This is how he finds himself on top of the table, stepping across it, and thrusting his foot, heel first, into Lee’s face. Even through the sole of his shoe, Henry can feel Lee’s nose flatten and crack. When Lee tries to get out of his seat, he gets another heel in the chin, which forces him back into his chair. Lee can’t see through the tears that have filled his eyes, so that’s the end of it.
HENRY SITS THERE, IN MRS. Hancock’s office, waiting for his father to come pick him up, his heart speeding up every time he thinks that maybe everyone knows—that maybe this thing, about his mom, is the thing that everyone says about him when he is not around. Do the kids in Frankie’s grade know it, too? Do they ignore him, and then whisper behind his back that his mother was a whore, barely knowing what they are saying, repeating the things their own mothers talk about?
Henry had abandoned the idea that the man who their father shot at was a government agent years ago. Andre had shamed him out of this theory. But the notion that the man could have been his mother’s boyfriend came to Henry only recently, and he was surprised he hadn’t drawn that conclusion before. Obviously others had drawn that conclusion, too.
He can’t bring himself to blame her for it. He knows now that things happened between his mother and father, on the other sides of walls, just before she walked into a room, in the dark when he and Andre and Frankie couldn’t see. He remembers sudden whimpers, pleading whispers coming from other parts of the house, the look on his father’s face when he had done something to Andre or Henry himself and gotten a rise out of her. At the time, these moments seemed uncomfortable, but ordinary. In retrospect, Henry understands the full implications with horror and guilt.
So she was with someone else. Maybe she was with a lot of someone elses, looking for a nice guy. Who cares? But it makes him furious that other people might have her figured for some kind of slut, running their mouths when they didn’t know the first thing about her.
His father comes. Mrs. Hancock greets him with a handshake—she hasn’t said a word to Henry except “sit” the whole time he’s been in the room. She is a fat woman with icy-pink lipstick and black hair pulled back tight that explodes into a frizzy ponytail. After shaking her hand, his father leans down to make eye contact with Henry, resting his hands on his knees. He has a two-day growth of whiskers from getting home late from work and not showering or shaving before he goes to bed.
“I had to take off early to get you,” he says.
Henry sits up straight and tries to look apologetic but doesn’t speak. His father’s mouth tells him that anything he says right now will be the wrong thing. Mrs. Hancock says that she is really sorry about all this and hands his father a form to sign.
Mrs. Hancock glances at Henry disapprovingly and then looks down at her forms. His father’s voice and his body language announce plainly that he intends to beat the shit out of Henry, and she seems to approve. She thinks she knows how this goes, because she knows the fathers in this town, the controlled cruelty they dole out to boys. But she knows nothing. Just like the rest of them, the smug little bastards who spread trash about his mother, who leave Frankie out of kickball games.
At this moment, Henry hates Edgefield and everyone in it. It’s all he can do not to fly at Mrs. Hancock and punch her in her icy-pink mouth. He follows his father out through a hallway of gawkers and meets all their eyes fearlessly, hoping one of them will say one word, one fucking word. No one does.
As soon as he slides into the passenger seat of the car, his father reaches over and slaps him. When Henry covers his face, his father knocks his hand away and slaps him again. He feels it in his teeth, but worse, it’s insulting.
“Why would you do that? Why don’t you use your brain, Henry? Now you can’t go on school property, and I have to send Frankie to school by himself. The next thing you know, he’s in a fight on the way there, and I gotta take off in the middle of the day to get him, too,” he says.
Henry shakes with rage and holds his cheek. His father slaps him again, and for the second time today, Henry’s body moves of its own accord. He lunges at his father over the arm rest that separates their seats and immediately gets a fist in his side. Henry loses his wind. He can fight, but he’s no Jackie Chan, especially not in a car. If he had wanted to avoid this, he should have run.
But there is no space here to regret his decision, no space to think at all. His thoughts are unreachable, on the other side of a wall of pain. If he could get to them, he might be able to stop his father from hitting him, but the wall gets higher, gets thicker. He thinks he says, “Dad, Frankie doesn’t fight; it will be okay,” though it’s probably just coming out as nonsense, just garbled, breathless begging. Stupid, Henry. He should have used his mind when it was still an option.
When Henry’s head slams into the passenger window, he feels the glass shatter. It falls slow, though, like snow, and there’s something not quite right about it. It’s not really happening like this. There is no broken glass. He is in between worlds now, barely conscious. His face is pressed against the door, face smashed to the window, his neck crushed between the door and his father’s hand. He tries to remember how to get back to the part where it was snowing glass, because there was not so much pain in that part.
Then, his father lets go, stops hitting. Full consciousness slams into Henry, and he feels the blood rushing hot to all his injuries. This is the worst part, but then it gets a little better, and a little better, until he can reach his thoughts again. The fuzz clears from Henry’s vision, and he sees his father’s face has gone white. He knows what he has done to Henry; the anger goes out, and shame slithers in. It cools your blood, sucks the color from your face. This shame is paralytic. His father doesn’t move, but the car fills with the sound of his breathing. It’s a terrible thing to hear.
Eventually, his father starts the car. Henry sits up and tries to put on his safety belt in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that he hurts all over. Halfway home, Henry says he is sorry for kicking Lee in the face, and he really is, though he only says so out loud because it will help protect him, and Frankie, to apologize. “Sorry. I’m really sorry.”
His father squeezes the steering wheel and nods.
He lets Henry sit by himself while he picks up Frankie from school, then makes Henry and Frankie double-decker ham sandwiches for dinner. This means his father is sorry, too. Henry eats it, even though it hurts to chew. He thinks, bitterly, that when he leaves here he will never apologize for anything again, not with words or with sandwiches, because apologies are empty.
They eat at the table, with the TV on. Frankie watches Henry eat, his eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses. He looks back and forth between Henry and their father, swallowing bites of sandwich without chewing. Henry knows he hates ham.
After their father goes to bed, Henry pesters Frankie to put on his pajamas and brush his teeth. Frankie doesn’t argue tonight, but he moves slow as molasses, eyes fixed on Henry, who stands in the doorway of the bathroom while he brushes.
“Celia Miller said you got into it with Lee,” he says, after he spits a wad of foamy toothpaste into the sink.
“Huh? Yeah. I did. I’m suspended now. But I don’t get to sleep in, ’cause I still have to walk some little punk to school.”
“She said you won.”
Henry takes his turn at the sink and knows just what Frankie means by this when he sees himself in the mirror. Half his face was swollen, his right eye purpled. The real mess is on the inside, in his throat and in his midsection, but his father was too angry to keep the visible parts intact this time. He passes his little brother a cup of water and brushes his own teeth, trying not to wince.
Frankie stands there with the cup.
“You should see Lee. Now he’s fucked up,” Henry says and laughs. “His face looks like a taco.”
Henry knows Frankie can deduce the facts. But Henry will keep bluffing. Their father has never done anything like this to Frankie, and there is no reason Frankie sh
ould have to walk around fearful that he will, not while Henry can block for him.
As Henry washes his face, Frankie seems to cave in on himself, his skinny arms and legs drawn more and more tightly to the center of his body, until he is a lump on the floor. The water from his cup spills and pools around his downy, knobby knees.
Henry kneels down next to him and mops up the water with a towel. He taps his brother lightly on the cheek to get him to look at him. Frankie lifts his head. His brow is knit, the bridge of his nose raw from his glasses. Henry takes the glasses off.
“Hey, man. I’m fine. Alright? Quit being weird and rinse your mouth.”
WHEN FRANKIE GOES TO BED, Cassie will come over and try to make Henry feel better, and it will annoy him. She’ll say he won’t have to put up with his dad much longer, and she’ll say Lee got what he deserved. She’ll graze her fingers over the backs of his arms until he sleeps. But in the morning he’ll still know his body betrayed him when it carried him over the table and broke Lee’s nose.
Henry is afraid he’ll do worse one day.
Alien Encounters
The circus leaves St. Louis for Galesburg tomorrow, and I can’t sleep. I just nodded off for half an hour and had a dream everyone was walking around wearing those helmets, the ones the Flying Delaflotes wear at the beginning of the show. The helmets were heavier in the dream. Me and Kylie, Azi and the Germans, Caleb and Adrienne and Lorne, we were all walking around with our heads dragging the ground. In the dream, it was kind of creepy, and I thought of how insects curl up like that when they’re half-squashed.
Now that I’m awake, though, it seems kind of ridiculous. I mean, it was just so much ass. Giant ass and old guy ass, skinny, crazy trick-rider ass. Kylie’s bubble ass and my assless ass, and Jenifer and Vroni’s twin velociraptor asses. Azi’s I-did-eighty-squats-this-morning ass.
So now I’ve got this idea for a show about an alien with a too-big head. He’s the typical type, with a green body and eyes like big black tree seeds and no ears. Gecko fingers. But that head. It’s just too big. The gravity on his planet just doesn’t have the same power as ours, and now, here he is, on the street, trying to get back to his ship with his noggin scraping the sidewalk.
While he’s pulling his head along behind him, he’ll be asking people, “Hey, have you seen a ship? Hey, can you help me out here?”
He’ll drag his head to the clown, who has been obliviously reading his newspaper while everyone else took off. The clown is respectable, in his bowler hat and a tweed vest, and he tries to be polite: “Well, what does the ship look like?” he asks.
“Oh, y’know, like a couple of plates stacked rim to rim,” says the alien.
The clown in the tweed vest scratches his head.
“It has a lot of lights,” says the alien, bending at the knees, unable to get comfortable.
“Mmmhmmm. Mmmmhmm.”
“Some landing gear.”
“Of course, of course.”
“You’ve seen it, then? Oh, thank goodness. This is really agitating, this situation.”
“Hmm? What ‘situation’?”
Silence here.
“Oh! You mean, the situation with your fat head,” says the clown. “Terribly sorry.”
“Completely understandable.”
More silence. The alien’s gecko hand rubs the back of his neck, as the clown purses his lips and looks off to the side.
“So, you’ve seen it, right?” asks the alien.
“Your head? Yes. Very unfortunate for you.”
“My ship.”
“Oh, your ship. No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I meant, I know the type. I haven’t seen your ship specifically.”
“So, you haven’t seen it?”
“No, I have.”
“You have?”
“Yes. Just not yours specifically.”
The alien fully realizes now that he has gotten help from the wrong person. But it’s too late to go back. The clown insists on helping.
The rest of the sketch will be about them finding the ship, a lot of physical gags where the alien’s head bumps up stairs and the clown tries to shove him through doors too small for him. In the end, they’ll find it, of course. The clown will send his friend up into space with good wishes. He’ll go back to reading his paper, glad to resume his routine, though maybe once he’ll look up at the sky, like he’s a little lonely.
I think I would do the alien in this one. I make a good straight man.
If I had my way, I would have Christiakov be the clown. He plays that role well. The helpful dumb guy. But I’ll probably have to settle for the second-best person to play the part, because there’s no way I’ll call Christiakov unless what I’ve got to show him is perfect. Proof that I wasn’t a waste of time.
CHAPTER 11
June 1990
ON THE WAY TO GALESBURG, Henry rode in the trailer, which was now fastened to a pickup truck by a hitch that Henry noticed was made in a factory near Edgefield. Not the factory where his father worked, but one where many other people from his hometown worked. Stuffed into the trailer with him were Caleb, the German girls, and Kylie. Henry’s cot was folded into the wall and in its place was a bench where Henry and Kylie sat, their thighs touching every time the trailer hit a bump. Catty-corner to them was another bench where Caleb did crossword puzzles. Jenifer and Vroni perched like a couple of birds on the metal shelf that Henry had used as a makeup table and whispered to each other in German, turning their beady eyes in his direction before returning to their conversation.
Henry watched Caleb, trying to get a clue from his face about how Adrienne was doing. The news from her MRI had not been good, and Henry didn’t know all the details, but her surgery was scheduled for the end of July. Caleb’s face was pale and unshaven, and he did his crossword without looking up. Maybe Henry should have felt sorry for him, but he didn’t. He liked Caleb but he couldn’t believe he’d left Adrienne when she was clearly sick and scared. Not even his father, who was the world’s biggest asshole, was such a coward. When his mother had the stomach flu, he’d stood by her like a sentinel.
Outside, cornfields went by in a green velvety blur. Up close, Henry knew the stalks were short, leaves curled from the heat and lack of rain. The cows grazed in patchy fields, on weeds and yellow grass.
Kylie passed him a scrap of paper. What’s wrong with you?
It was not a question that could be answered on a scrap of paper. What he should have done was write Nothing and hold her hand as she had held his before their last performance. But he didn’t, because he was preoccupied with what seemed to be going on with Adrienne and dreading having to perform the farmer show again. So he just shook his head and handed Kylie her piece of paper back. The German girls giggled.
What Seamus had said was, “Henry, if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it.”
Henry had done his best to hold Seamus’s stare, but the man made him nervous, with his weird violet eyes and low voice.
And so it was the farmer show for the rest of the season. It got laughs. It fit with the other acts. And that was that.
Henry had told Adrienne and Caleb about Seamus refusing to let him change the show, and Caleb had shaken his head and left the room, clearly unsurprised and not disappointed. Only Adrienne understood. She said that she was sorry, that Seamus had never let her do the things she wanted to do, either.
“He always wanted me dressed like a prostitute and holding some kind of phallic thing, like a sword or a boa constrictor. His taste is cheap.”
And Henry looked at the long curve of her neck, and he nearly said, You could never look cheap. You are the most beautiful woman on the planet.
At a rest stop outside Peoria, the circus caravan pulled into the trucks and trailers parking lot so everyone could stretch their legs. Only Kylie got out, though; Caleb and Henry were determined in their misery, Jenifer and Vroni too deep in conversation.
Through the trailer window, Henry saw Kylie toeing the black-eyed Susans al
ong the edge of the parking lot with her sneakers. Vroni pointed at her, and Jenifer squealed with laughter.
“Okay, what the fuck are you laughing at?” asked Henry.
“Henry,” warned Caleb.
“Mind your own business, little Pierrot,” said Vroni.
“Hey, where’s your handler?” asked Henry.
“Probably with your fat girlfriend,” said Vroni.
Then he was standing over them, one of his hands clamped over Vroni’s arm. He could break them both in two, snap them apart at the legs like a couple of wishbones. They didn’t seem to know this. They only looked up at him curiously.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said, and his hand clamped harder around Vroni’s arm.
“Sit down, Pierrot,” said Jenifer.
“Call me that again and I’ll show you a sad clown.”
“Henry,” Caleb said. “Sit. Please.”
Henry turned and saw Caleb looking up from the thin tablet of crossword puzzles.
“Please,” Caleb said.
Caleb had a pamphlet between the pages of his puzzle book, the kind you get at the doctor’s office. Information about thyroids or herpes or, in this case, probably brain tumors.
“What’ll you do if I don’t?” said Henry.
Caleb didn’t say anything.
“That’s right. That’s what you’ll do. Fucking nothing,” Henry said.
If Adrienne were his wife, he wouldn’t have left her for anything. In fact, just being her tenant for a week had made it hard to leave her. He’d felt so good the day that he had performed for her, when she was down and he had painted his original face on and balanced a small library’s worth of books on his head. Her smiles were worth more than other smiles and being able to ease her mind helped ease his own. It was Caleb who should have been hungry for that approval; he was the person who was supposed to comfort her.
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