Losing Henry

Losing Henry

It's 1971 and 18 year old Henry Anderson hasn't a clue of what to do with his life but thinks the easiest way to escape the expectations of everyone who knows him is the free bus trip out of town the Recruiter promises him. Henry is from a family that can't afford storm windows so college isn't a realistic option, and with a lottery number assuring him of being drafted he decides to enlist in the Navy. His last days at home in rural Northern Minnesota are a reminder to him of what he can expect even if he manages to avoid the draft so he sees the military as an adventure, and an easy way of putting off decisions about a future that seems too full of obstacles for him. When Henry leaves Bartonville he is sure that a change in surroundings will be an improvement, and looks forward to meeting people who haven’t already formed opinions of him. In the mill of boot camp Henry discovers that his only redeeming social qualities back in Minnesota, what he perceives as a razor like wit and brilliant insight, aren't appreciated by company commanders or fellow inductees. Even with his own and the Navy's efforts of shaping him into someone else, someone who fits in, he discovers that his personality keeps surfacing and seldom helps him with getting along.

Losing Henry

By Stephen J Pitzen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright (c) 2014 by Stephen J Pitzen

Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Author

Chapter 1

The bench seems warm and all the space around me has that cold ishy feeling like plopping down on a wet toilet seat. I don’t know what I’m doing still sitting here. The house has been dark for hours. Graduations over. All that’s left is the humiliation and loneliness because of what happened after. My family was great, way better than I had any right to, setting up a party for me, then when I told them I was going to another party they didn’t complain a bit, and hardly even showed their disappointment. Just told me to keep out of trouble and not ruin my clothes.

I didn’t think she’d do that to me. Leave me standing there like an idiot with no ride to the party, no ride home. Carlson pulls up in his new Mustang and off she goes. I stood there for a minute before I could believe it had happened. Hell we were right beside her folk’s car ready to take off, and Carlson asks her, does she want to ride with him, and without a second thought she climbs in the car with him and Etton and says to me, maybe I can catch a ride with somebody else, and maybe I’ll see you later. I’ve never felt like that in my life. She smiled her half smile at me as they drove off, like she was sure I could understand her dilemma, and I probably could have caught a ride with Steve, but all of a sudden I thought I was going to throw up so I just started walking.

The school house hill was dark with its tall elms shutting out the stars and moon. I stopped half way down by the old mortuary, it’s just his house now, but he used to do business out of it. I wasn’t thinking of doing myself in or anything, it’s just that when I was a kid I feared this spot more than any other thing on earth. The guy that ran it was so pale and spooky looking. A twisted man; that would have scared a person even if he’d been a kindergarten teacher, instead of doing what he did for a living. I had nightmares about this spot. Getting sucked in here in the dark, with weird spooky things trying to reach out and touch me. In my dreams I could usually fly away from any danger. Just jump off the ground like Super Man, and soar away, but not so fast, more like floating with a purpose. Only in this dream my buoyancy was a trap. My feet didn’t reach the ground, so I couldn’t put the brakes on, and I’d get drawn in like metal scrapings to a magnet. If I was lucky I’d wake up before reaching the open window. Then I’d lay there trying not to go back to sleep out of fear of getting back into the same dream.

When Grampa died I had to go in there and see him. The place didn’t scare me much after that. His body was lying there, but he didn’t smell like Prince Albert, and he was smiling like an insurance man. Grampa didn’t smile much and when he did something awful funny had to have happened. He was so pale even his big old nose was white. A pint of peppermint schnapps a day for keeping colds away had put a permanent rosy sheen to it, but something about that place had sucked the red right out, just like the mortician, pasty white and glowing. I think if we would have turned out the lights they both would have lit up like the Casey’s statue of Saint Christopher sitting on the dash of their Buick. Ma told me later it was just makeup. I suppose Mr. Thomas used the stuff on his own skin to make his customers appear more their old selves, like it was just the lighting or something, and everything in there lost the color that separated here and now from where you spent the rest of eternity. After seeing him somehow it wasn’t as scary, whatever the power was that had given him life had been more than just the thing that kept him up and moving. It was gone, and what was left reminded me of the May Flies that swarm around in the first part of the summer, and then die off in scads, and all these little bodies build up in the corners of buildings where the yard lights shine. They don't even last as long as leaves in the fall, one day they’re flying around annoying you, the next they’re dead. Then the soil has reached up and just sucked them down, and you wouldn’t even think much about them if they didn’t start hatching out the next spring. The only difference between us and those bugs is that it takes us sixty to eighty years to do what they accomplish in a week or less. When the spark that moves them leaves their shells they turn into mulch, just like us, it’s worrying about what happens to the spark after that bothered me, and still takes up quite a bit of my thinking.

I tried to figure out how many times I had walked this route, 180 days per year two times a day, more if there was an event at school, and then I’d been sick a little and played sick more, so maybe 178 days a year for thirteen years. I gave up my figuring in a confusion of numbers and decided to do it on paper later. I wandered through the McPherson Lumber Yard, and the shut down creamery where we used to break the chipped milk bottles, and right by the cement cow, to here, the bench at the bottom of the hill, my hill, the one my house sits on.

Rusty’s barking up by the house. The sound echoes down through the trees from high up above by the garage where he’s been tied every night of his life. The yard light flicks off and on to the movement of the pine boughs in the cool lake wind.

Whatcha doin sitting here Henry?

The gaunt drooping shape of Old Man Wiedholtz somehow had inserted itself between me and the street. A crazy looking silhouette of a scarecrow, bathrobe flopping around in the wind, if he’d had a hood and a scythe he could have been death, it’s that dark.

Nothin Mr. Wiedholtz just studying the stars.

You graduated tonight dint’cha, seems like Lizzy seen your name on this year’s list uh seniors.

Yeah, I graduated, I sure did. The sound of saying it made it seem even worse.

Well good luck boy. He turns and wanders off down the street.

His grandson, Danny told me that if he doesn’t walk like this at night he gets all bound up and needs an enema. Seems like every night of my life I can remember either seeing him wandering around, or shushing Rusty for barking, and then hearing the flip flopping of the galoshes he always wore for his evening walks, but never bothered to buckle. On a still night they could be heard for blocks, tonight with the wind and my thoughts he surprised me.

The pines above my head hold so many secrets. Time, sometimes most of a day, lost in fantasy. Just off the street, before the ground slants up hill and forms the ridge my house sits on, there's a hollow. The pines facing the street are crowded, but once you get behind this screen, and before you head up the hill, it’s like a walled in room, with thick pine boughs all around, and all above. Down below the moss so deep, like a mattress, and in the summer, heat draws up sap to all the limbs, the smell of pine sort of soothes me. It’s a place to think. I hid out here when Grampa died trying to put off seeing him and making it final. I hope I can get away from all this now, a new set of memories to twist around in my brain, and turn into something a little less humiliating, so I don’t feel like such a dumb shit. It might be a way to siphon off some of the pressure. Pressure to both be myself and be accepted. It’s been so confusing. Like two magnets, the harder I push to bring them together the more resistance there seems to be.

My initials are scratched into this bench in so many places Henry + Denise, Henry + Rhonda. I had etched them in with a pocket knife as if this could make them real. The romances were always one sided. I was probably the only one that knew of these horrible crushes. Eventually they would start dating someone with a car, one of the richer kids, or more honestly someone that could talk to a girl without tangling their words up and looking like an idiot. I suppose I should gouge out a Henry + Joan on the pine planking, and bring the history of my love life up to date. This was the worst, I’d shown her the inner me, blotchy, Adam’s apple bobbing awkwardness, she not only knew I was interested, she had rejected me.

Wiedholtz’s light goes out in the North corner of their house. I walk the path up between borders of blooming lilacs. A full moon is wedged up in the crotch of the climbing tree and it makes the trail glow. Our house is all dark. The windows still half wrapped in plastic which flutters in the wind. Dad won’t take down the storm covers until its warm enough for screens, by then it’s just wisps, held up by pine lathe and shingle nails.

Rusty rushes to the end of his chain, sniffs me, and tries to lick my arm. I sidestep around him to keep his muddy paws from messing up my good pants. He sits down and thumps his fat tail on the circle of packed dirt at the end of his chain.

The kitchen sink has crumby cake plates and glasses with layer’s of drying punch in the bottoms. Ma must have decided to save washing them for the morning. In the living room there’s a big tag board sign my sister made, CONGRADULATIONS HENRY LIVE LONG AND PROSPER. She did it in blue Magic Marker. She’s a big Star Trek fan. Ma had hung crepe paper over the arch between the kitchen and the living room. The place looked real festive. I could see them coming home, walking through the porch, Dad telling Helen to put her bike away before someone tripped on it in the dark, her doing her best, Yes sahib, and then promising not to do it again. They sat down to a cake Mom had spent the afternoon baking and writing their wishes for a good future on. Then I cheated them out of a chance to make their toasts to me, to say things that would have embarrassed me, I wish I could hear them now. Sometimes you need to hear how nice you’re turning out to be, even if it is just your Grandma and mother saying it. I felt I didn’t belong here anymore. By not riding home with them I had stepped out of their circle of protection. My first steps had gotten all screwed up and I wanted back in. Something was different now, and I could never get back in. Once when I was a kid I fell off the porch and scraped my knee on the only cement in our yard. Mom and Dad weren't downstairs so I’d gone looking for them. There were strange noises coming out of their bedroom. We didn't have doors then, just a cord with these curtains hanging from it that parted in the middle. I peeked in and that’s kind of the way I feel now, like who I was before I looked in there was someone I’d never be again. A chunk of the security I had before I saw that was gone, I knew something then that I wasn’t ready to know. It’s a little different now though, it’s like there’s something I’m ready to know, but I don’t.

I better go to bed, maybe I can forget tonight. I might be able to bring winter back, good old boring winter. Not spring and all of these decisions to make. Joan hadn’t hurt me as much as I had hurt myself. If I would have kept my mouth shut instead of asking her out she could have been just another name on the bench, no painful memories to forget, or embarrassments to face later, only some meaningless scratches in wood.

The frogs keep croaking down by the swamp. They almost seem like they’re going to stop, and then they start back, just as I’m about to fall asleep. A semi truck roars as its driver shifts gears to climb the grade out of town. A car squeals its tires and honks its horn all the way through town. At the party I suppose Danny and Steve are laughing about me and Joan, they had tried warning me that she had the hots for Carlson. If Dad’s truck wouldn’t have broken down maybe she would have rode with me, maybe not. Frogs have it made, once a year you get just the right temperature, and you have a slimy orgy for week or so and then forget about romance for another year. No hurt feelings or longing looks; just sex and eat bugs.

Chapter 2

Henry! You gettin up in there or not? I peek out over the top edge of my quilt.

Henry get down here if you want any breakfast. I hear the creak of the floor boards at the bottom of the steps; she must be listening for sounds of life.

You ain’t gonna get room service so Rusty’s eating pancakes if you’re not down here in about five minutes.

She’d do it too. Ma had many rules and eating what she spent her time fixing, when it was ready, was one of the big ones. I whipped the quilt off and untangled my feet from the wad of sheets that had somehow wound themselves around my feet during the night. I stand there shivering in the cold that must have shown up in the early morning. Last night it had seemed too hot to sleep. All the heat from Mom fixing party food had drifted upstairs, and hung in here, under the peak of the roof. The mosquitoes that had added to my misery were stiff and sluggish in the cold morning air. Swelled up, full on my blood, and hanging on the wall above my bed. I squash them now when they’re easy to hit. In the dark they were illusive and I was a slow slap away from vengeance. I leave them where they die, to warn other bugs of what happens when they mess with me, a red blotch with legs sticking out, a testimony to my prowess.

Down in the kitchen Mom starts rattling stuff around a little noisier than needed, I take it as a signal that Rusty’s about to have my pancakes, so I walked to the door. Where’s my new jeans Ma?

In the bottom drawer. Where’d you suppose they’d be?

Yesterday’s socks and underwear hadn’t made it to the hamper and looked ok, so I picked them up off the floor and pulled them back on. I grabbed the stiff new jeans and a sweatshirt from the bottom drawer and headed for the bathroom.

Downstairs all signs of last night’s attempt at a party were gone except for a big piece of cake sitting in a saucer next to my plate. I scooped off a gob of frosting and licked it from my fingers. The butter had already started to set back up after melting on my pancakes so mom must have been holding my breakfast longer than the normal time limit.

Sorry Mom

She looked at me and seemed to brighten a bit. Oh its ok, I wished I’d known you were plannin on goin to another party, we could uh had yours here tonight instead.

I had meant about being late for breakfast, but didn’t figure this was the time to straighten up the misunderstanding.

How was your party last night? Couldn’t uh been much, heard you come in about eleven. Figured it’d be the wee hours before you drug in.

So did I.

In the silence I could feel the motherly probes examining me for signs of what I wasn’t saying. I sopped up syrup with the last bit of pancake, and went to work on the graduation cake, without offering up eye contact.

Whatcha doin today? Try thinking each thing through cuz decisions you make the next few weeks will stick with you for a long long time.

I’m gonna talk to him Ma, it’s his day to be in town. I think it’s my best chance, it’ll get me out of town at least for a few years.

Mom didn’t say anything, just turned her back on me and went on washing the silverware. After a while she looked up, So your goin through with it after all we talked about, She didn’t look mad just worn out from worrying over a lost argument.

This is the only way I can ever see me affording college. In four years I’ll have the GI Bill. Heck they’ll be putting me through school then. You just wait an see it’ll work out just like I say. She was still standing there getting ready to say something. Besides you an Dad can’t afford to send me, an even if you could I don’t know what I’d do. I need some time to figure out what I want.

Yeah I’ve heard all that before, you could come home like the Jones boy too, running and drinkin all the time, no more sense uh direction then, than you got now, only full uh meanness. Or like your cousin Bobby goin off believing all that garbage bout heroes an glory. Look at him now sitting in the Vets hospital waiting for diaper changes.

She wiped off a glass, held it up to the window, seeing the sunlight sparkle through for a second, then she sat it down on the shelf above her head. Don’t go fight in some rich man’s war, we need you here, or maybe in Minneapolis, there’d be work you’d like down in The Cities if you just took the time to look.

Ma I’m almost nineteen, I got thirty-seven for uh lottery number. If I don’t enlist or get into college there gonna draft me. Either way I’m gone. I’ll be safe, get some cozy desk job, maybe even go to night school.

Later we walked out to the edge of the porch. Mom was being real quiet looking like she had a lot more to say, and was just looking for a chance to say it. I stepped down to the ground and looked back up at her. She was smiling this sad, lost kind of smile, a short bent woman in a button fronted, faded dress, all water spotted from washing dishes.

Supper’s gonna be late tonight cuz your Dad got some overtime, be home by seven-thirty.

I smile reassuringly at her and turn down the driveway. I walk away fast not wanting to look back at her and face her disappointment. It’s hard to have her look at me that way. The look of a parent whose kid is making a choice they don’t want them to make, but for the first time they can’t force them to choose what they feel is best. I suppose I should feel powerful, but I’m fighting this urge to go along with her choice, so instead I walk.

Chapter 3

Helen and a bunch of other neighborhood girls are running around on the low roof of the old creamery. In the summer the weeds get so tall there by the crumbling foundation for the stable that we could hide with the cigarettes we’d steal from home. Helen see’s me and waves; I hesitate for a second and then wave back, she smiles and waves again. I walk faster so she doesn’t come over to talk. Helen’s voice goes even shriller than normal as she yells warnings to her friends about crocodiles and the boat sinking. I couldn’t tell if she was Captain Hook or Humphrey Bogart maybe even some combination. Helen never minded playing two characters at a time, whether they were in the same movie or not, as long as they had big parts, and got to yell a lot.

A mostly red pickup goes by with Huey Green sitting on a stack of seed sacks in the back. We nod at each other, too cool to wave. His parents own a farm eight or so miles out of town. He graduated last night too. Dale said he’s buying a brush forty next to his folk’s farm and is going to be a farmer too. Dale said it scornfully and we all laughed, all of us wished we had Huey’s sense of direction even though farming doesn’t pay much around here. From Kindergarten on Huey never wore a stitch that was new, just yard sale stuff, which most of us got to wear for play and later for work. We’d say it’s new to me, but those were school clothes to Huey. Our joke was it’s new to Huey. As long as it was just us he’d smile about it. One time my mom bought a paisley shirt at a sale. All the year before that I’d wanted one, so when I saw it in the hamper of clothes she had washed I picked it out to wear the next day. I went to school that morning primed for the compliments I’d get for finally wearing something cool. I was walking with my friends when Carlson and his buddies walked by. He looked at me and said, Hey Anderson cool shirt, least it was last year when it was mine. Huey looked at me and said, It’d be new to me, we all laughed, but I felt sick, and never wore that shirt again, not even for work.

One time Carlson tripped Huey in Gym class and told him he smelled like pig shit. Huey got up and beat the crap out of him. Carlson never bothered him again. I tried congratulating him about it and he said he was ashamed for losing his temper. I always wondered if he was a Quaker or something, so I asked my Dad about it, he said they were just folks that took their Bible serious was all.

The business district of my town is small compared to a real town, but it has anything you might need, it just costs more. We only live three blocks from down town, and were on the edge of the city limits, with nothing but woods between us and Bemidji. On Saturdays and in the summer it’s hard to find a place to park, but the rest of the time you could walk down the street stark naked and hardly be noticed. One time the Simpson’s old collie Shep slept in the middle of the highway between the Shell station and the liquor store for two hours and didn’t have to move even once.

Our court house is a big brick building with a statue of Justice out in front surrounded by pink and white petunias. In social studies class we were supposed to write an essay about one of the branches of government. I thought I’d try to be funny so I wrote, "Justice burned her bra and went topless. She holds a scale that leans towards gold since it’s the heaviest of metals. She is blindfolded to give us the illusion of impartiality, has a cool sword, and wonderful breasts. Mr. Johnson gave me a D- and told me if I ever did something like that again he’d flunk me and tell my parents.

Excuse me, where’s the Navy recruiting office? An old lady in a fuzzy gray sweater turns and eyes me over the top of these half glasses.

This is the Clerk of Court office, can I help you?

Yeah! Where’s the Navy recruiter’s office?

She swivels her chair back to the typewriter. Down in the basement, third door on the right. He’s not in though, just left with the Army Recruiter.

Do you think he’ll be back today? She didn’t say anything just started rapping away on her machine.

Down in the basement the third door on the right was labeled Furnace Room. Further down the hallway there was a door on the left that had a Fly Navy sticker taped on it, and one of those pasteboard clocks with the hands you can move that said, Be Back At, this one claimed a return at 10:15, it was 10:20. The Marine recruiter was just across the hall, he waved and smiled, he looks too anxious, I decide to wait outside.

The court house steps are warm. The sun is shining down at just the right angle and this doesn’t seem all that bad a place to be. Cars go by on 34 every once in a while, enough to keep the dogs awake anyway, a sure sign that summer tourist dollars are on their way. Arnie Simms old 52 Chevy pulls up in front bounces over the curb and on to the sidewalk. Arnie jumps out, kicks the door shut, and walks away as the engine diesels to a wheezing stop. He’s always putting on like a rebel, but never quite pulls it off. He walks up and punches me in the shoulder, a little harder than he intended, or I expected.

Been gettin any Henry? He says, as he joins me on the step.

I just stare at him, which is the only appropriate response