Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (22 page)

"Oh, right," Black said. "Go up through the
saloon and meet us in the back alley. Just make sure no one sees
you."

Jesse did just that, closing the false
bookshelf behind him. He made his way up the long flight of stairs,
out of the cellar and through the saloon as nonchalant as
possible.

He emerged into the brilliant daylight of
Main Street, and squinted as he rounded the corner along the side
of the saloon towards the back alley. He hoped no one was
watching.

He felt a wall of stench—garbage—as he neared
the alley. Flies buzzed around the dumpster, filled with last
night's refuse and slop. There was a wagon parked there, marked
with the label of a Los Angeles distillery. Jesse stepped aboard
the small passenger cabin underneath the driver, who he realized
was Eli. Black was nowhere in sight as he stepped aboard; it wasn't
until he noticed the faint outline of a trapdoor beneath his feet
that he realized where the outlaw leader must have been.

With a "Yaah!," Eli got the horses in gear,
and the coach began to move.

Soon, they were beyond the borders of the
town, and heading down a dusty highway in the direction of the
Lotus camp. Jesse peered out of the window as the sun began to
set.

To his left, Bridgetown, with all its
buildings, appeared in miniature. It all reminded Jesse of a model
railroad.

To his right stood Devil's Peak. The ominous
mesa harbored the cause of his displacement, that much he knew; but
did it also hold the key to his salvation?

On all sides around him, a vast, sprawling
landscape of inhospitable wilderness stretched in all directions.
Not a shopping mall or a gas station in sight. How strange that
this should be his life now.

If the man hiding beneath
the floorboards at his feet turned out to only be goading him with
empty promises, Jesse could very well end up living here
permanently, and dying before the advent of television. Living and
dying in the shadow of Wayne Cole, and
Mrs. Wayne Col
e.

But there was another way. Another path for
Jesse. Yes, he would exhibit his film to the farmers and
townspeople of Bridgetown, and yes, they would see that they could
rise up against Wayne. But when Scoble brought the film to the rest
of the country, people would see Jesse was a visionary. He would be
the first person to wield the cinema to tell a story. To say
something with the screen. And through that, he could make a name
for himself just as big as Wayne's. Hell, he could invent rock and
roll.

No, he couldn't let himself think like that.
Too much was at stake outside himself.

Sleep did not present itself to Jesse that
night, and he tossed and turned inside the tent he'd been provided
at Black's camp. He was preoccupied with the images that his camera
had captured in Chicago. Its photochemical ghosts danced in his
head:

The angry former landowner, who raises a
clenched fist high in the air.

The hand of a dying American revolutionary on
the field of battle against the Britons.

The stately diva, who leads her fellow
citizens to the gates of the industrialist who stole their land
from them. A blonde-haired, portly, industrialist in round
spectacles.

It was not a subtle analogy, but Jesse hoped
it would be an effective one.

He began splicing celluloid together, holding
strips of the silver-laced gelatin up to the flickering candlelight
in his tent, and again realized he'd witnessed this moment before,
in his vision.

When the sun finally rose, he stayed in his
tent and continued to work. Black's men brought him the kind of
spartan breakfast that they themselves partook of. When it became
too warm and stuffy with the approaching midday, Jesse opened up
the tent's flap just enough to allow fresh air to circulate.

At eleven that morning, he wheeled the trunk
with the projector in it into Black's tent, where a wood-burning
generator had been rigged to supply a miserly flow of power, and
closed the flap behind him. The space was plunged into darkness,
and only a few shimmering fingers of light punctured in from the
borders of the tent.

Jesse removed the top of the trunk, and
rotated the middle portion down. Two big reels were exposed. He
meticulously threaded the film through the gate. When all was
ready, he flicked a switch and the first few frames of film leader
began to advance.

The projector's whirring tick-tick imparted
the high school memory of mental hygiene films upon Jesse. He
recalled staring sheepishly at the back of Susan Shepard's head,
her long auburn hair with the little white ribbon, while an
omniscient and strangely perverse narrator warned horny teens
against the dangers of parking in cars together.

Out of the nitrate haze emerged a title
card:

"A ROBBERY IN BRIDGETOWN."

As the film played out, he watched Black for
any telltale sign of emotion, but the mystic was stony.

Sixteen minutes later, the last few frames
ran through the film gate. Jesse flicked the projector off. His
eyes had not yet adjusted to the sudden darkness, and he strained
to make out the expression on Black's face.

Black snapped with his right hand, producing
a flame that danced in the space between his thumb and forefinger.
In the faint glow of fire, Jesse could make out Black's face,
contorted in a grimace that held one of his cigars between his
teeth. He lit it, and drew a deep, measured blow. After a moment,
he purged the smoke from his mouth and let out a satisfied sound.
He chuckled.

"Nicely done," he said.
"It's no
Citizen Kane
, but it'll be unlike anything these people have ever
seen."

Jesse felt his anxiety dissipate. He'd
received executive approval. He'd made it one step closer.

"So what now?" Black asked. "You going to
build us a movie theatre?"

5.

The wagon was typical. Apart from worn upholstery
and a scuffed-up coat of paint, its underpinnings looked solid, and
that was all that mattered to Jesse. He knew the Lotus Boys could
strip away the passenger cabin. They'd be replacing it with a
device that would hoist up a massive screen like the sail of a
clipper ship. The coach would then fulfill Jesse's vision for it:
to transcend mere people-mover and become a roving picture-box for
Jesse's guerrilla campaign against his own brother.

"This might actually work,"
Jesse said. The three bandits beside him each nodded their heads.
The men was dogged and disheveled-looking, having spent all night
out
there
somewhere on a mission to steal the vehicle and bring it back
to the camp before sunrise.

But wait, what was this? Three small
holes—bullet holes, Jesse suspected—shot through the wooden sides
of the cabin. He peered inside to investigate, and saw a dark spot
on one of the seats. He stuck his hand into the cabin and gently
pushed on the spot. A pool of dark blood rose up and out as if from
a sponge, and spilled onto the floor.

Hiis feet went numb, and his skin grew cold.
Jesse stepped down from the coach, pale-faced, and turned towards
the men.

"Why?" was all he could muster to ask.

Eli was the oldest of the three who'd gone
out to acquire the coach. He jumped in with a response first, and
Jesse sensed in his voice a paternalistic defense of the younger
men. "They put up a fight. Sonofabitch pulled a gun on us."

"Black said to steal
a
parked
coach,"
Jesse said. "As in, one without any people in it."

"I know, but this one was far away from the
city. And it looked right for the job. They didn't have to be so
goddamned stupid about it."

"Are they...?" Jesse's last word hung silent
in the air.

Eli put his hands on his belt. "They won't be
talking to anyone about anything."

The youngest member of the three, maybe
sixteen or seventeen, chimed in with support for Eli. "I know it
wasn't the plan and all, but we had to think quick, and we didn't
attract too much attention."

"'
Think quick
,'" Jesse echoed. How
callous this young this boy was. How warped.

"Johnny's right," Eli said.

Eli uttering that name made
Jesse think of Old Man Scoble and his Johnny-boy.
This
Johnny-boy was
broken, just like Scoble's puppet. All the men Lotus Boys were
broken—Eli on down the line.

Jesse wasn't sure what to say. He had to find
Black. "Just—get it cleaned off," he stammered. "And start tearing
apart the coach. If White's deputies show up, they can't link this
thing back to the owners." He started walking towards Black's tent,
cursing to himself.

When Jesse entered the tent, Black sat in a
meditative pose, eyes closed and unmoving. Jesse called out his
name.

The leader didn't respond. Jesse put an arm
on his shoulder. Black's eyes opened, and he looked up at
Jesse.

"We have to talk," Jesse said.

"What is it?"

"Something went wrong." Jesse kneeled beside
Black. "The guys we sent out to get a coach—they killed, I dunno,
at least two people. Stole their ride."

Black seemed characteristically unmoved. "I
see."

Jesse wasn't sure what he'd expected. "What
do we do?"

Black sighed, in a way that suggested this
conversation had been inevitable. "Sit down, Jesse."

So Jesse sat.

"You've aligned yourself with outlaws," Black
began. "They operate outside the laws of state and morality. People
like you or me—we work with them not because it's comfortable for
us to do so, but because they are willing to do the things that we
are not." He raised a finger. "And because they're desperate, and
so they're willing to take orders."

"Do they kill a lot of people?"

"Not a lot. I try to keep them under control,
or the town would truly run us out. But I wouldn't expect much in
the way of humanity out of them, Jesse. They are killers, and you
would do wise to remember that."

Something began to boil up inside Jesse that
hadn't been there a moment earlier. "You never said this was part
of the deal."

Black went stern. "'Deal?' What 'deal'?" He
raised his eyebrows, and something that scared Jesse made itself
visible in his eyes. "I'll remind you, we're trying to prevent the
death of billions. If a few people have to fall by the wayside, if
you and I have to look the other way when some small-time crooks
make a mess, so be it."

Jesse tried to swallow what Black was saying.
He willed himself to remember how it had felt to look upon a
million different possible nuclear wars. "You're right, of
course."

But he was no longer so sure about his own
motivations.

Jesse left Black's tent, feeling an
ambivalence in his heart, and walked out into the blinding midday
sunlight.

Eli, Johnny, and the third bandit whose name
Jesse had never learned stood before him. Eli, arms crossed, looked
especially displeased.

"Went running to Mr. Black, did you?"

"If there's even a chance the authorities
will be looking for us, he should know, that's all," Jesse
replied.

Eli spit, and dug his heel into the dry
earth. "You know, I'm beginning to wonder just what it is you
contribute to our group. Ever since you showed up, Mr. Black's been
having us run around to suit your needs."

"You won't have to wonder for long," Jesse
said, and forced a smile he hoped would come off as intimidating.
"I'll see you at the campfire tonight." With that, he turned on his
heels and walked the other way, towards his tent.

He laid down on the cot Black had provided
him. He couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the last guy
who'd slept in it.

The world was spinning. Maybe Black was
right—what had he expected? If he wanted to get back at Wayne, if
he wanted a chance to reclaim his life and his love with Susanna,
it wouldn't come cheap. He would have to get his hands dirty. And,
after all, if this was about preventing a future war, well, a lot
of things were suddenly fair game.

Feeling that blood between his fingers,
though, had made things real for him in a way that nothing had been
since he fell from the sky two weeks earlier. There were more
people than he could fathom, across time and space, whose lives
would be forever affected—defined, even—by what happened next in
this dusty town.

He put his hand over his eyes to block out
the light, or maybe the world. He tried to go to sleep, but it was
the middle of the day and he was wired.

So he got up once more and headed to where
the stolen coach was being dismantled. A couple of men were taking
sledgehammers to it, dismantling what they could without affecting
its underlying integrity.

"Lemme take over for a bit," he said to one
of the bandits. The man happily obliged, wiping sweat from his brow
as he handed Jesse his sledgehammer.

Jesse began to swing the hammer, over and
over. He found a rhythm. The act was meditational; simple,
repetitive, and its asked something from him. There was a spiritual
mindfulness that came with the sweat of labor.

By the time the wagon was fully stripped and
ready to be rebuilt into its new form, the sun was beginning to
fall, and the sky had turned the color of chardonnay.

That night, as on all other nights, the Lotus
Boys ignited a campfire at the center of their tents. In this
family of disenfranchised cast-offs, the fire served as a family
table, and a communal hearth.

Jesse watched the group come together as the
fire began to crackle and burn. He only sensed Black's presence
when the shadow of a man was nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with
him.