McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (52 page)

 
          
 
The two tall men blinked. My erratic behavior
made them nervous.

 
          
 
August was not so volatile. He was thinking
about the gong and did not allow himself to be distracted. His left eye gazed
off into
Baltimore
, while his right studied me.

 
          
 
"Like to get a hunnert an'
twenty-five," he said.

 
          
 
I immediately handed it over.

 
          
 
"Thank you," I said. "That's a
good price. What about the trunk?"

 
          
 
"It's under them quilts," August
said, after a moment. Having $125 materialize in his hand startled
him,
and he waddled off around the pickup and put it in a
safe place.

 
          
 
"I sure would like to see that
trunk," I said, when he came back.

 
          
 
Benny arrived with $75 and took the turtle
shell with the beautiful primitive on it.

 
          
 
"He wants that trunk," August said.
"You want it?"

 
          
 
A true trader, he was sticking to protocol. He
had come to see Benny, therefore Benny had first refusal on everything that was
for sale.

 
          
 
"My goodness," Benny said. "I
don't think so. I have over two hundred trunks."

 
          
 
It was true. Benny's house had trunks
everywhere, most of them serving as storage bins for medals, seals, coins,
watches, paperweights, netsuke, or other small objects.

 
          
 
August looked at the trunk thoughtfully.

 
          
 
"Take it out I won't be able to get it
back in," he said, to test my seriousness. Removing the trunk would
disrupt the balance of his load, which in his mind possessed an order not
visible to the casual eye.

 
          
 
“I’ll probably buy it," I said.

 
          
 
Looking resigned, he extracted the trunk,
while his companions stood by like two nervous birds, watching his every move
but not daring to offer any assistance. August was clearly the boss.

 
          
 
The trunk, when it finally emerged, was
wonderful. I couldn't immediately place the wood, but it was not American. From
the leather and brass work I thought it was probably seventeenth century,
though it might have been sixteenth. There was a crest stamped into the leather
and the inside was lined with
an ancient
purplish
velvet, dried to the thinness of Kleenex, but velvet still. Probably the trunk
was Spanish, possibly Portuguese.

 
          
 
"Do you know this crest, Benny?" I
asked. If it was a royal, as opposed to a ducal, crest, the chest might be
worth thousands.

 
          
 
Benny was no help. Like many collectors, he is
completely indifferent to objects he is not interested in buying.

 
          
 
"It's not familiar to me," he said
rather formally. He had got what he wanted—an astonishing primitive—and a
Spanish trunk could not interest him less.

 
          
 
August's good eye watched me unblinkingly as I
studied the trunk.

 
          
 
"Gosh, I like it," I said.
"Where'd you get it?"

 
          
 
"Over't
Pensacola
," August said.

 
          
 
"What would you take for it?"

 
          
 
"Two hunnert," August said. His
expression didn't change at all, but the figure caused his companions to blink
several times. I had a feeling August thought he was shooting for the moon this
time.

 
          
 
"Fine," I said, paying him as
quickly as I had paid for the gong.

 
          
 
My rapid acceptance caused a slight look of
worry to cross his broad face. He had meant to overprice the trunk, but the
fact that I hadn't even bothered to bargain could only mean that he had
underpriced it after all.

 
          
 
Nonetheless, the deed was done. No doubt it
would be discussed endlessly, as the three men rode up the road. They might
debate the sale for weeks, and even persuade themselves eventually that they
could have got an unheard-of sum, like three hundred, for the trunk.

 
          
 
In the meantime they closed the tailgate and
got ready to leave for the next stop up the road, having just made four hundred
dollars—not bad for
Baltimore
in the middle of the night. The tires of the old truck were so
treadless they were shiny.

 
          
 
Watching it creak away up the bumpy street,
the sideboards swaying with the weight of goods piled in it, I felt better for
a moment. The three strange traders had made me feel that I was in touch with
my vocation again. It was warming to think that all over
America
at this hour people were loading pickups
and vans and setting off for flea markets and swap-meets. It was a peculiar
solution to life, perhaps, but a surprisingly effective one. The treasure hunt
must never stop, even if most of the folks who pursued it were only able to
offer humble treasures.

 
          
 
"Who were the thin guys?" I asked
Benny.

 
          
 
"Sept and Octo," he said.
"Octo's the youngest. That's as far as the old man got."

 
          
 
I looked puzzled.

 
          
 
"Named his kids after the months,"
Benny said. "He was hoping to get twelve but the old lady died after
Octo."

 
          
 
"Were there any girls?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Why yes," Benny said.
"April, May, and June.
They run a nice flea market
outside of
Cleveland
. You ought to stop and see them if you're
up that way."

 
          
 
"I'll do that, Benny," I said.

 
          
 
It was
4 A.M.
when I pulled back into
Washington
—too late to sleep, too early to go to
Jean's house. It wouldn't do to show up that early, even armed with an
extraordinary trunk.

 
          
 
Thinking of Jean, I went into the cafeteria
where I had persuaded her to eat breakfast with me the morning we met. It was
an all-night cafeteria, but
4 a.m.
was not its busiest hour. A few tired
delivery men were drinking coffee, and two young hookers were hanging around
the pay phone as if it were their office. There were a few pale young men in
polyester suits who looked like they might have come off the graveyard shift in
some far-flung wing of the bureaucracy. They were so pale as to be almost
translucent. Perhaps they were only allowed out in the dark of night, and never
experienced sunlight at all.

 
          
 
As I was about to sit down and eat a big plate
of scrambled eggs I happened to look out the window and saw Eviste Labouchere.
He was chugging slowly up the sidewalk on an ancient motor scooter, wearing
evening clothes and a blue crash helmet.

 
          
 
Eviste carefully parked his scooter and came
in, still wearing the blue crash helmet. The hookers didn't give him a
glance—perhaps he often straggled through their office at four in the morning.
He stood pensively in front of about fifty yards of food, a small solitary
figure contemplating almost infinite gastronomic choices, but all he got was
coffee and a croissant. Beneath his crash helmet he looked a little melancholy.
I waved at him and he came over.

 
          
 
"Must have been a late party," I
said.

 
          
 
Eviste shook his head. He tried to grin, but
was too tired even to lift his small mustache.

 
          
 
"I speek to
Poland
," he said.

 
          
 
I didn't know if he meant the country, or if
he had a new girl friend named
Poland
.

 
          
 
It turned out to be the former. Thanks to the
fact that he spoke Polish, Eviste had a job at the USIA. Every morning from
2 A.M.
to
4 a.m.
he broadcast in Polish, for the benefit of
the oppressed masses.

 
          
 
"Sometimes I read poems," he said.
"Tonight I was reading Adam Mickiewicz."

 
          
 
To my horror, he began to cry. He had not
taken off his crash helmet, either. Tears ran out of his eyes and dripped into
the smudge of his mustache, then ran on beneath the chin strap of his helmet
and stained the front of his dress shirt.

 
          
 
"I don't like to speek to
Poland
," he said, wiping his eyes with a
paper napkin. "I am a re-porter! I need the sources. All the sources are taken
up."

 
          
 
He was too disheartened even to be able to
break his croissant in half.

 
          
 
Across the room the phone rang and one of the
two hookers answered it. Their wait had paid off. A minute later they were
going out the door.

 
          
 
It occurred to me that perhaps I could help
Eviste out. I could be a source. After all, I knew what seemed to me like an
important secret, although it wasn't too secret and no one else in
Washington
seemed to think it was important at all, or
even unusual.

 
          
 
"Do you know about the Smithsonian?"
I asked. "Do you know it's being sold?"

 
          
 
Eviste looked blank. In his tired state the
concept didn't really penetrate.

 
          
 
"Here's your scoop," I said. And I
explained to him about the sales to
Third World
countries. Peck Folmsbee's
museums,
and all the
replicas being manufactured in secret factories in
Hodges
,
South Carolina
.

 
          
 
"It's the truth," I said. "I
don't know why it hasn't been in the papers."

 
          
 
I really didn't know why. The only person I
knew who considered the Smithsonian sale an important secret was Brisling
Bowker, and that was probably because he hoped to auction some of it. The one
journalist I had mentioned it to,

 
          
 
George
Psalmanazar,
had dismissed it contemptuously. "It's a page-six story in the New York
Post," he had said, with some disgust.

 
          
 
Eviste was a fresher spirit. The minute I
mentioned the
Third
World
his eyes
began to light up. In no time he had sluffed off his fatigue. This was it, the
"sceup'* he had come to
America
to find. He began to scribble on napkins. Since
he used a felt-tip pen with a broad tip his scribbles soaked into the napkins
and became illegible almost immediately, but Eviste kept scribbling. Soon he
had such a pile of ink-soaked napkins that it became embarrassing. Fortunately,
the one busboy in the cafeteria was asleep, slumped against the milk machine.

 
          
 
Then, while I drank a second cup of coffee, he
dashed off to a pay phone to phone in his story. This did not prove simple.
While he was trying to get his paper in
Rouen
another hooker came in and looked indignant
when she discovered a small Frenchman using the telephone.

 
          
 
The call took a long time. Eviste's editors
probably weren't convinced. In all likelihood they had forgotten the very
existence of Eviste. Eviste became excited. He was yelling in French into the
phone.

 
          
 
I kept drinking coffee and thinking about
Jean. Though small she had seemed rather demanding. Probably the least she
would demand was stability, a quality I wasn't sure I had to offer.

 
          
 
While I pondered, Eviste chattered in French
to his editors. They were probably sitting over in Rouen trying to decide if
they wanted to make themselves the laughing-stocks of world journalism by
printing a story emanating from a stringer so obscure they had long since
forgotten him. As Eviste tried to persuade them, the city grew light.
A
street
-
sweeping machine, just finishing its nightly
run, parked outside. The driver came in to have his breakfast. It was a misty
morning, the streetlights amber circles in the mist.

 
          
 
Eviste finally came back, looking resigned.
His editors had had no interest whatsoever in the Smithsonian or its fate.

 
          
 
"They want to know about Nanceey,"
he said. "They want to know about Haig. They think Haig will shoot a
bomb."

 
          
 
He slumped in his seat, defeated. His scream
had fallen on deaf ears.

 
          
 
"Let's take a ride," I said,
thinking a trip to the Millers might cheer him up. The Millers were early
risers.

 
          
 
Sure enough, they had risen, or at least Boss,
Boog, and Josie had. Boog was sitting glumly at the table holding a telephone
to his ear, while Boss cooked a sausage omelet. Josie was cheerfully making
biscuits. She and Boss looked as friendly as sisters.

 
          
 
“I wondered where you went off to," Josie
said, when I came in. "
Boy,
you brought me to the
right place, all right. We seen a movie and then we went dancin'.
Me
and Micah danced half the night."

 
          
 
"Hi, Eviste," Boss said.
"Welcome to breakfast."

 
          
 
Boog hung up the phone and sighed.

 
          
 
"What's wrong with you?" Boss asked.
She looked somewhat testy.

 
          
 
"What ain't?" Boog said. "We
got any tequila?"

 
          
 
"He's a little like Little Joe,"
Josie said to Boss. "Gets depressed all the time, right?"

 
          
 
Eviste was watching Josie, who was still
wearing her yellow shirt. She had exchanged her
Levis
for some running shorts she had found
somewhere.

 
          
 
"You wanta buy a Henry rifle?" I
asked Boog, thinking a little action might lift his gloom.

 
          
 
"For how much?" he said listlessly.

 
          
 
When I introduced Eviste to Josie, Eviste
bowed, which surprised Josie no end.

 
          
 
"I guess I better make some more
biscuits, now that we got company," she said. In two minutes she was
teaching Eviste the fine art of biscuit making. The fact that he was wearing a
tuxedo didn't faze her at all.

 
          
 
"Eviste tried to break the story about
the Smithsonian being for sale, but no one's interested," I remarked.

 
          
 
Boog shrugged. "I'm puttin'
Winkler
County
up for sale pretty soon," he said.
"If I was to buy that gun
who
could I shoot with
it?"

 
          
 
"You might as well shoot yourself if you
don't cheer up," Boss said. "The one thing I won't tolerate is a
gloomy man."

 
          
 
"Micah's gloomy," Boog pointed out.
"He
lays
around crying half the time."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but it only takes Bob Newhart to
cheer him up,"

 
          
 
Boss said. "I thought you were going to
Saudi Arabia
today.'*

 
          
 
She sounded put out with her husband—a normal
thing for a wife to be, but Boss had never seemed like a normal wife. It had
never occurred to me that the Millers' marriage might fray, like other
marriages. Their long defiance of convention had been so successful that you
tended to forget that no success is necessarily permanent.

 
          
 
The life of their household went on, as
expansive as ever, accommodating Josie easily, and now Eviste, but the life of
Boog and Boss seemed to have changed subtly.

 
          
 
"It's an unsubstantial pageant,"
Boog said.
"A sleep and a forgetting.
There ain't
no peace nor help from care. Ignert armies clash by night, so's it's hard to
sleep."

 
          
 
"Shut up," Boss said. "Go back
to bed if that's the best you can do."

 
          
 
"I never went to bed," Boog said. He
looked at me angrily.