Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [36]
Every weekend during Henry’s incarceration, Annette rode a bus that left the city around midnight and took six hours to reach upstate New York. She was there when the sun came up, and when visiting hours began, she and Henry held hands and played cards and talked until those hours were over. She rarely missed a weekend, despite the grueling schedule, and she kept his spirits up by giving him something to look forward to. Henry’s mother sent him a letter while he was locked up, saying if he did not stay with Annette, “you might find another woman, but you will never find your wife.”
They were married when he got out, in a simple ceremony at Mt. Moriah Church. He was slim then, handsome and tall; she wore her hair in bangs, and her high smile gleamed in the wedding photos. There was a reception at a nightclub called Sagittarius. They spent the weekend at a hotel in the garment district. Monday morning, Annette was back at work.
She was twenty-two. Henry was twenty-three. Within a year, they would lose a baby, lose a job, and see the boiler in their apartment burst in winter, leaving them with icicles hanging from their ceiling.
And then the real trouble started.
The Reb said that a good marriage should endure tribulations, and Henry and Annette’s had done that. But early on, those “tribulations” were drug abuse, crime, and avoiding the police. Not exactly Fiddler on the Roof. Both Henry and Annette had been addicts, who cleaned up once Henry came home from prison. But after their baby died and the boiler burst and Annette lost her job—and a broke Henry saw his drug-dealing brother with a fat bankroll of hundred-dollar bills—they fell back into that life, and they fell all the way. Henry sold drugs at parties. He sold them from his house. Soon the customers were so frequent, he made them wait on the corner and come up one at a time. He and Annette became heavy users and drinkers, and they lived in fear of both the police and rival drug lords. One night, Henry was taken for a ride with some Manhattan dealers, a ride he thought might end in his death; Annette was waiting with gun in hand if he didn’t come back.
But when Henry finally hit bottom—that night behind those trash cans—Annette did, too.
“What’s keeping you from going to God?” Henry asked her that Easter morning.
“You are,” she admitted.
The next week, he and Annette got rid of the drugs and the guns. They threw away the paraphernalia. They went back to church and read the Bible nightly. They fought back periodic weaknesses and helped one another get through.
One morning, a few months into this rehabilitation, there was a knock at their door. It was very early. A man’s voice said he wanted to buy some product.
Henry, in bed, shouted for him to go away, he didn’t do that anymore. The man persisted. Henry yelled, “There ain’t nothing in here!” The man kept knocking. Henry got out of bed, pulled a sheet around himself, and went to the door.
“I told you—”
“Don’t move!” a voice barked.
Henry was staring at five police officers, their guns drawn.
“Step away,” one said.
They pushed through his door. They told Annette to freeze. They searched the entire place, top to bottom, warning the couple that if they had anything incriminating, they had better tell them now. Henry knew everything was gone, but his heart was racing. Did I miss anything? He glanced around. Nothing there. Nothing there—
Oh, no.
Suddenly, he couldn’t swallow. It felt like a baseball was in his throat. Sitting on an end table, one atop the other, were two red notebooks. One, Henry knew, contained Bible verses from Proverbs, which he had been writing down every night. The other was older. It contained names, transactions, and dollar amounts of hundreds of drug deals.
He had taken out the old notebook to destroy it. Now it could destroy him. An officer wandered over. He lifted one