Being Henry David

5

Twenty minutes into the four-hour ride to Boston, I finally relax, going over my itinerary in my head over and over again to settle my twitchy brain. The train will arrive at South Station in Boston. The lady in the ticket booth told me I should take a cab to North Station. And from there, a commuter train to Concord. If all goes well, I should get in about 4 p.m. today.

As for what happens after that, I have no idea. I’m trying not to think about that part. For now, I’m safe and warm, and sitting in this really comfortable chair watching the scenery go by. Buildings and bridges and concrete switch over to houses and trees and rivers. A lot of the tall grass I see is still kind of brown, and the trees just have buds on them, so I figure it’s early spring sometime. A glance at the date stamped on my train ticket confirms it. Mid-April.

From the dining car at the middle of the train, I buy two hot dogs and take my time eating them. On the outside, I must look completely normal to people around me, who barely give me a second look. Just some kid eating hot dogs on the train to Boston.

But as soon as I’m alone with my thoughts, total panic is a heartbeat away. Is this really happening? Did I really almost kill a guy in an alley? What the hell kind of person am I? Simon’s face, shocked and bloody, swims into my consciousness and it’s a struggle to keep the hot dogs down. There is nothing “normal” about me. I have a knife injury that I have to press paper towels against to control the bleeding. I assaulted a guy in an alley. I came close to becoming Magpie’s property in his creepy, surreal world of street kids and drugs. I’m worried about Jack and Nessa, who are still out on the streets, in danger. And then of course, there’s that other detail—I still have no idea who I am.

Can’t stand it. Have to think of something else or I’m going to curl up into a ball with my hands over my ears and start screaming.

Walden. I open the book with shaky hands and start to read, will myself to get lost in this book that might hold some clues for me. Completely submerge myself in the world I’m on my way to see.

I’m a crazy fast reader and finish most of the book even before we reach Massachusetts. Of course, there are pages missing here and there because of Frankie, but I can use my imagination to fill in the blanks.

To sum up—if I’ve got it right—this Thoreau guy was tired of civilization and how people become slaves to their own stupid houses and possessions. To prove he could be happier without those things, he stripped his life down to the simplest things he knew and took off to live alone in the woods. It sounds like he was really happy and at peace when he was in the woods like that, living by a pond. Must have been nice.

The lull of the train, swaying and click-clacking down the track makes me sleepy. I close my eyes.

My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill.

The words appear like they’ve been etched on the inside of my eyelids. I recognize them as words I just read in Walden, but what the hell? Startled, I shake the words out of my head and stare out the window at the scenery, trying to clear my mind, just sleep. My eyes drift shut again.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

It happens again. Whenever I close my eyes, entire pages and paragraphs of the book appear in my brain like snapshots in an album. If I wanted to, I could recite whole passages of Walden to the people sitting around me. I really could.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Okay, so this is getting annoying. Maybe because I have so little information stored in my stupid brain, I can retain entire pages of the first book I remember reading. I guess that makes sense. Sort of.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

After playing around with this bizarre phenomenon for a while, it occurs to me that what I’ve got has a name: photographic memory. And I almost laugh out loud, right there in the train. I’m a kid with amnesia and a photographic memory. Can’t remember anything that happened to me before around midnight last night, but everything I’ve read since then is chiseled into my brain. Talk about a memory gone completely twisted.

“Concord, CON-cord!” bellows the train conductor as he whips my ticket stub from a clip on the seat in front of me. Pressing my face to the smudged window, I watch the town of Concord come into view, then wipe away my fog breath with my sleeve.

It’s possible that as soon as I step off the train in Concord, my whole life will come back to me in a rush. Or that somebody will recognize me and take me home. Would that be good or bad? Would I be taken to a house and family where I’m safe and loved, or will the police nab me on the streets of Concord? I have absolutely no idea. But I have to start somewhere. And this is it.

The train jolts to a stop, and I line up behind the other people getting ready to step off the train and onto the platform. The late-afternoon sun slants orange through a big maple tree when I step off the train, nearly blinding me, so my first view of Concord is splotched with stars. I blink hard to get rid of them, then take a few steps off the train platform and just stand there in a small parking lot, making the other people walk around me, some peering back at me in curiosity. I watch everybody. Do they know me? Will they call me by the name I can’t remember? Is this home? Nobody shows any recognition. I’m both relieved and disappointed.

Across from the depot is a restaurant with clumps of yellow flowers planted out front and next to that is a bicycle shop and a dry cleaner’s. There are trees and shrubs on both sides of the narrow street, and everything looks scrubbed and clean, like maybe somebody comes out and washes the sidewalks every morning. A cool breeze blows my hair into my eyes.

Even as I absorb Concord, Massachusetts, even as I scan the street, searching people’s faces, one thing is clear to me: I have no memory of this place. It’s just a nice little town where people probably feel safe all the time and have nice families to go home to. A town where you don’t have to worry about junkies in alleys pulling knives on you. I wonder if Concord even has alleys.

The train bell clangs behind me, and the train pulls away from the platform. All the other people are gone. I bite my lip so hard it hurts.

There’s nothing else to do, so I step onto the sidewalk, look both ways and randomly head to the right. There’s a gas station at the corner, a doughnut shop across the street. When I reach the curb, I squint up at the street sign. Sudbury Road is the crossroad heading off to the right. I twist my head to get a good look at the name of the other road, the one I’m currently standing on.

Thoreau Street. The name of the place on which I stand is Thoreau Street. I stare down in amazement at Thoreau’s book in my hands, as if it somehow magically made this phenomenon happen and can tell me what I’m supposed to do next.

When I glance up again, there’s a girl standing next to me, waiting for the light to change so she can cross the street. She’s pretty in a girl-jock kind of way, with reddish blond hair in a ponytail, navy blue shorts, and a yellow T-shirt that says Concord Lacrosse. I search her face, hoping to see something familiar there. Do I know you? Do you know me? It’s not until she turns to gaze directly back at me that I realize how rudely I’ve been staring.

“Uh, hi,” I say, trying—too late—to be polite. Then, I cut my eyes away and stare down at the sidewalk. But still, I feel her eyes on me, checking me out pretty much the same way I’d been doing to her. I wait for the light to change so I can escape.

“Hi back,” she says after a moment. “You look…”

I tense up, expecting her to say something like, “you look like that criminal I saw on TV last night,” or “you look like somebody who lives in this town and vanished mysteriously a few weeks ago.”

“…lost,” she says. Her face is open, so different from the cautious eyes and shifty glances of people in the city. I guess when people are safe, they can afford to be friendly.

“I am lost.” My mouth is dry and my voice comes out like a croak. “Could you tell me how to get—”

“To Walden Pond?”

I stare at her. “How did you know?”

She points at the book in my hand. “The book. Another friend of Thoreau. We’re used to it around here.”

“Oh,” I mumble, oddly embarrassed to be just another random follower of Henry in this girl’s eyes.

“Well, I can show you how to get there. It’s not far, less than a mile. I came into town for Starbucks, but now I’m headed back to the high school for the late bus. If you walk with me, that’ll get you most of the way there.”

She looks sideways at me, and her ponytail swings behind her. Girls. Do I know anything about them? How to act with them, what they want? All I can say for sure is that I already like this girl, and so far she seems to like me back.

“All right,” I say. “Which way?”

She points in the direction I’m already heading on Thoreau Street. “Walden Pond is just past the high school, across the highway.”

Walden Pond is within walking distance. Good. After all that sitting, I’d much rather walk than take a cab. If they even have cabs in Concord, Massachusetts. It seems like the kind of place where they automatically award every kid a Mercedes as soon as he or she passes driver’s ed.

“I’m Hailey, by the way,” she says as we approach the first crosswalk. She pauses, looks up at me expectantly. The name thing again. I almost blurt out “Henry David,” with more conviction than that first time with Jack, but catch myself just in time. Here I am, holding a copy of Walden, on my way to Walden Pond on Thoreau Street in Concord. No doubt about it, that’s going to sound suspicious.

“I’m Hank,” I say. Last names seem unimportant to Hailey, who nods and swishes her ponytail again.

“Where you from, Hank?”

I clear my throat, trying to buy time. “You first.”

She has a pretty smile. Bright, trusting green eyes. And there’s something sweet and fragile in her that reminds me of Nessa.

“Just up on Authors Ridge. You know, up near the cemetery where Emerson and Alcott are buried.”

“Of course,” I say, pretending to know who they are. Emerson is one of the writers Magpie mentioned when we were in his closet, but the name is all I know.

We pass a line of Victorian houses painted white and yellow and green, all with big front porches and shutters. After the claustrophobic vibe of the city, the town feels open, with wide expanses of lawn and blue sky.

“And…where are you from, Hank?” Hailey prompts.

“Well, I’m from, uh, near Boston. Probably moving to Concord soon.”

Hailey pulls the hairband out of her hair, tucks it between her front teeth and gathers the hair back together to bunch back into a ponytail. “Yeah?” she asks through the hairband. “When?”

“Um. I’m not really sure. I mean, my parents work in Boston and want to move out of the city. When we find a house, that is.” I’m surprised by how smoothly these lies slip out.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” Hailey asks me.

I get ready to say one of each, the first response that comes to me, but that’s not what comes out of my mouth. “Just a sister,” I say.

“Are you okay, Hank?”

I’ve stopped walking and am leaning over at the waist, staring down at the concrete sidewalk. Sister. That word again. Like a punch in the gut. I have a flash of something, shredded edge of memory. A sense of danger, panic. Is my sister is in trouble? My gut seems to think so.

“Hank?”

“Sorry. Yeah, I’m okay.” I push the memory back before the beast can claw at my insides. “It’s just, um.” I catch a glimpse of Hailey’s T-shirt from the corner of my eye. Concord Lacrosse. “My leg. I pulled a hamstring running track. Sometimes it just zings me, you know?” I rub the back of my leg for dramatic effect, wondering about the lie that wouldn’t come out and then the one that came so easy.

Hailey nods. “My cousin did that once, pulled a hamstring playing basketball. Sucks.” This jock-girl knows her sports injuries. “You gonna make it, Hank?”

“Yep. I think I’ll survive.” I limp through a few steps to appear convincing.

We get to a big wooden sign that reads, HENRY DAVID THOREAU REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL, near the entrance of a wide driveway. I almost laugh out loud. Is everything in this town named after Thoreau?

“Come on up and see the school,” Hailey says. “Since you might be moving here and all.” I follow her up the driveway.

Thoreau High School is small, just one story high, made of yellow concrete bricks. The bushes out front are early spring sparse, with little buds that seem a long way from opening. We pass a playing field with a scoreboard that says, Home of the Patriots. Kids are running around on the playing fields, practicing baseball and soccer and track. Some kids are just milling around, sitting on fences, talking and laughing. A few stare openly as we walk past them, and I feel sweat on the back of my neck.

Can they see I’m an imposter? That I have no identity and no memory? I adjust my walk to longer, more confident strides and stare back with hardened eyes, holding their glances hostage until they are forced to look away.

“Hey, Danielle,” Hailey says to a tall blond girl near the entrance of the building. She’s wearing a lacrosse uniform like Hailey’s, although in comparison, the baggy clothes look shapeless on her.

Danielle smiles. “Hailey,” she says, cutting a friendly, curious glance at me. But she looks back at Hailey and her smile falls. “Girl, you’re pale. You need some juice or something?”

“I’m fine,” says Hailey quickly. But I take a good look at her and see that Danielle’s right. Her cheeks, which should’ve been flushed from walking a mile in the cold April air, are white. I’d been too distracted by my surroundings to notice, which makes me feel like a jerk.

“I might have some candy in my backpack,” Danielle says.

“I told you. I’m fine,” Hailey says, this time through clenched teeth.

Glancing from one to the other, I don’t know what to do, other than change the subject and distract everybody. I clear my throat. “Hi,” I say to Danielle. “I’m Hank.”

Danielle looks me over, and her smile returns.

“I found him near the train station,” Hailey says. “Trying to find Walden Pond.”

“Hello, Hank,” Danielle says. “Wow, you have the most gorgeous gray eyes ever.”

“Dan-yell.” Hailey flashes her friend a terse “cut it out” look. I try to hide a smile.

Danielle shrugs. “Well, he does.”

I peer behind the girls into the high school building and glimpse a glass case of sports trophies and a hallway lined with lockers. Where did I go to school and what did I do? Did I actually run track? Was I smart? Did I have a cute girlfriend like Hailey who I took to school dances and made out with in my mother’s car? That is, if I have a mother and if she has a car. Before another surge of blackness hits, I push these thoughts away.

“It’s really nice to meet both of you,” I say politely. “But I should probably get going before it gets dark, you know?” Besides, Danielle is still eyeing Hailey like she wants to give her CPR or a transfusion or something. None of my business, but I can see Hailey is embarrassed, so this would be the perfect time for me to disappear.

A flash of disappointment crosses Hailey’s face, but then she recovers. “Okay, so keep walking past the school, down that road,” she says, pointing off to the right. “You’ll hit Route Two which is a major road, and cross over. Then all you need to do is walk like another half mile. Straight shot, lots of signs. You’ll see it on your right.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Then she looks up at me and gives me this weird, sad little smile. Like she knows me and is sad to see me leave so soon, though in my bizarre rootless state, I could be imagining this. “So, Hank, let me know when you move to Concord, okay?”

I smile back at her. “Sure.”

“Oh.” She reaches into the back pocket of her shorts and pulls out a cell phone. “I should get your number then. And give you mine.”

I pause for a beat. “My number?”

“Yeah. That’s okay, right?”

I look at her phone. Surely I have one, or had one, back when I was a normal person. “Well, I don’t have a phone right now. I’m getting a new one. With a new number.” Hailey looks disappointed, like she suspects I’m trying to blow her off. “So, would you write yours down for me?” I ask quickly.

Hailey perks up again and I notice a dimple in her left cheek. “Got a piece of paper?”

“No.” I pause. “But I do have this.” I pull the book out of the back of my jeans and open it up to the back cover. “You can write it down here.”

Danielle digs into her backpack and gives Hailey a pen. In big loopy handwriting, Hailey writes her name and phone number inside the back cover of Walden. For good measure, she draws a little flower next to her name.

“See you around, Hank,” she says.

“Later, Hailey. Bye, Danielle.”

And as I stride down the high school driveway, I feel Hailey’s eyes on me, along with the eyes of her friends. To tell you the truth, it’s not a bad feeling at all.

When I cross Route Two, I come to a big green sign that reads: Walden Pond State Reservation. Almost there.

The sounds of the highway fade as I take the road into the woods. The air is cool and fresh and smells like leaves and dirt and the pine needles crunching under my feet. I continue down the road and sense the presence of the pond even before I see it—an open space off to the right, a break in the thickness of the woods. Then, there it is, a smooth gray surface like chrome reflecting the sky.

This is exactly what I imagined last night—was it only last night?—reading behind the Dumpster, with Jack and Nessa sleeping nearby. I can’t believe I’m here.

A steep walkway leads down to the water and a small sandy beach. I stand there for a while, listening to the quiet and breathing in the peacefulness of this place. A man and woman sit on a stone wall by the water, looking out at the spreading purple of the sky. A gray-haired man in hiking boots comes out of the woods and gives me a nod. Night is coming.

TO SITE OF THOREAU’S HUT

A sign with an arrow pointing to the right of the beach leads to a path along the shore of Walden Pond. The sun sinks and the temperature drops as I walk about halfway around the pond, looking for signs of the cabin.

I’m about to say screw it and just sit down for a while, when I see another sign with the words House Site pointing up a small hill away from shore. Finally. I climb the hill, looking for the cabin. Instead I see a big clearing with more signs and a big pile of rocks and pebbles. But where’s the cabin?

A few steps farther, and there’s a group of carved stone pylons, like skinny headstones. About twelve of these waist-high stone pillars are arranged in a perfect square, and all but the two in front are attached to each other with chains. It’s like some crazy outdoor exhibit at a museum. I lean over and squint in the dying light to read the words engraved on a metal sign: SITE OF THOREAU’S CABIN. DISCOVERED NOVEMBER 11, 1945.

Blinking hard, I read it again. Site of Thoreau’s cabin. And finally, I get it. Yes, the cabin was here in this spot, a long time ago. But not anymore. Of course not anymore. I should have realized this. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I step inside the stones outlining where the cabin used to be. It’s smaller than I expected. At the back there’s a flat stone with some poem about Thoreau’s hearth. That spot is where his fireplace was.

The sun disappears behind the horizon and I start to shiver. I wish that cabin was still here, with a big fire in the fireplace. Maybe hot stew or something cooking in a pot. But there’s nothing for me to do but gather a pile of dead leaves to make a pathetic pillow on the stone where Thoreau’s hearth used to be. Lying down, I try to imagine there is still warmth in that old stone after all these years. I try to pretend there’s a cabin built up around me, just like the one in my dream. I try to sleep.

Well.

No matter how amazing he was, or how much he loved the whole nature thing, even Henry David Thoreau would have hated being me at Walden Pond on a night like this.

It’s cold and dark, there are weird rustling noises in the woods, and I’m so lonely I feel like the last person left on earth. I’m shivering so hard my teeth rattle in my head and I would give just about anything, including my left nut, for a blanket. This sucks. At least the train station in New York was warm. I hate Thoreau for luring me here and making me think that by coming here, I might actually figure out who I am. Dozing off and waking up, suffering through surreal dreams of being chased and eaten by coyotes and rabid foxes, somehow I survive the night.

Just before dawn, the woods grow dead quiet and there’s something electric in the air. Somebody—or something—is here, watching me. A presence. My eyes fly open in a panic, and I see him. Henry David Thoreau. He looks exactly like the picture on the back cover of Walden, his hair dark and curly, one hand gripping the lapel of an old-fashioned gray overcoat. Standing at the side of the stone pillars, he looks down and watches me shiver.

“What are you doing, boy?”

Did he really just speak or did I imagine it?

“I’m, uh, you know.” My mouth is so dry I can hardly talk. “Trying to simplify, like you wrote about. Live in nature.” Jesus. I sound like an idiot. But it’s a little nerve wracking to talk to a ghost. Or the dream of a ghost. Or whatever this is.

Thoreau squints down at me doubtfully. “You read my book?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “Every word.” Well, every word except the ones on the pages Frankie ate, but I don’t want to get into that.

He smiles at me, and nods his head toward the sign by the rock pile. Thoreau’s smile turns into a dry, raspy chuckle. The sound gets louder, then suddenly he’s bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, laughing his ass off. At me.

What’s so damn funny? I look over at the sign, at the quote printed there in the dim morning light, even though I remember perfectly what it says:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

No wonder Thoreau is laughing at me. There’s such a thing as simplifying too much. Leave out the “essential facts of life” like food, warm clothes, and shelter, and obviously you won’t be able to keep your stupid self alive.

I turn back to where Thoreau stood to say, point taken. But I don’t have to cut back on too much stuff or food or money or a big house. I’m here, starting from absolutely nowhere with absolutely nothing. What better student could there be than me?

But Thoreau is gone and I’m alone, staring through the trees as a pale yellow haze begins to light the sky at the edge of Walden Pond. The wind rattles some dry leaves in the oak tree above my head, and it sounds a whole lot like laughing.