Henry's suicide attempt

Henry English’s attempt to die comes at a point when grief and fear have narrowed his sense of what he can still do for his family. The crisis is shaped not only by his despair but by a painful reversal: he begins to recognize that trying to keep Isaac close may be harming the son he wants to protect.

Pressures and Immediate Context

Henry is living with impaired mobility and the losses of Mary and Lee. He thinks of losing both in the same year and admits that fear of being left alone helped keep Isaac at home. Now he believes Isaac was responsible for the fatal incident involving Otto Carson, and puts the blame on himself as well: in his view, Isaac was never supposed to stay with him. Henry’s attempt therefore emerges from intertwined guilt and attachment—his belief that his choices helped bring about the crisis, and his fear that the family may be lost to him altogether.

The Attempt and Reversal

Henry leaves the house in his wheelchair and takes a bottle of whiskey and an old bottle of OxyContin out to the backyard. He has decided that dying would be best for his family, but the decision does not hold steady: as he moves across the yard, he begins to reconsider. The deer scatter as he wheels past, while his attention turns to the people he believes he is trying to spare.

Henry recognizes that his family will suffer either way, and that taking his life out of shame would make them bear another burden. He puts the pill bottle back in his pocket after taking a few pills, then wraps himself in a blanket and remains outside. The scene ends with him looking across the woods and the Valley toward the river, not with a confirmed death: his intention has faltered, and he falls asleep before the narrative establishes what follows.

An Earlier Measure of Guilt

The attempt is also shadowed by Henry English’s memory of the Steelcor furnace accident, in which two fellow workers died. He revisits his own decision to jump clear and survive, then imagines that standing his ground would have secured compensation for their families. His thoughts turn survival into an accusation: the others, in his view, saved their families, while he failed to do so. This older reckoning gives the present crisis a history beyond the events surrounding Isaac and Otto Carson; Henry’s self-blame has been shaped by an earlier loss and by his persistent belief that he has not carried his responsibilities well enough.

Narrative Contrast

The narrative then shifts to Bud Harris, whose effort to protect Billy Poe takes a sharply different course. Harris acts against Murray Clark, the witness whose testimony threatens Billy, and later reflects that both boys were worth saving. Set beside Henry’s crisis, this turn broadens the novel’s treatment of responsibility: love for family or friends can prompt a person to accept a burden, but it can also become a justification for choices that place others in danger. The juxtaposition does not establish that Henry knows of Harris’s actions or that one causes the other; it places their separate decisions within the same widening conflict over loyalty, guilt, and the cost of trying to save someone.