Henderson the Purple Rain King

Chapter 1

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. They rolled in from either the east or the ether just after Memorial Day, positioning themselves above the Inner Harbor and appearing with clockwork regularity thereafter. No one knew why or how or what it meant but by the dog days of that long Baltimore swelter of a summer most people were ignoring it and going about their lives as usual, not even the tourists were snapping pics for the Gram anymore. Never underestimate humanity’s ability to write off the miraculous, to grow accustomed to the sublime.

Every night the clouds lit the night sky like a coalition of benign purple suns, like a natural neon fever dream Vegas could never replicate. But they produced no rain. Night after night after night they gathered to roil and roll as if caught in the heart of some furious tempest-actual wind speeds notwithstanding-but never burst to shower their Princely deluge upon the parched Maryland earth, no matter how many doves cried and dearly beloveds went crazy and partied like it was that certain year. Then, later, when nobody cared anymore, they held their contents within their purple porous walls and whatever walked there alone.

I will say it again because it’s important: there was no rain that summer, not from the glorious purple works of living Nimbus and Cumulus art nor from all them boring ass regular whitebread clouds neither. Everyone and everything on the ground could’ve used it too for this was the official record-holding hottest summer ever, like actually ever, and the previous four each occupied the each of the preceding slots. This was also the third summer, again in a row, to be struck with catastrophic drought; the water levels of the Harbor, and the Brewerton Channel beyond, even those of the mighty Chesapeake, were lower than they’d ever been. That summer in Baltimore you could walk beside the Water Taxi from Federal Hill to Fells Point without getting your knees wet, while the once-mighty USS Constellation, the decommissioned sloop-of-war built in the 1850s and still hale and hearty for her age, looked more like the bones of some prehistoric beast unearthed by the scorch. Yes indeed, straights were dire for everyone from the sultans of the swinging city down to the walk of life yo-yos making money from nothing.

The August afternoon this story actually begins was hot, of course, muggy and gray with the low-hanging cloud cover a heavy and wet weighted blanket over Charm City. Beside the touristy-but-still-undeniably-beautiful Inner Harbor the former President was going to speak, likely to spread more of his hateful weaponized rhetoric in hopes it would propel him back to his coveted catbird seat, meet the new boss same as the old boss. He was set to start speaking around 11:30pm, late for a campaign speech and late for a man of his advancing age but this was a special circumstance. As familiarized as the Mobtown locals might be with the nascent weather phenomena in the area, the rest of the country and world might still have a bit more awe to be wrung. The dancing purple clouds, the light of what should have been called False Dawn but was mostly referred to as Second Set (my isn’t THAT clever), it would all look great behind the so-called great man. It would make him look more than presidential, it would make him appear godlike. Which would, finally, manage to match his ego. The mysterious laser light show’s great gig in the sky would begin, as it always did, just as bloviator’s rambling stuttering oratory reached its climax. Only, this night, it wouldn’t. This night, a lot of things wouldn’t, and couldn’t, and didn’t, and lot of other things would and could and did. If nothing else that idiot’s speech was canceled, have mercy.

There’s a lot more to tell, about a lot more things, but this is not that story.

The purple clouds were, as I said, located and fixed above the Inner Harbor, but it’s a few miles inland between downtown and historic Mt. Vernon, we find our man. Henderson is 26 and walking, well more like trudging, across St. Paul on Mulberry Street, trying to keep his thoughts at bay. He was in a good time and place for it, the street and cross-street packed just as rush hour is beginning, and when he leaves the street for the bridge ahead the din becomes more incessant and insistent. That’s what he wanted. It was the only thing in his life, just then, he was even halfway looking forward to.

Henderson, you see, isn’t doing too well. On top of all his other problems he’d just gotten rejected, and not like the sorry-I-just-don't-think-we-should-see-each-other-anymore kind of rejected but the wait-what-I-never-even-liked-you-in-the-first-place-you-idiot kind of rejected. That had just happened this morning. Last night technically but he’d spent all night obsessing over how to respond, the rejection came via text, can you imagine, and had gone to bed as the day was blooming, thirteen responses formulated, all unsent and deleted. And of course his rheumatoid arthritis was flaring like angry torches in his thighs, RA doesn’t usually strike people his age but he was a lucky YORA (you can figure it out) and doesn’t usually cause that type of pain in that portion of the body but, well, we already established how lucky he was, right?

Friends, his luck is about to change.

And in both directions.

Henderson doesn’t see his fate approaching from behind but his fate sees him. Specifically the shirt he wears, grabbed indifferently from the dresser: “VOTAR!” in reads in big red letters across his shoulder blades with “VOTE HIM OUT!” in smaller but still discernible yellow ones around the center of his back. The shirt had been a gift from his mother, still living in Texas and volunteering at every election, and was not political despite its message. It was, in fact, referring to a world-famous heel-cast Mexican wrestler in a hit sensation reality show revolving around the Lucha Libre matches set up with a voting system to help steer the direction of each match, American Idol via masked operatic combat. But it looks political. And the former and let’s-hope-to-god-not-actually-also-future president is in town, and both he and his followers love to hate any and all those who oppose or even simply fail to worship him. Plus Henderson is biracial. Or, well, both his parents and grandparents are biracial and none of their ancestries overlap so Henderson, with some pride, has often thought of himself as all-racial. Once, looking in the mirror and seeing five continents’ peoples and a rainbow of skin tones, it occurred to Henderson he might be America itself.

You see where this is going, right? All the nuances-the shirt could’ve meant anything or referred to anyone, Henderson’s skin tone and hair didn’t suggest any particular ethnic or racial identity, not from behind and not with bare seconds to spot him before action is taken-go right out the window. But not alone.

The bridge Henderson has now trudged almost halfway across reaches over Interstate 83, the Jones Falls Expressway, it is six lanes wide and one of the spots in Baltimore City proper you can really pick up some speed and everybody does. Vehicles rocket and shudder past our hero with mass and force and he barely registers any of them. But, again like you’ve already guessed, one spots him and all manner of fuckery is set to break loose.

Henderson doesn’t see what hits him or who throws it, all he gets is the briefest glance of a grey brown black pickup with a Confederate flag decal. The truck is doing fifty-seven miles per hour and the unopened can of National Bohemian beer was thrown with some force and even a little skill, perhaps the assailant had been an athlete in their youth, I can’t say and don’t care to find out and it doesn’t matter regardless. The assailant themself doesn’t matter is what I mean to say, they rarely if ever do.

The aluminum missile sent express mail from the Land of Pleasant Living, says it right there on the side, strikes our man Henderson dead center in the back of the head when he’s just about at the center of the bridge, above the northbound lane where the traffic merges with the Pleasant Street exit like two great sluggish rivers and the traffic begins to pick up speed. His whole world flashes pure white like interior lightning before melting away in a blurry gray fog.

He had been walking so fast and with such determination he managed four additional steps despite having been for all intents and purposes knocked all the way out cold before his body gave in to cruel mistress gravity and toppled toward the greedy ground. He could have gone in any direction. Had he gone forward or back nothing might have happened at all. A fall to his left would’ve sent him diving headfirst into the grill of a charging Cherokee. Would that have produced a similar result to what actually happened? Would that fall toward the sinister side produced the same incredible results, i.e. not his death but instantaneous resurrection? Who can tell. All I know is he went right, right over the concrete barrier and toppled into free empty space.

The fall should’ve killed him. Hell the one-eyed man with the mustache stamped on that cylinder of oh boy what a beer probably should have too. And we haven’t even gotten to the really crazy shit yet.

If you’re wondering how any of this is possible you might as well stop now, because it’s not. It also happened, exactly as I describe it, anyway.