Slow Fade (20 page)

At this point the sound man turned off Walker’s tape, not because it was finished but because Sidney was no longer filming Wesley’s reaction, having swung the camera up toward Long, who was standing on an end table with a noose around his neck, the rope having been thrown over a wide oak rafter.

“I don’t see the use in haranguing
. . . .
I seen enough and heard enough. But I’ll tell you one thing, Wesley Hardin. Your blood is mighty thinned out. My son ain’t no different. Bought him a saloon in Labrador City and the truth is, he ain’t cut out for it. Now me, I’m dead meat. Deer is deer and moose is moose and I’ll soon be belly up.”

He paused to take a slug from a bottle of rum and Sidney chose that moment to take the microphone from the sound man and push it toward Wesley.

“Do you have anything to say about any of this?” he asked Wesley.

A.D. provided the answer as he lurched across the room and picked up an ax leaning against the wall. With one blow he smashed the sound equipment and then went after the camera.

At that moment Annie Mae chose to pull the table out from underneath Long.

All movement in the room stopped as Long swung free. For a suspended moment he hung in the void between life and death and then the rope came loose from the rafter and he dropped to the floor.

Sidney made a move for the ax and A.D. reacted by swinging the ax down and chopping off Sidney’s right index finger.

Sidney’s howl filled the entire room.

The Hudson Bay man, well versed in such matters, wrapped Sidney’s hand in a towel to stop the bleeding and forced him to drink a full glass of rum.

“You cost me my trigger finger,” Sidney screamed at A.D. “You’ve ruined me and you’ve ruined the film.”

A.D. looked at him blankly, not fully comprehending what he had done.

“I’ll sue your ass,” Sidney said weakly as he was led away by the Hudson Bay man, followed in turn by the sound man and the rest of the subdued revelers.

Long picked up Sidney’s finger and put it in his pocket.

“You never know when a man might need an extra dick,” he said as he shuffled slowly into the kitchen.

“Does all this mean TV ain’t coming to the Slab?” Annie Mae asked.

“Sooner or later it will come,” Wesley said. “You can count on it.”

“I’ll be first on line,” Annie Mae said and followed Long into the kitchen.

Wesley sat down on the sofa and regarded A.D., who stood alone in the middle of the room still holding the ax in one hand.

“Tomorrow I want you and the rest of your crew off the island,” Wesley said wearily.

“I’ll be the first to leave.” A.D. dropped the ax at his feet and stared through the window at a thin slice of moon that hung up in the sky like a whore’s earring. “But I didn’t know Walker was going to pooch your old lady. I never listened that much to what he was saying.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wesley said.

The answer seemed to confuse A.D. “I guess it doesn’t. I mean, everyone takes on everyone in the end, don’t they?”

“No, they don’t,” Wesley said. “But maybe they should.”

“I’ll destroy the rest of the film,” A.D. said. “I can do that. The only thing is, I don’t want to go back to what used to be.”

“No need for that,” Wesley said absently. “You take the film and do what you want with it. You’re the producer and I trust you implicitly. Better an old demon than a new god, as they say. But there’s no need to deal with India, production costs being what they are over there.”

A.D. nodded and walked across the room to sit on the floor opposite Wesley, his back to the wall. He shut his one eye and then opened it again. They sat there in silent communion, or at least it seemed that way to A.D., until Wesley swung his feet up on the sofa and fell into a dreamless sleep.

WESLEY
slept into the middle of the next day and woke to the sound of the plane taking off across the bay. He lay for a long time without moving, watching patches of sunlight thick with dust slice into the room. Outside a board banged and the wind rose and whistled around the house before howling off toward the southwest. He remembered that wind. It was an autumn wind and it would blow for weeks until the ice came in. It would be a time of preparation. The boats would be hauled and the houses banked and the last of the wood cut. The light would grow dim and sullen and when the snow and ice came there would be nothing to do at all. Not even wait. Perhaps not even remember. He stood up. Someone must have removed his clothes and it was cold enough so that he hurried to dress. Then he went into the kitchen.

Long was frying mackerel and potatoes. Coffee was on and the room was warm from the stove. Wesley poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down.

“I’ll be drifting off,” Long said. “Got my own shack down by the shore and it’ll do.”

“’There’s enough room here for both of us,” Wesley said.

“Not for this child there ain’t. The whole panorama won’t never be the same since you landed, Wesley Hardin. Course, that ain’t true, either. I never seen a day that wasn’t the same on Slab Island. Even yesterday. That was the same. And tomorrow won’t be no different. Now me, I figure to make it through the spring thaw, enough to put out a trap line.”

“I’ll partner with you,” Wesley offered.

Long dropped the mackerel and potatoes onto a plate and shook his head. “I always set my own traps. Sell my own pelts. Chew my own ’baca. Never partnered and never will. Not on the sea. Not on the land. Otherwise what would be the sense? But I’ll plug you enough meat to last the freeze up.”

“I can plug my own meat,” Wesley said.

“You got to put it in the pan,” Long said.

“I can manage that, too.”

Long nodded, his mouth full of food. After he had finished eating, he slung a burlap sack over his shoulder with all his worldly goods inside and went out the door without a word.

Wesley sat in the kitchen until the fire in the stove went out. Then he went outside.

There were no boats out and dark clouds were sliding across the sun. On the other side of town someone was cutting wood with a chain saw and beneath him by the shore a family of Inuit were building a fish rack. He was standing in his socks, wearing only his pants and a thin cotton shirt, and the wind felt raw, almost painful. Beyond the harbor, long dirty swells were rolling in toward the breakwater. No planes would land this day, or the day after, and soon the ice would form and it would be weeks before a plane would come in.

He walked around the house and then went back inside and it was only after he had built a fire again and was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for the kettle to boil that Wesley realized he was for the moment, and perhaps even finally, alone.

Rudolph Wurlitzer
is the author of five novels:
Nog
,
Flats
,
Quake
,
Slow Fade
, and most

recently,
The Drop Edge of Yonder
.

He is equally well-known as a

screenwriter, responsible for the scripts

for
Two-Lane Blacktop
,
Glen and Randa
,
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
,
Walker
,

and
Candy Mountain
.

He is also the author of

Hard Travel to Sacred Places
,

a travel diary of East Asia.

Presently, he and his wife, photographer

Lynn Davis, split their time between Hudson,

New York, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.