The Avatari (17 page)

‘Sorry, they don’t seem to have heard of tea in these parts,’ Duggy remarked with some acerbity.

‘Coffee’s just fine, thanks,’ she said, accepting her cup gratefully.

‘Tired? We could check into a hotel and make it in the afternoon.’

It had been a cramped flight.

‘No, I’m fine. You?’ she asked.

‘Slept all through. There are some advantages to being a small man.’

Duggy had got some maps from Tourist Information. He now handed them over to Susan.

‘I asked the man how we could get to Daytona,’ he said. ‘Apparently, there’s a bus which leaves every half an hour. Then there are taxis. Or we could charter a plane. Took a while to get the information, though. I don’t believe they speak English.’

‘A plane to cover just thirty miles?’

‘That’s Texas for you.’

‘Let’s take the bus. You get a feel of the place that way.’

They began walking to the exit. As they passed the duty free area, Susan heard a low whistle. She turned to see two tall men, barely out of their teens, in jeans and Stetsons tipping their hats at her. She grinned back, shaking her head.

‘They appear quite friendly here,’ she said by way of explanation to Duggy, who gave her a wry, amused glance.

At the bus stand outside the airport, they found the bus going to Daytona. The driver was a large black woman who stood outside eating a doughnut.

‘We’d like to get off at Daytona,’ Susan told her.

‘Sure thing, honey. Hop in,’ the woman said, ushering them in with a sweep of her large hand. ‘Can’t miss it; it’s the last stop.’

The bus was practically empty. The only other passengers were an old couple who boarded after them and moved to the back, the man holding the older lady by the elbow and settling her in her seat. Susan reached out to help them with their bags.

‘Thank you, dear,’ the old lady said gratefully and the man tipped his hat in acknowledgement.

The bus wound its way out of the airport area. Susan, who had observed how warm it was getting as they boarded, was relieved that the bus was air-conditioned. As they moved on, she was amazed at the size of everything – the buildings, the roads and even the cars. They passed open country and saw a cowboy galloping after some cattle. The Stetson, which she had associated with Wild West movies, was de rigueur in this part of the world. They moved on to the Johnson Freeway and headed east, making good time. Soon, the White Rock Lake came into view. Susan gazed at it, then located it on her map, realizing that they were about to reach their destination.

‘Daytona!’ the driver called out.

She needn’t have bothered. The name was written in bold letters everywhere: ‘Daytona – Big Oil and Bigger Hearts.’

As they got off, a cab slowed down along the sidewalk. It pulled over as Susan and Duggy flagged it. They quickly got in. The heat was intense and both of them had begun to perspire.

‘Where to, lady?’ the cabbie asked.

‘The Wando Foundation. But first, we need to check into a hotel.’

‘Sure thing,’ he said. Starting the cab, he enquired casually, ‘You here for the computer work?’

‘That’s right,’ Duggy chipped in smartly, before Susan could even think of a response.

‘Could tell right away,’ the cabbie said. ‘Them library folks have been looking for people to do their computer work and I think it’s going to be a lot. It’s probably the biggest library in all of Texas. Now us local boys here, we can do the ridin’ and the drillin’, but guess we’re not cut out for computers. No, sir!’

Susan looked enquiringly at Duggy, who remained silent. They stopped at a motel and checked into rooms which were spacious and airy. After a quick wash and change, they returned to their cab which was waiting for them, when they had got off.

‘Business is slow this time of the day. No extra charge,’ the cabbie had assured them.

They stopped in front of an imposing building, which Susan thought was at least as big as the National Art Gallery.

‘Here you are!’ The cabbie got out and held the door open for Susan. ‘They’ll tell you otherwise, but the best steaks and dancing are to be had at Ramirez’s. That’s where I head,’ he said, nodding in gratitude as he pocketed the ten-dollar tip.

‘Thank you, I’ll remember that,’ Susan told him, smiling back.

As they climbed up the stairs, Duggy explained, ‘That old lady I talked to on the phone? She told me that the foundation was compiling a data base of all their records.’

‘What’s this foundation all about?’

‘Oh, old man Wando wanted this to be the repository of all Texas history.’

‘They have
that
much history?’ Susan asked, surprised.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. But they certainly have that much money.’

They entered a vast foyer and headed for the reception. The man behind the counter who was watching a baseball game looked up as they approached. Duggy told him they were doing an article and needed some information on Mr Ralph Wando.

‘You’ve certainly come to the right place,’ the receptionist said dryly, taking off his cap and scratching his bald head. ‘Level One. It’s all there. Probably more than you can handle in one day, though.’ He paused, before drawling on, ‘By the looks of it, seems like y’all are going to be spending some time here.’

They smiled back at him non-committally, reluctant to be drawn into more conversation about themselves than they needed to engage in. The man looked at them expectantly. When he didn’t get an answer, he sighed and turned back to the baseball game.

As Susan and Duggy headed for Level One, they realized they needn’t have bothered going to the reception. The location of the section they were looking for should have been obvious; a prominent signpost bearing the words ‘The Ralph Wando Collection’ pointed them in the right direction. They went up in an ornately designed lift more suited to a luxury hotel and entered a vast hallway. Books and binders were neatly stacked in the centre on rows of racks. There were spacious sitting areas and on the walls hung pictures, paintings and artefacts – all featuring or pertaining to the Wando family. Susan and Duggy walked around, wondering where to begin.

‘The man was right,’ Duggy conceded. ‘We can’t see everything in a day. It may well take a week.’

‘Why don’t you go through the artefacts and pictures?’ Susan suggested. ‘I’ll go through the books. And let’s meet at the vending machine in an hour.’

Susan began reading through the available material – school yearbooks, newspaper clippings and biographies – and soon found most of the information repetitive. Many of the stacks contained books in several languages that Ralph Sr had collected. In about an hour’s time, she had homed in on the basic story. Daytona had been a small ranching town, until Ralph Wando struck oil in 1918. The place boomed as a result, with almost everything being owned and run by the Wando family. Ralph Sr wasn’t the average redneck oilman. Before he struck oil, he had graduated from Princeton and had an affinity for music, art and even religion. He loved travelling, was personable and easily made connections in the right places. There was even talk of him running for Governor. Susan looked around her, feeling the presence of the man whose vision and impulse had led him to try and achieve something beyond the ordinary. Walking through the hall, she found the section she was looking for, where information about Wando’s expeditions to the Himalayas had been archived. There was surprisingly little about the last one, though, other than a few newspaper clippings. There were no personal diaries or letters, an unexplained departure from the detailed records of the previous expeditions.
That’s odd
, Susan mused. From what she had observed so far, Ralph Sr was a compulsive and diligent diarist. She made her notes, then looked at her watch. It was time to meet Duggy.

She found him talking to an old lady they had seen seated at a desk when they entered the hall.

‘This is my friend and colleague Susan Hamilton,’ he said. ‘Susan, this is Mrs Reeves, the lady I had called from England and spoken to. She really is a storehouse of all the information we need. Truly remarkable, I must say.’

‘Mr, er, Douglas, is being a gentleman.’ The woman smiled.

Duggy didn’t bother to correct the name.

Mrs Reeves looked Susan up and down and continued, ‘Like I was telling Mr Douglas, this town was built by Mr Ralph Wando Sr. It wasn’t just the money – there’s a lot of that going around here, as y’all would have seen. He had a dream. Hospitals, old-age homes, schools – the whole deal. Mr Wando wanted us to be on the map, not just of Texas, but of the US of A. Yes, sir! And if his life hadn’t been cut short, we would have been there too. Pity no one after him counted for too much. Junior was into cars and women and died in a head-on collision after a night of drinking. We had hopes for Jason, the grandson. There was talk of him getting into politics, but he was killed in Vietnam, I think.’

‘How about Jason’s mother?’

‘She died of a fever, when her younger son was about eight or nine years old. Didn’t take too long for Jr to hitch up with a waitress.’

‘And how about her, the second wife?’

‘Jessica? Oh, she was a nice sort – if you can forget where she came from,’ she said, her voice dropping conspiratorially. Mrs Reeves evidently wasn’t the kind who had forgotten. ‘She married again and moved out East some place.’

‘How about Jason’s brother?’

‘Josh?’ Again, her voice dropped and Susan made out that the old lady was uneasy dwelling on the subject. ‘Well, he’s here all right, running things now,’ she said. ‘He’s the, er, quiet sort. Keeps to himself, mostly.’

‘Your foundation is doing quite all right. We can see that,’ Susan remarked.

‘That’s all Ralph Sr’s doing. He knew that his son didn’t have the drive to carry forward what he had begun. So he set up watertight trusts for everything he had created and chose his management board wisely. Young Josh has also been taking some interest lately. He probably wants to do something for the family name – finally.’

Duggy coughed. ‘Coming back to the picture you had shown me, Mrs Reeves?’ he reminded her.

They looked up at the wall behind her desk. There was a black-and-white photo of some men in mountaineering gear smiling at the camera. Susan had just seen it in a newspaper clipping; this was a clearer, blown-up version.

‘That picture was taken, I’m told, just before Ralph Sr died,’ Mrs Reeves explained. ‘Created quite a stir, that expedition! Ralph Sr had got a number of local boys – buddies – to join him and they were sent off with a lot of fanfare, as if they were going to war or something. Came back with a whimper, though. Apart from Ralph Sr I don’t think any of them had the stomach for it. And with Ralph not making it back, it sure cast a pall of gloom over this town.’

‘Where are they now? The others, I mean.’

Mrs Reeves peered at the photo. ‘They’re all dead,’ she announced flatly.

‘Are you sure?’ Susan asked.

‘Of course I am, young lady! They were all from this town,’ Mrs Reeves said with some asperity. ‘You can check out the headstones while you’re here, if that’s what you want.’

‘Who is this man?’ Duggy asked, pointing to the face of a young black man standing in the second row, along with the porters.

‘That’s Aaron. He was Ralph Sr’s boy,’ she said, then corrected herself quickly. ‘I mean, er, his assistant. Went everywhere with him, I’m told.’ The woman read the query on the visitors’ faces and addressed it with a sigh. ‘Yes, he’s alive. Not doing too well, I got to hear.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Alzheimer’s. He’s been at the Wando Memorial for two years now.’

After asking a few perfunctory questions, Susan and Duggy thanked the lady and left. They found a cab to take them to the Ethel Wando Memorial Hospital and Research Facility. It was somewhere out of town and located in the middle of a large park which overlooked an artificial lake. It was an imposing building. Gazing at its size, Susan wondered if they got enough patients. She and Duggy debated on the story they would need to cook up if they were to meet Aaron without arousing suspicion.

‘Can you think of something?’ Duggy asked her.

‘We wouldn’t be able to carry it off, Duggy,’ she told him. ‘Let’s just say we’re looking for information about Ralph Sr’s expedition – which is true, in a manner of speaking.’

‘The direct approach?’

‘Exactly. It usually works.’

The girl at the reception desk looked doubtful. She turned to consult a bald man who was sitting at a desk behind her. He took a look at them and his expression lit up a bit when Susan smiled at him.

‘It’s all right,’ he said to the girl. ‘It will probably cheer Aaron up. I don’t know of anyone coming to meet him these days, apart from the church people, and they don’t come that pretty!’

He smiled back at Susan.

The girl at the desk rang a bell. A nurse came up and was asked to escort the visitors to Aaron’s room.

The nurse turned out to be a chatty young thing. ‘He’s a wonderful old man,’ she remarked, as they took the lift to Level Two. ‘Pity about his condition. But he’s still full of life and tough as a bull. Tells the most interesting stories you ever heard. Hope, for your sake, he’s feeling okay.’

They came to a wing and she opened the door to a room. It looked like a luxury suite.

‘Ralph Sr left him a lot of money,’ the nurse went on, ‘but that never changed the old geezer. Remained in his outhouse and caught fish – right till the day we had to bring him here. Even Mr Josh insists on only the best for him.’ She waved them inside and said, ‘I’ll go catch a cup of coffee. Don’t worry, I’ll be at the vending machine if you need me.’

They approached the man who must have once been fit and robust, but was now shrunken with age, the body contorted, the hands claw-like, the eyes vacant. For a fleeting moment, those eyes seemed to focus; he had noticed their presence. Then he smiled. A gob of saliva dribbled out of the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin.

‘Flowers.’ He spoke so softly, that they had to lean forward to catch the words. ‘Thank you.’

Susan had bought some roses for him from the kiosk downstairs.

‘Mr Jackson, we are doing some research on the expeditions of Ralph Sr. Could you tell us something?’ Susan asked, sitting by his bed.