Henry’s Protégé

I go down to Henry’s shack fairly often, but he never comes up to see me. I live on a hill with a good view for a workingman. I can see an expanse of that great river that has traveled all the way from Canada just to be here, as well as a tiny glimpse of the ocean far enough away to the West that no breakers or birds can be distinguished. Yet I can legitimately say, “the ocean is there,” and point toward a distant, hazy spot.

Henry could walk up here—he’s fit enough. He and his dog Hilda ramble over every beach, dune, and trail, and up every old logging road. Yet when I run into him somewhere, and I haven’t seen him for a while, he acts real hurt.

“Where the hell have you been,” he says, “You don’t want to become a worse recluse than me.” That way, apparently, madness lies.

In reality, Henry’s probably not that much of a recluse. The last time I was over there I found a young woman with Henry. After she had departed, Henry referred to her as his “protégé.” I can’t imagine what a protégé of Henry’s could be a protégé about, unless she aspires to be some kind of proto-curmudgeonette.

Her name is Andrea and just today I ran into her downtown. I really don’t want to make the mistake of describing her physical appearance without any previous preamble, but we could say the she might represent one of the few, but important, things that make an old man lament his lost youth.

But that’s a silly thing to say. I realized it as soon as I said it. There is a real pretense of delicacy in it, as well as a pretense of insouciance. Andrea is hot, okay? But that’s not a situation I can do anything about.

She produced a glorious smile without any effort, and said to me, “Don’t you think that Henry is brilliant?” Then, for what seemed like the longest time, I remained ridiculously unable to speak. Her smile began to change slowly into a look of curiosity. Finally, in order to help me out, she tried again: “How long have you known Henry?”


I had at last come to my senses. “The first time we met we fought over a trike.” And she laughed most merrily.

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When I got home I had plenty of things to ruminate about while I looked out at the river and that distant patch of ocean nobody would know is ocean unless I pointed it out. First and foremost, why was I unable to speak?

I think I know why, and it’s pretty shameful: There was some book, or essay, or something, by a British writer that I must have read years ago. I can’t remember who the author was. I’ve tried, but I can’t. He was going on about his lust for American girls back in the days before Britain had the National Health Service. It seems that thoughts about American girls with their perfect teeth, expressed with gleaming smiles, and (he supposed) their easy willingness to give blowjobs, drove him to distraction and near-madness on pretty much a daily or even hourly basis. Let’s hope he recovered from this obsession with the end of WWII rationing and the beginning of NHS dental-care-for-all.

It was this tawdry literary reference I was searching for in the floodlight of Andrea’s smile. Was she sleeping with Henry? He’s about a million years older than her, but when a young woman thinks a man is “brilliant,” who knows what she will do? I’m about as knowledgeable about young women as I am about Latvian folk music.

Is Henry brilliant? I don’t know—how do you define it? Who can say? He knows a lot about some things, I guess, and is no doubt smart enough to keep to those subjects. As long as he keeps his wheels in the ruts, he won’t run off the road.

Henry has all those binders. I’ve watched the volumes grow year after year. The first says “Henry’s Logbook,” and on the other ones are written Book 2, Book 3, etc. Is that where Henry’s brilliance is hiding, the brilliance he’s been able to hide so successfully from me all these years? Does he open the binders for Andrea, and then she sleeps with him?

I’m fed up with my view of an indistinct ocean, so I’m going to drive out there. I want to listen to the breakers and see the seabirds, especially the pelicans. It will clear my head—it always does. While I am walking down the beach I will probably wonder why I bother to think about all these questions, to weigh the pros and cons, to sift through the evidence, to consider the possible alternates, when in the end I’ll only know nothing at all.