Your Body is Changing (11 page)

“It’s cold, baby. I’m not getting any blood to it.”

“I knew this was a mistake.”

The sound of weeping. The whoremonger had made the woman cry. No—it was the man crying! A crying man!

“Let me try again. I promise I can do it.”

“You had your big chance, junior. I’ll tell you one thing. You will walk me back to the dorm. And you’re not coming in for milk and cookies.”

Secular humanists! Henry knew he must be near a state-run college where they tell you it’s okay to have abortions and draw the President looking like a monkey.

The man sobbed.

“Where are my pants?” said the woman.

Henry saw the back of a college girl in a golden sweater. There were two portions of her behind like halved peaches dipping below the sweater’s hem for all the world to see. And her hair was shorter than the man’s!

The man, with the sleeping bag rolled up under his arm, approached the spot where Henry was hiding, so Henry ducked and held his breath.

There was some sniffling and the like, and the woman used the Lord’s name in vain and told the man to get a grip, but nobody spotted Henry and soon there came a spooky silence.

Henry raised his head and saw the sleeping bag jammed in the crook of a small tree.

All was being provided for him.

God was so good!

Henry retrieved the sleeping bag and unrolled it on the ground. He scooted in and zipped it up as far as it would go, leaving only room to breathe. He warmed up quick. The inside of the sleeping bag had a smell that Henry assumed was attempted sexual intercourse. It was pleasant, like a friendly stray dog, and foreboding, like when he had forgotten to clean out his gym locker until the end of the year. It made his pants react. Suddenly he understood everything.

Henry was like Jonah. Jesus had come to him and given him a job to do and Henry had said, No thanks, Lord, not now!

And how about Moses? “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

Everybody had excuses not to follow the Lord.

“Dear God,” prayed Henry, “Instead of a whale You sent an owl to scare Uncle Lipton into an episode and set me on my path. The Bible doesn’t say whale, it says fish. It says a great fish, is I think how You put it. A whale is a mammal, not a fish. A whale’s throat would be too small for Jonah because they just eat plankton, which is another proof that the Bible is true. So for that one occasion You made a giant fish. You could have made a whale with a big enough throat I guess but You decided not to and that is good enough for me. Everything happens for a reason. Like the hairs on our arms. Why do we have hairs on our arms? Hairs are sensory devices that help with the senses. Please forgive me for when I said in Bible study that I believed in evolution because we have hairs on our arms. So what? Charles Darwin converted on his deathbed. He was like, ‘I have totally fouled things up.’ He admitted it was all a big mistake. He said he was sorry for messing with people’s heads. Now I am sure he is in Heaven because a person could like murder a million people and then accept the Savior into their heart on their deathbed and Jesus will be like, ‘Cool.’ But that is no excuse to do bad things. You can’t be like, ‘Ha ha, I am going to kill this person and later on I will ask God to forgive me and I will totally go to heaven.’ That doesn’t cut it. Nobody can trick You, Lord. You are not into loopholes. From now on I’m going to do whatever You say. You ordered me to help Polly Finch and I ignored You, Lord. I tried to tell myself I was mistaken. Like why would You look like Luke from Gilmore Girls? He is nothing but a big grump. Why does he get to date Lorelai? Please make him stop. What else? Please help Uncle Lipton to get better if that is in Your eternal plan. If not, well, okay, that’s Your call, but it sure would be a drag. And before I forget, thank You for providing me with this sleeping bag just as You provided the Israelites with manna from heaven. You sent a pillar of fire to guide them by night. I’m just like those Israelites because I don’t know where Your commandment will take me, Lord. I don’t know what hardships may lay on the road between me and Polly Finch. I don’t even know where Upstate New York is, come to think about it. All I can do is stay alert for any signs You see fit to bring unto me. I don’t expect a pillar of fire, but if You decided to give me one that would be cool. I would totally love to see one. Please forgive me for all my sins and protect me on this journey with the presence of Your holy angels. In Jesus’s holy and precious name I pray, Amen.”

“Somebody’s been sleeping in my sleeping bag.”

Henry woke, nudged by a foot.

“Sorry, mister,” he said. He scrambled part way out.

“Mister? How old are you, dude?”

“Fourteen.”

“Dude. Me too!”

The boy had kinky black hair instead of straight, his voice was deeper, his complexion was better, and it looked as if he were trying to grow a moustache—but otherwise he might have been Henry’s twin.

“So are you like homeless or whatever?”

“Yes,” said Henry.

“That sucks. Well, I’m out of here. It’s fine if you want to use the sleeping bag or whatever? As long as you don’t steal it. I use it to bag these college chicks. They love doing it outside. They’re like animals. I’m from New Jersey. They’re not like that up there. Up there we got civilization. If I told you what I was doing in that sleeping bag a few minutes ago you wouldn’t believe it. Sorry, dude. I’m like wired from doing it so much.”

Henry settled back into the sleeping bag.

“Just roll it up and leave it where you found it. Can I trust you, dude?”

“Yes,” said Henry.

“Because that’s like a hundred-dollar sleeping bag.”

The boy held a pack of cigarettes down toward the bag.

“No thank you,” said Henry.

“Dude! You are like one polite homeless person.”

The boy lit a cigarette for himself.

“Okay, I better get out of here. Hey, should I like bring you some food tomorrow morning or whatever?”

“No thank you. I’ll be fine.”

“Right. Well, you know, take it easy or whatever.”

Henry settled down and zipped himself in, tight and warm. He heard the boy walking away and pretty soon he heard him walking back.

“This is stupid. Why don’t you come stay at my aunt and uncle’s place tonight? You can like sleep in the garage or whatever. There’s a space heater. You can get something to eat. You won’t rob them or kill them or anything will you?”

“No,” said Henry.

“That’s cool.”

They were walking to the aunt and uncle’s house.

“I’m staying with them while my parents are in Venezuela or somewhere monitoring human rights violations,” said the boy, whose name was Vince. “My uncle teaches art history at the college. He brings his classes over to the house sometimes and that’s how I bag my college chicks. These Southern dudes are too repressed to give them what they want. Like a fourteen-year-old Jersey dude is the equivalent of a twenty-six-year-old Southern dude? That’s an estimate.”

“My uncle’s gone to London, England, with an exploding sore in his brain,” said Henry.

“Ouch.”

“He’s not my uncle. He’s my mother’s uncle. My great-uncle.”

“Yeah, thanks for clearing that up, dude. That’s like valuable information. That’ll like come in handy if I ever have to write your autobiography.”

Vince flicked away his cigarette in an impressive motion such as Henry had seen in movies about New Jersey.

This was what it would be like if there were no moral center. Vince’s aunt and uncle had naked pictures on the walls and naked statues on the tables. If something wasn’t naked they didn’t want anything to do with it. They ate fish for breakfast. On the morning after Vince had rescued Henry from the sleeping bag, Aunt Dora walked around in sweatpants and something like a bra. It was called a “sports bra.”

Aunt Dora had been on her way out to run in the city streets halfway naked first thing in the morning when she had noticed Henry watching cartoons with Vince and offered to whip up some breakfast. That was nice of her, but she could have put on a robe or something to cover her nakedness. She was probably about forty and had to wear glasses from infirmity but just flaunted her nakedness unashamed and the lemony dots in the narrowing pale scoop of her underarm when she reached to get a mixing bowl made Henry feel feelings.

The uncle had a tall, bald forehead but long orange-and-silver hair in the back, pulled into a ponytail such as was popularized by the forefathers of our nation. He grew a wiry patch under his bottom lip like a drug dealer might have worn and had a silvery devil beard, and he cursed openly with a big smile on his face in front of young people like it was the most acceptable thing in the world. He put alcohol in his tomato juice in front of everybody.

Neither the aunt nor the uncle objected to the music that Vince blasted through the house during breakfast, rap music in which unhealthy sentiments were endorsed in the dirtiest language that Henry had ever heard. The authority figures even pretended to enjoy the rap music. Nobody asked Henry who he was or who his family was or why he was there or when he had shown up because apparently they had abandoned the concepts of responsibility and discipline.

Henry didn’t know whether to use a fork or a spoon on any particular thing. Just two years earlier Daphne Bates had seen him pick up a pork chop and eat it with his hands and that had made the whole year of seventh grade a nightmare. Everybody had started calling him Pork Chop. Some people still did. He used to go home and pray every night that God would erase the pork chop from everybody’s memory. It didn’t seem like too much to ask compared to making the sun stand still, which God had done one time for Joshua, no problem. Henry finally came to understand that his prayer had been based on pride, which was why it had been answered “no.” It wasn’t God’s fault that Henry had picked up a pork chop with his hands. That was like when these atheists on TV started whining and complaining about “How can God allow a little child to starve?” Hey, I’ve got an idea, give the child a sandwich and shut up, atheist. In some ways, Henry felt that he was no better than an atheist.

“Is everything all right, Henry?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well then, go ahead and eat! Don’t wait for me. French politeness! Respect for the food!”

Everyone seemed to think that Aunt Dora had made a wonderful comment. All three of them, including Aunt Dora, laughed and laughed. Henry didn’t understand. Was it a joke? The French had not supported the war on terrorism. Was it something to do with that? These people probably wished they were in France right now, making fun of the President and going number two on the American flag. He suddenly had an image of the three of them lined up squatting in a row according to height, all laughing and smiling and going number two on a large American flag spread out on the ground. It was an image that was wrong in so many ways. He could see the sandy garden of Aunt Dora’s welcoming vulva, for example.

“My goodness, that fellow certainly does want to ‘pop a cap’ in the posterior region of that ‘bee-yotch,’ does he not?” said the uncle, referring to the rap performance underway.

Vince shrugged.

“You’re one of Vince’s ‘homeys,’ eh, chief?”

“Yes sir.”

“Sir! I find that insulting. Call me Duffy. Everybody else does.”

“I don’t,” said Aunt Dora.

“I don’t,” said Vince.

“Oh, you guys. You know what I mean. My students do. The ‘kids,’ or ‘home slices’ as I refer to them, believe me to be quite ‘hep’ in that fashion.”

“What a loser,” said Vince.

“Now Vince, what I have I told you about describing your uncle so accurately?”

Aunt Dora spooned something yellow into a bowl while everyone howled with laughter over her disrespect for the head of the household. Duffy said a bunch of stuff that apparently came out of an old movie nobody had ever heard of. Everybody rolled their eyes at him, right to his face.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Aunt Dora asked Henry.

“Hurt my tongue,” said Henry.

“Maybe you could have the polenta,” said Aunt Dora.

“Which one’s a polenta?” said Henry.

Duffy drained his coffee.

“Sorry,” he said, “but I’ll have to leave it to you gastronomic Magellans to explore that one. Duty calls.”

He got up.

“Where are you going? You don’t have class today,” said Aunt Dora.

“No, not exactly. Didn’t I tell you? I’m taking some of the ‘leaders of tomorrow’ on a ‘real trippy scene.’”

Duffy had promised, it seemed, to drive some of his students to a special event an hour north of the city and he had forgotten to tell Aunt Dora, though he could have sworn he had mentioned something.

“You know, Scarecrow Farm,” said Duffy.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The guy with all the scarecrows?” said Duffy. “You’ll just be bored and uncomfortable and angry. I know how you feel about Brother Lampey.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I have a little idea what you’re up to.”

“Please,” said Duffy.

“Where is that again?” said Vince. “That place with the scarecrows?”

“Pineknot,” said Duffy. He no longer sounded cheerful. “Pineknot, Alabama. You’ve never heard of Pineknot, Alabama. Nobody’s ever heard of it. Even the people who live there have never heard of it. Are you happy? Is everybody happy? And by the way, can we turn down this music to a mild roar?”

“Ja wohl,” said Aunt Dora.

“That’s right, I’m a Nazi.”

“Well, you’re certainly acting like one.”

“Yes, the main thing with the Nazis was they didn’t like their music too loud. That’s what was wrong with the Nazis. Thank you for the closely reasoned history lesson. Lest we forget.”

“Pineknot?” said Vince. “I sure wish I could take Henry there. He’s been saying how he wants to get to know the culture of his people. I know it’s a school day, but…”

“You’re right, Vince. It’s the kind of education you can’t get in a school, not in Alabama, anyway,” said Aunt Dora. “This is something that means a lot to you, isn’t it Henry?”