Stars and Bars

  ‘Please sit down,’ he said. ‘You too, Brian.’

  ‘T,’ said Bryant. ‘Bryantuh.’

  ‘You’re a girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I knew it.’ He glanced proudly at Henderson. ‘I may be an old man but I can still recognize females—even if they’ve got men’s names.’

  Henderson looked around. No pictures on the walls. The room was large and wood panelled. Twin ceiling fans stirred the warm night air. The furniture was old, worn but comfortable looking. Nowhere was there any sign of ostentatious wealth. He felt a brief twinge of unease.

  Bryant was engrossed in the silent TV.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink, Mr Dores? Bourbon, Martini?’

  ‘A beer would be very welcome.’

  ‘A beer would be very welcome,’ Gage chuckled to himself. ‘I like that.’ He pressed a bell push on the wall.

  ‘So you’re the man who thinks he can sell my paintings for me.’ He looked Henderson up and down. ‘How old are you?’

  Why was there so much speculation about his age these days? ‘Thirty-nine,’ he said. He heard a car pull up outside.

  ‘Thirty-nine,’ Gage repeated. ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘Sixty-five?’ Henderson guessed, and was rewarded with a bleat of sardonic laughter.

  ‘I’m as old as the century, my boy. But I’m as healthy as my sons. Hell, I’m healthier.’

  Henderson didn’t know what to say.

  The door opened and a dark, big man came in. He wore a tight embroidered denim suit and had a scalloped warlock’s beard.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. Didn’t know you had company.’

  ‘Come on in. This is Mr Dores. His daughter, Bryant. This is my son, Freeborn.’

  ‘Very pleased to know you, sir,’ he said sincerely to Henderson, shaking him vehemently by the hand. ‘And you, Miss Dores.’ He took some paces backward. ‘If you all will just excuse me I won’t derange you further.’

  He had glossy, springy hair like his father, Henderson saw, except it was black. He looked like a professional wrestler or an amusement arcade proprietor: someone on the very fringes of the entertainment business. He had heavy gold-coloured rings on several fingers. He smiled at everybody and left.

  A dull-looking middle-aged woman came in. She looked tired and hostile.

  ‘Alma-May,’ Gage said, ‘will you make up Cora’s old room for Mr Dores’s daughter. We have an extra guest.’

  ‘What?’ The outrage was genuine. ‘No way!’

  ‘Alma…’

  ‘God sakes.’ Muttering, she left.

  ‘Don’t go to any trouble,’ Henderson said quickly, ‘we were planning to stay in a hotel.’

  ‘Well, abandon your plans, Mr Dores. I won’t hear of it. Damn. Forgot to ask her to bring your beer. I’d better get it myself.’ He went out through a door at the far end of the room. Outside, Henderson heard Alma-May’s voice raised in passionate argument.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done,’ he said accusingly at Bryant, but she ignored him.

  ‘Mr Dores?’

  He looked round. Freeborn’s bearded face smiled at him from the doorway.

  ‘May I have a word, sir? If it’s not too much trouble. In private.’

  ‘Of course,’

  Henderson followed him out through the front door onto the porch. Freeborn, he noted, was not only large and tall but also very fat. But it was all held roughly in place by the strength and tightness of his shirt and trousers.

  Freeborn smiled and scratched his beard. At last, Henderson thought, somebody sane.

  ‘Excuse me asking, sir, but am I right in thinking you are the man from the New York auctioneers which wants to sell my Daddy’s paintings?’

  So there were paintings. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Henderson said amiably. ‘We have the privilege to—’

  ‘I think, to be fair, that I should inform you of a certain fact which has a bearing on your business.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That if you don’t get your fuckin’ ass out of this house by noon tomorrow I’m gonna bust yo’ fuckin’ head with it.’ His voice was still reasonable, the smile still in place.

  Henderson felt something slip and slide in his intestines.

  ‘Look here—’

  ‘You gonna be one sorry fucker if you ain’t gone. Know what I mean? Sorry.’

  Henderson nodded. Freeborn patted his shoulder.

  ‘You got the idea. Nice meeting you, Mr Dores.’

  Henderson stood alone for a couple of minutes breathing very shallowly in an attempt to restrain the trembling that suffused his body. The last time anyone had threatened him in such a direct, virulent and intimate way had been at prep-school. Nothing in his experience as an adult had prepared him for such seemingly disinterested aggression.

  He walked carefully back inside. Gage and Bryant sat side by side on a couch watching TV.

  ‘There’s your beer,’ Gage said, unconcerned by his absence. ‘Relax. We’ll talk business in the morning.’

  Henderson sat down docilely and sipped his beer. His head seemed to be full of clamouring voices all shouting competing instructions and plans of action. This must be what it’s like for Ike on a busy morning in the diner, he thought aimlessly, feeling a new admiration for the man’s expertise…He concentrated. Should he tell Gage of Ws son’s unprovoked menace and threat? But how could he? He’d barely been in the Gage mansion for five minutes. ‘Excuse me, Mr Gage, but your son says he’s going to bust my head with my ass.’ No, it wasn’t on. He had to speak to Beeby, that was what, and at once.

  ‘Mr Gage? Could I make a phone call.’

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t have a telephone in my house. But Freeborn has one in his trailer. He won’t mind.’

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ Henderson said. ‘Hate to disturb him. Not important.’

  He sat on wordlessly with Gage and Bryant trying to concentrate on the television. Within minutes he was totally lost, as the programme—a love story, he surmised—elided confusingly with the commercials every two minutes, it seemed. More confusingly, the same people—or astonishing lookalikes, appeared to be acting in both. Soap flakes, shampoo, dog food, then the young couple were meeting in a bar, they seemed happy. They were joined by young happy friends…but that turned out to be an extended beer advertisement. He wondered distractedly if the young woman and the dog had been part of a commercial at all. He tried to recollect the upshot of the scene he had witnessed: was she happy or sad as she walked through the woods with her canine friend? Suddenly a fat man was sitting on the bonnet of a car and making fantastical guarantees. Henderson’s brain reeled. He thought he glimpsed the young lovers again but they were still selling beer. Eventually he saw the credits roll and he knew that it was over, whatever it had been. He hoped they were happy. He sat back exhausted, his brow aching dully from the constant frown he had been wearing.

  A woman of incandescent beauty announced that she would read the ‘World and National News’.

  ‘Mrs Nazarine Kilgus, Furse County assessor, announced today that the annual ‘How’s Your Health Fair’ will be held next month at the Olar National Guard Armory in Olar. Mrs Kilgus said that everything would be free, except for an optional blood test which will cost eight dollars.’

  An hour later, halfway into a movie—this, Henderson had managed to follow—Gage stood up and switched off the TV.

  ‘Shuteye at the Ranchero Gate,’ he announced and rang the bell for Alma-May. She didn’t appear, so Gage himself led them upstairs. He ran briskly up to the top landing and stood there waiting for them.

  ‘Not even out of breath.’

  ‘Most impressive,’ Henderson said.

  They walked along a passageway towards the rear of the house. As they passed one door they heard rock music thumping away. Gage beat fiercely on this and shouted ‘Shut that noise up now!’ It died away to a muffled throb, like the distant pulse of a generator.

  ‘I loath
e and despise that modern music,’ Gage said. ‘Which is why I have the television on so loud. I’d rather mindless babble than that garbage he listens to.’

  Gage opened a door. ‘Bathroom. He, by the way, is Duane, Alma-May’s boy. Beckman sleeps up at the front. Cora and I are opposite you on the other side. Freeborn and Shanda have their trailer. Alma-May has her annexe behind the kitchen.’ He paused. ‘One other thing I should tell you. We’re vegetarians here. So no meat or fish in our diet.’

  ‘Fine,’ Henderson nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Bryant said.

  Bryant was shown to her room and was bidden goodnight.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Henderson asked her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ He hurried on to his own room. At the door Gage shook his hand solemnly.

  ‘Breakfast is very informal, Mr Dores. Show up when you’ve a mind and help yourself. We’ll talk in the morning.’

  Henderson watched him go, wondering if he’d missed his best opportunity to inform on the alarming Freeborn. He felt strange and frightened, suddenly out of his depth. He went into his room and sat down on the bed.

  Once, on holiday in the Mediterranean he’d been sailing alone in a dinghy a mile or so away from the beach. Beneath him was bright clear turquoise water, with the odd dark patch of rock or weed sometimes visible on the sand floor a few fathoms below the keel. And then he’d sailed over the edge of the continental shelf, or some great chasm in the sea bed, and the sparkling turquoise had given way to a dense cold inky blue. The little boat sailed on as before, the sun’s heat on his shoulders was unfaltering, but at that instant he had felt like screaming. All those black miles of water beneath him, pale things swimming there. He turned back at once. He had a horrible fear of depths…

  He pulled back the coverlet on his bed and noticed with a spasm of irritation that it was unmade. He saw the folded sheets resting on a chair in the corner. This Alma-May person, he reasoned, was clearly some kind of housekeeper so why didn’t she keep house? Angrily he made up the bed. Even without Freeborn’s unprovoked venom he would have needed no encouragement to leave this bizarre household at the earliest opportunity. Tomorrow he and Bryant would check into the nearest hotel—nearest decent hotel—Gage’s objections notwithstanding, and take things from there. At least, also, he’d be obeying the letter of Freeborn’s injunction if not the spirit.

  Somewhat composed, he opened the long floor to ceiling windows at one end of the room and saw that a smaller balcony ringed the house on this upper level too. He stepped out, leant against a pillar and gazed at the dark countryside. He could hear Duane’s rock music faintly, carried to him on a gentle breeze, then it stopped suddenly. In the darkness beyond, crickets kept up their monotonous creaking. A big moth fluttered heavily past him and into his lighted bedroom. He leant out and looked up at the sky. The stars were there, reassuringly occupying their ordained places. A line of some half-forgotten poem came into his head. ‘The lines are straight and swift between the stars’ or something. He felt slightly calmer out there in the open beneath their neutral light. He rested his hands on the balcony’s balustrade and breathed deeply, wondering first how soon he could leave the house and second when he could encourage Bryant to return to the Wax grandparents.

  He massaged his face. Perhaps the paintings would make the difference. He longed suddenly for the Mulhol-land, Melhuish office, the comforting bulwarks of his job, his routine, his colleagues. Out here he felt weak and unprotected, alien and unfamiliar. Freeborn had threatened to ‘bust his ass’. Why, for God’s sweet sake? What was he to Freeborn or Freeborn to him?

  Panic and fear assailed him once again and he knew too—with a profound weariness—that sleep was out of the question this evening. The long march of the night lay ahead, the tossing and turning, the pillow-punching and posture changing. He sighed, feeling a deep sympathy for himself, and turned back to his room.

  The large moth—the size of a wren, it seemed to him—that had fluttered past him on the balcony was now clumsily attacking the ceiling light, casting a leaping giant shadow over the walls and bed. Henderson wondered what to do: whether he could fashion a weapon big enough to deal it a mortal blow or pray it would fly away of its own accord. He was reluctant simply to swat this large and rather magnificent creature. He felt protective about butterflies and moths: they formed a select subclass of insects which he charitably spared from the normal ruthless pogroms he visited on the other members of their kind.

  As he stood there impotently the moth settled obligingly on the wall near the ceiling. He stepped on the bed and cautiously pinched its clasped wings between thumb and forefinger. The moth’s legs bicycled vainly in the air as he carried it gingerly to the window giving on to the balcony. But then, somehow, a wing came off and the moth dropped to the floor with a soft thud, its loose wing fluttering down like a leaf to join it moments later.

  Henderson felt shocked. The moth flapped and scrabbled uselessly on the wooden floor, turning in tight circles. Henderson imagined a thin moth-scream of horror and pain. Spontaneously, he stood on the damaged insect, hearing a faint crunch—like standing on a biscuit—before kicking the lifeless body out onto the balcony. He felt exhausted. The simplest acts—the most banal necessities and plans—seemed to bring in their train only absurd and trying consequences.

  He undressed wearily, switched out the light, and got into bed. He felt wide awake, his mind as active as a candidate’s, sitting a crucial exam. He heard the dull bass of rock music start up again. Duane, Alma-May’s son. How and why was his aural tyranny over the household tolerated? And who was Cora? What was he going to do with Bryant? Would Freeborn really bust his ass at noon tomorrow? Would the Gage collection solve Mulhol-land, Melhuish’s problems? Was it likely that Irene would forgive him? And Melissa? These and other thoughts jostled and elbowed their way through his mind as he turned on the left, then on the right, lay supine, then prone, discarded his pillow, retrieved it, doubled it, weighted the bedclothes with dressing gown and guilt, kicked them off and somehow, at some time, found some minutes of repose.

  Chapter Four

  Cautiously, Henderson entered the Gage kitchen the next morning. He felt bad: tired and irritated, but not so irritated as to welcome a confrontation with Freeborn. But there was no sign of him, or anyone else for that matter. This was a little surprising as he had assumed that Bryant at least would be present as her room had been empty.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee from a jug stewing on the cooker. Alma-May came in and nodded curtly in response to his ‘Good morning’.

  ‘Is Mr Gage about?’

  Alma-May indicated a letter propped on the breakfast table. It was addressed to Henderson, was from Loomis Gage, and informed him that he could view the paintings that afternoon when he, Gage, returned from unspecified business matters.

  Henderson realized that this delay would of course violate Freeborn’s noon deadline; but surely, he reasoned, he could count on the protection of Gage senior? One thing was clear: he couldn’t move to a hotel until he’d seen the paintings.

  ‘Have you seen Bryant—Miss Wax—by any chance?’

  ‘She done gone off with Beckman, early this morning.’

  ‘Good Lord. Where?’ he said with alarm. Melissa would never forgive him if…He stopped. Alma-May’s head had jerked round sharply at this invocation of the Good Lord’s name.

  To Hamburg.’

  He felt suddenly weak, then realized this must be Hamburg, Ga., or Hamburg, Ala., or wherever.

  ‘Why? May I ask?’

  ‘To the labrotory. Beckman’s lab.’

  This was getting out of hand.

  ‘His labrotory—laboratory—in Hamburg?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘I see…and Mr Freeborn? Is he…?’

  ‘On the road.’

  And what does that mean, he thought?

  ‘What does he do, on the road?’

  ‘He sails.’
r />   ‘?’

  ‘Sails things, Co-mercial traveller. Sails medical wadding. You know: lint, bandages, restraining straps. Got a line in mouthwashes, suppositories. That kind of thing.’

  ‘So it’s just us alone in the house,’ he said with a fatuous little laugh which he instantly regretted. No rock music emanated from Duane’s room so he assumed the boy was away.

  ‘There’s Miss Cora,’ Alma-May reminded him with heavy suspicion. ‘And Shanda.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  After breakfast—egg plant hash and some pale-grey tasteless sago⁄porridge-like substance—Henderson decided that the first priority was to phone Beeby.

  Encouraged by Freeborn’s absence he approached the double-wide mobile home outside the front steps and knocked on the door.

  It was opened by a young, quite pretty girl in an advanced stage of pregnancy. She wore a grubby white smock with blue piping and incongruous high-heeled strappy shoes. Her copious blond-streaked hair had been badly permed into what was meant to look like a mane of cascading curls, and two brittle wings were flicked back at each temple. A gold chain with an’S’ on it hung around her neck which was disfigured with a raw-looking love-bite.

  ‘Are you the man from New York?’

  Henderson confessed he was, after getting her to repeat the question a couple of times. This was no doubt the person who had answered the phone yesterday. She had a powerfully glottal, twanging, accent.

  ‘Oh.’ She stood in the doorway at the top of three steps twiddling a cigarette lighter in her hands, apparently content to stare.

  ‘I wonder if it might be possible for me to make a telephone call?’