Browning in Buckskin

by Peter Corris

  I raised my hand from the counterpane in a gesture of gratitude plus courtliness. I'd seen Doug Fairbanks do it many times and it always seemed to have the right effect. She smiled again and closed the door. I lay back thinking, Dick, old man, I'd say you've fallen on your feet here.

  Her name was Coral Smith although she'd been Coral Canetti for three years while she was married to the Italian who'd owned the joint. Canetti had died of pneumonia eight months back and Coral had resumed her maiden name as soon as she decently could. The sign outside still read 'L. Canetti prop.' under 'Auto Camp & Diner'.

  'How come you married him?' I asked Coral. This was over lunch two days after she shot me. Since then she'd been feeding me like a prince and keeping me well topped up with the best moonshine whisky I ever drank. I'd seen a photo of Canetti on the living room dresser – all handlebar moustaches and moist, dumb eyes.

  Coral heaped more fried potatoes onto my plate. 'You'd been through what I had, Nick, you wouldn't ask that question.' She took a small sip of wine – the Italian had laid in some pretty good red – and gave a grin. 'Hell, you'd have married him.'

  That was Coral, she'd shift from grim to lighthearted in a second. I found it very likeable. We shared a laugh about me marrying Canetti, and I got across the information to her that I wasn't married, which may or may not have been true. God knows what Elizabeth MacKnight-Browning was up to in Australia. I'd also told her that my name was Nick Brown which sounded close enough to the real thing to make me comfortable.

  'Smith 'n Brown,' she'd said when I told her this. 'Couple of ordinary folks.'

  We'd laughed at that too. You can see that we were getting along like a house on fire, had done in fact, from the first time I sat up in bed and really paid attention to her and the place I'd landed in. Coral was about thirty years old, a bit younger than me but I told her it was the other way around and she believed me. She was a very smart woman. She didn't owe any money on the establishment and she was making it pay. The diner did good business at weekends and mid-week and the cabins were usually fully occupied (I'd arrived on a quiet night.) This wasn't just because the beds were clean, a rarity in backwoods hostelries in those days I can tell you, or that the food was good. Canetti's was the place men from miles around took women and where women from miles around took men. The police did it and several judges, so the place had protection.

  Coral liked to cook. She had a Mexican woman to help her, but she did a lot of the cleaning work herself. I asked her why.

  'On account of people leave things behind, careless like. Letters, jewellery and such.'

  'You blackmail them?'

  'No, I don't, an' they know it. That's why they come to my place and keep coming.'

  As I say, she was smart, but so am I, and I had her eating out of my hand after a day or two. I played the invalid, claimed loss of memory, had small relapses and had to take to my bed, often. She was busy from morning to night, but she kept making small visits (I kept well out of sight of the customers for reasons of decorum) to bring me coffee, cigarettes and magazines.

  On the third night I let her give me a bath. I kept myself decently under the suds, but she saw the set of my shoulders and seemed to enjoy soaping up and rinsing out my thick hair. I guess she'd already seen other things when she picked the birdshot out of my legs. Nothing happened then. I towelled off and went to bed early in her spare room with a stiff whisky for company. I could hear her moving restlessly around in the house. I got up early, but not before her, and went to the wash-house for a clean-up and a shave. I shaved close, brushed my hair and put on a clean shirt. I refused breakfast and just had a cup of coffee. She asked if I felt all right. I was non-committal. I stayed in my room throughout the early morning. I heard her giving detailed instructions to the Mexican woman about what she wanted done around the place.

  The door opened sometime around 11 a.m. She was carrying a tray with a coffee pot, a whisky flask and some cookies on it. She'd taken some trouble with her hair; it was glowing from the brush and tied with a bright ribbon. She'd put on some lipstick and changed out of her working dress into a soft, slightly frilly affair with a scooped out neck. She put the tray down on the bed and sat carefully beside it. The tray was between us; we were a couple of feet apart.

  'Thought you might like a pick-me-up, Nick. Coffee and a shot?'

  I nodded. She poured two coffees and added the moonshine. I reached for the cup and our hands touched. Her hands had done a lot of work but she'd rubbed some sort of cream into them to make them softer and her nails were freshly trimmed. She was wearing perfume and she didn't smell of tobacco which was unusual because she was almost as heavy a smoker as me. We drank our laced coffee and didn't speak. A man and a woman sitting on a bed. A man and a woman saying nothing but silently signalling what was on their minds.

  'Things'll be pretty quiet today,' she said. 'Being Monday. Maria knows what to do.'

  'You work hard, Coral,' I said.

  'Always have, but work isn't everything, is it?'

  I finished my coffee. Good coffee and good whisky go together like satin and lace. I was warmed through and relaxed. Time to make a move. I put my cup on the tray, took hers and put it on top of mine. Then I shifted the tray to the chest of drawers which was a long stretch but I made it pretty elegantly. I winced though as I set the tray down.

  'Where does it hurt, Nick?'

  'It doesn't hurt.' I reached for her and she came into my arms like a wife greeting a husband back from the war. I stroked her hair and kissed her ear and did several other safe things before I put a hand inside her dress and touched somewhere that mattered. After that, it all went pretty much as you'd expect. She was no blushing virgin and I'd been screwing women of all shapes and sizes, in a dozen different countries, for more than twenty years. One point of interest was that it had evidently been lean pickings for both of us for some time past and we were keen as mustard. I don't know how many times we did it in that one session, but I remember being topside and below decks more than once and we weren't always on the bed. In fact we tore the room apart, spilt the coffee and ended up on the floor sharing a cigarette and the whisky flask and laughing like idiots.

  'God, my legs!'

  There were bloody spots oozing through the bandages. Time to get this thing into the right perspective, I thought. I let her help me back onto the bed. She tidied herself, then she cleaned up the room and fetched more whisky and coffee. She kissed me so hard I had to fight for breath and then she went back to managing her lucrative little business. I settled down onto the pillows and felt all my cares float away. Well, that's paradise, isn't it – a woman who fucks like the Queen of Sheba, works like a navvy, cooks well, takes a drink and earns enough for two to live on? I was willing to bet I was the first Browning in history to find one. I know that my Dad, 'Wild Bill', missed out on all scores.

  I never meant to stay in Three Cedars but, looking back, I can see why I did. It was September 1929 when I arrived and everyone knows what happened the following month. The stock market crash hit America like a bomb, and I wasn't the only man with a safe billet who hunkered down and stayed put. After all, what did I know about earning a living in America? Flying planes and acting in movies – neither seemed like a safe bet in October 1929. Added to that, there was Coral. Once the ice between us was broken there was no stopping her: she treated me like a king through the day and like a sultan at night.

  I did a little work around the place – mended a few fences, painted the cabins, kept Coral's 1927 Cadillac La Salle in working order. But mostly my job was to sit in the diner, read the newspaper, smoke a cigar and chat to the customers. It wasn't always easy; some of them were tough cops from LA and the border towns who were naturally suspicious of a 'sweetback man'5 like me. The politicians and other grafters on the public payroll understood me better, but they were dull company. One thing everyone agreed on was that times were bad and likely to get worse.

  'Got any investments, Mr Brown?' one of the cu
stomers, a drummer for pharmaceutical products, asked me.

  I shook my head. 'Not a one. My big business reverse happened before the crash. My partners gypped me out of everything.' I'd told Coral a version of the story of how 'Bluey' Tait and Terri Driver had robbed me, keeping the details vague. She was listening to this conversation and she gave me a sympathetic glance while I tried to look like a man who was planning a comeback.

  The drummer folded the paper he'd been reading and lit a cigarette. 'Well, think of it this way. If they put any of the money they took from you into stock, chances are they're as broke as you are now.'

  I tried the idea out and liked it. Coral thought the smile I gave was for her; she came across and put her strong right arm around my shoulders. 'Nick's not broke,' she said. 'He's got the best investment in the world.'

  Later that night, after a solid supper of spare ribs and chilli and a couple of pitchers of beer which had put us in the mood for some energetic love-making, I asked her what she meant.

  'I meant me, dummy.' We were on the big brass bed in her room, both naked as new-born babes; somehow I'd got one of her stockings wound around my neck. She gave the end a tug. 'There's not a penny owing on this place, and you know what it makes a week. Taxes're low and people're going to eat and make love right up to the crack o' doom.'

  'That's true. But I don't see . . . '

  She shut me up with a deep hungry kiss and we got back into it all over again. I found myself thinking of various things as she plunged and bucked her way to a climax. I'd told her I was twenty-six years old and an Englishman of good family – only slight exaggerations there – also that I was single and childless, which was true for all practical purposes. I'd also said that I had no money which was the honest truth.

  'Do you love me, Nick?'

  After what she'd just finished doing to me only an absolute oaf could have replied in the negative. 'Of course I do.'

  'Well, let's get married. Then half of everything I've got'll be yours.'

  3

  I should have smelled a rat right there and then, but I've never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth and Coral was an amiable woman quite apart from her other qualities. And of course I'd be marrying her under a false name with scarcely an accurate word on the documents, so it didn't feel like a binding contract to me. I showed a little hesitation at first which only made her try all the harder to please me. When I agreed she was over the moon.

  'We'll honeymoon in Hollywood, Nick. What do you say?'

  'Ah, . . . bit cheap, Hollywood, I've always thought. Wouldn't New Orleans be more romantic?'

  She gave me one of her deep, smacking kisses. 'By God, you're right! What a man. Nawlins'd have to be the most romantic city in America.'

  So, we went ahead with it. On 1 December, 1929, Nicholas Richard Brown, bachelor, business executive, born Tunbridge Wells, England, 10/3/02, married Coral Canetti, nee Smith, widow, cafe proprietor, born Denver, Colorado, 11/11/99. It was one of the smaller and quieter of my weddings – just a few of the customers at the chapel in Red Springs, which was the nearest town with a church, and a few drinks and a barbecue back home. I went to bed drunk which, come to think of it, has been a feature of marriage nights as I've experienced them.

  Through her police contacts Coral fixed me up with a driver's licence so I could share the driving to Louisiana. We couldn't leave on the honeymoon right away because the Red Springs' rodeo was on which made for a couple of busy days in Three Cedars. I was in the diner two nights before we were due to leave when Walter MacMurray walked in and sat at my table.

  'Nick, congratulations.' MacMurray extended his big hand and we shook. 'Fine woman.'

  'Yes, she is. Thank you.' MacMurray had been through a couple of times in the past few weeks. He was a tall, strongly built man with thick, black hair and a squarish jaw. He looked as if he could handle himself which, of course, made me wary of him. He had a bluff, not over-friendly manner, which surprised me because his job was selling insurance. From my days in the wine business in Australia and aviation and acting in America, I was accustomed to a much oilier type in that line of work. MacMurray used to come in, have a meal, read through some business papers and drive off. Once, I think, he stayed overnight in the auto camp, but it was a night I really tied one on and I don't remember much about it.

  He reached into his briefcase, took out some papers and put them on the table in front of me. Then he unscrewed the top of his fountain pen.

  'What's this?' I said.

  'Your wife's idea. I just had a word with her. She thinks you two should both take out insurance policies.'

  I lit a cigarette to give myself time to think. Insurance? Didn't that mean birth certificates, medical examinations, life histories? 'First I've heard of it. I don't know . . . '

  'Simple life policy. Ten thousand dollar cover. Nothing to it, just to protect the business in case something should happen. Later, when the kids come along, well, we'd have to take another look.'

  'I'm, ah . . . looking around for a business opening. I don't know if I can manage the premiums just yet.'

  'Mrs Brown says the business can pay the premiums. That's above board, lots of my clients do that.'

  'Surely there's a medical examination? You might have heard that I've been unwell. On the mend now, of course. We're off in a day or two, bound to help the recovery. Perhaps when we come back.'

  MacMurray waved his pen and winked. 'Doc Parsons from Red Springs has vouched for your health and vitality. I've got his certificate right here.'

  'I've never met the man.'

  MacMurray let out a bellow of laughter. 'He's met you. Helped you to bed on your wedding night. Said he never saw a fitter man, nor a drunker one.'

  I smiled weakly. 'Surely that's a bit casual for your purposes. What company do you represent, Walter?'

  'Western American. They pride themselves on a folksy, no red tape approach. If Doc Parsons says you're healthy, that's good enough. Besides, Coral wouldn't marry a man who wasn't in the prime of condition.'

  'What the hell do you mean by that?'

  'No offence, Nick, no offence. Just our American way of putting things. I guess you do everything more formally over in England.'

  I nodded. I didn't want to get into any discussions about England where I hadn't set foot in ten years. Anyway, I couldn't see any major objection. I wasn't planning to stay longer than I had to, probably just as long as Coral's energetic and imaginative brand of love-making held my interest. If our names on a couple of insurance policies made her happier, who was I to deny her the pleasure? MacMurray showed me Coral's signature under the stipulation that I was the beneficiary in the event of her death. The answers on my section of the policy paper had been written in which was fine by me, I've always found filling out forms a terrible bore. I skimmed a few of the clauses without much interest – it was all to do with a person who didn't exist anyway – and signed with a flourish.

  MacMurray gave me his hand to shake again.

  'Have a nice honeymoon.'

  The honeymoon was a roaring success. We drove clean across the south-west and the La Salle never missed a beat. I've always enjoyed driving good cars, and this was a beauty. Coral was as enthusiatic a bed partner in San Antonio after a hot day on the road as she was in Houston after a day lying around the swimming pool. In the Beauregard Hotel on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, there was no stopping her. She dressed up in yellow silk with feathers and black lace gloves like a French whore, and she played the part right down to the encore.

  I admit I spent most of the time in a haze of sex, French champagne, fine food and Cuban cigars. We must have eaten in twenty different restaurants in two weeks – high-class French places that served frogs' legs and quail, speakeasies that specialised in rare hamburgers, and Cajun dives with gumbo that stuck to the roof of your mouth and burned all the way down and out the other end. Coral paid for everything; she was far and away the most generous of my wives.

  The night
before we left we went to the boxing at the Polo Grounds and I saw a different side of Coral. Sure, she got a bit loud after a few drinks and liked to dance, even sing a little, but she wasn't what you'd call a naturally wild woman. Not like some I've known, such as Clara Bow and Belinda Douglas6, who could keep drinking, dancing, singing and screwing for days on end. We were a little high when we took our ringside seats. The first fight was a slow affair between a couple of tired middleweights who looked like hangovers from the toe-the-line days. Les Darcy could have put them both to sleep inside a minute. I said so to Coral.

  She yawned. 'Who?'

  'Les Darcy. He was a great fighter. From Australia.'

  'Where?'

  You can see that I sometimes had difficulty getting a good chinwag going with Coral. But she was sharp, and if I'd waxed knowledgeable about Australia she'd have suspected something. It's often like that, I've found, when you're going under a false identity – conversation gets inhibited. So I shut up and tried to take an interest in two skinny featherweights who had about the same amount of skill and consequently didn't lay a glove on each other. I felt Coral's interest stir when the main event fighters got into the ring – a chunky, barrel-chested bruiser named 'Sailor' Jones and a tall negro called 'Honey' Clinton. The contest was called a heavyweight bout, and the Sailor might have scaled two hundred pounds, mostly in the shoulders and thighs, but if Honey was more than a hundred and eighty ringing wet I was a Dutchman.

  After the introductions – both of them were the heavyweight champions of somewhere or other – they went at it as if they meant it. Sailor was a rusher who specialised in roundhouse clubbing punches. The only defence he knew was a crouch which, admittedly, did make it difficult for a taller man to hit him anywhere except the top of the head. Honey was cute; he danced, speared in jabs and light crosses and seemed to be almost counting the points he was tallying up. The first round was brisk and a nice mixture of brawn and science. Everyone was happy.