The only real choice for him was to work at one of the stinking chicken plants a couple of towns over. Eight dollars an hour was the starting rate back then—a good amount for the time and place. Everyone started in the blood and guts room, stood in a plastic apron all day while the yellow guts of chickens ran through their fingers. Many quit after a few days. A very few made it weeks. Some sturdy ones lasted a lifetime. But nobody who worked there ate chicken for months. Henry knew he would never survive the smell of the dead meat or the slick bloody floor and chicken viscera on his smock. But he tried. He clocked in a one and one-half hours. Plant Four by comparison was mostly dry, the particulates of wood as fine as snowflakes landing layer on layer in his lungs like the sludge in a drain a delicate violent process.
Henry had come home one night and told his mother he didn’t think he could stand it on the line another day. “Mama, it’s loud,” he said, sounding like the child he was. His mother had listened, hadn’t interrupted. Henry may not have known exactly what she’d say, but if he was being honest, he probably knew what she’d mean. “Don’t do it then,” she’d said, shrugging her shoulders. “You don’t have to eat.” His mother’s unsympathetic but sure grasp of the ways of the world had been just the thing Henry needed to hear. He hadn’t meant to think about her today.
But the body adapts, the mind adapts. Henry had seen it for himself with the guys on the line. Henry wasn’t one of the oldest guys in the group. Some of the men had spent decades at the machines. Randy Hightower, Alvin Lodermilk, Donny Goodman all had at least thirty years already and they showed no signs of leaving. Henry wasn’t a kid, but it made him feel better not to be part of the old guard. After nineteen years, he had a hard time convincing himself that the job was temporary.
Linda and Shelley, the white women in the main office, greeted him as they did as he took the side entrance into the building. Linda, the younger of the women, had been the subject of talk when she was first hired years ago. Her big chest highlighted in sweaters, her tiny little waist, thin blond hair dark at the roots that she fed into her mouth when she was nervous had all been noticed and discussed. If she liked the attention from the men, she gave no indication. She said nothing to even the boldest of them but smiled at them in a detached indulging way, like you might a child who had stepped on your toe. Henry never flirted with her. Shelley probably just seemed older than Linda. She’d come to the plant many years before Henry, looking like someone’s wife’s idea—a settled woman in elastic waist pants and sensible shoes.
A small maze of cubicles where the salesmen and low-level executives kept desks was one wall away from the machine room floor. Every day Henry passed by pictures of kids in baseball uniforms, ballerinas, and fat babies that looked like old men. Several of the men had plastic toys and fast food toys and dolls from comic books that Henry could not understand why grown men collected. The men on the line were supposed to come in the other entrance, but neither Linda nor Shelley minded him coming in the mid-management door. Henry needed that soft light moment before he entered the room and the grind of the machines.
For months now the plant opened only four days a week, which meant Henry had Fridays to himself. Not that it mattered much. As much as they try to get you to think so, there is no such thing as free time. Without money the days stretched like taffy, measured in judge shows and Family Feuds. At first that open Friday meant sleeping in, lazy mornings of pleasurable dozing, followed by a midmorning nap that felt like a necessity. Lunch meant a handful of sugary cereal, bologna he rolled into cylinders and dipped into the fancy jar of mustard Ava liked, or leftover anything, sometimes all of the above. For a short time Henry had loved that leisure. He’d worked for an actual paycheck since he was sixteen and for cash before that. The open day had made him feel lucky, like the rich must feel. Now a day off alone was worse than work. Ain’t that some shit?
If the teenage Henry could have known about the sad feel of time and days, the enormous weight of them, stacking up with nothing making them matter. The awful truth was that he had nothing, nothing to do with his hands or his mind if the work disappeared. He’d be like the old dudes sacking groceries or dragging socks over the electronic eye at Walmart. The economy was very bad. He suspected that he was suited for repetitive work that used to be the domain of teenaged kids, but now more and more often was done by grown-ass people, his age and older. He was like those adding machines or busted typewriters you see at the thrift store, out-of-date, picked for parts and made into terrible jewelry or sad coffee table art. Small town economic theory said if white people worked at those jobs the town economy is bad. If those white workers are over thirty, the economy is very, very bad. People were supposed to feel some of that dispossessed feeling when they retire after a lifetime of work. There had to be days of wondering what to do with yourself, the phantom pains of getting yourself up, rushing before the sun rose with the taste of quickly made coffee and toothpaste in your mouth—none of that leaves you overnight. You don’t work every day and then turn it off like a light. Henry expected to feel the loss, but not at thirty-eight years old.
5
Henry had tried to run. After he graduated from school he and his brother Sean had driven straight through and all night to New Orleans. They’d missed Mardi Gras by months, but they figured the town always had a party so why not. Henry and Sean found Bourbon Street easily and walked side by side past bars, restaurants, tattoo and dance parlors. A topless overweight white girl watched them from the patio of a nightclub. “Look at that,” Sean said and jerked his head at the girl. Henry had nothing against naked women, even not so beautiful ones, but the sight of her smallish breasts and large pink nipples pointing in slightly different directions made him uneasy. “Let’s go, man.” He grabbed Sean’s arm. He was eager to get to St. James square to have his fortune told. In some parts of North Carolina so-called psychics put up signs with painted red hands at the ends of the yards. Five dollars a pop for the secrets of your future as told by a little old lady con artist. He’d pass on that. Years before at the grocery store Henry’s mother had pointed out to him a small mousy-looking woman wearing hospital shoes. “There’s your great fortune-teller,” she’d said. Henry had watched the woman walk slowly with her grocery basket down the chip aisle, pick up orange cheese doodles, and toss them into her cart. Doodles! He’d never go to a North Carolina psychic. Mostly he didn’t believe in the dark powers at all, but he needed a hint, any hint about where his life was headed. He and Sean were determined to do and be more than they’d seen, but they had no clue where to start.
The day was already hot, but the forecast said oppressive heat, heat too ridiculous for late spring, heat that almost made you forget all your home training and act foolish. Not many buskers and performers had set up yet this early in the day, but a boy of maybe eight or nine and two older men who looked to be family were sitting on a large piece of cardboard just ahead of Henry and Sean. The brown boy of eight or nine jumped up at their approach and tap-danced in a jerky, untrained way on the cardboard. The boy locked eyes with Henry. “Hey, mister,” he yelled. “Mister!” The boy must have learned to never let a prospective customer look away, no matter how artless and embarrassing the performance, don’t let them look away. Henry shrugged his shoulders at the boy and considered pulling out his pockets like the broke Monopoly man. He doubted that would stop the dancing boy. Henry and Sean had maybe forty dollars between them to get back home. The dead-eyed boy tapped more vigorously as Henry struggled not to look back at him.
“I’m going back to the car,” Sean said. “I’ve got to sleep.”
“I’ll meet you later. If you move the car come right back here to find me. Okay?” This was the days before cell phones were extensions of the hand and people did not know every waking second what everyone else did every waking second. Henry thought that if he got lost in the city walking street after street that looked alike that it might take him days to find his brother and get back home. That wasn’t going
to happen. He was young; he was beautiful. Nothing was going to happen.
Henry would stop at the first table that called to him. He walked some distance from the bored-looking black woman with a head rag, old black woman with a head rag, bored-looking white woman with a head rag, long-haired white woman with witchy gray hair under a head rag. None of them looked promising to Henry. Some of them ignored him altogether, but most glanced up briefly as he passed. There were no young fortune-tellers and no men. Henry would never go to a young psychic or a man for that matter. A man has no patience for anyone else’s future, even Henry knew that. What he didn’t understand yet was that young people didn’t even know enough to know that they wouldn’t always be young.
“What are you looking for, honey?” At the third-to-last table in the row, a white woman called to him. “I’ve watched you. You want to stop. I know you do.”
Henry scanned the woman’s card table, which was covered in a dark blue tablecloth festooned with yellow stars and slivers of moons, the whole thing more appropriate on a preschooler’s bed. Behind her table the woman had maybe a half dozen bags and totes full of what looked like hastily stuffed clothes and household goods. The telltale triangle of a clothes iron nosed out of the top of one of them. Henry’s mother used to say you could always tell trashy people because they’d have a pile of junk in the corners of their rooms. By all appearances this woman had no room at all.
“You just get to town, honey?”
“Everybody just got here.” Henry smiled at the woman, not sure if he was being clever or obnoxious.
The woman did not say anything, but smiled indulgently at him.
“We’ve been here, me and my brother, about three hours,” Henry said. He and Sean had stopped at Rite Aid and gotten a jumbo bag of chips and some sodas after they peed in the mostly clean toilet, then come immediately to the middle of town.
The woman looked amused at him and motioned for Henry to sit in the open chair. She was younger than he initially thought. Forties, maybe.
“I don’t want a fortune,” Henry said as he sat down.
“You want to sit, so stay,” the woman said.
Henry crossed his hands, not entirely sure what he was waiting for. “Are you from here?”
The woman shrugged. “Might as well be. I’ve been here for twenty-some years.” The woman reached for his hand and turned it over in her own long fingered hands. Her nails were painted a deep plum color and nicely manicured, her obvious pride. The woman traced the dark lines on his palm with her index finger.
“What are you doing?” Henry asked.
“Your hand, honey.” As she traced the lines she whispered. The most Henry could make out was life, heart. She looked like she retraced her lines and looked for mistakes. “Let’s do the cards.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like how your lifeline looks. See?” The woman whispered this to him, her forehead near his own. “This line is dark and full, but hardly there. See this? If the lines coming off of it were pointing up then I wouldn’t think a thing about it. You see how this one points down?” She put her finger on a jagged line near his thumb. “I want to see something else.” The woman frowned and reached into her bag for the cards. She pulled them out without ceremony and cut the deck. The first card she turned over had a smiling skeleton against a dark background, curlicues swirling in the air around the bones like turbulent wind.
“That’s death isn’t it?”
“It’s hard to say. Death isn’t always death. You know that, don’t you?”
“It looks like death to me,” Henry said, but he was not afraid.
“Change, honey. Don’t hold on to things that can’t work for you. What’s your name?”
“Henry.”
“Henry?” The woman looked him over as she considered his name. “I don’t like Henry. It doesn’t fit.”
“I was named for my grandfather. Everybody loved him.”
“Doesn’t matter. Henry doesn’t fit you. Change it,” the woman said. “What about Hank?”
Henry laughed out loud. “I’m not a Hank. No way.”
“Maybe not.” The woman looked him over and conceded. “But change everything else.”
“I can’t change everything,” Henry said. He thought he’d feel something scary, some eeriness that meant dark forces had been summoned. What he felt was the same feeling of annoyance at an old woman telling him what to do.
The woman hesitated. “Listen to me. You have to make some hard decisions. Big change and transformation is coming for you. Do not ride in a white car. Ever. Stay out of parking garages. You won’t die there but there’s no good that will come from it. Go home as soon as you can. Don’t stay here. This is a sad place. It might not look like it, but there’s a lot of pain here under all this whatever. All this here. But whatever you do, don’t stay still, you’ll get stuck. That will unravel you. Don’t forget what you’ve heard here. Don’t ignore good advice.”
“Don’t ignore good advice?” Henry laughed. “You sound like my mama.”
The woman pursed her lips in an expression Henry couldn’t read. “Well”—the woman stared hard at Henry—“you also need to let the girl go. You’ll never be happy until you do. But I don’t see you doing that.”
Henry smiled slowly at the woman. She had his attention and for the first time since he saw her, a tickle of belief wormed its way into his head. Ava had been flitting through his thoughts all day. She was going to college three hours away (three hours!) in just a few months. Though she declared that she would not forget him and their relationship would be stronger than ever. She promised that being apart for a little bit would just make them happier to reunite. They would make it, she promised. Henry knew better. She would find somebody better, somebody smart, maybe even someone rich who would give her a life that he would one day watch from the sidelines like a child at a parade. He was sure that a good life was in Ava’s future. If he wasn’t a scared, selfish kid he would let it happen for her, be glad for her.
“I’m not going to let her go.”
The woman smiled and shrugged. “It’s up to you. People never listen. I don’t know why they bother asking. I’m just telling you what I know. It won’t be easy.”
“What else is new?”
The woman looked meaningfully at Henry. “You want to meet later? At four?”
Henry placed ten dollars in the woman’s hand. She held on to him too long with her beautifully manicured fingers. He was accustomed to women trying to get closer to him, flirting with him, but her interest took him by surprise. Like all attractive people, Henry knew he was beautiful, what he didn’t know was the expressions he wore and how his face registered his reactions to the world.
“I didn’t mean to shock you. If I don’t see you again, you need to remember what I said.” The woman smiled at him like she was memorizing his face. “Have a good life, honey.”
But Henry did come back. Right at four and directly to the spot. The woman brightened at his approach like she’d had the first good surprise of a very long time.
“My brother has the car.” Henry didn’t tell her that the car was where he and his brother slept.
“Here, help me with these,” she said as she handed him some of her bags. Henry grabbed most of them and followed the woman to an alley. The woman’s old car had the windows already down in the front. “No air,” she explained. “And yours won’t go back up.” The back of the car was stuffed with other bags of her belongings.
Henry stuffed the bags into the backseat. “Ready?” For a fleeting moment he thought about Ava and her dissolving face, her incredulity if she saw him with this woman. If he lingered on the thought it would pain him, he might even ask the woman to let him out and he would find his way back to Sean. He did not let the thought linger. This sex was less than nothing to him. Nothing at all. In a few short years his memory of this day would fade into a blur and he would not even recall enough about the woman to form a picture of her in his mi
nd.
They drove through neighborhoods miles from Bourbon Street. The breeze thick like opening a hot oven bathed their faces. The woman’s thin pale hair flew up around her, and for a moment Henry imagined that they were breathing under water like another species. Very quickly the landscape changed from the Victorian balconies to small homes in rows of close-together shotgun houses that were mostly white, but some with unusual vibrant teals and pinks, the occasional deep purple one in the row. They stopped behind one of the houses. “This is where my dog is,” the woman said and pointed to a light blue house surrounded by a white split rail fence. “Black people don’t like dogs, I know. But I’m going to get her back.”
“Maybe black people don’t like your dog,” Henry said.
“Maybe.” The woman glanced at him quickly to gauge his annoyance. “I used to live right there.”
“Why don’t you now?” Henry asked.
“Somebody else lives there. I’m not welcome anymore.”
Henry nodded not sure how he was supposed to respond to her. For a second he feared a jealous man with a shotgun running out of the house with a gun trained on his face.
“Nobody’s coming, honey,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. Nobody but you gives a damn about me. But you don’t know anything about that. Lost love.” The woman smiled at him as she moved to his side of the car. She pulled her flowing skirt up to her waist and straddled him in the passenger seat. “You like me, don’t you?” Her body was light, like her bones were hollow, her face pretty and delicate in front of him, her skin an intricate map of tiny little lines. “Is this okay, Hank?”
Henry was in the passenger seat of a piece-of-shit car with a woman old enough to be his mother. He did not know her name. “Light as a feather, baby,” Henry said.
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