Free The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski Page A

the whole situation. But the barest hint of maternal instinct struggled into her consciousness on the second day after giving birth, causing her to lay Bonaventure before her on the bed, touch each tiny shoulder, and lean down to kiss the tip of his nose. After caressing his little bowed legs with her thumbs, she unpinned his diaper to see things for herself, as new mothers will sometimes do.
    “It’s a boy!” shouted ghostly William again, but only Bonaventure heard.
    William kept a mighty vigilance during the early days of Bonaventure’s life and wished there was some way to tell his wife and child just how much he loved them. Those visits brought him immeasurable joy, but they also brought him suffering. Unfortunately, they were the only salve he had for his loneliness, and for the dawning realization that eavesdropping was as close as he would ever get to being included in the family. And even that was temporary.
    William was very aware of his circumstances. He knew there were three things he was supposed to do, each of them a challenge. The first was to forgive his killer, and the second to remove something Dancy was keeping. William knew he would need Bonaventure’s help for that one and it bothered him. He didn’t like to think about a little boy finding out violent things, but there was really no other way.
    “We’ve got time, little man. You don’t have to find any secrets yet,” William whispered as night settled in around them. He continued to push the third challenge away, not even forming it into a thought.
    When mother and child were both sound asleep, William walked to the morgue to see if he could find Dancy again, as he had on the night he’d been killed, the night he had held her all the way until morning.
    It didn’t happen. But how could it, he thought. That had been a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

 
    T HE charge nurse at the asylum made a note in The Wanderer’s chart that the patient had cried all day. It irritated her that he didn’t even have the presence of mind to wipe his own runny nose, so she had to do it.
     
    The librarian, Eugenia Babbitt, had seen the killer’s picture in the newspaper. She looked for more information about him every single day.

The Meaning of a Name
    N EITHER grandmother ever endowed Bonaventure with a nickname, preferring instead to call him by his Christian name, one that he shared with a thirteenth-century mystic turned saint, although such sharing was said to be coincidence; he was, after all, only half-Catholic, and casual half-Catholic at that. Before long his mother was calling him Adventure Arrow, or Venture Forth Arrow, or any number of pet names like Sweetie-pie or Whirly-bird, depending on her mood.
    When asked where she’d come up with a name like Bonaventure, Dancy couldn’t explain it, and so insisted that she’d plucked it out of the Greater New Orleans telephone directory without even thinking twice. The truth was that one morning she’d opened her eyes from a dreamless sleep and there it was inside her head, an irresistible suggestion. Dancy spoke the name out loud several times a day after that. She wrote it on paper in a lavish hand. She kissed it onto a penny and threw the coin into a fountain as if to wish good luck upon her little unborn child.
    Once Adelaide Roman got used to it, she began to like the name; she thought it sounded like something rich people would come up with.
    “What’s his middle name going to be?” she asked, and suggested that Bonaventure Roman Arrow had a real nice ring to it.
    Dancy said she would have to think about it, though she had no intention of doing anything of the kind. In the end, when Adelaide realized that his initials would be B.R.A., she called Dancy up at eleven o’clock at night to tell her to forget it, since someone was sure to tease him by calling him brassiere .
    Grand-mère Letice did not think the name a coincidence, but that was a sentiment she kept to herself. Upon learning of it, she