Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Author:James McBride [James McBride]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Next to that was a sketch, in his father’s hand, of a tiny box. Inside the box was a wooden stove, with small bits of firewood, crudely drawn, and a cross above it. The box had five sides; on one of the sides was a circle with a stick figure drawn in the middle, its arms outstretched.

“If this weren’t his handwriting, I wouldn’t believe he’d drawn it,” Elefante said.

“Do you recognize anything?”

“No.”

“It’s an Irish blessing,” the Governor said.

“I figured that much,” Elefante said. “But what’s with the firebox and the firewood?”

“Do you have a storage locker with something like that in it?” the Governor asked.

“No. That box could be anything. A garage. A house. A milk crate. A cabin in the woods. It could be anywhere.”

“Yes, it could,” the Governor said. “But where would Guido Elefante go?”

Elefante thought a long moment before he answered.

“My father,” he said dryly, “never went anywhere. He never went three blocks outside the Cause District. Hardly ever. He couldn’t walk very well. Even if he could, he wouldn’t go far. Maybe to the store in Bay Ridge once in a while that sold food from Genoa. There was a place on Third Avenue that sold Genoese stuff, focaccia, cheese mostly from the old country, but he hardly went there.”

“How do you know?”

“He never went anywhere, I tell you. He went to the boxcar every once in a while. He went to the storage place hardly ever. Maybe three times my whole life I saw him walk in there. I took care of the storage place, not him.”

“What else is around you?”

“Nothing. Just the housing projects. The subway. Some abandoned buildings. That’s it.”

The Governor looked at him oddly. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“That box is somewhere. Sure as I’m living, it’s sticking out like a blind cobbler’s thumb someplace. Somewhere your poppa put it.”

“How would I know where?”

The Governor yawned. “He’s your father,” he said sleepily. “A son knows his father.”

Elefante stared at the paper in his hands a long time. He wanted to say, “But you weren’t my father’s son. You don’t know how difficult he was. He was impossible to talk to.” But instead he said, “That’s not gonna be easy.”

He looked over at the Governor. He was talking to himself. The old man had fallen asleep. As quietly as he could, he rose from the rocker, stepped out the door, and slipped silently out into the hallway just as Melissa was coming up the stairs.

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