Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,66
to take care of us, but he got so mean. He started getting meaner and meaner. He started hurting Jack almost every day. And then, me.”
“Magpie was hurting you?” I ask Nessa. She nods, not meeting my eyes. All I want to do is take Magpie by his proper English neck and squeeze the proper English life right out of him.
“The worst was a couple days ago. Magpie sent Jack to collect a debt from one of his clients. The guy wouldn’t pay. But when Jack came back empty-handed, Magpie didn’t believe him. He got so mad he beat Jack up. I think he broke his arm.” Tears streak down Nessa’s dirty cheeks. “I was so upset, I went to the client myself and made him give me the money.” I don’t even want to know how she managed that, so I don’t ask. “But then Jack and I ran away. There’s no way either of us was going back.”
“You mean, you stole the money from Magpie?”
“The way we saw it, he owed it to us. Every penny.”
“Somehow, I don’t think he’d see it that way,” I say. A realization dawns on me. “Hey, did you come looking for me at the high school? Did you ask a lady janitor about me?”
“Yeah. Jack thought he saw you walk into the school. I didn’t think the guy looked like you, but Jack is not always so clear on stuff these days.”
So it was Nessa, dressed as a boy, and Jack, who came looking for me and talked to Sophie. Not Magpie or any of the scary guys who work for him. I’m safe. Maybe we’re all safe.
“Jack was in so much pain the whole way.” Nessa leads me off the path to push through some thicker underbrush. She swipes at her nose with the end of her scarf. “I had to give him something.”
“Like what?”
“Something for the pain.”
“Jesus, Nessa.”
“They were pills. I don’t know what kind. Magpie gave them to us, and we were going to sell them. But Jack needed some.”
Shit. This keeps getting worse. I have no idea what I’m going to find when I finally lay eyes on Jack.
We skirt around a thick oak tree and see their hiding place under the ledge of a huge lichen-covered rock. Jack is there, and at first, I swear he looks dead lying there on a bed of brown leaves, his worn army jacket laid over him like a blanket. Sleeping with his mouth open, he looks six instead of sixteen. Nessa kneels next to him in the leaves and rests a hand on his shoulder. I drop my pack on the ground and stand looking down at them both, feeling helpless.
“Jack, I found him. I found Hank,” she says softly. Nothing. He doesn’t even twitch. “C’mon, Jack, wake up.” She jiggles his shoulder, but he’s motionless. We lock eyes. Did they make it all the way here to Walden only for Jack to overdose and die here in the woods? Nessa shakes him again, harder this time.
“Fuck!” Jack jolts straight up, his eyes bulging. We rear back, taken totally off guard. “Goddamn, Nessa,” he moans, falling back into the leaves. “That’s my sore arm.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, tears flooding her eyes. “I…I found Hank. I brought him here.”
Jack holds his arm close to his chest like it’s a broken wing, eyes screwed shut against the pain. Then takes a couple deep breaths before looking up to acknowledge my presence.
“Hey, ugly,” he says at last, like the first time we met, and I almost smile. But his voice is weak and slurred, and there’s a purple bruise on his cheekbone.
“How you feeling, Jack?”
He winces. “Terrible, man. I think my arm’s broke. Magpie—”
“Yeah, I know. Nessa told me.”
He needs help. But here we are, way off the path in Walden Woods, too far from the road for a car to get in. And there’s no way I’ll be calling an ambulance or alerting the park rangers.
“Can you eat, Jack? You hungry?”
“Always hungry.”
I reach into my backpack and pull out the food I brought along for breakfast. “Here. You’re even skinnier than the last time I saw you. Eat this.”
I hand him a couple glazed doughnuts and open a container of apple juice. He wolfs the doughnuts down like he hasn’t eaten in days. Nessa eats one and lets Jack devour the rest.
“Okay, Jack, this is what we’re going to do,” I tell him. “Nessa and I are going to