Last Chance Saloon

Hour of Writes story November 2015 – Last Chance Saloon

"The Coffin Growers"

In still heat of noon I stood looking at a sandstone and light-timbered snake stretching its length over a steep gorge. Below, quiet waters heaved with incomprehensible force. Mister Van Straaten's new bridge had been completed, and would link his coffin factory to the mainland, meaning that the Ishmaelian days of punting funeral boxes down the river to the centres of export, with nothing more than a pike-staff, were over.

I was to cover the opening ceremony for the Limpopo Examiner, but had arrived a day early to case the joint and see Henry – an old friend and active trade unionist – who had held the title of King Coffin Grower for years. The river surged through the steep, forested gorge, which maintained its primeval silence over the affair of the bridge.

I went down a slender pathway with a sheer drop to my left and found the timber yard where Henry held court, master of plane and chisel, an inhuman power in his tree-trunk arms. For all the strength of one human being, it was hard to grasp that the arboreal vastness around me could be threatened by our puny species.

“But it is so,” said Henry, appearing from his workshop and guessing my thoughts. “We already have reached the tipping point, and the Old Man's factory hasn't helped matters. Still, people need coffins!” A great chunk had already been bitten from the forest's neural density, a factory lobotomy scarring an ancient brain.

“And coffee!” I rejoined and we repaired to the factory's Starbucks, a wedge of civilisation hacked from the seething chaos of leaves and vines.

That night, by firefly light, we rowed out to the middle of the arching tusk of the new-born bridge, ebony black against a Van Gough star-scape above.

“I have something to show you.” Henry pointed to the narrowest section of the central arch. It was plain to see that the stones were un-mortared and the wooden beams fastened by the flimsiest brackets, screws and nails amateurishly bent, a profound air of insecurity pervading the whole.

“But it will all come down when you carry the first coffin over at tomorrow's ceremony!”

“That's what a rich, tired old man will do for an Insurance Kill - his last chance to make a huge buck to keep him in his lifestyle without working.”

Later that night, we slipped into the Van Straaten villa, avoiding slow, unobservant monitor lizards and sleeping pumas, tiptoeing between wires designed to trigger vintage record players into jazz-age calamity. We stole his photograph album, thinking at a later date we would slip our own snaps between the pages and lay claim to the Van Straaten identity and fortune for the Woodsmen's Collective.

A few hours later, a brass band composed of Coffin Growers wheezed and groaned like the asthma ward of a poorly equipped hospital, their instruments winking in the bright blaze of morning. Buntings fluttered overhead, but patriotic flags lay drooping in windless heat.

The band coughed its last, ribbons were cut and a champaign bottle shattered in the stillness like a sneeze in the the slow movement of a Beethoven symphony. The needle of the old 78 record player on the Van Straaten veranda was spinning blackly at the centre, its song long finished.

I moved to the old billionaire's frail form and tapped the shoulder. “Are you sure the bridge is secure, sir?”

He shot me an angry glance, which missed by inches. I persisted. “This is your last chance to cancel the ceremony.” His fierce eyes deadened in their sockets and he raised the loud hailer to his lips.

“Henry will be the first to cross!”

“Are you sure you want me to be the first, Sir?”

“You are the strongest and the best among my workers. Together we tamed the jungle and exported the finest ebony coffins to the world. We gave mankind eternal rest from our eternal toil.” He lowered his voice to an Arthurian softness, full of wheedling, tabloid hypocrisy.

“You are what is Best in Men.”

“But Sir, the workers feel that you yourself should first walk the bridge. Your enterprise made it possible for us to toil in your factory of coffins.”

Silence. Deep waters oozed below.

“Come, my man! It is your honour. I have seen you carry two coffins at once, one on each shoulder.”

“Then, Sir, we will walk shoulder to shoulder.” Henry gripped the fragile plutocrat by his scruff and set off over the bridge.

Two figures, one calm and sure-footed, the other struggling madly, slipped into the far horizon, flies on a narrow bone, pleading cries fading to nothing under the water's soft sermon.

On the far bank, turbulent waves of forestation ebbed and sucked through sightless holes in bright elephantine skulls, whitened by rainfall relentless.

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