Part 1 (1/2)

Black Jesus.

Simone Felice.

When Black Jesus came home from war a big pair of Stevie Wonder sungla.s.ses hung on his face. Not because they made him look cool. That wasn't it. They gave him the gla.s.ses to hide the wreck the little plastic bomb had made of his eyes. He fought in Baghdad. He fought in Sadr City and out along the river and down all the bad roads in between. He fought in the Red Zone. He fought in the Green Zone. But most of all he fought the voice inside that whispered, Boy, you don't belong.

All through the night his fat mom Debbie drove south to the Marine Corps Air Station in her battered Chrysler wagon. Light rain on the roads. Memorial Day. After she signed her name on a clipboard and showed ID, they led her down the hall and into a room where a kid sat in a chair by the window, his seared head turned to face the gla.s.s where the cold sun he won't see again fell like a coin. That's when she came to him and touched his pale hair and said, 'Who did this to you?'

'Mom?'

'I'm right here.'

'I wanna go home.'

'I know you do, pumpkin. I know you do.'

Driving back up the New York State Thruway in the dark, one loose headlight dancing on the road before them, she tunes the radio awhile till she finds her station. Soft hits, yesterday's favorites. Islands in the stream, that is what we are, no one in between, how could we be wrong, sail away with me to another world and we rely on each other, ah ha, from one lover to another, ah ha.

She's doing 54 miles an hour. All the signs they pa.s.s say 65 since they raised the speed limit twenty years ago, but she doesn't care. Debbie's got her own way of doing things. Everybody howls past the Chrysler tonight. The radio's low and easy, and for the life of her she can't keep her eyes on the road because she can't keep her eyes off the boy right here in the musty seat beside her, so rigid and thin in his soldier's best. So young. So haunted and real. Now they're pa.s.sing Exit 17. Now she's got a hold of his hand.

'Lot's changed since you been away, Lionel.'

He says nothing. Then he says, 'Like what?'

'Oh, I don't know.'

'Why'd you say it then?'

She looks at his face. Then she looks at the road. After a while she says, 'There's a couple things I forgot to tell you on the phone.'

'Forgot?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay, so tell me now.'

'I burnt our house down.'

'What?'

'Our house.'

'It's a trailer, Ma.'

'Our home. I burnt our home down.'

'By accident?'

'Yes by accident.'

'I don't believe it,' he says, his dark gla.s.ses fixed on her now.

'How come?'

''Cause I know you, Ma. You're a hustler. You're a stone-cold pimp.'

'Lionel!'

'What?'

'Where'd you learn a thing like that?'

'I don't know. Over there. Guys.'

'What a thing to call your mother! That ain't the way I raised you, is it? Hearin' you talk like that makes me wanna s.h.i.+t in a bag and punch it.'

'Just tell me what happened.'

Unable to kill the little smile dawning at the corners of her mouth, the big woman breathes and glues her knee to the bottom of the steering wheel. She takes the window-crank with her free hand and twists the window down. She hasn't let go of his hand. She can't. And the cool night air cuts in.

'The Dairy Queen went belly up,' she tells him now above the hoa.r.s.e wind.

'Whatta you mean?'

'Belly up. s.h.i.+t the bed.'

'It closed down?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'But I-'

'Shhh. Don't be sad. I know how much you loved going there when you were a kid.'

'What's the DQ got to do with our place?' he says and pulls his hand away.

His mother breathes. After she breathes she says, 'Everything. It's got everything to do with us now, honey.'

He doesn't know what to say to that.

'Lionel? Earth to Lionel?'

'Don't call me that anymore.'

She looks at him with a screwed-up face and says, 'Whatta you mean? It's your name.'

'I'm Black Jesus now.'

'Excuse me?'