Fight the Rooster

by Nick Cole

  “Where’s their mother?” asks one.

  “We’re going for another?” asks Kip loudly. A baffling moment as everyone tries to decide what Kip has meant with his seemingly random question. Kip continues smiling broadly.

  “His hearing’s probably gone from the explosion,” explains Terry the Sound Guy.

  “Is that a film term?” says Kip even louder. “Nearing erosion?”

  “No, your hearing’s gone! It’ll probably come back in a little while! Otherwise we will have to get you to a doctor!” yells Terry loudly.

  “Oh,” says Kip, nodding. “But if my hearing’s gone, I think I should see a doctor. I don’t know how much a proctor is going to help.” Kip begins to open and close his mouth in large, over-exaggerated motions, much like a fish out of water.

  Jay arrives, not having seen what happened to Kip and only recently having being told about the excitement.

  “Are you okay?” He grabs his brother with both arms, looking for hidden damage and bruises. It seems he has done this before.

  “I saved some cats!” yells Kip.

  “You could’ve gotten hurt, Kip…” And then Jay remembers where he is. He’s not back home. He’s not pulling his brother from yet another mess. He’s not explaining to his parents how he’s failed in his responsibility to take care of his younger, stupider brother. He remembers that he loves his brother very much. Despite all those things. He figured that out a long time ago. He grabs his brother’s shoulders and looks directly into his eyes and yells, “I AM VERY PROUD OF YOU, KIP!”

  “I know,” says Kip. Then he looks around, smiling at everybody. A simple smile. A happy smile. A smile that says, I have everything.

  ***

  “I demand you cease production this instant. I have a writ from Judge Abernathy,” screams a lawyer, one of many surrounding the Fat Man. Other lawyers, similarly suited and typed, scurry across the set demanding the crew cease work immediately. The Fat Man stands off to one side, watching pandemonium ensue as the crew begins to fight back, resentful at being told to stop.

  The Great Director takes hold of the piece of paper that has been waved in his face and begins to read. Before he has even finished the first sentence, a lawyer begins obnoxiously paraphrasing the document in strident tones. He indicates, in clear terms, that the Great Director has no choice but to comply.

  “You see, you have no choice. We will have a hearing on the intellectual property of this film. My client is very determined to maintain the integrity of his work.” The lawyer smiles smugly and clasps his briefcase across his shrunken chest.

  “I see,” mumbles the Great Director. “May I speak with your client?”

  “No,” snaps the lawyer. “I do all the talking for my client. And more to the point, there is nothing to talk about. We have our order, and on Monday after the hearing, we will have this film.”

  “Okay, you can have it,” says the Great Director softly.

  “It doesn’t—what?”

  “I said you can have the film. I’m finished with it. I got every shot I wanted, except one. But I can live without that shot.”

  “I must remind you, sir, I am a lawyer and can give testimony indicating you are willingly surrendering the production to myself and my client.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Fine. We’ll just make a note of that here in my log. If you will sign the note we can get things under control.”

  “I’m not signing anything. But I am going to talk to your client.” The Great Director gets up from his chair. For a moment he is sure the phantom pains that once racked his frame will fling themselves to life. They are gone. Only the fear of their returning remains.

  “I expressly forbid you to talk to my client,” orders the lawyer.

  “I’m a big fan,” explains the Great Director.

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The Great Director crosses the short distance between himself and the Fat Man. The Fat Man arches one mischievous eyebrow at his approach.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” begins the Great Director cautiously. “I’m a big fan.”

  “Me too,” rumbles the Fat Man.

  For a moment the Great Director struggles to continue. He hasn’t considered the Fat Man might know of him. Though he should’ve. Still, it seems surreal.

  “I’ve always liked your work,” says the Fat Man.

  “Really?” mumbles the Great Director, scratching his head.

  “Really. To tell you the truth… I wish I had been an actor when you first began directing. I would have loved to have worked with you. I can tell,” he raises one thick finger to his eye and then lowers it down to the Great Director, whom he is larger than, “you really love film. Not like the directors I worked with.”

  “But you worked with all the greats. The best even.”

  For a long moment the Fat Man is silent. His eyes see something.

  “I did,” he says to himself. “I did indeed.”

  If a crew and a pack of vicious lawyers surround them, neither the Great Director nor the Fat Man is aware of them.

  “But they didn’t love it like you kids do,” the Fat Man says. “It was different for them. It was a job, or a title, or an office… or a commission from a high patron, maybe. Interesting.” He seems to say this last bit to himself. “But you kids. You love it. You luxuriate in your shots. You paint beautiful pictures, like the old Dutch Masters. Heartbreakingly beautiful stories, even if it means they’re sad. We didn’t have sad stories back then. Everything had to be happy. I guess what I’m trying to say is, you tell a good story.”

  For a moment the Great Director has no idea how to go on in light of this judgment. It’s as though he’s just looked at a photograph he didn’t recognize, and now… now he seems himself again. And for a moment he smiles, remembering.

  Then shame comes riding back in on a black horse.

  “It isn’t always that way,” apologizes the Great Director, throwing his hands wide to encompass the surrounding chaos as though he is pleading for mercy from some merciless court filled with expert witnesses all attesting to his multiple failures. Or accepting some kind of responsibility.

  “Yes… but it could be.” The Fat Man turns his full gaze upon the Great Director and smiles. “You’re a good kid. One of the best. I’d give anything to be young again. To be one of your actors.” Then he grabs the Great Director and hugs him.

  Crushed into the large man’s chest, the Great Director manages, “Then why all this? Why shut down the production?”

  The Fat Man is silent as he lets go of the Great Director. There is no one else now. Just the two of them and what is said next.

  “I was afraid you’d lost your way.”

  The Great Director, amid the pandemonium, the arguing, with the crew like children watching parents fight for the last time, opens his mouth to offer a final defense.

  But he has none.

  Terry the Sound Guy holds a shimmering disk, probably the audio track for the film, just above the head of a tiny lawyer who leaps pathetically after it.

  “Did you?” asks the Fat Man. “Did you lose your way?”

  The Great Director swallows. He closes his eyes.

  “I did,” he whispers. “I love making movies. I love my life so much that… that it had to be too good to be true. At any moment something bad was going to happen. Then it would all be gone. I’ve been waiting for that unspoken bad thing to happen for years.”

  “Has it happened?”

  “No.”

  The Fat Man studies the Great Director. Then he speaks. “But these scenes are not in my book. There was no war in my book.”

  “I know. I know. But that was your book. This is my movie. In my movie, your book and the story that happens to your characters never happen
s. It’s just a dream. Your dream. A last dream for a dying soldier. A dream… before… you know, dying, of what a life might have been.”

  “Oh,” says the Fat Man softly. Then he mumbles the words on his lips, not in that order and in no order anyone can remember, but he definitely murmurs “dying” and “dream” and then “before.”

  “You told us to do that in your stories,” says the Great Director. “You told us to create. Not just to re-create. But to create. So… I made the story my own. A dream about what you love, even when you’re dying. In my story, your story is just a ‘what could have been’ for a dying soldier.”

  “I told you to create?”

  “You did.”

  “Oh. I guess I did.”

  “My dream, being a filmmaker… it was so powerful that I was convinced it would kill me somehow. Maybe that’s what this film was about all along. And now I want you to help me finish it.”

  “Is anything ever finished?” ruminates the Fat Man in his deep voice.

  “It won’t be unless you help me.”

  The Fat Man folds two large arms across his massive chest. He turns his gaze skyward. Is he measuring the wind? Does he pause to consider the flight of a passing bird, its life, its death?

  In his eyes the weather changes. He settles his gaze once more on the Great Director.

  “Then I guess I must.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Life Before Death

  I am so glad you’ve made it this far. I’ve been waiting for you. It’s Friday Night. The Movie Theater. I am sitting in the near dark, waiting for the movie to begin. I have popcorn for us. Have some. All around people are talking in hushed tones or just sitting quietly. People enter intermittently, and after a moment’s pause, they select a seat and join the rest of us. They are no longer alone. They are with us. Waiting.

  We are all waiting.

  This story ends with the beginning. It finishes as the curtains part and the flickering light reveals a picture for you to watch. We are all waiting for this movie. I have come, like a good writer should, to make sure all ends up as it must. If you’re wondering about the Fat Man or the Great Director or Kip or Terri McCall or any of the others, even the Executive VP, then, I guess, you must keep wondering, or be satisfied with this last clue about them that I’ll tell you now.

  They’ll be all right.

  I promise.

  Now the lights are going down, and before the previews start I’ll tell how the film ended. How the Great Director shot the last scene.

  The Army brought a field hospital that last day of shooting.

  The Great Director had Goreitsky compose the final shot.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” he told Goreitsky. “A simple shot. Kurt’s body lying on a table. The Fat Man is going to play the part of an Army burial officer. He’ll come in and prepare the body.”

  “What is he to be doing?” asked Goreitsky.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to let him do what he wants. He’s a great actor. Just keep the camera rolling. Okay?”

  “Maybe is to be ‘okay.’ But is dialogue to be in scene?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh.” Goreitsky scratched his fuzzy white stubble. He needed a shave. “But how will I know where to make cuts? Shot seems pretty static.”

  “I know. Leave the camera in one position. Like you used to.”

  Goreitsky begins to shake his head slowly.

  “No. You have to. For me,” pleads the Great Director. Goreitsky looks up at him, his eyes searching for something.

  “I love your films,” says the Great Director. “I love the way you used to make them. You painted such beautiful and wonderful pictures.”

  “I know, but is no good nowadays,” protests the old elf. “I make good films now with moving the camera and doing things faster. Okay? I am to be making good shot that way.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I want you to paint me a picture. Like you used to. Just one last time. Then never again.”

  “Never?”

  The Great Goreitsky looks at his old shoes. At the crew, his village, hustling about him.

  “Okay,” he says cautiously. He smiles. Just a little bit. Like Santa might when giving a gift to the most rotten and undeserving of children who’ve only just repented during the bells of Christmas morning. Giving because giving doesn’t have anything to do with deserving. “I make one last shot picture for nice director who gave me job.” Goreitsky rubs his jaw tiredly. But there is a new sparkle in his eyes.

  “And for you too,” says the Great Director.

  “Yeah, yeah. For me too. I know.” But he is already wandering off toward the set. He is thinking. He is almost about to do what he has been waiting his entire life to do. He is excited to capture time and light as he sees it.

  As the set is being lit by Goreitsky, the cameras are set up. The Fat Man is dressing at the costume truck. He is putting on desert-colored Army fatigues. Everybody on the set is trying not to watch as he dresses in full view. After all, he is a legend.

  He finishes, leaving his jacket open with a brown Army issue t-shirt underneath. He puts on an Army ball cap and a pair of dog tags. He takes off the dog tags and unclasps them. From his own belongings, he pulls out a personal object. He threads the chain of the dog tags through a hole in the object. His thick fingers work nimbly with the delicate process. He breathes heavily, intent on the operation. Satisfied, he re-clasps the chain and loops it about his neck. Two dog tags and a rooster claw now adorn his massive chest. He stands facing the mirror, and for a brief moment, he does not recognize himself.

  Who did he expect to see?

  What has become of him?

  He is led to the set by the Great Director. They walk over cables and around light stands. The set is moments from going “hot.” The two of them stand off to one side. Kurt emerges from make-up and replaces his stand-in, lying down on the makeshift surgical table. The make-up artists descend on him once again, turning him into a corpse.

  “Are you okay?” asks the Great Director of the Fat Man.

  “Yes,” says the legend quietly. Then… “No. I’m a little afraid.” He laughs a little. “I haven’t done this in years.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. I just want you to process his body for burial. You know, clean it up, inspect the wounds. That kind of stuff.”

  “Okay,” says the Fat Man.

  He cannot ever remember being this nervous; certainly not at the end of his career. He’d hated the movies by then. In the middle he was too busy being a serious artist, or managing the business of being a serious artist, to be afraid. But now he remembers. It was the first time. He was playing a young sailor in a World War Two movie. He had one line. What was it?

  “A message from fleet, sir.”

  He handed the message to the star and exited the scene. That was the first time he was captured in time and light.

  He was nervous.

  He loved it.

  “We’re ready,” calls Scott the AD.

  “Are you ready?” asks the Great Director.

  “I think so,” says the Fat Man.

  The Great Director begins to walk off. The Fat Man grabs his arm, pulling him back.

  “Yes?” asks the Great Director.

  “I love this,” giggles the Fat Man.

  The Great Director looks at him and smiles.

  “Me too.”

  ***

  The shot begins with the Fat Man standing over Kurt’s body. He picks up a clipboard. He reads, mumbling words to himself. He lifts his head up, looking out the bottom of his eyes as he does so. He puts down the clipboard and looks at the body of Kurt. He makes a sad little face for just a moment and then sighs. Reaching for some wipes with his gloved hands, he begins to clean
the dried blood off Kurt’s face. He works slowly. When he comes to a particularly nasty wound on Kurt’s neck, the wound that has probably caused his “death,” he makes a small, mournful sound with his lips and teeth.

  A sigh for all that could have been in light of what has occurred.

  A mother who watches this movie in the theaters will write a letter to the Fat Man, thanking him for such a sensitive portrayal. She hopes her son, killed in Iraq, was treated with the same love by the people who took care of his body before he came home and she put him in the ground. She hopes for this more than anything she has ever hoped for in her life.

  She hopes that her son also had a dream before dying.

  “There, there,” mumbles the Fat Man.

  The ending of a story.

  Goodbye.

  He finishes cleaning the wound, he stops, looks at Kurt’s face, and smiles. The too-large face appraises Kurt and finally accepts what it finds there in the lines and unseeing eyes. Not just the body, the death, and the life, but the dream lived in the moments before death. The life before death.

  He returns to cleaning the rest of the body, and as he does, he begins to sing softly.

  “Singin’ in the Rain.”

  He’s off-key.

  But somehow it’s just right.

  He finishes cleaning the body.

  And the Great Director whispers, “Cut.”

  The End

  Thank you for reading this book

  Acknowledgments

  I thank God first and foremost. This novel wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Him and His perfect love for us. It is an undeserved gift. I thank Him for the promise of John chapter 14.

  I am also grateful for the assistance of my editors, David Gatewood, Anne Dubuisson-Anderson, Nicole Fernandes, and Morgan Cole. I also want to thank my agent, Jeff Gerecke, who initially expressed interest in the novel and was patient enough to ask for a rewrite and then read it again. Carl Graves at Extended Images designed and executed the cover, which my wife loves and my mother says “scares her.” I’d like to thank my beautiful wife for her love; it is a gift in the purest sense of the word. Also my wife’s parents, who pray for and encourage me. My dad, who began reading to me when I was very young, and told me many stories. My mother, who ordered me to quit what I wasn’t made to do, and to do what I was. And my sons, who are two very fine men.