A Thousand Miles from Nowhere by John Gregory Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

agonizingly slowly, it seemed even sadder, an awful, deathlike dirge, some kind of sigh from the heart’s bloody core. And when his father was done, when he picked up the bass and stepped out of the room, Henry understood that this would be the last of these dreams. He wept and wept and woke up still weeping.
    “Find someone, Henry,” Amy had told him. “Just see someone,” she said, pleading, but he couldn’t imagine whom he would see, what he could possibly say. What doctor would understand that he wasn’t looking to have his mind set right, that he longed not for sanity, not for a clear head, not even for relief. What he wanted was resumption. No matter the suffering, no matter the clatter, he wanted the dreams to come back. What else did he have, after all, by which to remember his father? So he wanted the dreams to continue on and on, his father forever playing the bronze-bodied bass, playing this music that was like nothing else except the sad, slow, and necessary— necessary, yes—beating of a heart.

Three
    WHEN HENRY woke up, it was almost noon.
    So he had slept. That was a good sign. He made coffee now on the bathroom vanity, standing over the small machine as it sputtered and spit, then he took the cup outside and went to retrieve the road atlas from the car. When he’d left New Orleans, he’d sworn he wouldn’t aim for anywhere in particular; he’d be like a wandering troubadour, content to make the highway his home. In those first hours he’d thought of the hurricane as a lucky coincidence, the final nudge he’d needed to truly leave his life behind. Many others on the jammed highway seemed to think so as well, hoisting bottles and beer cans through car windows, happy to feel so alive in the face of the storm. But now, seeing what he’d seen on the TV, Henry understood that there was no luck, no good fortune, in what had happened. New Orleans was underwater. People were dying. People were already dead. He couldn’t go back even if he wanted to. The grocery store and everything in it—his father’s bass, the few other things still there, the junk no one wanted to haul away—had surely been obliterated.
    He knew, of course, why he’d wound up in Virginia, even if he told himself that it was an accident, that he was just passing through. And he could just pass through. He could keep going, head up to Baltimore to see his sister. Mary hadn’t spoken to him practically since their mother had died, since Henry had skipped the funeral and left Mary to handle the lawyers and the papers even though he was the one still living in New Orleans, twenty minutes from their mother’s house, the house where he and Mary had grown up, where they’d stayed even after their father disappeared. Mary had sent Henry the various documents that required his signature, then she’d sent him the check—more money than he had imagined his mother could possibly have saved—when the estate was settled. It had been signed by a lawyer, but Mary had mailed the check herself. She’d slipped it inside a greeting card with a corny picture of a tropical sunset, but she’d drawn a line through the card’s sentimental message, something about beauty and eternal friendship, and written Fuck you instead. And beneath that, just for good measure, Fuck you, Henry .
    Even so, she would take him in, Henry knew. If he called her, she would take him in. She was the assistant curator at a Baltimore museum, but when she was younger she’d wanted to be an opera singer. And Henry knew if he went to Baltimore, she would first force him to endure a performance worthy of the stage: She would weep and put her arms around him, maybe, but soon enough she’d push him away and hammer her fists against his chest. She’d scream that he was an asshole, a bastard, a complete and total shit—then she’d admit to how desperately relieved she was that he was safe. He imagined her slapping him in the face, but even if she did, he knew that he