Fortunate Son: A Novel by Walter Mosley Page A

have to shout like that. He’s used to that house, and he thinks about those people like family.”
    “More than me,” Elton agreed. “Here they got their pet niggah grabbin’ me by the shoulder until it almost break, an’ Tommy didn’t even say to let me go. Here I am his real father, and he don’t even say a word when that man was crushin’ my bones. If I seen somebody do
my
father like that, I’d run at him with a two-by-four.”
    Thomas didn’t know what a “toobifor” was, but he understood that his father thought that he should have fought with Fontanot. He tried to imagine fighting the giant, but all he could think of was Eric running at him. Then he wondered what Eric would do when he found out that he was gone.
    “Do you hear me?” Elton said. “Tommy!”
    “What?”
    “Are you listening to me?”
    “I was thinking,” he said.
    “Thinkin’? I’m talkin’ to you.”
    “What did you say?”
    “Goddamn, the boy is retarded.”
    “Don’t say that,” Madeline chided. “He was born sick and couldn’t get enough oxygen. And Branwyn was alone and did the best she could.”
    “That’s not my fault,” Elton said in a softer tone.
    “An’ it’s not Tommy’s fault either.”
    AFTER TAKING MADELINE to her apartment on Denker, Elton brought Tommy to his rented house on McKinley. It was a small square building with chipped white paint and a flat green roof. There was an elevated porch and a tattered screen door.
    Elton carried Tommy’s little suitcase to the door and pulled the screen open.
    “Why the hell is the front do’ unlocked?” he yelled into the house as he stomped inside. Tommy ran up to the threshold, hesitated for a moment, and then followed.
    The house smelled of foods and cigarettes, something sweet and something else that made Thomas think of water.
    They were standing in a sitting room, where there was a TV turned on in front of an empty black couch and a brown recliner. There was a low white coffee table between the couch and the TV, and a carpet underneath it all that was dark purple.
    People on the television chattered away and the sun was bright outside, but this room would never be light. Thomas felt his new darkened vision would fit well in this dim, uneven room.
    “Hi, Daddy.” A woman came running out wearing pink cotton pants over a black leotard. She had dark skin and wore a blond wig of thick hair that did a flip in the back.
    “Ooooo,” the big curvy woman cried. “Is this li’l Tommy?”
    “Why the hell was the do’ open for any thief to come in here?” Elton barked.
    The smile on the black blonde’s face shriveled, and suddenly Thomas was afraid.
    “I opened the goddamned do’ when I heard yo’ rattletrap car comin’ down the street,” she said through curled lips and bared teeth.
    “But you wasn’t at the do’,” Elton said. “You was up in the house someplace where any niggah could’a come up in here an’ steal me blind. Shit. I know people go out for a piss an’ come back to find they TV gone.”
    “You think there’s some fool out there gonna break his back for that big pile’a shit you call a TV?” The woman was getting louder. Thomas felt the threat in her voice.
    “You’idn’t call it no hunk’a shit when I brought it home now did ya? Did ya?” Elton’s voice was also dangerous.
    Thomas had trouble understanding what either one of them was saying. Their voices sounded a little like his mother’s though, and he wondered if she was somehow trying to communicate through them.
    “I ain’t got nuthin’ t’say,” the woman said.
    “You bettah shut up,” Elton agreed. “An’ as long as I’m payin’ the rent you bettah keep that goddamned do’ shut too.”
    “Talkin’ ’bout the rent, Mr. Sanders came down lookin’ fo’ the check this mornin’. He said that if he don’t have it by six they gonna kick our ass out.”
    Elton balled up fists and raised them to his chest.
    Without thinking, Thomas fell to the