About Henry Fellows

Post 121:

About Killing and Innocence: The Chronicles of Henry Fellows

Episode 29:

Chapter 10: Therapy

            Remember Chris? You know, the guy who asked me what was what back at the nuthouse. Guess I forgot to mention that the nuthouse wasn’t the end of our relationship. He ended up working for me, actually. Figured he was owed something after shaking a suicidal back to a garden-variety depressive. Maybe it was obligation, maybe there’s no good thing in me, but right now I think my mind’s searching its archives to find anything clean or decent in the past.

            So a rich kid gives a guy a job? Yeah, I’m not exactly Santa Claus, but in the end it was a good thing to do. Weeks after my release, I went back to the hospital and offered him a security position at our corporate headquarters in Dallas. Initially he said no, thinking (not unwisely) he had a crazy stalker on his hands. Threw out a figure anyway— hundred thousand bucks a year. As before, he told me to “get my mess together.” Didn’t believe a thing, not about the job, not about who I was. I nodded and put my hands up, told him to check me out.

            Three days later, he traded in the hospital garb for a suit and tie, helping handle security for one of the largest downtown office buildings in the state. After a year of passing polite hellos he was moved up the ladder, taking charge of my personal security. It was then that we became close. Chris had been in the service too, falling into the army after a troubled youth. He “got his mess together” in the military, the same place mine was made. We never again spoke about the nuthouse, but we did talk; Chris knew a little about the things I did, the little I could tell him. He had his own tales of blood and guts but he was too dignified to share anything but humble vagaries.

            One night on a business trip in Chicago we went out and got hammered, listening to good blues in some basement bar until four in the morning. We swapped inflated woman stories and fish stories and I said thank you and he said thank you and the next day we woke up hung over and pretended that our night of bonding didn’t mean anything.

            As you do.

            Guess I’m thinking about him right now because he was one of the only people that believed in my innocence. The image of his pained face watching me in cuffs is a mainstay in my memory shanty. The authorities made it a spectacle. Came up to my office on the top floor with all kinds of guys. Like they were hauling in frigging Al Capone or something. Instinctively, Chris tried to stop them, barring the door to the conference room with his massive body while some blue-jacketed grandstander yelled “warrant!” from the other side of the glass. The whole thing was ridiculous. It’s not like I was making a dash for it. It was a frigging budget meeting. My arrest came between quarterlies and coffee. I urged Chris to let them through; the police were going to do what they do. Read me my rights and everything. I told him to call my loving wife while a gaggle of imperious drones escorted me to the elevators and down to the front of the building. Of course, the cops had the integrity to alert the media that I was getting taken in; a truly dizzying amount of cameras and reporters greeted me on the forced walk to the cars. I can still hear the chorus of questions, feel the anxiety and stress, see the look of my friend Chris when they took me away.