AT 29

  AT 29

  When Saturn Returns

  A NOVEL BY D. P. MACBETH

  Copyright © 2014 by D. P. Macbeth

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author.

  Published by eBookpartnership.com

  ISBN 978-0-9911172-0-8

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, enterprises, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Caligraphics. Guitar man image from Wikimedia Commons. In silhouette - Nederlands: Ben Howard tijdens een optredun in paradiso, Amsterdam. Image Credit ©Abigail Hoekstra.

  Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges Evan D. Macbeth, Linda Mount, Charles R. Scoggins, Jr. and Hank Van Handle for their suggestions.

  For my wife

  Book One

  Prologue - 1982 – The Whitehurst Legacy

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Book Two

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Seventy-Eight

  Epilogue - Saturn Sojourns On

  BOOK ONE

  Prologue - 1982 – The Whitehurst Legacy

  Lloyd Gannon Clarke cursed under his breath as he waited for his suitcase to tumble onto the carousel. He was wheezing after the long hike through the Tullamarine airport terminal. Traveling was so distasteful that he no longer cared to make these trips from Sydney. He had a measure of clout with his editor, but for some reason his protests met with threats from higher up. He had no choice, but to make this tedious excursion to Melbourne.

  The suitcase appeared at the top of the chute and slid down to join dozens of others wending in his direction. When it came within reach he grabbed it with one sweaty hand grunting, twisting and tugging until he was able to wrench it onto the floor where, thankfully, he could roll it to the taxi stand. That would be another chore, shoehorning his massive body into the backseat of a dingy cab. Twenty-five years earlier, when he was just starting out, none of this would have bothered him. Then he weighed a mere two hundred and seventy pounds, still too heavy for his six-foot frame, but not so unwieldy that he couldn’t fit comfortably into a seat on an airplane or in a taxicab. Today, however, he was well over four hundred pounds. The newspaper balked at purchasing two airline seats each time he went on assignment, but his column had a following. His editor relented.

  Balcony, front row, that’s where the critics sat. And, dead center, with unoccupied seats on either side, is where Lloyd Gannon Clarke placed himself as he had done every opening night throughout his career. No one would take the seats right and left. The man was too big, his persona too threatening for anyone to come close. By all measures, he was revoltingly obese. He looked down to study the early arrivers from his perch high above, leaning forward with his heavy arms resting on the railing. Tuxedos and gowns were the order of the evening. He smoothed the lapels of his own tux, made to exacting measurements to cover his girth, conservative and tasteful. After a while he sat back, taking no notice of the creaking seat that strained to withstand his weight. He opened the program and quickly paged to the details.

  BLOSSOM PRESENTS:

  THE WHITEHURST LEGACY

  Produced by James Buckman

  Directed by Timothy Seligman

  Musical Director, Reina Das-Whitehurst

  Written for the Stage by Alice Limoges

  Music by Nathan Whitehurst

  Arranged by James Buckman

  From the Story by Melba Whitehurst

  Clarke ran his hand through his thick black hair, the only attractive feature his body possessed. Soon this ordeal would be over. The taste of a gourmet dinner remained fresh in his mouth. Once the performance was over, well, not really, since he customarily left no later than the middle of the second act, he would have a late supper then a cigar and cognac. His column would be typed in his hotel room. Depending upon the hour, he’d either fax it to his editor or simply dictate it over the telephone to the copy boy on the night desk. Either way he’d make deadline. He always did.

  He scanned the list of actors. He knew only two of the names, minor players he’d seen in second-rate musicals, decent singing voices, but not much else to recommend. Seligman was competent as directors go, but he would never be big. The Das woman was the only person he respected. How stupid of her to leave the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for this pedestrian business. She’s the best violinist in all of Australia. Oh yes, Whitehurst, the rock ‘n’ roll singer. That’s why she abandoned her calling. To marry him and see her fortunes crumble away, such a waste.

  The American connection irritated him. He reached over to the adjoining seat and picked up his copy of the theater notes. He thumbed the pages, stopping at the one with a picture of Alice Limoges, the Pulitzer Prize winner. He read her bio again. She wasn’t a bad writer, he thought, certainly capable of magazine features. How in the devil did she get the commission to write this show? He’d already decided it would bomb. The American scriptwriter would take the biggest hit in his column. She should stick to magazine fluff.

  Blossom Presents? Lloyd Gannon Clarke did his homework on that crowd, too; a recording company from America, trying to expand its footprint by venturing into stage productions. Those bloody Americans will do anything for money. After Alice Limoges, Blossom would get the most criticism. Go back to rock ‘n’ roll.

  Finally, he turned the page to a picture of Jim Buckman. Here was the real travesty. He recalled the sensation stirred across Australia when the singer debuted his album, Back and Blue. Yes, and that song, Peg, that received so much attention after the television broadcast. Now, the pop singer is masquerading as a theatrical producer? And, that drug addled rocker, Nigel Wh
itehurst. He’s big among young people who have yet to be exposed to quality music, orchestral productions such as those his wife foolishly abandoned. Unlike the rest of this lot, at least he’s Australian, but that’s not saying much. So, tonight’s performance is about his so-called legacy. He flipped back to the narrative and stared at the list of characters to be portrayed, Jonathan, Nathan and Aaron. Those were supposed to be Nigel Whitehurst’s ancestors.

  Lloyd Gannon Clarke knew plenty about Australia’s history. He was among the few present day Australians familiar with the legend of Jonathan Whitehurst. He was skeptical. Bushrangers held a certain cachet among ordinary Australians, but Clarke knew better. The real ones were half-mad villains who were driven around the bend by the brutality of ‘The System’. It taxed credulity that Jonathan Whitehurst could have escaped into the arms of the indigenous population and survived for more than thirty years. Perhaps he truly existed, but the legend painted by a London reporter simply could not be proved. Nathan Whitehurst? Here was another fiction, half black with an American wife and a thousand-page songbook. Oh, and a whaling captain? Preposterous. Aaron Whitehurst’s story could be true. Of course, with the Americans involved who could discern fact from fiction? It didn’t matter. After tonight The Whitehurst Legacy would die a quick death.

  Lloyd Gannon Clarke should have been a brilliant historian. He was born in Sydney at the start of the Great Depression. As a youth during World War II, he distinguished himself by completing university level requirements by the age of fifteen. After the war he received the prestigious Sydney Medal for Letters and used the accompanying stipend to further his education in England. He did not adjust well. His argumentative nature alienated his professors who urged him to move on. Rebellious and hurt, he taught himself French and enrolled at the Sorbonne. In direct contrast to his academic path in London, he switched to fine arts, disdaining the history of his native country, which had earlier been his passion. But he wrote extremely well, and it was this skill, together with a capacity for laborious research, that won him the attention of a professor who possessed the patience to look beyond Lloyd’s prickly nature and offer intellectual guidance. “Go back to history,” he encouraged. “Australia has no accurate portrait of itself. You have the skills to write it.” In this way, Lloyd Gannon Clarke rounded out his education until his return, manuscript in hand, to Sydney.

  He was captivated by his heritage. On his maternal side he was descended from the notorious convict bushranger, Dermott Gannon. Instead of bedtime fables, his mother and grandmother regaled him with the courageous, though tragic, story of his great grandfather. In the eyes of the English who occupied Dublin during the second decade of the nineteenth century, Dermott Gannon was an instigator. The politically minded leader did not hide his disdain for Ireland’s occupiers nor did he shrink from confrontation. He led parades and organized strikes, always urging his countrymen to throw off the English yoke. Twice his demonstrations resulted in violence. When an English officer was severely injured, Dermott Gannon, his devoted wife and others, whether innocent or guilty, were rounded up and deported to hulks anchored in the Thames. Dermott received a swift sentence of fourteen years servitude in New South Wales. His wife, although uninvolved in her husband’s activities, received seven. They were separated within hours of the ship’s arrival in Sydney Harbor.

  Convict supervision was sometimes lax on the remote farms that sprang up slowly out of the inland bush. Within a year the Irish malcontent escaped to Sydney and spirited his wife away from the mill where she slaved under nightmarish conditions. For six months they subsisted on handouts from sympathetic settlers and the occasional kangaroo until his wife’s pregnancy drove them to return.

  English justice was harsh. Helen Gannon was returned to the squalid conditions under which she was forced to work fourteen hours a day until she miraculously gave birth to a baby girl. Dermott received one hundred lashes and was sent back, without medical treatment, to his labors on the remote farm.

  A year later, desperate to see his wife and child, he escaped again. This time he used his considerable persuasive skills to convince other convicts to join him. So great was his hatred for the British that he burned his way back to Sydney, stealing horses, guns and provisions before turning out freemen from their homes and torching their dwellings and fields.

  Alarms went out and the British military dispatched soldiers to track him down. A cat and mouse chase ensued for weeks as Gannon and his band of bushrangers outsmarted the soldiers with help from sympathizers along the rough roads leading to Sydney. In the dark of a cold night he slipped into the barracks where his wife nursed their daughter between shifts. What he found enraged him beyond reason. The sick woman was barely alive, bare-breasted, with his daughter in her skeletal arms. Dermott Gannon realized he could do nothing to free her from slavery. He tore from the barracks insane with fury.

  For weeks he and his followers burned their way deep into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He stole sheep, set crops afire and put farm families on the primitive roads to forage for their lives. With soldiers in pursuit, skirmishes occurred. Most of his men were captured, but Dermott held out, stealthily moving among the valleys and hilltops. He was cornered on a ridge overlooking Bainbridge Valley. When the soldiers surrounded him he opened fire, more willing to die than endure another assault from the lash, but the Governor’s order was to take him alive. And, alive he came out when his last bullet was expended.

  “Best you shoot me, now!” he shouted, from behind a tree as the soldiers closed in. “For I will not bend to the lash and will not be hanged!” Six soldiers set upon him from behind. He was chained and brought back to justice.

  Not one of the many settlers who lost their homes to the Gannon band was killed. Nor did a soldier lose his life in his pursuit, although not for lack of intention. This saved Dermott Gannon from the rope. His sentence was nevertheless harsh, two hundred lashes, enough to kill any man. And, if he remained alive, deportation to the worst hellhole in all of the British Empire, Norfolk Island, one thousand miles out to sea, desolate and ruled over by one of England’s unending line of brutal overseers.

  The lashes were administered in Sydney’s public square. Townspeople made a gay picnic of the spectacle as Gannon was paraded to the post chained, but head held high. Helen was brought to witness the depravity, allowed to carry their crying daughter as the infant sought her mother’s sickly breasts. Helen’s eyes lowered to the dusty ground when her proud husband was marched into the square. Hoots and hollers rose up from the excited throng. When Dermott Gannon saw his wife he cried out in anguish. Then, as his shirt was stripped from his back and his chains fastened to the post, he called out to her.

  “Raise your head, woman! Lift my child so she may know what dirty deeds men do! I may not live. Nor may you at the hands of these oppressors, but see that we are not forgotten. Gannon is our name! Make sure the fruits of our daughter’s passion carry that name down through all generations to come!”

  The first swing of the terrible lash whistled through the air, opening a slit across the Irishman’s back. He did not cry out. Instead, he raised his head and spat upon the ground. Then he endured the rest, stone-faced, until his back was a bloody pulp, ripped and torn to the very depth of his spine. When the chains were loosed soldiers stepped forward to carry his broken body away. The crowd was hushed, sickened by the immoral justice meted out, but Dermott Gannon would not be carried from the post. The stone man summoned all the strength he had to raise his head and walk from the square to the ship that would take him away.

  Lloyd Gannon Clarke mused about his middle name. He knew his great-grandfather’s fate; the second to last convict to be put to death on Norfolk Island. Everyone remembers the last man to die, but who preserves the name of the man who died before? Dermott Gannon led an uprising. He was hanged along with twelve others, their bodies buried in a mass grave. Not long thereafter, the last man was killed at the post, lashed three hundred times before the deadene
d eyes of his fellow convicts. The island prison was closed by order of the new Governor of New South Wales, dispatched from London to halt the depravities for which his homeland was becoming too well known. The last remaining convicts were then transported to another hell in Van Dieman’s Land.

  Lloyd’s thoroughly researched thesis about the treacherous founding of his country earned him a doctorate in history. He joined the faculty of The University of New South Wales, but languished in obscurity at an institution more dedicated to the sciences. He bored his students with the same droning lectures that filled his thousand-page history, a dry tome that only the most dedicated reader could finish. His failure was detail bereft of the humanity of the men and women who suffered so greatly to build his country. This lack, so easily recognized by the many publishers he pursued to print his work, drove him to bitterness. “Fools, all of them, publishers and students!” After a few years of fruitless teaching he quit. He became the resentful arts pundit who now sat alone in the center of the balcony’s first row.

  He stared dismissively at the filling theater. Opening night featured the leading citizens of Melbourne. They came to be seen. None knew that what they were about to witness was nothing more than another fantasy masquerading as historical fact; an American company and its producer/songwriter attempting to make money by catering to the whimsy of Australians ignorant of the truth. Absurd! How dare they!

  One

  Jimmy’s turning point came in late December of 1978, the debacle at Atlantic City. Opening for VooDoo9, that pre-packaged studio fraud, was the absolute low point. I couldn’t understand why he took the gig. I knew his talent better than anyone. When he was on, nobody, especially a coifed, corporate creation like VooDoo9, was worthy of being on the same stage. But that night Jimmy looked like just another flameout. I cried for him, couldn’t write a word about that show. He fell hard. Of course, he had been falling for a long time.

  - Alice Limoges, rock ‘n’ roll writer and groupie - from her memoir.

  He hovered above his vessel, staring down at the smoke and flames. A dozen men thrashed in the waters in a desperate attempt to right a whaleboat floating face down, atop the waves. It was his crew. The smoke rose into the sky, thick and black, but he could penetrate it. Not with his eyes because he had no physical presence. He did not see nor hear. He was merely aware. He drifted beneath the smoke to the Captain’s quarters. An empty jug lay on its side on a table. His spirits, the needed drink that too often filled his nights at sea after the music was done. He descended further to the bowels of the barque. A body lay smoldering. His body. Suddenly, he was above the ship once more. The whaleboat was gone and he slipped beneath the ocean to find it listlessly trailing severed ropes as it drifted slowly down to join its twin already resting on the sandy bottom. At last, he rose above the ship as it listed starboard. Only four men remained above the waves, fighting for life with their heads barely visible. He sensed they would join him soon.