Waiting For Henry

 Norah had fired a gun exactly twice in her life. Once, when her babysitter had left a gun on the kitchen table. She did not know if it had been loaded but she did remember her five-year-old self picking up the gun and pulling the trigger. Her sitter had rushed in and yelled at her for playing with the weapon. Didn’t she know that she could have shot the next-door neighbor who was in a wheelchair because she had cerebral palsy?

 When she told her mother this story many years later after her own children were grown, it occurred to her that the sitter’s priorities may have been a little off. She also recalled that later, the sitter’s husband had shot himself, and she wondered if it was with that same gun.

 The second time she had fired a real gun was as a birthday present to her husband. At that time he had a gun he kept in the house and insisted on her learning to load and shoot it. She had been adamantly opposed and declared it stupid.

“It’s for protection”, he said.

“Listen,” she countered. “if someone breaks into the house when I am alone with the kids, I will have to grab the keys to the gun safe, run downstairs, load the gun, run back upstairs and try to aim at the bad guy, who is now between me and my kids.” She stopped for a breath. “Instead, the kitchen in nearer, I shove the kids in the kitchen, grab a knife. My odds at looking threatening and hitting my target are much greater with a 12-inch butcher knife than a loaded gun. Besides, we have two dogs who will go for the throat and balls and two cats who will back them up. A gun is an unnecessary macho dangerous toy.”

 He didn’t like this argument but stopped trying to convince her. He still insisted the boys should know how to shoot. They lived in the South after all. She had conceded and planned a surprise visit to a gun range on the Southside of town. She wasn’t sure about teaching her eight and twelve-year-old all about guns, but here at least it was a safe environment. The trip had revealed that she had no aim and her youngest son did. Later her husband had given up guns and become a peace-loving Buddhist. In a fit of anger, frustration, and regret, he had dismantled the gun and taken a hammer to the parts.

 Now the memory of that broken gun flashed wistfully through her mind. The twenty-three-year-old stood in her living room, holding his gun at her. She knew his age because she knew him. His name was Henry and he was a childhood friend of her youngest son, Alex. 

 They had met in first grade and they had spent the weekends sleeping out at each other’s house. So much so, that she had wondered if she should pay child support to his family. But as they grew, Henry had changed. His dad worked nights and his mom seemed to pay less attention to him and more to his older sister and baby brother.

 By middle school, the sleepovers were less frequent. All the boys talked about was skateboarding, or longboarding as she had been corrected. By high school, Henry was smoking weed and getting into trouble with his mom and the cops. The last time she had seen Henry was when her husband had gotten a call from the county police.

 In an angered powered panic, her husband had managed to find the school where they had been caught trespassing. The boys waited on the wooden steps to the trailer where the overflow classes were held, two uniformed police talking to them. Alex looked appropriately scared and nervous. Henry just looked angry.

“I am not surprised this happened.” A voice from behind them in the dark said. “He’s always getting into trouble. There’s nothing I can do, and I am not going to try anymore.” Henry’s mother proclaimed.

 Whatever angry words Norah and David had planned in their speech had disappeared from their mouths. They looked at their kid and each other and then the cops.

“Mr. and Mrs. Boulton, Mrs. Derry, your boys were caught trying to break into the trailer here. Alex was able to explain they were thirsty and thought there would be water inside. Henry didn’t have much to say.” In the end, the principal had been called as a matter of routine, but no charges were pressed, and the matter was dropped. Both boys had been released to their parents. Alex had been grounded and had to listen to lectures constantly for days, Henry’s mom was silent.

 Something had switched off in Henry after that. Norah had asked about him occasionally and learned he had been in and out of juvy and dropped out of school. Now he was standing in her living room, the same place where he had eaten pizza and played video games years ago, except now he was aiming a gun at her.

 She looked at him. He must have been hanging around watching the house. Normally the dogs would have barked, letting her know there was trouble. They would have done just as she predicted and stood between her and the threat. But her husband had taken both dogs to the dog park and she had stayed behind to catch up on some work. She was alone with the cats who were sitting protectively between her and Henry. He looked rough.

 As a kid, he had been the chubby, goofy kid. His mom had said she liked that he and Alex were pals because Henry had problems making friends and needed someone to stand up for him. The man pointing the gun at her was skinny. His hair was shaggy and kept falling in his eye as he twitched nervously. His t-shirt looked thin and had holes in places. It was dirty and she could smell him. She suspected that he hadn’t been home or slept in a bed in days, maybe weeks. There was a camp of homeless people a few miles from their neighborhood. Sometimes one of them would be found dead of too much heroin.

“I need money!” Henry yelled at her.

“I don’t have much, but you can have what I do have. It's in my purse, behind you.” She pointed to the door where her purse hung on the doorknob.

“Get it,” he said waving the gun towards the door.

“Henry, you don’t have to do this.” She saw his rotten teeth when he spoke. Meth? She was a middle-aged suburban mother. The area they lived in was lower-middle-class, working-class some said. She had watched Breaking Bad with her kids and they had filled her in on the niceties of drug addiction. Were you supposed to give them what they wanted? What would prevent her from getting dead? She knew Henry and could still feel sorry for the kid that was so lost now. But that gun took away most of her sympathy and replaced it with anger and fright.

“Here,” she said handing the two fives she had in her wallet.

“You gotta have more,” he said, looking in disbelief at the cash.

“Look, I don’t keep a lot of cash on me, but Henry you know me. Let me get you something to eat. You can take a shower and we can figure out what to do to help you. David will be home soon, and he knows some places to get help”

 “No!” he screamed. “I don’t need help. I don’t need food. I need money!” He grabbed the wallet from her hand, momentarily lowering the gun to search for hidden cash and remove the credit cards. When he didn’t see any more cash, he looked like he was going to cry. “You don’t understand. I can’t, I- I can’t, Just this last time.” He looked pleadingly at her and the mom part of her emerged and she wanted to hug him and tell him it would be all right. Except it wouldn’t. Not now. Not anymore. He saw it in her eyes. He saw her give up on him and he knew that nothing or no one could save him. He had never been taught to believe in himself so all the counselors and social workers in juvenile and all the preachers in the shelters, none of them had been able to set a spark in him because there was no fuel to start a fire. He hadn’t given up on himself, because he had never had a self to give up on. In that instant, what little part of hope, of finding some sort of peace was gone. He was erased and he knew it and suddenly so did Norah.

 “You tried,” he said softly, looking into her soul. His eyes went from pleading to empty and he turned towards the door, dropping the money and credit cards.

 “Henry, wait,” she said as a matter principle, not compassion. The guilt was overwhelming, but she wanted him away. The lost boy had been too long gone and the shell that was left was used up, desiccated. She couldn’t feel anything for the shade that was walking away. She watched him walk out the door, down the sidewalk and leaving the gate open behind him. He walked behind the neighbor’s house, out of her sight. When she heard the bang, she closed the door and called 911.