Henry of Atlantic City Page 3

  Helena got mad. “What about it?”

  “You return in the fall, don’t you?”

  “Are you kidding? So she can brag that she’s putting her kid through college?”

  “Come on, don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth! And I’m sick of hearing it. Besides, who needs school? He’s taking me to Egypt.”

  “Egypt?”

  “He has a place in Cairo and a place here. We’ll go back and forth.”

  “It sounds exciting, Helena. Really it does. When I was your age I would have felt the same way you do.”

  “So why are you talking like I’m about to ruin my life?”

  “Because I’m not your age anymore, and I’ve seen things like this before.”

  “Don’t say that! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you understand? I love him, and he cares about me.”

  “I think you should wait. Give it a little more time.”

  Helena ran upstairs crying.

  The next day Helena and Henry were in the back room of Sy’s sister’s store. Helena was putting labels on dresses and Henry was practicing writing Coptic on the empty boxes with a red marker. He asked her what happened to Sy and her mother.

  “They ran away.”

  Henry asked why.

  “Because they’re crooks, that’s why!”

  Henry used to think people ran away because they were sad but in The Coptic Gnostic Library he read that you didn’t run away, you fell away.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Henry explained that you fell from the light into darkness, from knowing into not knowing. When you ran away it was impossible to tell which way you were going. If you were going into darkness or light. It meant you could never know if things were going to get better or worse.

  “Where do you get all this crap, Henry?” she asked.

  Henry told her about The Coptic Gnostic Library. Then he asked Helena if her mother and Sy ran away to get away from them and be in a better place.

  “I hope they went to hell,” Helena said.

  Henry knew all about hell. One afternoon he was playing behind the store when he saw a chariot run over a dog. The chariot driver didn’t stop but whipped his horses up and drove off. Henry went to look at the dog. It was just like all the other dogs that lived in the streets and alleys of Philadelphia. They were skinny and ate garbage and mostly were scared of people. The one that was hit was still only a puppy and the wheel had crushed its back leg. It was crying and shaking and trying to get up and Henry didn’t know what to do.

  An old man came over. “Kill it!”

  Henry got scared.

  “Put it out of its misery!” the old man said.

  Henry looked at the dog again. It was howling and squealing. He still didn’t know what to do. The old man spat on the ground. He didn’t have any teeth and his spit was almost as red as the dog’s blood. “How would you like to go through hell like that? Lay there all mangled up? What would you want?”

  Henry said he’d want to get better.

  “You can’t get better,” the old man said. “You can only get worse.” He spat on the ground again. “Kill the goddamn thing.”

  So Henry picked up a big rock and dropped it right on the puppy’s head.

  This was how Henry learned that the world originated through a transgression.

  “All right. That’s enough.” Father Crowley slapped his hands on his knees. “You’ve worn me out, son,” he said. They got up to go back to the O’Briens’. When they were in the car Father Crowley said, “We need to have another talk. I have lots of questions—especially about Philadelphia and Sy’s sister.” He also told Henry to stop telling stories in school because it was disruptive. “I don’t want to hear any more reports, okay? No more talk about gnosticism or any of those books you read in Philadelphia. Got that?”

  Henry asked why.

  “Because you’re not old enough to understand them. You’re way too far ahead of yourself, young man. You should put that remarkable brain to proper use. Forget the nonsense you’ve been reading and pay better attention in school.”

  Henry asked the priest why nobody believed in gnostic books.

  The priest frowned and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Then his eyebrows went up and down and when he talked he stared straight ahead at the road and didn’t look at Henry. “Because they are not the words of Jesus. They were written by men who wanted to create their own religion using whatever words and ideas they felt like. They invented everything by mixing up whatever came into their heads with whatever pagan ideas they liked, and the only reason their books lasted is because some of them had been hidden in caves. They are not the true gospels. Period.” He put his hand on Henry’s knee and smiled. “Henry, you’re a remarkable boy. I’ve never met anyone like you. But you’d better watch out that your gifts don’t get you in trouble. God loves those who love the truth.”

  Henry wondered what difference it made to God or Father Crowley or anyone what books he read and what books existed. He wondered if any of the books of the Bible had ever been found in caves.

  When they arrived back at the O’Briens’, Mrs. O’Brien was standing at the front door. She came out to the car. She had curlers in her hair and walked like a big red duck. “Come in. Come in.”

  “I’d love to, Mrs. O’Brien, but I can’t today. We had a good time together, didn’t we, Henry?”

  Henry nodded.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to come again next Saturday. Would that be okay with you?”

  Mrs. O’Brien leaned into the driver’s window. “He’s not in trouble, is he, Father?”

  “No. Not at all. He’s a remarkable little boy. It’s just—well, I can’t describe it. His head is filled with ideas he’s too young to understand.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Mrs. O’Brien said and waved goodbye.

  When they were inside she yelled at Henry for being a troublemaker and whacked him on the back of the head and said she was going to call his father.

  On Monday Henry had to go to the principal’s office again. “Have you been behaving yourself, young man?” Sister Agnes Mary asked him.

  Henry didn’t say anything. He was scared of Sister Agnes Mary.

  “I spoke with Mrs. O’Brien this morning,” she said. “She tells me that you are still telling lies and stories.”

  Henry said Mrs. O’Brien was a liar.

  Sister Agnes Mary grabbed him by the wrists. “If you ever speak like that again, you will be punished, young man. Do you understand me?” She gritted her teeth and Henry saw the spit fly from her lips. It reminded him of the old man in the alley. When she let go his wrists were red and sore. Henry cried and wished his father would come and take him back to the Palace. Gnostics didn’t belong in Catholic school. In the Gospel of Phillip it said that they who inherited dead things are dead themselves. Words are dead things because they are all true. It was the same with stories. They were all true and that was why he liked to tell them. If everything is true one thing is no more true than another and all words will dissolve into their origins.

  Henry decided to run away. He told Sister Agnes Mary he had to go to the bathroom. There was a window there and he opened the window and climbed out. When he was outside he ran to the bus stop. He had enough lunch money to buy a ticket and he got on the first bus that came. When he got on he sat in the last seat and tried to make himself as small as he could so nobody would see him. He remembered what he had read about running away. It was scary. He was alone on the open road. There were bad people on the highways—Tartars, Bulgarians, Goths, Huns, Cappadocians. People from all the corners of the empire. He didn’t know where to go or what to do when he got there.

  After a while he got off the bus and looked around. He was on a wide road—probably in Phrygia someplace. There was a 7–11 and a McDonald’s. Their signs stood high up on narrow metal columns. Henry was glad to see them because they were familiar and there was comfort in
signs that were firmly established. He hid in a dumpster behind 7–11 where it was neither dark nor light but only dim and where he hoped the archons would not get him. Archons are bad angels and there are lots of them. Athoth has a sheep’s face, Eloaiou has a donkey’s face, Astaphaios has a hyena’s face, Yao has a serpent’s face with seven heads, Sabaoth has a dragon’s face, Adonin has a monkey’s face, and Sabbede has a shining fire face. Henry got scared. Maybe he would have to wait for a long time before anybody found him. He would be like those scrolls that were in caves for so long nobody knew what they were when they were found. When they were put there they were one thing and when they were discovered they were the same thing but the world was something else, like if you put a piece of meat in the oven and then burned down the house and then opened the oven and the meat was still raw.

  There were magazines in the dumpster. They had pictures of naked men and women doing stuff to each other. Henry guessed it was fucking but even though people said fuck all the time, he wasn’t sure it was like the pictures. He remembered one day when he was out on the beach with Helena and she talked to him about her mother. “She’s an exhibitionist,” Helena said. “All she wants is to be looked at all the time.” She explained how her mother used to be in movies. “It’s so embarrassing! If anyone at school ever found out about my mother, I’d have to leave.”

  Henry asked why.

  “Because she used to be a porn star.”

  Henry asked what a porn star was.

  “You know, pornography?”

  Henry asked if it was like spirograph.

  Helena laughed. “Right. It’s just like spirograph.”

  They stopped talking for a little while. Then Helena asked, “Do you even know what a spirograph is?”

  Henry said it was an instrument for recording breathing movements.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Henry said he read it in a book.

  Helena dug her feet into the sand. “Well, it’s a toy too. I used to have one.”

  Henry was digging a hole, scooping it out and piling the sand around the edge to make a fort. Helena watched and then after a while she said, “She isn’t really a whore—even though everybody calls her that.”

  Henry kept digging and when the hole was big enough he told Helena to come into it with him. They worked together making the walls higher and higher. “Has anyone ever talked to you about sex?” Helena asked.

  Henry didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything.

  Helena was quiet for a while, then she said, “You can’t imagine what it’s like to have these dumb men hanging around my mother all the time.”

  Henry said he guessed not.

  “Just because they saw her fucking in a movie, they somehow think they’re going to fuck her too. They’re always surprised when it doesn’t happen.”

  Henry said he guessed so and piled more sand onto a collapsing wall. He asked Helena if her mother had ever shot anyone.

  “Are you listening to anything I’ve said?” Helena asked.

  Henry said yeah.

  “If I think about it too much it drives me crazy.”

  Henry asked what drove her crazy.

  Helena dug her foot into the wet sand and kicked a blob of it onto the wall Henry was working to build up. “I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. You’re too young.”

  Henry piled the sand faster and faster as a wave sent a big lip of foaming water into one side of the fort, making the outside walls smooth. Helena kicked more wet sand onto the wall Henry was working on. “I’ve never seen any of the movies my mother was in,” she said. “When I was twelve she told me about everything. She said she wasn’t sorry for anything she’d done, and I shouldn’t think that what she’d done was bad. She said she wanted me to know everything since one day I’d find out anyway. She offered to let me see one of the movies if I wanted, but she said she’d prefer it if I chose not to. You want to know how I see it all now?”

  Henry said okay.

  “I have this friend at school named Martha. Her dad was in the Vietnam War. Martha told me that as long as she could never imagine what he’d seen and done, it was okay. It’s normal not to imagine your parents doing certain things.”

  Henry asked Helena if sex was fucking.

  Helena got a surprised look. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you like this.” She didn’t say anything for a while and began smoothing out one of the sand walls and patting it with her hand. Then her face got all red. “Forget what I said, Henry.” They smoothed out the walls and patted them and some other kids came over and stood outside the fort and watched them. “It’s time to go home,” Helena said. “I’m getting sunburned.”

  Henry got out of the dumpster. The pictures made him wish he hadn’t seen them. They showed people with strange looks on their faces rubbing their hairy parts together. It reminded him of animals and was kind of sad.

  It was dark and someone yelled, “Hey!” Henry ran around to the front of 7–11 and went inside. He took out all his money and counted it. It was more than five dollars. The first thing was to call Sy’s sister but when he tried to remember her name all he could remember was the name of the store and the joke she made about it: If you wanna be ritzy, you gotta shop Mitzi. There was a pay phone outside the 7–11. He went back outside and got a plastic milk crate and stood up on it so he could reach the phone. Then he called the operator and said he wanted to call Mitzi in Philadelphia collect but nobody answered at the shop and Henry hung up.

  One thing was sure. He wasn’t in Byzantium anymore. Where he was now you needed a car and to have a car you needed to have a license. In the good old days Henry rode around in chariots and if he was lost there were plenty of saints and angels around to talk to and they’d always offer to get him back home if he needed it. Saints were good to have around because they could see through walls and around corners and they always knew about all the killing and lying and cheating that was going on everywhere they went. Angels were the same but they could fly and see through people too. Not just through their clothes but into their thoughts. Also, angels usually dressed well and carried weapons. Saints went around barefoot and sometimes even naked and were usually filthy and broke because they always gave away everything they had. Nobody liked to talk to them. Angels and saints both knew about the visible and the invisible and the different things that couldn’t be talked about and also that God was a fuckup but that was why you had to love Him. He had made a big mess of things. It was up to them to try to help out. That’s what they were there for. To help straighten things out. Saints didn’t mind being poor and filthy and angels didn’t mind flying around fixing things all the time. Being an angel would have been okay. But Henry didn’t have any weapons or know how to fix stuff. So he decided to become a saint.

  He tried to call Sy’s sister again but there was no answer. There was nothing he could do except not cry and wait. He didn’t want anybody to see him. Saints had to be careful. When you were a saint people wanted stuff from you and if you didn’t give them what they wanted they’d try to kill you. Lots of saints got killed by people who didn’t get what they wanted out of them.

  Henry climbed back into the dumpster. It got cold and Henry got even more hungry. Even though it was only the end of September and there were still leaves on the trees it felt like winter. Henry began to shiver. He wondered what Mrs. O’Brien was thinking right now. She was probably glad he was gone but mad because he’d left all his stuff at her house. He could hear her going, “Lord, oh Lord,” and fanning the air with her hand. He could hear Mr. O’Brien telling her to shut up in his sleepy voice. Henry started to cry. He was about to go and give himself up when a cat jumped onto his lap and began purring and rubbing up against him. At first the cat scared him but then he remembered that saints could talk to animals. When you know that everything is in code you begin to understand the world.

  In the morning Henry went around to the front of the store and called Sy’s sister. Th
is time she was there. “Henry! What a surprise! How are you?”

  He told her he was at 7–11 and asked if she would come pick him up.

  “Henry? Are you all right? Where are you?”

  Henry said he waited all night until she came to the store because he didn’t want to go to Catholic school or live with the O’Briens anymore. He wanted to live with her because he liked it in Philadelphia.

  “Oh my god, Henry. You ran away?”

  Henry said yes.

  “Where are you? Do you know where you are? Go inside and ask somebody to come to the phone, Henry. Go find a grown-up for me to talk to.”

  Henry went inside and asked the man behind the counter with big tattoos on his arms to come outside. At first the man didn’t say anything but then he went outside and talked to Sy’s sister. When he was finished he gave the phone back to Henry. “Henry, you stay there, okay? Stay with the man I just talked to until somebody comes to get you. Do you understand? Henry? Are you all right? Oh my god. This is terrible. Henry? Are you there?”

  Henry promised to stay put. He put the phone down and followed the man with the tattoos back inside. The man gave him a doughnut and some milk. “Someone will be here to get you real soon, kid,” he said. “Don’t run away on me, okay?”

  Sy’s sister never came. Henry was taken back to the O’Briens’ house by two members of the imperial guards who put him in the back seat of their car and talked on the radio. One of the guards turned around. “What’s your name, son?”

  Henry was scared and didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t worry, son. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re taking you back to your momma and daddy.”

  Henry shook his head and said no they weren’t, they were taking him to the O’Briens’.

  The guard raised his eyebrows.

  Henry said I hid myself from them because of their wickedness, and they did not recognize me.

  The guard looked at Henry for a minute and then he turned around and talked to the other guard, who was driving. After a little while he picked up the radio and talked into it but Henry couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore and he fell asleep and didn’t hear what was said.