“We’ll want his stories taken down. I understand you know shorthand, Harry?”
“Yes.”
“Part of your education as a reporter?”
I shrug. “I quit school when I was fourteen – to help my mother out. I went to work clerking in a grocery store. I thought night-school commercial classes were a way to improve my prospects – typing, shorthand, bookkeeping, that sort of thing.”
“Very good. When you find him I want you to interview him; I want every word taken down and delivered to me. And there are other things in which your good judgement and experience would be invaluable. Would he be an asset in a publicity campaign? Would the press and public take a shine to him?” Chance hesitates. “Is he cooperative? Co-operation will be important. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And don’t forget, if we are successful, at some stage this raw material will need to be shaped into a scenario. Who better qualified to write the scenario than the man who got the story from the horse’s mouth? Up until now you’ve worked only as a title-writer. It would be a great opportunity for you, to write a big picture, wouldn’t it, Harry?”
We both leave that question unanswered because the answer is obvious.
“So who is it that I’m supposed to find? What’s his name?”
Chance raises a cautionary finger. “Don’t take what I’m about to say amiss, Harry. But before I divulge his name I need some assurances from you. A promise that what we have discussed here will remain absolutely confidential. This is a matter for the three of us in this room and no one else. I am aware of what my reputation in this town is. The pampered son of a rich man, dabbling in pictures, a rank amateur. For that reason, I prefer my affairs kept private. If what I’m up to were made public, my enemies would twist it to make me look ridiculous. I won’t be made a laughing stock.”
“I can keep my mouth shut,” I assure him. “But they’ll want to know what I’m up to in the office. It’s impossible to keep anything quiet in the office.”
“This job won’t require you to work in the office. Stay away from the office. At least for the time being.”
“That in itself will raise questions -”
Chance interrupts forcefully. “Fitz will arrange things in the office. None of that need concern you.”
“Fine. Let Mr. Fitzsimmons take care of it. But I still need to know who I’m looking for.”
Chance leans forward, picks up a can of film lying on the floor, waves it at Fitzsimmons. “Denis, put this in the projector for us. There’s a good fellow.” Fitz does what he is told, deftly and efficiently; in moments all is ready. “Out with the lights, Fitz. Let us begin!” Chance cries gaily.
The projector starts to whir, the lamp beside us is extinguished, the film begins to jump and twitch on the screen. What we are looking at seems to me raw, unedited footage of the dime-a-dozen Westerns that every studio in southern California churns out like sausage. None of the title cards have been inserted and this makes the story hard to follow. This is what I make of it.
There is a trial. An ill-favoured fiend is convicted of something on the testimony, of a beautiful young girl. A handsome officer of the law embraces her ardently as the villain is carted off to his cell, shrieking imprecations and struggling in the grasp of his jailers. Next, there are shots of a wagon train and of the lovely young woman sitting on a wagon seat, apparently singing, her lovely face tilted up to the sky. Then – a jailbreak! Gunplay, honest citizens shot down like dogs in the street, horses galloping, swarms of dust.
Later, the villain kneeling beside wagon ruts, shaking his fist, presumably swearing revenge to the same sky the heroine serenaded. Followed by night. The wagon train encamped in a circle, a blazing fire, a geyser of sparks, eerily luminous smoke shuddering up into the black sky. Three men saw soundless fiddles, a boy twangs a silent jew’s-harp, a mute concertina snakes back and forth between hands. Men in big boots swing women in calico dresses and poke bonnets.
I can feel Chance stirring on the sofa beside me, his body tense with anticipation. I glance over at him. He is staring at the screen with such intensity that his soft, full face is as rigid as a granite Buddha’s. Suddenly he springs to his feet, gives a sharp, nervous tug to his trouser legs and skips to the screen. The hot white light of the projector glazes his features, giving him the queer, fixed look of a ceramic doll.
The camera cuts to a little dog, jigging on its hind legs. Round and round it hops, tongue lolling. An old man joins in the dog’s dance, capering in a spry, lock-jointed way, waving crooked arms above his head. The dog leaps against his legs, barking and barking, noiselessly.
“Him,” says Chance, holding a finger up to the face on the screen. Seemingly on his command, the camera cuts to a close-up. The old face swells, filling the screen the way a dream fills the mind. A huge, eroded face. He’s laughing now, the old man, the white stubble of his beard standing up like bristles on the back of an enraged hog, the deep eye sockets black and charred-looking, as if they had been burned into the face with a red-hot poker. “Him. His name is Shorty McAdoo. Find him for me, Harry.”
It is after three o’clock in the morning when Fitz and I leave Chance’s house. There are many things to discuss and plan. I am to have a car placed at my disposal. I am to have an expense account. I am to have an increase in salary from seventy-five dollars a week to one hundred and fifty dollars a week. I am to find Shorty McAdoo and get his story. I am to do this without revealing who I am working for.
When he bids me goodbye, Chance says, “My regrets at keeping you so late, Harry. But I do not sleep well. I sometimes forget that others are not accustomed to the same hours.”
“You’d get more sleep if it wasn’t for the speech-making in the middle of the night,” says Fitzsimmons disapprovingly.
“It is not speech-making,” Chance answers sharply. “It is thinking aloud. Thinking aloud, Denis.”
Fitz, reproved, shrugs.
Going down the long white corridor that morning, descending the long curved staircase, I feel the same anxiety I experienced earlier. In the midst of the silence, the starkness, I become too aware of myself. I watch my hand slide along the banister, my foot plant itself on the next step. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the ladder-backed chair isolated on the cold marble floor of the ballroom, the strangeness of its position.
3
Seeing as it was unseasonably fine that morning of April 16, 1873, the swells took the opportunity to cut a figure by promenading to and fro on the hurricane deck of the
Down below, on the levee, a crowd of several hundred jostled feverishly, clutched by the excitement which always accompanied the season’s first run to Fort Benton, head of navigation on the Great Muddy. Well-wishers called goodbyes to relatives and friends jammed solid against the rails of the lower deck; children and dogs blundered about in the blind alleys of legs and skirts; roustabouts traded rustic sallies with departing deck hands. On the fringes of the crowd an old blind black man, hat in outstretched hand, sang with much fervour and little profit until a teamster driving a freight wagon swore to peel the skin off his back if he didn’t haul his black arse out of the way. The tatterdemalion’s tiny granddaughter led him away by the sleeve.
The sun climbed higher and the twin stacks of the
