Tribesmen (6 page)

“Looks like we finally found the natives,” he said. “This is great. Amazing on-screen value.”

Cynthia didn’t raise the flashlight to look at his crooked yellow smile, but she knew it was there.

Chapter 8

Umberto

The rest of them were asleep. After the bleach-blonde with the dark skin had calmed down about the skeletons, the crew had dusted off five thatched bedrolls and camped in the two huts adjacent to the small fire Umberto had started.

Umberto would have been asleep, too, if he hadn’t taken a handful of uppers to balance himself out this afternoon as they disembarked the plane. Like the rest of them, he had been expecting to work. He hadn’t planned on a day-long hike along the beach and then through the jungle. Being the internationally renowned gentleman he was, Umberto also had to tow the heaviest piece of luggage along with him.

His palms were sore as he sat brooding in front of the fire. The drugs still caused his heart to pound against his chest, making it impossible to sleep no matter how much he wanted to.

Umberto had always loved fire, and now he held his fingers as close as he could to the flames. It was a game he played as a child: seeing how long he could take the heat. The soot from the fire turned the tips of his fingers black.

He sat on his hands, warming his ass cheeks and staring off into the night.

The jungle beyond the camp was silent except for the constant hum of crickets and something that sounded like cicadas; did they have cicadas in the middle of the ocean? Umberto usually disliked quiet. He was a man of action and stillness didn’t calm him.

But sitting by the fire and listening to the bugs was—he had to admit—enjoyable. Possibly because he didn’t have to listen to the rest of the crew jabbering to each other in eighty different fucking languages, only snatches of which he could understand.

A gust of wind batted and bent the tall grass behind the fire. The wind brought with it the fresh smell of the sea, and a gentle howl.

Under any other circumstances, on any other island, this would have been a great night. For example, if they had decided to film in Rio, he would have found himself two card games and a whore by now. Even better, if they were in Southern Italy, he wouldn’t have to bother with finding the whore: he was a semi-familiar face back home, and ladies love a celebrity.

Here on this dead, unnamed island, he was forced to sit quite literally with his thumb up his ass. It didn’t make the situation much better that his thumb was warm.

He swiveled and looked at the burlap door that led to the hut behind him. Inside that hut, he guessed that the two girls were curled up, probably hugging each other for warmth and safety. Umberto could provide them with both protection and companionship.

He smiled at the thought and tugged at his crotch. His hands were still pleasantly warm. Maybe he should slip in there and try to snuggle up next to the makeup girl with the big breasts and the alright face, or maybe the cute little cube of brown sugar with the blonde hair.

He thought of the moolie writer in the next hut, and his smile dissolved into a frown. Old Jacque would probably have a problem if he tried to move in on his woman. Umberto didn’t have any real problem with moolies, but he fucking hated frogs.

Stuck up foreign
puttanas
, not giving him the time of day, who did they think they were? A beauty school dropout and some halfie from the States, that’s what Tito had told him. How is it possible that Umberto was not making it with one of them right now? At least one of them!

He turned back around and gazed out into the tall grass again. There was a form staring back at him now.

Stumbling, he tried to jump to his feet.

“Don’t be afraid,” the shape said. Its eyes were perfectly framed by the thick grass that hid everything else from view.

“Who are you?” Umberto asked, curious how any Caribbean islander had learned Italian.

The person in the grass shushed him. “You’ll wake the others. Come over here so we can talk without you shouting.”

It didn’t seem like a great idea to Umberto, and it wasn’t his machismo pride that made him listen to the mysterious stranger, but the stranger’s voice itself. Umberto could not tell whether it was a man or a woman’s voice; but either way, it ebbed and flowed its way into his mind, telling him everything was alright with just its intonation.

Before he even noticed his legs were moving, Umberto was putting up his hands to push the tall grass away from his face.

“What Umberto Luigi wants more than anything is the role of a lifetime,” the shape said. He couldn’t tell what it was in the moonlight.

“What are you?” It was both male and female, tall and short, black and white, old and young. Just when Umberto thought he could comprehended a stable image of it, he would catch the glint of an eye as it changed color or the wisp of a beard where he thought there had been a smooth-shaven cheek.

“I can give you what you want, Umberto. I can give you the role that will make you known all over the world.” The figure ignored his question, and he began to forget that he had even asked one to begin with. The shape’s offer echoed in his head.

“What would I have to do?” he asked.

The shape smiled, first as an old black woman, then as a tall bearded white man glistening with sweat and grime. “To begin, go back to the village and get a blade.”

As the words came, so did pictures. Umberto saw in his mind’s eye where the machete was kept. “Then you must quietly take the boar into the jungle.”

Umberto smiled. His dream role lay out before him and all he had to do was grab it. “I think I know exactly what the third step is,” he said, turning his back on the shape and heading back through the grass.

He was very quiet as he uncovered the boar. Its hair was coarse and wiry on his neck as he slung the beast over his shoulder and disappeared into the forest. The machete dangled from his belt, gleaming in the starlight.

Chapter 9

Denny

The thin bedroll was as hard and unforgiving as the ground under it, but it only took a few moments for Denny to pass into a heavy sleep.

He awoke several times to noises in the night, the picture of a stooped old black woman still fresh in his mind and foreign whispers in his ears. These moments were brief, and after each he would dive back into unconsciousness with minimal effort.

The first blades of morning light cut through the window of the hut, and he awoke for good.

As Denny crawled under the doorway, he didn’t feel rested. He felt sore and sweaty, and there was the strange tickle of a headache at the base of his neck.
Maybe I did miss a fix yesterday
, he thought before realizing that if chemical withdrawal were indeed setting in, it would have been a shitload worse than this.

The dry mouth was pretty bad, though. His tongue felt like crêpe paper as he ran it over his mossy teeth, and it stuck like glue. Before touching the equipment to set up for the morning’s shots, he wandered to the east end of town and stopped at the well that Jacque had found last night.

The well wasn’t made of mortar and stone, neither did it have a little gazebo on top like all the wells that Denny had ever seen in the movies. This well was just a three foot hole in the ground covered with three slats of wood and a basket on a rope.

He lowered the basket down and up, his elbows aching from the effort. The water was brown and musty, but cold enough that he was tempted to gulp it right down. Last night, Jacque had made a big show of finding a shallow metal dish in one of the huts and boiling their water. Jacque may have been an intelligent guy, but he was also a pussy.

“Drink,” a voice said at the back of his mind. If he boiled it, it wouldn’t have felt as nice as it did coursing down his throat.

After drinking his fill, Denny splashed the rest on his neck and chest, his morning shower probably covering him with more dirt than he’d started with.

Inside of the hut, he could still hear Tito snoring. That was good. He didn’t need the old man hassling him while he loaded the camera and unpacked the rest of the equipment.

Tito was a pain, but boy could the man talk. Last night, it had taken the director less than an hour to defuse the situation with the dead bodies. He had convinced the writer and the actress that he sympathized with their point, and was just as disturbed as they were to find a mass grave, but the plane wasn’t coming back for another two days so they might as well make the movie a testament to the islander’s lives.

Denny didn’t buy that testament bit, and he was sure that the rest of them didn’t either. But they had nowhere to go, and a movie to make.

It took half an hour of putting everything in order before Denny was stricken with abject panic.

Where is my meter?
A cameraman’s light meter is only slightly less important to him than his pecker. Denny clawed through the excelsior of the big crate, tossing clumps out onto the ground until he was certain that the crate was empty.

“Look at this mess,” Tito said from behind him. “What are you doing?” The old man stretched in the dawn. Tito wore only his shorts and his suit jacket. He didn’t look at Denny, but instead picked specks of sand from his chest hair.

“Looking for my light meter,” Denny said.

“It’s around your neck.”

Denny’s fear abated, but it didn’t make him feel much better. He clutched at the gadget, slapping it against his chest.

“I was going to get some coverage of the huts, maybe some inserts of bare feet in the sand,” Denny said.

“Are you calling the shots now?” Tito gave a blank stare back, if it was possible to rub one’s belly in an intimidating manner, than the old man was doing so.

“No, I’m sorry. What do you want to start with? Mein director?”

“Coverage sounds good,” Tito said and let his hands fall slack. “Everyone wake up! You’re all late to set! I’m docking your pay,” he yelled to the huts, his voice sending a flock of birds out of the trees and up into the early morning sky.

The others began to stumble into the open and Tito got up close to Denny. “I like you, Denny. You’re great at what you do,” Tito said, his voice a whisper. “But don’t you ever fucking shoot a single frame of film without my say-so.”

Tito slapped him on the shoulder and Denny nodded, feeling like a disciplined preschooler.

After taking some light readings and messing with the aperture, Denny stood in front of the camera and outstretched both his hands, parting the small crowd Moses-style. Jacque shuttled the girls out of the way of the camera and Tito took a few steps over. Denny ducked out from behind the set-up and then remembered that the Golden Guinea was not among them.

“Jacque, could you please go back into the hut and wake up Umberto so he doesn’t wander through the shot?”

“He wasn’t in there with us,” Jacque said, motioning to the tent. It figured that the brainiac would double up with the women. Jacque had all the luck.

“Well he wasn’t with us last night,” Tito said. “Probably passed out by the fire.”

“Then where is he now?” Jacque asked.

Alright, Perry Mason, enough with the questions. I want to shoot,
Denny thought. He felt a single bead of sweat glide over the hair above his ass cheeks. It was early and the sun was on the move. If he didn’t shoot now, he would miss the soft light of dawn.

“Probably taking a shit. What do I know? He ate the tuna on the plane, big mistake,” Tito said. “Just get out of Denny’s way.”

“Finally!” Denny got into position behind the set-up, unlocked the x-axis on the tripod, tightened up the tilt and gripped the pan handle. He then pressed his eye tight to the viewfinder, blocking out any light that could seep in and prematurely expose the film.

“Whatever happens today, don’t you dare cut the camera, child,” a familiar voice said into his ear.

“What was that?” Denny turned to look at Tito.

“I say nothing.”

He shrugged and inhaled deep, holding his breath as he started rolling. There was the familiar mechanical whir and in a few moments of flawless movement it was over.

It was a beautiful, smooth pan. Ten seconds of the movie was now shot, twenty when Tito used the footage twice.

Chapter 10

Cynthia

Cynthia watched Jacque carefully as he spoke to Tito. There was an uneasiness in both men, as if they were both braced for a fight. It wasn’t openly hostile, and it wasn’t devoid of familiarity, but there was violence to it nonetheless. “Okay writer. We got three people, two women and a man and no natives. Which scene should we start with?” Tito asked.

“Right now we don’t even have Umberto. We’ve only got Cynthia. I don’t have any scenes with just her in an empty village…or just her alone in the jungle for that matter. We need at least Umberto.”

“Sweetheart,” Tito said, snapping his fingers at the makeup girl, Daria. He said something to her in Italian. She nodded and smiled before saying: “No English.”