Rick returns for Clare, son, gets the bad news, rides north

RICK returns for CLARE, son, gets the bad news, rides north

HENRY

Rick, no way!.  How are you here?

RICK

I caught a favorable wind in Cairo.  Where’s Clare?

HENRY

Rick, she’s dead.  She died at childbirth, at that upstate Maternity Home that my uncle sent her to.

RICK

Goddamn.  Henry, I wrote her back, I told her

“I’ll be back for you and our baby within 2 weeks.”

HENRY

Yeah, she told me.  She said “Henry, even if they’d let me keep this child, I’m not ready to be a mother.”  She was going to give him up any way, and, well, I guess she did.

RICK

I’m going upstate then.  You still got that bike?

HENRY

Rick, no point.  Look, I went up there with my uncle.  The Mother Superior and the Police Commissioner have a system, see.  They move them like hotcakes up there.  And the troopers don’t cut wannabe fathers any slack.

RICK

Where’s your bike?

HENRY

It’s out back of Ridge’s.  Rick, man, I’m telling you, nothing good comes of the north country, especially when the leaves start to fall.

RICK

You got some gas money?  Some gloves?  Still got that jacket of mine?

HENRY

Be careful, brother. A Navy guy and two USMarahalscame to talk to Alice yesterday.