• • •
The stick Blue found was as tall as he was. He dragged it over the sand, all the way back to the Impala. “Look. I can draw my name,” he said, and gouged large letters at Ralph Angel’s feet.
“It’s time to go,” Ralph Angel said, his thoughts turning to his trip to California. “Come on. Dry off.”
“Can I bring it with me?”
“What do you need a stick for? You’re going to poke your eye out.” But he’d had a hundred sticks just like it when he was a kid. Sticks and antique marbles, buttons and civil war bullets he found when they plowed up the cane fields. He’d come home with pockets bulging, and Miss Honey gave him old Kerns jars for his collections. “On second thought, why not. Just be careful with it. Let’s go.”
“I need to do one more thing.”
“Okay, but hurry up.”
Funny how much he still remembered: the airline ticket arriving in the mail with his father’s handwritten instructions telling him what to do when he got to the New Orleans airport — how to check his suitcase at the counter, how to find his gate on the big TV screen, how the meal served on the plane would come on a small oval plate covered with foil, and he could pick what he wanted, chicken or beef. And if he behaved himself, the stewardess might pin a set of wings, just like the pilot wore, to his shirt.
“I’ve never been to California,” his mother, Emily, had admitted, tearfully, as the attendant announced his flight was boarding. “I’ve never even been on an airplane.” She’d pulled herself together long enough to see him off. “You be good out there. Mind your manners.” Then she stood up, reached to hug him. And maybe it was because they were at the airport, where people were rushing to catch their flights, but for the first time, he saw how slowly she moved, how she had to concentrate on every step, how she seemed pained to raise her arms.
Excited as he was to be leaving he said, “I don’t have to go. I could stay here with you.” She was the best mother she could be.
Emily’s lips trembled. “Boy,” she said, finally, “stop talking nonsense and get on that plane.” Her hands shook as she handed him his ticket.
• • •
Los Angeles was just like his father described — the bright blue sky, more cars than he’d ever seen — and he’d pressed his face to the window while his father drove to his new house, where Lorna and baby Charley waited. For the first month, things were easy as pie. He had his own room with a brand-new bed, new clothes, and a shiny new bike. But being with his father in California was different from their time together in Saint Josephine. Jealousy sprouted quick as rye grass as Ralph Angel watched his father lavish attention on his new family, especially on baby Charley, just two and learning to talk. Charley, Charley, Charley. All anyone ever talked about was Charley. His plays for attention, minor offenses at first — his father’s wallet swiped from the nightstand and tucked between the couch cushions, Charley’s pacifier stuffed in the garbage disposal — became more serious: outbursts in class, schoolyard brawls, arguments with Lorna, until finally, claiming he was only trying to feed her, he filled a baby food jar with water and forced Charley to drink. The water flooded her mouth, bubbled from her little nose, and for a few terrifying seconds, even he was convinced she was drowning. “That’s it,” Lorna declared, and his father had no choice but to send him home. Back to the shabby house. Back to a mother whose condition had worsened.
Blue dropped to his knees, rolled in the sand, lay on his back and moved his arms and legs up and down like he was doing jumping jacks.
“What are you doing?” Ralph Angel said.
“Making an angel.”
“This isn’t snow.”
“That’s okay.”
“Well, get up. You’ve got sand in your hair.”
Blue stood and Ralph Angel brushed him off. Sand on Blue’s neck. Sand down his shirt and in the waistband of his briefs. Sand in the folds of his pant legs.
Back on the road now, the stick poking through the back window, Ralph Angel said, “Stop scratching.”
“But my hair itches.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you. We’ll wash it when we get there.”
“But it itches bad.”
The sign outside the roadside café read LOST DOG: BLIND IN ONE EYE, MISSING RIGHT EAR. TAIL BROKEN. RECENTLY CASTRATED. ANSWERS TO THE NAME “LUCKY.”
Ralph Angel laughed, thought: I know the feeling.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
In the bathroom, Ralph Angel turned on the faucet, lay Blue faceup on the counter so his head hung over the sink. He pressed the dispenser till a half-dollar-size dollop of soap filled his palm.
“Close your eyes.” A halo of lather surrounded Blue’s face, his hair like the burrs caught on one’s pant hem. Ralph Angel scrubbed till he felt the sand loosen.
“Ouch,” Blue said. “That hurts.”
Ralph Angel wiped soap away from Blue’s eyes, out of his ears, then cupped his hand under the faucet so the warm water ran over Blue’s scalp. “How’s that?”
Blue smiled. “Better.”
He dried Blue’s hair with a paper towel, then looked into his son’s face again, feeling the weight of Blue’s head in his hand as the boy relaxed.
“I like being on this trip with you, Pop,” Blue said. He yawned.
How would his life have been different if his father hadn’t sent him back? If Charley had never been born? He couldn’t say. How much of his mother was in him? He’d never know. But he could do everything he could think of for his boy. He could do that. “Thanks, buddy,” Ralph Angel said, and sat Blue up on the counter. He wiped a drop of water that snaked down the boy’s neck. “I do too. I like that it’s just you and me.”
6
It had been a week since Denton said no, and Charley still hadn’t found a manager. She spent days scouring barbershops and roadside bars, oily garages and smoky pool halls — the places men gathered after work or on weekends to tell jokes, talk about their trouble on the job or with their wives; the places they went to feel like men, and where, if a desperate young woman who was trying to make her father proud happened to wander in, they wouldn’t mind coming to her assistance. But no luck.
Now, exhausted and even more discouraged, Charley rolled over the railroad tracks into the Quarters. On the corner, a group of young men stood on the sidewalk: XXL plaid shirts and baggy jeans like gangsta rappers, hair braided in zigzag cornrows that made their hair look like puzzle pieces. They smoked pot and drank from brown paper bags, and as Charley rolled past and waved, they jerked their chins a tiny bit, like guards at a security checkpoint, and she debated whether to pull over and ask if any of them wanted a job.
Miss Honey’s house was quiet. Must be at church, Charley thought, and went to her room to change out of her farm clothes — jeans, a plain short-sleeve blouse, and work boots — which made her look older and possibly a little butch, but which she believed helped make a good first impression, showed that she was serious, responsible, and not just some kid playing in the dirt. After a long day like today, it would feel good to sit out on the porch and watch the people pass, and maybe, for a minute, let her mind wander.