I wanted him to join us but Karp was against it. But what a town, everything in our grasp: gunplay and Indians, dance-hall girls, cowboys and gamblers, gunmen, bandits, rustlers and law officers, the real frontier atmosphere and Wild Bill acting himself right off a circus poster. But it was all too real and when we set up the camera on the street they gathered around, looking from everywhere. Then, understanding, they knocked us down and fifteen .45s were looking us dead in the eye.
What’s the big idea, I said.
What’s your name, the one-eyed one said.
We told him and what we were about.
Pictures, he said. We don’t need any dam’ pictures around here.
Maybe you don’t but other folks do, Donelson said. We’ll put this town on the map.
Map? the one-eyed one said. We don’t want it on any goddam map. You want to ruin everything?
We’re trying to help, Karp said. We can help it grow.
We don’t need any help. We don’t want no growing. Get up on your knees.
He pointed the pistol.
We looked into their miscellaneous faces and did what he said.
All right, One-eye said, from now on you three cockies are going to be known as the three monkeys …
Why you—Donelson began, starting up.
One-eye moved without bending. There was a flashing arc of movement and at the smackcrunch of impact Donelson sprawled in the dirt, his cheek flaming with the red imprint of a .45’s long barrel.
Now shut up, Rebel, One-eye said, and you’ll keep healthy.
God damn you, Donelson said, scrambling to his knees. But this time I grabbed him, holding on.
Shut up, I said, we’re outnumbered. Can’t you see that?
Now you’re talking, One-eye said, glaring down. And don’t you forget it! Outnumbered, outgunned and outmanned!
He grinned, shaking the whiskey to an oily foam, his thumb over the bottle-mouth. And you, he said, dowsing whiskey on Donelson’s head, I now baptize Mister Speak-No-Evil. So from now on keep your big cotton-pickin’ mouth shut tight as your daddy’s smokehouse!
Then, pouring whiskey on Karp’s bowed head, he said, And your buddy here is named forthwith, like the lawyers say, Hear-No-Evil.
Out of the corner of his swelling mouth Donelson’s voice came harsh and violent. All right, Israelite, he said, Where’s your goddam cunning now? Why don’t you blow your fucking horn!
Karp looked straight ahead, kneeling there in the dust, his face calm, his eyes tragic and resentful yet resigned. As though the world was affirmed in the pattern of his forefathers’ prediction. So he was prepared to die a stranger in a strange land, resigned before even this random fulfillment of prophecy. The goyim were repeating once more their transgression against him….
I shook my head feeling the hot splash of whiskey soaking my skull. My eyes stung as it coursed down my face and I suppressed a scream, holding my breath. And I seemed to be walking under water and I no longer saw them there above me. For I was in the kingdom of the dead, tight and enclosed. Back in the box …
Don’t appear to like it much, someone said and laughed.
And you, One-eye said, I name See-No-Evil.
I could see him then, his collar band held with a brass button, his rotten teeth, his drooped lid, stepping back and the others no longer threatening but laughing. My knees were aching but I could see very sharply now. The hair that showed on his knuckles, sprouted from his ear, his flared nostrils.
All right, boys, One-eye said, let ’em up.
We got up and I picked up the camera and folded the tripod. A drop of whiskey had splashed the lens and I polished it away with the end of my tie. I looked—Donelson’s face was bright red and twitching as he watched One-eye take a drink and pass the bottle around. One-eye stuck the pistol in his waistband and rocked back and forth on his heels, smiling now and his missing eye giving his face the look of a battle-scarred, shell-shocked tomcat. Then the bottle came to Donelson, paused before him, and before he could open his mouth I said,
Drink up. Go ahead.… Then Karp took it, even though he didn’t drink.
Now you got the right idea, One-eye said. You’re getting the hang of how to live in this town. This here’s a good town, you monkeys; the best town in the West. All you have to know is how to live in it. So I says: Go drink yourself some whiskey. Go diddle yourself some broads—we got all kinds from all kinds of places. Fact we got Frenchies, we got Poles, we got Irishers, Limeys, Eskimos, Yids, and even a few coal-shuttle blondes. That’s right, and the price of poontang ain’t high. So go shack up with a few and change your luck. We know the kind old Rebel here cottons after, don’t we, boys? Let him sleep with Charleston Mary and he’ll start to winning with the dice. What I mean is, enjoy yourself. Why, there’s money laying around on the streets in this town. You can do most anything here as long as you can outdraw and outshoot the ones who don’t like it. So like I say, you can do anything only don’t let us see you poking that goddam piece of machinery at us. You understand?
We get it, Donelson said. But tell me something….
What’s that?
What time would you say it was?
Time? One-eye said. How the hell would I know? In this town we make our own fucking time….
Mister Movie-Man, she said, you dreaming again?
Not now, I said. Time is a juxtaposing of pains and pain hurts even after the object is gone, faded.
You better not be while you’re eating. But you were gone somewhere, flew right away from me. Or maybe you were thinking about the picture?
No, I said. Only about you. You make a very nice picture.
She looked a question, her head to one side. I sure hope I can act like you want me to, she said. I really never thought of being in a picture before but now I sure want to be able to do it. Will there be any fighting in it?
Some, I said.
And horses?
I’m not sure about that, I said. But there’ll be love scenes….
You mean I’ll have to kiss somebody?
Sure, that’s part of the love scene.
But in front of all those folks … and with his girl looking? She’s angry with me already—
There’ll be many more folks to see the picture, I said.
But that’s different, she said. I won’t be there….
Don’t worry about it, I said. I’ll teach you how it’s done. Now was the time to begin and I put down my sandwich and moved. I saw her large eyes and suddenly I ceased to dream.
You just work in the contest and win, I said. I’ll take care of the rest. I was disturbed.
Oh, I will, she said. I’ll raise more money than all the other girls put together. You’ll have to give me the best part….
Yes, I said, the best is yet to be, but you girls will have to work hard. Stir up the interest of everyone. Karp insists that we have the full cooperation of the community….
Which one is Mr. Karp, the one with the camera?
No, that’s Donelson. Right now Donelson is doing the shooting. Later on I’ll take over. Karp is the other one.
Well, he won’t have to worry because everybody is interested already. Two clubs are planning dances and another one—well, they’re going to give a barbecue. Is Mr. Karp the boss?
Boss? No, he’s just a partner like the rest of us. We’re the three partners. What other plans do you have?
We’re still thinking up things to do. We plan to give a combination hayride and trip-around-the-world.
What’s a trip-around-the-world?
That’s when you ride to different parts of town and go to different houses and in each house they have the food of some country—like Mexico for instance, and it’s all decorated like a Mexican house and the boys and girls who give that part of the party will be dressed in Mexican costumes. And when you get there you buy the food and they give you some drinks and you can dance and have a good time. Then after a while everybody piles into the hay and the wagon goes to anot
her house and there they’ll find another country and another party. It keeps going on just like that.
That’s interesting, I said, but you want to work hard on the popularity contest.
I mean to, she said, I really have to have that part. I like plays and things, they kind of take you out of yourself.
They do, I thought, and you have no idea how far.
Some English people were here last year and they put on some wonderful shows. With nice scenery and music and everything. You couldn’t always understand what they were saying but it sounded so fine. Like listening to folks sing some of that opera music in a different language.
Did many folks go to see them?
Quite a few, she said. I went every night. A lot of folks did.
That’s very good, but where’d they give the plays?
They gave them in the school auditorium. There’s a stage there and they brought their own scenery for one of the plays. But you know something, Mister Movie-Man?
No, what?
When you listened to them real close you could see scenery that wasn’t on the stage. They said the scenery and you could see it just as clear. You really could.
That’s right, I said. Sometimes you can. But that’s with a certain kind of play, movies are different. Everything has to be seen or scene. You’ve got good ears though. I touched where the gold wire entered the soft lobe of her ear. She watched silently. Watched my hand.
Thank you, Mister Movie-Man, she said, and have another drumstick….
I thought about the contest and all their plans. A thousand would get us to the coast and help us get a start.… Going to what nation in what territory? And this time I’d let Karp hold the cash, he was practical and more dependable than Donelson. He was down in the business district picking up a few dollars at his jeweler’s trade. He could make a watch from the start, give him the tools, the metal and the lathe….
What will the story be about? she said.
I haven’t decided yet, I said, but I’m working on it.
Well, I’m sure glad to hear that.
Why?
Because I saw your friends taking pictures all over the place. What were they doing that for?
Oh that, I said, they’re just chasing shadows, shooting scenes for background. Later on when we start working we’ll use them, splice them in. Pictures aren’t made in a straight line. We take a little bit of this and a little of that and then it’s all looked at and selected and made into a whole….
You mean you piece it together?
That’s the idea, I said.
Well tell me something! she said. Isn’t that just marvelous? Just like making a scrap quilt, I guess; one of those with all the colors of the rainbow in it—only more complicated. Is that it?
Just about, I said. There has to be a pattern though and we only have black and white.
Well, she said, there’s Indians and some of the black is almost white and brown like me.
I looked up the hill, hearing the distant cowbell. Far above us the black and white coats of the herd lay like nomadic blankets against the close green hill, and higher still on the edge of the shade, two young bulls let fly at one another, head-on into the sun. They must have jarred the hill like thunder.
Hosan Johnny! Hosan Johnny!
Where’d I hear?
He shake his tail, he jar the mountain
He shake his tail, he jar the river.
A long time ago. I could see them back off and paw the earth preparing to let fly again. What was I doing here when there was so much to be done? Movement was everything. I had to move on, westward. How would I plot the scenario with these people? What line would engage them, tie them up in an image that would fascinate them to the maximum? Put money in thy purse, the master said. I needed it.
What time is it? I said.
She looked into the trees. A pink petal clung to her hair. About two-thirty, she said.
Two-thirty, I said. How can you tell without looking at your watch?
By the way the shadows slant against the trees, Mister Movie-Man.
By the shadows? Why don’t you use your watch? Doesn’t it run?
Sure, it runs, listen….
I lowered my head to her blouse, hearing it ticking away. It was a little past two-thirty but she was close enough. She wore some faint scent—a trace of powder. I looked at her. There was no denying the charm of her.
You’re right, I said. I wish I could do that….
You could if you would stay in one town long enough, she said. Don’t you have a watch?
I had it stolen back East, I said. I had pawned it in Newark.
Look, Donelson said, What’s the plot of this thing?
We won’t plot it, I said, we’ll make it up as we go along. It depends upon how much dough they can raise. I’ll think of something. Just shoot anything interesting you see.
Play it by ear, you mean? Karp said. With this little film we have?
That’s right. By ear and by nose, by cheek and by jowl, by the foresight and the hindsight, by the foreskin and the rearskin, by the hair of my chinny chin chin and my happy nappy!
We stood in the street beneath a huge cottonwood tree, the camera resting on a tripod near the curb. For once there was no crowd. Sunlight, clear and unhazed, flooded the asphalt, and the odor of apple blossoms drifted to us from a pair of trees in a yard across the street. I could hear the bounce-rattle-scrape as a pair of little girls tossed jacks on the porch of a small house that sat behind a shallow lawn in which a bed of red poppies made bright red blobs in the sun. Beside me Donelson was rolling a Bull Durham cigarette and I fought my irritation under control. He was arrogant and impatient and he had no discipline. If I didn’t guide him every minute he’d waste the film and antagonize the people. I’d look at the day’s shooting and there would be nothing more than a jumble of scenes, as though the rambling impressions of an idiot’s day had been photographed. With Donelson it was gelly, gelly, gelatine all day long and all images ran to chaos, as though Sherman’s army had traumatized his sense of order forever. Once there was a sequence of a man whitewashing the walls of the slaughterhouse which stood at the edge of the town near the river, and this followed by a flock of birds strung out skimming over a stretch of field; then came shots of the courthouse clock at those moments when the enormous hands leaped across the gaps of time to take new positions but ever the same on the bird-fouled face, then a reversed flight of birds, and this followed by the clock hands whirling in swift reversal. Donelson ached to reverse time, I yearned to master it, or so I told myself. I edited a series of shots, killing time. The darkness between the frames longer than what was projected. Once there was a series consisting of a man and a boy and a boar hog, a cat and a great hairy spider—all shot in flight as they sought to escape, to run away from some unseen pursuer. And as I sat in the darkened hotel room watching the rushes, the day’s takes, on a portable screen, the man seemed to change into the boy and the boy, changing his form as he ran, becoming swiftly boar and cat and tarantula, moving ever desperately away, until at the end he seemed, this boar-boy-spider-cat, to change into an old man riding serenely on an old white mule as he puffed a corncob pipe. I watched it several times and each time I broke into a sweat, shaking as with a fever. Why these images and what was their power?
And Donelson had sung, “Oh, while I sit on my ass on the ass of my ass a curious paradox comes to my mind: While three-fourths of my ass is in front of my ass the whole of my ass is behind.” Oh, Donelson, that impossible Donelson. That bad boy with his toy. Sometimes I wondered if any of it had meaning for him beyond the joy of denying the reality of all that which he turned his lenses upon….
From the walk I was listening to the dry, rhythmical, bounce-scrape-scrape-bounce of the knucklebone jacks and ball of the two little girls continuing, when suddenly from behind us a dark old fellow wearing a black Cordoba hat, a blue denim jacket and a scarf of fuchsia silk wrapped around his throat moved stiffly past on a fine blac
k seven-gaited mare. Small and dry, he sat her with the stylized and monumental dignity of an equestrian statue and in the sun-slant the street became quite dreamlike. His leathery hands held the gathered reins upon the polished horn of a gleaming cowboy saddle and his black, high-heeled boots, topped by the neat, deep cuff of short tan cowhide riding chaps, rested easy and spurless in the stirrups as he moved slowly past as in meditation, his narrowed eyes bright glints in the shadow of his hard-brimmed hat. Donelson started to speak but I silenced him as I watched with whirling mind, filled with the sight and listening now to the mare’s hooves beating with measured gait through the bright suspense of the afternoon—when suddenly a little boy in blue overalls exploded from between two small houses across the street and ran after the horseman, propelled by an explosion of joy.
Juneteenth Page 10