“Have a nice day?” he asked caustically.
“Oh hi. Yeah, it wasn’t bad. He’s not so weird as I thought. He’s weird, but not that weird.”
“In future do you think you could possibly let me know when you’re going on an outing?”
“I was just keeping out of the way. I thought you’d be pleased.” She picked at the material on her trousers. “Seen the paintings?”
“No. Gage has been away.”
“Beckman says they’re already sold.”
“Well he’s wrong,” he said impatiently. “Where is he anyway?”
“In the bar.”
“Right. I’ll ask him.”
Henderson paused at the door, second thoughts crowding in on him. Then he pushed through the door.
For four o’clock in the afternoon the bar was astonishingly busy (so this was where everybody was) — and very dark. There must have been two dozen men in the long, thin room. As his eyes grew accustomed to the murky atmosphere he saw that they were all white, all wearing work clothes, and all more or less drunk. Tentatively, he approached the bar. In addition to purveying alcohol it also sold, he noticed, handkerchiefs, a range of pens and combs. All the fitments and plastic advertisements for beer were decades old.
“What’ll it be?” the pasty-faced, oily-haired barman asked him. No Southern courtesies here.
“I’m looking for Beckman Gage.”
“BECKMAN!” the barman shouted down to the end of the room. There, Henderson saw an ancient mechanical skittle machine and Beckman bent over it.
Beckman gave up his game and wandered over, beer bottle in hand. He wore similar clothes to the men in the bar — denim and a checked cotton shirt. Odd garb for a laboratory, Henderson thought, but then again, he probably swabbed the floors.
“Hi,” Beckman said. “Beer?”
“Please.”
Beckman’s longish, straw-coloured hair gave him an initial appearance of youthfulness, but when his face was scrutinized its lines and wrinkles were more apparent. Henderson guessed he was in his mid-thirties — far too old for Bryant, he reassured himself.
A long-necked beer bottle was banged down on the bar and its top flipped off with an opener.
“Could I have a glass, please?” Henderson said without thinking. The barman looked at him with heavy suspicion — as if he’d just asked for the ladies’ room — before raking around on some shelves beneath the bar and presenting him with a thick, finely scratched and semi-transparent glass.
“Cheers,” Henderson said. Beckman smiled, his eyelids fluttering like an ingenue’s. He seemed to blink about two times a second, Henderson calculated: it must be like seeing the world lit by a stroboscopic sun. To his alarm he sensed his own blink-rate going up in sympathy.
“Thanks for taking Bryant to your, ah, lab.”
“Hey, a pleasure. Nice kid. Sure talks a lot.” Blink-blink-blink-blink.
Pause.
“She’s my step-daughter. Or soon will be.”
“I know. Congratulations.” Bat-bat-bat-bat.
Henderson turned away and forcibly held his own fluttering eyelids steady with thumb and forefinger. Making eye-contact with Beckman was instant conjunctivitis. He addressed the beer in his glass.
“What is it exactly that you do at your lab?”
“Well, I’m what’s known as an elementary particle physicist. You know, quarks, neutrinos, anti-matter — that sort of thing.”
“An elementary particle physicist?” Henderson strained to keep the laughing incredulity out of his voice. The poor guy. “Fascinating.”
“I think so.”
There was another pause. Then Beckman said, “Listen, please don’t worry about my blinking. It happened in Nam. I nearly got blown away.”
“Really? I hadn’t actually noticed…I thought…” Henderson changed the subject. “Bryant said something about the paintings — your father’s paintings — already being sold.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Some months ago. Freeborn sold them.”
Henderson felt a twinge of alarm. “Are you sure?”
“I guess so.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“You tell me.”
“Who did he sell them to?”
“Some guy called Sereno. I don’t know. Maybe you’d better ask Freeborn.”
I’d better ask old man Gage, Henderson thought, I’m sure he’ll be fascinated.
“Can I hitch a ride back to the house?”
“Surely. Let’s go.”
They went outside and got into the pickup, Bryant sitting between them. She had put on sunglasses — maybe to hide her blinks, Henderson thought. She seemed very at ease and unconcerned.
They bumped off down the track.
“When I was in Nam,” Beckman began, unprompted, “‘68, Dac Tro province. No, it was Quang Tri. They called an airstrike on this hostile ville. ‘Cept the fuckin’ airforce dropped the bombs right on our fuckin’ platoon. Three dead, six injured. I woke up two days later in a hospital, not a scratch, but just blinking like shit. Haven’t stopped since.”
“God,” Bryant said in awe. “You’ve been blinking like this all these years?”
“You got it.”
“Didn’t you get any compensation? Some sort of pension?” Henderson asked politely.
“For what? I told you, I didn’t have a scratch. I didn’t even get a fuckin’ purple heart. They sent me right back in.”
“Good God,” Henderson said, “that’s barbaric.”
“But at least you weren’t dead,” Bryant said. “Like the other guys.”
“Yeah. That’s something, I suppose.”
They arrived at the house. Alma-May was sweeping the porch.
“Evening,” Henderson said. “Mr Gage back?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good.”
“But he’s gone away again. He was looking for you. For to show you the paintings, he said.”
“Bloody hell… Excuse me.” Henderson looked around him exasperatedly. “Did he leave any message about the paintings?”
“No.” Alma-May swept dust over his shoes. He moved aside.
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“No.”
♦
That evening, Henderson and Bryant watched TV after being served something called ‘turnip cakes’ and a watery ratatouille. Beckman disappeared into his room. From upstairs came the remorseless bass thump of Duane’s rock music. Henderson got a bad headache at about half past nine. He went out into the warm night, stood on the porch and stared at the yellow windows of Freeborn’s mobile home. He found no answer there and so went up to bed.
Chapter Six
“Yeah, we was on patrol near Loc Tri. No, no, it was Dhat Pho. Man, we was pissed. A real jerk-off patrol. Then we sees this like buffalo thing — kinda like a big cow? You know? — in a paddy field. That’s where the gooks grow their rice.”
“In a paddy field? I see.”
“Yeah. Well, I guess it was about, oh, a hundred and fifty yards away. No, let’s see, maybe a hundred and thirty.” Beckman Gage, elementary particle physicist, frowned as he tried to recall the exact distance. “Let’s say one-forty. Anyway, so the sergeant says, “The first guy to off that buffalo gets a six-pack on me.” Yeah. Well, I was like carrying the machine gun. The other guys start firing…”