When Henry Came Home

by Josephine Bhaer

  In the morning I packed what few things I had, carefully tucking my drawings against the inside of my bag so they would not be crushed. I shaved, quickly, and went out into the front lobby to pay and return the key to my room.

  "Is there a train leaving today?" I asked the man at the counter. It was a different man, now, a little younger but just as bald. His brother, maybe.

  "Sure," he said. "Come in last night. Leaves... oh, noon, I reckon."

  "Thanks."

  "Hope we'll see ya 'round again."

  "Sure." I took my bag and walked out. It was hot already... it was always hot. I found myself longing for the east again; not really wanting to go, just—a yearning, kind of, to move on. I was a roamer, and I knew it. I hated to leave, but—well, it was easier. Part of being a coward, maybe.

  Mary met me at the door, a glass of water in hand that she had half finished. "You're not leaving!" she said, surprised and yet not, somehow.

  I found it hard to meet her eyes, but I managed it for a moment or two. "Yes," I said. "I—need to get back."

  She looked irritated, the way only a loving woman can. "So you've got enough of what you needed and now—" she let out a quick sigh. "Well, never mind. Come in, Edward, and have a goodbye."

  Henry looked up from his desk as we came in and set down his pen. He didn't say anything, but he must have gestured somehow because I sat down across from him.

  "I'll get you something to drink," said Mary, and disappeared.

  "She'll be sad to see you go."

  What a strange man Henry had grown to be. "I know," I said. "I... need to go."

  Mary returned and handed me a glass. "When is the train?"

  I drank a bit, thankful for the relief. Inside, it was no cooler than out. Just more cramped and close. "Noon," I said.

  "We'll walk you down, then."

  "All right."

  Mary grabbed Henry's arm as he pushed himself up, and I took my bag and opened the door. It was well before noon, but we walked slowly, trying to stay in the shade. In the street, horses swatted irritably at flies with long, hot tails. "I'm glad I came back," I said, just to fill up the silence. "It was nice to see things again." Which was true; I think it pays to return now and then to places you've been, even if you've left them far behind. This is especially important to someone whose world consists of a radius of about three yards in any given direction—if I forget where things are, I really am lost. I do like the city, for that—signposts on every corner, or on most of them, anyway. Reliable.

  We came to a natural halt at the bottom of the stairs to the platform. Henry nudged Mary slightly, nodding upwards once. She said something quietly to him, and he nodded, clearing his throat and then coughing a little.

  "All right," said Mary, "I'll see you to the train, if you've got to go." Slipping reluctantly away from Henry, she marched up the first step, turning to look back at us.

  I put my hand out, and Henry took it. A nod between us was all for the farewell, and I suppose that is all either he or I expected. He knew me; I knew him. What more was there?

  All the way up the stairs, Mary stayed one step ahead of me, but I was surprised at the top when she turned and hugged me tightly.

  "I wish you wouldn't go," she said, and her voice was a little unfirm.

  "I—I have to, Mary." I knew, eventually, that she'd learn what I had done to Sarah, and I did not want to be there to see the disappointment in her face.

  "I wish you'd stay and be my brother. You ought to."

  "You've got Henry," I offered.

  She stood back, and that flare was in her eyes again. "What on earth makes you think I'm talking about what I have or haven't got?"

  I was silent, making sense of the remark. I wished that she were as tender with others—well, me, in particular—as she was with Henry. That was another strange thing; Mary was a little firecracker, but around Henry—well, in her eyes, there was a kind of gentleness, an intense care. She handled him like a blind pup, and in return he gave the same. The rest of us, it seemed, were stockyard chickens, to be grasped brusquely and handled with efficiency when necessary—even wrung by the neck, when there was call. I suppose it wasn't so much a quality in her as it was in us—by us, I mean the rest of the world. We needed rough handling.

  "Well, anyway—I got you a little present." She dug into her handbag and pulled forth a small tablet of drawing paper, along with two nice pencils. "Please use them, Eddy," she said.

  "I will. And I've got something for you." I opened my bag, putting the new trinkets inside, and drew forth my sketches of the previous day, handing them over.

  "Oh, Edward," she said, glancing through them. She stopped at the last one and shuffled it to the top of the pile. "Oh," she said again. "Oh." It was her, and Henry of course. I had done it from memory, and I saw now that I had been very close. She had been easy to draw, very much so, with her large, sparkling eyes and forever smiling mouth. Henry had been harder—his face was blurry, from repeated tries, and still wasn't quite right. "Thank you, Edward," she said, genuinely. I felt a bit shy, and gave an embarrassed smile. "You'll always be my brother, you know, even if you never come back," she told me.

  Lord, I wanted to cry. Wanted to jump around yelling my head off.

  Holding my drawings in one hand, she reached back into her handbag. "And—this is yours," she said, holding out the flask.

  It glinted in the sun. For a second, a bare second, under that hot summer sun, I wanted to say, "Keep it, Mary, Sister, or throw it away. I don't care. You're my sister. Why do I need it?" But I didn't. I just looked at it, and looked at her. She gazed straight back, into my eyes, and hers were soft and sad.

  I looked at it there, out of place in her slender little hand, then reached out and took it. After all, she wouldn't be on the train, not when that noise—I shoved the flask down into my bag, down into the very bottom. I didn't want it now, not yet, maybe not ever again, but it scared me—Yes, it scared me to be on that train alone. But as I walked away I shoved it to the bottom, because who knew--? I might meet a pretty girl on the train. And I might, just might, forget.

  Chapter Five

  The wind was strong one early Sunday morning in a dry September, blustering through golden-brown trees, stealing away the papery treasures and raining them down in quick dust-devil whirls. It rushed through the little valleys, along creek beds, and through the natural tunnels of man-made roads. It was along one of these roads that an old buckboard moaned and thumped, chattering dully over dry ruts as the splintered boards strained and pulled at the nails that held it together. On the weather-warped driver’s seat of the buckboard sat Henry and Mary, Mary laughing as they jerked back and forth, her eyes lost in a veil of long chestnut hair, licking out like fire in the wind. Mary tried in vain—but not very hard, in any case—to pull her hair back into the shape it had formerly taken, and failed miserably. She shrieked as they went around another corner and clung to Henry for the pounding in her chest. "Faster!" she cried, in spite of it.

  Henry grinned in a sort of grim, secret, determined way, and flicked the reins out again.

  They rattled like the wind itself over the flat land, all thoughts but delightful fear cast away in the noise and rush until the trees became sparse and the wind dispersed to go out on its own way. The horses ran themselves out and turned to a nervous canter and the deafening clatter of the buckboard turned rhythmic and soothing. A small white building with a miniature steeple came into view. Mary let out a final laughing sigh and pulled her hair back, though wisps still ran about like eddies where her hair ended and smooth, olive skin began. "Folks'll think I've gone plum crazy," she said, "wearin' my hair like this to church."

  "I remember you used to wear your hair down, out places."

  She smiled, out of breath and cheeks flaring a lusty red. "That's when I was a kid," she said. "Wouldn't be proper now."

  "When are you a child, and when are you grown up?"

  "Oh," she mused, leaning back against his
shoulder as she pinned up her hair, "around sixteen, I reckon."

  "Just—one day you ain't and then the next you are?" The church came closer, lined with buckboards and wagons and a few folks milling around.

  "It does sound kinda silly. Maybe it's more like you grow up slow, along the way doing different things because you are older, and for girls puttin' up hair is one of those things." She was silent for a moment as Henry pulled the horses to a stop. "Looks like we're late. Ma won't approve." Then she grinned, hopping down from the wagon. "But I ain't goin' home with Ma to be lectured, am I?" She skipped around to the other side to help Henry, then unhitched the horses and led them to water on the side of the building. She tied them there and went to join Henry on the front steps. Music came out loudly but a little muffled, and they went inside to find a place with everyone standing. There was a spot about the middle of the room on the edge of a pew, and they slipped in and Mary picked up a hymnal, although they both knew the words already.

  They joined the singing, with the choir up front leading, and the hearty sound rose to the rafters of the little church until it nearly burst open to heaven above. Instead it only shook the walls and floors until they, too, were humming in their own particular manner, low and inaudible but felt deeply in the chest. After a few songs, Henry leaned a little towards Mary. "You ought to be in the choir," he whispered in her ear.

  She turned her head and grinned, then whispered back, "So should you," into his ear so close he could feel her voice trembling upon her lips as the chords tumbled out, the air thick and warm with so many bodies together. After a moment, she leaned over again. "I think maybe we are," she said.

  At length, the music came to a halt, and the congregation was seated. The preacher emerged, a great, looming man, his hair all grey and frazzled, and his beard looking as if it had not been cut in some years—and indeed it had not. He was a ferocious and dear old man, holding the deep and sincere adoration of his congregation, though he would have denied it had any man said it to his face. He seemed to take pride– if pride was the word—in terrifying his flock with rousing tirades of hell and damnation, although immediately after noon these rantings would cease, and he would pass in and about the people to hold babies and play jolly Saint Nick to young children. It was a sort of dichotomy between friendship and duty, and because of it no one became offended. They somehow felt he never was referring to them when he stamped around in front of them—and if, in fact, he were referring to them, he would never have the heart to play the beast in a moment of genuine confession. To further the proof of his actual mildness, he was content to be called simply "Preacher Dan," without a surname at all.

  The sermon that Sunday, as near as anyone sitting in a pew could figure, was on the tale of Jonah. It started out, of course, with a bible verse, but as Preacher Dan continued and grew more and more fervent, the tale expanded until it might have been a great, unrhyming poem of Odyssean proportions, spun out of some worthy philosopher's mind, laced with strange, beautiful words and references to literary works none but a few had ever heard of. His body, too, became part of the poem, and his wild gestures seemed to become the ship and then the whale and, then again, the shores of Ninevah.

  As Preacher Dan came to Jonah's casting from the boat, Henry leaned over again to Mary. "Did you ever read Moby Dick?" he queried softly.

  Mary clapped her hand over her mouth—but not before a short giggle escaped. For a moment Preacher Dan paused, glancing about, but that was all. Mary looked at Henry, her eyes wide, hand still over her mouth. Her shoulders shook, and she dared not remove her hand for fully another two minutes. At last she did, clamping her lips shut over her smile. "That was bad," she whispered back, when finally she could.

  Henry looked at her, innocently.

  Later, when the service had ended, they walked out arm in arm and down the steps to get some fresh air, along with most of the congregation. Mary stared up at the sky, blue and empty but chill, trying to see beyond. "I wonder sometimes what the sea looks like," she said absently. "I've never been. Just to stare out forever, blue in the sky and all blue underneath, too. I think maybe it would drive a man crazy, if he was out there too long."

  "It does, sometimes."

  "You seen the ocean?"

  "Once. It was only blue for one day I remember, though. Mostly it's kind of green and grey, and all cloudy."

  "I bet it's beautiful anyway."

  Henry paused, thinking. "Yes," he said at last. "I guess it is." He stopped walking, looking down at nothing for a minute. "You—want to go?"

  "Where, the ocean?" Mary laughed. "It's so far! We'd be weeks. Months!"

  "No—just for today." He gave a half-nod in prompting. "Say yes."

  Mary tipped her head to one side and smiled oddly. "Well—all right," she agreed. She looked back towards billowing checkered blankets and laughing children, already messy-faced. It was the usual custom to bring a picnic basket to church on Sunday and eat together in the grass after. "I reckon they'll do fine without us."

  Henry angled towards the wagon, and Mary ran to get the horses.

  When they had climbed up into the little bench-seat in front, Henry turned the horses further down the road, past the church and even further away from town. He set the beasts to a gallop and watched from the corner of his eye, secretly pleased as Mary's hair unfurled. She gave an exclamation of dismay. "I give up!" she declared at last, shaking her head and feeling the pins tug and then fly away in the wind. She put a hand up to one side of her face, keeping the hair out so she could talk. "Where're we goin'?" she asked, laughing at her own predicament.

  "Just wait—you'll see." He glanced at her, smiling a little, almost shy.

  "A surprise!" She twisted close around his arm and closed her eyes. "How far?"

  "Not long." As they continued, the flat yellow land passed under them, gradually beginning to dip and roll. There was only vastness in front of them, and soon the same behind when a hill rose to block the dwindling spots that were trees and buildings. Mary opened her eyes again and gazed out at it, squinting in the sharp sunlight.

  "I love this land," she said. "There ain't noplace on earth as beautiful. I'm glad I live here."

  "How do you know?" asked Henry, hesitantly. "You ain't never been anywhere else, have you?"

  "Nope. I just know."

  Henry was silent for a while, feeling the wind and Mary's arms around him. "You're right," he said.

  Mary held tighter, smiling privately.

  Soon the buckboard slowed, clattering up a soft rise. "Close your eyes," he told her, and she obeyed. He brought the horses up and to a halt at the very top. "All right."

  Mary sat up straight and opened her eyes. "Oh," she said, taking in a long breath. "It's beautiful." There before her rolled and seethed ten billion separate strands of golden hay, so brilliant and gleaming in the sun that it hurt to look. The billows traveled in great longish waves with the wind blowing towards them, and the last rustling row lapped at the horses' hooves, making them paw back in the dust.

  "This is the sea," Henry told her. "Happy birthday."

  Mary laughed, slapped him on the arm playfully, and kissed him. "You knew all along!" Henry quenched a smile and looked down at his hands a moment, holding the reins. Then Mary tugged him over to her side of the hard little seat and leapt down to the ground, pulling him after her. She left him standing on the top of the rise and let her legs carry her wildly down into the warm golden waves, her arms wheeling back for balance. She let out a long, breathy whoop and spun around, tumbling down and down until she disappeared in the hay. A moment later she sat up on her knees so that her head came above the grass. "I'm drowning!" she called, laughing, and threw herself down again to gaze at the sky. This, too, did not last long, and after a moment she stood, sober, and looked back up the hill to see her husband standing there next to the wagon, a striking outline against the sky with his neat black suit and cane in hand. Mary waded back up the embankment, hitching up her dress. "You
look a fine figure," she called, halfway up.

  She reached the top, face flushed. "I'm hungry," she declared. "Let's eat." Going to the back of the wagon, she lugged out a picnic basket and a blanket and was about to spread the blanket out next to the buckboard when she paused. She looked up at Henry and grinned. "No—let's eat in the ocean!" With that, she grabbed up the basket again and plunged haltingly down the hill, only just barely keeping balance. When half of her body stood immersed in the fragrant, earthy grass, she put down the basket and began to spread the blanket out, beating down the grass under it to make a little square flat area. This done, she hopped up and went to Henry, who had picked his way half down the hill. In his free hand, he carried a sort of tube, which he had pulled from its spot under the buckboard seat.

  As Mary came to him, he put his arm around her and she took the tubing from him, looking at it curiously. "What is this?" she asked as they walked slowly down.

  "I'll show you."

  "Ah-ha! Another surprise?"

  "Well—yes."

  She laughed, putting her hand out for a moment against his chest to steady him. A moment later they sat down, in the middle of the blanket so that the staffs of hay on either side, blowing in the wind, wouldn't bother the food. Mary scooted up close to him. "Show me!" she urged.

  "How about we eat first?"

  Mary crossed her arms. "Oh, all right," she huffed amiably.

  Sitting in the middle of the blanket was somewhat like being in a little boat, or maybe a tall barrel, so deep with its own weight that although it had not sunk, most of it was below the water. The reeds themselves made little whispering, rustling noises, as if amplifying the hollow cry of the wind. Together the sound was so loud it almost deafened conversation, had Henry and Mary not been whispering into each other's ears anyway. When they finished lunch, Mary placed the tubing in Henry's lap and looked up at him with large, expectant eyes.

  "You look like my kid sisters on Christmas morning," he told her, and she grinned. With careful, purposeful hands, he untied the string and unrolled the stiff paper, careful to hold it so that the wind didn't catch it, though down in the grass they were fairly sheltered. Mary looked at it, putting out a hand to keep the nearest corner from rolling up again.