He has always been Henry Junior. Not Henry, not Hank, not Junior. Henry Junior since the first moments of his life. His parents, Henry and Alice, came into parenthood late. By the time their son came along, most of their friends had a station wagon full of kids. Some were even young grandparents. The long delay seemed to make Henry and Alice all the more thankful for the tiny surprise.

When Henry held his son for the first time in hands more accustomed to gripping tools than cradling babies, he gently lifted the newborn with both hands until the baby’s face was even with his. He looked into dark brown eyes staring wide open back at him. A man of few words and even fewer emotions, Henry spoke with a tenderness that surprised even Alice. “Well, well, Henry Junior.”  His voice and his bushy eyebrows gave a little rise on the first syllable of “Henry,” then fell off on “Junior” as if he were setting down a heavy load.  They might as well have written “Junior” as his middle name on the birth certificate, because from that moment, he was never called anything else. Except for one time in the third grade. The teacher, new to Bowman Elementary, called out “Henry” when calling roll the first day of class. She repeated “Henry” three times before a poke from behind and a, “Hey, that’s you,” caused Henry Junior to respond to the strange name. He corrected her and that was that.

Henry and Alice brought their baby home to the house they had bought after their first year of marriage. They knew the house as the Walker house, where Mike Walker, the funeral home director, and his wife, Cynthia, had lived for 35 years. The back of the two-bedroom wood-framed house faced the tracks. A small back yard and a 50’ right of way was all the separated the row of houses from tons of hurtling steel, the roar of engines, and the hundreds of passengers oblivious to the small towns they hurtled by, identical towns made unique only by the name on the water tower. Henry and Alice were well acquainted with the liabilities of living near the tracks, but houses along that row were a bargain for that very reason, and Henry and Alice were looking for a bargain.

Like almost every other house along the track, it had wood siding and peeling white paint. Two of the houses had upgraded to shiny vinyl siding causing them to stand out like a gold tooth. Fake aluminum shutters had long since replaced the functional wooden shutters that had for years protected the windows from howling winds and blowing snow. From the vantage point of the train, the row of houses from the back all looked pretty much the same. A few had flowerbeds; all had the obligatory trashcan beside the back door. They were neat but not particularly well kept. Like looking at a person from behind and noticing they missed a belt loop.

For Henry Junior, living by the tracks was an adventure. Watching the train go by became a daily activity for him when he was no more than five years old. In those early days Henry did not stand still as the train roared by. He jumped up and down, he waved, he ran from one end of his back yard to the other, racing with a train he had no hope of keeping up with. There were no fences, but he knew where his yard ended, and he always stopped precisely at that spot. For a while it was a game to see how many people he could entice to wave back at him. One evening he got 28, breaking his old record of 25.  “Way to go, Henry Junior,” he shouted as he pumped his fist in the air. “I got 28!” he declared as he bounded through the back door and into the kitchen. “Nice going, Henry Junior,” Alice replied absently as she turned over the pork chops sizzling in the skillet.

Part III tomorrow.