Your Body is Changing (18 page)

And, “Hey! It was nice to meet you!”

And, “Hey! Mister! You forgot your cat!”

He was ignored. The old farmer simply went back the way he came, mowing down whatever he had missed the first time. It didn’t seem to make a difference to him whether he was coming or going.

By the time they reached Demopolis people knew they were coming before they arrived. Sometimes Henry and Brother Lampey got to stay indoors, in pastors’ houses. Henry got laughed at by a pastor’s skinny teenage daughter for wearing a bathrobe. She was rebuked by her mother. Later Henry saw the daughter running across from the bathroom to her bedroom in a towel that was almost falling off. She saw Henry. She stopped for a second and looked right at him. She seemed to consider something. Then she ducked into the room, banging her knee on the doorframe. She said a bad word that Henry couldn’t believe and slammed the door. That night he put his ear on the wall and thought he could hear her moving around. He was filled with feelings.

As the crowds began to increase in number along the roadsides, the Lord instructed Brother Lampey to give Henry a perm. Later the Lord instructed Brother Lampey to bleach Henry’s hair, and later still to shave it all off and buy him a black wig and shave off his eyebrows also, and give him some big glasses to wear as well as special dentures to change the shape of his mouth in public. When they got right outside Birmingham there was a big sign on the Holiday Inn that said WELCOME TEN COMMANDMENTS.

The young man at check-in recognized them. He did not even object that Brother Lampey had brought in two of the smelly goats. Henry was carrying, as instructed, an extremely heavy red Bible, almost as large as Henry’s torso, that Brother Lampey had fetched from under the wagon.

“Welcome, welcome. We’ve been expecting you!” said the clean young man.

“Do you think you could lay your hands on some beef jerky for these famished goats?” said Brother Lampey.

“I’ll certainly see what I can do, sir. I just want you to know, first of all, that your accommodations are on the house. Mr. Jervis has made it quite clear that you are to be put up in our finest suite. We’ve set up a special awning for your rig, too, over in the Shoney’s parking lot. We certainly hope you won’t mind if some of the locals come to get a look at the wonderful Ten Commandments.”

“I would like to give your manager this attractive Bible in recognition of his hospitality.”

“Well, it certainly is a nice one, sir. My goodness, your little helper seems to have a hard time holding on to it! It certainly is a nice big Bible, sir.”

“Is your manager available for consultation?”

“Oh, yes sir. What am I thinking? He asked me to send you in as soon as you arrived. Allow me to show you—”

“I can find it, thank you. And now, if you please, my goats require beef jerky.”

“Oh! Of course, sir!”

The clerk helped Brother Lampey tie the goats to a revolving stand of travel brochures. The clerk went one way and Brother Lampey took the Bible and went another, leaving Henry alone except for the goats, who were eating the brochures.

Henry saw an arrow pointing the way to the swimming pool. He decided to take a look. As he was walking down the corridor he happened to see Brother Lampey standing in an office, talking to the man behind the desk—a man with no arms.

The man with no arms saw Henry.

“Yes, I’ve got stumps. Go ahead and get an eyeful!”

“I’m sorry,” said Henry.

“This young lad was not gazing upon your stumps,” said Brother Lampey. “He is merely looking for me, no doubt. He is my young ward, Theodore Cleaver by name, and he hates to be separated from me for too long of a period.”

“Come in and shut the door,” said the man with no arms. He still seemed angry.

Henry came in and shut the door. He stayed on the far side of the office.

“Hey, you want to climb under the desk and get a gander at my other stumps, Curious George?”

“No sir.”

“Are you sure? I got a matching set.”

“No thank you,” said Henry.

“No thank you,” the man with no arms repeated, as if it were the stupidest phrase in the world.

“Perhaps, Theodore,” said Brother Lampey, “you can check and see if my lead goats have received their beef jerky. If so, you may take them outside to mingle with the other, less fortunate, goats.”

“I’m not done with him yet!” screamed the man with no arms. “Hey, did you ever hear about the child-murdering abortion doctor who almost got assassinated with a Civil War cannon?”

“No sir. Is it a joke?”

The man with no arms hollered and yelped and angrily wiggled his stumps around. “It’s history! It’s American history!”

“Please check on the goats, Theodore.”

“Don’t you dare touch that doorknob. I’ll kill you, you little SOB. I’m talking about a man whose name will never be known because he was anonymous. He didn’t care about getting his name in the papers. And he just had to listen to his brother-in-law. ‘I work at the Civil War museum. I can get you a real Civil War cannon.’”

“Yes,” said Brother Lampey. “I believe you mentioned earlier that there was a lovely white Bible you wished to give me in exchange for the red Bible I have just now given you.”

“Top of the filing cabinet. You’ll have to get it yourself. In case you ain’t noticed, I ain’t got no arms nor legs!”

Somehow being at a Holiday Inn made Henry homesick. He followed Brother Lampey along the second-floor walkway, passing the big picture windows, some with curtains drawn, and he didn’t see any actual people, but each window made Henry think of a family and what kind of life that family was having together at the Holiday Inn. He was holding on to Bumpy, who was trying to get loose.

Brother Lampey had a somewhat difficult time unlocking the hotel room because he was carrying the white Bible that the man with no arms had given him. It was just as large as, if not larger than, the red Bible he had traded it for. As soon as Brother Lampey managed to get the door open, Bumpy jumped out of Henry’s arms and ran straight under one of the two king-sized beds.

Brother Lampey shut the curtains at once.

“This is the fanciest place I’ve ever been in my life,” said Henry.

It was like a regular Holiday Inn room except bigger, and there was a fruit basket on the table near the window. Also, the door was opened onto the next room, and that was theirs, too, and it was just as big as the first one, with two more king-sized beds.

“Where are you going? Stay out of that room,” said Brother Lampey. “That is my room.”

“Wow,” said Henry. “Sorry. I was just looking. This whole room is mine?” He pushed the “4” button on the air conditioner, the highest level, even though it was pretty cool outside. The blast ruffled his hair. He removed all the disguises Brother Lampey made him wear—his face-altering dentures and his large, thick eyeglasses and his black wig—and put them down on the telephone table.

“Is that okay?” he said.

“As long as you do not open the curtains,” said Brother Lampey.

Brother Lampey shut the door and turned on the lights.

Henry sat on one of the beds and bounced a little.

“I am retiring in a moment into the adjoining room, which will be my room,” said Brother Lampey. “You are not to disturb me. I am locking the door between us. If I need you, I will summon you. You are to leave your side of the adjoining door unlocked. You are not to leave the room for any purpose, and not to open the curtain without your eyewear, et cetera, in place.”

“I’ll need to let Bumpy out for bathroom time,” said Henry.

“A cat, I believe, will hold its leavings till Doomsday if need be. For all a cat’s many faults, it is an exceeding clean animal from my small understanding of it. On a related subject, it will not be necessary for you to tend to the animals tonight, so consider this a brief vacation from your chores if you wish. If I decide to have you comb out my beard as usual, I will let you know. You may watch television, but only programs of a high moral character such as Leave It to Beaver. If you watch the television too loudly I will bang on the wall and you will turn it off at once and leave it off for the rest of the night. No matter what kinds of sounds you hear emanating from my room you will not disturb me or ask any questions about my private activities whatsoever.”

There was a kind of knock or bump that sounded as if it came from the second room, Brother Lampey’s room. He hurried out, shutting and locking the common door behind him. Henry ran to the window and peeked, careful to hold most of the curtain in place.

Pressing one cheek to the window he could see just enough of the person at Brother Lampey’s door to know that it was the man with no arms or legs. He was manipulating a gas-powered wheelchair with a stick he had in his mouth. That was cool. The wheelchair made a ton of blue smoke, just like the go-cart that Uncle Lipton had tried to build for Henry when he was angry about being unemployed, and the go-cart had worked for about ten minutes and Uncle Lipton had taken it apart with an ax.

Brother Lampey’s front door opened.

Henry closed the curtain. He could hear Brother Lampey and the man with no arms or legs on the walkway, talking, but he couldn’t make out what they said.

Henry heard Brother Lampey’s door shut. The wheelchair motor seemed to stop and idle at Henry’s window for an anxious moment. It made a creepy sound like this: Putt…putt…putt…putt. Then it moved on.

Henry was shivering. He turned off the air conditioner.

Two beds in one room! “I can pick whichever bed I want to sleep on,” he said aloud. “I wonder which one I’ll pick.”

It was Henry’s first time alone in a motel room. He got a sudden urge to masturbate.

Masturbation is a perfectly natural urge that happens to everyone on the planet and it must be avoided at all costs, as he had learned from Your Body Is Changing: A Christian Teen’s Guide to Sexuality. And anyway, Bumpy had come out from under the bed to sit on the little chest of drawers and stare at him. Henry couldn’t masturbate with Bumpy looking at him like that. Bumpy had an intelligent face, something like a monkey face, that always made an effort to understand whatever Henry was saying.

Henry walked over and scratched Bumpy’s chin. Bumpy lifted up his head and squinted with pleasure.

“Thanks, Bumpy,” he said. “You kept me on the path of righteousness. I owe you one.”

Henry considered that maybe he would have a nocturnal emission tonight in his sleep! That would be nobody’s fault.

Was it a sin to wish for a nocturnal emission? That was kind of like wishing you would accidentally shoot and kill somebody even though you were obeying all the rules of gun safety. It was exactly like it! Nocturnal emission was not a sin and shooting someone by accident was not a crime, but fantasizing about either one was the dark poison of an evil soul.

“What’s wrong with me, Bumpy?” said Henry.

Bumpy sprang off of the chest of drawers, across the room, and onto the table with the fruit basket. He pawed at the cellophane.

Henry realized with horror that Bumpy was sitting right on top of the white Bible, which Brother Lampey had left behind in his rush to answer the door.

“Bad Bumpy! No!” said Henry.

Bumpy scooted.

Henry picked up the Bible and wiped it off, even though Bumpy had left no trace of dirt. He gently dusted the embossed gold cross, the gold words HOLY BIBLE.

Henry sat down in the chair by the window and opened the Bible.

It wasn’t a Bible.

It was a kind of satchel made to look like a Bible. There were stacks of hundred dollar bills inside. Lots of them.

Henry felt funny.

He forgot his instructions and pounded on the door he wasn’t supposed to pound on. He clutched the cumbersome Bible. A spilt trail of money straggled behind him.

The door flew open.

“Have I not made myself abundantly—”

Brother Lampey saw the Bible and snatched it from Henry’s hands.

“I think there’s been a mistake,” Henry said.

Brother Lampey came in and lay the open Bible on one of Henry’s beds. He began gathering the money from the floor and stacking it back in place.

“There has been no mistake. No doubt our disfigured patron sympathizes with our mission to bring the Lord’s Word to the New York art community. This is by way of a generous tithe or donation. Did not the Apostle Peter after much soul-searching accept the lodging and hospitality of Cornelius the centurion? Should we therefore turn up our noses at the modern equivalent? There is plenty of time to worry about money when you are older. Were I a young man such as yourself with nary a worldly care I would put all this behind me and watch some relaxing television programming.” He snapped shut the money-filled Bible and handed Henry the remote control. Henry sat on the end of the bed and clicked on the TV. There was a commercial for a comedy show about vomiting puppets.

“See if you can find Leave It to Beaver. In particular the one where Wally gets a job selling red hots and soda at the lake. It would do you a world of good to see how a young man such as Wally responds to the challenges of money and responsibility. Note also the ludicrous behavior of Eddie Haskell, who would like nothing better than to sit in the sun and play his ridiculous bongos as some tepid form of rebellion. As the Lord said, ‘I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.’ No doubt these are the verses that the creators of Leave It to Beaver had in mind when they came up with Eddie Haskell. These words, no doubt, shall form the rubric for Eddie Haskell’s grave. No one enjoys his bongo playing and yet to Eddie they are the fools.”

Brother Lampey took the Bible into the other room and shut and locked the door behind him.

The sexiness of Henry’s near-wet dream was interrupted by an ominous putt...putt...putt, and it was a good thing, too, because in the dream Ashton Kutcher was taking off his shirt and tossing his long, shiny hair around and Henry had some funny feelings about what might be happening next. He thought maybe he had to put his hands into a big bucket of warm, wet, white plaster and rub it all over Ashton Kutcher’s chest to make some kind of statue out of him. But luckily an owl came at Henry through the dark, hung on some kind of motorized clothesline, and made him forget what he was doing.