by Jack Hodgins
Far too aware of his body’s every agitated cell, he accompanied her around the side of the restaurant to where her car was parked, a silver-blue Mercedes convertible from an earlier decade. “You see how determined I was to find you? It cost me twenty-five dollars to park this thing for a fifteen-minute conversation!” She laughed again, and was still laughing as she slid into her car and shut the door. She started the engine, released the brake, and made the car leap forward to roar around behind Thorstad and along past the restaurant and uphill past the wooded trailer park towards the one wide highway that seemed to link everything in this world to everything else.
15
Nowhere on the studio lot could he find an indication that nature knew it was spring. No birds sang here. No squirrels courted, no flowers bloomed. Nor were there any trees capable of blooming. The only trees he could see in the area outside the Writers’ Roost were evergreen shrubs trimmed to resemble animals. The pavement beneath his feet prevented the very idea of grass. Perhaps there’d been a decision to exclude the natural world and limit reality to the camera’s eye.
His principals would have laughed to learn that Axel Thorstad could be sidelined so thoroughly. Administrators who’d suffered his campaigns against school rules, unjustified demands, unnecessary interruptions, and ridiculous schedules were aware of his ability to negotiate around foolish regulations that came between him and his students. But he had never before confronted the superior forces of a television producer.
“Be patient” was Evans’s advice. “Go up and watch the morning scenes being shot. If you get bored, come back to the Roost for a nap. Don’t men of a certain age need a daytime snooze, so they won’t nod off and miss their supper later?”
Did it show that he hadn’t slept well last night? The prospect of lunch with Oonagh had kept him awake. The woman had meant too much to him once, more than he should have allowed. Then she had gone out of his life and meant something else altogether, at a distance. There was something rather pitiful about keeping alive the memory of an ancient infatuation for someone who’d since succeeded in a world where she was admired and even adored by countless strangers.
He was surprised he hadn’t been accosted by Elena’s voice reminding him that it was she and not the actress who had found and drawn out the man in him, while the actress had had only the infatuated boy. Elena had always told him precisely what she thought, before laughing and kissing him, and walking him into a corner with her tongue in his mouth.
It would be a mistake to go to this lunch. He would discover they had already, yesterday, said everything they had to say to one another. He would be embarrassed and awkward, would make a fool of himself, accidentally betraying the confusion of a bewitched youth. But there was no escaping now. Because she hadn’t given him a phone number or any other useful information, the only way to avoid the lunch would be to let her wait at the gate until she gave up, something he could not do.
Travis had insisted he dress for the occasion, ordering Thorstad to wear the “good clothes” he’d worn to the Evanses’ dinner party—his dress pants, his pale green shirt, and his dress shoes, which Travis himself had insisted on polishing for him. “You’ve let yourself get out of practice! This woman is used to millionaires and movie stars.”
Before walking down to join her at the gate, he’d hoped to introduce Travis to an article he’d come across, a review of a book in which an academic had drawn a straight line between the nineteenth-century poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge and the twentieth-century songs of the Beatles. He wasn’t even certain that Travis’s generation listened to the Beatles, but if “The World Is Too Much With Us” were to show up on his exam, he could do worse than refer to the words of “Eleanor Rigby” or “Love.”
But Travis was in his trailer preparing for this morning’s shoot and did not want to be disturbed. It was Paolo who accompanied Thorstad in through the wide doorway to Sound Stage Number 5. “We’ll be shooting a series of short scenes today,” he said, “mostly out of order.”
Inside, they passed by a good deal of clutter before coming to a tall set whose open front wall exposed staircases and naked beams and three storeys of rooms empty of furniture, all in dim shadow. “We’ll have forty people crammed in there later, with half a dozen cops trying to get them out.” Paolo’s hands conducted the rhythm of his own speech. “People will get hurt. Shots will be fired. Eventually all of them will be cleared out, except for one who refuses to leave—and two others who’d been hiding in the cellar, including your Travis.”
But when Paolo perched in his canvas chair, his monitor and the chairs behind him weren’t facing this exposed interior but rather the separately constructed front exterior walls of several buildings in a row, the tallest of them rising three full storeys, a handsome red-brick structure with a column of bay windows, one above the other, each with elaborate trim, though some of the windows had been replaced with sheets of plywood. Its neighbour, a squat one-storey building, also had boarded-up windows, its walls and door and even the raised letters of a sign—“Eastern Junk Co”—painted over with a dull green. A sidewalk, complete with parking meters, had been built along the entire base of this two-dimensional city block.
“You’ll recognize Craig Conroy,” Paolo said. “Great actor. Made his reputation in Season’s End.”
Thorstad had not seen anything called Season’s End and had never heard of Craig Conroy but assumed there would be pleasure in watching a “great actor” at work. From his canvas chair behind Paolo he could see in the monitor that the camera was trained on the window directly above the front entrance to the tallest building. Of course he didn’t need to watch the monitor this time. A man in faded jeans and a too-large cotton shirt stepped into this window and turned to face inward, with feet apart and a hand clasped to the frame on either side. Both the building and the man were flooded with light from the tall powerful lamps, the red bricks and blue cotton more brightly coloured than even midday sun had ever managed in Thorstad’s outdoor world. The air in the tenebrous non-world outside the range of the lamps was surprisingly cool, possibly because of the bare concrete underfoot and the high ceiling and storage space above.
Voices belonging to people he couldn’t see shouted for quiet and “Background!” and, after a pause, “Rolling!” Then Paolo shouted “A-a-and . . . action!” Immediately a uniformed policeman grabbed the man in the window from inside and tried to wrestle him back into the building. The two men struggled until the man in jeans lost his footing, teetered for a moment with arms wind-milling about, then twisted about and leapt to the sidewalk, landing to roll forward on a mattress.
Once the mattress had been removed, the jumper—now splayed on the sidewalk—was leapt upon by a second policeman, who pulled his arm up behind his back and levered him to his feet, then thrust him ahead so violently that he fell to the sidewalk again. The policeman kicked him repeatedly before dragging him again to his feet.
The stunt double stepped down off the sidewalk and came back to stand by Thorstad behind the monitor while another man in identical clothing took his place, face down, with hands and feet placed where the double’s had been. This must be Craig Conroy. Paolo left his chair to shift the actor’s right leg a little, but the actor got to his feet, apparently with questions he needed the director to answer. The conversation was conducted with voices lowered, both men looking down at the floor.
Though the stuntman watched this conversation intently, Axel Thorstad saw this as an opportunity that might not come again. “A pleasure to watch you work,” he said.
The man grunted a throaty “Thanks.”
“My father did your sort of work but I never got to see him on the job.”
“Yeah?” The eyebrows went up but the eyes suggested he’d heard this sort of thing before. His face, this close, was broad, and marked with acne scars. “He work here, did he?” Axel Thorstad was being patronized. Perhaps it seemed absurd, a man his age speaking of his father.
“For
Centurion Pictures. A movie called Desperation with Derek Morris. He died from a fall.”
This was probably not the sort of thing you should mention to a stuntman while he was on the job. But at least this one responded sympathetically. “A real bugger, that. I’m sorry to hear it.” He smiled, and tilted his head to one side. “He couldn’t have been as tall as you. A man your size’d have precious few he could double for. Good movie, was it?”
“Not so good it was worth a man’s life.”
“Sorry.” He looked down at his own boots. “My grandfather was in the business too. Lots of bruises but no serious wounds. He’s in his nineties now. What year you say this was?”
“Nineteen thirty. Your grandfather might have heard of him. Tomas Thorstad.”
“Could be.” The man shrugged. “The world was smaller then.”
“If you see him, maybe you could ask? Your grandfather. Just in case.”
The stunt double considered his boots for a moment. “I suppose I could give it a try. The name again?”
But Paolo was back behind his monitor now, ready to shoot again. “Where’s Travis?”
This stab of anxiety in Thorstad’s stomach must be the sort of thing parents sometimes felt. He turned, in case it was necessary to fetch the missing one from his trailer. But Travis came up from behind, wearing yesterday’s costume, and passed by, grim-faced, to walk in through the door to the building and disappear, with Rosie immediately behind him.
The window struggle and the leap was shot once again. This time, when Craig Conroy had taken his place on the sidewalk and the policeman had begun to yank the actor to his feet to march him out of camera range, Travis exploded from the open doorway shouting. “Stinking bloody fascists! Bastard cops!”
This was the sort of outburst that Thorstad knew would be met with audience laughter if this were a high school play and the moment had not been prepared for. Here, he supposed the job of preparing for this moment would belong to an editor, who had yet to cut and rearrange things in order to fit this moment into a larger context.
Rosie had appeared in the doorway as well. Apparently the old woman’s granddaughter had also been hiding in the cellar. Travis went down on one knee with a hand to the sidewalk and raised a finger smeared with red liquid. “They’ll kill him this time,” he said, and showed the bloodied finger to Rosie, who was obviously unimpressed. When Travis had got to his feet he shouted, “You told me he wouldn’t be one of them. You told me he would, uh . . .” He threw up both hands. “Sorry. I’ll try it again.”
“You told me he’d be out of town,” the woman with the clipboard read.
The back of Thorstad’s neck was hot. He had no idea if what he was witnessing was a common event, every actor’s occasional bad moment, or if this was a sign of something going wrong. Ridiculously, he found himself thinking, Take a minute to breathe, then try to relax. We’re pulling for you. Of course he didn’t know if anyone was “pulling” for Travis. This wasn’t a swim meet, with parents shouting encouragement from the stands.
Travis went down on his knee and again found blood on his finger and again stood up, apparently to chastise Rosie about something, but got only a little further into his speech than he had the first time. It may have been a long speech, or it may have had some awkward construction to stumble over. It may have been a last-minute addition. No one had given Thorstad a copy of today’s script.
Paolo stood up from behind his monitor and drifted in for a private conference. Everyone turned away and tried to look as though merely wondering what might be happening on the concrete floor behind them. Those who raised their eyes, Thorstad noticed, were careful not to look at the others. Whatever Travis was hearing from Paolo was not praise. The girl hung on the door frame and watched as though class clowns were spoiling her opportunity to shine. The handsome Reynolds Green, who must have been standing back in the shadows, moved up closer now to watch, or perhaps to be seen.
Since it was Travis in trouble, and since he had certainly glanced in Thorstad’s direction before walking away from the set, his instinct was to go after him. But he knew this would be a serious blunder. Paolo followed with his head low, one hand to his mouth, perhaps trying to think of something that might help. Evans had appeared from somewhere as well, and moved up to confer with Paolo for a moment, before letting him go after Travis and out of sight behind a stack of furniture.
Perhaps anticipating Thorstad’s impulse to interfere, Evans was suddenly beside him with reassurance. “He just needs to remember he’s not in a high school musical. Let’s get you a coffee.” He lowered his voice to add, “Maybe this is the result of trying to serve two masters.” Then, to the crew member with the tool belt at his hip he said, “Show Mr. Thorstad to the canteen?”
The crew member almost certainly understood that he was to make sure the old guy was not only directed to the coffee but prevented from coming back. This was not the first time Thorstad had noticed that more than forty years in charge of a classroom was inadequate training for being confined to the sidelines in other people’s worlds. There was nothing he could do but accept the coffee, served from the back of a truck, and stand outside in the lane to drink it. The man with the tool belt had gone back inside but no doubt would keep an eye on the door.
Reason enough to wonder why he was here! Did he need to remind himself of the alternatives? He had been trying to save his life. He had not become just another of the misanthropic recluses down the various trails through the woods. There’d been the Birney poem to alert him, and the mad old fellow with the axe. And there’d been Lisa Svetic at the other end of his shotgun barrel. He had chosen this—to return to the world, to be a teacher again, to prepare Travis Montana for his exams.
“This is disappointing, my darling, to think that the great servant of love would be exiled on the pavement while his student is so obviously in trouble, especially since I know you have never been content to let anyone down, mainly because you seemed to feel responsible for the welfare of everyone who came near you, a trait that nearly drove you crazy at times, so that I constantly felt there must be something I could do to convince you that the whole world did not rest on your shoulders every minute . . . though of course this may be one situation where you are justified in feeling responsible, since the boy is far from his family with no one to protect him from the bullies who would pull him this way and that for their own purposes, getting away with it simply because they know how to make their own goals seem identical to his—all of which is to say, my beloved, that you have got yourself into a situation where you are in danger of failing yourself as well as everyone else.”
It was Travis’s “help me even though I can’t be helped” look he had recognized. He’d seen it countless times in students. But here, cast out from the sound stage—banned from the false derelict buildings, the lair of the homeless, the scene of police harassment—it wasn’t only Travis he found himself thinking of, or even Evans’s casual accusation. Now that he had been left on the pavement with a bitter cup of coffee in his hand, he was thinking too of the people he’d seen sleeping under bushes and down along the water’s edge. He was thinking of Angus Walker.
Help me even though I won’t accept your help.
That day at the drop-in centre was not the first time Walker had reappeared in his life. Many students returned to the high school, some with problems to share, others with accomplishments to report. A knock at the staff-room door—one more student you hadn’t seen for years had come back to say hello.
This was probably early June, the summer break just a few weeks away. Walker stood in the hall, his arms too long for his jacket. He’d come to tell his former English teacher that he’d graduated from university with a degree in education, but not, it turned out, in order to be congratulated. Walker—a young man now—was clearly upset. “Can I talk to you, sir? In private?”
It seemed that he had not only graduated but had been hired by a school board for September and was terrified at the
prospect of facing a class of his own. That a new teacher was terrified seemed natural enough to Axel Thorstad, but this was the first time anyone had come back to confess it. Thorstad put a hand on Angus’s elbow and walked him down the hallway to his classroom, where he asked the chess club to leave. If he’d been a university professor or a department store manager he’d have had an office for conducting private conversations, but as a high school teacher he’d had only his classroom with its dusty chalkboards and pale green plywood walls. When Thorstad wasn’t teaching in it, the room belonged to the chess club on Mondays, the newspaper club on Tuesdays, the future teachers club on Wednesdays, the comic book club on Thursdays, and the grad planning group on Fridays. Chess club members had grumbled when they were asked to leave, but agreed to stand outside the door until they could return to their games. “Can we trust you not to touch?”
“You made it look so easy,” Angus said. He sat on the slanted top of a front desk while Thorstad perched on a corner of his own. “All I had to do, I thought, was to act as enthusiastic about my subject as a ten-year-old explaining the features of his new bicycle. All I had to do was act as though I loved the students like a father, counselled them like an older brother, and disciplined them like a disappointed mother. You see, I paid attention. I watched you—how you did it.”
Thorstad tried not to betray his shock. “You thought I was putting on an act?”
Angus was preoccupied with what he’d planned. “But it wasn’t so easy after all. I tried hard through five years of university— weekly practice sessions in someone else’s class. I was given barely passing grades but was encouraged to try harder. So I did. Every year.” For his final “long practicum,” however, the sponsoring teacher had given him a failing grade. “To save me from a barely-good-enough future, she said. She said that barely good enough may be fine for some jobs but isn’t good enough for a teacher. But the university ignored her grade and I graduated with a degree that’s useless for anything else. What could I do but apply for a job, hoping I wouldn’t get one?”