by Ray Succre
“I understand. We’ll work out money later. My largest concern is the workload; I don’t want to wear myself out like I did on The Other Side.”
“Great, we’ll come up with a plan, then. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep after this, so I’m gonna get dressed and put on some coffee. Enjoy Hong Kong. And hey, say nice things about me in your lectures.”
“Oh, I’m done. Finished the last of them only two hours ago. But I did have a few nice things to say about you over the course of a lecture.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, in the second half. I had to make up for the things I said about you in the first half.”
Chapter Thirty-One
FADE IN:
EXT. The boundaries of EMERY’S dreams - dawn
and at times
INT. Production sound-stage for ‘The Deserter’ - dusk
A set for a dusty, desert-like scene. There is a painted backdrop indicating the rock structures and hills of the American southwest. The set is idle. No one is present but several lights are on. A stationary piece of tumbleweed sits at the stage’s edge. In the set’s center is a television, sitting in the caked sand.
ZOOM TO:
The television screen. We see the television activate, and we find ourselves watching the black come to life. The set flickers and, after a beat, a program begins. It’s ‘The Deserter’, third episode, and as the introduction begins, we see that we are currently on the same set for the scene we’re watching on screen. A set within a set. We see LIEUTENANT MERRILL on the screen, in western wear, sitting on his horse. Tumbleweed bounces past him at the same moment it bounces past us on set.
The channel is altered here, however, and the show cuts off. We are now treated to a different show. We see a montage of a victorious EMERY ASHER parading through the set and rewriting people’s faces. We see him sweating and smoking and drinking like a machine. The cast and crew of ‘The Deserter’ mill about a busy set as EMERY hops around between them, inflicting his will on others. We see LLOYD VERNE as THE DESERTER, HENRY MERRILL. VERNE is talking with EMERY, aggravated. EMERY holds an Emmy in one hand and a tape recorder in his other. A lasso hangs at his waist.
EMERY:
(into tape recorder)
This is a note to uh, go ahead and remove one of the gaffers. Tall guy. You know who. Find out his name, first. I don’t know him any, but he’s drunk again and it’s pissing me off.
CUT TO:
EMERY swilling bourbon from a bottle and cramming lit cigarettes into his mouth while in a makeshift writer’s room. More of a shed, really. From here, we pan around to a stage. A TALL MAN stands on it, talking with DOZIER. We see the TALL MAN walk away dejected, having been fired. Nearby Teamsters point and laugh at the terminated man.
CUT TO:
EMERY standing before a director, his hands on the director’s face. EMERY is rearranging the man’s features, moving the nose up and lips down, broadening the cheeks, giving the director the appearance of a pig. Two insect people stand in the background gauging this behavior and nodding to one another. We see EMERY then walk over toward a receptionist, just off set. She slowly walks behind a partition while unbuttoning her shirt. EMERY looks about and then follows. He has a dog's tail extruding from the back of his pants and the tail begins to wag.
CUT TO:
LLOYD VERNE, playing Henry Merrill, The Deserter, strutting across a set with a rifle in his hands. Other actors approach and a scene begins. We pan away from this scene to see EMERY standing beside the pig director, laughing and smoking and coughing and slapping his knees. We pan back to the scene with the actors. They’re pointing into the distance, into the old west, which resembles New Mexico and is painted on a back canvas. Over this suddenly drops a large banner with the headline: Asher Strikes Gold with New Western.
FADE BLACK
In the black, we begin to hear quiet gunfire, automatic weapons, rainfall. This gains in volume over about ten seconds. We hear orders being shouted in English and the occasional, solitary shout in Japanese. Then we hear Susa’s soft voice.
SUSA:
A letter is such a terrible way to learn about your father’s passing, but it’s the only way I can reach you. I’m so sorry, Emery.
There is a brief eruption of gunfire, followed by a bugle working the reveille, which cuts out abruptly several seconds in.
FADE IN:
EXT. West Binghamton Cemetery, 1944 - DAY
There is no sound. We see EMERY standing before the wooden coffin at the tail end of a funeral, dressed in his formal military uniform. His hat is cocked and so is his mind. We see him lift a cigarette and take a long inhale, staring coldly at the wooden coffin (viewing open) that contains his father, Henry. The lid is closed and the coffin begins to slowly descend into the Earth. His mother, SUSA steps forward and hops onto the coffin as it lowers. We see her disappear beneath the rim of the gravesite. With a sigh, EMERY bends down and picks up a shovel. Beside him steps a JAPANESE SOLDIER, also holding a shovel. The two men glance at one another and begin shoveling dirt into the hole.
CUT TO:
Emery’s commercial for Chaste Cigarettes, a thirty second spot of pure advertisement. We have sound now. Emery’s eyebrows enunciate his meaning as he speaks, his voice calm and practiced, his suit pressed and his hair slicked back clean. He smokes and speaks and assures us that the matters of rich flavor and pleasing sensation are now at our disposal. There’s a jingle, but this, like the earlier reveille, cuts out sharply after several seconds.
FADE BLACK
Los Angeles. The sun above. The work below. Television. Sets and people of the industry. The orchestration of a show’s production was again the gruel of his days. Emery had thrown himself headlong into The Deserter, his feelers wavering and picking up any feed that might lodge itself near enough for him to detect it. Before the first episode, when the pilot had been shot and was about to be aired, critics had panned the announcement. They felt the last thing television needed was yet another western, a genre already threadbare and devoid of new ideas. It was a child buying cologne for his dad on Christmas. Something dull and played out, intrinsically, but forgiven because this was a child. Emery was not so innocent and the critics had devastating mouths full of disdain for the idea. Then the pilot aired and most changed their tune.
This pilot was a strong example of what Emery was going for, which was only a western in the visual sense. Henry Merrill was a good character, with intricacies and a complex nature that Emery could spend years uncovering in the serial format. The reviews were very promising, and no one had expected what Emery was bringing to the genre, which was a gallimaufry of surreal emotional feedback stirred with heart. And a rifle. The stories were genuine and far-fetched at the same instant. There was a moral involved, and a magnificent back story full of detail, but Merrill, as a character, was quiet and obscured, Deciphering him, as well as the moral of his existence in the west, would take far more than the viewing of a single episode.
Emery had married Beth a second time after returning from Hong Kong, which described his sentiment quite well. The children were able to attend this service, as did several friends and cohorts, including Calvin, though Emery was sad to note Larry had not been able to make it. Beth’s aunt attended, though more due to her happening to be on a visit during the wedding. Emery wrote vows, but these were not for the Emmy. Beth knew him more than anyone else could, and no amount of literature would please her coming from Emery. Flowers given by a florist bore less heart than flowers from a plumber. What he wrote was simple, honest, and all about her. This also happened to be the way he felt, of late. He was simple in the means of going to work and coming home, something he was now better at than he had been in previous years.
He was honest in that he accepted his setbacks as just that, in knowing he deserved nothing beyond what he made happen, and what drove his days. These began and ended with her. This was the happiest she had been since moving to Los Angeles, and the girls seemed to
enjoy his presence more. There were visits to the set to see him at work, and many lunch dates with Beth. This second marriage, a matter of ceremony and romance, felt to him to be more purposeful than the first. The first marriage had been for bare love. This new wedding had been for so many more reasons, and all of them were authoritative.
On set, Emery was not the same man. His lectures having ended for the time being, he now was the man about a story, and performed this role expertly. It was process. Process controlled everything. Keeping the network both pleased and aloof was key, but the process of keeping a show moving had to be upheld, and in this, the network needed more information than ever. Television had become a tricky bitch over the course of few years, and he had seen it up close and quite personal. It continued changing at the rate money for its productions came in, which seemed to be on flatbed truck, and at the rate sponsors signed on and begged for promotion, which seemed to be constant. There was goodness in him and a sense of propriety, but he had reached the point of being somewhat hardened on set. It could happen from war, from divorce, deaths, and it could happen with cancellations and accolades. A man could see too much, and stopped being able to see himself correctly in a mirror. He could fall to vice and make awful mistakes. In seeking to live full measure, a man might follow his urges, but there was no measure deep enough to tell him how much certain urges were costing his soul.
Emery’s soul had leaped from his body and rushed across the set but one week back, toward a receptionist. He could no longer see where his soul might have gone. He made up his mind to look for his soul later. Beth would help him. His marriage had never been stronger, and the occasional receptionist might be a small, quiet reward for hard work, so long as Beth never knew.
She knew the day after it happened.
FADE IN:
EXT. Dusty plains, 1867 - Afternoon
Desolate. The slight sound of wind. Parched dirt from the baking effect of the Sun on this difficult to seed land.
A slow pan over the dusty plains. We see the head of Merrill’s horse, LAUDERDALE enter frame, followed by the rest of the animal. We see MERRILL saddled atop it. The two stand there, surveying the distant hills. MERRILL reaches down, lifts his canteen, and removes the cap. We see him take a swig.
(V.O.) HOST ASHER:
Within the soundings of a man is a thing dormant to most eyes, a place in which the whole of his past is stored. Henry Merrill is a man with nothing, a loner who rides atop the dust of the old west. He is a deserter and lives with the shame of abandoning the losing side of a war in which he was expected to die, a man wanted for treason by a government no longer in power, a side of the war now existing solely in the moods and ideals of its southern survivors. Should they find him, he will be hanged.
And so he has traveled west, where he now wanders searching for purpose, life, a future, making do and trying to remain, his resolve hidden deep and a rifle at his side.
Henry Merrill will find what he seeks, somewhere in the lost, outlaw plains of a criminal and seldom-policed west. This is the story of Merrill’s search, the story of The Deserter.
FADE TO:
Morning. When the Sun of a new day rose on the set of the west. Emery woke and wrote. He recorded his notions on cassette and sent them to his secretary. He read these transcriptions and plotted out the story of his protagonist, aware of the continuance he now sensed, and fully planning on the fruits of this labor. He no longer felt strangled by CBS, who, surprisingly, had been eager to pick up the show. Based on the success of the pilot, they had even begrudgingly offered him his old time-slot. The network, something which had caused him incredible grief (though also much income) in the past, had somewhat given him carte blanche with 8 pm. This was unexpected and savored. The gods were glancing down and Emery was looking up. Dozier was thrilled and quite active, serving as Emery’s executive producer, no less. It was best, perhaps, to enjoy the good times before any of the bad could come down from on high.
When the Sun set, when the actors were gone and the day had extinguished, he would lay in bed beside his wife, urging back those nightmares of Leyte and the superable degrees of failure to which his thoughts were prone. Caution was his new weapon of choice in many things, and the show was a success. He revised everything with the obedience of a slave and kept pulling the strings of his puppet with a dexterousness that had been gleaned from his history in the medium. Beneficial matters were at hand, so long as one chose to see them as beneficial. With a more realistic eye however, these matters were more slated than actual. When guilt over certain benefits, over specific behaviors, overcame him, he threw it into the typewriter. When this machine was sated, he then possessed only the barest, thinnest guilt. He used this to buy his wife things.
The months passed and Emery traveled the old west on his spirited typewriter, clattering out his stories and absurdities in the form of meritorious wrangling and the interaction of desperate characters, his resolve hidden, and a cassette recorder at his side. The television glittered at times and his work was a flash into homes. He bought a color television and admired the new shows, began pressing the network to let The Deserter go color, too.
The audience was reimbursing him with praise, and his thankfulness was as strong as his work ethic. The long suit of television again shot through his veins with all the spark and temerity for which he had hoped. Things were happening and the prospects of good fortune were not only palpable, but key. The audience was not small, and they were paying attention.
CUT TO:
INT. ASHER LIVING ROOM - 10:00pm
An orderly, lit living room with the general amenities. A television is on and BETH ASHER is sitting on the couch. She is alone.
Scene is silent. We see BETH ASHER in pajamas, sitting on the couch, watching television. Several lights are on. Credits begin scrolling down the television screen and she yawns, looking up at a clock on the wall. We get an ECU of the clock, showing the time, 10pm. BETH gets up, seeming annoyed, and turns the television off. After this, she moves toward the window, draws the shades aside, and peers out.
CUT TO:
BETH’S POV. We see the street outside, past the front yard. We’re panning left and right, looking up and down the road out front. All seems still. We CUT TO a medium shot from outside, of BETH in the window. After a moment, she releases the shades. We CUT TO The living room interior again. Same shot as before. We see BETH turn from the window. She has a sour look, and returns to the couch, sitting down but not relaxing into it. She sits upright, somewhat rigid in the still, silent room. She is slowly turning her wedding ring around and around on her finger with her other hand. She seems to be unfocused, staring toward the floor absently. Her thoughts appear to be sad ones. Beat. We slowly begin to hear the quiet sound of an extended laugh-track, growing louder and louder. The sound becomes overwhelming.
CUT BLACK
Chapter Thirty-Two
Bernie Dozier and Emery Asher sat in a room, the mood stale and the air suffocating. It was here, in offices like this, and in a mood such as this, that Emery had in the past been shot through the head with the network gun, that he might then race across the realms to the next job. He took in the design of the walls, the sort of frame around the window. He gauged the sort of desk (too small) and the style of ashtray (blue melmac). Death and birth both took place in offices like this one. Emery had heard the rumor that morning, as had Bernie. The Deserter had faced a few recent complaints from the network, the most prominent being that they wanted more action and less character drama. Emery had added action, but would not compromise with the interactions of characters. It was a smart program by design, not an ongoing, O.K. Corral potboiler.
With rumors of a cancellation in the works, Emery and Bernie had conferred and then chosen to take the offensive, calling the network executive, Bob Teague, for a meeting. Emery was becoming null in spirit by these sorts of arrangements. The difference, this time around, was that it was not Dozier who sat behind the desk relaying the news of c
ancellation. This time, Bernie stood beside him while another network executive cancelled the show. Emery removed himself from emotion for a moment, something he had learned in previous years, and a behavior that benefitted him. Bernie chewed through his leash and bared his teeth.
“Now look here, Bob, I know how this works. The network wants a viewer rating of 22 for each episode and we had three or four of ‘em come in at, what, 18? We got something like an A-, and not that coveted A+, but lemme guess: They’re readin’ us low and you think no one is watching. Just a few fans, not a productive base.”
“Straight to it; good. Well, that’s the gist of things, Bernie, except you’ve never pulled in an 18. Your highest, as you well know, was a 16. Second episode.”