties. He’d gone out now and then, 1 0 3

  Wa l t e r M o s l e y

  but found kissing in the backseats of cars and on porches unexciting. It’s not that he didn’t think about sex. He dreamed about naked women every night, often waking with an enor-mous erection.

  Don’t you want somebody to love you? Limon once asked him when the conversation drifted to girls.

  No, Eric replied. Not really. I like being alone.

  “What’s her name?” Eric asked his father.

  “I’m not your secretary, son. Ask her yourself.”

  Dr. Nolan pushed the door open and threw the cordless phone onto the bed.

  “Hello,” Eric said into the receiver.

  “Eric?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Christie. Christie Sadler.”

  “Oh. Hi.”

  “I’m just calling to apologize for what Drew did today. I mean, he shouldn’t have thrown that racket at you.”