It’s difficult to accurately describe Henry’s voice. Imagine a bellowing goose with laryngitis, or an east Texas moonshiner shouting from inside his own still. Henry’s voice can suck all the ambient noise from a city bus, and fill every square inch of airspace with exuberant prattle. Every syllable is expelled forcefully from somewhere within a rigid frame which always appears to be tipping, as if cautiously sneaking up on this whole gravity thing.
Henry is one-half of a sibling phenomenon known all over Hyde Park as The Sombrero Brothers. The brothers once traveled the neighborhoods together, generally wearing matching straw hats. Big hats. Sometimes, actual sombreros. Before being asked to leave and never come back, they could almost always be seen or heard at the Walgreens at Guadalupe and 45th, filling a shopping cart with Gatorade and dispensing free advice to customers and staff. They would stay for hours. On his own, Henry could spend an entire day at Walgreen’s or Hyde Park Grocery, attaching himself to anyone who might be stocking shelves or running a register. And he says the damnedest things. Like:
“Yore about as purty as Cameron Diaz. And that feller over there is as good lookin’ a man as you are a woman. Y’all should be a couple if you ain’t already. Huh? Huh?”
These days, I see Henry more often than his brother, and on the rare occasion that both are present, they always seem to be angry, and bickering like an old married couple.
The Sombrero Brothers are probably harmless, they are certainly entertaining, and the neighborhood would be much less interesting without them.
Henry is always at a store, on his way to a store, or just returning from a store. I’m pretty sure he has been banned from Walgreens, but I still see him at Hyde Park Grocery, or riding the bus to HEB. His never-ending monologues are fearlessly awkward freeform expressions of unkempt tangential thinking. Once, on a bus, I heard him ask a driver if he had ever heard of Sammy Davis, Jr. The driver had, and was rewarded with the following:
“Man, you ever see him dance? Did ya? He was like them kids at the Apollo. Ya ever been to the Apollo?”
The driver stared at Henry in the mirror. “You mean the Apollo Theater in Harlem? No.”
Henry kept going, “Them kids are somethin’. Once they get goin’, it’s all cartwheels and backflips. You expect them to just go through the roof. What about you? You like to dance? You a dancer? What about sangin’? You like to sang?”
The driver just shook his head.
“Well, I like to sang.” Henry said. “But ever’body gets mad.”
Under that big hat, Henry usually has a towel or a t-shirt draped over his head and shoulders. A long-sleeved white shirt is generally buttoned at the wrists, and his hands are covered with white cotton gloves. He walks slowly, almost teetering, with his arms slightly bent and his fingers splayed. He was towing a cart full of groceries a few weeks ago when our paths crossed in the middle of a church parking lot a few blocks from my house. He started waving when he saw me coming.
“Howdy howdy. How ya doin?”
Except for an occasional nod or salutation, I had never conversed with Henry before. But, he greeted me like his long lost pal, and as he passed, he asked, “Which one of these churches is goin’ out of business?”
I shrugged. “I don’t...”
“Well. One of these churches is shuttin’ down. I heard it was a Baptist or a Methodist, or one of ‘em.”
That was it, until the next morning when I saw him again, slowly walking toward a bus stop. He crept cautiously down the sidewalk, pausing after every tenth step or so. He would then stand with his fists balled at shoulder level, and look around, as if waiting for the Mothership. Then, he would take a few more steps. Perhaps he has issues with his feet, but the snail’s pace of his trajectory could also indicate chest pain or breathing problems. I hope that isn’t the case. I hope he really is looking for the Mothership.
As he approached the bus stop, I fully expected another enthusiastic greeting. Instead, he looked at me like I was sprouting a second head. For a moment, I though he was going to tip over. Then, he spoke.
“Excuse me, sir. Excuse me. Can you tell me what time it is?”
I looked at my watch, and managed a few syllables before he started talking again.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you. Can I ask ya about them shoe strangs?”
“I’m sorry?”
He pointed at my shoes. “Them shoe strangs. Do you find that them fat shoe strangs cut off the circulation less than these skinny shoe strangs, like I got.” He pointed at his own shoes – uber-modern athletic monstrosities that look like they should be docking with a Romulan Warbird.
“I never really thought about it. These are the laces that came with the shoes.”
I almost got that sentence out before he said, “It’s like this belt. I hate wearin’ a belt. Cuts off the circulation. But when yer pants fall off, ever’body gets mad.”
At that point, the bus arrived. We both got on. I was going downtown, Henry was going one block.
Once, at Hyde Park Grocery, Henry attached himself to a hapless employee who was stocking beer. When I arrived, Henry was pontificating with much enthusiasm. In the time it took me to pick up three items, stand in line and pay for them, the verbal slipstream of Henry’s consciousness moved from the subject of beer, to imported beer, to marijuana, to “the kinds of drugs they make fer people who like to freak out.”
“You wanna freak out?” Henry shouted. I couldn’t see him or his victim, but I imagined the poor bastard cowering as Henry rose up before him like deranged blue djinn, screaming.
“YOU WANNA FREAK OUT? HUH? HERE! THINK ABOUT THIS…”
The cashier froze, holding a jar of pasta sauce in mid air, and waited. Blink. I stopped counting currency, and waited. Blink. A customer who had just entered from Duval Street stopped walking, and waited.
Blink.
“AGHHHHH! YOU’RE ME AND I’M YOU! YOU’RE ME AND I’M YOU! HEY! COME BACK! YOU’RE ME AND I’M YOU! AGHHHHH!”
I heard someone running.
That was the day I started looking for the Mothership.
