Big Henry
I was fourteen in the summer of ‘97. After my mom thought I was asleep, I’d sneak out and follow her down to a bar called Lick’s. I grew up in a dull, little town with one bar too many filled with people born there. Lick’s was a box made of wood that would have tumbled over if the big bad wolf ever came along. I would just hang back; close enough to listen in on drunken conversations between patrons taking a cigarette break between drinks. One night, I tried walking up to some of the smokers. One told me to piss off and flicked his butt at me. I was a nimble kid and darted out of its path, no problem. This was amusing enough to start a game and if someone could hit me, his buddy would owe him a drink. After heading back into the bar, I found a cigarette that wasn’t finished, and gave it a try. There wasn’t much more left, but enough to make the Lick’s spin all around me.
It wasn’t long before I was stealing cigarettes from my mom. I didn’t want to go back to Lick’s and risk her finding out what I had been up to, so I stole from her. If that logic seems odd, it’s because most of mine was back then. However, it also wasn’t long before she found out. I remember when she walked in and found me taking a couple from her purse. I just ran out the front door, she was yelling the entire time about how I was going to end up like the asshole that left me with her. Or something like that. I was too busy getting the hell out of there and ended up at the truck station on the other side of town.
That’s where I met big Henry.
The man stood at five foot nine; with wiry hair that was going grey and a beard that covered most of his face, which was good because it managed to cover the majority of his teeth. Everyone said he was big-boned. Here is how I put it: if an archaeological team finds his bones someday, they’ll think they just discovered a new species of dinosaur.
“You look like the devil is chasing you,” he said as I came running around the corner of the station. His voice was horse and his breath smelled of filtered cigarettes.
“I’m running from my mom,” I said after catching my breath. “Caught me trying to steal some of her cigs.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I’d become the criminal who wandered right into the police station. However, it wasn’t a police station I wandered into. Henry just laughed and invited me to have lunch with him in the diner. It was a fake appendage of the gas station, meant to pull in more than just truck drivers who needed diesel. Henry was greeted by everyone in the place, while I just walked behind him and examined familiar faces. Henry told me about his route. I can’t remember where he started but it always took him through the area.
“Do you stop here often?” I asked him.
“Kid, I stop everywhere. Don’t you have anything better to do than run around gas stations?”
“Not much to do around here and I don’t have my slingshot anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
“My mom burned it after I got caught shooting the old ladies in the butt.”
I was certain that Henry’s laugh was heard across town. After we finished eating he told me I was alright in his book. When the waitress dropped off the check, he left a couple of cigarettes on my side of the table. He seemed amused by my expression
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
“Not unless you feel like telling,” he said and chuckled. “Now go on, and don’t worry about the bill.”
I went under the bridge outside of town and smoked both, thinking about how cool Henry was. My mom and I didn’t speak much after that. She really let me have it after I stole from her but I did my best to avoid her after that. She worked long factory hour, and I started spending my time down by the truck stop.
“There really isn’t a lot to do around here, is there?” Henry asked about a week later when he stopped by again.
“Nope, got any cigs?”
“Damn kid, give me some air.”
He didn’t always stay long, sometimes he would just pre-pay inside and I’d have a few words with him. His stories were great and I was always hitting him up for cigarettes. Sometimes he’d hand a few over and others times he would tell me to get lost. I felt a little betrayed when he’d pull that on me.
“What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen dead on the side of the road?” I asked him once.
“Saw a buffalo get hit once.”
“Who hit it?”
He just gave me a wicked smile and tapped the grill of his truck.
He told me about the people he’d met; a trucker older than dirt who would always ask him for cotton balls or this old lady who would give him secret remedies to loosen his chakras. He told me about his favorite gas station cashiers; one’s who greeted him by name and knew which cigarettes to reach for. About a trucker who hollered over the radio waves about the second coming of Jesus or the one who always mumbled nonsense in an attempt to stay awake. I always wondered if he told people about me, but I never asked.
He told me about failed relationships and what he felt about marriage. Sometime he’d tell me about his younger days, as he always called them, and the girls he brought back to cheap hotel rooms. He told me about crazy adventures he went on with his brother before he was a trucker. He told me about the places he had been, from seeing mountain ranges that touched the sky to the nasty hotel room with things crawling in the mattress. He told me about drunken fights and the scars he had to show for them.
After a while, I didn’t care if I got smokes from him. I just wanted to hear more stories from big Henry and tell him mine. He told me about everything, but there was one thing he never touched on so I brought it up.
“Hey Henry, can I ask you something?” It was about the middle of August.
“What’s that?”
“Did you know your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it like, what did you get from knowing him?”
The air seemed to grow stiff between us and the glare that crossed his face was something I’d never seen before. He didn’t say anything, just brought the back of his hand across the side of my head, right above my eye. My ears were wringing and I thought that I could stay on my feet but before I knew it, I hit the cement ground. My right arm was torn up and I could feel my face beginning to swell up. My eyes were full of tears when I looked up at the big, blurry shape looking down at me.
“That’s what I got out of it.”
He didn’t apologize, he just turned and walked to his truck. I got up and ran all the way home. I spent the afternoon crying in my room and when my mom got home, she wrapped me in her arms and I cried some more. I told her I was sorry for stealing but I never told her what happened to my face. It was bruised for a week, and I never left the house.
I stayed away from the truck station the rest of the summer and didn’t return until years later. It was after I had graduated from high school, during my first year at the community college in the next town over. I recognized the woman working at the station, but if she remembered me at all, it didn’t show.
“Is this everything for you today?” she asked as I placed a can of pop on the counter.
“That’s all I’m getting, but could you tell me if a trucker called big Henry comes through here still?”
“That’ll be $1.14,” she said as I handed her a couple of dollars. “As for Henry, I’m sorry to tell you this, but he had a heart attack a couple of years ago and passed away.”
I told he thanks as she gave me the change and left without saying another word. I walked back to my car thinking of big Henry. I drove home thinking about him. When I got home, I closed all the doors, and I tried to figure out why I couldn’t cry.
Writing is a form of expression that is necessary and something Michael Seitz has always been capable of. He doesn’t have any delusional ideas of being the next Carver or O’Connor. He writes because he loves it and wishes to create art through his words. He hopes his work makes people feel or think a little bit deeper than they did before; that would make him content.