For months now the plant opened only four days a week, which meant Henry had Fridays to himself. Not that it mattered much. As much as they try to get you to think so, there is no such thing as free time. Without money the days stretched like taffy, measured in judge shows and Family Feuds. At first that open Friday meant sleeping in, lazy mornings of pleasurable dozing, followed by a midmorning nap that felt like a necessity. Lunch meant a handful of sugary cereal, bologna he rolled into cylinders and dipped into the fancy jar of mustard Ava liked, or leftover anything, sometimes all of the above. For a short time Henry had loved that leisure. He’d worked for an actual paycheck since he was sixteen and for cash before that. The open day had made him feel lucky, like the rich must feel. Now a day off alone was worse than work. Ain’t that some shit?
If the teenage Henry could have known about the sad feel of time and days, the enormous weight of them, stacking up with nothing making them matter. The awful truth was that he had nothing, nothing to do with his hands or his mind if the work disappeared. He’d be like the old dudes sacking groceries or dragging socks over the electronic eye at Walmart. The economy was very bad. He suspected that he was suited for repetitive work that used to be the domain of teenaged kids, but now more and more often was done by grown-ass people, his age and older. He was like those adding machines or busted typewriters you see at the thrift store, out-of-date, picked for parts and made into terrible jewelry or sad coffee table art. Small town economic theory said if white people worked at those jobs the town economy is bad. If those white workers are over thirty, the economy is very, very bad. People were supposed to feel some of that dispossessed feeling when they retire after a lifetime of work. There had to be days of wondering what to do with yourself, the phantom pains of getting yourself up, rushing before the sun rose with the taste of quickly made coffee and toothpaste in your mouth—none of that leaves you overnight. You don’t work every day and then turn it off like a light. Henry expected to feel the loss, but not at thirty-eight years old.
5
Henry had tried to run. After he graduated from school he and his brother Sean had driven straight through and all night to New Orleans. They’d missed Mardi Gras by months, but they figured the town always had a party so why not. Henry and Sean found Bourbon Street easily and walked side by side past bars, restaurants, tattoo and dance parlors. A topless overweight white girl watched them from the patio of a nightclub. “Look at that,” Sean said and jerked his head at the girl. Henry had nothing against naked women, even not so beautiful ones, but the sight of her smallish breasts and large pink nipples pointing in slightly different directions made him uneasy. “Let’s go, man.” He grabbed Sean’s arm. He was eager to get to St. James square to have his fortune told. In some parts of North Carolina so-called psychics put up signs with painted red hands at the ends of the yards. Five dollars a pop for the secrets of your future as told by a little old lady con artist. He’d pass on that. Years before at the grocery store Henry’s mother had pointed out to him a small mousy-looking woman wearing hospital shoes. “There’s your great fortune-teller,” she’d said. Henry had watched the woman walk slowly with her grocery basket down the chip aisle, pick up orange cheese doodles, and toss them into her cart. Doodles! He’d never go to a North Carolina psychic. Mostly he didn’t believe in the dark powers at all, but he needed a hint, any hint about where his life was headed. He and Sean were determined to do and be more than they’d seen, but they had no clue where to start.
The day was already hot, but the forecast said oppressive heat, heat too ridiculous for late spring, heat that almost made you forget all your home training and act foolish. Not many buskers and performers had set up yet this early in the day, but a boy of maybe eight or nine and two older men who looked to be family were sitting on a large piece of cardboard just ahead of Henry and Sean. The brown boy of eight or nine jumped up at their approach and tap-danced in a jerky, untrained way on the cardboard. The boy locked eyes with Henry. “Hey, mister,” he yelled. “Mister!” The boy must have learned to never let a prospective customer look away, no matter how artless and embarrassing the performance, don’t let them look away. Henry shrugged his shoulders at the boy and considered pulling out his pockets like the broke Monopoly man. He doubted that would stop the dancing boy. Henry and Sean had maybe forty dollars between them to get back home. The dead-eyed boy tapped more vigorously as Henry struggled not to look back at him.
“I’m going back to the car,” Sean said. “I’ve got to sleep.”
“I’ll meet you later. If you move the car come right back here to find me. Okay?” This was the days before cell phones were extensions of the hand and people did not know every waking second what everyone else did every waking second. Henry thought that if he got lost in the city walking street after street that looked alike that it might take him days to find his brother and get back home. That wasn’t going to happen. He was young; he was beautiful. Nothing was going to happen.
Henry would stop at the first table that called to him. He walked some distance from the bored-looking black woman with a head rag, old black woman with a head rag, bored-looking white woman with a head rag, long-haired white woman with witchy gray hair under a head rag. None of them looked promising to Henry. Some of them ignored him altogether, but most glanced up briefly as he passed. There were no young fortune-tellers and no men. Henry would never go to a young psychic or a man for that matter. A man has no patience for anyone else’s future, even Henry knew that. What he didn’t understand yet was that young people didn’t even know enough to know that they wouldn’t always be young.
“What are you looking for, honey?” At the third-to-last table in the row, a white woman called to him. “I’ve watched you. You want to stop. I know you do.”
Henry scanned the woman’s card table, which was covered in a dark blue tablecloth festooned with yellow stars and slivers of moons, the whole thing more appropriate on a preschooler’s bed. Behind her table the woman had maybe a half dozen bags and totes full of what looked like hastily stuffed clothes and household goods. The telltale triangle of a clothes iron nosed out of the top of one of them. Henry’s mother used to say you could always tell trashy people because they’d have a pile of junk in the corners of their rooms. By all appearances this woman had no room at all.
“You just get to town, honey?”
“Everybody just got here.” Henry smiled at the woman, not sure if he was being clever or obnoxious.
The woman did not say anything, but smiled indulgently at him.
“We’ve been here, me and my brother, about three hours,” Henry said. He and Sean had stopped at Rite Aid and gotten a jumbo bag of chips and some sodas after they peed in the mostly clean toilet, then come immediately to the middle of town.
The woman looked amused at him and motioned for Henry to sit in the open chair. She was younger than he initially thought. Forties, maybe.
“I don’t want a fortune,” Henry said as he sat down.
“You want to sit, so stay,” the woman said.