Henrietta, Indiana

This is a story I wrote inspired by Josh Ritter's song "Henrietta, Indiana". It's a first draft with very little editing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvDs9cniZB0

Henrietta, Indiana

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.”

Matthew 6:22-24

Henrietta sits right off of 70 as you come west from Indianapolis and out of Ohio. There’s never been a reason to have much here aside from that mill. Three generations of my family worked in that mill. The whole town was damned near based around it. Before they put it in Henrietta was just a four way intersection with a post office. I guess we got lucky when they decided to vitalize our little town.

Now my dad’s dad moved here in the 30’s. He was coming east from whatever hell awaited him when he got off the boat in New York and, he wanted to get as far away as possible. He settled on going over to California but him and my grandma ran out of money right around the time he saw a sign for a new mill that was looking for employees.

My daddy then my brother took up work there after him and for a while all three at the same time. I was next in line but they shut it down without anything close to a warning, giving people no chance to brace for the impact. In one night the whole damn town was out of a job. No one even knew until they showed up for the 9:00 am shift and all that greeted them was this big paper sign that read “Closed: Thank you for your time”. This was in the July that followed my senior year of high school and I had already been hired, so in effect three people in our family were suddenly and without warning unemployed.

My family has had an affliction for the more dangerous and addictive joys that life has to offer and that summer my daddy took to the hard stuff. This didn't fit well with Henrietta's dry laws so every night we’d drive on over to Greencastle, the seat of Putnam County, and go to their store.

These rides were some of the only times where I got to see my daddy as the man he wanted to be, but not the one he was. He would talk to me about anything that came into his head, these were mostly dreams he use to have or the foolish ideals he carried in his youth. These rides were also the only times he ever told me he loved me. But once we got to the store in Greencastle he’d go in, come out with a case and a brown bag, then get real quiet the whole ride home. I remember one of those nights, instead of his eyes being lifeless and dead, I could see a distinctive look of the devil and hate that, to this day, I have rarely seen in other men.  

My brother on the other hand took up a different danger. He started his preaching own sermons in the basement of the house we had grown up in. I went down there a few times as more and more people started to attend and he preached with a fiery vengeance. One of the nights I went down and he was in a rage quoting the book of Matthew. Good people had come from miles around because in these times you followed one of two paths, my daddy or my brother. When he was done preaching the almighties word he went back to his chair and sat down, opening the room to anyone present that wished to speak up or repent. I looked over at him, covered in sweat, thinking to myself about the all the good he was doing these people in our basement when I caught my daddy's look in his eye.

I was still running with this girl I met in the 10th grade while these events were transpiring. I started spending less of my time at home and my drives to Greencastle all but stopped. Her and I had started discussing the future and entertaining the thought of marriage. We both wanted desperately to get out of Henrietta and figured why not do it together. She had started on planning out a nice little ceremony when we found out and because of that we had to go on down to the courthouse one Wednesday morning and make it official.

One night I was headed over to see my daddy and let him know what we had done. I turned on the radio and the first thing I heard was “Three dead...Identified but on the run...probably half way through Illinois by now...FBI on the way”. I switched it over so I could get my mind straight for the conversation that was going to take place. When I pulled up to the house all the lights were off. I figured they had run over to Greencastle and would be back anytime.

I waited on two hours before I heard the sounds of a car. Next thing I knew I had 15 reporters and policemen inside the living room. My daddy and brother had gone and taken three of the plant supervisors and hung them up from the Oak in the middle of the town square. Had it not been for Mrs. Wallace they might have been found swinging the next morning by the kids going to school. Three weeks later they were found in a bar in Lincoln, Kansas trying to start a fight over the price of a whiskey.

As I’m writing this I got my first child and wife asleep in the 

other room, on one side of me a bible open to that hell of a sermon

my brother gave and on the other a bottle of whiskey that’s nearing

the bottom. I guess now I’ll go drive on over to Greencastle and

make the day of the 16 year old kid who works there a hell of a lot

more interesting.