Stars and Bars

  ‘Who?’ Henderson shouted.

  ‘You, you!’

  Did she want him to stop, or stop Freeborn?

  Freeborn pounded up, his face florid, his breath coming in hoarse, phlegm-rattling gasps. Henderson looked quickly about him, then snatched a bamboo cane prop from a flower bed. The large sunflower it supported keeled gently over as if in slow motion.

  Henderson held the cane in front of him. Left elbow on hip. Controlled relaxation: fleche attack, cuts to the head. Freeborn stopped abruptly, a look of puzzlement on his face. Shanda’s whimpering died away as they all contemplated Henderson on guard.

  Henderson flourished his cane, wiggling the tip at Freeborn’s face. Nobody moved. Then Henderson suddenly felt tired and foolish. He sensed the beginnings of a blush through his sweat.

  Freeborn turned away.

  ‘Get me a beer, honey,’ he said and spat two or three times on the ground. He turned to his guests. ‘Gentlemen, let’s go inside.’ With uneasy smiles the two men skirted Henderson and went into the trailer. Freeborn followed, and Henderson was left alone.

  He stuck the cane back in the border and attempted to right the fallen sunflower. As he picked it up, the great nodding head, the size of his own face, came away in his hand.

  That afternoon, after a lunch of pan-fried nut rissoles and turnip slaw, Henderson went in search of Duane. Mobility was his chief concern now: he had to be in Atlanta in twenty-four hours for Irene.

  ‘He ain’t here,’ said Alma-May. She didn’t know nothing about ‘no tize’.

  On the way back into the hall from the kitchen he met Freeborn and his two guests. There were no introductions. Freeborn ignored him as he ushered the two men up the stairs. Henderson assumed they were going to see Gage. He wondered what for.

  He went outside and made his way to a ramshackle collection of old sheds some distance away from the main house. Here he found the old black gardener who kept the grounds in order. Henderson asked him if he knew where he might lay his hands on a spare tyre and a gallon of petrol.

  ‘Luxora.’ The old man said. ‘Dr Tire. They’s a gas station there too. You can get gas there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Henderson said, smiling politely.

  Returning to the house, he quickened his pace when he heard the dull throb of music emanating from Duane’s bedroom.

  He knocked on the door, failed to make out any reply and pushed the door open. The walls were covered with shiny posters of rock stars and sportsmen. There was a lingering foetid smell of unwashed, overused sheets garnished with a hint of ashtrays long unemptied. The noise of the music was immense and palpable. It seemed to stir strands of his hair. Four speakers the size of travelling trunks stood in each corner of the room. Bryant sat alone on the bed, crosslegged, smoking, bobbing her head to the rhythms of the drums.

  ‘Bryant!’ he shouted.

  She looked round, got up and turned the music down.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said.

  ‘I’m looking for Duane.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘I can see that. What are you doing here?’

  ‘He said I could listen to his records any time I want.’

  ‘Well, he’s got two of my tyres and a tankful of petrol and I’d like them back.’

  ‘I know. God, he’s only trying to help,’ she said disgustedly.

  ‘It’s a funny way to render assistance. Why did he have to syphon my petrol?’

  ‘He’d run out of gas. He had to have gas to take your tyres to try and match them. I said he could.’

  ‘Very decent of you…Tell him to get it all back together by tomorrow morning. We’re leaving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you’re leaving. I’ve got a business appointment in Atlanta. Make up your mind whether you’re going back to New York or Richmond.’

  Bryant said nothing. She took a trembling drag on her cigarette. Henderson noticed it was hand-rolled.

  ‘I say, that’s not dope, is it?’

  To his utter consternation Bryant started to cry. She began to sob and sniffle. She sat down on the bed. After some thought, Henderson sat down beside her. He felt a disquieting dampness beneath his thighs; it was rather like sitting on a river bank. He stood up.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of smoking grass, or whatever.’ Now she was pushing all her fingers repeatedly through her hair.

  ‘Ah just go away and leave me alone, you…’ She leant over the amplifier and turned the music up again.

  With a sigh, and overlooking the implicit oath, he left the room. On the landing at the head of the stairs he encountered the sauntering figure of Cora.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I hear that you and Freeborn nearly came to blows over Shanda. Very chivalric.’

  ‘We did come to blows. Or rather blow. There was only one actually delivered—American, too.’

  ‘But then you were going to play swordfighting, I hear.’

  ‘Self-defence,’ he said, a little frostily. ‘Anyway I’m off tomorrow. All done. All ‘through’, as you say.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  Henderson explained that in fact it was slow. He then told her of the mysterious offence he had caused Bryant.

  Cora shrugged. ‘What do you expect? She’s probably finding it hard to come to terms with you as a father.’

  Henderson considered there was some Tightness in that observation. He realized he treated Bryant as if she were a slovenly waitress in a restaurant, with hectoring aggression, rather than in any spirit of paternalistic good will. He had never felt at ease with her and after that night in Skaggsville their relationship had acquired even less welcome contours…

  He felt suddenly depressed at the thought of his impending marriage to Melissa. It wasn’t so much Melissa that he was reluctant to take on; it was the prospect of a lifetime’s tense and problematic contact with Bryant and metal-mouthed Irv that got him down. He pursed his lips. Then he realized that by some association of ideas—prompted no doubt by recollections of the view down Bryant’s pyjama top—he was staring vacantly at Cora’s chest. She crossed her arms.

  ‘How old is Duane?’ he asked. ‘As a matter of interest.’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know, really. Thirty-three, thirty-four, I guess.’

  ‘Thirty-three? Thirty-four?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Good God.’ He felt an obscure but powerful sense of worry. ‘I’d somehow got the notion he was seventeen or eighteen. Thirty-three…’

  Cora laughed unrestrainedly. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh, he reflected.

  ‘Are you going straight back?’ she asked.

  ‘Not directly. I’ve got this business meeting in Atlanta first.’ He wasn’t really concentrating; he was busy reconstructing his identikit of Duane.

  ‘With Miss Dubrovnik?’

  ‘Who? Oh yes. Yes.’ He thought wildly. ‘I told you about it. It’s a problem of dating one of the paintings. I’ve taken polaroids, close-ups…technical matter I’m not really equipped to deal with.’

  ‘So she’s some sort of genuine expert. Unlike you.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Is she Yugoslavian? That name—’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. Originally, you know.’ They stood and looked at each other for a beat or two. She doesn’t believe me, he thought. I wouldn’t believe me either.

  ‘You don’t happen to know,’ he said, ‘who those two men were with Freeborn, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you know them? They come from your home town.’

  ‘What? Hove? Surely not.’

  ‘No, stupid. Roach City. They own a gallery in New York.’

  Chapter Nine

  Henderson clattered down the front steps and set off at a brisk walk for Luxora Beach. Although riven with worries at this new problem, he could still muster an intense frustration at having to walk miles to get to a telephone. It was like living in the Wild West, some frontier town in the 18905. The ne
xt thing they’d be telling him that the Indians had cut down the wires to make ornaments…

  He glowered at Freeborn’s trailer and paused. Was it worth risking it? Would Shanda let him in if he wasn’t there? But what if he was? He kept on walking.

  He was drawn up again by faint cries behind him. He looked back, saw it was Alma-May and retraced his steps.

  ‘Mr Dose! Mr Dose!’

  ‘Yes, yes. Here I am.’

  ‘Got a message from Duane. He called Shanda ‘bout ten minutes ago. He says he can get the tyres for your car.’

  ‘Excellent. When?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘But that’s useless.’ He actually stamped his foot in the dirt of the drive. ‘I’m going away tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s them French tyres, he says.’

  Henderson stroked his forehead with the fingers of both hands. He had strong doubts about this ‘French tyres’ excuse. Duane had probably pawned them to buy records. ‘This is madness,’ he said rhetorically. ‘I arrived here on Monday. My car has a puncture. Some ghostly figure volunteers to fix it. A week later it’s still out of action. Madness.’

  ‘What’s a ‘puncture’?’

  The walk into Luxora Beach took place beneath the full glare of the late-afternoon sun. Henderson arrived at main street in his now familiar state of perspiration and irritation. In a petulant assertion of his own rights as an individual he decided to visit a gas station at one end of the street that—he had noticed previously—bore the sign ‘drive-thru burgers’. He crossed the railway tracks and the main road and made his way down the raised sidewalk to the gas station. A pickup and a car were parked outside the flimsy shack. A girl—blonde like Shanda, bold make·up;, gleaming earrings—leant out of the window talking to two other girls in a maroon car. They looked vaguely familiar: he had seen them—laughing—on his last visit to town. They all stopped talking as he approached. A straining extractor fan hauled thick air from the kitchen. There was a powerful smell of fried onions and cooking oil.

  He examined the menu.

  ‘A quarter-pounder please.’

  ‘Onions? Mustard? Pickle? Ketchup?’

  Affirmative on all four counts. He paid and the burger duly arrived: a grey ice-hockey puck in a mean bun, a brown ruff of onions and the sectioned knob of a gherkin poking out beneath it. He took a huge jaw-cracking bite. Oil dripped down his chin onto his tie. He snorted astringency from his nostrils. His eyes watered. Mustard and ketchup squelched between his teeth. Still chewing, he took a long draught of Coke. The girls in the car watched him in horror-struck curiosity. He might have been Neanderthal man wolfing the steaming flesh of a mammoth. Bliss.

  He heard the rap of knuckles on glass and looked up. Beckman sat behind the wheel of the pickup beaming hugely. I can’t escape this bloody family, Henderson thought, and wandered over.

  ‘Hi there, Henderson. Like our squirrelburgers?’

  Henderson managed a smile. ‘Just felt like some meat. I’m not really used to a vegetarian diet, you see.’

  ‘That ain’t meat, man.’ Beckman gave a high, delighted laugh. ‘Or, anyways, surer ‘n’ shit it don’t come from no steer.’

  There was, Henderson had to confess, a faint aftertaste now, the like of which he’d never previously encountered. A sort of renal gaminess, but somehow artificial tasting—as saccharin is to sugar—chemically engendered. He sent his tongue into the crevices and corners of his mouth. He pumped his saliva glands. He could not only taste it, it also filled his nasal passages, seeped along his sinus, like gas in a mineshaft.

  ‘It’s not squirrel, really, is it?’ he said, in the sort of weak voice that pleads to have confirmed that a leg is being pulled.

  ‘Minkburgers,’ Beckman grinned. ‘Weaselburgers.’ He gave a hoot of laughter. ‘Stoatburgers.’

  Henderson dropped his cooling rodentburger in a trash can and gulped down his Coke.

  ‘Come and have a beer,’ Beckman invited.

  Henderson said he had to make a phone call first but would see him in the bar in a minute or two. Slowly he made his way towards the post office. He now felt distinctly queasy. What with the current marmoreal state of his bowels it would probably be with him for weeks.

  He slumped into the phone booth, and requested information to provide him with the number of Mono-park 5000. Then he dialled the hotel. A series of cheerful girl-voices booked him a suite for the following night. Would he like a suite with a whirlpool bath? Why not. This brought to mind images of mixed bathing with Irene and he began to feel slightly better.

  He gulped air. The prism wedged between spine and sternum had had its corners worn down like a pebble on a beach, and had shrunk to the size of a large cooking apple. He badly needed a drink to wash away, or at least mask, the taste of the burger which seemed, if anything, to be getting stronger. He headed for the bar.

  There were about ten pickups and cars parked outside the bar. Inside there was a lot of raucous laughter of Cardew’s ‘heh-heh-heh’ variety and much upending of beer bottles. He saw Beckman at the skittle machine and nervously made his way through the denimmed throng muttering apologies and bestowing edgy smiles. The machine was simplicity itself. A wooden ball was rolled down a chute—the direction and gradient of which one could alter—in an attempt to knock down the skittles. Those bowled over were re-righted by means of string attached to their crowns. The only mechanical device in the game twitched this taut whenever a skittle was floored.

  Beckman crouched intensely over the chute, emitting a holler of glee every time he knocked any skittles over. It seemed a strangely banal pastime for an elementary particle physicist, Henderson thought, but maybe this was simply his way of unwinding after a trying session with the quarks and neutrinos darting quantumly around his lab.

  ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Beckman offered, after a few more games.

  They approached the bar. Two beers were produced, plus a glass (unrequested) for Henderson, accompanied by a look of condescending pity from the etiolated bar-keep and curious glances from the relentlessly joshing good ole boys.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Beckman said comfortingly. ‘They think all you English are fags anyway.’ He pulled at his own bottle. ‘So, how’s it going anyway?’

  ‘Just about finished,’ Henderson said. ‘We’ll be off tomorrow.’

  ‘Hell, I thought you were going to be here for weeks.’

  Henderson explained in broad outline what his job entailed. He also mentioned his immobile car and Duane’s worthless promises. He wondered if there was anything Beckman could do to speed up Duane’s repair work.

  ‘Look, no problem, I’ll drive you to Atlanta,’ Beckman volunteered. Henderson told him of his business meeting at Monopark 5000 (greeted by a whistle of admiration from Beckman’s lips) and his wish to spend a few days touring the more scenic regions of the South.

  ‘No sweat,’ Beckman continued. ‘You take my pickup. Come Saturday, when Duane’s fixed your car I’ll drive it into Atlanta and we can trade. I’ll meet you Saturday, say, four, corner of Peachtree and Edgewood, same as before.’

  ‘Great,’ Henderson said. ‘Saturday at four, then. Turned out to be a lucky day after all. It started badly,’ he explained.

  ‘Hell, I knew it would be a good day for me. Been feelin’ good since this morning.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Why’s that?’

  ‘Simple. Had me a five turd crap before breakfast. Can’t beat it for settin’ you up.’

  ‘Really?’ He paused, there really was nothing one could say in response. He tried not to imagine this source of contentment. ‘I’m very grateful, Beckman. This meeting, it’s very important.’

  ‘No problem. What are friends for?’ His fluttering lids made the remark seem incongruously coy. Henderson felt another twinge of alarm at this announcement of his new status, but he decided not to challenge it. Instead he asked another question.

  ‘Do you happen to know who those two men are who arrived today with Freeborn?’


  ‘You mean Ben and Peter? Nice guys.’

  ‘Who are they? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘They’re friends of Freeborn. Some kind of business partners? They had a big deal going or something. They were down here about a year ago. They’re the guys he sold the paintings to.’

  Henderson screwed up his face. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, something like that.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit. I gotta get back.’

  Henderson sat silently on the drive back to the house pondering the news. What had Freeborn done? Sold the paintings—his legacy, no doubt—to finance some nefarious deal? Mortgaged them in some sort of way? Then his father goes and ruins everything by deciding to sell them himself. H. Dores, Esq. turns up, and sets off a panic. It certainly explained Freeborn’s hostility.

  He was still pondering the ramifications of this plot when he stepped into the-hall. Gage, Freeborn and the two men were standing at the foot of the stairs chatting amicably.

  ‘Henderson,’ Gage called. ‘Come and meet our two friends.’ Gage seemed almost unnaturally cheerful, Henderson thought. He was introduced to the two men; one, Benjamin Sereno; the other, Peter D. Gint. Sereno was small and dark. He had an enormous moustache that seemed constructed on a different scale from his body, but which, Henderson swiftly realized, was deliberately intended to obscure or draw attention from his lips. He had lips like Toulouse-Lautrec: thick, claret-coloured and wet. They made Henderson (still queasy from his rodentburger) even more nauseous: they reminded him of thin fillets of liver, or, due to the hirsute proximity of the moustache, a wound in the flank of an animal. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva. They shook hands. He noticed an ostentatious carbuncled ring set with a red stone. A lot of American males sported these, Henderson had observed, only Serene’s stone was held in an inch-high plinth and must have weighed a pound.

  Gint was burly with receding blond hair. His short collar was prominently monogrammed P.D.G. At some point in his youth his entire face had been ravaged with acne, leaving him with skin pitted like a peach stone. The scourge was still not past: an angry wen pushed his collar askew, a mini-Krakatoa about to blow. Whatever they looked like, Henderson thought with mingled worry and relief, it certainly wasn’t New York gallery owners.