Heartland

by Davis Bunn

  “What else did she say?”

  In reply, Martin hit the speaker button connecting him to the projection room. “You have four segments, is that right?”

  “Three longer ones and two together that total less than a minute, Mr. Allerby.”

  “Roll the longest tape.”

  The lamp beside his chair dimmed. There was none of the flickering start to digital film. For raw footage, the cameraman held the clapper in place longer than normal with film, just to give the viewer something to focus on before the scene actually played.

  In this case, however, they were seeing work that had been edited, and thus the clapper was removed. Which meant the light came onto the screen and revealed fifteen seconds of a handwritten scene number. Then the screen came to life.

  Both men instantly moved to the edge of their seats as though drawn by the same cord.

  The light was far too rich for a midbudget film. The crowd was far too large. The first three seconds declared this to be an epic. Fifty, a hundred million dollars. A Titanic-size budget. It had to be. But it couldn’t.

  There must have been two thousand extras filling the hall. The place itself looked drawn from the twenties, as did many of the faces. Hard, leathery people. The sort of crowd you might expect in a Russian film of the Stalinist era, back when the director could walk through streets and have the commissars pull out every face he liked. The sight hit Martin like a fist to his gut.

  And that was just the first image.

  The camera swooped down from its perch in one long arc, drawing in absolute professional perfection from the balcony, lingering over a few of the faces, each and every one of them perfectly lit. Then it came to rest upon the man on the stage. A pastor. He spoke a few words. Martin could only assume they came from the Bible. Spoken in simple clarity. The words gave an impossible authority to the man who took his place at the microphone.

  Impossible that a completely untested actor could carry himself with this much power.

  JayJay Parsons spoke words that Martin could not completely take in. JayJay set his hat upon the table. He talked some more. He drank water. The tremble in his hand caused the water to reflect the light in tight shimmers. But his voice was steady. Firm. He turned and spoke briefly to the people behind him. Martin felt his breath catch. The man looked good from every conceivable angle.

  When JayJay turned back, a voice broke in from the audience. JayJay’s own surprise was reflected by the camera, which jerked sharply as it shifted and searched. Almost as though the man who spoke had caught them both unawares.

  Milo asked, “How did they do that?”

  Martin lifted his hand for silence. Too caught up in what he was seeing to respond any further. The camera settled upon a member of the audience. No, that was wrong. The camera gripped him. The image was so sharp Allerby could smell the man’s sweat, feel his nerves. The camera was relentless.

  Then a woman spoke. Again there was the slight jerk, though Allerby suspected the camera had half anticipated this, because there was no searching for the second speaker. That new actress came into view. Kelly Channing stood in the aisle. She was angry in the way of a truly beautiful woman. Her rage magnified her allure, turning her into some kind of unapproachable magnet, the charisma of a primitive chieftess. A warrior queen. Again Martin was not able to fully capture what she said. Because in truth it did not matter.

  The camera returned to JayJay. He finished speaking and just stood there, a terrible mistake in the film’s rule book. Never release mounting emotion into a vacuum.

  But here, this one time, it worked.

  The camera gripped JayJay as the weariness came and went in a flash of ruthless insight. Here stood a man worn down to the secret essence, the core of truth that few people ever truly saw in themselves, and never in another. Yet here it was. The man wanted nothing more than to live his life on the ranch. Yet he had been drawn into a fight not of his making. A fight that had so drained him he was stripped down to the bone. Revealing his true nature.

  A hero.

  In the instant where the revelation would have become corny overplay, a voice shouted from the balcony, “And all the people said . . .”

  The roar came from one voice emitted by a thousand throats.

  “Amen!”

  And it still did not end.

  The camera action was Academy Award smooth. Martin knew they had spliced it. The working portion of his brain, the analytical segment that never stopped, told him there was no way they could have done what they did without a cut-and-switch between camera units. Only he could not find one.

  The view drew back from two thousand people rising and shouting and clapping and calling back to the man on the stage. Their hero was now surrounded by other men and women who had come forward from their chairs to shake his hand and speak words JayJay probably could not take in. The camera never lost JayJay as its focus moved farther still, until it finally drew back through an open rear window, and turned.

  And revealed a crowd even larger than the one inside.

  The camera swooped down and connected with a single face. A woman in a waitress uniform shouted and clapped in total abandon. Then the camera drew back. On and on and upward, higher now than the building from which it had just exited. So high it looked down upon the entire crowd filling Main Street from the hall down to a church. The steeple rose into the sunset. The cross cut a brilliant shadow from the setting sun. The same sun that burnished the crowd and the assembly hall and the town with an ethereal glow.

  The screen went blank.

  Milo slumped back in his seat. He needed both hands to steady the thermos and refill his cup.

  Martin shook a cigarillo from the pack. Gripped the lighter with two hands to light it. Took a steadying drag.

  The speakerphone light came on. “Should I run the next clip, Mr. Allerby?”

  “What do you think, Milo?”

  His sales director leaned over and asked the speakerphone, “Is the rest as good as this?”

  “I’ve only seen two more segments, Mr. Keplar. I thought they were hot.”

  Milo took two tries to get his cup back in the saucer. He said carefully, “We need to discuss how we’re going to handle this hit.”

  “Let’s take a walk.” Martin rose and said to the projectionist, “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Hold the room for me, please.”

  “You got it.”

  They said nothing more until they were walking through the stretch of green between the outer wall and the office building. The same Japanese gardeners who handled Martin’s home kept this tiny patch looking like a green tuxedo.

  Milo saw nothing but what lay ahead. “It’s true what you told me in there? They’re ahead of schedule?”

  “And under budget, if Britt’s cost sheets are to be believed, and I think they are.”

  “You won’t ever keep a lid on this. One word from that scrawny projectionist to his pal at the Hollywood Reporter, and tomorrow you’ll be reading about this over your mangoes and coffee.”

  Martin flipped his cigarette over the studio wall. “I agree.”

  “If I show this to Fox, this one clip, I’ll have worldwide rights sewn up in about two seconds.”

  Martin drew a pair of sunglasses from his jacket pocket and settled them on his nose. He did not need them for the light, as the smaze had been building all week and now blanketed the valley in shades of putrid gray. He simply did not want any prying eyes to see how close he was to letting loose the screaming ninnies.

  “Scratch that,” Milo said. “If Disney sees this and gets a single solitary whiff that the studio is available for purchase, they’ll be camping at the old man’s front gates with a blank check in hand.”

  Martin lit another cigarillo. He wanted to feel something. Even if it was the acrid bite of smoke at the back of his throat.

  Milo looked at his partner. “That’s not so bad, is it? Being able to write your ticket to one of the majors?”

  “It is,” Mar
tin said with his smoke. “If the original aim had been to own the studio outright.”

  Milo kicked the grass at his feet. “So what happens now?”

  “I want you to go on vacation. Vanish completely. No phone, fax, e-mail, nothing. Make a big deal of it, talk it up, let everybody know I approve. You’ve been working too hard, need a complete break, and since you’re gone your secretary and PA can take off as well. Shut your office down entirely. There won’t be anyone for the sniffers to approach. Officially, everything will have to wait. Call when you get wherever you’re going and let me know how to make contact.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll think of something,” Martin replied. “I always do.”

  The woman was stylishly dressed, but about twenty years out of date. Yet her crystal clear gaze and her calm expression said she could not have cared less. She rose from her chair on the other side of the screening camera and straightened her jacket. She wore an original Balenciaga she had pulled from the trunk of a junk dealer’s car. She had found it one weekend in La Jolla, just before her husband had gone down with cancer. Probably the last great weekend they had shared together. That was how she liked to dress. In memories as fine as the clothes.

  “You’re a prince, Chuckie,” she said to the projectionist.

  “No problem. And you’ll do what you said, right?”

  “The next opening we get in editing is yours.” She walked to the door. “I was never here, okay?”

  “Just so you don’t forget.”

  “That’s my boy.” She started to open the door, then turned back and said, “Strange response from our two top dogs over their latest smash hit, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Looked to me like they were both kicked in the teeth. But hey, I’m just the projectionist, right?”

  She opened the door, checked to make sure the hall was empty, and replied, “Not for long.”

  Chapter 36

  For a day and a half, Britt worked JayJay with the second team. That was the name he had given Kip and the steadicam. Kip had responded with genuine disbelief at the news, so shocked the featherweight flapping was stilled entirely. Britt had told them both together. Just, go out there and do it. No further instructions, no embellishments, no nothing. Typical Britt.

  They shot half a dozen fifteen-second mini-scenes. They started with JayJay standing on a hay bale or the back end of his own truck, which had been adopted into the cinematic fold. Both the hay and his truck now sported bunting straight from a local printer. Red, white, and blue banners that proclaimed in starry letters, “JayJay Parsons for Mayor.”

  The same bunting that had suddenly sprouted up all over town.

  Running JayJay for mayor being the surprise Peter had worked up and to which Miller had agreed.

  The steadicam guy was a solid human brick. With his equipment he measured about five feet square. He wore a biking singlet stretched to bursting by his muscular build. He did not speak. Ever.

  Britt had booked a vanload of extras. But they proved unnecessary. Wherever they pulled up, people appeared. The third time it happened, JayJay said to the steadicam guy, “We oughtta try this in the middle of the Mojave. Just hop out and see who pops outta the sand.”

  The steadicam wore his blond hair cut in a big-city buzz cut. He pushed his bug-eyed shades up on top of his head and rubbed at the sweat.

  “Nice talking with you,” JayJay said.

  The steadicam guy nodded and slipped his shades back into place.

  Kip flickered about, setting up shots and then shrilling them to a last-minute halt, wanting a different backdrop, or another face up close to where JayJay stood. The AD was clearly terrified over his first big chance. He bit his nails to the quick as JayJay delivered the same lines over and over, a couple of paragraphs from the same speech he had used in the hall. When he had enough footage, Kip made his hands dance, which was the prearranged signal for the crowd to applaud.

  Six stops, six different crowds, and they were into what played for rush hour in Salton City. JayJay asked, “You know what I think?”

  Kip did not look up from his rumpled script pages. “Actors can get arrested for thinking on location. It’s part of the California penal code.”

  “I’m thinking you ought to film me walking down Main Street.”

  Kip dropped the pages into his lap.

  “Have the steadicam guy walk beside me. Use that feller with the whatchamadingie—”

  “Reflector.”

  “Right. Have him do his job on the light. Let’s just see if the folks keep coming up to say hello.”

  “No sound,” Kip mused. “Just get some footage of you playing actor.”

  “Politician.”

  “Same thing.” Kip grinned. “This is fun.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” JayJay said, climbing from the truck. “But it sure beats digging fence holes for a living.”

  When they showed up at the fair, an extra dressed as a cop directed them down a dusty field into a long line of waiting vehicles. They knew he was an extra soon as Kip rolled down his window and yelled, “We’re filming here.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Denderhoff, sir! I didn’t recognize you. Right over there, sir! Park behind the sound truck, please!”

  Kip settled back into his seat and said, “Offer them a line of decent dialogue, and an extra will suck up to the exhaust pipe of a cross-country bus.”

  “Thank you for that Hollywood news flash,” JayJay said.

  “Hey. You want to survive in the jungle, you got to learn the code.”

  “Anytime I need a dose of wisdom, I sure know where to come,” JayJay agreed.

  “What did the crowd say the other night? Amen?” But Kip was smiling. “Unless you wise up, next time you hear that will be at your funeral.”

  They didn’t need to talk it through. They both saw the crowd turning and thought the same thing, which was, why waste the moment? So JayJay let the makeup lady do another touch-up and the lighting guy settle into place with the reflector, and the steadicam get situated by Kip, and he made his entrance. Getting applauded through the fair gates and down the carnival midway. A dusk-streaked sky competed with the carnie lights, splashing the crowd with happy colors.

  When Kip spotted Britt watching them, he went back to his splayfooted nervousness. But all Britt said was, “We need to move straight into the first take.”

  JayJay caught the director’s edge. “Is Kelly okay?”

  “Kelly’s not the problem.” Britt’s expression was grim. “Kip, they need help settling the crowd down by the stage.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Tell Derek we go in five.” Britt turned to JayJay. “Kelly’s handling it okay. But it’s still her first time singing for a camera. You know what that’s like.”

  “Not the singing part, which is a good thing for everybody. But I can imagine.”

  “Go help her get ready.”

  “What’s the matter, Britt?”

  Britt seemed tempted to tell him. But the director merely shook his head and said, “It has to wait.”

  They had pulled a trailer up behind the stage. JayJay waved to the roadies working on the musical equipment and knocked on the trailer door. A voice said something he missed because the sound guys started testing the mikes. He entered and said, “Kelly?”

  “The lady’s in back.” The band’s leader got up from the sofa and handed his guitar to a buddy. “Mister, I don’t even know your name. But I got to tell you, we owe you big-time for this break.”

  “All I did was tell the folks in the front office what I heard you giving on the stage, which was quality. And you can call me JayJay.”

  “That’s your for-real name?” The guy took a double-fisted lock on JayJay’s hand. “We been waiting eight years for this. The head honcho out there says maybe they’ll use one of our original songs on the sound track. If that happens, Arista is talking a two-album deal. Anytime, anywhere, you hear what I’m saying?”

  J
ayJay slipped by the band and knocked on the rear door. He heard Kelly say, “Is it time?”

  “Not quite.” He opened the door a fraction. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure thing, Slim. Watch a girl go into full-frontal meltdown.”

  There wasn’t really room for her to pace. But Kelly was giving it a solid try. JayJay shut the door and asked, “Are you mad with me for telling them?”

  “I should be. But seeing as how my mother gave you her version of verbal branding, I’m kinda stuck at my own need to apologize.” She wrung her hands. “That is, I would be. But right now I can’t get my mind past what’s about to happen.”

  “Kelly, I got so many things I want to say I can’t hardly get a single thing out.” JayJay wanted to reach out, sweep the lady up, give her a hug big enough to rob them both of air. But he couldn’t, not without a sign of welcome. So he leaned on the wall behind the door and said, “But I got to tell you, you look about a hundred kinds of fine right now.”

  She wore a Hollywood version of country cool. Silk top one shade darker than her hair and knotted across her middle. Silk pants made to look like denim, tucked into pale high-heeled boots so soft JayJay reckoned he could roll them up like socks. Her hair flowed across one shoulder, the way he liked best, and tonight there were little sparkly jewels woven into her tresses. Her top and her hair glittered as she turned.

  “Kelly.”

  “What?”

  “You want to pray?”

  “You say the words, Slim. I’ll do my best to pay attention.”

  “Can I hold your hands?”

  She made two more crossings before she finally got within reach. Her hands were cold as ice. JayJay said the words, hardly hearing them himself, just willing his strength into her.

  Whatever he’d said, it touched her enough for her to finally look at him. “I’ve missed you so.”

  The metal bands that had been wrapped about his heart for over a week loosened somewhat. “You don’t know, you can’t, how much that means.”

  She whispered, “I’m so scared.”

  “I know, and it hurts me to think I’m the cause. But I got to tell you, what you did up there on the stage at Goody’s, it was the finest thing I’ve ever heard.”