Being Henry David Page 9

  Thomas nods thoughtfully. “The night you fell out of the sky.”

  “Yeah.” I clear my throat, shuffle a bit, and pick up the book. “Thanks for this,” I tell him. “I’ll go read it right now.”

  I duck into the next room, where there are tables and chairs for studying. I sit at a round table near the window, and scan the biographies of all the statue people in the book, including Emerson and Thoreau, just in case Thomas decides to grill me about them. But my head hurts so badly, it’s hard to focus. So when I’m done, I get up, cram all my stuff, including the library book, into my lost-and-found backpack, and do some exploring.

  Down the hall, I find the men’s room. Pulling up my shirt in the stall, I can see the pus from my cut oozing through the bandage, even though I just changed it. The damn thing is throbbing and hurts like hell. So I change the bandage again, using fresh supplies I took from the nurse’s office before I left the school.

  Continuing my scouting mission, I discover the library has three floors of books, plus a basement level with a boardroom and a candy machine. There are a lot of places where a guy seeking shelter could hide for a day or two. I buy myself a package of peanut butter crackers from the machine and eat them for lunch.

  Back on the first floor, I sit on the big couch in the lobby next to the statue of Emerson in his chair, and under the watchful eyes of the other statues. Sinking into the comfort of the couch, I pretend to continue reading the library book Thomas gave me, so I won’t look like some random homeless person who just wandered into the library to take a nap. Even though that’s exactly what I am and exactly what I feel like doing. I close my eyes against the throbbing pain in my head.

  “Hank, wake up. The library closes in ten minutes.”

  “What? Oh. Okay.”

  Garbled thoughts, twisted and confused, sinking in quicksand, can’t think. All I want is to sleep and sleep. I close my eyes again; drift back under.

  “Look at me, Hank.” This time, Thomas has a hand on my shoulder and is gently shaking me. “You definitely don’t look well, my friend.”

  I force myself to open my eyes wide, though it hurts. Everything hurts, especially my side, where the knife wound is throbbing. “I’m fine,” I lie. “Really.” Feeling like a drunk person, I peer around at my surroundings, not fully recognizing where I am, not caring. I pick up the library book and hand it back to Thomas. “Thanks. I’ll be going now.”

  I get up, grab my backpack, and sway just a bit on my feet as I take a step toward the door.

  “Hank, wait. At least let me make sure you get home.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Not looking at him, I adjust the strap of the pack on my shoulder. “My parents should be outside right now to pick me up.”

  Wanting to believe me, he nods, relief in his dark eyes, like maybe he actually cares what happens to me. A woman enters the lobby and I register dark hair and a blue sweater, but the rest of her is a blur.

  “Thomas, I can’t get the main computer to shut down,” she says. “Something weird keeps popping up on the screen. Can you come take a look?”

  “Sure, Annie. I’ll be right there.” He turns to me and says in a firm voice, “Well, you go home and get some rest now, okay, Hank?”

  With a little wave, I pretend to head toward the front door as Thomas leaves the room. But as soon as he’s out of sight, I struggle to make my mind work, try to decide where to go, where to hide. What kind of security system would a library have, anyway? Cameras and alarms? Motion detectors?

  There’s no time to think this through. Next to the couch in the lobby, there’s a grand piano, covered with a woven brown cloth that almost reaches the floor. When I hear Thomas’s voice rise in the other room, I dive under the piano. By accident, I hit the pedals and the piano makes a muffled, musical bang. I freeze. My heart thumps so loud I imagine it can be heard echoing through the entire library. Cowering, I wait for Thomas to come in and discover my hiding place.

  “Come on, let’s go already,” I hear the woman librarian say to Thomas. “This place gives me the creeps after dark.” I hear their footsteps approach the front door. “It’s all your fault, you know. All that talk about the library being haunted. I’m going to have nightmares.”

  Thomas laughs, apparently having forgotten all about me. “Sometimes I swear they’re here, especially late at night, trying to communicate with me.”

  “You would think that.”

  The library goes dark, and I hear the door click shut, locked from the outside, and then all is silent. More silent even than the high school, if that’s possible. Silent as a tomb.

  I wait a long time, to make sure they’re really gone. When I start to get a cramp in my leg, I crawl out from under the piano. I don’t need to go far. The couch is right there, inviting me to lie down and sleep. It’s too short for my lanky body, but I don’t care. I collapse into it, feet trailing over the edge. Just need a good night’s rest, and tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow, I’ll figure out what to do, how to find my sister. It’ll all be better after I sleep.

  Just as I start to drift off, there’s this strange shushing sound, like the sizzle of the surf. But it gets louder and I recognize what it is. Someone is in this room with me, whispering. What the hell? I open my eyes to see who’s here, except that nobody is. I’m alone. Well, almost.

  It’s the statues. Their lips aren’t moving in their frozen marble faces, but I can hear their voices. And after a moment, I can even make out what they’re saying.

  That guy Ephraim Bull is whispering something like, “Look at me, I’m the Father of the Concord Grape,” and Louisa May Alcott is saying, “I wrote Little Women, a book beloved by girls all over the world.” It reminds me of a boring museum exhibit, or a maybe a video about prominent citizens of nineteenth century Concord, Massachusetts, they’d show kids in middle school. The statues are stiff and without emotion, as if the people they represent were statues too, who never laughed or cried, never got hungry or cold or sick.

  “I am Bronson Alcott,” whispers the statue with huge eyebrows that look like fuzzy white caterpillars. He mumbles something about this place called Fruitlands he started, which sounds to me kind of like a 1960s commune that didn’t work out so well.

  Some distant corner of my brain knows this is nothing but a crazy dream, inspired by the book Thomas gave me and brought on by the fever deep-frying my brain cells. But some other part of me is trying to convince me this is real, that the statues really do whisper to themselves in the Concord library at night after everybody goes home.

  Ebenezer Hoar’s voice grows slightly louder as he states his reason for being memorialized in marble. “I was a judge and a congressman,” he says in a bland voice. Big deal. “And if you had appeared in my court, young man, I would have thrown you in prison for the rest of your natural life.”

  Startled, I glance up at the statue. He is looking straight at me with those spooky white marble eyes without pupils. “And I wager no one would miss you.”

  The others hiss in agreement, whispers that become threats and I realize there is nothing of the real Alcotts, Judge Hoar, Ephraim Bull, or Ralph Waldo Emerson in these statues at all. And somehow, they seem to know all the dark things about me that I can’t remember.

  The floor under me starts to shake, and I don’t know if the eruption started inside the foundation of the building or someplace deep inside me. The whole library shudders with it, and the statues are silenced as their marble bodies tremble, then quiver toward the edge of their pedestals. Edging closer, closer, then with terrible silent screams, the statues fall one at a time and crash onto the library floor. Not solid marble at all, but with thin exteriors like eggshells that crack open and spew their true contents. Rotting meat crawling with maggots. Fat night-crawlers and green garter snakes and horned lizards. Broken shards of glass and twisted metal. Razor blades and knives and meat cleavers and spikes. The snakes slither toward me and I can smell rancid flesh.

  Henry’s statue sits f
rozen on its pedestal, still intact, watching me with a detached kind of sympathy.

  I try to say, do something, Henry, but can’t make any sound.

  Bad spirits rise from the ruins of the statues then, curl toward me and lean over to stare into my face like they can extract information from me or maybe tap into my life force, jealous that their lives are over forever and I’m screwing up mine. They touch my hair and pull at my shirt.

  Stop it. I try to swat at their fingers, turn away from their cold breath on my face, but I can’t move. Go away. Still can’t move, can’t speak, can’t shout, until at last, I can.

  “Get away from me!” Hear my own voice at last, feel my body writhe.

  “Shhh. Hank, it’s okay, you’re all right.” Somehow, Thomas is here. Thank God. Thomas. Is here.

  “Thomas, make them stop, make them go away.”

  “There’s nobody here, Hank, you’re just imagining it. You’re burning up with fever, buddy.” He has a cell phone in his hand and puts it to his ear. “Help will be here before you know it.”

  I grab the phone, jab blindly at the Off button, throw it across the room, and scream at Thomas, begging him not to call anyone.

  “Jesus, Hank. Calm down. You need help.”

  But I’m begging, shouting at him like a mental patient. “Don’t call, please don’t call anybody, you don’t understand. Can’t let them find me.”

  “Hank, look at me, open your eyes. Why can’t I call someone to help you?”

  “My sister.”

  “Your sister, Hank?”

  “My sister needs me, I need to go to her. And I can’t help her if I’m in jail.”

  Thomas rears back. “Jail? What are you talking about, Hank?”

  “If you call somebody, they’re going to lock me up. Please. I beg you, please, Thomas. Please.”

  My body heaves with sobs but I’m aware of this from a distance, like I see myself from the ceiling, or maybe I’m one of the statue heads back up on its pedestal, intact and hiding the ugliness inside, looking down and seeing the truth. I’m just a lost boy who has done something too terrible to remember, a trespasser into a world where I don’t belong.

  Thomas goes quiet, but finally says, “Look, Hank, you can’t stay here. The library is opening soon. I’ll take you to my house and we’ll figure this out. Okay?”

  I thank Thomas over and over and he helps me to my feet, wraps one of my arms around his neck and helps me walk outside to his motorcycle. He asks if I’m strong enough to hold on and I say yes, just don’t call the cops. We get on the bike and I lean against his wide back trying so hard not to pass out or fall off. And we ride for five minutes or fifty minutes or maybe it’s five hours and finally we’re at his house and he helps me to his couch and that’s all I know.

  9

  I am under water. At the bottom of Walden Pond, buried in muck, weighed down by pockets full of rocks. Can’t make my way to the surface, but it’s okay because it’s quiet here. Peaceful. Maybe I’ll stay forever.

  Now and then I sense people around me, trying to help me, trying to pull me to the surface. They touch my burning face and poke at my side, the place where Simon’s knife sliced through my skin, and I scream, but the pond muffles the sound, keeps everything so quiet. It’s okay to give in to the quiet. I am safe. Don’t have to think about anything, not now. Don’t have to remember. Just rest. The remembering can come later. The facing up to things can wait.

  Henry stays with me every minute in my underwater sleep, sits on a white rock with his hair floating in the current, and talks to me. He looks a little older than the last time I saw him in a dream. Last time he was clean-shaven, but now he has long sideburns that connect to a full dark beard. Henry helps me pass the time by quoting passages of Walden and tests my own twisted memory by having me quote some back. He tells me things about myself. But only the ones I can handle right now, he says. Just little things, like I was obsessed with Legos when I was a kid and my favorite birthday cake was yellow with chocolate frosting. My best friend’s name in kindergarten was Silas. But when I ask him to tell me my name, he won’t answer. Give it time, he says, just give it all a little time. So I do.

  Now and then, a phrase floats in and out of my thoughts. Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he. I think it’s a song or a poem or something. And it’s important somehow. But why? Like the rest of my memories, its significance is always just out of reach.

  Underwater there is no time and yet time passes, until I find myself restless with life under the dead leaves and pondweed and invisible jellyfish of Walden. I think you’re ready, Henry tells me at last, and even though I’m scared to go back, I agree. The sun breaks through the surface of the water, tries to reach me with healing fingers of light. So I kick my feet and push myself back to the air and sunlight and life. Ready now for whatever is next.

  “Well, look who’s back.”

  Thomas sits in a small wooden chair, big arms resting on his knees, watching me. I’m in a blue-painted bedroom with a slanted ceiling, and the sun shines in the window, too bright. I squint against it, but notice the headache is finally gone. I sit up, too fast, see little bursts of light flashing in front of my eyes, then lean back against a pile of pillows somebody has tucked under my head.

  “Whoa, easy, Hank. You’re still weak,” Thomas says.

  I’m wearing a white T-shirt I don’t recognize and green plaid pajama pants, probably Thomas’s. I lift up the edge of the shirt and see a square of gauze taped onto my skin. When I press on it, it’s sore, but not on fire like it was.

  “You had a nasty cut there. It got infected and you’ve been in and out of consciousness for about twenty-four hours,” he tells me in a slow, calm voice so I can absorb it all. “I almost gave in and took you to the hospital a couple times, but I figured we’d wait things out if we could. You were really adamant about that. A couple more hours though, and I would’ve taken you in, no matter what you said.”

  A woman with short black hair and about six silver earrings in each ear comes into the room and hands a green mug of coffee to Thomas. “Ahh, you’re awake,” she says with a big smile like she knows me. She’s probably thirtyish like Thomas, and pretty in a Goth-lite kind of way. Her hand on my forehead is cool and smells like vanilla. “I figured after the fever broke in the night, you’d be back among the living today.”

  “Hank, this is Suzanne. She’s a friend of mine. And, lucky for both of us, she’s also a nurse.”

  “Hey there, Hank,” she says, in this gentle voice exactly like you’d expect from a nurse. “It took a whole lot of antibiotic cream and cold washcloths but we finally got your fever and that nasty infection under control.”

  Cold washcloths and clothes I don’t recognize. My legs twitch. This nurse lady probably saw me naked, and I wasn’t conscious enough to remember it. I stare at a tiny diamond stud in the left side of her nose and think about this.

  “We considered leeches, but they’re hard to come by this time of year.” I can tell Thomas says this to make Suzanne smile and she does, although she rolls her eyes at me like we share a joke.

  “So how you feeling, Hank?” she asks. “Kind of like you got hit by a bus?”

  I almost say no, it was more like a truck, but all I can do is shrug and nod, like I’ve forgotten how to speak.

  Suzanne pats me on the shoulder like I’m her favorite patient. “You must be starving. Ready to eat something?”

  I’m aware of the hollow place in my gut, and find my voice. “Yes. Please.”

  “Great. I’ll see what I can whip up for you in Thomas’s kitchen.”

  We listen to her footsteps descend the wooden stairs.

  “Your girlfriend?” I ask Thomas.

  He taps a fingernail on the green mug in his big hands, and his face reddens. It’s kind of funny—this big, Harley-riding, tattooed guy blushing over a girl. “Maybe. We’ve kind of bonded over this past day or so. I guess I can thank you for that.”

>   “You’re welcome,” I say.

  Thomas clears his throat, and I know he’s holding back, wanting to ask me why I have a knife injury, why I freaked out at the library, why I fell out of the sky and into his life a week ago.

  “I just want you to know,” he says instead, “that I’ve been in trouble myself, Hank. When I was younger, I got on the wrong side of the law a couple times and had to learn some lessons the hard way.”

  He pauses to check my response, but I don’t know what to say. I vaguely remember babbling something about jail and begging him not to call the police. But he’s going to wonder what kind of trouble I’m in, and I don’t know where to start. How can I explain that the trouble that scares me most is the trouble I’ve forgotten?

  “I even did time. A couple years in prison, for breaking and entering.” He pauses again. Maybe he’s thinking if he opens up to me about his past, I’ll do the same. “I’m not proud of it. I was an angry, rebellious kid. I’m still a rebel in my way, but I know how to channel that energy.”

  Breaking and entering is not as bad as Simon in the alley, assault and battery. Sure, it was self-defense, but would the police see it that way? And there are the crimes I might have committed before I woke up in Penn Station. And there’s that other thing. Maybe you killed somebody. Did somebody hurt my sister? Did I kill the guy? Is that what I’m blocking out?

  “Anyway, I guess I’m just trying to say I understand. And if I can, I’d like to help.”

  A guitar case is leaning against the wall in a corner of the room, and I focus on that instead of Thomas. I could use someone to trust. And I could sure use some help. But I’m not ready to ask for it.

  “You play guitar?” I ask.

  Thomas follows my gaze. He gets the guitar case, brushes away some dust, and lays it at the foot of the bed. He snaps it open, and inside is an old Telecaster with a butterscotch finish, gorgeous and in excellent condition.

  “Wow,” I say. “Nice ax.”

  Thomas picks it up, slips the strap over his shoulder, and plays a few licks. It’s not plugged into an amp, so the sound is soft and tinny. “Haven’t played for a while,” he says, twisting the pegs to get it in tune. “But I was in a punk rock group in the nineties. One of the best times in my life.” He strokes the body of the guitar like it’s a woman and he’s madly in love with her. “This guitar helped get me through some really bad stuff, believe me.”