When Henry Came Home (18 page)

             
She patted Henry's upper chest softly, and his hand came up to brush hers as she stepped out from behind him and it slipped away. "Of course I do!" she said, looking a little puzzled. "I always have, you know that."

             
I shook my head, numbly. No, I hadn't. Or maybe I should have but was too damn block-headed to see. I blinked again.

             
Mary stepped forward again, and embraced me. "You didn't?" she laughed, softly, in sympathy. "I'm sorry—I should have said, Edward, I should have." Gently, she patted my back, then gave me a squeeze and released me. "Well, then," she said, "we should celebrate. It's not every day you find a sister. Will you stay for lunch?"

             
I looked at her, and then at Henry. She moved back a little, and her hand went back and he took it. "No," I said suddenly. "I mean—thank you, but—do you mind? I'd like to..."

             
"Go on. It's all right."

             
"Thank you," I whispered, nodding to each of them. I backed up a few steps, then turned and went, not hurrying this time. I walked down the boardwalk a ways, enjoying the hot sun, and crossed over to my hotel. I mentioned earlier that there were certain benefits to being nearsighted, and I was now enjoying one of them; for all I knew, Sarah could be standing twenty feet away, watching me. I, however, had neither the ability nor the desire to see her, unless chance again placed her directly in my path. It did not, and I arrived safely in the lobby, and stopped at the desk in front. "Could I get some lunch delivered upstairs?" I asked.

             
The man looked up from his newspaper. "Will do," he said, starting to fold it.

             
I turned, and then stopped. "Would you have any more paper around?"

             
He grunted and stood, then fished around behind the counter. "Here," he said after a moment, handing me several pieces. "We got more if you want."

             
"This'll do. Thank you."

             
He grunted in acknowledgement and I went up the stairs to my room. I hadn't noticed before, but my window overlooked the street below, and so I pulled the table across the room to face out, adding the chair a minute later. I sat down, and watched people go by. Their shapes were fuzzy—everything was fuzzy—but my imagination and my memory filled in the rest. I licked the tip of the pencil and set my hand to drawing.

             
After a while—after my lunch had come and gone—I thought I saw the door to Henry and Mary's place open. I knew it was them when I saw that haze of yellow—Mary's lovely dress. Henry was next to her, in brown, and they walked slowly down the board sidewalk. I squinted, trying to make out faces, but it didn't matter; they were in my mind.

             
I feel compelled to impress again that I was not in love with Mary Peterson. My fancy, tainted with brandy, might have entertained the notion for a moment or two, but it was ridiculous. No—it was something about the two of them, together, that I loved. The only way I can think to put it—and this is a poor comparison—is to say it was like when an expert horseman rides a filly of the finest breeding. Alone, each of them is a fine specimen, but put rider on horse and there is a thing of beauty, stretching long and lean and powerful across the plain. It is simply a wonderful thing to see them, and you love the thing because it is so beautiful and perfect.

             
Perhaps I was in love with her, a little. But no more than any other man, and I wouldn't have dared to act upon it. No—she was my sister. I closed my eyes, and felt a smile on my face. It was more than good enough.

             
I sat in that chair, watching the blurry little town go by, until the sun set and a chill breeze blew through. I closed the window then, and went to bed.

              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.

             
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."