Cholly and Samson Fuller’s father-son relationship

Cholly and Samson Fuller’s father-son relationship is a brief, devastating reunion in which recognition fails to become kinship. Cholly finds the father who rejected him as an infant, but Samson does not acknowledge him as a son: he asks what Cholly wants, demands to know who sent him, and finally orders him away. Cholly cannot say that he is Samson’s boy. The scene turns a long search for family into another experience of rejection, leaving him, as the narrative puts it, with nothing more to lose.

Background and Search

Samson Fuller is Cholly’s father, but their relationship has been shaped by separation since Cholly’s infancy. Cholly was abandoned in a junk heap by his mother and rejected by his father during a crap game. The later meeting therefore does not begin with an established bond that can be repaired; Cholly arrives seeking a connection that was denied before it could form.

At the game, Cholly asks an old white-haired man whether Samson Fuller is nearby. The question marks the end of a journey, and Cholly edges toward two men standing with anger folded into their faces. One of them is his father. Cholly recognizes the resemblance in Samson’s eyes, mouth, and whole head. Recognition is immediate in appearance, but it gives Cholly no assurance that Samson will recognize or accept him in return.

The Encounter at the Crap Game

Cholly is fascinated by his father’s face and even wants to touch the clean space amid neglected tufts of wool on his head. The impulse is intimate, but the scene offers no welcome to answer it. Samson turns a hard, belligerent face toward him and asks what he wants. Cholly hesitates, then asks whether the man is Samson Fuller.

Samson’s questions make belonging conditional on an explanation. He asks who sent Cholly and whether he is Melba’s boy. Cholly says he is not, but cannot remember his mother’s name; the possibility that he may never have known it deepens the uncertainty of his own origins. He cannot say, “I’m your boy.” The words seem disrespectful to him, even though they are the plainest claim he could make. When Samson impatiently asks what is wrong with his head and who told him to come, Cholly remains unable to establish himself as family.

The game resumes around them. Samson bends to toss a bill on the ground and waits for a throw, treating the encounter as an interruption rather than a meeting that deserves attention. Once the money is gone, he tells Cholly to tell the woman who sent him that she will get her money, then curses him and orders him out of his face. The reference to money displaces the question Cholly has come to ask: Samson responds as if Cholly were a messenger or nuisance, not his son.

Rejection and Its Consequences

Cholly takes a long time to lift his foot from the ground. He is trying to back away and leave, and the effort required to move registers the force of the rejection without turning it into reconciliation or confrontation. Samson has made his refusal unmistakable; Cholly, who cannot bring himself to name their relationship, has no reply that could change the outcome.

The narrative places this encounter beside Cholly’s earlier abandonment by his mother and rejection by his father. It describes him as free to live his fantasies and even free to die, with the manner and timing of death holding no interest for him. That freedom is not security or independence grounded in care: it follows from the sense that he has nothing left to lose. Alone with his own perceptions and appetites, Cholly has no parental bond to return to and no family acceptance to draw on.

Significance of the Relationship

The failed reunion gives concrete form to the difference between biological kinship and lived care. Samson is unmistakably Cholly’s father by resemblance and descent, yet he refuses the encounter in which that connection might be spoken or recognized. Cholly’s inability to say “I’m your boy” and Samson’s dismissal work together: one makes the claim unsayable, the other makes acceptance unavailable.

The scene also links abandonment to Cholly’s later condition without suggesting that rejection excuses or erases his actions. Its emphasis is on the deprivation that precedes his adult life: a mother lost in infancy, a father encountered only to be turned away, and a resulting solitude described as freedom from anything left to lose. Their relationship ends not with a recovered family tie but with Cholly backing away from the game, carrying the old rejection into a life organized around his own appetites.