Fight the Rooster

by Nick Cole

  Generally, the Great Director considered flying to be contrary to his desire to live forever, and he avoided it when he could.

  “C’mon. I promise I won’t fly.” WildBill placed a paw over the place where his heart should have been.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. I can tell when even I’ve had too much to drink. Plus, I’m here to make a movie, not relive my desire to die in combat. Trust me.”

  ***

  “Dammit to hell. I want more smoke over the target, and when I say more smoke, I want, I mean I really want, more smoke! You are fired if this aircraft is not flying into the sulfuric bowels of hell on a smoggy day in the middle of August. Roger?”

  WildBill released the key on his throat mike and concentrated on the controls around which he now had his apelike hands.

  He was flying the aircraft.

  He leaned over to the Great Director, who had been recruited, or rather ordered, to sit in the co-pilot seat, and yelled, “Get ready, this one’s really gonna get hot. We’re goin’ in low.” Then he cackled with delight.

  WildBill circled again through the clouds above the movie set. At that moment some two thousand German infantry, a handful of British commandos, and Sir Nigel waited below to begin acting. The scene comprised an attack by the commandos to help the Allied offensive by knocking out a German stronghold near a small French village that had been painstakingly reproduced by the art department and filled with explosives by the special effects department. It was now moments away from being blown to high heaven. WildBill had ordered large controlled fires to be started east of the set so that prevailing winds could push fat black billows of oily smoke across the shot.

  On the first pass, with the pilots in control, they had come in above the smoke, at what at the time seemed a dangerously low altitude, but when now compared with the most recent passes seemed soundly sane and measured. WildBill had expressed displeasure with the pilots’ flying, and after a series of threats, cajoling, wheedling, and the promise of “Golden Time” for the rest of the day, the pilots had climbed out of their seats and WildBill had taken over, forcing the Great Director to join him. Subsequent passes had only become more lunatic. Now WildBill was ordering that the end of the world be simulated so that he might fly through it.

  The Great Director feared WildBill was not the least bit concerned about getting the shot, or their collective safety for that matter. Instead, he was convinced WildBill wanted to play “war.” The Great Director further suspected that WildBill considered sudden death to be some sort of bonus round.

  The Great Director maintained his standard white-knuckled death grip, alternating between the safety of staring down at the controls inside the cockpit and regretfully peeking outside the window. When he did peek, he was confronted by a dizzying array of the many insane attitudes WildBill chose for the aircraft’s position relative to the ground. At first the pilots had been cautious, giving advice over WildBill’s shoulder, but after watching WildBill demonstrate what was either expertise or a complete lack of sanity, they lightened up and opted for expertise, as this was best for everyone’s state of mind.

  WildBill kept grumbling angry threats at unseen people on the ground, promising them a wrathful destruction from above if they did not accomplish the impossible immediately. Instantly he would flip personalities, only to begin laughing wildly as he finished a war story, one of many that afternoon, in which he either got shot down, lost a lot of money, took a Saigon whore with him on a mission, or killed a lot of people. In one particularly disturbing story, which the Great Director would be haunted by for years, WildBill managed to get all four elements into one grisly account. In all his stories, he was “drunk as hell,” as he often liked to bellow.

  WildBill was given a short message from the ground indicating all his requests were being met on the set and that he could start his pass when he felt ready. WildBill acknowledged with a hooting “I’m always ready, son!” and put the plane into a steep banking climb that did wonders for the stomachs of all. Federal transportation authorities investigating the crash would later find the rear gun turret, now turned camera pit, covered in vomit.

  At the top of the climb he yanked the aircraft over into a hard dive, gunned the massive engines, and started what he called, into the mike, his “attack run.” The Great Director did not like the sound of that at all. He locked his eyes tightly shut, only to be even more disturbed by the falling sensation and the combined sounds of the screaming engines and the whistling pitch of the air as it whipped across the fuselage.

  “This is it, baby!” screamed WildBill.

  “You’re too steep!” shouted the pilot from behind them.

  “This is what?” screamed the Great Director.

  “All or nothing!” cackled the maniacal WildBill.

  “No. No. Not all or nothing! That’s crazy talk, Bill,” reasoned the Great Director, assuming the role of hostage negotiator.

  “The wings won’t handle the stress load of the dive. You’ve got to even out,” pleaded the pilot, though not urgently enough for the Great Director’s taste.

  “You’ll see!” screamed WildBill. “You’ll all see!”

  “We’re gonna die! I knew you were crazy. He’s crazy,” screamed the hysterical co-pilot from behind them. “I told you, he’s got crazy eyes like my sister!”

  A smoke bank rushed up at the cockpit window, only to shroud everything in black—then it was gone an instant later. Ahead and below them, a roiling black mass fumed and boiled evilly from the east. WildBill flew directly into its heart and eased back on the controls. Outside, black smoke and bits of burning ash raced past the windows. Inside, everyone, including WildBill, was screaming.

  “SHUT UP! Shut up! Shut up! Shut the hell up!” screamed WildBill. His tirade overwhelmed them all, and though everyone feared for their lives, they feared him even more.

  Now it was quiet, and WildBill pulled back on the throttles until the engines were slowly turning the props. It was almost peaceful.

  “Hold on,” said WildBill. The smoke broke up below, revealing snatches of the approaching ground. He added power to the engines, which began to turn the props faster as the plane shot free of the smoke. They passed over the battlefield less than a hundred feet above the surging mass of German panzergrenadiers as they counterattacked the defiant British commandos.

  And now it was not a movie.

  It was a time machine.

  The Great Director forgot all about Hollywood and death.

  It was Saturday afternoon at the movies once again. Below him a great adventure was playing out. Men fighting hand to hand as machine guns blazed while a smoldering German tank exploded in a shower of sparks. In the middle of it all, on a small hilltop, stood Sir Nigel in beret and uniform, firing a small machine gun bravely into the Teutonic hordes.

  It was a boy’s dream of war.

  Everyone in the cockpit understood now the genius of the shot, the madness of WildBill. WildBill said nothing, staring ahead and into the past. Flying the airplane. Righting some unknown wrong from the misery that was his history.

  Maybe.

  They cleared the north end of the small valley that was the set, and WildBill keyed his throat mike. “Did ya get it?”

  Silence.

  “Great,” he replied as his attention turned to the starboard engine, which now seemed to be losing power intermittently. It had started as they crossed over a series of explosions at the end of the shot. WildBill pulled back on the power and feathered the prop so it would windmill harmlessly as opposed to creating drag and pulling them over into a short death-dive onto the side of the hill they were just barely floating across.

  “Turn the camera around and point it toward the entrance road near the eucalyptus trees and keep rolling, we’re going in.” WildBill’s instructions were to the camera crew on the ground. His hands erupted across the
controls as he fought for mastery over the sluggish aircraft, coaxing and alternately beating it into alignment with the road. The aircraft wallowed across the short field in between, losing more and more of the precious altitude it barely possessed.

  In the background, the co-pilot kept screaming, “We’re gonna die! We’re gonna die! I knew it, he’s got crazy eyes like my sister!” While the Great Director kept asking, “What?” over and over, each time growing more manic as no one paused to explain the “nothing to worry about” aspect of the situation.

  “What was it you came to see me about?” asked WildBill quietly as he worked to keep the airplane aloft for a few hundred more feet.

  “Bill, I don’t think this is the time…” started the Great Director.

  “There might not be much time left.” Ahead, a stand of eucalyptus trees refused to leap out of the way. “Go ahead,” prompted WildBill.

  The Great Director floundered, trying to remember what idea had possessed him to come out here in the first place. “I…” he began.

  It was going to be close with those trees; everyone in the cockpit knew it.

  “Go on,” said WildBill as he extended the flaps.

  “I’m afraid of dying!”

  “Yeah, so what, so am I.”

  “I don’t think I want to make movies anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “If-I-make-another-one-I’m-afraid-I’ll-have-a-heart-attack-I-can-feel-it-every-time-I-get-near-a-shooting-script,” said the Great Director as fast he could, as if that would somehow help avoiding the giant trees ahead.

  “That’s too bad. I always thought you were the best,” muttered WildBill.

  There had been no time to get the landing gear down. Now with just tens of feet between the stricken bird and the gravel road, WildBill killed the other engine and screamed, “Evacuate the camera pit and brace for impact!”

  The aircraft slammed into the ground, skidding along the dirt road and off to one side, where it came to rest in a freshly turned dirt field. The back end rose up for a second, wanting to go farther, then settled back to the ground as if reluctantly accepting this turn of events.

  After a moment’s silence, as the vintage warbird sank into its last resting place, WildBill keyed the mike. “Did you get it?”

  They had gotten the shot.

  “Listen,” said WildBill. He turned in his seat to face the Great Director. Gold teeth filled his suddenly sober smile. “You should be afraid. People die making movies. It’s a scary business. Not everyone is as careful as I am.”

  WildBill erupted in wheezing laughter. The pilots and cameramen could be heard screaming and crying as they fled the aircraft through every available hatch.

  ***

  Later, when the NTSB investigators arrived, a shirtless WildBill, gesticulating wildly, explained the mechanics of the crash, or what he chose to call “the landing.”

  The Great Director found Tony the AD and asked if he could see the dailies. For a moment Tony hesitated, wondering whether this would be yet one more thing that would cause WildBill to snap and go on that killing spree he’d been promising. But it looked like WildBill was going to be busy for a while, if not under arrest, so Tony the AD agreed.

  The assistant director led him to a small tent that had been set up to watch the raw footage of the day’s shooting. Tony queued the shots, and one by one they watched the attack from the ground, the various cameras catching the battle from different perspectives.

  It was good stuff, thought the Great Director.

  Then they watched a camera shoot Sir Nigel’s POV as the battle grew in intensity. Suddenly the camera jerked up to look into the black swirling mass of oily smoke streaked with gray. The camera began to under-crank, making everything slower. With grace, the terrible majesty of their plane appeared from within the smoldering sky like an avenging angel, its blades slowly chopping the smoke of war to shreds. It streaked across the battlefield over three German tanks that had just arrived, threatening to change the course of the battle. The plane passed, and the tanks exploded. Every detail, a boy’s model, was beautiful. Then Sir Nigel looked at his men, urging them forward, destroying the enemy with renewed vigor as the aircraft dropped into the background, passing in front of a hill.

  The film strip ended in a flapping bright petulance.

  “He was right,” muttered the Great Director.

  “Yeah,” said Tony. “At least you can say one thing about him. He knows how to make movies.”

  Chapter Six

  I Heart Coveting

  Dr. Jerome Mandelbaum shifted uncomfortably in his leather chair. What the doctor lacked in care, empathy, and the ability to sympathize with others, he made up for in personal paranoia, selfishness, and a willingness to violate the ethics of his patients, as he possessed none himself. He had been justly accused in the past, by patients in particular, of not listening to them at the very moment he was not listening to them, which was most of the hour he was supposed to be listening to them.

  These accusations always occurred when the tensions of his personal life were in the extreme. His patients’ nightmares, recounted abuses, and imagined slights could ignite the flame of anxiety over which he kept constant vigil, and then his demons, simmering just below the surface, would burst forth in spasms of dysfunctional and obsessive glee. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he would let loose with a nervous high-pitched laugh or an exasperated sigh. At his worst, he would engage in a series of session-halting seat adjustments in an ever-futile effort to get comfortable within a leather chair that betrayed his movement with loud noises akin to an elephant bellowing while in the throes of intense intestinal distress.

  The Great Director was recounting his latest nightmare when Dr. Mandelbaum, unable to sit still for a moment longer, sighed deeply as though a great weight lay upon his chest.

  The Great Director paused for a moment, staring at the doctor.

  The causes of Dr. Mandelbaum’s inability to treat his patients in an acceptable American Psychiatric Association format were twofold. The first was his personal life. It was a mess of infidelity, lies, and drug and alcohol abuse, along with actual crime including embezzlement from the other doctor who shared his office space. Petty crime, ranging from shoplifting to, at last count, nineteen unpaid parking tickets, rounded out the doctor’s depravity. These transgressions merged into a super hurricane of justifiable paranoia that left him swamped on the shores of a shadowy island filled with howling beasts, which is what his patients would see if they could look into his soul.

  The second cause was an array of psychosomatic illnesses the hapless doctor was susceptible to. This sickness caused him to identify, intensely, with any and all of his patients’ fears, maladies, and traumas. This form of empathy should have made him a good therapist, to some extent. Instead, his innate selfishness and rampant character defects caused him to take on the problems of his patients and manifest them in his own life. And Dr. Mandelbaum, using his reservoir of training, medicine, personal experience, and a genuine commitment to immorality, was able to outpace his charges in an alarmingly rapid manner. Often he excelled tremendously in a particular psychological trauma where the patient had only managed an amateur level of proficiency. He could progress to full-blown addiction or extreme psychosis in a given area over the course of a few weeks—as compared to the lifetime it had taken the tormented souls who sought his care.

  He was regularly thankful, when in the clutches of patient-induced suicidal tendencies, self-loathing, or parental abandonment, that he had not gone into oncology.

  After medical school, within weeks of opening his practice, he had begun to take on the habits, and oftentimes perversities, of his patients. Habits ranged from kleptomania to a brief addiction to sniffing cans of paint. Eventually he encountered the adulterer. Since Mandelbaum was not married, he could not commit adultery—or so he ruefully thoug
ht for several weeks. He remained despondent at his inability to complete his latest debauchery. Aha, not so! In a moment of clarity he found the solution to the obstacle and seduced his colleague’s wife and committed adultery with her.

  At first, as his addictions went, he was thrilled. Eventually, though, he tired of adultery in what he considered a “vicarious” form. So he quickly married a nice neighborhood girl and devoted himself to a campaign of ardent faithlessness. He found himself much happier now that he could commit full-fledged adultery.

  It was much the same way with his drinking problem, his smoking habit, his drug use, embezzlement, depression, paranoia, shoplifting, and voyeurism. All had been acquired from some poor soul who had reached the end of their tether and sought his professional help.

  Mostly, the patients treated themselves by admitting they had a problem. If they were not healed altogether by the end of their sessions, then at least the simple act of talking out loud and admitting they needed help had seemed to comfort them. And Dr. Mandelbaum, attempting to heal his distressed patients, in turn acquired a new vice, adding yet another link to the ever-growing iron chain of depravity he wore about his neck.

  As the years passed, he found himself allocating more and more of his time to his deviant pursuits and less and less of his time to the needs of his patients. In the end, most of his hours were spent either pursuing a line of internal inquiry on how to commit more asocial acts, or suffering from the real, or imagined, consequences of his previously committed asocial acts.

  Now, Dr. Mandelbaum’s fidgeting could be suppressed no longer. He absolutely had to switch positions. In this instance, as the Great Director droned on and on, Mandelbaum’s desire to move was brought about by his urge to alleviate a gnawing paranoia growing within him. He needed to look out the window, to scan the parking lot. He was sure someone was out there waiting for him. A betrayed husband with a .38 Special tucked into his waistband. Peppermint schnapps in a crumpled brown paper bag to give him the courage to blow Mandelbaum’s adulterous brains all over the side of another doctor’s newly purchased white Mercedes, which, incidentally, Mandelbaum had been coveting to no end as of late.