Henry of Atlantic City (17 page)

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Authors: Frederick Reuss

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“You got one more chance,” Otis Redding said.

Just then Mr. Miller came in and called, “Lights out!”

When it was dark Elvis Presley said, “He wants to be a fucking Egyptian caveman.” Everybody started laughing until Mr. Miller came in and warned them to cut it out.

The next morning while they were making their beds Robert Johnson said, “There’s a band named the Egyptians.”

“Yeah, I heard them on the radio,” Ernest Whiskey Red Brown said. “The Egyptians!”

Otis Redding came over to Henry’s bed. “Listen up, everybody.” He pointed to Henry. “From now on you are the Egyptian.”

Henry looked at all the boys standing over their beds and said I went into the realm of darkness and I endured until I entered the middle of the prison. And the darkness of chaos shook.

Otis Redding clapped Henry on the back and spun around on one foot. “The Egyptian. You one
baaaad
muhfucker,
man!” Then he went back to finish making his bed.

In church the priests say,
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us
. Once when Henry asked Father Crowley why lamb? Father Crowley said, “Because the Agnus Dei is the symbol of Christ, and lamb is the sacrificial animal slaughtered in ancient times to give praise to God. When Jesus died on the cross to save man from sin and redeem him into everlasting life with the Father, he was taking the place of the sacrificial lamb, and that is why we say the Agnus Dei during the mass.”

At Saint Jude’s they talked about God sending his son to die for the sins of the world, and Saint Augustine said Jesus Christ was both victor and victim and it was because he was the victim that he was also the victor. But Henry’s angel said that Christ was sent to ransom, not to redeem, because the dead are the ransom paid by the living for the Creator’s mistake. The angel said there are no sacrifices, there are only victims, and by playing the lamb Christ wasn’t taking away the sins of the world, he was showing the only way out of it.

The same day that Henry became the Egyptian, Robert Johnson told the story about the man who lived in the woods, Hatchet Harry. He was a bank robber who drove a big black car and never stayed in one place for more than a night because the
FBI
was always right on his
tail. One night he robbed a bank in Philly. He thought he made a clean getaway but suddenly he heard sirens behind him. He drove as fast as he could and cut through alleys and drove all over the place until he got onto a road leading out into the country. As he came around a curve he saw a big open gate and he turned into it. That was how he gave the cops the slip.

It was in the days when the old millionaire still lived in the mansion all alone. One night the old man was lying in his big bed. He heard a car pull up in the driveway and went to the window and saw a man get out and begin prowling around. He went down to the room where he kept his collection of old swords and armor and he grabbed a battle-ax, the kind that is curved and sharp on both sides. The gangster prowled around and looked into all the rooms. Then, just as he came into the dining room, the old millionaire stepped out from behind the door and buried the axe in the man’s head.


AAAHHHHHHHHHHH
,” Robert Johnson screamed. Everyone in the dining room stopped talking. Robert Johnson drew a line with his fork from the middle of his forehead down to the bridge of his nose and got spaghetti sauce in his hair.

“Let’s try to keep the noise to a minimum,” Mr. Miller called from his table near the window. “And cut the clowning,” he said to Robert Johnson.

“Muhfucker never died,” Robert Johnson whispered. “The axe was so fuckin’ sharp it stayed there in his skull and
not even one drop of blood came out. Muhfucker ran ‘round screamin’ and screamin’, then he started laughing ‘cause he couldn’t believe he was still fuckin’ alive and also ’cause the ax went into his brain and made him crazy.” He picked up a handful of spaghetti from his plate. “This is what his brains looked like.” He squished the spaghetti through his fingers. “He ran out of the mansion into the woods and only a couple of people ever seen him since. Sometimes late at night you can hear him laughing.” Then he made a high-pitched, screeching laugh, “
HEEEE HE HE HE HE
.”

Later Henry asked Mr. Miller if the story about Hatchet Harry was true.

Mr. Miller laughed. “It’s an old tradition around here,” he said. “In my day there were two versions. One about Hatchet Harry, who was a gangster, and another was Meat Cleaver Mulligan. He was a butcher. His shop in town was attacked and he was killed by an angry mob during the cholera epidemic of 1859.”

Henry asked why.

“Because they thought he was spreading the disease by selling bad meat.”

Henry asked if it was true.

“I suppose cholera could be spread that way—but I’m not positive.”

Henry said no, he meant which
story
was true.

“It depends on who is telling it.”

Henry said then it was sort of like the Gospels.

“How do you figure that?”

Henry said they all told the same story in different ways and so they were all true in their own way and that meant the stories were true in more ways than one.

“I’ll have to think about that,” Mr. Miller said. “But right off the top of my head, I’d say there is a huge difference between the story of Hatchet Harry and the New Testament.”

Sy’s sister and Helena were both sitting down when Henry came into the visiting room. Helena was holding a baby. Sy’s sister jumped up and hugged Henry with both arms and rocked from side to side so that it was hard for him to breathe. “Oh, Henry, it’s so good to see you. Are you okay?” Then she let him go and took his hand and pulled him over to where Helena was sitting with the baby in her lap.

Helena pulled the blanket away so Henry could see the baby’s face. She looked different than Henry remembered but it was a combination of older and younger and happier and sadder. Henry bent down for a closer look and the baby burped. “He just ate,” Helena said.

Henry asked what his name was.

“Ali,” Helena said.

Just like his father, Henry said.

“That’s right,” Helena said. “His full name is Ali ben-Mohammed Ali. It means Ali, son of Mohammed Ali.”

“But I just call him Al,” Sy’s sister said and touched the baby’s nose.

The baby looked up at Helena and she bent down and kissed it and made a motherly noise. “What do you think, Henry?”

Henry asked why the top of its head was throbbing.

“That’s the baby’s fontanel.”

Henry asked what that was.

“It’s the soft spot on a baby’s skull.” She touched it lightly with her hand.

Henry looked at the baby and watched the spot on its head pulse. Then he said the children a woman bears resemble that man who loves her.

“He does look a lot like his father,” Helena said.

“He has his father’s forehead, but he’s all mom around the mouth and eyes,” Sy’s sister said.

Helena lifted the baby up onto her shoulder and began to pat it on the back. “He has gas,” she said.

“All babies have gas,” Sy’s sister said. Then she told Henry to sit down and tell them how he was doing.

“We wanted to come visit you sooner,” Helena said. “But something came up.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Sy’s sister said. She laughed. It sounded a little like Big Henry’s laugh and just as Henry was about to ask about him she reached into her bag and took out a book. “This is a present from Big Henry,” she said.

It was
The Baseball Book of Records
. Henry opened it and leafed through the pages. He remembered the way Big Henry talked and wondered if this was the book he had
learned to talk that way from. He remembered the time Big Henry took him to the Hippodrome in Philadelphia and had four hot dogs, two bags of popcorn, and seven beers. He asked Sy’s sister if she was still angry at him.

“I married him,” she laughed. “So I guess you could say I’ll
always
be angry at him.”

Henry asked why she married Big Henry if she’d always be angry at him.

She pulled Henry to her and messed up his hair. “It was just a joke, Henry. Why do you take everything so
seriously
?”

Henry asked how far away Philadelphia was.

Sy’s sister looked at Helena. “It’s a long way away,” she said. “A long, long, long way away.”

Henry asked if they knew where his father was.

Sy’s sister shook her head.

Henry asked Helena if she knew where her mother and Sy were.

Helena shook her head and then bent down and nuzzled the baby as if she had hardly heard what Henry had asked.

He asked if they were ever coming back.

Sy’s sister pulled Henry up close and said, “Try not to think about it too much, okay, Henry? Let’s just say they’re underground.”

Henry remembered what the emperor had said and asked if his father had a new job at the Palace.

“Not likely,” Sy’s sister said.

He asked if they were dead.

Sy’s sister held him by the shoulders and looked at him for a long time. “These are questions that you’ll have to save for later, Henry. Much later. For now, you should try not to think too much about it.”

They were all quiet for a while. Then Helena said, “Saint Jude’s is a really nice place, Henry.”

Henry said the strong who are held in high regard are great people and the weak who are despised are the obscure.

Helena put the baby back down on her lap. “What’s that mean?” she asked.

“You don’t have to explain,” Sy’s sister said. “I heard you loud and clear.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Try not to be sad, Henry. We are all very proud of you.”

Helena tickled her baby under its chin and it began to make a gurgling sound. Then she unbuttoned the front of her blouse and lifted out one of her breasts. She guided the nipple into the baby’s mouth. Henry tried not to look but he couldn’t help seeing that her nipple was big and brown. She held it between her fingers the way people held cigarettes. When the baby was attached she looked up.

Helena and Sy’s sister stayed until the baby finished eating. Then they both hugged and kissed Henry and told him that they would come back again to visit him soon. When they were gone Henry went outside to look for Mr. Miller. He found him at the basketball court watching Otis Redding
and Jim Morrison playing one-on-one. Mr. Miller was wearing high-tops, which meant he was going to play the winner. Henry gave Mr. Miller
The Baseball Book of Records
because personal property wasn’t allowed at Saint Jude’s.

Mr. Miller looked at the book. “Thanks, Henry. We’ll put it in the library and you can look at it anytime you want to.”

Then Henry said he didn’t want to see any more visitors.

Mr. Miller closed the book. “What do you mean, Henry?”

Henry said he didn’t want to see anyone else who came to see him.

“What happened?” Mr. Miller put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Henry watched Jim Morrison do a layup.

“C’mon,” Mr. Miller said. “Let’s play some ball.”

Later Henry was raking leaves outside the dorm. His team was assigned to yard detail. When a team was assigned a place to work Mr. Miller got out an old army hat and wrote each job on a piece of paper and the members of the team drew to see what job they got. Henry got raking.

Mr. Miller stood behind Henry and watched him rake. He was always standing around and asking questions or telling everyone what to do or asking if he could play too. Henry had heard Howlin’ Wolf say Mr. Miller was a loser
because anyone who came back to Saint Jude’s after getting out had to be. He didn’t even have a car and had to take the bus when he got his day off.

“Good job, Henry,” Mr. Miller said.

Henry didn’t look up or say anything but just kept making long swipes with the rake that sent the leaves flying behind him. He was trying to imagine how anything could shed so much of itself and still be the same thing afterward. He asked Mr. Miller if trees died when they dropped their leaves and then came back to life, or if they stayed alive all winter without them.

“Good question, Henry. They stay alive but go dormant, sort of like animals that hibernate.”

Henry raked and said nothing.

“Mind if I ask you a question, Henry?”

Henry kept raking.

“Why’d you let that gorilla out of the cage?”

Henry backed into the pile of leaves behind him and stood in it and kept raking. He didn’t want to talk about Big Nekkid. At night sometimes Henry thought about Big Nekkid. He was sorry Big Nekkid had been killed. But he wasn’t sorry he had freed her. Freeing Big Nekkid had been a good deed, like the story Father John had told the other day about Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead. Letting Big Nekkid go was like releasing her from captivity and saints knew a lot about captivity because they were captives too. They were captives of their sainthood and
that meant they didn’t have any choice but to do good deeds. They were called to them.

Mr. Miller moved out of the way of the flying leaves. “Why’d you do it, Henry?”

Henry said because he had to.

“You had to?”

Henry said he wanted to too.

“Are you sorry?”

Henry said nothing.

“I have to know, Henry,” Mr. Miller said. He stood at the edge of Henry’s leaf pile. “I’m trying to help.”

Henry raked.

“Just tell me you’re sorry. Are you?”

Henry said no. He stopped raking and looked around at the job he’d done. The raked grass looked like a big scar.

“Would you explain why you’re not sorry?”

Henry said because he wasn’t.

“Even though what you did led to the death of an innocent animal? How can you say you’re not sorry for what you did?”

Henry said why should he be? Jesus wasn’t sorry for raising Lazarus up from the dead.

“Henry, drop the rake. I want you to explain.”

Henry asked if bringing someone back to life was a good deed.

“It wasn’t just a good deed, Henry. It was a miracle.”

Henry said well, Jesus didn’t say he was sorry.

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