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Black Rose Writing
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 231
Copyright: June 23, 2016
ISBN-13: 9781612967141
Price: $6.75 (eBook)
Recently released from prison after serving a long sentence, Vanburn Holding travels to an intentional recovery community in Thailand hoping to establish a new life for himself. News from home, however, threatens to ruin his endeavours and prompt a sudden, unforeseen return home.
Having recently completed a long prison term for a crime committed when he was fourteen, Vanburn Holding pitches his hopes for a new life in an intentional recovery community based in northeast Thailand. On the eve of his departure for Asia an encounter with an ailing American high school girl on one of the beaches of his Caribbean island home threatens to derail his plans. Van, however, contends with this frightening occurrence and upon journeying to Asia and establishing himself in the community setting begins fashioning the mode of life he has envisioned for years. But in time his past catches up with him, bringing the realisation that things left undone at home for too long cannot remain in that state. He therefore acts to take responsibility for all his actions, not simply those with consequences more easily borne.
Excerpt
Prologue
She was the apple of her mother’s eye. The epitome of the blonde,
blue-eyed, squeaky clean all-American high school girl. Never in a
million years would she have been so base or degenerate as to drink
to excess or combine heavy drinking with hard drugs. She could be
trusted wholeheartedly, even when not under the watchful gaze of
her mother or in the company of other elders who frowned on such
vulgar behaviour among the young.
Marianne Canny, backed to the hilt by the girl’s stepfather
Vaughan and more so her grandfather Andy, grasped every
opportunity that came her way to play the same card as the days
passed and no definitive solution broke the mystery open. The means
were considerable and originated as much from the print media as
they did the old stalwart radio and the cocksure, noisy brat television.
Newspapers, magazines and book publishers did all in their
power to milk the ‘guaranteed to be a winner’ missing pretty white
woman syndrome. But television, with its immediate auditory-visual
dissemination, trumped the competition. For their particular ends the
TV networks were gifted with industrious Marianne, a woman who
slaved many hours a day for a public relations firm in her home state
of Mississippi.
She was as shrewd as the most battle-scarred politician at
handling reporters and tricky questions and fanned the flames with
her imaginings of dastardly deeds done to ‘my darling Gloria’ or ‘my
beautiful baby’. She might have been awaiting this chance all her life.
Additional mileage lay in the fact that the case provided a spin on the
syndrome inasmuch as Gloria was a mere eighteen, an ingénue, a new
graduate with her whole life ahead of her, as the cliché went. More
than one lip biting television anchor alerted viewers of this in the
immediate aftermath.
The cast supporting Marianne in her quest, an assortment of
friends and family, endorsed the line. Gloria was an angel and had
always been an angel. Anyone who suggested otherwise was no
friend of theirs. They were as bad as the skunks on New Mendoza
who had, without any doubt, done grievous harm to the girl.
Even for an extremely gullible audience, poisoned daily with
misinformation or half-truths about news events, this must have been
hard to stomach. Gloria began resembling a figure out of myth, far
from the high school girl who, like her classmates, eagerly packed her
bags in anticipation of a sojourn in the relatively distant Caribbean.
But, unlike them, she met trouble before the five days ended.
The youngsters who travelled with her hardly ever featured in the
news reports. When they did they verbalised not a word about the
trip. As if a harness had been affixed, they utilised platitudes or
hatched inconsequential anecdotes about the kind of classmate and
friend Gloria had been in the months and years before the tragedy.
Watching the broadcasts from far away, a young man from the
island, Vanburn Holding, was given to thinking. Rather than a fairy
tale upbringing fit for a princess, might the missing girl have
undergone something as tempestuous as his own formative years had
been? The more he heard Marianne’s sound bites, in interviews short
and long, the more he wondered about possible similarities between
this girl with the silver spoon and himself, her seeming opposite.
Inevitable
8
One
Van and Hank
When a child has advanced to an age of any consequence, to have a
virtual stranger suddenly dumped on him as the new dominant male
in his life can be a hard ask. I was six-years-old, but I would go on to
recall the manner of Hank Van Neal’s permanent entry into our lives
like it happened the other day.
Dad had died and been buried in the island cemetery, located on a
patch of high ground that on clear days offered a view of the South
American coast in the near distance. Van Neal was among the
mourners on the bright, hot day of the funeral. My father gave him
work in the car rental business he owned and managed. Van Neal
came to dinner frequently during the time. A childless man whose
Dutch wife died within twenty-four months of their marrying, the
invitations provided a panacea for his solitude.
I never suspected he would inveigle his way into our lives in the
way he did and within such a short period. Only six weeks had
passed since clods of earth were strewn upon the polished lid of my
father’s coffin.
“Vanburn, this is your new dad-ee.”
Fresh home from school, I closed the front door behind me. Still
befuddled by the untimely departure of one who in future I would
remember only by dint of old photos and an ever-diminishing
memory of me balanced upon his shoulders as we bicycled our way
along a gravel laden stretch of road, the last thing in the world I
wanted or needed then was a replacement.
Josie, my mother, stressed the word’s dual syllables until it exited
her mouth sounding more like two words than one. Her background
– she was born in the Deep South of the United States and lived there
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9
as a little girl until her mother and father, who was from the island,
moved to New Mendoza to live – shone no more clearly than at such
moments. When I saw Van Neal’s familiar face alarm bells went off.
I resented the affected way she stood dabbing her eyes with a lace
handkerchief. Had she so readily, so soon, forgotten her late
husband? I abhorred him on several counts – the fact that he’d
brought her to such a state, his forwardness in having wrapped an
arm tight about her then narrow waist, like she was his woman and
had always been his woman, the creased jowls, the high forehead, the
fair hair that crowned it combed straight up, and his phlegmy Dutch
accent.
Self-assured to the point of arrogance. That was him, if I read the
expression on his chops right. He resembled a man who had finally,
after an excruciatingly prolonged period of waiting, gained the prize
sought-after. Had those visits to the house for dinner been a
pernicious setting of the scene?
“Hank’s going to be moving in and him and me will soon be
marrying.” I looked from him to her and back again. “So you won’t
have to be without a dad-ee.”
Again the stress on the two syllables. I loathed her accent that
afternoon. I wished she’d left it behind in America. But her
presumption was worse. At her bidding, I took Van Neal’s offered
hand. As I did, he bent at the waist and brought his pug-like face
close. His bright blue eyes drew level with mine.
Boldly, given his superiority in age and strength, I held his gaze. It
was war on, but there was not even a remote chance of my
surrendering the first round to this usurper. We stared at each other
for up to a minute, each aware of the other’s rank animosity. I knew
he locked mine away for safe keeping when his eyes momentarily
hardened. On the count of one his more benign look was back, but the
message had gotten through: I’ll whip you into shape, God be my witness.
You'd better believe it, sonny.
“Don’t worry, Hank. He’ll come round.”
Van Neal glanced at his wife-to-be, taking in her positive spin on
the no love lost situation. She didn’t know me well if she sincerely
believed I would modify my attitude toward him. I didn't so quickly
forget. He unwound to his full height and brought the hand that had
Inevitable
10
grasped mine unnecessarily hard to the top of my head. I became
aware of uncomfortable pressure there, intensity that reiterated what
the hand grip and fugitive flash in the eyes had conveyed loud and
clear.
Josie often reprised the same line – Hank, you’re not to worry, he’ll
come round – in the months ahead. In tense times, I would also
overhear her say, Give him time, Hank. He misses his dad. I saw it as
belated recognition that I’d had a genuine father. But bringing up the
fact worked negatively on Van Neal. He interpreted it as a slur on his
capacity, an implication that he didn’t fit in how they hoped. By
nature he was quarrelsome, but at least two or three times in my
hearing her his dad citations angered him.
Years later, when I had unrestricted time to think everything
through, I drew the conclusion that but for my refusal to accept him
the two of them might have stood a realistic chance of being happy
together. Bridging the distance wouldn’t have cost me anything. I
could’ve done that without necessarily embracing him as a father
figure.
But potential in that area went right down the drain the day he
nearly wrenched my right arm out of its socket. A journeyman from
way back, or so he bragged to anyone who would listen, he liked
being on the water. For several years before he moved to the island
full-time, he appeared annually for three- to six-month stretches, the
period coinciding with the bleakest winter and spring cold in the
Netherlands. Sometimes spring over there could be as stark and drear
as winter, he used to say.
When he wasn’t manning an office counter and attending to
clients for my father or supplementing his income with odd jobs, he
was to be found on the water, in a homemade skiff, a small sail boat
or a single-engine speedboat. The speedboat featured a blue awning
at the top, a handy add-on in a climate as hot and sunny as ours.
Rare were the days when the sun failed to shine in our little plot
of paradise. We were the recipients of more than three hundred and
twenty days of sunshine annually. The prevailing breeze blew out of
the east. Its southerly bent tended more toward the north in the wet
or hurricane season. That was one reason why the terms wet season
and hurricane season were misnomers to us. An average annual
Lindsay Boyd
11
rainfall rate of less than fifty inches put us in the dry, or arid, tropics
range. Year in year out, some Antilles islands received drenchings to
the tune of twenty, thirty or forty inches in a single storm let alone the
whole season. Hurricanes never threatened us. Our position in the
Caribbean ensured immunity from monster systems.
No matter how often I point blank refused to join Van Neal and
her on a boat outing, Josie always asked if I wished to go along. She
liked me to come along. This was in the period when she preserved
hope that peace, of a sort, might be brokered. I did step into a boat
with them a handful of times, but not once when it would’ve been just
him and me.
When he paid the equivalent of 2000 American dollars for the
speedboat, he berthed it at the marina, Nestor Bay Wharf. Early one
Saturday morning, partway through a two-week spell of unbounded
sunshine, Van Neal rose early and headed to the wharf. He got
underway without incident but hit a mechanical problem a mile or so
to the south, off Hawkings Beach. We’d lived inland of there a long
time and so the area had a ring of familiarity. Josie and I spotted him
when we arrived at the shore. He was marooned and fuming, a
hundred yards up from the southern end of the beach.
He sighted us but made no acknowledgement. He went on
spewing invective into his cell phone. I guess the target was the poor
unfortunate who made a hash of repairing his precious possession. It
was akin to a piece of junk anyway. The awning on top, functional
though it may have been, made it look more ridiculous. I had no
sympathy for him, yelling and screaming, treading back and forth like
an imbecile at the water’s edge.
“Can I go back?” I asked my mother.
I knew she wouldn’t agree but I thought it worth a shot. I watched
her watching him. We were about twenty yards away from him,
awaiting his next move in the shade of some tall pines at the rear of
the beach. She answered without giving up her scrutiny of him.
“No, you wait here with me.”
“I’ll take the bus,” I said, making another effort. “I’ll wait for you
at Ronnie’s.”
Ronnie, a girl a few years younger than me, was the second
daughter of our next door neighbour. Though this was happening less
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12
than in the past, it was to their house that I was sometimes sent to be
‘minded’ when Josie and Van Neal went out and I didn’t go along. I
thought it a sensible out except for the prospective difficulty posed by
the distance between the beach and home, six and a half miles.
Josie went on staring at this man roped in as a husband in a
misguided bid to provide me a surrogate father. Her unease wasn’t
just a figment of my imagination. And I believed the reason she did
not okay my beating a retreat to Ronnie’s had nothing to do with the
distance I would have to travel. I had, after all, reached the age where
I could be trusted with things such as riding public transport alone.
She never let me go, I thought, because I was, in a manner of
speaking, her protection in a tense predicament. I would stand up for
her if the worst came to the worst. She would stand up for me.
We left the pine canopy after he completed his call and waved us
forward. It was incredible to see a simple gesture imbued with such
anger and hostility. The hapless boat kept bobbing up and down in
the shallows behind him. Neither Josie nor I were sure what he
wanted us to do, whether to board in the hope he might be able to
rectify the problem in a moment or what.
When I moved too close to the boat for comfort, both mine and
his, he grabbed my right arm, pulled and slung me away. I felt the
pain of a damaged ligament or muscle instantly. By some miracle
nothing tore. Had I been seriously hurt Josie would have scratched his
eyes out. Deferential as she was with him ninety percent of the time,
he could cross an invisible line in his treatment of me.
He bided on the right side of that this time because everything
was over and done with in a flash. My loud squeal was an automatic
reaction, much like how anyone would respond to an assault of that
kind unless they’re made of steel. Even the song and dance I
performed on the beach, gripping my sore arm, lasted just seconds. I
refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing he had discomfited me
badly. I quietened down, let go my arm and brushing past Josie
thundered back to the shade. There I dallied a moment before turning
on my heels in open resistance, determined to have no further part in
this latest instalment of our twisted family drama.
My right arm served no useful purpose for days. I hid the fact
from both of them, difficult as that was because it lolled by my side,
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13
an unhelpful appendage, for everyone to see. Attempts to do the
standard daily tasks with it failed because I lacked the required
freedom of movement. One evening at dinner, with Josie and Van
Neal mid-conversation, I reached out with the afflicted arm, aiming to
pick up a salt shaker. But I couldn’t extend it the required few inches
until I brought my left hand over, grasped my right wrist and
manoeuvred it the rest of the way. Josie reacted to the late corrective
movement with a pitying look. Van Neal smirked. King of the castle.
Well, I would show him one day and how I longed for time to speed
by till the day was upon us.
He’ll come round. The boy’ll come round. I overheard Josie make such
divinations less and less over time, as if she no longer believed the
mantra herself. What I heard more often were his assertions to her.
That boy’s not right or, less commonly, something’s not right with that
boy. I never heard him theorise as to what precisely he believed to be
not right with me. But he blazoned the claims in a particular tone, one
that would have swayed even those partial to granting me some
elbow room. If my mother, if anyone else, opened their eyes the
obvious would be illuminated for them too: that an undiagnosed
mental impairment was at play.
My arm righted itself eventually. No thanks to him. The natural
elasticity of a twelve-year-old saved me from nothing more
harrowing than several days obscure soreness. Much of the time I
could forget it. I was hardly aware of any wound. The mental residua
was another affair.
. . .
Were your dealings with your stepfather, Gloria, in any way similar?
Was your experience with this man Vaughan like mine with Van
Neal? Standing at your mother’s shoulder in interview after
interview, he is the ‘yes man’, there to assure the world he is with
Marianne by hook or by crook. But he’s unsuited to the role,
uncomfortable. And what a gaffe he made when he acknowledged
that you and he weren’t close.
Your mother bowed her head hearing that admission from her
second husband. That wasn’t in the script. Nor his quip that you
Inevitable
14
never took drugs. Before someone from the media scrum was astute
enough to see the inconsistency and ask your stepdad how he could
be sure of something like that if you and he weren’t close, Marianne
called time. Enough harm had been done.
But no one in the family panicked. Your mother was a master of
damage control. The hale and hearty if bumbling Vaughan began
appearing live to air, or unscripted, much less after the first twentyfour
hours. The lead male role would lodge in the safe hands of your
no nonsense granddad Andy. Anything aired about your character
henceforth aligned with the image of the blonde, blue-eyed maiden in
the senior portrait.
You look so pretty in your senior photo. Lustrous, long blonde
hair parted in the middle falls behind your shoulder on the left, over
your shoulder and down to your nascent breast on the right. Your offthe-
shoulder black dress becomes you, as do the white beads around
your neck. Your skin is lightly tan. Most fetching are your eyes and
smile, fixed directly on the camera. This is how everyone knows you
now, Gloria. In the full blossom of youth. Not a hair out of place. But
it’s not how I remember you.
Who were you really?
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