Yellow Mesquite (38 page)

 
“I don’t care if he’s the king of Timbuktu.”

“Mr. Buchanan—”

“All I know is you’re telling me I had ten thousand dollars in your bank, and this is the first I’ve heard about it.”

“There does seem to be some sort of…well,
irregularity
. Of course, you
do
understand, the bank has acted in good faith.”
 

 
“Hell, no. I don’t understand anything of the sort.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but you do realize, too, that Texas is a community property state? What belongs to the husband belongs to the wife and vice versa?”

“That money was left to me for an express purpose, a gift, an inheritance. We’ll see what my attorney has to say about it.”

 
“Mr. Buchanan, is there somewhere you can be reached? Let me look into this and get back to you on it.”

Harley had a hard time concentrating on the JCPenney spring catalog that afternoon.
 

H
E ARRIVED
HOME
and had his work clothes on when Whitehead called. “Boy, what the hell’s goin’ on up there?”

“You tell me.”

“Gonzales sez you don’t know nothin’ about that money.”
 

“Well, Gonzales got something right, anyway.”

“That Sherylynne, she told me you signed over checkin’ rights to ’er.”

“And I understand you witnessed it. Imagine that.”

“Now, lookie here, son, you was up there in New Yark. She said she sent it and you signed it.”

“That how you witnessed it?”

“Well, god a’mighty, it was either that or you was gonna have to make a trip back down here.”

“All I know is somebody forged my name on that paper and you witnessed it.”

“Boy, Harley Jay, now you listen here to me. I thought you knew about that money all along.”

 
“Yeah? That just leaves Sherylynne, doesn’t it.”

 
“Now, wait a minute. She’s your wife. I don’t think you can—”

“My wife? She divorced me. Remember?”

“Son—”

Harley hung up on him. He went to the kitchen and stood, thinking, wishing he had a stiff drink of Jack Daniel’s on hand.

The phone rang.

“Boy, Harley Jay, now don’t you go hangin’ up ’cause I gotta tell you, them people over at the bank, they ain’t too happy about this. You and me, we gotta try and come to some kinda agreement on this thang.”

“Agreement? All I know is that between you and Sherylynne and that bank, my money’s gone.”

“Well, I guess you could call it your money, but if you’re anything like me, you ain’t the kinda feller to sponge off other people.”

“What do you mean, ‘sponge off other people’? What do you mean by that?”

“Mavis mighta left you that money, all right, but you ain’t never done nothin’ to earn it that I know of. That’s spongin’ in my book.”

“I never took anything from anybody in my life, and you know it.”

 
“Now boy, Harley Jay, don’t go gettin’ testy on me here! You forget how I helped you when you was down and out, give you that job and that car and paid your way to all them places.”

“Just a damn minute! You didn’t give me any car and you didn’t pay my way anywhere and you know it! As for that job, you never had anybody more reliable, work harder or any better than I did, and you know that, too!”

“Son, I’m sorry you feel that way. Aside from ever’thang else, I thought you and me was friends.”

“Uh-huh. So now it’s
friends,
is it? If you didn’t have anything to do with this, what’re you worried about?”

“You know, you and Sherylynne been like my own flesh and blood. I wouldn’t want you bringin’ charges against her. You wouldn’t do that, now, would you?”

“Who’re you worried about, you or her?”

“Now, listen here, son, they ain’t no use bustin’ a gut over it. It ain’t but a few months till you’ll be getting another one a them checks. So why not let Sherylynne and that baby have that money and be satisfied. Write it off as child support. I mean, you ain’t been payin’ nothin’, right?”

“What do you mean, ‘getting another one’?”

“W’hell, you’re gonna get that ten thousand ever year fer five years. You didn’t know that?”

Again he was stopped in his tracks.

“Boy? Harley Jay? You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here. And while we’re on the subject, I
have
been sending child support, and for what it’s worth, I have receipts.”
 

“Forget that Mickey Mouse child support! That damn bank can make a lot of trouble for us.”

“For you and Sherylynne, maybe. And if my ten thousand isn’t replaced by Monday, they’re going to get a grand opportunity.”

“Just what’re you plannin’ to do?”

“I can’t make it any clearer. That ten grand better be replaced in my account by Monday morning, or you’re going to find out, big time.”

“Boy—”
 

Harley hung up.

THE NEXT DAY
at noon, Harley went down to the lobby and called Gonzales. “Mr. Gonzales, Harley Buchanan.”

“Ah, yes. Delighted to hear from you. I’m told your little, uh, problem is straightened out.” Mr. Gonzales’s attempt to be light and friendly sounded fairly strained.

“Just so we’re clear, I wasn’t the one with the little problem.”

“Well, yes. In any case, I’m told you’ve come to an agreement with Mr. Whitehead and Mrs. Buchanan. Is that correct?”

“Depends. If he replaced my money, we can all relax.”

“Yes, yes, of course. In fact, Mr. Whitehead was in this morning, said your wife had withdrawn all the money without his knowledge, and he was willing to make it up to you on her behalf.”

“That old man’s full of shit and you know it.”

“Well—”

“I understand I have another ten thousand coming to me on the first of January. That right?”

“Why, yes. Yes, you do. Not only that, but the amount is to increase by two thousand a year. So this year you’ll be getting twelve.”
 

“Twelve…?”

“Next year it will increase to fourteen. And so on to eighteen, two thousand more a year for four years. That’s the way she set it up. Inflation I suppose.” Mr. Gonzales sounded eager to spread good news.
 

“You’re saying I’m going to get that on the first of the year for the next four years?”

“Yes, sir. That’s absolutely correct.”

Harley took a moment to catch his breath. “Okay. Now, listen. I could really stir up a stink over this if I wanted to. You know that.”

“Well, uh, the bank—”

“I don’t give a hang about the bank. I want that money deposited to my account at First National City Bank, one-fifty-three, East Fifty-third Street, here in New York. In the meantime, nobody’s to touch it except me. Understood?”

“Certainly, Mr. Buchanan. Certainly. We’ll send you an authorization form. Return it certified mail. In the meantime we’ll put a hold on all withdrawals.”

Harley went back up to the art department. He sat at his drawing table with his T-square, the pre-printed layout pad, information on the latest camping accessories from Product Management.
Twelve-thousand dollars
. Just about twice what he made here at JCPenney. He choked up, thinking of Mavis—dear, lonely, lovely Mavis, friending him with such a gift.

It was bad enough that Sherylynne and Whitehead would swindle him, but he had a hard time accepting that they could do such a thing to Mavis, knowingly going against her express wishes. And when she was dying. It was hard to believe Sherylynne had spent ten thousand dollars from the time he left Midland in October of ’64, to the present, November of ’65. Thirteen months.
 

The next day he called several Midland attorneys. Two sounded promising until he mentioned the connection with Whitehead regarding Sherylynne’s last known whereabouts. Then they politely declined representation. So. This custody thing was going to be a problem.

The next morning he knocked on Mr. Nelson’s office door. He gave two-weeks’ notice and apologized for letting Mr. Nelson down. Mr. Nelson said Harley was ripe for an art director job if he wished to stay on. Mr. Nelson was somewhat taken aback when he learned Harley was resigning in order to paint. Harley shook Mr. Nelson’s hand and said with humor that he regretted he couldn’t stick around long enough to take Mr. Nelson’s job, after all; he had had good intentions. Mr. Nelson smiled, clapped him on the back and wished him good luck. “Change your mind, we can always use you.”
 

That evening after work, he went down to Forty-Seventh Street Photo and bought a thirty-five-millimeter Nikon with a good telephoto lens, fifteen rolls of slide film, and some lighting equipment. On Saturday and Sunday he made slides of all his paintings. He shot them with the telephoto lens, as distance kept the rectangular edges true, parallel to the slide mounts. He had them developed and divided them into sets. He wrote a short résumé by hand, in which he mentioned that he had studied with internationally known artists in Dallas and New York. He mentioned that he was currently represented in New York by 20/20 Insight, but failed to mention he was still a student.
 

On Monday, he paid Nelda five bucks to type it up. He made photocopies of the letters, and that night he packaged slides to two galleries in Houston, one to a gallery in Dallas, one to Santa Fe, one to Philadelphia, and one to Chicago.
 

Word had gotten around that he was leaving, and friends and fellow workers arranged a going-away luncheon on Friday, his last day. He hadn’t confided his windfall to anyone, only that he was leaving to paint full time. When a few asked openly if he was independently wealthy, he only laughed. “Hardly.” Quitting a decent job to paint? They probably thought he was outright lying. Or completely nuts.

Chapter 41

Reconnect

T
WO WEEKS BEFORE
Christmas he bought a doll for Leah. The eyes closed when you laid it down. They opened and it said “Mama”
when you stood it up
.
The salesclerk said that no doll had ever said “Daddy” that she ever heard of. He boxed the doll up and mailed it to Leah in care of Whitehead.
 

As always on holidays, a box arrived from his mother. There was a hand-tooled Western belt with a silver Tony Lama buckle, a Christmas album by Ernest Tubbs, and a tin of homemade candies. Included were a hand-crocheted blanket and a set of interlocking plastic blocks for Leah. And for Sherylynne a gold locket that had been his grandmother’s. A note said Anna Mae and Annie Leigh, coeds at Texas Tech, were home for Christmas and doing well. Aunt Julie’s health was beginning to fail. One of his second cousins had been run over and killed while working for the highway department. The fall crops had been fair, but the price of beef had dropped again and it wasn’t worth it to feed through the winter. His mother wished he and Sherylynne and Leah could all be home for Christmas.

He put the locket aside and repacked the things for Leah. He would mail everything but the locket in care of Whitehead. As yet he hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell his family about Sherylynne.

That evening he polished his boots, took a shower and put on clean jeans and the new belt. He sat with a bottle of Burgundy in front of the windows overlooking Franklin Street, and watched long shadows slide down the face of the building across the way, dissolving into night.

He sipped wine from a jelly glass and mused on the fact that a good many people had taken notice of his boots. He understood that the boots accorded him a certain ambiance, set him apart in a manner similar to the way Uncle Jay’s flat-brimmed hats and shirts buttoned at the collar had set him a little apart. It hadn’t escaped him, either, that most of the high-powered talent he had brushed elbows with in the city had had their reputations burnished with a lot of hype, by image manipulation that hadn’t one thing to do with talent. Warhol had silver wigs. Calder wore homemade shirts and ties. The writer Tom Wolfe wore spats and white suits and carried a cane. Harley’s own mother had taught him that appearance was all anyone had to judge you by until you opened your mouth.
 

 
He went and stood before the long mirror on the bathroom door and studied himself. As much as he might like to appear suave and debonair, he was never going to be a Brooks Brothers model. His physical appearance had more in common with self-portraits by Egon Schiele than the promotions of Madison Avenue. Still, Tom Wolfe was nothing to write home about either. Not to mention Warhol. Harley looked again at his boots and the new belt. He decided to buy himself a good Stetson. One with a flat brim like Uncle Jay used to wear.
 

Earnest Tubbs sang “Blue Christmas” on the stereo, over and over. It was a good album to go with a bottle of Burgundy when all alone on Christmas Eve. It had been one year to the day since he had given Frankie the scarf from Bonwit Teller and she had disappeared from his life for good. He thought again about the Stetson hat and decided he was a little tipsy. A cowboy hat? Who was he kidding?

TWO DAYS LATER
he had a call from Charmin, a Warhol groupie he had met at a SoHo gallery with a filmmaker, a friend of one of his instructors at SVA.
 

Charmin invited him to a New Year’s Eve party over near Union Square. “I’m having this get-rid-of-the-old-year party,” she said. “Come on over and get laid.”

He hesitated to
accept the invitation
.
On the other hand, now that he was no longer going to work every day, he realized the danger of becoming too isolated, absorbed in his work to the exclusion of everything else. Already Frankie had accused him of being too reclusive; it wouldn’t hurt to make an appearance once in a while.
 

He ironed jeans and put on a new shirt, soft tangerine in color, to which he added a sterling silver bola inlaid with a chip of turquoise. He put on his luster-shined boots and the new belt with its silver buckle, and stood before the wall mirror in his navy pea coat. Not too weird, but not exactly Madison Avenue, either. He picked up a small bouquet of flowers from a vendor on Canal and flagged a taxi.