The Werewolf and His Boy

Larkin’s at Short Pump, Far West End, Richmond September 16, Wednesday night Henry Allan Thorn Henry really loved the night and his graveyard shifts at Larkin’s. He loved the shadows and the dark corners that even the lights high in the ceiling somehow failed to illuminate. He loved the unexpected caves made by lumber or boxes or concrete that just happened to be stacked in a certain way, even if the next day, like sand castles, the caves were gone. He loved the green shadows of the Garden Center that darkened and grew and turned black and grey as night fell. He loved the Garden Center’s green, earthy smells: the stalks, the fronds, the leaves, the tiny pots, the ferns in hanging baskets. Tonight he had found a shaded corner in the back, where he was deadheading flowers and watering flats of petunias, dahlias, pansies, calendula and sweet alyssum. Snapdragons, chrysanthemums, asters. The autumn roses were next. Henry inhaled, drinking in all the scents, the green, the earth, the shadows. He had never told anyone that shadows had colors and scents and that green shadows had the richest, the deepest, smell. The Garden Center was his favorite place; he wanted to work there full time. Instead he was a floater. Sort of. Henry had never told anyone a good many things. He had learned early on that he was different from everyone around him in some deep basic way. People didn’t like differences. Sometimes they would hurt you if they thought you were different. No one would ever know he had another secret besides smelling shadow-scents: he knew how to disappear. Somehow he knew how to pull the shadows around him like a soft, soft cloak, the colors of his skin, his clothes, his black hair, became ghosts of themselves, faint enough for whatever was around him to show through. Sometimes even the sounds he made in the shadows were muted to barely audible whispers. He had learned long ago how to pretend to be invisible in a crowd. He tried not to use the shadows at work, but a lot of the time Carlene seemed to forget that he was in the Garden Center, and that was fine with him. Even if he didn’t love working with plants so much, Henry knew he had to be in the Garden Center right now. Something was coming. That was another of Henry’s deep and dark and long-kept secrets: he sensed when things were coming, events, weighted moments coming charged with meaning. He rarely knew what the moments would be, and some he might have avoided if he had known, like the time the dog at his last group foster home attacked him. He just knew that they were coming and where. One was coming to the Garden Center. Henry shook his head to clear his thoughts. It did him no good to waste time trying to focus on these impending moments. He went back to deadheading and spraying the plants. Plants, Henry had found, were often a lot nicer than people. Sometimes thorns and leaves might tear or prick his skin, but they never bit him or snapped at him, like cats and dogs did, or even some people. Plants never looked past him or through him or talked around him, the way some of the guys at work did, even at lunch, when they would go over to Jason’s Deli or Chipotle or out front to Dominic’s Garden Grill. He was used to it; it had been happening to him all his life, including in all the foster homes he had been in and out of until he was eighteen. It still hurt. Henry was scanning the next flat of pansies: a little dry, a few deadheads—when he jerked up, the watering can spilling on the concrete floor. He felt the weight of the impending moment pressing on him. He listened hard, his head c****d toward the doorway, some forty or fifty feet away, with only two rows of plants of one kind or another and a flat cart loaded with bags of potting soil and mulch between him and whatever was coming. “Three weeks of training and orientation, I told you that, right—this is the Garden Center, obviously…Back this way is the storage room, where we keep the special order bins, appliances on clearance…” Carlene, the senior day manager, was giving a new guy a tour. Her voice trailed off as she disappeared back into the main store. The new guy, red hair falling over his face, stood in the doorway and stared at Henry. Henry could feel his gaze as if it were directly on his skin. He could feel his body responding and he knew the redhead was feeling the same things he was. “Mr. Currey?” The redhead took a step back, and turned, looked at Henry again and then disappeared into the main store. Henry closed his eyes as he inhaled, exhaled. He smelled the new guy: mint-scented soap, Tea Tree Tingle Shampoo, Old Spice shaving cream and deodorant, desire—the sharp, acrid smell of fear. Smells, scents, odors. Henry had been thirteen when he had first started to smell the emotions of those around him. At first, it had been just the slightest scents, as if carried by a breeze from far away. It had taken him a long while before he could match scent to emotion. At times he had felt almost overwhelmed in a tangle of sensory input; the worst had been when one of his foster parents had taken him to a revival meeting, and it was so bad, he had run screaming from the church. They had called Social Services to come get him that afternoon. The doctor said nothing was wrong with the boy, except maybe stress, and being overly sensitive. Henry’s next foster parents were more understanding and let him wear a bandana over his mouth and nose, until he sorted through the scents, the feelings, and how to tune them out, learned how to not-smell. Thankfully, they didn’t take him to any church revival meetings. Now Henry could smell when he wanted to, or not-smell. Fear was sharp, pungent, layered. Anger, burning and dark, hot, sometimes cold. Cold anger was the worst. Desire, sweet, strong. Only recently had Henry developed the ability to detect the distinctive scents of more subtle emotions—despair, melancholy, and anxiety. * * * * James George Currey For one intense, intense moment, Jamey couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move. He was consumed with desire. That guy in the Garden Center: dark, dark black hair, thick, streaked with silver. Medium build, medium height. Pointed ears, tufted with black hair. When Jamey closed his eyes and then looked again the ears were completely normal, no points, no extra hair. He heard the manager call his name, her voice sounding distant and far away, and he turned to leave and follow her, but he stopped in the doorway to look back. The desire was still there. The second time it was even harder to turn away and follow after her, but he did; he had to. Jamey needed this job. The money his mother had given him after his father had kicked him out of the house, spewing Bible verses as he threw stuff in his car—what Jamey called his “maternal severance package”—was about to run out, and although neither his friend Charley nor Charley’s roommate had said anything, Jamey was pretty sure the offer to sleep on the couch wasn’t good indefinitely. “That’s—I always forget his name. Harvey. Horace, Harry. Henry. Henry Thorn,” Carlene said. “You’ll meet everybody after training. Anyhow, this way, kitchen cabinets, special orders…” Jamey decided not to mention that he’d seen pointed ears on this Henry Thorn. He had always seen things that no one else did as long as he could remember. His mother had told him stories about baby Jamey telling her he was seeing moving lights in the trees, and how he’d cried because no one would believe him. Everybody had laughed and told him they were fireflies or car lights—no, no, they were as big as my hand—so Jamey decided that some of the things he saw were secrets because nobody else ever saw them. Or would admit it; he wondered now about his grandfather and his mother’s brother—and sometimes his mother. The green man and the green lady in the woods, the silver lady in the lake and the goat-footed horned man: all secrets. Optical illusions and an overactive imagination, his mother said. He had never told anyone about flying. It had been September, he had been six and the teacher had sent him to the lower playground, out of sight of the school, to fetch left-behind equipment. Jamey stood for a moment at the top of the green hill, looking down at the empty playground. He had started running and running and the wind had caught him or he had caught the wind and for one supreme minute, he was airborne. It had happened only twice more that fall, on the lower playground, the last time in a swirl of leaves. Nor had he ever told anyone about the other, older memory of walking through a wall. He had been at the back door and then he found himself outside in the backyard. His mother had spanked him and yelled at him for lying. Jamey wondered if his mother still told baby Jamey stories. He hadn’t seen or heard from anyone in his family since the end of summer school, other than the seemingly endless anti-gay tracts his mother kept mailing him: the weird little cartoons, like Doom Town, Sin City, and The Gay Blade, and endless photocopies of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and the rest. It had been hard at first to throw them into the recycling bin. He had been too scared to try going home to Fredericksburg. He had called his little sister and brother but his dad had caught them, and blocked the phone number. Charley had then offered to let Jamey use his cell phone but Jamey had been afraid to touch it. Using a pay phone now seemed like a luxury. If he didn’t get this job…Pay attention to what this woman is saying, Jamey. Pay attention, he told himself. “You had a year at VCU, so you might be interested in our tuition reimbursement program. All right, come in the office, let me give you the forms you need to fill out to get on payroll, your fingerprints for the background check, signatures on the privacy waivers, the usual. I think I will start you as a floater at first…” Jamey had looked back one more time in the direction of the Garden Center. Did that guy really have pointed ears? * * * * Ella, Atlanta The kids were in bed. Danny was on the night shift at the hospital and Ella finally had some time to herself. She was reading when the alarm sounded: wind chimes, silvery, sweet, faint. She closed the book and sat very still. She hadn’t heard the alarm in how many years? This persona, Ella Lewis, had never heard those faint wind chimes. Silvery, sweet, far away. A false alarm? She would have to wait; that was protocol. But already she felt the edges of this persona start to unravel. She sniffed. Just the barest of traces but she recognized both scents. It wasn’t a false alarm. * * * * Henry, Friday—early Sunday morning, October 9-11 When Henry moved his marker to In on the staff board, he saw that James Currey was In, too. Just looking at his name, as Henry had for the past week, made him pause and catch his breath. He had dreamed of Jamey more than once. Henry had wanted to speak to him, to say something, anything, but somehow, no opportunity other than glances across the break room, had presented itself in a week. But that, he knew was just an excuse. When he had smelled fear, he had smelled both Jamey’s and his own. Rehearsing while he sorted his clothes at the Laundromat or rode the bus to and from Short Pump, or alone in the Garden Center didn’t seem to help. Some of the dogwood saplings had seemed especially interested, which he actually found annoying. Henry knew he had choked, which was stupid, he was stupid, stupid, stupid. But he was still scared. Henry had figured out being gay had to be one more of his secrets in high school. It wasn’t safe to be out, not at Deep Run High School in Henrico County, nor in the mob of kids in the different foster homes. A girl had been pushed down the stairs, and then the bad thing had happened to a guy at the bus stop. But that was then. Jamey had looked back at him three times, glances he could still feel. Never mind. It was going to be a long day, starting with the register, then Paints for most of the morning. Only one hour in the Garden Center before lunch, then stocking light bulbs and the loading docks in the afternoon. Paints sucked. People tried to ask him questions about colors when even though clearly he wasn’t the one in charge. A woman last week had wanted to know what he thought about the colors she was considering for her son’s room. He was about Henry’s age and she just wasn’t sure. White with blue trim, but which white? Dover White? Pure or Westhighland? White Duck, Narcissus, Dreamy. Dreamy—she liked Dreamy, did he? Telling her he was a little color-blind and wasn’t in charge of Paints anyhow didn’t help. She seemed determined to go through all 204 shades of white, and Henry was sure she would start the 230 shades of blue after that. It had taken him a while to get her over to Frank. When Henry checked into Paints, Frank was already busy with a customer so he pointed with his thumb to several boxes that needed opening, sorting and shelving. Henry nodded and got to work. After mid-morning break Henry drifted back to the Garden Center and began sorting bags of mulch and potting soil, trying to figure out how he could talk to Jamey, no matter how scared he was or how scared Jamey seemed to be. He had almost succeeded at lunch on Wednesday. Jamey had been sitting right beside him and he had felt a surge of energy when their knees had bumped. He had almost growled when he had felt—and smelled—Jamey’s gaze again. The scent of desire was almost overwhelming. Jamey had looked away nervously and started talking about a dream, a recurring dream he had again last night and what did the guys think it meant—running in a*****e, and—The guys had laughed at him and Jamey had shut up. Henry had almost spoken up about his recurring dream, but when they had laughed at Jamey, he had gulped down his words. They felt like little stones, settling into his stomach. Today lunch break came and went but no Jamey. Henry got ready to head to the Garden Center when Carlene tapped him on the arm. Damn. “Light bulbs, remember?” Henry grumbled inwardly as he nodded at his boss and went to work on the light bulbs. He didn’t look up until he turned down the right aisle and there was Jamey setting up the step ladder, next to a flat cart loaded with boxes and boxes of bulbs. “Henry, right? Carlene said I should help you with the bulbs, yeah? Start handing me the Phillips 250s right there, okay?” Henry nodded and then grabbed the first box and handed it up to Jamey, close enough to notice the curve of Jamey’s neck, the brightness and softness of his red hair, his freckled skin, those startling blue eyes. He inhaled Jamey’s scent again. “I was thinking about your dream,” Henry croaked, as he handed up the next box. “Yeah?” “The dream about running in a*****e?” Henry passed the bulbs up to Jamey’s waiting hands. Jamey looked down at Henry for a moment as if deciding how much he could tell this boy. Henry was convinced that people didn’t talk to him because they thought he was weird. But, Jamey smiled as if he had reached some decision and Henry smelled a change in his scent, a lightening of the fear. “That dream? I’m never talking about dreams with those guys again. I rather not imagine what kind of dreams they have. Anyway, I was being chased here, in this store—through Paints, through Fashion Bath, into Roofing & Lumber—and things kept shifting in the store. Something chased me everywhere and finally into the Garden Center.” Jamey paused and looked hard at Henry, as if he was making another decision. “I don’t know if I should say this, but I didn’t have on any clothes; boy, am I glad I didn’t tell them that. Then I woke up. What do you think it means?” For a long moment Henry could only stare at Jamey in wonder. Jamey’s dream mirrored one of his own recurring-since-the-age—of-thirteen dreams, except that he was towards something instead away from it. He would run and run and run, down the aisles of a huge store, far bigger than even this giant warehouse, with shelves that reached high over his head, so high he couldn’t even see the tops, packed with so many thing that threw shadows in various shapes and sizes, and darknesses. Ahead, feet slapping the floor. Then, suddenly green shadows and trees and he would wake up. After these dreams, everything ached, especially his arms and legs, his jaws, his teeth. “You okay?” Jamey asked as he reached out to touch Henry on the shoulder. Henry twitched at the sudden sharp jolt of what felt like static electricity. Someone cleared their throat. Both boys whipped their heads around, to see a dark-haired older woman standing a few feet away, looking very impatient. “Excuse me? Can you tell me where I can find bathroom fixtures to match this?” She held up a blue and grey floor tile sample. “I’m redoing my bathroom and everything just has to match.” “Sure, just follow me. Catch you later, Henry,” Jamey said as he headed off with the dark-haired woman behind, who was talking about how hard it was to find faucets in the right color—she had looked all over Richmond, Home Depot, Pleasants Hardware, Noland Company and she did not want to drive all the way to Gaithersburg to the Great Indoors. Traffic on 95 was a nightmare… An unfamiliar warmth spread out like a slow tide, down his chest, into his heart, through his groin, down, until he was aroused and embarrassed and scared all at the same time. He grabbed a box of light bulbs to hide his erection and willed it away as quickly as he could. He walked away without turning around but he knew Jamey had looked back. * * * * The dark-haired woman kept talking, reciting the list of stores she had been to in Richmond: Ferguson Bath & Kitchen Gallery, Richmond Plumbing Specialties… Jamey clenched and unclenched his fists behind his back. His right hand still felt like he was touching Henry. Why in the world had he touched Henry in the first place? That was incredibly stupid. Jamey looked back quickly: he could see Henry’s ears, pointed, tufted with black hair, just like before. What was that energy jolt all about? He’d never felt that before. The woman had finally stopped talking, and now she was checking her tile sample against what was there, muttering just loudly enough that she just hoped that Larkin’s could help her… * * * * Henry had other recurring dreams, most of them about his mother; they were all he had of her. A woman with golden eyes and long black hair leaning over him, the same woman running with him, touching him, holding him close against her, pressing his temples as she whispered into his skin, stay inside, stay inside…In other dreams, she whispered forget, forget. Occasionally he’d dream of his father, but he was always just a shadow behind his mother. When Henry was almost thirteen, his foster mother was scandalized to discover that he didn’t know all about who Jesus was so she made him memorize the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. After that, Henry had prayed to God and Jesus, begging both to help him find his mother and that she would come for him, that the next knock on the door would be his mother, come to take him home, and tell him that she had always loved him. So far, his prayers had gone unanswered. It wasn’t long after that their family dog started getting hysterical when Henry was within ten feet of it. They sent him back. After that he never seemed to stay long with any foster family. If they had pets his time with a family could be measured in days—once even in hours. And there was that incident when he ran screaming out of church, trying to escape the smells. Social Services gave up when he was sixteen and in his sixth high school—four in Henrico County, two in the city of Richmond. They placed him in a group home (and his seventh high school, Deep Run) where he had spent two very lonely years until he was eighteen. That had been a year and a half ago. The group home foster father had given Henry just enough money to rent a tiny one-room apartment in the basement of a Longwood University professor’s house on Three Chopt Road and get a three-month bus pass on the GRTC. The foster father had known someone at Larkin’s, too. Henry figured the man must have felt really sorry for him after what had happened with their new dog. The scars from the attack ran down Henry’s right thigh and leg. The professor, Dr. Kathleen Melloy, explained she was on the road a lot: a two-hour round trip commute to Longwood and back, and her fiancé was up in Ann Arbor, finishing his PhD, so she was often gone on the weekends, too. She wanted someone to keep an eye on the house, pick up the mail and packages and newspapers, turn the porch light on and off. Other odd tasks as needed. Since then it had been a steady routine of Larkin’s, a lot of ramen noodles, mac and cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, getting the mail, collecting packages and newspapers, riding the bus, until— Until that moment in the Garden Center when Jamey had looked back at him. * * * * “Excuse me? I want to see some wood and laminate samples, like Pergo? Do you have Pergo here? I’m thinking of taking up the carpet in my living room…” “Ronnie. I already told you they have Pergo—do you ever listen to me? Kid, tell him you have Pergo…” Henry nodded and smiled at the very earnest bespectacled man and his taller chatty grey-haired friend and took them over to Flooring & Tile where he introduced them to Jack, the Flooring guy in charge of Pergo. He looked back at the two men once: the taller one had a hand laid carelessly on the shoulder of Ronnie, the shorter one. Henry stared. It was a revelation. Just two regular guys. Maybe sort of like me, like Jamey. Do they know how to disappear, too? Henry had never really met another gay person before. He had been too afraid to talk to some kids at school whom he had guessed were. Here were two men—a couple—in Larkin’s, buying flooring. He walked back to Lighting, a bit dazed as he took down the ladder and put up the platform cart, wondering when he would see Jamey again and what he would say and what Jamey would say. Wondering if Jamey touch him and then he could touch him back and tell him he had seen these two guys, regular guys, just like anybody else— “Henry. George got sick so I need you on the graveyard shift Saturday, okay?” It was Carlene again, her ubiquitous clipboard in her hand, a pen stuck in her thick black hair. According to some of the guys, she slept with pen in hair and clipboard in hand. If he hadn’t spaced out, Henry knew he would have seen her coming and disappeared just long enough. Then he could have drifted back to his plants. For the first time he didn’t want the graveyard shift. He didn’t know where Jamey lived, or what his number was, and now Henry wouldn’t see him until Monday. * * * * Henry, Saturday Work Saturday night broke the Jamey-spell, at least temporarily. Unloading masonry, ceramic floor tiles, cinder blocks, landscaping stones, and bags of mulch and potting soil did the trick. Henry didn’t have the energy for anything else except pick up, carry, stack, drop, repeat, until finally he got a break and dragged himself into the men’s room, into the handicapped access stall in the back corner. Henry grabbed hold of the arm railing and leaned into the wall, then slumped, slid to the floor, pressed his forehead against the cool flatness and closed his eyes. Just for a minute… “Thorn? You in there? Anybody seen Thorn?” It was Eduardo, a night manager, looking for him. Henry jerked awake. Where was he? The bathroom, in the handicapped stall, and he was stark naked. Where are my clothes? I just closed my eyes for a minute, to take a break. What happened to my clothes? Is that my T-shirt? Henry grabbed his shirt hanging from the hook on the stall door. One leg of his jeans stuck out from under the metal wall. How did I get so dirty and naked? Twigs in my hair? What’s this in my teeth—hair? Fur? Am I going crazy? Sliding to the floor and pressing his head against the wall was the last thing he remembered. “Thorn? Where the f**k is that idiota?” Eduardo yelled again. He was definitely pissed. Henry scrambled into his jeans, yanked his shirt over his head and slammed the door open. His New Balance walkers—one last guilt-driven gift from his group home foster father, after the dog savaged Henry’s other pair—were, thank God, right there in the corner, on top of his red Larkin’s vest. God only knew where his socks and underwear were. Henry jammed on his shoes and ran out into the store to find Eduardo. “I was in the Garden Center; I couldn’t hear you. I’m so sorry.” “What the f**k happened to your clothes? Were you trying to f**k a holly bush? Never mind—your ride’s out front—get outta here. And take a damn shower, you stink.” Henry ran for the front of the store. If he missed his ride, it was a long walk home—or a long hour and a half wait for the first Sunday morning bus. At least Jamey wouldn’t see him like this. His ride home was gone by the time he got to the front of the store. Henrys sighed. Frank in Paints, who sometimes noticed him waiting at the bus stop, had offered him a ride home—if Henry was on time. He walked slowly to the bus stop and sat down to wait. After he saw his reflection in the Plexiglass wall of the stop, he pulled as much of the grey fur out of his teeth as he could. Gross. * * * * Ella, Atlanta Ella eased herself out of bed very carefully and very slowly. She didn’t want to wake Danny. He had only been asleep for an hour. She grabbed her bathrobe from the foot of the bed, slipped into it and pulled it tight and close. She looked back at Danny, asleep on his side, the tension gone from his face. She wished it didn’t hurt them so much when she left. She wished she could make him forget. She wished she cared more than it was possible for her to do. She knew the necessity of marrying a mundane and having children, but they did complicate so many things. The alarm sounded again: wind chimes, silvery and sweet. She listened intently at the bedroom window, pressing her cheek into the glass. She could feel the transformation beginning: a tiny fire at the edge of her awareness, like a leaf slowly burning, its edges slowly, slowly curling up and dropping away into ash. * * * * When Henry closed the door to his apartment behind him and went into the bathroom he finally got a good look at himself. No wonder the other people on the bus had looked at him so funny. Sleep-walking and sleep-undressing—and apparently sleep-clothes-ripping. His T-shirt and jeans looked as if someone had tried to claw them off his body. Everything smelled awful. His teeth hurt. His fingers and toes hurt. Henry shook his head. He knew this didn’t make sense but then a lot of things that happened to him made very little sense. He yawned. He was bone-tired—way too tired try and figure out what was happening, what had caused him to sleep so deeply that he couldn’t remember falling into holly bushes or his clothes being ripped off. At least Dr. M was here this weekend, no caretaking work. And Jamey… Henry gave up; he was too tired to think. He tossed his T-shirt and jeans into the waste basket and wondered if he had enough money to get replace them at the thrift store. Then he lay down on top of the bedspread, thinking he should get up and take a shower in a minute, but he just wanted to lay still for a minute… He woke up from a dark and deep sleep that had lasted until late in the afternoon. He got out of bed slowly; his body aching even worse than when he had fallen asleep. He dragged himself into the shower and when he had the water as hot as he could bear it, he just stood there, letting the water beat on his head. He was hungry; he wanted meat. He toweled off in front of the TV. Larkin’s—his Larkin’s was on the news. A body had been found near a dumpster by the loading dock that morning. It had apparently been there since sometime early Sunday.