Henry

People come and go in a house. Owner after owner leaves the trappings of their lives on the wood and dry wall. In the corners of the kitchen no matter how well it’s cleaned residuals remain of those who were before. It is the attic in which the discarded things may drift up into sometimes. They float up there and are lost to memory. In the attic of the house at 158 Elm, a mystery sits stewing in the darkness, trapped in silence and Time.

The sky was marbled with winter clouds. The wind rattled bared tree branches like old bones. Power lines swayed and dipped in the grayness. Houses shed their inner warmth a yellow glow diffused through windows foggy with heat and condensation. Up and down the street families moved to and fro in quiet trajectories. Pots clicked, the TV chattered, the pets slept in the warm places they had carefully nuzzled and pawed for themselves. The wind brushed eves and whisked along shingles, tapped on window panes whistling through cracks. Leaves tumbled and collected in yards, sometimes making an elegant arch down into browning lawns, hard leathery soldiers making a parachute drop in foreign lands.

A cold gust descends from the clouds and whirls like a witch in mid air, brushing the transformer, making the phone wires bounce. It whips around in a cackling turn and snuggles like a cat in the roof out-cropping, and then finds its way to the rusted attic vent that it had been seeking.

Inside the attic, as the house made its “family noises,” like the TV and a radio, the dishwasher and conversations in the kitchen, the wind moaned through the grates in the vent and snuffled around in the papers and boxes on the dirty floor. It made the dress on a rag doll flutter. A stuffed cat’s hair bristled. A top rolled onto the dirty floor and rocked to a stand still. The attic sighed, the sound rising from a cluster of blankets and towels blooming from between large cardboard boxes.

Outside, rain began to patter on the shingles, tapping at the lit windows. The water churned in dirty drains, boiling out through gutters and onto the dampening earth. A wind-up clock ticked somewhere in a clutter of boxes. The “wind witch” yammered and clattered on the damp roof. In the corner where the darkness had gone inky and opaque, was a doll. It was a doll and it was a boy, and it was sitting in the shadows as the rain patted and blew over the stones of the chimney from which dark smoke belched.

This doll was not made of plastic or porcelain. It had been sitting on the dirty floor for some time, the skin the texture of white cheese. It sat in the darkness as the rain tapped on the house and the clouds moved across a steely sky and a brittle tongue of lightening daubed at the playground across the street. As the light flashed it lit up the attic in a pattern from the vent. And that’s when the doll started to softly cry.

The boy was the size of a small seven year old, he appeared to have been well fed, well cared for. He wore a red jacket with X-Men on it. His shorts were ironed, but had settled into a residual of dust and grime. His shoes were Nike’s, they were untied. He sat on the attic floor slung into the corner like a rag. His hair was curly and full of dust, paint chips and harbored an occasional spider’s web. His eyes were two dark holes. He had a handsome face; the lips were elegantly formed like a cherub. His hands were sculpted and lay like dead doves in his lap. His shoulders heaved a little. The weeping sounded hollow, echoing from a place long abandoned, empty and forsaken.

Near his foot was a scattering of books, some toys, comics, things he had taken from boxes that he sought comfort from. Above the door tangled in the rafters like a great bird, was the Black Knight bicycle. To the right of that was an assortment of fishing gear, and a “Blue Bird” kite. The lightening flickered, illuminating a toy box and a name painted in white on its side. It was “Henry.”

The crying continued. It was weak and tired. The white hand drifted up to the boy’s neck and settled just at the collar bone. Above the thin fingers on the chalky neck you could see the burn of ligatures. The boy coughed a dry, rotten cough. He lifted a stuffed monkey and put it on his chest and curled up into the darkness as the rain poured over the dark roof shingles above. The hours ticked away, and soon the crying mingled with the dust of the attic, and dissolved away into silence.  


Weeks before Short Stop was sitting in the yard lounger watching the sprinkler click. The watery umbrella hissed at the sunny back yard. In the trees birds flitted and argued. Short Stop was letting the sun sooth his bare arms. He was sucking on a straw in some pink lemonade and watching the dog leap and bark at the sprinkler. He scratched his stomach and shook the glass. The ice rattled.

In the distance an Elmore County police helicopter suspended in the summer sky, cruised above the roof tops the huge blades whuffing, the engine ratcheting along. Short Stop let his eyes fix on the shadow of the helicopter for a moment..only a moment. The yard was suddenly filled with men rushing to grab harnesses to lift the wounded. Shots were fired, the yellow marking smoke blew past his vision and the metallic sound of bullets smacking into helicopter metal pounded on his ear drums.

There was screaming and someone calling for their mother and then rockets began to carve up large divots of lawn. It was like a hammer was being slammed into the ground by a giant trying to kill ants. More bullets, more sounds of metal to metal and metal to flesh. The helicopter rose into the sun turning. Then the rocket dissolved the rear rotor and it spun out of control and away. Short Stop was screaming now, the lemonade all over his shirt and pants. He was groveling around in the ruins of the destroyed lawn chair shouting to men long dead in the middle of a war long past. His neighbor, Fred Orbacher, called the police.

Officer Dunn petted the dog as the EMT’s rolled Short Stop to a waiting ambulance. “That’s all right fellah, “the officer said. Later he would ask Orbacher if he could keep Scotty until Short Stop retuned. “Sure,” Orbacher would say. He was half Short Stop’s age but admired the old man. He had shown Orbacher the Purple Heart he had gotten in Da Nang and the bronze star at the 154th in Bin Dinh Valley.  He and Orbacher had spent some good evenings going over the details of the war in estrogen laden story telling. Short Stop had been right there when Orbacher’s wife Elizabeth had fallen in the driveway. The EMT’s said she would have died if he hadn’t have acted fast to get help. Orbacher was the kind to remember these things.

He let Scotty into the back yard and gave him some water from a plastic bowl. Elisabeth called from the dining room.

“Is Short Stop Okay? She asked?

“He’ll be alright,” he assured her.

“I hate it when that happens, “she said speaking into the silverware she was polishing. “It scares me.”

“It scares him too,” Fred reminded her.

It took them a week to release Short Stop this time. The VA had given him a medication that dried his eyes out, nose membrane and mouth. He hated the medication. Fred picked him up at the VA and brought him home. Scotty wagged his tail and licked Short Stop but he didn’t seem to want to respond much.

“I need some sleep,” he said.

Fred led him to the bed and helped him take off his shoes.

“Want a blanket?”

“No...Thanks.”

“I’ll be home and by the phone if you need me,” Fred said.

Short stop cast a watery, red eye towards Fred.

“You know what I really lost over there,” He said. Fred was standing in the door frame looking in at him. “I lost that neat kid I used to be. I lost that neat little kid”

Short Stop curled up and went quickly to sleep. Fred let himself out. As he passed down the hallway his eyes glanced at the picture of Short Stop and three friends. They stood there shirtless in the hot Vietnam sun grinning with tanned faces into the camera. Short Stop had said all three of them were names on “The Wall” now. Fred closed the door behind him.

The sun moved slowly across the lawn and the shadows warmed into sultry ochre. Stars twinkled in the sky coming out as night came. The clock ticked in the living room. Short Stop was what you would call “tidy” and kept things picked up. The house was always in good shape, everything in its place. Scotty was sleeping at Short Stop’s feet when something shot past the doorway to the hall. Scotty heard footpads, and then the sound of a chair moving in the kitchen.

He whined, and tried to wake Short Stop. But he was too drugged to respond. Scotty whined, his hackles up. He was still looking down the hall when Short Stop woke up.

“Hey there little Turd,” he said ruffling Scotty’s fur.  The dog barked. Short Stop swung his legs around on the bed.

“Fuck me,” Short Stop said as he glanced at his face in the mirror of the dresser. “That is one ugly old fart there,” he told his reflection. He stood up, undressed, cut off the hospital wrist tag and walked into the shower. The cold water made him hiss but he stood there in it until his thoughts came together in a coherent way. He washed himself slowly, making sure he got all the mental ward stink off.

Hours later, in a room full of steam and useless mirrors, he got out and dried himself. He dressed, combed his hair with his fingers and walked down the hall into the kitchen. There he stopped.

Someone had moved a kitchen chair over to the cupboard and removed a peanut butter jar. It was new, and Short Stop saw the indentations of fingers in the smooth surface of the fresh cream.

Short Stop looked at the dog. “Scotty did you do this shit? You know I don’t let nobody put no fingers in my fucking peanut butter.”

But Scotty was busy sniffing the floor, around the table, and down the hallway. Above him he didn’t see the slightly cracked attic door close as he passed by.


Short Stop liked to do the cross words in the morning while he sipped Coa Coa and yelled at the news casters on CNN.

Then he would do an hour on the tread mill, take his morning shit and watch “The Comedy Channel.” If the sun was just right he’d go out in the back yard and water the lawn. He always kept a jug of pink lemonade handy, to finish off the day. He turned on the sprinkler, pulled over the last lawn chair left, and sat down in the sun.

Under the apple tree where he was sitting, he could see across the yard to Fred’s garage. Birds flitted from branch to branch in the pear trees that lined the fence between his yard and his other neighbor Bob Stancheon. The sprinkler hissed, the watery flower dancing on the air over the grass. The spray was tapping gently over the white roses by the back porch on trellises. The trim around it needed paint.

Short Stop picked his nose for a moment, took another swallow of lemonade and let his eyes wander over that trellace. They stopped at the attic vent. It was missing.

Short Stop shook his head and gave his mustache a pull. He always did that when he was pissed. Now he had to either find that vent or buy one like it. Sonofabitch!

After a trip to Home Depot Short Stop was reasonably sure that he had the right vent now. He had measured the hole. He had measured the flange. Up on the ladder he had to force the soft metal into the vent aperture, but he secured it with screws, six to be exact. When the drill motor stopped whining on the last one, that’s when he heard a box fall in the attic. He heard the box fall, and then foot falls, as if someone was running away from the wall his ladder was against...

Short Stop was thinking about that. Did he really hear someone running in his attic? How did they get in there? Maybe it was just a squirrel? When Short Stop bought the house last January he really didn’t look in the attic. He wanted the house. He put together the down payment with his VA back pay on his PTSD disability upgrade. The sale was quick.

He stood there on the ladder until he got this feeling that VC was watching him through the fence. They were getting ready to come through the wire and he had to get to the fifty caliber machine gun right now or they would over run the motor pool again.

He took a breath...and climbed back down the ladder, folded it, put it in the garage and sat down at the kitchen table to make a peanut butter sandwich. He turned on Comedy Central, sprawled out on the couch and didn’t wake up until eleven o’clock that night. He got up, took off his Jeans and went into the bedroom.

Someone had torn up his pillows leaving goose feathers like a brittle snow all over the bedroom. “Goddammit Scotty! He snarled, but Scotty was in the closet cowed and whimpering. Short Stop smacked him with a slipper and Scotty howled and barreled out of the room.

“Look at this fucking mess,” he said, waving his hands around the room. At eleven o’clock that nigh Short Stop had the vacuum out and was chasing goose feathers. At five thirty in the morning he was done. He walked back out to the couch, sat down in his boxer shorts and fell asleep.

When he woke up at noon, he used the toilet blasting it with a noisy stream pf piss. Then he walked through the living room and into the kitchen. A chair had been pulled out and this time someone had gotten out some strawberry jam. It was all over the counter, drawers and floor.

Short Stop didn’t get angry. He cleaned up the mess, wiped everything free of the sticky jam, and then went to his closet. He took out his gun case and removed the “Witness” 45 caliber semi-automatic hand gun. He slipped in a clip of shells, slid back the loader and let a round insert into the chamber, and then with his thumb he flicked off the safety.  He sat down in his easy chair, turned on the light and waited.

At about nine at night he awoke to the slam of the hall closet door, he reacted firing off a round into the leather sofa. He rose out of the chair and turned to aim down the hall when he saw a shadow leap into the ceiling....and disappear.


He let the gun drop to his side and stared at the hallway for a moment. That’s when he heard running over head. The old fear thing came back to him. The shadows were moving about in the distance, the shouts, the bursts of gun fire and the light from flares dancing across the ground making the shadows jab and swing screwing up his sense of where he was oriented in space.

He knew what to do.

He went into the hall closet and took out the small step ladder. He padded back under the attic entry and set the ladder under it. His heart was thudding in his sixty year old chest. But a secret part of him wanted to do this, wanted to one more time have it over an enemy. He looked up to where the attic door was and took the first step. One hand was on the Witness pointed at the door, the other was reaching age spotted fingers to open it.

His hand floated up to the door, he felt it give, and he drew back the hammer on the Witness and with his fist batted the door up and away. There was a moment of confusion, the gun went off, the flash blinded him, and in this terrible second his eyes locked on that of a little boy. Short Stop knew in an instant whose eyes had fixed in his own in that terrible, painful moment when he came face to face with the ghost that had haunted him for three decades since the horrors of Vietnam.

Short Stop screamed, screamed so hard his muscles strained in his throat. His saliva flecked on the panted walls. His arms flailed in the air and he fell to the floor, the gun spinning across the bathroom tile and stopping behind the toilet. Short Stop couldn’t hold back the terror any more. It came rushing out of him like a volcanic surge that blew across the world soaking it in the blood of madness.  He beat his head against the walls, the NVA were charging the wire, the trumpet was blasting, the machine guns were cutting into the human waves but it wasn’t stopping them. Someone hit those fucking claymores!

He lurched through the garage entry in the kitchen and threw things around on his work bench. Then he grabbed the rope he was going to use for Scotty’s yard stake and quickly made a loop with a slip knot. He flung the rope over the garage opener bar and climbed on some stacked milk crates. He secured the rope, slipped it around his neck over his head, and screaming “Mother” he jumped off the crates, his voice abruptly choked into silence. Seconds later, he was unconscious, suspended from the garage opener, his life wheezing out into the dusty atmosphere of the garage.


The rain had subsided, the shingles of the roof glistened as the moon drifted from behind steely clouds. A light breeze tugged at the damp branches of trees, it toyed with the smoke from chimneys. Cars hissed by under the amber street lights, the air was clean, like a new beginning. The “Witch Wind” moved in the sky like an invisible bird. It blew around the dripping eves of houses, touched at steamy windows, hissed down outside vents. Inside people were getting ready for bed. Clocks were set, TV’s turned off, beds turned down. The ebb and flow of life closed its eyes and yawned. The moon rose in the tangle of tree branches and wrestled itself from their bony grip.

Smiling, it showed its wide, triumphant face to the glowing street lights.

Its glow reached into the attic of the house that Short Stop hanged himself in. Still in the garage, his face purpling, he swung gently in the silence. In the attic though, a child sat in the darkness crying. He rubbed his throat, and was inconsolable, his hand over a pinned purple heart and bronze star for bravery in an enemy action in the Bin Dinh Province in Vietnam, awarded to Sergeant Henry Amyl Newton, otherwise known to his friends as “Short Stop.”  



“You know what I really lost over there,” He said. Fred was standing in the door frame looking in at him. “I lost that neat kid I used to be. I lost that neat little kid”