The Star’s playing ‘Darryl F. Zanuck’s Jesse James’ tonight and that title is stretched breathtakingly across the theatre’s marquee wall in pistol-shot Wild West lettering. Molly is about to call out to Sam, but she bites her tongue in the darkness of the street because she realises Sam is in the company of two teenaged girls, Aboriginal girls with pretty smiles and long legs, older than Molly, so old that Molly can see how their breasts are filling out their Sunday school dresses. Other Aboriginal families file out of the theatre around them; there are no white families at the pictures tonight.
Of course, those girls see in Sam what Molly sees. They see his spark, his light, his Hollywood charm and they stare at it wide-eyed and dumbfounded, slack-jawed and spellbound by a brief and impromptu cowboy show Sam is giving right there on the footpath.
He fixes his cowboy hat and snarls in the face of an imaginary Wild West lawman. ‘Well, Marshall,’ he says in his thickest Missouri accent. ‘I’m just about done here listenin’ to ya rabbit on about my indiscretions and I’m gonna guess your hand don’t move half as quick as your mouth.’ Sam’s right-hand fingers dance above a curved, oversized red and green apple-flavoured candy cane hooked like a pistol over his brown leather work belt. Then his hand moves so fast that Molly sees nothing whatsoever between the candy cane vanishing from Sam’s belt and it reappearing, raised in his right hand and firing three shots that explode from his film sound effects lips as his left palm speed-cocks an invisible pistol hammer.
When the deed is done and the imaginary lawman lies bleeding in the dirt, Sam triumphantly blows smoke from the candy cane pistol shaft. In a flurry of movement worthy of a circus act, he spins the pistol vertically on his right forefinger, then shifts it into a horizontal spin that lasts a full minute, and those young women he came to the pictures with are so mesmerised by his cowboy skills they can only giggle because their bodies are too frozen by awe to clap their hands. Then, as fast as the pistol was drawn, it is holstered tightly and securely back in Sam’s belt. Only now do the girls clap.
Sam tips his hat to his audience with a wink. ‘And what brings you fine ladies to a no-good, blood-suckin’ town like—’ His words are cut short by an imaginary bullet in his back that sends him staggering forward into the arms of his audience. ‘It’s that feller Bob Ford,’ he coughs, imaginary blood spilling from his cowboy lips. ‘He done shot me in the back.’ Sam falls grandly to the ground, the last beats of a short and tragic cowboy life pulsing out of his shoulders. ‘Please . . . ma’am . . .’ he whispers up to the taller of the two young women, ‘would you grant this sorry outlaw one last kiss before he rides off into hell?’ And Molly sees from the darkness of the road that the cowboy’s dying wish is granted: the tallest girl kneels over Sam and gently places a kiss upon his lips, a kiss that seems to Molly to last as long as most of the features that show on the Star’s big white picture screen. And of course Molly is not the girl to grant that kiss because Molly never dug enough graves to buy the blue satin dress to wear to the pictures and Molly could never look so tall and so beautiful as that lucky, full-busted girl in her Sunday best because Molly’s always six feet deep in dirt and dead folks.
Sam closes his eyes for the cowboy’s last sleep. The older girls howl with laughter and Molly treads lightly to the scene and stands over her friend Sam, feeling, for the first time in her life, every heavy ounce of the inherited heart that’s slowly turning to stone inside her chest.
‘Hi, Sam,’ she says, softly.
Sam opens his eyes. He beams wide.
‘Hi, Mol’!’ he hollers. He springs to his feet. ‘I didn’t know you were comin’ out tonight.’ He looks her up and down. ‘You’re gonna need shoes on if you want to catch the next picture. All the whites are coming back for Bogie in High Sierra. We just seen Jesse James. You woulda loved it. They had that Tyrone feller you like playin’ Jesse.’
‘Tyrone Power,’ Molly says, flatly.
Sam looks her up and down again, deeper this time. ‘You all right, Mol’?’
The tall girl wants to go. ‘Ya comin’, Sam?’ she asks. ‘We’re all swimmin’ under the stars at Vesteys.’
Sam smiles. ‘I’ll catch up later,’ he says. ‘I wanna stick with me little outlaw mate ’ere for a bit.’
The older girls turn, stroll away along Smith Street.
‘I’m not so little,’ Molly says, her eyes turned away.
Sam chuckles, nods his head. ‘Yeah, I know, Mol’. You’re bigger than Bogart in my book!’
He pats her shoulder. ‘Wait ’ere for a second,’ he says, excited. ‘I wanna introduce you to a friend of mine.’
He disappears down a lane off Smith Street. Molly sits in the gutter, rests her elbows on her knees. Horse hooves clop along the dirt road of Smith Street, and Sam moves into the light, bouncing gently on a saddle tied to a handsome dark chestnut horse with white markings on its lower legs like it’s wearing long socks.
‘This is Danny,’ Sam says, a hand rubbing the horse’s crest. ‘He’s a hot-blood colt, Mol’. Real fast. Fit as a bull. Danny and me have been down south huntin’ them buffalo through the Rum Jungle. He never stops this feller. Jumps on them beasts like lightnin’ strikin’. Bang!’
Sam holds his hand out to Molly. He turns into Jesse James once more. He turns into Tyrone Power.
‘Ma’am, would you grant a lonely cowboy the pleasure of your
