Henry of Atlantic City Read Online Free PDF Page B

out the walls and patted them and some other kids came over and stood outside the fort and watched them. “It’s time to go home,” Helena said. “I’m getting sunburned.”
    Henry got out of the dumpster. The pictures made him wish he hadn’t seen them. They showed people withstrange looks on their faces rubbing their hairy parts together. It reminded him of animals and was kind of sad.
    It was dark and someone yelled, “
Hey
!” Henry ran around to the front of 7–11 and went inside. He took out all his money and counted it. It was more than five dollars. The first thing was to call Sy’s sister but when he tried to remember her name all he could remember was the name of the store and the joke she made about it:
If you wanna be ritzy, you gotta shop Mitzi
. There was a pay phone outside the 7–11. He went back outside and got a plastic milk crate and stood up on it so he could reach the phone. Then he called the operator and said he wanted to call Mitzi in Philadelphia collect but nobody answered at the shop and Henry hung up.
    One thing was sure. He wasn’t in Byzantium anymore. Where he was now you needed a car and to have a car you needed to have a license. In the good old days Henry rode around in chariots and if he was lost there were plenty of saints and angels around to talk to and they’d always offer to get him back home if he needed it. Saints were good to have around because they could see through walls and around corners and they always knew about all the killing and lying and cheating that was going on everywhere they went. Angels were the same but they could fly and see through people too. Not just through their clothes but into their thoughts. Also, angels usually dressed well and carried weapons. Saints went around barefoot and sometimes even naked and were usuallyfilthy and broke because they always gave away everything they had. Nobody liked to talk to them. Angels and saints both knew about the visible and the invisible and the different things that couldn’t be talked about and also that God was a fuckup but that was why you had to love Him. He had made a big mess of things. It was up to them to try to help out. That’s what they were there for. To help straighten things out. Saints didn’t mind being poor and filthy and angels didn’t mind flying around fixing things all the time. Being an angel would have been okay. But Henry didn’t have any weapons or know how to fix stuff. So he decided to become a saint.
    He tried to call Sy’s sister again but there was no answer. There was nothing he could do except not cry and wait. He didn’t want anybody to see him. Saints had to be careful. When you were a saint people wanted stuff from you and if you didn’t give them what they wanted they’d try to kill you. Lots of saints got killed by people who didn’t get what they wanted out of them.
    Henry climbed back into the dumpster. It got cold and Henry got even more hungry. Even though it was only the end of September and there were still leaves on the trees it felt like winter. Henry began to shiver. He wondered what Mrs. O’Brien was thinking right now. She was probably glad he was gone but mad because he’d left all his stuff at her house. He could hear her going, “Lord, oh Lord,” and fanning the air with her hand. He could hear Mr. O’Brien telling her to shut up in his sleepy voice. Henry started tocry. He was about to go and give himself up when a cat jumped onto his lap and began purring and rubbing up against him. At first the cat scared him but then he remembered that saints could talk to animals. When you know that everything is in code you begin to understand the world.
    In the morning Henry went around to the front of the store and called Sy’s sister. This time she was there. “Henry! What a surprise! How are you?”
    He told her he was at 7–11 and asked if she would come pick him up.
    “Henry? Are you all right? Where are you?”
    Henry said he waited all night