Being Henry David

3

“Jack, you son of a bitch. Get out here!”

I lurch awake, and for a long blank moment I have no idea where I am or what woke me up. Walden lies next to me on the ground, where it fell when I went to sleep. There’s a good dream lingering behind my eyes and I grasp at it, but it vanishes before I can remember. My heart sinks when I realize where I am. The alley looks even dirtier and more depressing in the first white light of morning.

Then I realize what woke me up. Some guy is shouting in the alley.

“Jack!”

There’s a confused rustle inside Nessa’s shack, and then Jack emerges, squinting in the morning light, hair sticking up all over his head. He looks past me at someone on the other side of the Dumpster where I can’t see.

“What are you doing here?” Jack calls out.

“I want my money back.”

I untangle myself from my blanket and peer around the edge of the Dumpster, watching Jack approach some skinny, bent-over guy standing in the alley, hands fisted at his sides. He wears a filthy flannel shirt and his face is like an old man’s, all sunken in against his skull. The guy from the train station men’s room.

He reaches into the pocket of his shirt, pulls out a plastic baggie, and waves it in Jack’s face.

“I don’t know what you cut this with, Jack, but it’s not right. I want my cash back.”

“I don’t have the money, Simon. I already gave it to Magpie.”

“So get it back from Magpie.”

A pause. “I can’t do that.”

Simon shoves Jack against the Dumpster. Jack’s skull slams against the metal, clangs like a muffled bell.

“This is bullshit, Jack.”

Jack sits crumpled on the ground, holding the back of his head. I help him to his feet, then turn to face Simon. “Leave him alone,” I say. My voice is steady but my heart slams against my ribs like a manic bird in a cage.

Simon cuts bloodshot eyes at me. “Stay out of this.” He holds up the baggie and throws it onto Jack’s chest. “My money. Now.”

The baggie bounces off Jack’s chest and lands at my feet.

“I swear, Simon, Magpie said it was pure,” Jack says.

Leaning hard against the Dumpster, he pulls himself to his feet. “He never cuts, you know that. And I didn’t do anything to it.”

I pick up the baggie, open it, and peer at the white powder inside, not sure what I’m looking at.

“Do it,” Simon says to me.

“Do what?”

“Taste it.”

Taste it? The guy is staring at me with his crazy hollow eyes, and it’s freaking me out. So I wet my finger, dip it into the powder, and touch it to the end of my tongue.

“It’s sweet,” I say, surprised. “Like—” I search my memory banks for the thing that reminds me of this taste and consistency. “Powdered sugar or something.” And there’s another taste too, sharp and bitter.

“Exactly,” says Simon, all triumphant. “You cut it with powdered sugar. A lot of it.”

“But you tried it,” Jack says, desperate. Even his dirty blond hair is trembling. “You said it was fine.”

“I was wrong.”

“I think you did it,” somebody says to Simon. And I realize that someone was me. “You cut the stuff so you could sell it and make more profit. And you’re trying to blame it on Jack.”

Both Simon and Jack stare at me. Simon’s left eye twitches. “You’re f*cking crazy,” he says.

“I don’t think so.”

Simon hesitates. Then he grins at me with those gray-black nubs that used to be teeth. He reaches under his shirt and pulls something out of the back of his belt. A knife. The blade is slender and long, with a black handle. The metal gleams in a shaft of morning light.

“You don’t want to do that,” I say.

“Actually,” says Simon, “I do.” He lunges at me, poking the knife at my gut. I dodge and try to kick the knife out of his hand, an unsuccessful karate move. Better just try and pound the crap out of him. I clench my fists and Simon thrusts the knife at me again. This time the blade catches the side of my sweatshirt. There’s a ripping sound and I feel a sharp pain in my side. The knife, when Simon pulls it back, is streaked with blood.

Before I can respond, I hear a growl from somewhere behind Simon, and then Jack is jumping on the guy piggyback, wrapping his skinny arms tight around Simon’s neck. Simon bellows, tries to shake Jack off, slices the air with the knife. He manages to break Jack’s hold on him, flings him off onto his back, knocking the breath out of him.

From somewhere outside my peripheral vision, I hear Nessa scream Jack’s name. Simon looms over him with a lunatic grin, hand fisted on the knife handle, the blade with my blood still on it glimmering and I’m thinking, my God, he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna kill Jack. There’s a brick on the ground. I snatch it up without thinking, lift my arms, and crack it on the back of Simon’s skull. He turns to me, eyes wide, shocked surprise, aiming his knife at my face. So I hit him again, brick against forehead. His mouth moves like a beached trout, but there are no words. Blood comes oozing through his hair. He growls in the back of his throat and falls forward.

Jack and I take two steps back and stare at the fallen body of Simon, both of us struggling to catch our breaths.

“Is he dead?” Jack’s entire face is white, even his lips.

Dead. The word echoes in some chamber of my brain and my whole body seizes up like I’m paralyzed.

“I don’t know,” I say in a whisper, unable to take my eyes off Simon’s motionless body. “I just wanted him to leave us alone.”

Nessa stands with us, staring down in horror at Simon. As we watch, his right hand twitches and he takes a deep, shuddering breath, like his soul had started slithering away then decided to return to his pathetic body after all. He moans. I didn’t kill him. Thank God. I messed him up bad, but I did not kill him.

“We need to bolt, Nessa,” Jack says, still not taking his eyes off Simon. “Get our stuff. We’ll find a new place.”

Nessa nods and ducks into the shack. She comes back out with a stuffed backpack slung over her skinny shoulders. The last thing she grabs is the colored plastic bead necklace decorating the front of the shack.

“Hank,” she says then in a quivery voice. “You’re bleeding.”

A circle of red darkens the side of my sweatshirt. I lift it up and look at my stomach, to the right of my belly button, below my ribs. A trickle of blood slides down my side and into the waistband of my pants.

“He just nicked me. I’m okay,” I tell her, but everything is getting blurry around the edges. Blood. So much blood.

From somewhere up above there’s a clanking sound and the muffled voices of men shouting to each other.

“The construction guys are showing up for work,” Jack says in a panic. “Let’s get out of here.” But first he kneels down and reaches shaking fingers into Simon’s pockets. Simon groans, but doesn’t struggle. Jack pulls out a thin wallet and opens it to see a small wad of cash and a couple cards. He stuffs the wallet into his back pocket.

“Hey, what are you kids doing down there?”

Jack, Nessa, and I freeze. A man in a yellow hard hat leans out of a second floor window. I imagine the scene he sees below: Simon crumpled on the ground by the Dumpster, head oozing blood, Jack rifling through his pockets while Nessa and I stand there and watch. Accomplices. Immediately the three of us scatter, almost tripping over our feet to escape that reeking alley and the dark nameless thing that happened here.

The worker shouts something else, but we don’t stop running until we’ve hit one of the main avenues where morning people crowd the sidewalk, hoping we can blend in. We make ourselves slow down, calm down, walk in rhythm with the stream of anonymous, innocent city people.

“Where we going, Jack?” I ask, pushing back the panic rising in my throat. There’s a spatter of blood on Jack’s ear, more on the front of his T-shirt. Simon’s blood. I press my right arm hard against my side to hide the growing circle of my own blood, so dizzy I can’t see straight.

“Somewhere safe,” Jack says through clenched teeth. “Don’t pass out on me now, Hank. We’re almost there.”

People, buildings, dogs, telephone poles, mailboxes pass in a blur, colors and blending shapes. I concentrate on moving one foot, then the other. Just keep moving. Jack and Nessa lead me to a side street, then down a set of stairs leading to a below-street-level apartment. My knees almost buckle as I scramble down the stairs behind them. I scan the street for anyone who might be chasing us, as Jack pounds on a graffiti-covered black door.

“Magpie, let me in,” he shouts at the door. “It’s Jack.”

The sound of sirens rises from a short distance away, getting louder. Jack pounds harder on the door. “Magpie, we’re in trouble. You gotta let us in.”

Slowly the black door opens, and the three of us fall inside. The lights are dim in the apartment, which smells of rancid garbage, cigarette smoke, and aftershave. The weird combination of smells makes me gag. The apartment is a mess, piled nearly to the ceiling with stacks of books and newspapers and trash.

Sirens grow louder until they pass in front of the apartment. We stand motionless and silent as the wailing sound fades.

“This better be good,” says the tall man standing beside the door. He has an English accent and is wearing a blue satin robe. With his beak nose and slicked black hair, Magpie resembles his name. “Talk to me.”

So Jack tells Magpie everything. By the time he gets to the part about Simon and the brick, and the construction worker seeing us, my legs won’t hold me up for one more second. I slump to the floor, remembering the blood, remembering the bitterness mixed with powdered sugar on my tongue. A black, heavy wave sweeps up behind my eyes.

Just before the wave crashes over my head, I hear Magpie curse at Jack, followed by a sickening smack and a cry of pain. Then I am gone.