Tornado Pratt

by Paul Ableman

  So I asked her:

  “Where do you get all that energy from, Ma?”

  “Why just from the sun, I guess, Tornado. I just love living in the sun like this. Then there’s so many exciting things to do. Yesterday I collected a song from way back before the Declaration of Independence. And I just can’t get enough of your fine social life. You know so many interesting people and, don’t forget, son, I never had much of you before so it’s exciting for me to have you all the time. And this is such a beautiful place, Tornado, with the creek and the sea and there’s a lot of shells which are not just beautiful but valuable as well and I was thinking we could maybe make little collections of them and advertize them up East and maybe make a nice little business out of it. I haven’t got so many years to live but I never felt better in my life and—”

  I figured that my pa had sat on her for sixty years and now, with the pressure released, she was just spouting out like a fountain.

  PRATT STOPPETH THREE OF THREE

  It wasn’t on the same day or even maybe the same week but it was sure as hell within the compass of a month that I met the three people who dominated my last phase, Horace. Oh, sure, you were the most important, gazing thoughtfully at the house in the dusk when I drove up with a sackful of fish. I called:

  “You want something, son?”

  “I’m looking for Mr Tornado Pratt.”

  I didn’t say anything, Horace, because I couldn’t locate the source of the enchantment. It was like golden leaves flowering in the forests of time. Grace rippled in the air and I glanced across the darkening sea, wondering if I’d see flakes of rapture drifting down. That was the first moment of my old age, Horace, when youth flowered on the coast. I asked:

  “Who?”

  Just to draw closer, and when you got near enough I saw you had her cheeks and eyes but a stronger chin. And when you spoke again:

  “I’m sorry—isn’t this the house?”

  My impulse was to spring from the car and bundle you in my arms, crooning at the failure of the deeps to hold you. What I heard was the clear, English reed I’d last heard from Nat’s lips. You weren’t falsetto, boy, and I would never impugn your masculinity but you still had a boyish treble nestling in your throat that pierced the crusts of time and restored to me the frail-wavering ghost of my love.

  I asked:

  “Who are you, son?”

  Your smile slipped into perfect congruence with the one stored in my brain. But I was gruff as you recounted your adventures in locating me and how a chance reference by a cousin in England had initiated a little whirl of interest which slowly, over a month or two, dilated into a vortex of curiosity about the semi-mythical Yankee lord of the aunt who’d died before you were born and finally propelled you across the Atlantic to meet him. I was gruff because it was part of my inchoate strategy, which I must have initiated almost at the moment your first words hit me, to keep you near me forever.

  So I continued gruff but laced it with hospitality. I asked you in and fed you. I gave grumbling assent to Ma’s eager suggestion that you stay for a week, slipped you a hundred bucks for the road when you left after that week, intimated that if you’d care to circle back, after inspecting the North and West, I’d be willing to put you up again for a spell. I knew you’d accept, Horace. You were her kin and the same strange tug of longing that had united us acted again between you and me. You confirm that, don’t you, son? Sure you do. Proof is: you came back, right on schedule and you’ve been with me ever since and I just wish I could establish for sure that you’re here now. Say, Horace, could you just take my hand? Yeah—phim—right, I sure felt that, son. You’re here by the bed. So now I’ll continue, Horace, and remember, son, I don’t pay you for idling so make sure you get everything down so you can write a fine book, not like that last one.

  I can’t recall who came next, Helen Jameson or—oh sure I do. Leastways, I can figure it out. It must have been the Gabellis because I found Helen when I was nosing about the coast looking for a site for Paradise. So I had to have met the Gabellis before that: Adam and Eve—and after what we put them through for publicity, Horace, it’s amazing that they’ve still got cordial feelings for yours truly, the Serpent. But they come by for cocktails sometimes. When I see them I still find it hard to hear what they’re saying through the remembered ballyhoo. I discern, rippling behind Adam’s—hell, can’t even shake the Madison Avenue tag—real name was George which is the anglicization of Giorgio, I guess, not Giuseppe which was his true name but, having to rap out a name fast for some bullying punk on Ellis Island, he’d picked George and stuck with it as his pizza empire had spread round the Milwaukee area. Yeah, the point I was trying to make was, because I most often saw George and Maria, for the first year, smiling into camera or backed by media freaks, I never could fix them as plain folks even after they’d been just obscure occupants of Paradise One for five years. They were good, kind but boring people, Horace, and I had them taped that way within minutes of our first encounter in Palm Island Bay.

  It was a fierce day with a tremulous sun sulking behind veils of cloud and a sense that, just below the horizon, a stupendous tempest lurked. The sea shared the uneasy calm and lapped the shingle with small, irritable sighs. The submarine cliffs along the north side of Palm Island Bay are good for rock lobsters and I was aiming to claw out a mess for dinner that night. But by the time I’d stripped, put on my trunks and flippers, the approaching storm had revealed its battle standards: towering purple cumulus on the skyline, cleaved repeatedly by streaks of fire. It would have been imprudent to have been caught in the storm a half mile from land and so I reluctantly abandoned diving for the day. I dressed and walked along the beach to watch the storm approach. Its black wings spread like a magician’s cloak and distant thunder began to boom like an artillery barrage. I was so fascinated by the grandeur that when the first scattered handfuls of rain rattled on the dry grass, I found I had no chance of reaching my car without a drenching. I’d walked the best part of a mile and I was wearing a lightweight suit that would probably be wrecked, so I glanced about for shelter and saw a kind of woodman’s cabin a hundred yards back up the slope. I went scrambling towards it and reached it before the first great swathe of rain came swooping in off the sea.

  I was prepared to bust a window to get in but the door had a handle and naturally I tried it. To my surprise the place wasn’t locked and so I piled in. I immediately discovered the reason why entrance had been easy. A middle-aged couple was seated on a pile of logs beside an open hearth. The minute they saw me, they stiffened slightly and the man reached quickly into his pocket. I said courteously:

  “Hope I’m not intruding?”

  They glanced at each other and I could tell they wished they had the right to say: you are, mister. But they were obviously taking shelter the same as I was. The man looked back at me and shook his head, keeping his hand in his pocket. I reckoned he was clutching a gun and I was sorry for his sake he was so nervous and I tried to set him at ease.

  “There’s sure going to be one hell of a storm. My name’s Tornado Pratt.”

  “Gabelli—George Gabelli. My wife: Maria.”

  He had a slight Italian accent, but, with his grey hair and square face, he didn’t look too Italian while the lady was a typical, plump Italian mama. I tried again:

  “Hope I don’t make you nervous. I live about twenty miles down the coast. Often come here to fish.”

  The next instant, lightning split the air close by and, almost simultaneously, a brilliant crash of thunder deafened us. Gabelli jumped to his feet, tugging the gun from his pocket. Maria gave a cry. I was none too happy at seeing that automatic fluttering like a storm-tossed leaf and I murmured soothingly:

  “Let’s take it easy, huh? It’s only thunder.”

  George looked down sheepishly at his gun, frowned and replaced it in his pocket. I said:

  “You’re very nervous, Mr Gabelli.”

  “Sure. I got reason to be.”

&
nbsp; “Well, I don’t know what you’re afraid of but I don’t mean you any harm. I didn’t know there was anyone in this shack. I just walked too far from my car and didn’t want to get wet. There’s no need to shoot me.”

  And I gave him a big, disarming smile. He stuck it for a moment then he nodded rapidly with a wry smile and pulled his gun-hand out of his pocket without the weapon.

  “We’re crazy. We’ve had such—bad experiences—anyway, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr—what was it?”

  “Pratt. Tornado Pratt.”

  “Say, have I heard that name some place?”

  “Could be—but it’s a long time since I could count on it.”

  Well, we shook hands at last. And after that we talked for a couple of hours. That’s how long that fierce storm raged and kept us penned up in the shack. After a while, we made up a fire and, sure enough, found a can of Nescafé and sipped steaming black coffee. At first we just talked desultorily but then something occurred to me and I asked:

  “Did you find the door open too—or did you have a key?”

  Well, it turned out they’d been given the key by the agent who was handling the property, five hundred acres of scrub, wood and coast. The Gabellis were thinking of buying it and building themselves a house. I enthused:

  “Fine place to settle. I’ve been here two years.”

  But Maria then got a bit tetchy and grumbled under her breath. This initiated a family squabble, part in Italian and part in querulous English. It took me some time to get the hang of it but I gradually perceived that this was a routine part of their life, looking at potential sites for building themselves a retirement dream house, and that Mrs Gabelli was disgruntled because, after five years of looking, they still hadn’t settled on anything. She seemed to blame her husband for this. He turned to me and admitted:

  “She’s right. Trouble is, I’m scared.”

  “Scared? Of what?”

  “Wolves—human wolves. I want to live in the country but I can’t bring myself to abandon the security of the city—such as it is.”

  Then he told me of the family’s grim experiences. His second daughter had been kidnapped and raped by three hoods. She’d been returned alive, after a ransom of a hundred thousand bucks had been correctly dropped, but she was now “a nervous wreck” and “would never find a good husband”. George’s city home had been robbed and defiled with excrement and obscene scrawls and, worst of all, he himself had been assailed at his office by safe crackers who, when he walked in on them by chance, beat him near to death, tied him up and left him to rot. He’d lain bleeding and unconscious for thirty-six hours that Christmas—his family believing him to be in Canada—until a cleaner found him. The last item in the sick catalogue was that Maria had been mugged and lost a handbag full of dough. George was longing for nature but scared that it would come laced with psychopathic hoodlums who’d have him and his wife at their mercy.

  Naturally, I suggested to him one of the estates which has protection, armed security guards and so on but George, who had a peasant feeling for the outdoors, said he’d looked at a few of those and they were “phoney”. So that set me thinking, Horace. When the storm was over, I took the Gabellis’ address and claimed I might just be able to help them. I’d formed the idea of Paradise in my mind already.

  PRATT’S PARADISE

  Raising funds was the first stage of the operation. I reckoned I’d need about five million. First I got Alex, who was now a media star with a regular, networked television show, to put up a hundred thousand bucks for working capital. Then I took an office in Miami and got out prospectuses and dummy brochures. I contacted local money and big corporations that needed to diversify and within six months I had the five million subscribed.

  The idea was for a small estate of about forty homes, scattered about! That was the unique feature. It was not to be an institution with a perimeter fence but just a flock of attractive country houses. The thing that made it Paradise was the security system. What I offered was a complete security package. Naturally, the place could never be as safe as some of the islands with guarded bridges, making them a kind of luxury Alcatraz, but I provided, along with the house, trained guard dogs, electronic warning systems, twenty-four hour automobile patrols with the guarantee that an armed guard would never be more than ten minutes from the front door. But the original gimmick and the heart of the plan was the “refuge”. Into each property I built two refuge rooms—one on each floor. These were, in effect, massive and virtually impregnable vaults, with their own air supply, drinking water and food. They didn’t need much food because they would never have to be occupied for more than a few minutes, hour at the most, but an ordinary-sized family could have occupied one in relative comfort for two weeks if necessary. The idea was: the slightest disturbance, monitored by electronics and dogs, and the occupants of the house retreated into a “refuge”, slamming the door behind them. When they did this, a sign lit up on the front saying: security guards will be here within ten minutes. Then all they had to do was press a button, triggering an alarm at security HQ, and then sit it out, totally secure, until the guards roared up and released them. Of course, the vaults could be opened from within too if necessary.

  They were a fantastic success. In the whole history of Paradise, Horace, only one of our clients was ever physically assaulted. The refuge vaults have been used, to date, eight hundred and seventy-four times for genuine alarms. There have, naturally, been many thousands of false alarms too but the system was designed to accommodate that probability. Three Paradise homes have been burnt down and the inhabitants knew nothing about it until they were released from their vaults by the guards and found smouldering ruin all about them.

  In the ten Paradises at present inhabited throughout the United States and Hawaii, one thousand, nine hundred and twelve retirement families enjoy all the benefits of unspoiled surroundings with the very latest in—

  What you could do, boy is take the dough I’ve left you—which you’ll find is a tidy sum—and write a book that will generate love because—that other book was crap, boy, and deserved what it got although I concede my action was disgusting but—

  After you’d been with me for more than a year and I had affection for you and I believed you had affection for me. Which I still believe, Horace, but it was a big shock to me when I misplaced my car keys and needing them bad and thinking maybe I’d lent them to you and not being able to locate you finally forced open your desk and found

  BIG MAC

  That’s what you called me in your novel: Big Mac.

  At first, when I picked up that manuscript I was amused because you’d been so tight-lipped about it. No one in the house had you down as a budding author. You were always buying books and we figured you were reading when you locked yourself in for long spells. But it seemed you’d mostly been writing. My first reaction was a thrill of pride because you occupied the position of a son in my mind and I would have been proud to have a son who was a famous writer.

  Then I just started flipping through the pages but very soon I became aware of a breathless feeling. I wouldn’t admit what I’d perceived for some time and just went on reading grimly but finally I had to concede that the chief character in that book was based on me. Big Mac—a kind of loud dinosaur, whooping like an Indian, steered about by his prick and grabbing at all the cookies in the jar. That book hurt me, son, but now, looking back, I can admit it contained some truth. Not much, because how can any book truly represent a man’s life? I reckon if you could slice through a man’s brain and reveal all the activity happening there at any one instant, the flashing of his thought back and forwards in time, and the millions of connections forming and reforming, why I reckon you’d have the material not just for one book but for a hundred libraries. So you have to admit, Horace, that any book you write is going to be very selective. But what bugged me, son, was why, living under my roof and breaking bread at my table, you’d selected things—or at least imagined things that correspo
nded with what you’d observed and what I’d told you—which made me out a rumbustious buffoon. Why did you do that, Horace? It gave me the feeling you were a spy, that you hadn’t really come to find me because of romantic interest but because you were looking for material to turn into the kind of witty, bitchy book which is all that comes out of England these days, or which is the impression I receive from book reviews in the New York Times. So my first reaction to your book, Horace, was rage and if you’d been in the house then I’d have come at you with balled fists. Then—maybe it was rage and maybe it was those bad oysters we ate the night before but just at that moment my bowels heaved and I had to high-tail it into the john. I took your book with me and by the time I’d unloaded I’d read some more pages and was blind with fury. So I wiped my ass on your book, Horace. Naturally, the next minute I regretted my beastly action but the fouled pages had already been flushed away.