Stars and Bars: A Novel

by William Boyd

  Beckman’s pickup turned and bumped across the railway line. Henderson followed suit.

  “Wrong side of the tracks,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

  They left the paved road and drove along a winding dirt lane with—from what he could see through the dust Beckman’s wheels drew up—scrubby undergrowth on either side.

  Presently they passed through rickety wooden gates and beneath a wrought-iron arch with THE GAGE MANSION written on it in dirty white scrollwork. In front of them in the faint moonlight, Henderson could make out the bulk of a rather large house ahead. The drive swept them around in a generous semicircle. The headlights picked out small groups of tall trees, which seemed strategically placed to aid some landscaped composition. Lights shone from a few windows.

  The pickup stopped. Henderson stopped. He looked at Bryant, who returned his nonplussed stare. For the briefest of moments they seemed allies. He stepped out of the car. In front of the house was an immense double-wide mobile home made of ribbed aluminum and some sort of plastic wood veneer. Power lines hung between it and the house. Looking back Henderson saw that the drive formed a perfect circle. He moved away from the car in an effort to gain some better conception of the architecture, but it was too dark. It was, he thought, of little consequence anyway. Even the finest building would have been vitiated by the hideous adjacency of the mobile home. He wondered why it was there.

  “He’s inside,” Beckman shouted from the pickup and drove off around the drive and back out of the gates again.

  Inside the house or the trailer? Henderson asked himself. He removed their cases from the car.

  Bryant was peering in a curtained porthole punched through the ribbed aluminum.

  “There’s people inside,” she said.

  There was a call from the house. “Mr. Melhuish, is that you?”

  “Oh, God,” Henderson said weakly. “Let’s go.”

  He and Bryant climbed up a dozen or so steps to a wide wooden veranda that appeared to circle the house. A small man stood outside double front doors.

  “Mr. Melhuish,” he said, and shook Henderson’s hand vigorously. “A pleasure to meet you, a real pleasure. I’m Loomis Gage.”

  “My name is Dores,” Henderson said apologetically. “Didn’t Mr. Beeby explain I was to come?”

  The small man laughed cheerfully.

  “Dores, Melhuish. Who gives a rat’s rump? It’s all the same to me. Come on in.”

  They stepped through the doors into the hall to be greeted by a considerable blare of noise. From somewhere above them came the thump and twang of rock music, and from a room on the right a television boomed.

  “This is my stepdaughter!” Henderson said, obliged to raise his voice. “Bryant Wax! Stepdaughter-to-be, that is!”

  Bryant looked around her with mild curiosity. “Hi,” she said.

  “You do business with your family?” Gage shouted back.

  “Well …!”

  “I like that!”

  “What?!”

  “I said, I like that!”

  “Rarely!”

  “Excuse me one moment!” Gage took some steps up the stairs.

  “Turn that damn music down!” he roared. He paused, ear cocked. The volume was reduced. He descended and opened the door of the room that contained the TV. It was quite dark, apart from the bright colors on the screen. Gage turned the noise off but left the picture flickering. He switched some lights on.

  “That’s better,” he said. Loomis Gage was small and plump, and clearly very old, though he seemed sprightly enough. His face had its full quota of tucks and dewlaps and his eyes were watery. Yet he had a shock of pure white hair, as dense and springy as a teenager’s, which seemed at odds with his advancing years. His nose was noticeably snub too, Henderson saw, and thought it a curiously indecent feature on a man as venerable as this. Gage wore a short-sleeved yellow sport shirt and khaki trousers. His neat potbelly pushed against an engraved silver buckle the size of a side plate.

  “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 a female—even if they’ve got men’s names.”

  Henderson looked around. No pictures on the walls. The room was large and wood paneled. 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-colored 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’ 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 around. 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 your 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 minutes breathing very shallowly in an attempt to restrain the trembling that suffused his body. The last time anyone had threatened him 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 clamoring 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 his 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 program—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 after 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 hood 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 Gage,” 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 toward 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 loathe and despise that modern music,” Gage said. “Which is why I have the television on so loud. I’d rather hear 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 annex 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 good night.

  “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 had been 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 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, leaned 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 leaned 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 Mulholland, 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—t
hat 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 to try fashioning 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 but terflies and moths: they formed a select subclass of insects that 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 scrab bled 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 cookie—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 Mulholland, 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 quilt, kicked them off and somehow, at some time, found some minutes of repose.