Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,65
I say. “I’ll tell him you got away, but that you dropped all his stuff. Okay?”
She shrugs, then nods. “Okay, Hank.” Before I can scoop up the clothes, she grabs my hand, her blues eyes searching my face. “Promise you’ll come back?” She’s squeezing my fingers so hard it actually hurts. “Please?”
“Of course, I will. I promise.”
Nessa helps me gather up a denim shirt, black jeans, a pair of cowboy boots, and a backpack, and I jog down the hill to where the guy is pacing around the clearing with a limp, his arms wrapped around his chest, shivering even harder now, his lips turning blue. Close up, I can see the guy is older than I thought, probably in his forties. He has thick red hair on his chest and back, almost like fur, but it’s obviously not enough to keep him warm on a chilly spring morning in New England.
“The kid got away.” I tell him. “But the good news is that he dropped your stuff. Here.”
He grabs the bundle of clothes, and he’s still cursing like crazy under his breath, not that I blame him. He looks so funny, I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
“All I wanted to do was come to Walden Pond and emulate Thoreau by taking a morning bath in these sacred waters like he did,” the guy murmurs, eyes still blazing. “But then some asshole runs off with my gear. I bet that never happened to Thoreau.”
Emulating Thoreau, eh? I look at his drenched boxers. They’re pink, covered with red and white hearts, like joke underwear his wife or girlfriend gave him for Valentine’s Day. Nice boxers, I almost say out loud. As if reading my thoughts, the guy blushes and pulls his pants on, right over his wet underwear. “Okay then,” I say, hoping to spare either of us both further embarrassment. “Sorry this happened to you. Have a good day now.” I turn away, still fighting a smile.
“Wait,” he says hastily, and I turn back. “Uh, thanks. You did a good thing.”
You did a good thing. A good thing. Well, that’s nice for a change.
I grab my sleeping bag from behind the boulder, stuff it into the pack and swing it onto my back before heading up to join Nessa. I find her right where I left her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, ripping the bark off a dead branch.
“Hank,” she says, nodding as if to reassure herself. “You came back.”
“Of course I did.”
She sighs, a deep inhale and exhale that racks her small body. Then tears start rolling down her face, leaving tracks in the dirt. Damn. I hate to see a girl cry. It just makes me want to go find the person who hurt her and beat him up.
“What’s going on, Nessa?”
“It’s Jack,” she says in a whisper. “He’s hurt, bad.”
“Where is he?”
She scrambles to her feet and grabs my hand with icy fingers. “I’ll take you.”
Holding my hand tight like a little girl, Nessa leads me through the woods and down to the path, then over fallen trees and new spring undergrowth, to a hiding place on the other side of the pond.
“We came to Concord to look for you,” she says, anticipating my questions. “You left us plenty of clues, like your name. Henry David. Jack remembered that. And he remembered the book you showed him, Walden, and how you said it was a clue to who you are. It wasn’t hard to do a little research and find out where Walden is. We figured if we hung around here long enough, you might just show up. Which you did.”
“But why did you steal that guy’s stuff ?”
Nessa’s face is dirty, but a red flush shows through. “I just happened to walk by and saw clothes and thought maybe there was food in that pack. We need clean clothes and we’re hungry. Do you blame me?”
I shrug. Doesn’t matter now. Plus, it’s not like I can judge stealing after all the laws I’ve broken in the past few weeks. “So why did you leave New York? And what happened to Jack?”
Nessa pulls the black hat down over her ears. “Things got bad with Magpie, so we had to get out of there.” She says. “He was really mad after you left, even though Jack told him he tried to stop you from leaving. But he was pissed at both of us. I thought he liked us, that he wanted