Fortunate Son: A Novel by Walter Mosley

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.
    “NO I WILL 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.
    “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?”
    “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.
    ON THE FRONT 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,