“I’m so-so-sorry a-a-a-about your brother,” said Dale. “He was a good guy.” He rushed the last part out without a stutter.
“Thank you, Dale,” said Achilles. “And congratulations.”
Dale turned to where Ines and Janice were talking. Achilles hadn’t noticed the papoose Janice wore. “That’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Dale with a wink, patting his stomach. “Little D got me off the g-g-g beer. But fuck, he cries.”
Even at that late hour the crowd continued to grow, more people stopping by to eat or bring food, including Janice’s brothers. They were bigger than Achilles remembered. Burly, bearded men with full-sleeve tattoos and chain wallets. Although only a few years older than him, they looked ancient. They brought a braided dog collar with them as a gift. Achilles placed it on the mantel next to the urns. When they learned that Ines was from New Orleans, they expressed their condolences. “It’s a tore-up business they’re doing you.”
There hadn’t been that many people in the house since his eighth birthday party. People were spread across the kitchen and the living room. Someone turned on the news, and the first story was about New Orleans. In fits and spurts they return, from Houston and DC and Atlanta, by car and boat and taxi and on foot, the native New Orleanians are coming home, but many say not fast enough. A hush fell over the living room.
Achilles’s mom apologized and offered to turn it off, but Ines was glad to see it, to know that it was news, and even more, “I’m glad they’re evacuees now, not refugees.” The screen door banging behind her, Janice went out front to smoke a cigarette. At the VFW, she and Dale had looked so content, so happy. She had slipped out her breast to feed the baby like it was the most natural thing in the world. (It was enormous, and he wished Merri or Wages or someone else was there to gawk for him.) And when Dale whispered in her ear, she smiled that big smile of hers and looked so beautiful, as she did right then in the front yard smoking that cigarette in the moonlight, her dress just short enough that if the light were right he could have seen her little hearts. Achilles followed her outside. They smoked one in silence. She offered him another and he accepted.
“Ines seems nice,” said Janice.
“I guess you want those letters back?”
“Those are yours,” she said.
“Good. I wasn’t going to give them to you.”
“She seems real nice,” said Janice.
“She’s smart too.”
“All that matters is that she treats you well after all you’ve been through. And that you treat her well too.”
Achilles felt as if he was seeing her for the first time tonight, as if he’d been happy with her but hadn’t known it. “You like being a mother?”
“Best thing ever happened to me.”
He thought for a minute that he loved her. “I ‘preciate them letters.”
She coughed and glanced around to see if anyone was listening. “Don’t start that now.”
He handed her his locket, but she refused it. “I want to give you something to remember me by.”
“A thank-you would be enough.”
“Thank you,” said Achilles.
“Finally! You’re welcome,” she said, blushing. “I’m going back inside.”
“You sure about the locket?” asked Achilles.
Janice gently kissed him on the cheek. “You never forget the ones who break your heart,” she said, and slipped back into the house.
Dawn was breaking as everyone left. Ines and his mother sat on the back porch, their chairs so close their knees touched. Janice and his aunt had cleaned up before they left. The only thing that remained on the table was the funeral program. Troy’s funeral program said “The Word Is Your Salvation.” Wages’s program said “Trust in the Word.” His father’s program said “The Word is Life.” Everyone had their party line, the manner of speaking in which they invested themselves, became real, and set themselves apart. He’d witnessed it with Bryant who, within a few days, went from moaning to saying stuff like, “Where’s Darkwater when you need them?” Ines was the same, professing what she couldn’t actually live because she didn’t look it, saying at every turn, I’m black, no really, listen. I am. That’s all it was, words spoken like an incantation, the power in not caring, or trying not to care. There is no God but M16, and I am his messenger. Had Hausman asked about Goddamnistan six months ago, Achilles would have quoted Merri, saying, “Suit up and put some fucker on the maggot diet.”
He went outside to see what his mom and Ines were talking about. From the looks on their faces, it was something private. His mom asked, “Is it okay if Ines hears this?” She studied his face. “You opened it, didn’t you?”
Achilles nodded his agreement. “I already opened it and everything.”
He excused himself and went back inside. If they knew what was in the envelope and he didn’t, wouldn’t that make them even, restore balance? Wages said the warrior suffered for what he had seen, what he knew. Achilles’s burden was also his gift to them: Troy’s other life, emaciated and drugged, in exchange for their knowledge of his adoption. But by the time he was inside, he discarded this idea, crouching beneath the window to listen.
“I always wanted him. I was his godmother, and I was there the day he was born. Cecile, his mom, was my best friend. Her family had disowned her for marrying a white man before she married Achilles’s father. I knew them. They were good people, just from a different time. I babysat him all the time. He was with me the night they died. I already knew him like my own. I had him over here all the time. Still took almost a year to work the paperwork out. We couldn’t have kids, you know. We tried, but it never worked. Then he was there, like a gift. It was just a matter of making it legal. Troy was different. One day Bill comes home, says, ‘We have to take this kid. We have to.’ The way he says it. Well, I sign the paperwork, but I never ask to see the original birth certificate. I don’t want to. I exchange that for one condition: he can never tell Troy what’s in there either. Because Achilles was already here, and I didn’t want him to feel displaced.”
She went on to say more about his birth parents. By the time she was finished, Achilles was dizzy, his face hot. His parents were Cecile Octavia and Charles Richard Drew. He was born on March 2, 1983, not May 3, as he’d always thought. He wasn’t a Taurus. His parents died in an automobile accident less than three miles from where he grew up. Killed by a drunk driver. They weren’t street people. His real name was David Drew. He wasn’t Achilles.
These revelations so stunned him that he didn’t hear their chair legs scraping the deck, or the door, or his mother and Ines enter the kitchen to find him hunched over beside the window.
“Oh no,” said his mother, as Achilles slipped by her and out the door. He walked into the woods and through the culvert under the highway, officially entering Pennsylvania, and into the wooded hollow his father called Winter’s Last Bowl, a shady grove, the snow’s last refuge, sometimes glowing until late May. To make room for new houses, the trees had been cleared over the years, so what snow remained turned to mush and by spring was a mosquito nest. Had his father felt as if he was being gentrified?