One solid handclap and two thumbs up.
When Friday night came around again, Dancy suggested they should first think up gris-gris for each other. She said she would make a pouch out of one of Bonaventure’s baby booties and fill it with the feather of a hummingbird so he could hover wherever he wanted to, a bee’s wings so he would always find something sweet, a lead pencil that would never wear down, a scrap of paper so he would be able to talk if he had a broken arm and couldn’t sign, and a real strong magnet so if he ever got lost he would be pulled back home to Bayou Cymbaline.
Bonaventure said he would make Dancy’s gris-gris out of the pocket of one of the smocks she wore in her shop. He would soak it in shampoo first and then put the tooth of a comb in it and three different sizes of curlers so hair would do itself and she wouldn’t have to work too hard. And he would put in the Indian Head nickel Mr. Silvey had given him so she would always have money, the knob off the radio so she could hear Hank Williams sing, and the wishbone and heart from the Thanksgiving turkey so she would always have good luck and lots of love.
They both wrinkled up their noses at the mention of the turkey heart, but they had to admit that gris-gris was like that.
William waited until Dancy left the room and Bonaventure was working on a new airplane model.
“Hey, buddy. Whatcha doing?”
Bonaventure smiled and said, —Hey, Dad. I’m going to paint this airplane.
“What color?” William asked.
—Gray, with red and white stripes on the tail and a big white star inside a black circle on the wings and the sides. The star will have a red circle in its middle. It’s an F4F Wildcat.
“Wow.”
—What are you doing?
“Oh, nothing much; I was just wondering about those gris-gris bags you and your mom talk about.”
—Gris-gris bags are fun.
“I’ll bet they are. I wouldn’t mind having one myself.”
—Really?
“Yeah, really. Hey, you better not let your paint dry up.”
—Oops.
“Okay, then, I’ll let you get back to it.”
—Dad?
“What, son?”
—I’m glad you came by.
“Me too. Sleep tight, pal. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
—Will you come again tomorrow?
“I’ll sure try.”
Bonaventure slumped his shoulders and bowed his head.
“Okay. I’ll be here for sure and we’ll talk some more.”
—Want to talk some more right now?
“Nice try, Bonaventure, but I know it’s time for bed.”
Over the next weeks, Dancy and Bonaventure came up with gris-gris for Grand-mère, Trinidad, and Mr. Silvey; for Dancy’s customers at the beauty parlor; and for Gabe Riley and Miss Wells and Mrs. Humphrey. They collaborated on one big one for all the kids in Bonaventure’s class and on another big one for the regulars at Bixie’s Luncheonette. They’d had to be especially careful with Grand-mère Letice’s because she could be a little funny about things like gris-gris.
One conspicuously absent from the gris-gris endeavors was Grandma Adelaide Roman.
“Oh, let’s not worry about it, Adventure Arrow. She would just say it was devil stuff anyway.”
A you’ve-got-a-point-there nod.
“Who else should we make one for?” Dancy asked.
—My dad.
“He doesn’t need one,” Dancy said.
—He wants one.
“You shouldn’t make up stuff like that, mister. Let’s talk about something else.”
William was in the room for this conversation. He watched while Dancy and Bonaventure shined a flashlight on the wall and used their hands to make shadow-bunnies that danced around until they got in a shadow-fight and got their ears all tangled up. Then he listened to them summarize the day and tuck in all its edges.
Dancy plumped up Bonaventure’s pillow and said, “It’s not like I don’t know you’ve got a book and a flashlight under the covers. Just don’t read for too long. You need your beauty sleep.”
—
Mom!
Bonaventure said in sign shout, —
Boys don’t beauty-sleep!
Dancy chuckled and smoothed his hair from his forehead. “You’re right,” she said as she moved toward the door. “You’re beautiful enough already. I love you, Sweetie-pie. Good night.”
—Good night. I love you and you are beautiful too.
William waited a minute or so after she left before he said, “Hey, there, buddy.”
—Hey, Dad.
“So how’s the gris-gris business treating you?”
—Mom doesn’t think you need one.
“Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
—Yeah. Maybe.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” William said, and then he did something he hadn’t done since Bonaventure was in the newborn nursery: he sang a song to him, making it up as he went. As Bonaventure listened to that song, he heard a shower of comets go sweeping across the galaxy and raise a sparkling, whooshing, dazzling wind that blew stardust around in a swirl.
Dancy took a long soak in the tub and then polished the nails of her fingers and toes. She fussed with her hair and flipped through a magazine before going to the kitchen for a glass of warm milk.
Then she began to collect.
She opened a bottle of root beer, poured it down the sink, and kept the cap. She took a sugar cube. She tore the recipe for chicken etouffée from a cookbook. She went out to Mr. Silvey’s old workshop, where she found a compass and a piece of steel and she took those too. Then she went into William’s old room, where Letice had insisted that everything be left as it was when William lived. Dancy took a sock out of a drawer and took it back to her room, where she sprayed it with the same perfume she’d worn so long ago. She put one of her own earrings in with all that she’d gathered and slipped everything into the sock.
The recipe was to keep away hunger, and the bottle cap was to keep away thirst; the sugar was for William’s sweet tooth, the steel was to protect him from bullets, and the compass was to bring him home. The earring and the perfume weren’t part of the gris-gris; they were just to remind him of her.
William spent the rest of that night in Dancy’s room, watching her toss and turn, for sleep did not bring her rest. He was still there the next morning when Trinidad came in to change the sheets. She went about her business just as calm as could be.
“You should get some rest, Mr. William,” she said.
E
VEN
though Bonaventure thought Trinidad was wonderful, he still missed the Silveys sometimes. He missed keeping company with Mrs. Silvey in the kitchen, and how she always smelled like talcum powder, and how if he happened to break one of Grand-mère’s knickknacks accidentally when he was running through the house or maybe got some dirt on something that he wasn’t supposed to touch, he could go to her and she would say, “Well, now, let’s just see what we can do about that.”
And he missed Mr. Silvey something terrible. He went out to the workshop almost every day in search of the sounds left behind in the coffee cans and sewing machine drawers and the jars full of nuts and bolts and screws. Though he and Mr. Silvey had often worked side by side without saying anything, the workshop had never been quiet. The tools, every last one of them, spoke in pings and taps and catch-toothed ratchets about stair treads or railings or holes they had fixed. But now there were only breathing sounds for him to hear because no one ever used the tools or the hardware anymore, and so they just slept all the time. Bonaventure could hear them snore.
Sometimes he went to the workshop just to feel close to Mr. Silvey again. It was during one of these visits that he heard some whistling coming from the wagon by the window. He walked over to it and wrapped his fingers around the handle and was overjoyed that it felt warm once again.
“Hiya, pal.”
—Hiya, Dad!
“Hey, I wonder if you could do me a favor. It’s not as hard as going after that sound in your mom’s closet.”
—Sure.
“I’d like to meet that fellow who teaches you to sign, the one who comes during the week. What’s his name? Mr. Riley?”
—Yeah.
“I think he’s about my same age, and I was wondering if maybe I might know him from somewhere.”
—Gabe isn’t from here. He’s from New Orleans.
“Well, there you go. I lived in New Orleans for a while.”
—I thought I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody about you. How can I help you meet Gabe if I can’t tell him about you?
“You don’t have to tell him anything. All he has to do is touch the wagon handle here and it’ll be like a handshake, just like you and I do. You can tell a lot about a man by his handshake. I think he might be a pretty good guy, but I’d like to know for sure. Do you think you can arrange it for me? I sure would appreciate it, son.”
Bonaventure jumped at the chance to be helpful by doing something that wasn’t scary. —I’ll help you shake Gabe’s hand, Dad! You can count on me!
“Thanks, buddy. We’ll talk again soon. I promise.” And then William was gone.
Most of the paint had disappeared from the wagon, worn away by humidity and the passage of time, but Bonaventure spotted one small scab that had survived, which he peeled away and put in his pocket before going back into the house. The smile still beamed across his face, as his father’s words echoed and echoed in his head,
I think he might be a pretty good guy
. He wanted his father to like Gabe Riley.
He took an envelope from Grand-mère’s desk in her office and put the paint chip from the wagon in it; then he went to his room and carefully placed it in his memento box.
The following day, after finishing the part of his lesson that included Dancy and Letice, Bonaventure had a sign conversation with Gabe.
—You know square-cut nail?
“I don’t think so.”
—You know tool cuts hole in pipes?
“No. Do you?”
Spelling out letters of —Hawk’s bill snips.
“You are smart about tools.”
—I will show you.
“Okay.”
A waving motion as if to say, —Come this way.
Boneventure led Gabe out to Mr. Silvey’s workshop, where he showed him the square-cut nails and the hawk’s bill snips.
Holding up the wagon handle, —You know what is?
“It’s a wagon handle.”
—Come from plow blade.
Bonaventure placed the wagon handle in Gabe Riley’s hand.
“This was made from a plow blade?”
—Yes. I love.
Gabe stood motionless, as if maybe he was under a spell, and then he signed, “Heavy. Warm. Nice.”
Sometimes Gabe was mystified by Bonaventure, as teachers often are by gifted children. It was obvious that the boy had a high IQ, and it was getting more and more difficult to present him with something challenging enough to keep him from getting bored. Gabe did some thinking on the matter. One idea led to another, and eventually he saw no reason that Bonaventure Arrow could not be multilingual. And so it came to pass that a flashlight, a set of bongos, and the naval flag semaphore system found their way into the tutoring that took place on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It wasn’t that Bonaventure really needed to know Morse code or how to communicate with flags—it was just for fun.
Bonaventure was crazy about the idea. It was something he could talk about when other kids talked about stuff they did with their dads. His happiness was not lost on Dancy. She wanted to do something special by way of thanking Gabe for going above and beyond, so she invited him to come to supper on a Saturday night.
He showed up early, flowers in one hand and a comic book in the other. It was just the three of them having pork roast and dirty rice at the table in the kitchen. They would have eaten in the dining room if Letice had been there, but she was at a meeting of the Altar Society over at Our Lady of the Rosary. That was one thing about Letice: she was a dining room person. It was just how she’d been raised. Adelaide Roman, on the other hand, had never even seen a dining room until she was almost twenty-five years old and taking a tour of historic homes that were decorated for Christmas, after which Theo Roman didn’t get a moment’s peace until he’d added on to the back of their house.
There were only a few awkward moments in an evening that was more than a tutoring session but definitely not a date. They signed and talked and laughed, and Bonaventure joined in at first, but then he seemed to draw back some, and when the table was cleared, he asked to be excused. He said he wanted to read the
Captain America
that Gabe had brought him.
Dancy let Bonaventure go, which left her and Gabe to linger over coffee for a while before doing the dishes together, just like a regular couple. He washed and she dried, since he didn’t know where to put things away. Their hands never touched at all.
Bonaventure could hear his mom and Gabe talking, and he wished that Gabe could be there every night. He started to feel bad about that wish and sent a thought out to his father, but William didn’t answer.
William was out in the kitchen. Dancy had laughed quite a few times during the evening, but he thought it sounded different, at least from the way it had sounded back when it was for him. And he wouldn’t have thought Gabe was her type; he didn’t seem to be as athletic as William had been, but more bookish.
The next day William started to pull Dancy to Père Anastase, but then he changed his mind.
A week after Gabe had come to dinner, Bonaventure brought something up with his dad.
—Did you like Gabe that time you shook his hand?
“Yes, I did. He has the grip of an honest man. You like him too, don’t you?”
—I like him a whole bunch. He knows a lot of jokes and he makes me laugh.
There was emptiness in the conversation then, just for five seconds or so, before Bonaventure, looking away, hands in pockets, said, —He makes Mom laugh too.
The emptiness sagged between them again until William said, “Laughing is good,” but then the emptiness came back.
—Yeah. Gabe knows a lot of stories too. And he lets me practice reading and signing with comic books. Did you read comic books when you were a kid?