Terminal Island

Chapter Fifteen

PIG



Henry’s mother listened with baffled sympathy as everything came out of him in a torrent; the whole ugly incident as well as his absolute refusal to go back to school, ever. When he was through, he waited for the total support and understanding he felt he was due.

“Gee, honey,” she said hesitantly, trying to be sympathetic, “I don’t think they’ll let me keep you out of school forever…”

“Gaagh!” Henry threw himself face-down on the bed and sobbed, “Did you even hear what I said? I can’t go back there! Ever!”

“All right, all right. Gosh.” She stroked his shuddering back. “But first things first: I’ll go right to that school and talk to them. I’d like to know what kind of place they’re running down there! Gee whiz, you’re all banged up.”

“No, don’t talk to them! Please! I told you what happened: They’re gonna make out like it was all my fault!”

Henry didn’t trust her. In her loneliness she was so vulnerable to any kind of authority figure, so eager to conform, so willing to be smooth-talked and manipulated and charmed—he had done it to her himself, many times. When he thought of the people in that office, Henry could easily imagine his mother eating out of their hand, being persuaded that he was exaggerating and that the school was perfectly safe. That the best thing for him to do was to “get back on the horse.”

She said now, “Well, I can’t just keep you home without telling them. It’s against the law.”

“No, Mom, please.” Henry realized he had to back off the larger demand if he didn’t want her meddling in. “Look, I didn’t mean what I said about staying out forever. I will go back, but just not right now, okay? Just let me stay home the rest of the week so things at school have a chance to settle down.” He could finagle more time later.

“The rest of the week! Gee, Henry, I don’t know…”

Annoyed by her reaction to his compromise, Henry blurted, “Jeez, it’s only two days, come on! I’ve been out longer than that before!”

“Yes, when you were sick, though.”

“Sick? Look at me—I’m a total wreck!”

Checking him over, she reluctantly agreed to let him stay out the rest of the day, and then to think about what they would do in the morning. Henry jumped at the deal, confident he could wheedle her on a case-by-case basis.

Thursday morning, he moaned and groaned about feeling ill until she let him off the hook, and Friday followed suit. Just as he had counted on, she was too preoccupied with her own problems to trouble much with his—once home, the inertia favored staying there; it was just easier.

As his mother attended to her various errands, Henry lounged around the apartment in his bathrobe, reading and re-reading comic books until they were sucked dry, then plumbing the lurid gossip magazines and paperback romances his mom loved so much—stories of bold, beautiful women struggling against overwhelming odds to find love and personal fulfillment. In the margins she had scribbled notations like YES!!! and SO TRUE!!!

Henry already felt a million times better. He was not someone who craved the company of others, and was most comfortable alone with his own thoughts. His ideal entertainment was lying propped up in bed, with something good to read in one hand and something good to eat in the other. The trauma of the school already seemed far, far away.

On Friday, someone came to visit. It was the Vice Principal, Mr. Van Zand. The unassuming-looking man clumped up onto their porch in his brown suit, knocking on the sliding door and shading his eyes to peer in.

Don’t answer it! Henry wanted to say, but his mother was already doing it, flipping the latch and peeling the door open. The man was inside before Henry even had time to jump out of bed.

“Hi, Henry,” Mr. Van Zand said amiably, coming right up to the bunk to shake Henry’s hand. “Say, I like your apartment—it’s cozy.”

“It’s small,” said Henry’s mother, “but big enough for two. I like to pretend we’re living in a little cabin in the woods.”

“By golly, that’s right; now that you mention it, it is kind of like a cabin, isn’t it?” He nodded slowly as if savoring the apt description, then turned back to Henry. “I just came by to see how old Henry here is doing. We’ve missed him at school. Not feeling well?”

“He’s had a touch of the flu,” she said apologetically.

“That’s too bad. Gee, he looks all right to me.” The man reached out and cupped his hand over Henry’s forehead. The palm was dry and hot. “Doesn’t feel feverish. Are you sure he’s sick? I was afraid it might have something to do with the little incident that happened on Wednesday.”

“Not really,” Henry said. “I’m just not feeling well.”

“Are you sure? Because from what I’ve heard, things kind of went a little haywire. Some of the girls feel pretty bad about it. They wanted me to tell you they’re embarrassed about what happened, and that it was really just a misunderstanding.”

“It was?” Henry asked, thinking, I bet.

“Well, you know, girls at this age…” The man confidentially leaned in, lowering his voice. Henry could count the individual bristles of his thin mustache. “They’re all going through puberty, and you know what that means.”

Henry nodded, both wary and flattered by this man-to-man stuff.

Mr. Van Zand said, “It’s a rough time of life. They’re irritable and high-strung. Anything can set them off. Especially a good-lookin’ guy like you.”

“Come on.”

“No, really! They feel unattractive and awkward and mixed-up, they don’t know how to express all these strange new feelings they’re having. It’s gotta be very difficult, and us guys don’t make it any easier for them: We expect them to act like fairy princesses all the time and get offended if they don’t. You know, the line between attraction and repulsion is very thin—it doesn’t take much to cross over. All it takes is for a cute guy to look at them the wrong way, and bam!—their whole self-esteem collapses and it’s World War Three.”

“Jeez,” Henry said.

“That’s what I tried to tell him,” Henry’s mom explained to the man. “But kids think everything is the end of the world.”

“Mom,” Henry protested. To the Vice Principal, he asked, “Am I in trouble for hitting Lisa?”

“Not at all. She understands it was something that happened in the heat of the moment.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her. I held back my punch.”

“Nobody’s blaming you. It’s all over.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine—just a little pop in the nose, that’s all. She was more surprised than anything.” Chucking Henry in the shoulder, the man joshed, “I wouldn’t want to see what would happen if you weren’t holding back. That’s a heck of a right hook you got there.”

“Nah,” Henry said shyly.

“Oh yeah—you’re one tough hombre. I don’t think anybody’s gonna be messing with you.” The two adults laughed. “So, what do you say? Are we gonna see you on Monday morning?”

“Uh…” Henry squirmed.

“Come on, get back on the horse,” the man said. “You’ll see, it’ll be like nothing ever happened. A fresh start.”

Henry looked at his mother. She looked back, eyebrows raised with hopeful anticipation, leaving the decision to him.

“All right,” he said.



That night, Henry dreamed he was back at school. The girls were after him, and he was running down the dark hallway looking for a place to hide. The corridor was much bigger and darker than it should have been, with rotten carpeting on the floor instead of tile. He spotted an open door and ducked inside, finding himself not in a classroom but in a glass-bottom boat. It was dim inside, like a grotto, with watery blue light coming from the big window to the sea. Henry looked down at the dark kelp forest below, its long fronds swaying in the depths. It was hypnotizing.

Suddenly a great cloud of red billowed down through the water, filled with pink and white bits of flesh. Huge black rays swooped in to suck up the chum. The bloody plume continued to grow, turning the sea from blue to red and filling the cabin of the boat with the same rich color. Henry fled, running upstairs to the open deck. There was no escape; the very sky was stained red, and in that gruesome light he saw that people were falling from the end of the pier into a big black funnel on the boat’s stern—there were thousands of them lined up all the way down the pier around the waterfront to the Casino. The Butcher was in the boat’s cockpit, wearing a fancy captain’s hat with gold trim. Every few seconds he pulsed the engine, sucking people through the propeller and clearing the chute for more. The sound of it was the most horrible thing Henry had ever heard.

There was nowhere to run, nowhere for him to jump except into that sea of blood—Henry struggled to scream and could not. The Butcher leaned down and hoisted Henry into the cockpit, putting the captain’s hat on his head. Pointing to a big black button, he said, C’mon, Skipper. Why don’t you give it a try?



The weekend passed too quickly, and as Sunday evening came on Henry was confronted by the dual realization that a) he was expected to return to school in the morning, and b) he could never in a million years do so. He just couldn’t—it was a dead certainty. Nothing in the world could make him go back there.

Working up to the sickening knowledge that he had to break this news to his mother, he barely tasted his dinner—and she had cooked one of his favorite dishes: lamb stew with cabbage and potatoes. He had to rush to the toilet soon after to throw it up.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he gasped as she stood over him, watching with concern.

“Oh no—that’s all right, baby. The food didn’t agree with you, that’s all.”

“No, it’s not the food.” Henry looked up at her, his face leached of color, droplets of toilet water in his forelock. “I want to get out of here.”

“What?”

“I want to leave. I want to go back to the mainland.”

“Oh, honey, why? Is it because of the school?”

“It’s everything. I don’t like it here. You said you don’t either—let’s just leave.”

He had hoped she would jump at the chance, or at least go along with it, but she seemed to be dragging her feet: “Well, maybe at the end of the month, if this job doesn’t come through…”

“No! Not the end of the month!”

“When did you have in mind?”

“Now! Today or tomorrow! As soon as possible! Can’t we just pack up and leave? Please!”

She knelt down beside him, talking soothingly as she stroked his head: “Honey, I can’t just leave like that. There are a lot of things that have to be squared away first, even if we could go. I just don’t think we should make any hasty decisions. This job is looking like it could be a wonderful opportunity for us. If it comes through, maybe we could rent a little house with a yard, get you your own room, a bicycle, maybe a dog or a cat—wouldn’t you like that? Maybe I could even open a little boutique. It’s something we’ve dreamed about for a long time.”

More pie in the sky, Henry thought. “I don’t care. I just want to get out of here.”

“Okay, gee…but does it have to be so fast? Can’t it wait a week or two?”

“No—not if it means I have to go back to that school.”

“But you already told that nice vice principal that you didn’t mind going back there.”

“I know—I lied! I can’t go back, I just can’t.” He clutched at the hem of her house-dress. “Don’t make me go back there, Mom. I beg of you.”

“Maybe if I went and talked to them—”

“No!” Now he was getting annoyed. “Why can’t we just leave? God!”

She gave him a final pat and stood up again, joints popping. “Ooch,” she groaned, snapping out the kinks. “Honey, I promise you we’ll do what we can. Can you hold out for a week, just so that I can have a little breathing room to figure out what to do?”

“Does it mean I have to go back to school?”

She gave it agonizing consideration, then said, “I’ll make a deal with you: If the job falls through, we’ll have no choice but to leave—we won’t have the money to pay next month’s rent anyway. But, if they decide to hire me, you have to agree to give school another try. If it still doesn’t work out, we’ll think about other possibilities, but you have to at least give it a try.” Before Henry could object, she said, “In the meantime you can stay home. You don’t have to go unless the job comes through. Is it a deal?”

“When will you know?”

“They keep telling me it should be any day now.”

Just to buy time, Henry agreed.



Monday was slightly more tense than the previous days Henry had spent at home. After Mr. Van Zand’s visit, he didn’t feel quite as safely cocooned as before, and had nervous twinges thinking about what the people at school must be saying and doing about his continued absence. But as usual he took great solace in reading and daydreaming. His mother went out for a few hours in the afternoon, and Henry shut the curtains so that if anyone came by they would think no one was home. He had no intention of answering the door.

As the hands of the clock inched past three o’clock, he felt himself breathe easier. The hardest part was over, only four more days to go.

Something slammed against the door.

Henry sat up in bed, hearing faint jeers from the street. Unnerved, he waited a minute, then climbed down off his bunk and peeked out the curtain. There was no one in sight; the narrow path along the hedge was empty, and the thin slice of Eucalyptus Street that he could see looked clear as well.

There was something on the porch—a brown paper bag.

With a sinking feeling, Henry opened the door and nudged the rolled-up bag with his toe, thinking, What now? There was something wet inside; the bottom was damp and torn. He was sure it was garbage or dog turds, something like that, and would have preferred to just throw it in the trash without looking at it. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch it at all until he knew what it was.

Using his mother’s bamboo backscratcher, Henry cautiously opened the sack, prepared to leap away if it was some kind of booby trap. Peering inside, he could see that it was meat—raw meat. With dawning awareness, he ripped open the sides of the bag to fully expose what was in there.

It was the skinned head of an animal. A pig’s head.

Henry stared at it in nightmarish fascination, heart jangling.

The lipless face of the pig was one huge, hideous grin, its strangely human molars all exposed and its big gnarled tusks curling outward like goat horns. Its eyes had been gouged out and replaced with spiky thistle burrs. Stuffed in its jaws was a weird plastic object that at first Henry thought was some kind of bottle, but when he carefully pulled it out he discovered it was the base of a toy—a toy hula girl. It looked exactly like the one he had given to Christy. It was broken and bloody.

Henry numbly wrapped up the head and carried it out to the garbage cans, stuffing it down deep so no one else would see. His whole body felt woozy, he couldn’t seem to complete a thought. All he knew—and he knew it with an absolute conviction—was that he had to shield his mother from this, no matter what. She couldn’t know.

Because if she knew, if she were to see something like that—some grisly thing that had no place in her fragile, self-protective shell of childish nostalgia—there was no telling what could happen. She could crack. She could crack up completely and he would be alone. Henry could only shudder to think how easily she might have been the one to find it.

Coming home, she sang, “Hel-lo! Hel-lo! I’m back! Anything happen while I was gone?”

“Nope,” Henry said. “Not a thing, Mom.”