Henry of Atlantic City

by Frederick Reuss

  That night Elvis Presley stood at the foot of Henry’s bed and shouted, “Okay! Listen up!” When things got quiet he said, “It’s name time, dudes!” He made Henry stand up on his bed. “What’s your name?”

  Henry didn’t say anything.

  “Tell us your name, dude,” Elvis said.

  Everybody laughed and someone said, “Yeah, faggot.”

  Ernest Whiskey Red Brown jumped up and down. “Faggot. Faggot. Faggot.” Then John Lennon slammed his pillow into Ernest Whiskey Red Brown’s face. They began to wrestle. Someone began to chant, “Fight, fight,” and the two boys began to wrestle more seriously until Otis Redding told them to break it up.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Otis yelled. He pushed them both backward onto their beds. “You want to get free time cut back again? Any of my free time gets cut because of you I’ll kick both your asses!” He looked at Henry. “Same goes for you.”

  Henry lay down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling. Elvis grabbed him and tried to make him stand up again.

  “That’s enough,” Otis Redding yelled. “Cut it out!” His voice was louder and deeper than any of the other boys’, and since he was the oldest, Elvis Presley backed off. “Okay, dude, relax,” he said and went back to his bed and threw himself down on it.

  Otis Redding went down to the end of the room where his bed was. “We already lost fifteen minutes of free time because of fuckin’ John Lennon over here,” he said. “No way I’m gonna let it go to thirty. Not for any of you dumb fucks.” Just as he lay down Mr. Miller came in. “Five minutes to lights out,” he said.

  The next day everyone was mad at everyone else and nobody paid any attention to Henry until night, when Elvis Presley came over to Henry’s bed again. “Okay, dude, time’s up. What’s your name?”

  Robert Johnson jumped up and down on his bed and sang, “I went down to the crossroad fell down on my knees.” Then he fell back onto the bed and pedaled the air with his legs like he was riding a bicycle and strummed an invisible guitar across his belly.

  “You finished?” Elvis asked.

  Robert Johnson kept strumming the invisible guitar on his belly and singing, “I believe to my soul now, po’ Henry sinkin’ down.”

  “Well?” Elvis Presley demanded.

  Henry said nothing.

  “You have to have a name,” Elvis said. He put his hands on his hips and tried to look tough. Then the other boys all came over and surrounded Henry’s bed.

  “C’mon. You can become anyone you want to. Anyone you ever wanted to be. It’s easy.”

  “Where’s Elmore?” Otis Redding said.

  “Over here,” Elmore James said.

  “Why you sitting over there all by yourself? We got to get the new kid his name.”

  “Chill, man. Stop acting up,” Elmore James said.

  “What you thinking about, Elmore?” Otis asked.

  “Gettin’ the fuck outa here,” Elmore James said.

  “You always thinking too hard. That’s a problem.”

  “Where’s Honeyboy?” Robert Johnson called.

  “Over here,” Honeyboy Edwards said.

  “Where’s Honeyboy?”

  “I’m over here, man.”

  “Honeyboy; where’s Honeyboy gone off to?”

  “He’s over in the bafroom pullin’ on his dick.”

  Robert Johnson cupped his hands and shouted, “Honeyboy? You playing with yourself again?”

  “Fuck you,” Honeyboy Edwards said. He got up from his bed and everyone started laughing.

  Elvis Presley motioned everyone over to Henry’s bed. “C’mon!” He held up his hand for everyone to be quiet.

  Henry looked at the boys surrounding his bed and told them he was Saint Augustine. They all looked at each other, then at Henry. Elvis said, “No way, man. You can’t do that.”

  “You can’t be a saint,” Howlin’ Wolf said. “You got to be somebody famous.”

  Henry said Saint Augustine was famous.

  “Saints aren’t allowed,” Otis Redding said.

  Henry asked why not.

  “It’s a sin, that’s why,” Otis Redding said.

  “And besides, it’s a pussy name,” Sid Vicious said and started laughing.

  “Hey! Shut up, man,” Robert Johnson said. “That’s blastphemy.”

  Sid Vicious made a face and stuck his tongue out and went back to his bed.

  Henry said call me Barbelo, then.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Howlin’ Wolf asked.

  “Never heard of him,” Sid Vicious called over from his bed. “Is it a group?”

  Barbelo is the first thought, the womb of everything, the mother/father, the first man, the Holy Spirit, the thrice male, the thrice powerful.

  “Say what?” Howlin’ Wolf said.

  “You can’t just make up any old name you want,” Elvis Presley said.

  “Yeah, you got to be somebody!” Howlin’ Wolf said.

  “How ’bout Queen,” Kurt Cobain said. “You could be Queen. They’re a band.”

  Everybody laughed and said, “Queen! That’s it!”

  “He can’t be Queen,” Jimi Hendrix said.

  “That’s right,” Ernest Whiskey Red Brown said. “No way he can be Queen. Prince, maybe.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Henry said Barbelo was the first thought that came forth from the invisible virginal spirit.

  “Sure, man, whatever you say,” Elvis Presley said. “It’s just that you got to have a name that other people can relate to.”

  Otis Redding pushed his way to the front of the group. “You ’member what we told you?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “Pick a name or we’ll pick one for you, dipshit.”

  “Hey, Dipshit, I like that,” Ernest Whiskey Red Brown said.

  “He picked a name, man,” Jimi Hendrix said.

  “It can’t be just any name he ever heard,” Otis Redding said. “It has to be a real name.”

  “That’s right, man,” Honeyboy Edwards said. “We all famous here.”

  “That’s right,” Keith Moon said. “We don’t want anyone hanging around who isn’t.”

  “Pick another name,” Elvis Presley said.

  “He picked a fuckin’ name,” Jimi Hendrix said.

  Henry said Barbelo was the first thought, which was the thought of God.

  “Gimme a fucking break, mate,” Sid Vicious said. “You some kind of born-again Christian?”

  “There ain’t nothing wrong with being born again,” Honeyboy Edwards said. “Robert Johnson got born again.”

  “He was a bluesman,” Sid Vicious said.

  “Where you think he got the blues from? Piece-of-shit punk,” Honeyboy Edwards said.

  Elmore James laughed.

  “Kiss my ass! You piece of honky dogshit!” Honeyboy Edwards kissed his hand and slapped himself on the rear with it.

  “Just shut the fuck up!” Jimi Hendrix said. “All of you.”

  “Okay, okay,” Otis Redding said. “Name some Barbelo songs. If anyone ever heard of them, you can be Barbelo.”

  Henry said there were no songs, only some books that were found in a cave in Egypt.

  “What the fuck?” Robert Johnson said. He clapped and spun around on one foot and John Lennon did it too.

  “Yo, man, why you always copy everything Robert Johnson does?” Otis Redding asked John Lennon. “Names that come from books ain’t allowed,” he said. “They got to be famous names. How the fuck are we supposed to know someone’s name who came out of a cave in Egypt?” He laughed and everybody started to laugh. “Yo, man,” he shouted. “The kid wants to be a fucking Egyptian caveman.”

  “Is Barbelo a brother?” Honeyboy Edwards asked. “If the dude’s from Egypt, then he’s a African.”

  “That’s right,” Ernest Whiskey Red Brown said. “Has to be a famous white dude.”

  “That’s right,” Elvis Presley said. “When I got here I wanted to be Kokomo Arn
old, but nobody let me. That’s why I had to be Elvis Presley.”

  “I bet Elvis thought he was Kokomo Arnold too,” Honeyboy said.

  “You’re being racist,” Jimi Hendrix said.

  “It ain’t racist,” Otis Redding said. “It’s just the way it is.”

  “It’s still racist,” Jimi Hendrix said.

  “You don’t know what the fuck you talking ’bout,” Otis Redding said. “Elvis wanted to be black. Ever’body knows that. Don’t mean it can happen! Michael Jackson wants to be white. Don’t mean it’s gonna happen.”

  “It’s racist!” Jimi Hendrix said.

  Otis Redding got mad. “You too caught up in that sixties shit.”

  “Yeah, shut the fuck up,” Honeyboy Edwards said. “Is Barbelo a brother? Or a white dude?”

  Henry said he didn’t know.

  “Pick another name, man,” Otis Redding said.

  “He picked a fucking name,” Jimi Hendrix said. He pushed his way out of the circle and went over to his bed. “Bunch of fucking idiots.”

  “No way Barbelo’s famous if you don’t even know what he looked like,” Otis Redding said.

  “That’s right, man. You don’t even know if he’s black or white,” Elvis Presley said.

  “You got one more chance,” Otis Redding said.

  Just then Mr. Miller came in and called, “Lights out!”

  When it was dark Elvis Presley said, “He wants to be a fucking Egyptian caveman.” Everybody started laughing until Mr. Miller came in and warned them to cut it out.

  The next morning while they were making their beds Robert Johnson said, “There’s a band named the Egyptians.”

  “Yeah, I heard them on the radio,” Ernest Whiskey Red Brown said. “The Egyptians!”

  Otis Redding came over to Henry’s bed. “Listen up, everybody.” He pointed to Henry. “From now on you are the Egyptian.”

  Henry looked at all the boys standing over their beds and said I went into the realm of darkness and I endured until I entered the middle of the prison. And the darkness of chaos shook.

  Otis Redding clapped Henry on the back and spun around on one foot. “The Egyptian. You one baaaad muhfucker, man!” Then he went back to finish making his bed.

  In church the priests say, Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Once when Henry asked Father Crowley why lamb? Father Crowley said, “Because the Agnus Dei is the symbol of Christ, and lamb is the sacrificial animal slaughtered in ancient times to give praise to God. When Jesus died on the cross to save man from sin and redeem him into everlasting life with the Father, he was taking the place of the sacrificial lamb, and that is why we say the Agnus Dei during the mass.”

  At Saint Jude’s they talked about God sending his son to die for the sins of the world, and Saint Augustine said Jesus Christ was both victor and victim and it was because he was the victim that he was also the victor. But Henry’s angel said that Christ was sent to ransom, not to redeem, because the dead are the ransom paid by the living for the Creator’s mistake. The angel said there are no sacrifices, there are only victims, and by playing the lamb Christ wasn’t taking away the sins of the world, he was showing the only way out of it.

  The same day that Henry became the Egyptian, Robert Johnson told the story about the man who lived in the woods, Hatchet Harry. He was a bank robber who drove a big black car and never stayed in one place for more than a night because the FBI was always right on his tail. One night he robbed a bank in Philly. He thought he made a clean getaway but suddenly he heard sirens behind him. He drove as fast as he could and cut through alleys and drove all over the place until he got onto a road leading out into the country. As he came around a curve he saw a big open gate and he turned into it. That was how he gave the cops the slip.

  It was in the days when the old millionaire still lived in the mansion all alone. One night the old man was lying in his big bed. He heard a car pull up in the driveway and went to the window and saw a man get out and begin prowling around. He went down to the room where he kept his collection of old swords and armor and he grabbed a battle-ax, the kind that is curved and sharp on both sides. The gangster prowled around and looked into all the rooms. Then, just as he came into the dining room, the old millionaire stepped out from behind the door and buried the axe in the man’s head.

  “AAAHHHHHHHHHHH,” Robert Johnson screamed. Everyone in the dining room stopped talking. Robert Johnson drew a line with his fork from the middle of his forehead down to the bridge of his nose and got spaghetti sauce in his hair.

  “Let’s try to keep the noise to a minimum,” Mr. Miller called from his table near the window. “And cut the clowning,” he said to Robert Johnson.

  “Muhfucker never died,” Robert Johnson whispered. “The axe was so fuckin’ sharp it stayed there in his skull and not even one drop of blood came out. Muhfucker ran ‘round screamin’ and screamin’, then he started laughing ‘cause he couldn’t believe he was still fuckin’ alive and also ’cause the ax went into his brain and made him crazy.” He picked up a handful of spaghetti from his plate. “This is what his brains looked like.” He squished the spaghetti through his fingers. “He ran out of the mansion into the woods and only a couple of people ever seen him since. Sometimes late at night you can hear him laughing.” Then he made a high-pitched, screeching laugh, “HEEEE HE HE HE HE.”

  Later Henry asked Mr. Miller if the story about Hatchet Harry was true.

  Mr. Miller laughed. “It’s an old tradition around here,” he said. “In my day there were two versions. One about Hatchet Harry, who was a gangster, and another was Meat Cleaver Mulligan. He was a butcher. His shop in town was attacked and he was killed by an angry mob during the cholera epidemic of 1859.”

  Henry asked why.

  “Because they thought he was spreading the disease by selling bad meat.”

  Henry asked if it was true.

  “I suppose cholera could be spread that way—but I’m not positive.”

  Henry said no, he meant which story was true.

  “It depends on who is telling it.”

  Henry said then it was sort of like the Gospels.

  “How do you figure that?”

  Henry said they all told the same story in different ways and so they were all true in their own way and that meant the stories were true in more ways than one.

  “I’ll have to think about that,” Mr. Miller said. “But right off the top of my head, I’d say there is a huge difference between the story of Hatchet Harry and the New Testament.”

  Sy’s sister and Helena were both sitting down when Henry came into the visiting room. Helena was holding a baby. Sy’s sister jumped up and hugged Henry with both arms and rocked from side to side so that it was hard for him to breathe. “Oh, Henry, it’s so good to see you. Are you okay?” Then she let him go and took his hand and pulled him over to where Helena was sitting with the baby in her lap.

  Helena pulled the blanket away so Henry could see the baby’s face. She looked different than Henry remembered but it was a combination of older and younger and happier and sadder. Henry bent down for a closer look and the baby burped. “He just ate,” Helena said.

  Henry asked what his name was.

  “Ali,” Helena said.

  Just like his father, Henry said.

  “That’s right,” Helena said. “His full name is Ali ben-Mohammed Ali. It means Ali, son of Mohammed Ali.”

  “But I just call him Al,” Sy’s sister said and touched the baby’s nose.

  The baby looked up at Helena and she bent down and kissed it and made a motherly noise. “What do you think, Henry?”

  Henry asked why the top of its head was throbbing.

  “That’s the baby’s fontanel.”

  Henry asked what that was.

  “It’s the soft spot on a baby’s skull.” She touched it lightly with her hand.

  Henry looked at the baby and watched the spot on its head pulse. Then he said the childr
en a woman bears resemble that man who loves her.

  “He does look a lot like his father,” Helena said.

  “He has his father’s forehead, but he’s all mom around the mouth and eyes,” Sy’s sister said.

  Helena lifted the baby up onto her shoulder and began to pat it on the back. “He has gas,” she said.

  “All babies have gas,” Sy’s sister said. Then she told Henry to sit down and tell them how he was doing.

  “We wanted to come visit you sooner,” Helena said. “But something came up.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Sy’s sister said. She laughed. It sounded a little like Big Henry’s laugh and just as Henry was about to ask about him she reached into her bag and took out a book. “This is a present from Big Henry,” she said.

  It was The Baseball Book of Records. Henry opened it and leafed through the pages. He remembered the way Big Henry talked and wondered if this was the book he had learned to talk that way from. He remembered the time Big Henry took him to the Hippodrome in Philadelphia and had four hot dogs, two bags of popcorn, and seven beers. He asked Sy’s sister if she was still angry at him.

  “I married him,” she laughed. “So I guess you could say I’ll always be angry at him.”

  Henry asked why she married Big Henry if she’d always be angry at him.

  She pulled Henry to her and messed up his hair. “It was just a joke, Henry. Why do you take everything so seriously?”

  Henry asked how far away Philadelphia was.

  Sy’s sister looked at Helena. “It’s a long way away,” she said. “A long, long, long way away.”