Being Henry David

9

I am under water. At the bottom of Walden Pond, buried in muck, weighed down by pockets full of rocks. Can’t make my way to the surface, but it’s okay because it’s quiet here. Peaceful. Maybe I’ll stay forever.

Now and then I sense people around me, trying to help me, trying to pull me to the surface. They touch my burning face and poke at my side, the place where Simon’s knife sliced through my skin, and I scream, but the pond muffles the sound, keeps everything so quiet. It’s okay to give in to the quiet. I am safe. Don’t have to think about anything, not now. Don’t have to remember. Just rest. The remembering can come later. The facing up to things can wait.

Henry stays with me every minute in my underwater sleep, sits on a white rock with his hair floating in the current, and talks to me. He looks a little older than the last time I saw him in a dream. Last time he was clean-shaven, but now he has long sideburns that connect to a full dark beard. Henry helps me pass the time by quoting passages of Walden and tests my own twisted memory by having me quote some back. He tells me things about myself. But only the ones I can handle right now, he says. Just little things, like I was obsessed with Legos when I was a kid and my favorite birthday cake was yellow with chocolate frosting. My best friend’s name in kindergarten was Silas. But when I ask him to tell me my name, he won’t answer. Give it time, he says, just give it all a little time. So I do.

Now and then, a phrase floats in and out of my thoughts. Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he. I think it’s a song or a poem or something. And it’s important somehow. But why? Like the rest of my memories, its significance is always just out of reach.

Underwater there is no time and yet time passes, until I find myself restless with life under the dead leaves and pondweed and invisible jellyfish of Walden. I think you’re ready, Henry tells me at last, and even though I’m scared to go back, I agree. The sun breaks through the surface of the water, tries to reach me with healing fingers of light. So I kick my feet and push myself back to the air and sunlight and life. Ready now for whatever is next.

“Well, look who’s back.”

Thomas sits in a small wooden chair, big arms resting on his knees, watching me. I’m in a blue-painted bedroom with a slanted ceiling, and the sun shines in the window, too bright. I squint against it, but notice the headache is finally gone. I sit up, too fast, see little bursts of light flashing in front of my eyes, then lean back against a pile of pillows somebody has tucked under my head.

“Whoa, easy, Hank. You’re still weak,” Thomas says.

I’m wearing a white T-shirt I don’t recognize and green plaid pajama pants, probably Thomas’s. I lift up the edge of the shirt and see a square of gauze taped onto my skin. When I press on it, it’s sore, but not on fire like it was.

“You had a nasty cut there. It got infected and you’ve been in and out of consciousness for about twenty-four hours,” he tells me in a slow, calm voice so I can absorb it all. “I almost gave in and took you to the hospital a couple times, but I figured we’d wait things out if we could. You were really adamant about that. A couple more hours though, and I would’ve taken you in, no matter what you said.”

A woman with short black hair and about six silver earrings in each ear comes into the room and hands a green mug of coffee to Thomas. “Ahh, you’re awake,” she says with a big smile like she knows me. She’s probably thirtyish like Thomas, and pretty in a Goth-lite kind of way. Her hand on my forehead is cool and smells like vanilla. “I figured after the fever broke in the night, you’d be back among the living today.”

“Hank, this is Suzanne. She’s a friend of mine. And, lucky for both of us, she’s also a nurse.”

“Hey there, Hank,” she says, in this gentle voice exactly like you’d expect from a nurse. “It took a whole lot of antibiotic cream and cold washcloths but we finally got your fever and that nasty infection under control.”

Cold washcloths and clothes I don’t recognize. My legs twitch. This nurse lady probably saw me naked, and I wasn’t conscious enough to remember it. I stare at a tiny diamond stud in the left side of her nose and think about this.

“We considered leeches, but they’re hard to come by this time of year.” I can tell Thomas says this to make Suzanne smile and she does, although she rolls her eyes at me like we share a joke.

“So how you feeling, Hank?” she asks. “Kind of like you got hit by a bus?”

I almost say no, it was more like a truck, but all I can do is shrug and nod, like I’ve forgotten how to speak.

Suzanne pats me on the shoulder like I’m her favorite patient. “You must be starving. Ready to eat something?”

I’m aware of the hollow place in my gut, and find my voice. “Yes. Please.”

“Great. I’ll see what I can whip up for you in Thomas’s kitchen.”

We listen to her footsteps descend the wooden stairs.

“Your girlfriend?” I ask Thomas.

He taps a fingernail on the green mug in his big hands, and his face reddens. It’s kind of funny—this big, Harley-riding, tattooed guy blushing over a girl. “Maybe. We’ve kind of bonded over this past day or so. I guess I can thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome,” I say.

Thomas clears his throat, and I know he’s holding back, wanting to ask me why I have a knife injury, why I freaked out at the library, why I fell out of the sky and into his life a week ago.

“I just want you to know,” he says instead, “that I’ve been in trouble myself, Hank. When I was younger, I got on the wrong side of the law a couple times and had to learn some lessons the hard way.”

He pauses to check my response, but I don’t know what to say. I vaguely remember babbling something about jail and begging him not to call the police. But he’s going to wonder what kind of trouble I’m in, and I don’t know where to start. How can I explain that the trouble that scares me most is the trouble I’ve forgotten?

“I even did time. A couple years in prison, for breaking and entering.” He pauses again. Maybe he’s thinking if he opens up to me about his past, I’ll do the same. “I’m not proud of it. I was an angry, rebellious kid. I’m still a rebel in my way, but I know how to channel that energy.”

Breaking and entering is not as bad as Simon in the alley, assault and battery. Sure, it was self-defense, but would the police see it that way? And there are the crimes I might have committed before I woke up in Penn Station. And there’s that other thing. Maybe you killed somebody. Did somebody hurt my sister? Did I kill the guy? Is that what I’m blocking out?

“Anyway, I guess I’m just trying to say I understand. And if I can, I’d like to help.”

A guitar case is leaning against the wall in a corner of the room, and I focus on that instead of Thomas. I could use someone to trust. And I could sure use some help. But I’m not ready to ask for it.

“You play guitar?” I ask.

Thomas follows my gaze. He gets the guitar case, brushes away some dust, and lays it at the foot of the bed. He snaps it open, and inside is an old Telecaster with a butterscotch finish, gorgeous and in excellent condition.

“Wow,” I say. “Nice ax.”

Thomas picks it up, slips the strap over his shoulder, and plays a few licks. It’s not plugged into an amp, so the sound is soft and tinny. “Haven’t played for a while,” he says, twisting the pegs to get it in tune. “But I was in a punk rock group in the nineties. One of the best times in my life.” He strokes the body of the guitar like it’s a woman and he’s madly in love with her. “This guitar helped get me through some really bad stuff, believe me.”

“What kind of stuff ?” I’d rather talk about music and Thomas than answer any questions about myself.

Thomas runs his fingers up the neck of the guitar, miming chords. “Foster care from the age of eight,” he says absently. “Bounced around to four different homes by the time I was eighteen.” He clears his throat, then pulls the strap off his shoulder and lovingly puts the guitar back in its red felt-lined case. “Feeling like nobody wants you and you don’t belong anywhere can make a person a little crazy,” he says.

Uh, yeah.

Just then, Suzanne comes in with a tray, and sets it down on the bed next to me.

“It’s just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some milk, but Thomas doesn’t have much in the way of groceries around here,” she says to me. “Not that I’m a gourmet cook or anything, but that’s just pathetic.”

“I’m a bachelor. I don’t need a lot,” Thomas says with an easy shrug. “Peanut butter. Jelly. Beer. What else is there?” He latches the guitar case shut and sets it back in the corner.

I’m hungry, so the sandwich tastes incredibly good. And the jelly is grape, which I’ve decided is my favorite. I’ll never be able to eat the stuff again without thinking of that Ephraim Bull guy, father of the Concord grape.

Suzanne goes back downstairs and Thomas and I sit in silence for a couple of minutes, not looking at each other while I eat my sandwich. He jiggles his leg and peers out the window, chewing on a fingernail. Trying to look patient and failing.

“So how did all of that change?” I ask him, licking peanut butter off my thumb.

Thomas stops jiggling his leg and turns toward me.

“Excuse me?”

“How did you go from angry to—” I wipe my mouth with a napkin and struggle for the right word. “Not?”

Thomas kicks his feet out in front of him, leans back in his chair, and laces his fingers behind his head. “Well, let’s see. After I got out of jail, I drifted around for a while, and finally found a job as a custodian at a library. To stay out of trouble, I spent every free moment there reading everything I could get my hands on. The head librarian was this woman who was impressed that a loser ex-con like me was such a big reader.” He frowns and looks out the window, but I notice that Thomas’s eyes have grown soft. “She became like a mother to me, made me feel like I belonged somewhere, you know? Long story short, I went to college for American History, got a master’s in Library Science, and here I am.”

Before I can bombard him with questions to keep him talking, Thomas clears his throat as if placing a period at the end of his story and leans forward in his chair, eyes penetrating mine. “Anyway,” he says. “Enough about me.”

I stare down at the quilt on the bed until all the colors blend together in a jumbled multicolor blur. “So, I guess it’s my turn now,” I say. And I realize I really do want to tell him. “First, my name isn’t really Hank.”

Lying back against the pillows, I tell Thomas everything I know, from the moment I woke up at the train station with Walden at my side, not knowing my name or where I came from, to the freak-out scene at the library. I tell him about Simon’s knife and the crime I committed in the alley. I tell him about Jack and Nessa and using Simon’s money to get a train ticket. Tell him the whole thing in a detached way, like it’s somebody else’s story, somebody else’s life.

Then I tell him about the few memories I can access. Like what I know about my father and mother. My sister. Big eyes, blond hair, blood. That’s when it stops feeling like somebody else’s story, and it becomes completely and painfully mine.

I have to get out of this bed.

“Hank, take it easy.” Thomas is standing by the side of the bed, hand pressing down on my shoulder. “When you’re stronger, I’ll help you find answers, I promise. I’m a research librarian. Finding answers is what I do, remember?”

I settle back against the feather pillows, letting them engulf me until the dizziness passes. Gazing up at Thomas’s strong presence makes a flicker of hope ignite in the center of my chest. But just as quickly, fear snuffs it out.

“Do you think I’ll go to jail, Thomas?” Staring up at the ceiling, at water stains and fault-line cracks in the plaster, I feel like a little boy asking if the boogeyman is hiding under my bed. Except that it’s way scarier than that. Depending on what I did, somebody like Judge Hoar could send me to jail for the rest of my life.

“I don’t know, Hank.” Thomas sits down, scratches his shaggy black hair thoughtfully with both hands until it sticks up in spikes. “Your circumstances are unique, so it’s hard to say. But look, what you need right now is a safe place to stay for a few days, and you’ve got that. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

We. The ceiling cracks and stains blur into amoeba shapes before my watering eyes. “Why would you do this for me?” I whisper.

“Like I told you. When I was younger, some good people helped me out, and that made all the difference,” he says. “This is my chance to pay that back. Maybe you’ll do the same someday for somebody else.”

“Thank you, Thomas.” I swallow hard, brush tears from my eyes before they can drip down my stupid face. “So what do we do first?”

“First, get out of this bed and take a shower, dude.” Thomas punches me in the arm. “You reek.”

After my shower, I find Thomas out in his driveway, changing the oil in his Harley. I sit on the back steps, watching Thomas work. Do I know about engines? Have I ever worked on cars or bikes? Nothing comes, but it doesn’t matter. It just feels good to be outside, warm sun on my face, my arms. It’s a relief to have let somebody in at last, somebody who might be able to help me.

“You know, I’ve got it figured out,” Thomas says after a while, sliding a metal pan under the oil tank. He rests on his haunches and looks at me. “I know who you are.”

Startled, I turn to stare at him. “You do?”

He stands up and grabs a wrench from a neatly organized tool chest on the driveway. “Yep. I suspected it from the first moment I saw you at the cabin site, looking like you were transported there from some other time or place. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“And then when you were unconscious, you started talking.”

“Really? What did I say?”

“You were quoting entire phrases of Walden, verbatim.”

“Which means that—” I have a photographic memory.

“That you’re Henry Thoreau reincarnated.” Thomas interrupts, pointing his wrench at me triumphantly.

I stare at him, my mouth hanging open.

“I mean, just look at you,” he continues. “Dark hair, gray eyes, just like Henry. And you know his writing by heart. I think it’s a reasonable explanation, don’t you?”

“Reincarnated? Thomas, I don’t think—”

Thomas starts to chuckle, and I realize he’s just yanking my chain. But then he stops laughing and jabs a finger at me. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost—”

“That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them,” I say without thinking.

Thomas nods to himself. After another moment, he turns to me again. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself—” he says and waits. “Than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

He stares into my face, eyes intense. “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature,” he says.

“It is earth’s eye,” I respond. “Looking into which the beholder…uh…wait, I’ll get it.” I rack my brain, and nothing comes to me. Could be from one of the pages Frankie ate. Or maybe my memory isn’t as great as I thought. “Nope. No idea what’s next.”

“That proves nothing. Not even Henry could recite every single word he wrote,” Thomas says and shrugs. “I still say you could be him reincarnated. Why not? There are far weirder things in this world, Hank.”

I shake my head. “You have a lot of strange ideas, Thomas.”

“I know. I get that a lot,” he says cheerfully. Gotta admire a guy who’s clearly comfortable with his own quirks. “But if anything comes to you about Henry’s love life—or lack thereof—let me know. There are a lot of Thoreau scholars who have questions we’d like to get cleared up on the subject.”

“Promise.”

Thomas smiles at me and winks. Then he turns back to his Harley and loosens the bolt on the oil tank with his wrench, giving the job his full attention like he’s already forgotten all about me and his bizarre theory.

Thoreau reincarnated? Ha. If that’s true, then I’m totally screwing up Henry’s second chance at life. Just one more reason to feel like a loser.

Sitting there on the steps in the sun, watching Thomas change the oil in his motorcycle, my mind wanders to that beautiful butterscotch Tele that Thomas has in the guest room. If I’m really careful, I wonder if he’ll let me play it.

And then I’m struck by a scrap of thought. An old memory? No, a new one. There’s that thing I forgot to remember. Something I was supposed to do before I got sick. Damn, what was that? Then I remember. Hailey.

I never called Hailey. The last time we spoke, when I said I’d call her, was days ago. She’s going to think I blew her off.

“Thomas, can I borrow your phone?”

Hailey answers her phone on the first ring, and at first I have no idea what to say.

“Uh, Hailey? It’s Hank.”

No answer.

“Hailey?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t call. I was sick. I mean, seriously, there was this infection, and I was really out of it for a while.”

“What do you want, Hank?”

Damn.

“Well, I thought we might get together. You know. Play some music. Like we said.”

She makes me sweat it out and doesn’t answer for a good ten seconds, though it feels a lot longer. “Sure,” she says at last, like she doesn’t really care. “Come over to my house tomorrow at four. I should be back from lacrosse practice by then.”

She gives me the address and hangs up kind of abruptly, but I don’t care, because she’s giving me a chance to redeem myself. Standing in Thomas’s front hallway, still holding the phone, I feel a goofy smile spread across my face. I’m going to see Hailey. Tomorrow. Yes.