Henry Knows

I burst through the doors on that Friday afternoon. Finding him hunched over piles of camping saws, I couldn’t wait to talk to him. On this blistering hot sunny day he wore a long sleeve shirt, like always.

“Hey Henry, how are you?”

“Good, how about yourself?”

“Great, I just got back from Los Angeles yesterday.“

“Los Angeles?”

Surprise assaulted his face, invading his voice too. A year ago he uprooted his family and on more than one occasion let me know he missed the weather out there.

“I went to the American Idol Final Performance show on Tuesday. My sister got tickets” I said.

“She did?” He turned to help a client.

“Yes, Los Angeles was great. On TV everything seems so dramatic. Not so dramatic live. I ate BBQ in Los Angeles too. I went on a BBQ Tour last summer and made some YouTube videos out of them. I figured since I am out there I might as well make it part of my tour. Have you ever heard of a place called Trader Vic’s?”

He turned and walked to the back of the work area. “No.”

“Well, I went to Trader Vic’s and tried their BBQ ribs and they weren’t very good. No sides.”

Henry looked up from the bench. “No sides?” He sounded like an echo. His quiet, unassuming nature offer no clues to his violent, gang infested past.

We’ve had the most liberating discussions. It’s during those discussions I discovered why the long sleeve shirts. Tattoos. It’s during those discussions I learned he got sentenced to prison for killing a man, a year for each bullet in his gun. It’s during those discussions he came to tell me about his religious conversion.

I continued my diatribe, “they had this mustard sauce that lit my mouth on fire and this red sauce that tasted like tomato paste for pizza.” I gritted my teeth as I couldn’t contain my resentment over that red sauce.

“That’s terrible.” He sorted through more camping saws, looking for mistakes.

“It was terrible, and furthermore, my sister said she would go to a BBQ place with me, but when push came to shove, she bailed out. She rolled her eyes and scoffed.”

He looked up from his pile, straight at me. In his discerning Hispanic accent he said "that’s a bummer, you really missed out.”

“I know. It sucks. She is still out there and saw a place in Redondo Beach called Pinky’s. It’s supposed to be world famous. She went to the Promenade in Santa Monica, a big shopping area and saw like six barbeque places.”

He smiled at this. “Oh man, there’s barbeque all over. Pinky’s is famous. It’s good, but it’s not the best.” Living there his whole life, close to half a century, he would know.

I looked straight at him. “What place do you like? Where do you think the best place is?” I needed to know what he knew.

Without hesitation he said “Man, if you want the best, go to Lucille’s.”

“Where’s that?”

“There’s two of them. One is near Disneyland in Anaheim and the other’s near Pasadena.”

“Mmmm, I don’t think she will be able to make it there” I said.

“There is nothing that compares to Lucille’s. It’s the best.”

“Oh man, I blew it.” Life isn’t fair. Henry knows.