Almost at once, his vow was challenged. Brenda stood on the porch in a frilly gown that made her look as if she’d just stepped onto the porch from a fancy dress ball to take the air. Were Jerry and his bunch supposed to capture her in that? He had to chomp down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from asking.
She called to Martin, “Are we ready? Shall I start fanning myself?”
“Just a minute.” Martin scurried over to the cameraman, who’d set up his equipment in front of the porch. The two men held a brief conversation. Then Martin trotted over to the mounted Navajos, waiting in the trees a few yards from the porch. He looked pleased when he returned to the chairs. “All right, we’re almost ready. Find your mark, Brenda, and we can go.”
“Right-o.”
Colin marveled at her good humor. Even when she got mad—as, for example, when she was scolding him for being a fusspot—she didn’t hold on to her anger. Offhand, Colin couldn’t recall ever having met such a sunny-natured woman He hadn’t expected her to possess such a quality, mainly because she was so lovely. Colin had always believed beautiful women were spoiled and unpleasant. It pained him to admit that Brenda Fitzpatrick seemed to be neither.
Lord, it was difficult having one’s preconceived notions knocked about like this. Because he was feeling uncharitable and cross, he folded his arms over his chest, slid down in his chair, and stared balefully at the porch.
Brenda took her mark, which had been chalked on the porch floor, leaned against the railing, and commenced fanning herself. She looked for all the world like a southern belle resting after dancing her feet off at a plantation hall. She also looked darned near irresistible, and Colin wished she didn’t. Dash it, this experience was difficult enough without his lusting after the leading lady.
“Good!” Martin called to Brenda. “Remember to look startled when you hear the hoof beats.”
“You bet,” Brenda said.
“Isn’t she wonderful’?” Martin murmured.
Colin figured the question to be rhetorical, so he didn’t answer. He’d have had to agree, however. She really was remarkably wonderful. As an actress, of course.
Martin stood, lifted his megaphone, and shouted into the trees. “Ready, Jerry?”
Jerry uttered a grunt, which both Colin and Martin assumed was consent. Martin called, “All right, then. Action!”
The cameraman started cranking, the camera commenced its ear-shattering clatter, sprockets chunked out onto the ground as the scene progressed, and Colin watched it all with interest. Jerry Begay, leading his pack of fellow Navajos, clad in costumes native to no Indian tribe Colin had ever studied and riding horses no self-respecting Navajo would ever ride, let out a whoop and rode into the camera’s range. Colin’s frown of disapproval deepened as the action unfolded.
Brenda, apparently hearing the sound of the horses—although how anyone could hear anything at all over the noise of the camera was a mystery to Colin—drew herself up and peered off as if into the distance. She lifted a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes, which was idiotic as this scene was supposed to be taking place at night, and drew herself up further. Her face assumed an expression of dismay that gradually altered into one of terror. She opened her mouth and let out a scream that sliced through the air like a knife.
Colin winced. Darn it, she was supposed to be acting; she didn’t need to shriek like a banshee for real.
The horses rode up to the porch and the Indians pulled them to in a cloud of dust. Brenda began backing up, which was also stupid. Why didn’t she just open the door and escape inside the building? Colin, recalling his vow, didn’t ask.
“I hope that’s not too much dust,” Martin muttered. He called to Brenda and Jerry, “Good! Good! Keep, it up. Jerry, try to look more menacing.”
Colin grunted but didn’t speak. He was proud of his reserve. He shook his head when Jerry plastered an expression of evil intent on his broad brown face. The Indians, Colin noticed, hadn’t been forced into wearing white makeup, but they’d had their own natural reddish-brown complexions enhanced a good deal. Colin disapproved. Such magnifications of the differences among people could only lead to further misunderstandings and bigotry.
Again, he held his tongue.
“Excellent! Wonderful!” Martin sounded as if he were overjoyed with Jerry’s altered expression.
Colin rolled his eyes.
Brenda, meanwhile, had lifted an arm and was holding it in front of her in a fending-off gesture. Colin thought contemptuously that any female who acted this stupidly deserved to be kidnapped and run off with. Except, who’d want her?
Jerry crept toward her, a tomahawk in his hand. Colin sat up straight. A tomahawk? Good God. He sank back in his chair and didn’t protest, although everything inside him rebelled at the notion of a Navajo, pretending to be an Apache, operating on the home ground of the Sioux, carrying a tomahawk to kidnap a white female who obviously lived on a plantation in Georgia or somewhere equally southern. Lord, this was awful.
Brenda cried out some phrases that were supposed, Colin imagined, to be protests. She looked the part of a panic-stricken belle, although her words belied her act. “Good, Jerry,” she said, still looking horrified. “Bend forward a little more. It’ll look more creepy that way.”
Jerry grunted and lifted his tomahawk. Colin could scarcely bear to watch.
“Good,” Brenda said, although her appearance of terror didn’t alter. “Now I’m going to scream a little bit more. Don’t be alarmed.”
She did as she’d warned them. Jerry didn’t flinch, although Colin did. The woman had a shriek like a train whistle, and it hurt his ears. Poor Jerry, who was even closer to her than Colin, must be suffering greatly.
But Jerry didn’t seem to mind. He stalked Brenda until she was flat up against the wall of the lodge. Then he let go of a volley of Navajo. Colin hoped the camera wasn’t aimed at his face or the whole world would know these weren’t Sioux. Or Apaches.
No. That was silly. Only scholars like Colin—or Indians from the respective tribes—would know the differences in the speech patterns of the Navajo and Sioux. Or Apaches. God, he couldn’t stand much more of this.
Brenda let out another squawk when Jerry threw his tomahawk aside—another irregularity that would have earned him low marks in any Indian tribe in the world—and plucked her right up off the porch. He flung her over his shoulder and ran across the porch, down the steps, and to his horse. The horse whickered nervously. There again, Colin thought sourly, was a mistake. Indian ponies were trained to within an inch of their lives and would never balk at anything their masters did.
He sighed. Nobody else cared. He had to keep that mind or he’d go crazy.
Jerry flung Brenda onto the horse and leaped up behind her as effortlessly as if he did such things every day. Now that was a demonstration of riding skill of which Colin approved. It was the first time in the whole picture he’d had occasion to applaud.
Other cast members, led by Leroy Carruthers, poured out of the door, pretended to be aghast by what had happened, and started yelling and screaming. Leroy and a couple of the other men fired blanks at the escaping Indians, heedless of the possibility of hitting horses or the woman they were supposed to be protecting. Colin forced himself to keep his eyes open and watch. This was terrible.
Martin, he noticed, was enjoying himself hugely. He kept calling out encouraging words to Brenda and Jerry and the other Indians. Colin watched him with interest. He truly did love this industry. If only he loved historical accuracy as much, Colin might be happy, too. Not, of course, that anyone cared if he was happy.
He was getting maudlin. He sat up straighter and watched the band of Indians race off into the woods on their sluggish mounts. He reminded himself that nobody but him cared if the horses were sluggish.
“Good!” Martin shouted. “Great! I think we’ve got it on one take! Perfect!”
He rushed over to the cameraman, who gave one last crank of the camera, which spat out
one last sprocket and stopped cranking. He shook out his arm as if it hurt, which it probably did. Curious, Colin heaved himself out of his chair and joined the two men in time to hear their conversation.
“What do you think, Ben? Was the dust level all right?”
“I think it’ll be fine,” Ben, the cameraman, said. “We’d better look it over before we put it in the can, but I think it’s a good take.”
Martin nodded enthusiastically. “Good. Good. Do you think we should do another take just in case?”
Ben shook his head. “Naw. Let’s see this one first. I think it’ll be fine.”
“Great.” Looking as pleased as punch, Martin lifted his megaphone and bellowed into the woods. “Great job, Jerry and the rest of you. Brenda, you were wonderful. You can come out now. As soon as we do the shot with Leroy on the porch, we’ll move the camera to the Indian village and shoot that scene next.”
A bunch of people leading horses and Brenda, still atop one of the beasts, ambled out of the woods. Brenda was laughing happily, evidently at something one of the Navajo had said. The whole group of them was smiling.
How did she do that? Colin wondered. How in the name of mercy did she manage to put everyone, even a tribe of Navajo Indians on foreign soil, at ease? He’d never seen anything like it in his life.
He discovered he envied Brenda Fitzpatrick her way with people and could hardly believe it of himself.
Chapter Nine
When the camera next began cranking, Brenda watched Colin rather than Leroy Carruthers after the first few minutes. She wondered if Colin would recognize himself in Carruthers’s character. It was painfully obvious to her that the actor had modeled his actions on Colin’s.
If Colin did recognize himself, she hoped he wouldn’t be dreadfully offended. After all, although Carruthers was acting like an intellectual stuffed shirt and an impossible purist in this scene, he was eventually going to become the hero of the picture.
“Gadzooks!” Carruthers cried as he did a comedic double take. “Have those beastly savages actually male away with the love of my life? Horrors!”
Everyone watching him laughed. Everyone but Colin.
Brenda saw his eyes narrow, his arms cross over his chest, and an expression of suspicion creep over his elegant features. Oh, dear, she hoped he wouldn’t be too upset.
“Egad, what to do? What to do?” Carruthers continued, running across the porch and peering off into the distance like a flustered scientist watching an experiment dissipate. “Should I grab a horse and follow my darling into the mysterious blackness? Or should I, the quintessential absentminded professor, think about it for a year or two and then take some kind of action?”
More laughter. Increased dubiousness from Colin. Brenda gnawed on a knuckle and continued watching him. He must have felt her intense concentration on his person, because he turned his head and sent a quick glance her way. She smiled at him and wiggled her fingers in a hello gesture. He didn’t respond, but frowned harder and turned to watch the end of the scene.
“Good!” Martin called through his megaphone. “Great, Leroy! Perfect characterization!”
“It should be,” Carruthers responded, still in character. “I patterned it after the real thing.”
Oh, dear. Brenda wished he hadn’t said that. Scrutinizing Colin closely, she couldn’t detect whether he understood the meaning behind the actor’s comment or not. He was smart enough to catch on, but she didn’t know if he had the social intuition to do so. She’d met other men—most men, in fact—who wouldn’t recognize themselves when acted on stage if they were given a magnifying glass, a mirror, and a hundred years of study in which to do so.
Suddenly Colin turned around and walked over to her. She was so surprised, she barely had time to produce a serene smile for his benefit. She didn’t want him to know how worried she was He’d certainly not thank her for fretting about his feelings being wounded. She said, “Leroy’s a wonderful actor, isn’t he?” because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I guess,” Colin muttered.
Put out by his tepid response, Brenda said “I think he’s captured the moment very well.” She didn’t say anything about Carruthers’s characterization, which he’d also done very well.
“Hmph. I wouldn’t know, never having been in that position before.”
“That’s the whole point” she said dryly “That’s what acting is. Actors interpret scenes and behave as they believe a normal person would behave under the same circumstances. I mean, one doesn’t have to discover a dead body to understand the horror such a discovery would evoke in a sensitive person. Or even an insensitive one,” she added trenchantly because his attitude irked her. As usual.
Martin called out, “Great! You’re doing great, Leroy! Now go and tell the others the girl’s been snatched!”
“I suppose so.” Colin appeared unconvinced.
They both watched Carruthers without speaking for a moment. The grinding clamor of the camera filled the air, and the, sound of sprockets chunking onto the earth gave a curious rhythm to the ungodly noise. The actor yanked open the lodge doors and pretended to give an alarm to the rest of the participants of the ball. Several more actors in evening costume ran out onto the porch and began milling around, some wringing their hands in consternation, some peering off into the distance.
“Perfect!” Martin shouted. “Wonderful! Look scared, ladies! Remember, everybody’s best friend has just been abducted by Indians! Explain it all to them, Leroy!”
Carruthers started an animated depiction of someone telling a tale of awful importance to the other actors. He did a great job, looking to Brenda exactly as she’d expect Colin to look in the same circumstances. Only more ebullient. Brenda couldn’t imagine Colin flinging his arms around in that uncontrolled manner.
Several of the female actors commenced clinging to each other in terror. One of them pretended to faint. Another pressed a hand to her bosom and let out a shriek of mock horror.
“Perfect!” Martin called, pleased with his cast.
“This is ludicrous,” Colin grumbled.
“Fiddlesticks. You just have no imagination.” She expected him to take instant exception to her judgment.
He didn’t. He looked at her for a moment, his brow furrowed into those two parallel lines that made Brenda weak in the knees, pushed his glasses up his nose, and frowned at the scene again. “Perhaps.”
Perhaps? His qualified response astounded Brenda. “You mean you admit it?”
“I don’t admit anything, dash it. I said perhaps I lack the sort of imagination that can take pleasure in nonsense of this nature.”
“I see.” Drat the man. He was so difficult. “Don’t you ever feel the need to escape from everyday life?” she asked curiously. “I mean, don’t you ever get tired of being serious and studious every minute of the day?”
He glowered at her for a second then turned back to the scene. “No, I can’t say that I do.”
“Do you ever go to the moving pictures?”
“Sometimes.” The admission came out sounding grudging.
“Do you enjoy them?”
“Some of them. Not the ones that depict history inaccurately.”
“Don’t you ever take comfort in pretending? Even if that means pretending things happened differently from the way they really did?”
“No.” The word was clipped.
She heaved a large sigh. “That’s too bad.”
Turning completely away from the action and eyeing her suspiciously, Colin said, “Why is it too bad? Is it wrong to prefer reality to idiotic fantasy?”
“Tosh. This is fun.” She squinted at him. “I really do believe you’d be happier if you learned how to have fun, Colin.”
“I doubt it. Not if fun means appreciating inaccurate depictions of historical events.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about taking things a trifle less seriously. Enjoying life.”
“I enjoy lif
e perfectly well, thank you.”
“If what you do is enjoying life, then I’m glad I don’t.”
“And . . . cut! Perfect. Great! One take, just the way I like it!” Martin chortled with pleasure as he rushed up to the porch of the Cedar Crest Lodge. “Wonderful job, ladies and gentlemen. You can pack up those costumes now. We won’t be needing them anymore.”
The cast members congratulated one another and went back inside the lodge. Brenda watched Colin watching them. He appeared both frustrated and angry. She shook her head, wondering how to get through to him the notion that life wasn’t all hard labor and study. She was startled when he turned on her almost ferociously.
“Was that man using me as his model?”
She blinked at him, astonished at his question and unsure how to answer. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, if he had any. On the other hand, it might be good for him to know that people found him fodder for fictional fussy professors. “Um, I believe he may have been.”
He swallowed, and some of his ferocity fled. “Do I really act like that? Like a blind, dumb animal with no understanding of human fellowship’?”
For goodness sake, he’d pegged himself to a T. Brenda hedged. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly. But, um, perhaps you do appear slightly blind to the conventions of societal behavior and the finer points of, um, fraternity.”
“Good God.” He looked stunned.
Feeling small and unkind and not liking it, Brenda said. “Mind you, I’m not saying it’s true, but sometimes you do give the impression that you don’t give a hang about anything or anyone but your precious academia.”
“I see.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t give a hang,” she hurried to explain. “Only that you give that impression. Occasionally. Every now and then.”
“I see.”
She gazed at him inquiringly. “Do you care about your fellow human beings, Colin? I mean, as a rule?”
He gave her a hideous scowl. She thought at once that he’d make a perfect Jack the Ripper should Peerless ever decide to fictionalize that twenty-year-old, particularly ghastly series of murders.
Beauty and the Brain Page 13