Stars and Bars: A Novel

  “Oh, doesn’t one? But I do. I hate the English.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” He sensed a hot pelt of embarrassment cover his entire body. He backed off a couple of steps and waved his hands about.

  “Perhaps if I, if we were to get to know each other I might, um, be able to—ha, ha—persuade you to, to, reconsider. Or at least exclude me from the general slur.” Somehow he had reached the door. He wished he hadn’t given that little laugh.

  She puffed on her cigarette and made no reply.

  “Well, I won’t disturb you further. Sorry to have—”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dores.”

  “Bye.”

  He shut the door and walked slowly down the corridor. He understood what Shanda meant. What an astonishing woman, he thought. What a … bitch, there was no other word for it, blind or no. He shook his head in sagacious sorrow. He wondered what had brought it on. Had her blindness been caused by a crash in an English make of car, a Jaguar or Aston Martin, say? Or had she been a forceps delivery handled by a clumsy and strong-fingered English gynecologist? He turned the corner realizing with some distaste that his armpits were moist and squelching. No, there was something deeper there: that sort of aberrant hate—if he was any judge of human nature—was to do with affairs of the heart turned sour. Unrequited love. Probably ditched by an Englishman for a girl who could see. Some right-thinking, sensible, sane, pragmatic Englishman. Turned her into a bitter, chain-smoking, reclusive Anglophobe. He trotted down the stairs, feeling marginally reassured by his armchair psychology, and saw Freeborn come in the front door. He resisted the temptation to check his watch.

  “You still fuckin’ here?” Freeborn said, pointing at him. “You got about a hour and a half.”

  Henderson slowly arrived at the foot of the stairs.

  “Look, I might as well tell you,” he said nervously, “that I’m not leaving here until I have completed my business with your father.”

  Freeborn, who had been heading across the hall in the direction of the kitchen, abruptly changed course and strode powerfully over. Henderson raised his hands to chest level, then tugged at the loose skin on his neck.

  Freeborn put his huge face with its dense, neatly clipped beard very close to Henderson’s.

  “Listen, you English fuck. You ain’t gonna do no business with my father. It’s been done, see? Those pictures are sold already. He’s a old man. He don’t know what he’s been talking about, so get yo’ shit out of here.”

  “Your father has asked my company to do a valuation on his paintings and I don’t intend to leave until he tells me to.”

  Freeborn looked at him. “You been warned, man.” He spread his hands reasonably. “I can’t say fairer than that. Just don’t fuck with me.”

  “The last thing on earth I want to do is ‘fuck’ with you,” Henderson replied bravely. “I suggest you take the matter up with your father if you’re unhappy about my being here. I’m simply doing my job.”

  “Yeah, and look, keep away from Shanda, heah? I catch you messin’ with her, boy, and you—”

  “I was only making a telephone call, for God’s sake.”

  “That’s my fuckin’ phone, man. You keep yo’ chickenshit hands off of it, no-good English mofo.” With that he turned and marched off into the kitchen.

  Henderson went slowly back upstairs to his room. This sudden hostility from all quarters left him feeling weak and thoughtful. He wondered, once again, if Beeby knew what he was talking about.… And what, moreover, had Freeborn meant by the statement that the pictures had been sold already? Or was that all his clenched fist of a brain could come up with as a ruse? Like a lot of people, Freeborn could at times give the impression of being astonishingly stupid, but it was too risky an assumption to elevate into a truth. He resolved, for what seemed like the hundredth time, to quit the Gage Mansion the minute his evaluation was done.

  Feeling sorry for himself in this way made him think of Irene, his comforter. Perhaps he might just still manage to entice her south after all if he wrote to her. She might not answer the phone but surely she’d open a letter. After he had finished here—if all went well—he could justifiably claim a couple of days off. Irene might relent at the prospect of a weekend in Charleston or Savannah.…

  He took a writing pad and envelope from his case and sat down and wrote her a letter to this effect, well larded with apologies and excuses for his craven behavior on the night of the “mugging,” and concluding with as overt a declaration of love and affection as he had yet allowed himself (“with absolutely all of my love, H”). He was wary of sentiment. Or rather he was all in favor of sentiment but uncertain, not to say ignorant, of how best to express it.

  As he sealed the envelope it prompted thoughts of the last letter he had written. He wondered vaguely whether Lance Corporal Drew would be able to enlighten him about his father’s death.… And what would his father have made of his son’s current predicament? he asked himself. Perhaps the saddest and most lasting consequence of Captain Arnold Dores’ death in the Burmese jungles in 1943, Henderson thought, was that he, his son, had no vision of the man, no personal private image to cherish or be consoled by aside from purely fanciful or wishful ones. Such photographs that the family possessed were almost counterproductive. In blurry black and white they showed a neat, thin man in baggy flannels with a small moustache and very short hair. Even the more professional shots were undermined by a forced and unnatural smile that exposed the rather wide—and to his son’s eyes, unsightly—gap between his father’s front teeth. These secondhand images were further disappointing in that they confirmed the distressing fact that Henderson drew most of his features—his square face, his rather small nose—from his mother. He didn’t look like his father at all.

  If the only sort of immortality we were guaranteed, he thought, going to the window and looking out at the wilderness of the back garden, was the image of ourselves that lived on in the minds of those who survived us, then his father had been singularly unfortunate. He tapped the edge of the envelope against his thumbnail. Even his widow’s reminiscences were commonplace and uninspiring. “A charming, sweet man” was the last verdict his mother had passed, when questioned by her son; but she said that about everyone she didn’t actively dislike. Perhaps she’d forgotten, he thought. But that made him angry: people had a duty to remember. Friends and family ought to talk and gossip about the dead as if they were alive.…

  He turned away from the view and paced unhappily about the room. Maybe he should get Melissa to summon Bryant home. Tell her that this mad southern scientist was experimenting on her daughter in his “labrotory” … He sighed with exasperation. Then he realized he’d forgotten about Freeborn’s latest threat. He’d have to work on the amenable Shanda, make sure that he could phone whenever Freeborn was out of the way and perhaps get her to relay any messages secretly to him. How typical of Loomis Gage not to allow a phone in his house! he thought angrily. It was precisely the sort of selfish affectation millionaires went in for.… He told himself to calm down. He found he was still irritated by his encounter with the blind and mysterious Cora. It was lucky he was so pro-American, he reasoned, otherwise the Gage family would have given him serious grounds for a bit of Yank bashing himself. But they weren’t Yanks, he realized, they were “Rebs” or “Confeds” or whatever they called themselves.

  His complaints were interrupted by the sound of a car arriving. He wondered if it was Gage. But the blast of rock music that ensued some minutes later informed him that the driver had been Duane.

  The noise forced him downstairs to the kitchen, where Alma-May made him a processed-cheese and gherkin sandwich for lunch. She professed ignorance to the two questions he asked of her, namely, where was Gage and when was he due back?

  “Duane said your car had a flat this morning,” she said.

  “I thought it was something like that.”

  “Mr. Gage toi’ him to get it fixed.”

  “Oh. I’m very grateful.
Do you think he could put on the spare, if it’s not too much trouble?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  chapter five

  AFTER lunch, Henderson realized there was nothing for it but to walk into Luxora Beach and post his letter. At least it was something to do.

  At the front door he saw Shanda teetering around outside her mobile home on her high heels.

  “Shanda,” he called softly, and went over.

  “Hi. How’re you doin’?” She had both her hands pressed into the small of her back, her belly straining fiercely against the material of her smock. Henderson felt a little uncomfortable talking to someone who was so ostentatiously pregnant, but he persevered.

  “Um, look, Shanda, I was going to ask, that’s to say I was wondering if you might just possibly see your way to doing me a little favor,” he began confidentially, but then stopped as he saw her eyes cloud with incomprehension.

  “It’s my back,” she said slowly. “It’s killing me.”

  Henderson pinched his nose. There was no alternative; he’d have to speak American, otherwise they would be here for hours.

  “Well, shucks,” he began again, trying to recall his Huckleberry Finn and Ring Lardner. “I reckon I jist plumb done gone and forgit to ask you to do me a service, like, goshdarn it.” It was a little overdone, he admitted, but, like an orchestra tuning up, he had to get in key.

  “Oh, yeah?” Shanda’s look was uneasy and relieved at the same time, like a monoglot UN delegate whose malfunctioning translation machine has just been restored, only to hear news of a military coup back home.

  “If’n you-all done git some calls,” Henderson persevered, “could you-all tell me? On the sly like?”

  “Well …”

  “I’d sure be mighty grateful.”

  “OK. I guess.” She looked around. “I don’t know if Freeborn …” She frowned, then smiled. “What the hell, he ain’t around much. He don’t tell me nothing, neither. I’ll tell you when he’s away, so you can use the phone too.” She smiled again—conspiratorially—and rubbed the back of her neck with a hand.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Henderson said. “Our li’l ol’ secret. Have a good day now.”

  He walked off, rather impressed with his grasp of vernacular. Now at least the outside world would be able to make contact. One step in the right direction.

  It seemed surprisingly hot for April, and during the trudge into town along the featureless lane he was obliged to remove first his tie and then his jacket. A mile or so up the road, Freeborn roared dustily past him in his big car, one hand high out of the window, his middle finger spearing the air. Henderson, checking instinctively that there were no witnesses, gave him a V-sign back. It all seemed a bit feeble and adolescent, but, as with Bryant, he found it no problem descending to Freeborn’s level.

  Sweaty and not a little footsore he arrived some fifteen minutes later at the main street of Luxora Beach. In front of him was the railway line and beyond that the road. To his left was the shopping area. The neon of the bar signs still burned palely in the afternoon air. The town was very quiet—in fact he could see no one on the streets at all. Above the main street, strung on a wire cable, a set of traffic lights blinked redundantly. There were no cars to stop.

  He crossed the railway and headed toward the wooden spire of the Baptist church. Down these side roads were small businesses and stores: LUXORA BEACH AUTO ACCESSORY; LUXORA BEACH AGRICULTURAL WHOLESALERS; ELECTRICAL GOODS; DR. TIRE; LUXORA BEACH FERTILIZERS, HEBERT HACKETT RAFT, JR., PROP.—“REAL MANURE”; LUXORA BEACH GRAIN AND SEED MERCHANTS.

  At the post office—not far from the church—a wooden building flying the Stars and Stripes, and below it the Stars and Bars, he posted his letter (express) to Irene. He noted the glass-boothed public telephone outside it and wondered if he should try and call her again, but on reflection decided to let the letter do its work first.

  He walked back to Main Street, business over. What an effort, he thought, just to post a letter. The afternoon sun was still beating down fiercely and there was still little sign of life. He stood in some shade on the raised wooden sidewalk and looked up and down the dusty road. Where am I? he thought. What am I doing in this place? He longed for a car or a lorry to drive through town. On the door of the shop next to him was a notice: CLOSED SUNDAY. SEE YOU IN CHURCH.

  He thought suddenly—illogically—of his father. Perhaps it was because he felt as strange and out of place here as his father must have at times in the fetid jungles of Burma. From placid drizzling Hove to hot dangerous Burma … Henderson looked about him. He tried to imagine Arnold Dores standing beside him now. The thin man in his baggy trousers, his short oiled hair, his neat moustache. What would he say? What advice would he offer? Would he smile, and expose the unfortunate gap between his front teeth? “Now look, son, if I were you, I’d—” What? He exhaled. The fragile chimera of Arnold Dores disappeared.

  A large maroon car started up in the parking lot in front of the shops. It drove slowly along before turning to bump across the railway tracks and wheel onto the main road. He saw that there were two girls in the front seat with blond hair like Shanda’s and a lot of makeup. They cruised leisurely past him, staring at him with candid curiosity. They wore scant T-shirt tops, tight across their breasts. The car was battered and filthy. Old cigarette packs, magazines and handbooks were piled in a loose drift between the dashboard top and the windscreen. The car moved on slowly down the road; it seemed to trail a frisson of sexuality, like smoke—of the most tawdry and flashy sort, he conceded, but impressively potent for all that. Somewhere there was a life in Luxora Beach.

  Intrigued, and smiling to himself, he crossed the road. There was a look, he thought, watching the car disappear from sight, that was common to a huge proportion of American girls. It ran the gamut from Shanda to millionaires’ daughters. First there was the mane of hair or an attempt at a mane—blond preferably, but not essential. Then there was a lot of mascara and all the rest: blusher, eye shadow and lipstick (usually pink). And then something must glint or glisten on the head—earrings most commonly, but a necklace or hairslide would do. He added some more details to the archetype—pushed-up breasts, white strappy high-heeled shoes—as he headed for the Gage Mansion road. Then he saw Beckman’s pickup parked in front of the bar with Bryant sitting alone in the front seat. He changed course.

  “Have a nice day?” he asked caustically.

  “Oh, hi. Yeah, it wasn’t bad. He’s not so weird as I thought. He’s weird, but not that weird.”

  “In future do you think you could possibly let me know when you’re going on an outing?”

  “I was just keeping out of your way. I thought you’d be pleased.” She picked at the material on her trousers. “Seen the paintings?”

  “No. Gage has been away”

  “Beckman says they’re already sold.”

  “Well he’s wrong,” he said impatiently. “Where is he, anyway?”

  “In the bar.”

  “Right. I’ll ask him.”

  Henderson paused at the door of the bar, second thoughts crowding in on him. Then he pushed through the door.

  For four o’clock in the afternoon the bar was astonishingly busy (so this was where everybody was)—and very dark. There must have been two dozen men in the long, thin room. As his eyes grew accustomed to the murky atmosphere he saw that they were all white, all wearing work clothes, and all more or less drunk. Tentatively, he approached the bar. In addition to purveying alchohol it also sold, he noticed, handkerchiefs, a range of pens and combs. All the fitments and plastic advertisements for beer were decades old.

  “What’ll it be?” the pasty-faced, oily-haired barman asked him. No southern courtesies here.

  “I’m looking for Beckman Gage.”

  “Beckman!” the barman shouted down to the end of the room. There, Henderson saw an ancient mechanical skittle machine and Beckman bent over it.

  Beckman gave up his game and wandered over, beer bot
tle in hand. He wore similar clothes to the men in the bar—denim and a checked cotton shirt. Odd garb for a laboratory, Henderson thought, but then again, he probably swabbed the floors.

  “Hi,” Beckman said. “Beer?”

  “Please.”

  Beckman’s longish, straw-colored hair gave him an initial appearance of youthfulness, but when his face was scrutinized its lines and wrinkles were more apparent. Henderson guessed he was in his mid-thirties—far too old for Bryant, he reassured himself.

  A long-necked beer bottle was banged down on the bar and its top flipped off with an opener.

  “Could I have a glass, please?” Henderson asked without thinking. The barman looked at him with heavy suspicion—as if he’d just asked for the ladies’ room—before raking around on some shelves beneath the bar and presenting him with a thick, finely scratched and semi-transparent glass.

  “Cheers,” Henderson said. Beckman smiled, his eyelids fluttering like an ingenue’s. He seemed to blink about two times a second, Henderson calculated: it must be like seeing the world lit by a stroboscopic sun. To his alarm he sensed his own blink rate going up in sympathy.

  “Thanks for taking Bryant to your, ah, lab.”

  “Hey, a pleasure. Nice kid. Sure talks a lot.” Blink-blink-blink-blink.

  Pause.

  “She’s my stepdaughter. Or soon will be.”

  “I know. Congratulations.” Bat-bat-bat-bat.

  Henderson turned away and forcibly held his own fluttering eyelids steady with thumb and forefinger. Making eye contact with Beckman was instant conjunctivitis. He addressed the beer in his glass.

  “What is it exactly that you do at your lab?”

  “Well, I’m what’s known as an elementary-particle physicist. You know, quarks, neutrinos, antimatter—that sort of thing.”

  “An elementary-particle physicist?” Henderson strained to keep the laughing incredulity out of his voice. The poor guy. “Fascinating.”

  “I think so.”

  There was another pause. Then Beckman said, “Listen, please don’t worry about my blinking. It happened in Nam. I nearly got blown away.”