Being Henry David

by Cal Armistead

  Sitting in the last row, I wait for my head to stop vibrating, for the gray spots in my vision to clear. Why the hell would the sound of a crashing door cause me to throw myself to the floor like that? Another question without an answer.

  I stuff my plastic bag of clothes under the chair in front of me and turn my focus away from my problems and on to the redheaded girl sitting on the stage.

  As if sensing my eyes locked on her, Hailey turns and looks up to where I’m sitting, leaning my arms on the seat in front of me, watching her. She squints, and then with one hand, shields her face from the lights on the stage so she can see me better. Encouraged, I stand up and start walking toward her.

  Hailey hops off the stage and we meet in the aisle. She looks happy to see me.

  “Hank,” she says, and gives me this sweet, shy smile. “What are you doing here?”

  “I, uh, well, my dad is in town, looking at houses and property and stuff, and I didn’t feel like going along. I went for a walk and ended up here.” These lies come so easy, I’m proud and ashamed at the same time.

  “Does that mean you’re transferring soon?”

  She sounds hopeful, and I wish I could tell her yes. I wish I was a normal person who could go to this school and attend classes and take Hailey to dances and cheer for the Patriots sports teams.

  “I might,” I tell her. “Although it’s so late in the school year, I might just hang out in Concord and, you know, do stuff on my own.”

  “Stuff on your own?”

  “Like home-schooling. To finish up the year.” I shrug and go for a confident smile to back it up.

  She turns her head to one side and crinkles her forehead at me like she doesn’t get it. I notice that she’s wearing two different earrings, a dangly gold musical note in one ear, and a silver G-clef in the other.

  “But where are you living, if your parents don’t have a house out here yet?”

  “Oh, I have this, well, uncle who lives in town. I’m staying with him.” All these stacked-up lies are starting to make me nauseous. I gesture toward the stage. “So, what’s going on here?”

  Hailey looks behind her at the stage. “Oh, it’s this thing we do every year called the Battle of the Bands, coming up in a couple weeks. It’s a big deal, with sets and lights and fog machines and stuff. A big deal for us, anyway.”

  “That’s cool. You in the show?” I ask.

  She looks away, shrugs. “Nah. I’m just helping backstage, organizing and stuff.”

  From the stage, the suburban gangster is staring at the two of us.

  “That your boyfriend?” I jut my chin toward the kid.

  Startled, Hailey follows my gaze. “Cameron? No. He lives next door to me and we’ve known each other since we were kids. That’s all.” She shrugs. “Well, I should get back to work. Stick around for a while if you want.”

  “Sure. Can I help?” I ask her.

  Hailey introduces me to this hyper blond lady named Ms. Coleman who’s obviously in charge of the event.

  “This is Hank, he’s a new student here,” Hailey says, cutting me a look that says, just go with it. “Can he help out?”

  “Of course, of course,” Ms. Coleman says. She’s so busy she barely even looks at me. “Welcome aboard.” She points out a toolbox and gives some vague directions about building sets.

  For about an hour, I join the other kids (who ignore me for the most part, which is fine with me), working on the sets and trying to be helpful. It turns out I’m good with my hands, adept at drilling into wood frames and thinking through how things should fit together. Building stuff comes naturally to me. My hands remember. Maybe my dad taught me.

  Then I recall the voice I heard in the woods this morning, calling me. It wasn’t Thoreau and it wasn’t Thomas either. It was my father. I know this. Although I can’t conjure a picture of him in my head, at least there’s no warning slash in my gut when I try.

  “Hey, you.” There’s a voice coming from somewhere above my head. I glance up to see Cameron standing on a platform above the stage. “Can you bring up that spotlight for me?”

  He points to a black unit by my feet, with metal flaps in front of a large bulb, and a loop on top like a handle. “Sure.” It’s heavier than it looks. The only way up to the platform is a makeshift ladder, blocks of wood nailed into the wall. With one hand carrying the spotlight, the other grasping the ladder, I climb up to where Cameron is kneeling at the edge of the platform. It’s hard to stand there and lift up the light without losing my balance, but I manage.

  Cameron waits a beat longer than necessary to reach out for the light, like he’s hoping maybe, just maybe, I’ll slip and fall. I see it in his eyes. He reaches to lift the spotlight out of my hands, but just as I’m letting go, he releases his grip and the weight of it comes down on me. Asshole. Instinctively, I reach for the spotlight with both hands, afraid to let the unit go crashing to the floor, and I almost fall backward off the ladder. Just in time, Cameron grabs my arm. “Sorry,” he says, not looking in the least bit sorry. “Lost my grip.”

  I smirk at him, drilling into him with my own unflinching eye contact. “Yeah, right.” I say.

  He turns away from me to hang the spotlight, standing on a narrow catwalk and reaching up into the blackpainted rafters. The platform at the top of the ladder is not a big area, just about the same size as Thoreau’s cabin. Still, there’s enough space for a guy to stand and hang lights. Or hide.

  “Okay, good work, everybody,” Ms. Coleman calls out. “We’ve made a lot of progress. Let’s clean up and have some lunch.”

  In the kitchen, there are boxes of pizza somebody ordered for the cast and crew. I feel awkward around the other kids, like an intruder, but the last thing I’d do in my situation is refuse free food. So I take a couple of slices of pepperoni and chow down. The other kids sneak glances at me, but nobody talks to me. Fair enough. I don’t try to start a conversation either. It’s hard to talk to people when I’m a stranger, not just to them, but to myself.

  I look for Hailey, but Cameron has taken her aside, doing his possessive act again, telling her some long involved story (she keeps looking in my direction; am I only imagining she wants me to rescue her?), so I casually slip out of the kitchen.

  With nothing better to do, I wander into an open room adjoining the auditorium. There are music stands, lockers, instruments, and random pieces of sheet music scattered on the floor. The band room. And there in a corner, somebody has left an acoustic guitar. It’s not a fancy or expensive guitar, just a dusty old Yamaha, but for some reason, I’m drawn to it. I pick it up, run my fingers over the wood on the neck. Placing my fingers on the top frets, I play a D chord, and wince when I hear how out of tune it is. So I twist the pegs, get it in tune, and start playing a song I don’t recognize, but my fingers seem to remember by heart.

  Now this is cool. I know how to play guitar. Music, as it turns out, feels as natural to me as breathing. Feels so good, I forget where I am. Close my eyes, let my fingers fly, and play the hell out of that old guitar.

  At first I think I’m imagining things when I hear singing. But I open my eyes, and there’s Hailey, leaning against the lockers.

  “No, Hank, keep playing,” she says. “I love the Beatles. My mom played their stuff all the time when I was little.”

  So the song I’m playing is something by the Beatles. A spark of memory snaps into place, like synapses repairing themselves. The Beatles. Of course.

  I try to start the song again, but I’m flustered and forget how to play, unable to pick up where I left off. Then I make myself relax, return to that place where my fingers did the remembering. It comes back, and Hailey sings. She has a gorgeous voice, silky but with this raspy quality that makes it unique. Sexy. Here and there I miss a chord because I’m distracted by her singing, and she misses a few words, but while we’re playing, I feel like I’m on a different planet. A planet where only Hailey and I exist, like we’ve been making music together forever.

&nb
sp; And as she sings, I listen to the lyrics and remember the name of the song. “Blackbird.”

  The last notes of “Blackbird” hang in the air for a while after we’re done, and I hold my breath. “Wow,” I say at last. “You have the most amazing voice.”

  She looks away from me then, shrugs. “I dunno,” she murmurs, but I can tell she’s trying not to smile.

  “So explain to me why you’re not performing in the Battle of the Bands.”

  Hailey plays with the zipper on her red sweater. “Couldn’t get a band together. I mean, I did it last year, but it didn’t work out this time.”

  “When is the show?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “That’s enough time to pull your band back together, isn’t it? Maybe I can help.” Call me delusional, call me impulsive, whatever, but under the new influence of music, I feel like anything is possible. Plus, I’d grab any excuse to spend more time with this girl. There’s just something about her.

  “I don’t know,” Hailey says. She won’t look at me. “Last year, there was this thing. But look, it’s no big deal. We can talk about this later. Even if we don’t enter the competition, we can play together for fun if you want. You still have my number, right?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’ll call you. Definitely.”

  She nods and smiles this cool, really pretty smile. “I’d like that. Thanks.”

  I set the guitar back in the corner, and together, we head back down the hallway and into the auditorium.

  Later, I stand inside the front lobby of the school with the rest of the kids, pretending to watch for my parents’ car pulling up in front of the school to fetch me. After Hailey leaves, giving me a wave and flashing that dimple, I excuse myself to go to the boys’ room, but nobody seems to hear me, or even notice I’ve slipped away. Perfect. I hang out in the bathroom until all is quiet, and I’m pretty sure the last kid has left.

  Blending into the hollow silence of the school, I set out to explore. Walking down the empty hallways is kind of creepy, like being the last person left alive after a nuclear attack. But then I start thinking, hey, if there was a nuclear attack and I was the sole survivor, everything I need to keep myself alive is right here at Henry David Thoreau Regional High School.

  Clothing? All set. Not just the clothes I already own, but when I investigate the boys’ locker room, I find a big cardboard box shoved up against a wall in the corner, marked Lost and Found. It’s full of T-shirts and gym shorts, collared shirts and jeans, even sneakers and jackets, and some look like they’re my size. How rich are the kids in this town that they can completely forget to bring home all these clothes? I’m sure Thoreau would have plenty to say about that.

  As for food, the cafeteria has all the food I can eat, if I can get past the locked door. Through the window in the kitchen door, I see enormous cans of food like applesauce, tomato sauce, and peaches stacked on the counters. I’d never go hungry.

  Turning away from the kitchen door, I’m trying to figure out where I can lie down and get some sleep. All the classroom doors are locked, the nurse’s office is locked, the library is locked. I’m thinking maybe the best I can do is head back to the auditorium and try to curl up in one of those red seats, when a woman in a plaid flannel shirt and jeans comes bursting out of a closet clutching a mop. We collide right into each other and she tumbles backward, landing on her butt on the floor. The keys attached to her belt loop make a jangling crash, and the mop goes flying.

  “Oh man. I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching over to help her to her feet.

  “Excuse me,” she says, wide eyes startled. She has gray-streaked hair in frizzy curls past her shoulders, but her face looks young somehow. Innocent.

  Once she’s on her feet again, I get the mop and hand it back to her. “Are you all right?”

  The woman stares at me for a long moment, narrowing her eyes. “Michael?” she whispers.

  My heart lurches. Do you know me? I search for something familiar in her thin face. She’s sort of pretty in an all-natural, former-hippy kind of way.

  “I’m sorry.” She shakes her head as if she’s trying to wake up from a weird dream. “You look like somebody I knew once,” she says.

  Michael. I examine the name, repeat it in my head, but feel no spark of recognition.

  Heavy footsteps approach, then a man’s voice interrupts. “You still here, kid?” Turning, I see the dread-locked janitor. His intense eyes snap at me with intelligence and suspicion.

  “Well, I—I was helping out with sets, and my dad hasn’t come for me yet. Can you tell me where there’s a phone so I can call him?”

  “You don’t have a cell phone?” he asks. “I thought all you kids had phones.”

  “I don’t have one at the moment. It…broke, and I don’t have my new one yet.” With his unflinching gaze on me, my lies seem completely transparent.

  “There’s a pay phone by the front door,” he says. “You never noticed?”

  “I never noticed,” I say lightly in what I hope is a charming way. That’s when I see something shimmering on the cafeteria floor, where it skittered under a chair. It’s a set of keys. They must have fallen off the janitor’s belt loop when she fell. I rip my eyes away from the keys, hoping the janitors won’t notice.

  The woman clears her throat softly behind me. “Billy,” she says. “Doesn’t he look a lot like Michael?”

  Billy’s expression softens when he looks at the woman. “Maybe a little. Around the eyes. But come on, Sophie, we need to finish up. Some kid puked in the back hallway.” He cuts a resentful look in my direction, as if he suspects me. “As soon as we get it cleaned up, we can get out of here.”

  I wonder if the two janitors are a couple. Billy and Sophie, lovers and high school custodians. Michael’s parents?

  Sophie opens the closet next to the kitchen, takes out a huge wash pail on wheels, and pushes the handle into Billy’s hands.

  Please don’t notice the keys on the floor. Please don’t notice the keys.

  “I was just leaving,” I say to them both. “Have a good one.”

  With one last wistful look at me, Sophie follows Billy down one of the long hallways, and I head toward the front door. I put the heavy black phone to my ear and pretend to make a call.

  Once the two janitors disappear, I set the phone quietly in the cradle and slip back into the kitchen, making sure my sneakers don’t squeak on the clean tile floor. With an eye on the cafeteria door, I reach for the keys under the plastic orange seat of the chair. Scoop them up, muffle the jingle, and stuff them into the front pocket of my jeans.

  Then I slip noiselessly into the auditorium and ease the door shut slowly, so it won’t make that crashing sound. Grabbing my bag of clothes from the place where I tucked it under the seats earlier, I hurry toward the stage. Imagining I hear a sound like maybe a tall janitor wielding a large mop, I scale the ladder to the upper platform in seconds.

  Curling up on my side, I make a pillow of the clothes Magpie gave me and a blanket of my coat. I stay there on the platform until my heart rate slows down, until the building grows dark around me with the setting sun. Until I fall asleep.

  7

  Scuffing through the dead leaves and pine needles at the side of the road, I head back to Walden Pond the next morning. I’m drawn there, like maybe this is the place where I can find some answers. Which is tough, considering I’m not even sure of the questions.

  Last night I slept like a dead person on the stage platform at the school, and woke up in the same position I went to sleep in, my back stiff and no dreams to remember. With Sophie’s keys giving me free reign of the school, I took a shower in the boys’ locker room and picked out a change of clothes from the lost and found—faded jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. In the cafeteria fridge, I found some ham and cheese sandwiches, milk, and an apple.

  My side hurt and was bleeding again, so I let myself into the nurse’s office to get antiseptic and bandages. The cut should be better by now,
but it’s still red around the edges and hurts to touch it. Worst of all, it reminds me of Simon.

  In my imagination Simon is a zombie, withered hands reaching, eyes glazed, blood streaking down his forehead, nubby teeth grinning. Will he be looking for me too, like Magpie and those guys who work for him? But no, none of them can find me here. There’s no way.

  Don’t think about it.

  Walden Pond is a mirror, reflecting gray-blue skies, the pines, and oak trees with new leaves pushing out of fat buds. Some people are out hiking, but the deeper I go into the woods, the more alone I am. Walking faster, I break into this little trot, a comfortable jogging pace that just feels good. Maybe I really did run track in my former life, because running feels as natural as walking, as playing guitar, as breathing. Somehow I’m even able to set aside the pain in my side to focus on the running. My legs and breaths settle into a rhythm that calms every cell in my body like meditation, like some kind of drug. Even though my body is moving, my mind is relaxed.

  A collage of images floats into my consciousness, snapshot memories of Jack and Nessa, of Magpie and Simon. Thomas. There’s Hailey smiling at me and Cameron glaring. Ms. Coleman. Sophie and Billy. In such a short time, my weird disjointed life has put me in contact with a lot of people. Some I’m glad to have etched on my brain. Others I’d erase in a nanosecond if I could figure out how.

  Leaves and pebbles and pine needles crunch in cadence under my sneakers, lulling me into a comfortable trance, and in this frame of mind, I try to access the memories that lie just out of reach.

  Gently pressing my memory to the edge of places that don’t feel safe, I think: Dad. Then I think: Mom. The beast inside twitches in its sleep, but I refuse to surrender, focusing instead on my pumping arms and legs, my breaths. Inhale. Exhale.

  Dad. Mom.

  Like a camera taking a picture, an image of my dad flashes behind my eyeballs. Tall man, dark hair, wire rimmed glasses, gray eyes like mine, a kind smile. We are outside, Dad and me. We’re in the woods, building a fire. We have sleeping bags and backpacks and compasses. This is something we do together, something that belongs to us.