1985 - Stars and bars

by William Boyd

  ‘Teagarden! Eugene, over here! Over here!’

  Teagarden trotted over and looked down at him.

  ‘Well, Mr Dores. What a surprise.’

  Henderson clambered out of his basement well. His Mary Mount Maxi-Pad box was now the consistency of porridge. With every step part of it fell away.

  Teagarden looked at him.

  ‘Yeah…’ he nodded. ‘Pretty good.’

  Henderson shrugged. ‘Well…’

  Told you you shouldn’t ought to have gone down there. What happened?’

  ‘Long story, Eugene.’

  Tmsure.’

  ‘Going to the gym?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Saved my life, Eugene.’

  They strolled across the street to the gym. Teagarden unlocked the door and switched on the lights. Henderson sat down opposite his locker with a squelch. He suddenly felt like crying. He also felt like telling Teagarden that he loved him, so abject was his gratefulness, but he refrained.

  ‘Whew,’ he said. ‘Quite a night, one way and another.’ Now that it was over all the emotions he had pent up overwhelmed him, like a football crowd invading the pitch. For a few moments his brain succumbed to the mindless violence.

  ‘Like some coffee?’ Teagarden said.

  ‘Please.’

  The gym was quiet and cool; it seemed like a sanctuary, a holy place. Teagarden went off to boil a kettle. Heh-derson stood up. With both hands he ripped away chunks of his Maxi-Pad box. A shower. A meal. A change of clothes…

  ‘Well hello there, Mr Dores.’

  He looked up. Freeborn, Sereno and Gint stood at the end of his file of lockers. Gint was pointing his gun at him. ‘Quite a dance you’ve led us, Mr Dores,’ Sereno said. ‘Luxora and back in twelve hours. Quite a dance.’

  ‘Shoot the fucker,’ Freeborn implored. ‘Off him, Peter.’

  ‘First he has to tell us where the paintings are.’

  ‘How did you…? I mean…’

  Sereno waved his address book. ‘Not many New York addresses, Mr Dores. Peter spent the night in your apartment. We’ve just been there. Missed you by minutes at Ms Stien’s.’

  ‘Blow him away, Peter! Waste the bastard!’

  Sereno glanced suspiciously at Freeborn.

  ‘Where are the paintings, Mr Dores?’

  ‘They’re burnt, destroyed. Duane burned them on Loomis Gage’s instructions. Ask Freeborn.’

  ‘Give me the fuckin’ gun!’ Freeborn leapt for Gint’s hand but was elbowed easily away. Then Gint went very still.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Teagarden said. ‘Or else this thing’s gonna be stickin’ out your mouth.’

  Teagarden held a sabre to the back of Gint’s neck, the point on his hairline. Gint stood like a man who has just had an ice-cube dropped down his shirt, back arched, chest out.

  ‘Drop the piece and kick it over to Mr Dores.’

  Gint did this. Henderson picked the gun up. It was somehow much heavier than he imagined. He pointed it vaguely at Freeborn.

  Teagarden walked round Gint keeping the point of his sabre at his neck.

  ‘OK, shitbrains, beat it.’

  Freeborn turned and ran. Sereno watched him go.

  ‘So the paintings are burnt,’ Sereno said. ‘Making sense, at last.’ He and Gint backed off.

  ‘Duane burned them. Look at the bottom of the garden behind the Gage mansion.’

  ‘Shame,’ Sereno said. ‘I never really wanted the house. But beggars can’t be choosers.’

  He and Gint turned and left.

  ‘Very impressive, Eugene,’ Henderson said weakly. ‘Thanks a lot. Here, you can keep the gun.’

  Chapter Four

  When Henderson next appeared on the streets of Manhattan he was slightly better dressed. He wore his whites—poloneck, knickerbockers, socks and gymshoes. Teagarden had lent him a green windcheater and ten dollars for a taxi. In gratitude, Henderson had signed up for a two-week crash course in epee.

  He hailed a taxi and it drove him to his apartment. On the way he wondered what Sereno and Gint would do to Freeborn when they caught him.

  At his apartment he picked up his mail. The doorman handed him a parcel.

  ‘Special delivery,’ he said. ‘Just arrived from the airport. Your friend was here earlier, but he said he couldn’t wait.’

  Henderson ascended in the elevator. The whole ghastly adventure was now, he hoped, over. He pressed the buzzer on his door. Sereno and Gint had his clothes, wallet, address book, keys. Minor inconveniences.

  Bryant opened the door.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘God. What are you wearing?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I can’t take it any more at home, Henderson. Mom, those fucking dogs—’

  ‘Bryant—’

  ‘Sorry.’ She paused. ‘Henderson, can I stay here? I don’t want to go back. Please?’

  ‘Yes, by all means, of course.’ He went in. She seemed to have forgotten Duane.

  Shanda sat on the sofa.

  ‘My God, what are you wearing?’ She got up and waddled over. ‘Hi.’ She pecked him on the cheek. ‘That Peter Gint was here all night. Boy, is he off the wall…Then Freeborn and Ben came by real early. Freeborn messed the place up a bit. I was cleaning up when Bryant arrived. You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Freeborn took his denim jacket back. Can you believe that?’

  Henderson sat down heavily in his ransacked sitting room, dumping the parcel on the coffee table. He shuffled his mail: catalogue, bill, bill, catalogue, letter. He ripped it open.

  Dear Henderson,

  Enclosed is a bill for cleaning. $13.50 for removing oil stains from my jacket sleeve. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked. The suit cost $175.00. We can settle up when you get back. Too bad about the Gage pix. But it’s an ill wind…Remember the man in Boston with the Winslow Homers? Ian Toothe went up there last week. It seems he also had two Pissarros and a Renoir and Ian persuaded him to sell them all. Good old lan—saved our bacon, as you guys say.

  Yours, Pruitt.

  ‘You want some breakfast?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Some, uh…Coffee, please.’

  Bryant went into the kitchen. Shanda came and sat on the arm of his chair, her belly at eye-level, her musky farinaceous smell filling his nostrils.

  ‘Freeborn’s throwed me out. He says you can keep me.’

  ‘Oh really? Very big of him.’

  ‘Could we get married, Henderson? I’d kinda like for the baby to have a daddy.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  He got up, went into the bathroom and ran a bath. He locked the door, stripped off and soaked for twenty minutes or so. He thought distractedly of the last few days. He got out, shaved and went through to his bedroom. He fell asleep almost instantly. When he woke it was midday. He changed into clean clothes.

  Back in the sitting room the air was blurry with cigarette smoke. Shanda scrambled some eggs and brewed some coffee. As he was eating, the telephone rang. Shanda answered.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘My name is Shanda McNab.’

  Pause.

  ‘Yes, I am staying here. Who is this please?’

  Pause.

  ‘No, I’m Henderson’s fiancée. Oh.’ She looked round. ‘She hung up.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Henderson said with sudden alarm.

  ‘Bryant’s mommy. She says you’re a cheap bastard and she never wants to see you again.’

  ‘Typical,’ Bryant said. ‘Hey, are you guys getting married? Congratulations.’

  Henderson opened another letter. It was from his car rental firm. The letter informed him that the car he had hired in New York had been written off during a car chase after a bank robbery in Biloxi, Mississippi. Could he throw any light on the matter? The cost of the car was $18,750.00.

  He asked Bryant to make him some more coffee. Shanda sat opposite him smoking a cigarette. He wondered what he was going to do. He leafed through his mail. Circular,
bill, bill, airmail.

  Airmail. His own handwriting. Postmark Galashiels. Inside, scored sheets of Campbell Drew’s strong uncompromising hand.

  Dear Mr Dores,

  Thank you for your letter. As you know your father was in six column of Wingate’s first expedition across the Chindwin. On the list of March 1943 we had made camp just prior to attacking a Japanese base at Pinbon. Before we were to attack we were notified of an airdrop for new supplies.

  It had been decided that, due to our being behind enemy lines, it was not safe for airdrops to be made by parachute. The procedure was for the supply plane to fly low over the jungle and the provisions and ammunition were simply thrown out of the hatch. Of course many stores went missing, but, for security reasons, it was far safer than parachutes.

  Captain Dores ordered the company to spread out along the area marked for the drop. We had been on the march for weeks and were short of all supplies. This drop was crucial for us.

  The plane, a Dakota, as I remember, came over fast and low, the crates tumbling out of the hatchway. We gathered up what we could and reported to company H.Q. We assembled there with our collection of supplies. Then it was noticed that Captain Dores was missing. I and three other men went in search of him.

  I am very sorry to say, sir, that your father was killed by a tin of pineapple chunks. A crate of supplies had broken up in mid-air scattering the tins haphazardly. Your father was hit full on the head. I know he died instantly.

  I am very sorry to bring you these unfortunate details. I had been with your father since Imphal. He was a very brave man.

  Yours faithfully,

  Campbell Drew

  Henderson carefully folded up the letter. A tin of pineapple chunks. Embedded in his skull.

  ‘Are you OK, Henderson?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘No, no. Entirely expected.’

  ‘What’s in your parcel?’

  He breathed in deeply. Ach well, he thought, where’s the sense? He tore open the parcel. Demeter and Baubo, frameless, and a letter from Cora.

  Dear Henderson,

  Duane couldn’t bring himself to burn this one. I found it in his room and he told me every thing. I guess Sereno and Gint will be down for the house next week. I thought you should have this, as it’s your favourite. Think about it.

  Cora

  Bryant and Shanda looked over his shoulder. Henderson knew he couldn’t keep it. Cora might be able to buy off Sereno.

  ‘I’ve seen that before,’ Shanda said, frowning. ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t like it much,’ Bryant offered.

  Henderson held Drew’s letter in one hand and Demeter and Baubo in the other. What was it old man Gage had said?…He knew now what he was going to do. He folded up his letter. Collision of soft grey brain with hard tin of pineapple chunks. A good way to go.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ he said to Bryant and Shanda. ‘I’ll be back later.’

  Henderson Dores walks briskly down Park Avenue towards the forties. It looks quite different now the rain has stopped and the warm midday sun makes everything steam and exhale. He finds it hard to believe that a few hours ago he was creeping through the neat shrubs of the central reservation, clad only in a cardboard box. It might have happened to a different person…

  He cuts over on Fifty-seventh and then down Fifth. Huge puddles still prove obstacles to traffic and there is much irate hooting of horns, and colourful oaths fill the air. He turns onto Forty-seventh at the Eastern Airlines building and walks along it until he sees the delicatessen where Irene goes for lunch. He walks with measured purposeful tread.

  If everyone wants to be happy, and everyone is going to die, then there’s really no option, he tells himself, suddenly seeing everything with a new clarity. The whole can of worms took on some sort of focus; the immense hill of beans arranged itself in some sort of order. Teagarden and his zencing, his own shyness, Beckman’s blinks, Melissa and her dogs, Bryant’s breasts, Gage’s boxing, Shanda’s baby, Cora’s sadness, the general’s WAC, Demeter and Baubo, and, finally, his own father’s fatal encounter with a flying tin of pineapple chunks one hot day in the Burmese jungle in 1943.

  He pushes open the door. Irene sits with a pleasant young man, not unlike Pruitt Halfacre. Henderson approaches.

  ‘Irene,’ he says, ‘I’m back. It’s all over.’

  Irene swings round, an ambiguous expression on her face.

  ‘DORES, YOU BASTARD!’

  People scream, plates drop with a crash. Henderson crouches instinctively and the first shot smashes into the plasti-pine veneer above Irene’s booth.

  Duane stands in the doorway, his fat face shiny with hot tears, shaking gun in both hands.

  ‘YOU STOLE HER YOU BASTARD!’

  Henderson, bent double, plunges through the bright plastic strips that hang from the lintel of the kitchen door. Various oriental chefs in damp singlets are surprised to see him scramble through the cookers and kitchen units towards the rear exit. From behind him come more screams and crashing furniture as Duane pursues.

  Henderson explodes into the mean alleyway between Forty-seventh and Forty-sixth, barging heavily into a tramp picking through the trash cans.

  ‘Sorry,’ Henderson gasps, regaining his balance.

  The tramp’s face is familiar. The shades, the trilby, the raincoat…

  ‘The furrier at midnight—’

  ‘I know, ’ Henderson yells. ‘I know all about that now!’

  He turns and runs up the alleyway, running as though his life depended on it (and it does), his legs pounding, his hands clawing air, striving with all his might and all his effort to reach the distant, sunlit vision of the teeming streets ahead.

  THE END