McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (62 page)

 
          
 
"I don't think that's fair," I said.

 
          
 
"I didn't say it was bad," Jean
said. "It's okay. You're not ungenerous. In fact you're rather
giving."

 
          
 
Then she dropped the conversation, lay down
with me again, and we cuddled for a while before making love again.

 
          
 
It had just been a little bit of bed talk, but
it came back to me and stayed in my mind all the way across
West Virginia
,
Indiana
, and
Illinois
. I should have been more conclusive, then,
it seemed to me. If I had just said the right words, or if Jean had, we might
have dispelled all the vagueness that afflicted our relationship—vagueness
about what we both wanted, apart or with one another.

 
          
 
But we had started to touch one another again
and had failed to reach any conclusion, leaving me to finish the conversation
in my head as I glided across
th
^
Midwest
.

 
          
 
For a while I felt as if I were actually about
to reach a conclusion, after which I would understand everything I needed to
know about myself, about my experience, and about my relations with
beautiful
objects and beautiful women. I felt heavy, and
waited for the conclusion as one waits for a belch. Any moment, the belch in my
head would come, and the first thing I would do was call Jean, wake her up, and
explain to her that I finally knew exactly what was going on.

 
          
 
But if the conclusion was to come like a
belch, driving proved to be my Alka-Seltzer. I slowly fizzed back into a blank,
relaxed state, and instead of waiting for the conclusion I began to wait for
St. Louis
. The sun was well up before I crossed the
river and passed beside the Gateway Arch. By the time I got tired enough to
sleep I was in
Nebraska
.

 
          
 
In the Northwest I had an extraordinary run of
luck. For three weeks, every time I turned around I found something unusual,
and unusually splendid.

 
          
 
The run started modestly at a garage sale in
Vancouver
, where I bought a
New Guinea
dagger made of cassowary leg bone. A spry,
elderly, blue-eyed Britisher was holding the garage sale. When I bought the
dagger he asked if I had an interest in a really unusual weapon.

 
          
 
"Sure," I said.

 
          
 
"What would you give for the club that
killed Captain Cook?" he asked.

 
          
 
"I didn't even know a club killed
him," I said, feeling that I was probably dealing with a nut, albeit a
sprightly nut.

 
          
 
"Oh yes," he said. "It's a
Tongan club. I have the full provenance, if you're doubtful. I am descended on
my mother's side from Admiral Sir John Hunter, who was a very competent artist,
if I do say so. He made excellent drawings of Hawaiian fauna. I've got the club
just in here."

 
          
 
It was a wonderful club, whether or not it had
killed Captain Cook. It was made of ironwood, had a little wrist loop, and was
incised with genealogical ornaments of some kind, showing a bird, the sun, and
the moon.

 
          
 
Amazingly, the old gentleman, whose name was
Legh, did have a more or less believable provenance for it. Though it had once
been in his family, it had somehow slipped out and had had to be bought back at
auction, in the early seventies. I read the catalog description, which did make
it seem likely that the club had been used to give Captain Cook a whack or two,
although not until he had already been stabbed.

 
          
 
Mr. Legh's house was full of interesting
weapons. He loved scimitars and had two hundred or so, some of them in splendid
jeweled scabbards.

 
          
 
"I was posted in the
Middle East
for forty-eight years," he said.
"Diplomat, you know. That's where I got the scimitars."

 
          
 
"Did you know Sir Cripps Crisp?" I
asked, just curious.

 
          
 
"Oh yes, Jim, quite," he said, with
a frown. Cleariy they were not friends.

 
          
 
After a little negotiation I bought the club
for $8,000.

 
          
 
"Why are you selling it?" I asked.

 
          
 
"The wife's had an operation, that's why
she isn't here to serve us tea," he said, not at all depressed that the
family heirloom was leaving the family once again. For good measure he threw in
a couple more cassowary leg-bone daggers. He had a bushel basket full of those.

 
          
 
In
Seattle
the next day, in a junk shop, I found a
Navaho double-saddle blanket, very old, with a pattern I had never seen. It was
a wonderful saddle blanket. I bought it for a few hundred dollars and later
sold it to Boog for $5,000. The same day I bought a Paduan lamp in the shape of
a pelican. I knew I was having a run and ran it for all it was worth. I kept
moving south, buying wonderful things everywhere I went. I bought a Victorian
cannonball, a Ming jarlet with a wonderful blackberry and lily underglaze, a
lizard-skin drum, an amazing Inro compartment with a swooping crane design, a
lacquered rosewood tobacco boon, a Lalique plique-a-jour gold enamel necklace,
a Faberge carving of a mandrill, in jasper, and an extraordinary goldsaddle-frame
that was probably late seventeenth century.

 
          
 
The run ended at a flea market on the south
side of
Portland
, in a delicate
Oregon
mist. As I wandered around, waiting for the
mist to lighten just a little, I spotted an old couple sitting in green lawn
chairs beside what was probably the rustiest pickup I had ever seen. It was a
'48 Chevy without a speck of the original paint, or any paint, on it. It
belonged in a
Rust
Museum
, if there was such a thing, and I stopped
for a moment, mainly to admire the pickup. The old man and the old woman were
just sitting there in the mist, working their gums. They had laid out a
miserable little display on the tailgate of the pickup and were apparently
content with it. Their stock consisted of six or eight insulators, a few old
tools, some fifties Coke bottles, and a little pottery. What wouldn't fit on
the tailgate was on a rickety card table set between them.

 
          
 
"Howdy," I said. "I like your
pickup."

 
          
 
"Yes sir," the old man said.
"We like her too."

 
          
 
"I don't," the old woman said.
"I been tryin' to get him to trade it in, but he won't. If we run it much
longer we won't get
no
trade-in at all."

 
          
 
"She wants one of them with that power
steering," the old man said, spitting a squirt of tobacco juice into the
wet grass.

 
          
 
"Got anything good you're hiding?" I
asked.

 
          
 
They studied me for a moment, trying to decide
if I could be trusted to handle the good stuff.

 
          
 
"Got a box of Depression glass in the
front seat," the old man said finally. "You can look if you'll be
careful."

 
          
 
I had been neglecting my commission to buy
Depression glass for Momma Cullen, so I walked around and opened the pickup
door. On top of the box of junky glass lay a dusty manila folder with a comer
of something that looked like vellum sticking out. Just the sight of the vellum
gave me a tingle of anticipation.

 
          
 
The folder contained a large leaf from a
Moghul manuscript—a beautiful, delicate miniature showed a battle scene
involving elephants. The elephants were surrounded by an army of small,
stylized, but perfectly drawn people, their faces all calm despite the passion of
the fight.

 
          
 
Some finds produce
a
stillness
in you. Still, very still, was how I felt as I looked at the
wonderful leaf, with its thin, elegant goldwork and its two tiny armies. After
looking at it for several minutes I put it back in its folder and carried it
and the box of glass back around to where the old couple were sitting.

 
          
 
"Nice glass," I said. "How much
will you take for the whole box?"

 
          
 
"Three hunnert," the old woman said,
without hesitation.

 
          
 
"How about this
thing?"
I asked, holding up the folder.

 
          
 
"Found that yesterday, down at
Pleasant Hill
," the old man said.
"Hadn't
priced it yet."

 
          
 
"We
was
thinking
of giving it to our little granddaughter," the old woman said. "She
likes elephants."

 
          
 
"I'd sure like to buy it," I said
quietly. "That is unless you really have your heart set on giving it to
her."

 
          
 
"Aw well," the old man said.
"We could buy her some coloring books with elephants in them, couldn't we,
Momma?"

 
          
 
"I guess so, Daddy," the old woman
said. "That thing's got gold on it though.
Must be worth
something."

 
          
 
"Would you pay thirty-five dollars?"
the old man asked.

 
          
 
I paid them the $35, plus $300 for the
Depression glass. In the process I learned their names: They were the Haskells.
The old lady told me all about her grandchildren as she carefully wrapped each
piece of worthless glass in two layers of newspaper. She and the old man were
wildly excited—this was their biggest day as flea marketers, ever.

 
          
 
I walked away feeling sad. The run was over. I
didn't know what the Moghul leaf was worth, but it was worth a lot. In a way I
had cheated the Haskells. I should have bought them a pickup with power
steering.

 
          
 
But if I had, what balance would have been
disturbed? The thrill of selling $335 worth in one day was in itself a thrill
that would sustain them for
years, that
they could
talk about, probably, for the rest of their lives. Paying them a fair price for
the leaf might just as easily have destroyed them. They would never again have
had a nice time, sitting in the mist in their lawn chairs, waiting for a sucker
who might give $300 for a box of Depression glass. They had invited me to come
by their home, next time I was in
Oregon
,
and I said I would.

 
          
 
"If you're down in
New Mexico
, buy us some arty-facts," the old
woman said. "Arty-facts still sell real
good
, up
here."

 
          
 
A few months later I sold the Moghul leaf to a
dealer in
Memphis
for $ 115,000. But that part of it seemed
commonplace, not really exciting, either to me or to him.

 
          
 
When I left the flea market I drove all the
way from Portland across to Montrose, Colorado—it was a Sunday night when I
pulled off* the road and hit a motel, in the shadows cast by the cold Rockies.
Most of the drive I spent on the phone with Coffee, discussing
various
of her problems and trying to decide if we were up
to a meeting. I had let Coffee's husky childish voice, talking endlessly, pull
me slowly south and I was seriously thinking of paying her a quick visit before
going back east to take the Arbers to Disney World.

 
          
 
As I was undressing to take a bath, I flipped
on the television and was startled to see the freckled face of Uncle Ike
Spettle fill the whole screen. Uncle Ike was working his gums, much as had old
man Haskell back in
Portland
.

 
          
 
He was dressed in a clean white shirt and a $5
imitation-rawhide string tie. When the cameras rolled back a little I saw that
he was in Cindy's gallery in
Georgetown
, being interviewed by Dan Rather.

 
          
 
Beside Uncle Ike, on a
little pedestal, sat the boots of Billy the Kid.
They were under glass,
or maybe under plexiglass, with a solid security guard with a pistol on his hip
standing nearby.

 
          
 
I could hardly believe my good timing. The
boot exhibition was happening, right before my eyes. Cowboy culture had come to
the capital of the land and Dan Rather was there to tell us about it.

 
          
 
"Uncle Ike, how does it feel to be here
in historic
Georgetown
?" he asked.

 
          
 
Uncle Ike worked his gums for a bit, eyeing
the security guard skeptically.

 
          
 
"You reckon that boy can shoot?" he
asked.