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Hensen March

About

Hensen March (pseudonym) is a private-practice

psychotherapist with a Ph.D. and license in clinical psychology.

Grief fueled his desire to write this book. His son was a writer.

He began writing "Next" the day he buried him.

Front photo of the book "NEXT" By Hensen March

Back photo of the book "NEXT" By Hensen March

Random paragraphs from “Next“

“He said little after that. His mind wandered through the whisper-
moan trees. He felt the coin in his pocket and saw the sad eyes of the
hermit. He asked Miss Elizabeth about her great uncle. She told him
she was five years old when her great uncle came back from the
Great War. He didn’t speak and sat on the porch where the curved
railing turned right at the left corner of the house. He sat in the
rocking chair from daylight till dark. He wouldn’t speak again until
Miss Elizabeth was ten years old—she remembered the day. It was
midafternoon in the late summer. Her great uncle stood up from the
rocking chair and began to talk. He thanked everyone for the care he
had received, put his belongings in a large canvas bag, walked down
the road and over the hill and never returned.
Miss Elizabeth said she had used portions of the visits with her
father to look for her great uncle. She drove through the hills and
down into the small valleys and hollers and asked around about a
man who lived away and apart. She had an old picture of her great
uncle from back in the day when cars had small wagon wheels with
wooden spokes and solid rubber strips that covered the rims. The
picture showed him clean-shaven and standing next to his older
brother who was seated. Both wore three-piece suits with pocket
watches. His older brother had long white hair and a full white
mustache and was known to carry a pearl-handled pistol and
reportedly had been in a number of situations where it had been
necessary to draw and fire.

The brothers had seen changes in the country during the trailing
years of the nineteenth century and the preteen years of the
twentieth. It had been years since an armed altercation. During the
last days of the century, the pistol was pulled and fired in close
situations with poisonous snakes and to practice with tin cans and
the occasional whiskey bottle.
The twentieth century brought killing sanctioned by the
government and carried out by soldiers. Soldiering had taken the
younger brother’s voice and began Miss Elizabeth’s belated search
for a man who lived away and apart. Miss Elizabeth’s story had
carried the car out of the hills onto flat land with afternoon sun. She
began to finish the story of the search for her great uncle, recalling
the day she had entered a single street carved out of the high side of
a mountain. He listened with his mind’s eye and saw the black car on
a narrow, carved-out road making a slow left turn around the upper
edge of the mountain, with the mountain on the left side of the car
and hundreds of feet of air on the right side of the car.
The story described a day seven months ago, and his mind
placed him in the front right seat as the story continued. He saw it
through the windshield. The view shifted left around the curve, and
the car continued left into a deep fold in the mountain where eleven
houses appeared in the windshield. Seven houses backed up to the
mountain and faced away from vertical back yards. The houses on
the right side of the road had back yards filled with downward-
facing heavy air and no back doors or windows. The right side of the
road had suffered trauma, and only four perched houses remained.
The jagged remains of the unfortunate had poured down hundreds of
feet of dark coal dirt. The car had turned left, and the windshield had
been greeted by the rotten-tooth smile of a forgotten mountain-perch
town.
The last of the town was close to the end of the single street.
Money and interest in coal had been lost. The missing-house town
sat in front of a wide, dead-end turnaround where the car stopped at
a porch marked “General.” The porch had rocking chairs that were
occupied by opinions and stories from the last of those who carried
the dark images of the blackness that waited in the deepest part of
the mine. The mine was closed; the elevator down was turned off.
The last mark from the last machine lay open in the blackness,
undisturbed.

Clever tall stories poured over and through porch railings of
buildings marked “General.” The same was true in the perch town.
The best stories and tellers were often found inside. Around pot-
bellied stoves slunk a creature that appeared as a twinkle in eye,
face, and mouth during the telling of tall stories with rhythm where
listeners participated in movement, expression, and comment—an
understated theater that entertained all. The sitting and standing
circle around the stove was where Miss Elizabeth said she was told
that a tall, slim man who lived away and apart could be found two
mountains to the east and on top of the next mountain to the north.
He saw the car pull out of the perch town, turn right into the fold and
out again, and right around the last turn. The story was finished, and
he remained in the front seat on flat land passing before-seen barns”

Short Story

Trigger warning - the story contains race issues in the early 1960s South.

Red and Harry

Billy Roscoe Brown was born on a Tuesday afternoon in February. His mother had become confused as to the year of his birth. She was certain it was a Tuesday during the last days of gray and brown before spring. She recalled an afternoon storm with lightening, thunder, and high wind. White, sharp light flashed through the windows—wind drove sheets of rain on wooden clapboards and rattled wavy glass windows. Her name was Harriet most called her “Harry.” Harry was in the back corner room with a dark-skinned woman that did housekeeping for women in a family way.

On that Tuesday the crown of Billy’s head appeared with Harry’s vagina wrapped tightly around his ears. The woman helping with the birth stepped back and gasped. Billy’s hair was exceptionally long and electrifyingly red.

The woman did what she could.

“Push Miss Harry!”

Harry did not deliver quietly.

***************

Harry’s house had a white-picket fence. It had been forty some odd years—well, near’ fifty years since that Tuesday. The fence had faded to gray the gate drooped and tall, brown weeds lay in the front yard.

It was election time when people went campaigning door-to-door. The boy had agreed to help his father hand out cards. His father parked the car at the edge of a one-street town. The boy’s father knew all two hundred fourteen people in the town. As they approached, the father explained who lived in the first house on their left. His father said he had known the woman who owned the house. Her name was Harriet—she had passed on some years back.

***************

The hot part of summer found Harry sitting on the front porch. She wore bib overalls, white tee shirt and over-the-ankle boots—untied, no socks with leather tongues that flapped when she ran. Harry was fifteen with strawberry blonde hair in a bowl cut. She sat in the rocking chair with her right leg draped over the chair arm.

Over her right leg she had been watching a man on a black horse in the distance. The man and horse had come out of the woods and turned left onto the road—Harry judged it to be close to a hundred yards. The man’s left hand held the reins above the saddle horn. His back was straight and his feet rested lightly in the stirrups. The horse stepped high with a smooth gait and shiny coat.

The rider and horse were different and had an out-of-town look. Harry was used to local riders who sat heavy in the saddle and rested their hands on the saddle horn. Local horses were shorter, poorly shod and had coats with patches of gray, dried mud.

Harry spoke to herself, “Black mare, Tennessee walker—five-gaited, ‘bout twenty-one hands, fancy pants rider.” She rocked a little faster. The man and mare got closer. She stopped looking at the man, hoping he and the horse would pass by. They did not.

*************

The boy’s father continued, “It was August—I took the census; rode a black mare. Harriet was sitting on that porch—she looked to be about your age…fourteen maybefifteen. A brand new car sat in front of the fence…it had a big chrome grill in the front and a powerful V8 engine under the hood. It was a car meant to out run government revenuers. The back of the car had heavy springs that made the body sit high above the rear tires. The car body sat level when the tank in the trunk was full of moonshine.

Harriet said there were no adults at home. I asked the census questions standing outside the picket fence. Harriet said her family farmed. A cotton field lay to the right of the house and ran back in a narrow strip to the woods. There were only two acres, not enough to support a family or a new, fast car. I knew the adults were in the woods cooking sour mash.”

“Who lives here now?”

“Billy, Harriet’s son. He should be close to fifty by now.”

“Does he make moonshine?”

“No, he does something else for a living.”

“What.”

“Well, Miss Harriet was a white lady and Billy’s father was a black gentleman with light skin and dark red hair. Billy was born with his father’s complexion, but Billy’s hair was a fiery red. People call him “Red” and he has done the same thing since he was fourteen.”

“What?”

“Make babies with light skin and red hair.”

A woman and a girl walked across the street and stopped at Red’s gate. This had interrupted the boy’s next question. The boy’s father tipped his hat. The woman pushed hard on the gate. The wood scraped against the brick walk leading to the front porch. The boy watched the two make their way to the door. The woman knocked, the door opened and Red stepped out and to the side; the woman and the girl went inside. Red looked at the boy and closed the door.

The boy had handing-out-cards on his mind when he pushed the gate and knocked on the door. Red opened the door. He knew it was Red. He had never seen hair that bright red. Red was tall and the door was wide open. The woman and girl were sitting on a small wooden bench next to an open bedroom door. The woman had a shiny, black purse in her lap and an envelope with money in her hand.

The thought dawned and shone full measure on the boy’s face. He felt it and Red saw it.

“Have a good day, son.”

The door closed slowly

***************

It was election time. The boy knocked on eighty plus doors that day handing out cards and asking people to vote. He stepped inside one home and was tackled by an insane woman with wild hair. The woman opened a back room door and came at a dead run screaming—three men pulled her off of the boy. One woman answered the door naked. She took the card, studied it for a moment and agreed to vote. She smiled. It was his first naked woman and she knew it.

***************

It was election time. It was the day he met Harry’s son.

Poems

The Edge of When You Left

The sun leaned back and watched

gray wind push cold air

through seconds when you were less near

Now soft air comes around open bud

And the edge of when you left begins

Now you rise with us

and walk softly through our dreams

Grief’s fist opens briefly

where you rest gently in open palm

We carry you forward

Letting go

But not leaving

Sometime

Our heart is heavy with should-have stones on our way to sometime

Sometime when stones become dust and loss turns and smiles for the time we were given

One of the many Amazon five star reviews of the book:

This book is one I’ll never forget.

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2023

Based on actual events, this story takes you on a rollercoaster ride as the young protagonist draws strength from acts of kindness toward him and memories of his mother’s love—strength that sustains him through heartbreaking times of cruelty and indifference. This boy’s journey from one uncertainty to the next is like a handbook for survival and triumph in the face of grim adversity. You can’t help but come away from the book with a keen reminder of the way warm memories can offer respite from stress and fear in the moment. The story also gives compelling testament to the powers of planning and perseverance in the face of danger and neglect. It’s an inspiring story that is all the more memorable because it is exceptionally well written. Hensen March creates rich, vivid images interspersed with humor and intriguing perspectives on life that continue to come to mind long after finishing the book. The author’s skill in weaving the protagonist’s thoughts and “internal monologue” into the telling of the story gives such insight to this remarkable character. I highly recommend “Next”.

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