“I met Raela, and three days later Drew killed Christie, shot you, and the police killed him.”
“And you think that it’s because you wanted her?”
Sheepishly Eric nodded.
2 4 4
F o r t u n a t e S o n
Thomas looked away a moment. He noticed the white man talking to the young woman.
“I was lookin’ at the moon last night,” Thomas said,
“while you were asleep.”
“So?”
“I remembered that I met this guy once who used to be a merchant marine, but he got a blood disease and they let him go. He said that he had enough money that he could have had a house and a car, but he found movin’ around a better life. He said that livin’ in a house was like spendin’ your life in a tomb.”
“You think he was lying?” Eric asked.
“I never thought so,” Thomas said. “But I never thought about it. But he said somethin’ else.”
“What’s that?”
Thomas thought that he heard the young black woman say something to the man next to her.
“He said,” Thomas continued, “that the moon has gravity and that the ocean rises up and falls down because of that.”
“Yeah,” Eric said, “the moon governs the tides.”
“So if that’s true,” Thomas said, “and if one day somebody said to you that you couldn’t have what you wanted unless the tide didn’t come in, what do you think would happen?”
“Of course the tide’s gonna come in.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “The tide’ll come in, the sun’ll rise, people will live an’ die, an’ you can’t do a thing about it.”
“I could kill myself.”
“But it wouldn’t make no difference except to the people who love you.”
“Excuse me,” someone said.
The young men looked up to see the girl who had gotten on earlier.
2 4 5
Wa l t e r M o s l e y
“Can I sit with you guys? That jerk down there started talkin’ shit.”
“Sure,” Eric said and Thomas wanted to say but didn’t.
“I’m Eric and this is my brother, Tommy, I mean, Thomas.”
“They call me Lucky,” Thomas said.
“They do?” Eric asked.
“I thought you said you were brothers?” the young woman said, settling next to Thomas. She had a wheeled, silvery suitcase that was meant to look like metal but was made from lightweight plastic. Eric got up and put the bag in the rack above their heads.
“We were separated when we were young,” the young white man explained.
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “We just found each other again.”
“You don’t look like brothers.”
Thomas and Eric told their story together, sometimes finishing each other’s sentences. As they spoke, the young black woman pictured the two men as little boys and found herself smiling at their graceless affection for each other.
Her name was Clea Frank. She was a native of Denver and now was on her way to a scholarship at New York University.
She was a language major and wanted to work at the UN.
The young white man had tried to “put the moves on her,”
and she wanted to sit with them so that he’d leave her alone.
She was happy that Eric and Thomas were going all the way to New York.
“ D on ’t you f e e l funny calling him brother?” Clea asked Thomas some time after midnight as the train approached Chicago.
2 4 6
F o r t u n a t e S o n
“That’s what he is. He’s the only brother I’ve ever had.”
Eric was asleep, and Clea had just come awake after napping through the late afternoon and evening.
“But he’s not your real brother — he’s white,” Clea said. “I mean, I don’t have anything against white people, but I don’t go around calling them my brother either.”
