Slow Fade (6 page)

The camera held on her as she walked away, through the door and into the street, and then panned back with the drunken arrival of one of the Mexican drivers dressed as Pancho Villa as he walked up to Wesley to find out what was going on.

EVELYN
walked down the street, the sad trumpet from the mariachi band following her as she went through the false front of a bank and out onto an open field. She realized that she was very drunk and sat down at the end of the field on a pile of flat rocks. In front of her a patch of light spilled over the littered yard of an adobe house. She must have dozed off, for she was startled by a hand pulling on her shirt. A small girl, naked and solemn, stared at her with round black eyes. Evelyn made no effort to speak or smile and just sat on the pile of rocks. A trickle of urine ran down between the girl’s legs. Behind her an old woman appeared in the doorway of the house, her thin Indian frame covered with a gray Civil War jacket several sizes too big for her. The girl ran back inside the house and Evelyn looked directly into the woman’s ancient eyes. The old woman said something in Spanish, giving a slight almost imperceptible shrug toward the house, and Evelyn followed her inside.

A large room was divided by a wall of canvas stretched across a clothesline. Two men sat at a table playing dominoes. One she recognized as a local wrangler who also doubled as one of Pancho Villa’s men, a role he had no trouble qualifying for with his full black mustache and heavy-lidded eyes. The other man, wearing a Boston Red Sox jacket and a battered gray Stetson set low over a thin copper-colored face, was one of the stuntmen that Wesley had brought down from L.A.

The old woman sat down on a double bed in the corner, next to a plump woman in a Japanese housecoat nursing a baby and watching a game show on TV which she never took her eyes from.

“
Indio
,” the old woman said, pointing to Evelyn standing in the doorway.

The wrangler pushed out a chair from the table for her to sit on. “She thinks you’re Indian.”

“I’m half Eskimo.”

The wrangler explained that to the old woman in Spanish, who fired back a reply, which he translated: “She says there’s thousands of Mexican Indians playing baseball in the States so why shouldn’t some of your Indians come down here and play?”

The wrangler poured Evelyn a shot of bourbon from a half-empty bottle on the table, which she drank quickly. The room was warm with a thin layer of smoke underneath the ceiling from a leaky open fireplace, and there was the smell of dogs and cooking oil and baby urine that made her feel connected to another room at another time.

“Wes is shooting a scene,” she said, wanting to say something to blunt the force of this unwanted nostalgia. “Pancho Villa in the saloon.”

The wrangler stood up. “No one told me they were shooting Pancho Villa in the saloon.”

“No one told anyone anything,” Evelyn said. “It’s a free-for-all scene and it doesn’t matter.”

“I have two lines in that scene,” the wrangler said.
“ ‘
I don’t mind killing him’ and ‘To hell with the revolution. Let’s go for the gold.
’ ”

Evelyn watched him put on his hat and go, knowing that she should leave with him.

The stuntman looked at her with cold black eyes. “At least Wes is going out with his boots on.”

“I guess,” she said.

The stuntman poured himself another drink, then filled her glass as well. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mrs. Hardin. There’s no way in hell I’m going over and watch the old bastard pull the plug on himself.”

“I know what you mean,” Evelyn said, watching the stuntman pour himself another drink. He seemed slightly crazy but somehow in control.

“Of course I’d sign on for him again even though he fired me day before last. You understand he likes to fire me. Fired me one time in North Dakota and once in Hong Kong. I get a load on and bust up something or somebody and he fires me. But he takes me back. I think he has a weakness for half-breeds.”

“I’m a breed,” Evelyn said. “And I think he has a weakness for me, but I don’t know if I want to go back.”

“Oh, hell, of course you’re going back,” he said impatiently. “You can’t leave a man like Wes Hardin when he’s down.”

“It seems as good a time as any,” Evelyn said, wondering if she meant it.

“You’re Canadian?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I suppose you married him to get out of town. Hell, I don’t blame you. I know what Canada is like. I broke a foot up in Calgary in a car stunt.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“See it through anyway. Who cares where anyone is from or what it was like? I’m part French and Moroccan and it’s never done a damn thing for me.”

His face was flushed from the booze and confessions of mixed blood, and Evelyn found him violently handsome. He sat there pouting, his lower lip feminine and full, his eyes staring past her, focused on some inner turbulence. She knew she was getting sloppy, but it was as if she had to run her own parallel course to Wesley’s, to step across her own boundaries while he was breaking up his.

“In some secret way I know you more than I know Wes,” she lied.

“Because we’re both breeds?”

“Because neither of us makes plans and Wes has to have a plan or he’ll die.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s so shaky. He’s run out of plans.”

“Maybe.”

“He has more fear than we do. You can smell it on him.”

“You have fear and I can smell it on you.”

He looked at her with great care. “What am I afraid of?”

“Of me, for one thing,” she said softly, smiling at him.

He didn’t answer. Behind him, the woman in the Japanese housecoat changed channels.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he said finally. “I’m afraid of Wes.”

“Maybe it’s time you broke that one.”

She stood up, dizzy from the booze and the smoke and the dull knowledge that she had gone too far with him.

“I’m going for a ride,” she said. “I love my husband.”

“I don’t know about love,” he said, wanting to hurt her.

She leaned on the table looking down at him and then abruptly left.

He stood up as though drugged and followed her out the door where she stumbled over a twisted pile of bailing wire.

Reaching out to steady her, his hand brushed across her breast. She gasped, leaning against him, and it was then that he knew just what it was she wanted done with her.

They walked silently across the field and down the back end of the street, past the false plywood fronts of the town. Suddenly she was unable to go on. Shouts and trumpet blast washed over them from the saloon and then receded. They were standing next to the jail in the shadows of an overhead balcony. She let him pull her to him, his mouth finding hers in a surprisingly gentle and tentative kiss and then she abruptly turned and walked into the jail.

The ground floor was full of lighting equipment and she picked her way through piles of cables and generators and up a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor, his footsteps following behind. Moonlight fell through a barred window outlining a sheriff’s office with a rolltop desk and a rifle case. Two cells, their doors open, occupied the rear. She went directly into one of the cells, bare except for a single cot.

“I’ve led you to jail,” she said, turning to him.

“As long as you don’t leave me here.” His hands unbuckled his pants.

“But I am going to leave you here,” she said, taking off her clothes.

“Shut up,” he said, reaching for her ass.

IN THE
saloon, a drunken and confused Pancho Villa sat on a chair elevated by two aluminum camera cases, giving it the temporary stature of a throne. Beneath him drifted a bored and mostly stoned crowd of whores, actors, and mariachi players held together by the prevailing rumor that Wesley Hardin was in the process of flipping out and that they might be witnesses to a legendary event sure to be reported in
Rolling Stone
,
Time
, and
Cahiers du Cinéma
. This rumor was further reinforced by the appearance of the female star, who showed up full of righteous abuse about Wesley’s deliberately sabotaging her career. In an unnaturally loud voice contracted from the still-rising effects of the pharmaceutical coke, Wesley had called her a self-indulgent cunt and a worthless actress who further and forevermore was living proof that the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset was right when he said the twentieth century would see the final dominance of mediocrity over intelligence. Stunned and speechless by this reduction, the female star had returned to her hotel, where she had booked herself on the first flight to L.A.

Returning to the end of the bar, Wesley sat alone brooding about just what it was he had intended to do with this night. The rest of the saloon waited for him with awkward apprehension, no longer trying to pretend they were at a party or some kind of spontaneous
cinéma vérité
exploration by an aging master of the Western genre.

“We’ll do the fucking mountain man scene,” Wesley said as if startled by sudden illumination.

The mountain men were summoned and instructed to ask Pancho Villa how they could get laid now that they were his guests in Mexico. As Hank and Scarface approached the throne where Pancho Villa had passed out, the saloon door swung open and the producer swept in, followed by a newly arrived studio executive from L.A. in jeans and white Peruvian peasant’s shirt. He was obviously thrilled to be on the front of a real crisis on a real set. Wesley ignored them, instructing the cameraman to keep on shooting.

Hank pulled on Pancho Villa’s foot: “Pancho, now that we have fought and died for you, we would like to ask you a favor.”

Pancho Villa, startled and confused, looked down at the kneeling mountain man: “Favor
? . . .
I don’t need no favor. I have an occupation
. . .
ask him.”

He pointed to Wesley, who explained his role to him: “You are Pancho Villa.
El jefe
. You must give the orders and make the decisions because within you lies the spirit of the people, for better or for worse. Not those profane assholes from Mexico City.”

“Be like Anthony Quinn,” Pancho Villa ordered. “Never say die, and ask for dollars, not pesos.”

Wesley pointed to the producer: “The money man over here will give you one thousand dollars American.”

Elated, Pancho Villa grabbed one of the whores and kissed her. “Then I take this
puta
and give you all the other
putas
.
Viva México!
”

A few cheers rang out from the crowd and the band swung into an enthusiastic version of “La Cucaracha.” Wesley pointed at the cameraman to pan around the room to include the producer and the studio executive.

“Jesus Christ, Wes,” said the producer. “This has gone far enough.”

Wesley stood on a chair so that he was equal in height to the enthroned Pancho Villa. “These two men represent everything that’s fucked up with this process,” he said to a suddenly self-conscious Pancho Villa, who was looking for an easy way to get the whore down from his lap.

The drunken voice of the prop man sang out from behind the bar: “Hang the cocksuckers
. . .
burn ’em in phony receipts
. . . .
”

The producer made a desperate move to grab the camera, but the cameraman, an ex-professional soccer player, eluded him easily, planting a quick kick to his groin while continuing to shoot.

The studio executive took this moment to step forward. “I plead with you, Mr. Hardin, to stop all of this. It’s very upsetting to see a man of your legendary reputation lose all control in this manner.”

“I am in total control,” Wesley said calmly.

“Fire the son of a bitch,” the producer gasped, kneeling on all fours.

The studio executive continued, raising his voice to include the entire saloon, “I must add that I represent the studio on this matter and the studio’s position is that if this room isn’t emptied in five minutes we will close the entire production.”

The message communicated itself to the crowd, which grew suddenly subdued, all except the band, which misunderstood the silence and launched into “La Cucaracha” again.

“Keep on shooting, Sidney,” Wesley said to the cameraman, who was in a nothing-left-to-lose mood.

“Put down that camera,” the studio executive said.

“Why don’t you tell him he’ll never work again,” Wesley said.

“All right. Put down that camera or you’ll never work again.”

“Keep shooting,” Wesley said, as the crowd circled around them. “This is my set.”

“Not any more, Mr. Hardin,” the studio executive said, conscious that this historic moment was being filmed. “I am relieving you of that responsibility.”

Wesley had almost reached the calm that he was seeking, needing only one more shock to cut him loose altogether. He took the .38 out of his belt and raised it, aiming toward the bottle on the bar that held the live tarantula. At that moment he saw Evelyn standing just inside the door, regarding him soberly. He lowered the .38, motioning for Sidney to hold the camera on her reaction. Then he fired, shattering the glass.

As one body, the crowd rushed out the door. All except for the studio executive, who walked over to the tarantula and squashed it with the heel of a custom-made English boot. “That’s it,” he said directly into the camera, managing to look both official and compassionate. “That’s the whole ball of wax.” Then he turned and left the saloon, nodding politely to Evelyn as he went through the swinging doors.

Shaken and exhausted, Wesley sat down at a table, Evelyn coming over to him and absently rubbing the back of his neck.

“Give me a two shot uptight and we’ll call it a day,” Wesley said to Sidney and the sound man, who were the only other people left in the saloon. “Assemble the footage in L.A. and consider yourself both on the payroll. Perhaps we’ll continue this little exercise later on.”

Having run out of all other options, Sidney raised the camera and focused on Wesley as he pulled Evelyn onto his lap. She put a hand up to block the lens but Wesley gently lowered it. “How would you feel about driving to Mazatlán tonight?” he asked. “We’ll lie on the beach for a few weeks and see where we go from there.”

“I would like that,” she said, kissing him on the mouth.