by Mark Foss
Through it all, Candy maintained an inscrutable facade. She nudged a ladybug along her palm. She brushed off the dirt that layered her bare feet. She gazed at far-off worlds. Hers was not black sheep defiance, but a natural talent to filter out the hypnotic qualities of the Tone. Her quiet aura helped break the spell that lingered from Joseph’s performance. Fully awake, my sense of duty rushed back, and I felt the urge to crawl out with my clipboard. But Candy’s new pantomime from the Clue board game bewitched me. With a toss of her head and a few hand gestures, she became the voluptuous Miss Scarlet in the library with a lead pipe, proclaiming her innocence with a fluttering of her eyes. I believed her. Anyone would. I was frozen in place, unable to help my embattled father above ground. I needed Candy’s permission to leave.
6
THE VAST FRONT LAWN, ONCE SO populated with cars on auction nights, seems particularly bereft today. Every May, I help Joseph plant rolls of fresh sod and by every August the grass has turned a ghastly brown. Yet we keep trying, Joseph convinced that this is the year the roots will take. I like his undying faith in possibility. He has not given up on Candy either.
I call out to announce my arrival, knowing I won’t get an answer. Sometimes I pretend he’s faking it — that, like Candy perhaps, Joseph has simply decided not to speak. He does not have throat cancer; he’s just tired of using his magnificent voice to sell other peoples’ junk, and the only way to stop is to stop speaking entirely.
The beeps from the microwave draw me to the kitchen. He’s nowhere in sight. I pull out the Swanson Hungry Man Dinner — the homestyle gravy, tender green beans and mashed potatoes of his country fried-chicken meal still compartmentalized, still warm. On the table, his glass of milk is cold. The silverware drawer is open, and the back door — leading to the stage — is ajar.
I call out again, this time towards the barn. I wait for his vigorous de rigeur wave from the door. Nothing. I begin to worry, quickening my pace for a look upstairs, and then a formal inspection of the barn. I drive back to the front gate, checking behind boulders. I lay into the horn in his truck, expecting him to appear in an upstairs window wondering what all the fuss is about.
The auction stage in our backyard has three round levels, each slightly higher than the last, connected by ramps. For Hoss, the three tiers have always resembled giant versions of the transporter pods on Star Trek. For me, they have been potential landing strips for extraterrestrials. For Candy — I know now — they were springboards to a life of performance.
After I circle the stage a second time, I stand on the top tier, thinking another few feet of height will make all the difference in perspective. North, south, west, and finally east, towards those ten dead acres that lie behind the stage. The frayed yellow rope that cordons off the perimeter of the field glows with the force of an electrified fence. I do not see Joseph standing on the flat rock, and the neighbour’s horses graze indifferently. I call out again, cupping my hands as they taught me in Cubs. Joseph has wandered out here, drawn by some inexplicable need to reach this flat perch. He’s confused, unable to find his way back. The sun, towering overhead, has played tricks with his eyes. In his fragile condition, he has become dizzy and disoriented, walking deeper into the field. Or else he has panicked and started to run, only to be tripped up by a malevolent clump of earth. I walk along the perimeter of the field from one end to another. Too dusty for footprints. He is lying face down now, somewhere out there, unable to call for help.
Or worse. The flat rock is farther than you think! Stay on the path! Keep away from the bog! Did Joseph ignore his own dire warnings from our childhoods and take the shortcut across the quicksand pits? Will I find his arm suspended in mud, his hand reaching out desperately to the heavens?
With the field bone-dry, the quicksand pits will be hard and crusty. But Joseph says there’s no telling when the firm earth might give way, or how the sands will shift underground. Nowhere is truly safe, and even the path can turn treacherous. None of us has ever seen the mud sink more than a few inches, and that only in the fiercest storm. Hoss says it’s all bullshit, the rantings of an overprotective single parent who worried his children would wander off in the field. So why, I wonder, does Hoss only cross the barrier when he’s stoned? And why, on those rare occasions when she entered the field, did Candy stick to the path?
I fill up my water bottle, rifle the drawers for the compass, and pick out a walking stick. Joseph’s favourite staff is missing, which makes me more anxious. I loop one end of rope around the beam on the stage and the other around my waist. The wind has picked up, as if in anticipation of my trek. I don a balaclava to keep the dust off my face.
The quicksand pits are a safe distance away, but who’s to say they haven’t migrated? With each step, I expect my stick to plunge into a bog. The earth holds my weight. The cicadas are screeching from the other side of the fence. Amid the sand swirling around my face and the unrelenting sun, I push on, one foot after the other. The insistent whinnies and snorts of the neighbour’s horses keep me from losing my bearings entirely. The compass readings seem wrong and I don’t know if I should trust science or my senses. Has it been five minutes or a few hours in the field? When does the present become the past or does it sometimes go the other way around? I call out for Joseph again through the nylon over my mouth. The wind does not respond.
And then I stumble upon him, and he brings me to my knees. He lies on his back, near the flat rock, arms and legs stretched out in snow-angel position. Already the swirling earth has begun to bury him. I have to wipe the sand off his face. His eyes are closed, but his raised eyebrows and wide-open mouth look like an expression of rapture.
I whisper his name.
— Your homestyle gravy and tender green beans are getting cold. We can reheat them. Or take new packages from the freezer. Start over.
The horses stamp, snort, swish their tails; they drew Joseph out here in midday with their horsey racket. They miss his pheromone-induced sermons from the mount, the chant so powerful it banishes flies from their eyes. Did he run blindly into the field, convinced the horses’ sheer force of desire would restore his voice? Would it come back, defying the doctors, but just for a moment? A note so pure of heart that when its last echo fades in the wind, Joseph simply lies down in the earth, opening himself to his Maker.
Does the restlessness of the horses announce Mary is waiting, standing on the flat rock with her arm outstretched, as if holding up a bid card? For all those years, his wife came whenever she heard that precise tone in his chant; it beckoned her from beyond the beyond. His voice now silent, he has not been able to conjure her. Bereft, she has willed herself into being. Had he run into the field without a safety cord, so anxious to be next to his beloved again? They shared a connection so intense that it has drained Joseph of what little life he has left.
I WALK BACKWARDS with a firm grip on Joseph’s arms, dragging his feet along the earth, trying not to trip over the safety cord, which slackens before me as I near the stage. He is surprisingly heavy and I have to stop for water to quench my thirst, checking over my shoulder frequently to ensure I am on track. Several times I find myself walking parallel to the outside edge of the field. Once, I get turned completely around, and head in deeper. The quicksand pits loom closer. It might be better to wait for help — someone official in a white coat who would push a gurney across the field, hauling Joseph out in a more dignified manner. But I’m unwilling for strangers to intrude on his last journey.
His heels catch on a clump of earth, and the sudden resistance trips me to the ground on my back with Joseph on top. The wind dies and the storm settles. I’m not so far from safety. I push on for the last hundred feet, his body seemingly lighter.
The ramp makes it easy to drag him up to the first tier of the stage. Under the canopy, protected from the relentless sun, I tap the rotting wood with his staff, trying to recapture the old magic and let Candy know we’re back.
7
WITH EACH CREAK OF THE fl
oorboards on the stage, I peer down, through the cracks, expecting to see Candy. She may surprise me. She always has. My discovery of her secret surpasses anything she has yet come up with. Knowing that somewhere out there Candy is reading my blog is a pleasure matched only by my sadness that I have arrived too late to share my posts with Joseph. I had to finish my own film so I could present my evidence at once.
For all her various guises, multi-coloured wigs, and makeup, Molly O’s physical resemblance to Candy can’t be denied. Beyond their similar heights, the angular shapes of their faces, the intensity of their eyes and the way they project intelligence, they share the same gait — especially the trademark backwards walk Candy perfected on the auction stage. What’s more: Molly O lives out countless scenes that can only have been lifted from Candy’s life.
Even now, after studying her films frame by frame, and appreciating the intelligence at work at deconstructing the codes of silent cinema, eroticism, and porn, I get uncomfortable at the idea of my younger sister taking part in sex scenes, however intellectualized. The devices and techniques used to undercut eroticism only inflame desire for the unattainable. I have no creepy sexual longings for my sister, but it’s hard not to be in love with Molly O.
How Hoss will react to my discovery of Molly O is hard to say. As much as I’m eager for Candy to walk through that front door, I first want the chance to show my brother my blog and film. After I win him over with my irrefutable analysis, Candy is free to pull a coup de théâtre, walk back into our lives, and prove me right.
Only an hour away from the Wasteland, Hoss is blissfully ignorant of what’s gone down with our father. He may well drive back to Toronto without ever putting his inner peace to the test with a visit home, as he’s done so many times after other retreats.
If I had the strength, I would haul Joseph into the back of the truck and drive him to the morgue myself. I don’t want to scramble, pull, and twist. I prefer to let the firm and gentle hands of the ambulance team wheel him down the ramp one last time. Let them arrive and depart with sirens blazing to give Joseph an exit befitting his stature as the best damned auctioneer in the county.
IF CANDY INHERITED her silence from our mother, her sense of the dramatic moment is all Joseph. This might be why she chose our parents in the first place. On stage, Joseph’s chant is a fast-moving river careening towards a waterfall. In the homes of prospective customers, his sales pitch is a gentle pond of lily pads, bulrushes, and cattails that seem still, yet actually move under the surface. His meandering style is scripted down to the last pause — the subordinate clauses that spring from nowhere, the calm reflections, the matter-of-fact observations. As are the accompanying facial tics — the worrisome running of fingers through his greying hair, the affirming tilt of the head, the reflective rubbing of his thin moustache. I observe this performance dozens of times, but still get swept up by his folksy charm.
I remember sitting in the country kitchen of a grieving widow, her adult son eyeing us with ire. Freshly baked apple cinnamon muffins adorned the counter, left no doubt by the wife of Cyril McInnis, Joseph’s main competitor. To counteract the home-baked gesture of empathy, Joseph praised the widow’s son, noting the passing of his own wife and the unshakeable bond between parent and child. I tossed Joseph a look of affection on cue.
We walked slowly back to the truck, leaving them the contract to mull over. He tousled my hair, pointed his staff at the geraniums sitting in the vintage wheelbarrow. We took the time to smell the flowers. The choked-up son watching our performance called us back to the porch where we signed on the arm of the rocking chair.
Another time, Joseph brought Candy along, believing a traumatized four-year-old daughter would have an even more compelling effect on an old widow. For once, he thought, let her strange silence serve a useful purpose. Candy squeezed the fruit on the kitchen table. She pulled the old woman’s hair. She opened the refrigerator door and turned on the tap. We left the contract with them, knowing they would never sign. On the way home, I’m sure Candy winked at me.
THE ENGINE OF the vehicle pulling into the Wasteland sounds powerful, and the two doors that slam are the right number for an Aston Martin — except I was only expecting to hear one door. Has Candy brought a partner on her first trip home? A son? Joseph would have been so pleased. The Tone, which skipped our generation, might well emerge in the next or the one after. I will know when I hear my nephew speak what’s possible.
A short stocky woman and a skinny man with a Samurai knot, both in their twenties, emerge from the side of the house in orange jumpsuits. I was right to bring Joseph out of the field. These two, sweating in their uniforms, can’t even push the gurney along the dead grass without stumbling.
They cover Joseph with a standard-issue blanket, hoist him up without so much as a one-two-three, and then roll him back to the ambulance. They don’t realize, or don’t care, that I’ve trailed them. She’s going on about the performances the night before on America’s Got Talent, how she could have sung so much better. He starts strumming an imaginary guitar, recalling his glory days in a high school air band. No sirens. They plod through the archway onto the third concession without a farewell honk. I regret not hauling Joseph into the back of his truck, daydreaming that my reckless speed would generate enough wind power to kick-start his heart.
Molly O
The Seductive cinema of Mickey Nailand
Home Films Suppositions About Me
Mary, Mickey, and Molly
Posted by LJ
Mickey Nailand’s oeuvre — his experimental remakes of Mary Pickford films — is both celebrated and castigated by those who remember.
Women are uncomfortable with the uneasy relationship between the empowerment and exploitation of young women.
Intellectual men writhe in their seats, unsettled at the idea they could be watching their daughters and sisters in states of undress.
Coarser men drawn by promises of erotica are aggravated by Godardian jump cuts that undermine titillation and accentuate abstraction.
Silent film enthusiasts decry the campy treatment of the genre, even as they secretly enjoy the in-jokes.
Experimental filmmakers, whom Nailand so seriously cultivated, never truly let him into their club.
Who was Nailand, and did his actress Molly O play a larger role than the credits would have us believe?
Consider that early silent films were written by the likes of Anita Loos, Frederica Sagor Maas, and so many other women whose contributions are only now being rediscovered.
In that spirit, this blog will excavate the story behind the Nailand and Molly O collaboration. Close readings of the films, archival research, and my own musings will break years of silence, arguing that Nailand’s work deserves a place in the pantheon of underground/experimental cinema, and that Molly O has secrets of her own to be revealed.
Mickey Nailand arrives in the Lower East Side (LES) of New York City in the mid-1980s from a middle-class family in a hick town in the North Country of New York State near the St. Lawrence River. He takes courses at Millennium Film Workshop and joins the Film-makers’ Cooperative, but remains a clean-cut outsider in the rough-and-tumble milieu of the LES. Venues like Films Charas prefer more established experimental filmmakers, or at least those with true LES credentials. Apart from sparsely attended screenings at the Coop itself, or at the RAPP Art Center, Nailand’s films are most frequently programmed at ABC No Rio and Naked Eye Cinema. Yet he grows disenchanted since his films are never chosen for programs that tour across the US and Canada. Too well-off for radical artists living hand-to-mouth in rat-infested apartments, too apolitical for filmmakers documenting police brutality, too sexually tame for the Cinema of Transgression or Erotic Psyche schools, and too whimsical for everyone else, Nailand becomes obscure, even by the standards of experimental filmmaking.
In the fall of 1989, however, he somehow negotiates a two-week run for his new film, M’liss, at the Bleecker Street Cinema. Advance promotion lands
a glowing preview in the Village Voice. The male critic argues that Nailand’s approach teases out the pedophiliac undertones of the original Pickford version, bringing them into the light for critique. He intimates Nailand’s unique style could make him the next Jim Jarmusch.
Intellectuals flock to M’liss to see what all the fuss is about. On the third last night of the run, two men are ejected from the screening for indecent behaviour, an event that receives lurid coverage. Sleazy men in dark raincoats fill the rows of the theatre for the last showings. Never mind that much more explicit, and uncritical, fare can be seen in porn cinemas. Nailand never recovers from the humiliation.
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8
ON THE “WHAT TO DO first” page on the government website, I’m relieved to see “grief and loss” as a separate link: it must mean they come later. There’s nothing to suggest checking your blog for comments from your long-lost sister is a priority. Nothing says it’s not either. Nor is there a rule about referring to the deceased in the past tense.
I stop typing long enough for Joseph’s screensaver to kick in: a photo of Candy on the auction stage, while she still dressed as television characters. Her eleven-year-old face is already opaque. In the background, atop the third tier, Joseph looks on proudly, taking time out of his chant to observe his daughter. I’ve never seen this photo before, which gives me hope there are new stories about Candy to discover and new clues to pursue.
Joseph was two and a half days away from winning an autographed photo of David Canary, the actor who played Candy on Bonanza. He never cared for my ruthless eBay tactics. If he was meant to win the auction, he’d win, he would say. A response laced not with my brother’s syrupy karmic beliefs, but rather an old-fashioned respect for fair play. Since when has anything been fair at the Wasteland?