Leather Chair

Leather Chair

Bruce Lyman

This story was inspired by two random postcards placed together – one depicting a young man sitting in a chair, the other promoting an art show. The latter depicted a glass slipper covered in red glass beads. I started to write about the young man. The chair took over.

 

Y

ou may not think a leather chair is any big deal, or wonder how it came to be covered in blood. But where I come from the only leather I ever saw was breathing, and on four legs. And the blood was on the inside.  So when I found the chair on the side of the road, upended with its four wooden legs pointed at the sky I stopped and looked around. The dense wall of plantation pine trees were silent observers and no one had rattled the road gravel for some time. Yet here it was, discarded and out of place. I looked around. Not a sound.

The shiny leather and deep seated brass button pinning down the crosshatch pattern across the seat and back distracted as I levered the heavy beast back onto its feet. At first I did not see the darkened stains leaking down its back or the pooling darkness on the seat. It was a beautiful chair and begging for me to sink into it. I looked around. The road was still empty and the forest silent, yet I felt guiltily as if I had entered the study of an important person and was intruding.

After some hesitation I eased into the seat. How comfortable was that? I was amazed at how hard it looked but how comfortable it proved to be. My feet stretched out into the long grass and nodding wildflowers and I leaned back to gaze into the sky. The day slowed down and I soaked up the sun. The chair was very comfortable. More comfortable than anything I had ever felt in my whole life. The back and seat sank back and the arm rests seemed to wrap me in and hold me firm. I felt I was floating on air. My eyes felt heavy and sluggish. “What the heck, just a small nap” I thought.  

“Taking it easy, as always you layabout.”

The laughter broke me out of my slumber and I struggled to get out of the chair in response to Ian’s rasping laugh. He was always catching me out at the mill where we worked. There was no malice but still, he was always interrupting my short naps I like to take behind the timber stacks. The chair seemed to protest, springs squeaking and twanging and the leather creaking. Those arm rests were closer than I thought but I used them to lever myself away.

But even with their help I found my jeans and shirt were stuck to the leather by something sticky and adhesive, and leaving the comfort of the chair was more than just a battle to overcome my drowsiness. As I gained my feet Ian’s chuckle stopped as he caught the sight of my back.

“Whoa, check that out. Looks like blood. What the heck have you found?”

That leather chair had blood on it. Only hours old. Ian stuck his fingers in the blackness and held them to the sun.

“Animal or human? Hard to tell” Ian mused to himself. I was struggling out of my T-shirt and paid him no attention. Suddenly I could hear the flies.

“Where did you find it?”

“Nowhere. Well, just here. It was lying upside down, looking like it had fallen off a truck.”

“Thrown off more like it. You sure you found it?”
“What do you mean?”

“You havn’t been splashing any blood around? Hey, you aren’t hurt are you?”

“No, no, I don’t think so.”

Ian turned me around a few times and asked me to breath in and out. Laughing he asked me to touch my toes. I didn’t think it was funny,

“What if it is human? What do I do now? If that is human, well, you know, you know…”

“That someone is dead?”

“Yeah, that’s a lot of blood.”

We both looked around the forest clearing. There were no other clues that told us anything about the bloody chair and how it got there.

“Come on, pick up your T-shirt and let’s get back to town. That new copper is going to want to look at this. Maybe even those CSI types will come and poke around. That chair could have come from interstate.”

“But the blood is too fresh.”

Ian was already striding off and he yelled back at me. “Now you are thinking too hard about it. C’mon detective, there are experts who can worry about that sort of thing. All you have to worry about is getting those clothes cleaned.”

The walk back to town took us about twenty minutes. Neither of us spoke. Ian did not seem too worried about what we had found but my head swirled with possibilities. Where had it come from? Whose blood was it? Will the coppers think we had killed someone and thrown the body away?

That is exactly what the young country policeman thought. He wanted to lock us up for our troubles until he could get advice from his headquarters. That was until Mrs Harrison walked into the station with a puzzled look on her face and handed a brown paper parcel over the counter. “You need to look at this young Constable. I think you might have the first murder of your career on your hands.”

Ha, that got his attention. He carefully peered into the bag and then ripped it open until we could all see a glittering glass shoe lying beached on the Formica. It had a high heel and was decorated with ruby red glass crystals that flashed in the light.

We all gazed in silence at this shoe. I had never seen anything like it. Not even in the fancy magazine Howard sometimes stacked on the window sill at his barber shop. I was looking at the beads and wondering where a person would wear such a thing, and missed what Mrs Harrison was on about. It was soon the talk of the town even though the copper tried to keep it under wraps. You can’t keep something like this from being spoken about in a country town. A foot was still in that fancy slipper, bone and flesh chopped off above the ankle.

 

***

It turns out the blood on the chair belonged to a dog. So the experts said. That creeped me out. Lots of blood but no hair, wondered the young copper. He thought that was strange. Because there was no human blood he stopped by the timber yard in his patrol car. The boss thought there was trouble and raised his hand to have the ripping saw stopped. As it whirred down the copper and the boss got into a huddle and kept looking over at me. I was trying to look busy but I don’t think I fooled anyone. The boss waved me over.

“Simon here says he has some lost property of yours. Says you handed it in a couple of days ago.”

“Lost property? Nah, I don’t think so” I replied. I was a bit uneasy with Simon the copper talking to the boss. Might talk about the timber I was selling on the side. That would be unholy.

Simon wiped his forehead. “The chair you found. Dog blood. Can’t say how it got there but I don’t need that fancy furniture cluttering up my cells. Come and pick it up. It’s all yours.”

Ian, of course, laughed his head off. Silly mongrel. “Shoulda seen the look on your face when you realised you were not in trouble” he cackled. “Wish I had a camera. Or a video – would send it in to one of those TV video shows where…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, very funny. But what am I going to do with that thing? There is no way I’m  going to fit that chair into my room. The landlady will have a spasm and not cook breakfast for a week if I tried that on.” But Ian, as always, had a sensible plan.

“Hey, we all know you like a quick cat nap behind the timber stacks every now and then. How about I bring my truck down to the station, pick up the chair and bring it back to work. It will be out of the weather and we can all enjoy it.”

I could hardly argue with that so at the end of our shift we drove out through the plantations of pine into town and lifted the chair onto the truck.

“Phew, this thing must have a cast iron frame” grumbled Ian as he staggered under its weight, trying to gain the refuge of the tailgate. “There is more than just timber in the frame of this thing.”

I had to agree. “It sure is heavy. But you know I was surprised by how comfortable it is, even though it is so bulky and looks hard as the boss’s face. Try it when we get back to the yard. You’ll be surprised.”

“I’ll do just that” Ian grunted from the other side of the chair. “It has been a hard day – a quick nap in the chair will do me a world of good.”

We shunted the chair in behind the timber stacks where we took our lunch out of the sight of the boss. Then we both stood there and admired it.

Ian had a puzzled look on his face. “Strange thing you know mate. That blood looks just as fresh as it did all those days ago when you found it. When was that? Last Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday.  Strange. Here, I will clean it off and test it out like you said.”

“Sure, go right ahead. I am off home for dinner. Don’t appear for grace and that land lady of mine throws my dinner over the back porch railing. Worse than living at home.”

 Ian laughed and laughed. “Sure thing. Catch you tomorrow.”

***

 The boss was a in a grumpy mood all the following day. Ian was his foreman and there was a big job on. But Ian was not at work. I told the boss I had seen Ian up here last night.

“Tell me something I don’t know he growled at me. His truck is still here.”

That surprised me. I wandered out to the parking lot to see for myself. Sure enough, there was Ian’s battered old jalopy of a truck.

I wandered back to the timber stack and stepped behind it. The chair was there, still and shiny. I scratchedmy head, puzzled. Ian had said he would clean off the blood but clearly he had not. It was still as shiny and fresh as ever. That was just too weird and the skin goosebumped up my arms.

But there were no signs of Ian. No boots, lunch box, dropped keys. Nothing.

***

Ian was missing three days when his boots appeared beside the chair. I was the one who saw them first. , just lying there as if they had been kicked off by someone sitting back in that chair. Now I really freaked out. That was too weird. I ran back to get the boss and asked him to call the copper.  The boss stood and looked at the chair, and the boots, scratching his stubbly cheek. He frowned. “Bugger had better not be playing games with me, what with this big job on and all.”

“Ian never played games with work stuff. Please call the copper. This ain’t right.”

The boss nodded and strode off to make the call.

Simon stood with his thumbs hitched in his belt, gazing at the chair and the boots at their feet.

“You sure they were not there three days ago?” he asked me.

“Yes sir.”

“You playing games perhaps. Did you hide his boots and then place them out here?”

“No, of course not. Why would I do something like that?”

“Keep ya pants on, just asking the obvious questions before we have to think about the not so obvious.”

After a short, silent pause the young copper stepped towards the chair and picked up one of Ian’s well scuffed, unpolished boots. He looked puzzled as he straightened up and jigged his hand, as if feeling the weight of the boot. He turned the boot right way up and looked inside.  He scared the bejeesus out of all if us when he shouted and dropped the boot. Even the boss turned pale and took a step back. The cop picked the boot up again, more gingerly this time, and tilted it to show us the contents. Bone and flesh.

***

This town of four hundred lumber people has not had so much excitement since a drunk deer shooter shot holes in Mr Macintosh’s fuel bowser and that was twelve years ago. Mr Mac never repaired those holes and tells the story like it was a rerun of D-Day. The copper got all the excitement he needed with a white van up from the headquarters with FORENSICS stencilled along the side and a refrigeration unit built into it. That got the old timers talking. Everyone reckoned a killer was on the loose.  

I had found Ian’s boots so I was called in to the police station to answer a powerful lot of questions. On and on they went. I could tell them nothing but I think they were suspicious of me. Soon they were done.

“You are not planning on going anywhere now are you?”

“Yeah, sure. Going back to work. The boss has lost Ian and I am down here talking to you. Some one needs to give him a hand.”

 The big shot forensic copper did not react. “Stay in town” was all he said.

I was about to leave when Mrs Harrison was brought in. She smiled at me and I think for a moment we were in a small but special group together. The “bone in boot finders” group, an elite club in this town. I nearly laughed at the thought of it but the police were straight into Mrs Harrison, no pleasantries if you please. I kept my mouth shut.

“Where did you find that glass slipper? Tell us straight.”

“Well, as I already told your young colleague here  - he wrote it all down you know - and I signed that it was all correct, ahh... Well, as I said, I was walking my dog along Cable Lane. He loved the woods that dog. But he has been gone a week you know and I cannot find him. I can’t for the life of me think where he might be.”

“The slipper?”

“Ah yes. Well actually it was not a slipper we found first. It was a leather chair.  Bovver barked and jumped all over it. He was very excited by it. Jumped straight up on the seat whining and barking and sniffing at it. Then he just curled up on it and looked like he was going to have an afternoon snooze. Silly dog. I wonder where he is. Have you boys seen a black Labrador anywhere in your travels by any chance?”

“Mrs Harrison, tell us about the slipper.”

“I am getting there, young man. Just be patient. If I hurry through then you will only want to be asking me more questions later. A stitch in time you know.”

I thought the policemen from the city looked irritated but they only nodded and Mrs Harrison continued her story.

“Well, here’s the thing  -  I could hardly get Bovver off the chair. My husband named him you know. Bovver is not something I would offend an animal with. He did not want to leave and scratched the leather a little I am sorry to say. It was when I was trying to drag that blessed animal off the chair when I noticed the shoe in the grass. ‘What a weird place to leave such a pretty shoe’ I thought. But there was not much time for pleasant thoughts ‘coz I saw the contents straight away you know. It gave me such a start. But I have seen worse you know, I was a nurse during the war. Sat in hospital ships off the coast of New Guinea. Saw some messy stuff. So this chopped off foot was no big deal. But our plantations are not a war zone and I wanted to get it reported to young Simon straight away. Trouble was, he was out of town talking to farmers in Hillsdale about cattle thieving so I hear. So I had to come in and report it the next day. Kept the shoe in the meat cooler you know. Don’t want flies ruling things for you all, His first murder you know, young Simon. This will look good on his report. Darn that Bovver. I forgot all about him until after I got home. He must have got lost in the plantation. He will come home sometime I hope. All you policemen sure you haven’t seen a lost Labrador. He will answer to ‘Bovver’ if you speak to him nicely. Even you boys from the city.”

The “young Simon” as she called him suddenly noticed I was still standing at the counter. “You can leave now thanks. We will call you if we need to ask any more questions.” He was sounding all official like, trying to impress the heavies from FORENSICs. I said nothing and made my way back to the timber yard. I felt sad for Mrs Harrison and her Bovver, though the name made me laugh. Back at work the boss was too busy writing up advertisements for a new foreman. He was not cutting timber that day. “Too much on my mind” he said. “Why don’t you go and sort some of that panelling we cut for the school contract? Don’t rush, no point right now.”

But I needed to do something to take my mind off the missing Ian and off Mrs Harrison and her New Guinea nursing days and her matter of fact attitude to the glass slipper. Tough old bird, but soft on a Labrador called Bovver. I worked the next three days like I have never worked before. The panelling was sorted and the charcoal kiln prepped for the next load. I even loaded the feed with fresh logs. The boss was going to be surprised when he got back and got his head sorted out. I never would have guessed he was so keen on his foreman. Life is full of surprises, isn’t it. After three days of working up a storm I had run out of things to do. Time for the old nap I thought.

I hung up my leather apron and wandered around the back of the stack and nodded hello to Fred and Arthur, both perched on a couple of planks and eating their lunch. The chair sat off to one side, alone, with an abandoned air. I took an old turpentine rage and wiped it down.  The blood stain was still there but it was no longer tacky and adhesive but hard and firm, like resin. Just to be on the safe side I spread an old piece of sacking over it and sat down. It was as comfortable as I remember it. I sank back and relaxed, put my feet up and knocked my cap down over my eyes. The leather seemed to sigh in pleasure and I felt like I sank in a little further, the chair going out of its way to make me comfortable.  This was going to be a long nap.