Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,24
the train from New York.
“Hungry?” Thomas takes a civilized bite into his own bagel and smiles.
“Growing boy,” I say with my mouth full, but try to take smaller bites so I won’t look like a total pig.
Thomas pours me more coffee. “Well, you look better now than you did when I first saw you this morning.” He reaches over and picks up my copy of Walden from where I’d set it next to me on the bed and flips it to the back, to the photograph of Thoreau with his pale-eyed, serious expression. “You looked like you fell out of the sky or something.”
Wiping my buttery fingers off on my jeans, I hope I don’t look like too much of a slob. When I glance up at Thomas, he’s not looking at the book anymore, but intently at me.
“So where did you come from, Hank?”
I shrug, feeling slightly buzzed from too much caffeine and too little sleep. “I guess I fell out of the sky or something.”
Why not? It’s as good an explanation as any. And even though Thomas has been kind to me, I decide not to tell him the truth. There are still so many questions I need to answer for myself first.
“I see you value your privacy, and I respect that,” Thomas says, looking down at his hands. “But come on, I have to ask. Why were you sleeping outside at the cabin site? Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I’m just curious.”
“Well,” I say reasonably. “I wouldn’t have been sleeping outside if the cabin had been there like it was supposed to be.”
Thomas smirks. “Fair enough.”
I stand and nonchalantly try to open one of the windows, like I just want some air, and all I manage to do is disturb a spider, who scuttles to a corner of his web. The window is nailed shut. Figures. Outside, instead of a view of trees and bushes that should be there, there’s a view of the parking lot and the road, where rush hour cars are whizzing by. Not the best location for a hideout.
“It’s not right,” I say, half to myself. “It doesn’t belong here.”
“I’m sure Henry would agree with you,” says Thomas. He reaches up to scratch the back of his head. That’s when I notice a design in black ink on his upper arm, showing under the left sleeve of his navy blue T-shirt.
“What’s the tat?” I ask.
He pulls up his sleeve to show me the tattoo of a man’s face in profile, a man with an old fashioned black beard. Under it is written in fancy script lettering like a signature: “Henry D. Thoreau.”
“You know.” I pause, uncertain how to say what I’m thinking. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but—”
“But I don’t act like a stodgy Thoreau-loving historian-slash-scholar who works for the park commission?”
“Something like that.”
“Yeah, I know. I get that all the time.” He gets up, screws the top on his thermos and gathers the remains of our breakfast. “I’m heading into town. Want a ride?”
A ride on the Harley? Hell, yeah. We head out to the parking lot and walk to the motorcycle. “For a kid who worships Thoreau enough to stay all night at his cabin site, you have a lot to learn,” Thomas says, handing me a spare helmet from the back of his bike. “Thoreau was a rabble-rouser in his time. A free spirit. A rebel.” He pulls on his own helmet, straddles his bike, and flashes straight white teeth. “Why do you think I like him so much?”
After Thomas drops me off in town, I aimlessly walk the streets of Concord with my hands stuffed deep into my pockets. I can’t stop thinking about seeing Thoreau last night. Sure, it was probably just some freaky dream. But what if it wasn’t a dream? What if Thoreau’s ghost knows stuff about me and is watching over me like a guardian angel or something? Maybe that’s why I woke up with the book next to me at the train station. Maybe it was a sign, a gift from Thoreau himself.
Now that I’ve had some food to start my day (Essential Fact of Life Number One), I decide to address Number Two—clothing—at a sporting goods store on Main Street. I buy a warm coat (on sale, half off), plus black sweatpants and a thick gray sweatshirt. I put the sweatpants and sweatshirt on in the dressing room, and stuff the clothes Magpie gave me into the plastic bag.