The Long Take Read online

  But we’re lucky. You heard of John Alton?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s the best: T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked by Night.’

  ‘He’s our DP. Got great eyes. Great eyes. He can see in the dark

  and he’s not afraid of it. He’s our Caravaggio, y’know?

  Wanted to work with him all my life.

  This’ll be some movie. Hope you like it.

  Anyway, pal: glad to meet you. I gotta go. Gotta go.’

  Joe walked around Pike at the bar, who

  looked up and said something – one word, his name

  it sounded like: introducing himself, as always –

  before turning back to his drink.

  Joe slowed slightly, and stiffened, then

  pushed through the swing-door.

  Walker knew the word now: it was ‘Kike’.

  *

  A year since he’d seen him, Billy was just sitting there, staring.

  One side of him, dirty blond hair down his back, a man shouting:

  ‘. . . I don’t even know where the fuck you came from you fuck

  you fucking tripped me up you fucker you motherfucker you

  what the fuck you doing with that you fucker don’t you fuck

  don’t shoot me don’t fucking shoot me fucker don’t shoot . . .’

  On the other, a black guy with cataracts,

  the lenses of his eyes

  clouded and blue like distant planets.

  In one hand, a photograph, creased,

  worn soft and thin as a dollar bill.

  A woman, with eight bags of tin cans and the stench of decay.

  Her feet wrapped in gunny sacks and a stain

  coming through the thick woolen stockings.

  Her fingernails were yellow, and scooped liked teaspoons.

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ she called out, over and over, ‘Praise the Lord.’

  And there was a line of kids in their twenties, slow-eyed,

  passing the jug of Thunderbird. Back from Seoul with a medal,

  a duffle bag and a thirst: a need to get wiped out, to get totaled.

  Some had crutches, missing arms or legs; all of them

  looking out, like they could see something, straight ahead.

  ‘Howya been, junior?’ he said, and started coughing.

  He looked ten years older, dragging a little: slow on his feet.

  ‘Yeah, okay, but you’re not so good.’

  ‘Reckon I got that valley fever. It’s the time of year.

  Santa Ana coming in and it all goes to shit.

  Get a coffee? Can’t do nothin’ for them boys right now.’

  Walker saw their lips and tongues were already black,

  one was asleep, or passed out.

  ‘The old-timers are checking out fast. Now it’s soldiers again.

  On T-bird.’ He took a sip of the terrible coffee.

  ‘But the real thing’s the mental jobs, the fruitcakes, y’know.

  I can’t help those guys. It makes me edgy being around them.

  It’s driving me crazy!’ and he laughed, briefly.

  ‘They shouldn’t be on the streets, eh.’

  ‘The hell with it,’ his smile disappeared,

  ‘Nobody should be on the streets.’

  He said things weren’t so good with the Panama Hotel,

  that there wasn’t enough room for him and his books,

  that he didn’t really know what he was going to do.

  ‘But I’ll be fine. I’m just a little bushed right now.

  And this damn weather gets the whole town jittery.

  But how about you, Mr News-hawk?

  Still at the paper? Still writing about us?’

  ‘Yeah, still there. I’m doing social issues, the Red Scare,

  film reviews now and again, but mostly just city work.’

  ‘You ready to talk to me yet? Y’know, about what happened?’

  ‘Maybe another time, Billy. You’re tired, pal;

  you look out on your feet.’

  *

  He heard from a neighbor there was some action outside,

  a movie being made around back of the apartments.

  He found a crew on Clay Street,

  at the foot of the utility steps that run

  right behind the Sunshine and the Hillcrest, on up to Olive:

  light rigs and mikes and a good-looking actor

  sitting in a Corvette, and back of the camera

  that big guy with glasses, and the quiet European

  with the light meter, from that filming he’d seen

  at the Nugent deli and the Bradbury Building – three,

  three-and-a-half years ago, before he went north.

  He’d caught that picture, and it was really good,

  the ‘M’ on the shoulder like the ‘M’ on the forehead;

  and he’d see this new one, no doubt, sometime.

  Was he ahead of the rest, or behind? He couldn’t tell.

  *

  Another Christmas on his own.

  He found Gitana’s number, but it just kept ringing.

  The dead rose still has thorns.

  He started slow, at the Montana, under the New Grand Hotel.

  Got a buzz on with some old guys, then took off downtown.

  The Jalisco, with the juicers and barflies,

  opposite the cathedral, the Service Club and the Rescue Mission,

  then the Indian bars farther down Main – El Progreso,

  the Columbine, the Ritz – got a burger at Scott and Freeland

  then on to the Torch, double shots half a dollar.

  Just to be with other people.

  It’s 1, 1.30, and he was near the Barclay

  when he heard what he thought was some

  couple making out – the regular

  slap of flesh on flesh and the guttural

  huh! uurrh – huh! uurrh – huh! uurrh . . .

  The sound of ceilidh night back home.

  But then there was sobbing;

  he turned round and went down the alley.

  This guy, on his knees: rummaging in a bag

  it looked like. Then he saw

  that his hands were red; and that,

  under him, was curled the body of a man.

  And now he was on Harlem Place, in back of the burlesques

  and the Hotel Rosslyn,

  and the next thing he knows it’s the girl with the red flower clip:

  ‘Hello, sweetheart. You look lonesome.

  You lonesome, soldier?

  How’s about it? You want a good time tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ he heard himself say.

  When they got to the room at the top of the stair

  he was hard as coal:

  couldn’t say a word, just

  put a penny in her slot and watched her dance.

  *

  Through the window, the moon hangs, snagged in the trees;

  dogs are browsing through cartons and chicken-bones.

  In the corner of the room

  the mice on the sticky-trap struggle and die.

  Rows of empty bottles. Dead soldiers.

  A wife, a home, some kids; none of that possible now.

  He took another Seconal, tried to tune the radio

  to a station he knew, a language he understood.

  From inside the celluloid lampshade, the spider

  in his lift-cage rises and falls, rises and falls.

  He climbed back into the pill, and sank.

  *

  The blue buildings step out from the gray, the cool night slipped from their shoulders like a bathrobe.

 
December, 54

  *

  There was a lunch on the Hill that weekend –

  ‘For those of you alone at Christmas’, the sign said –

  in the Bethel Gospel Mission at the foot of Cinnabar Street,

  where people went to sing for salvation.

  He wasn’t going to, but he found himself there anyway.

  It was filling up, and there were people there he knew to look at:

  one of the barmen at the Montana, a woman from Budget Basket,

  Mr Yee the laundryman, a bunch of the old folk

  he’d seen standing around. He sat down next to Red, the newsman,

  introducing himself.

  ‘Yeah, good to meet you, too. Properly.’ Red shook out a Camel.

  ‘Smoke?’ In a double-move of his thumb he flicked open his lighter,

  clicked down on the flint.

  His empty left sleeve tucked into the suit pocket.

  ‘Howdya lose it?’

  ‘Eighth Air Force. We’d caught a load of flak bombing Munich

  and crash-landed the way back to Suffolk. Third combat flight,

  and the last, obviously.’ He smiled. ‘And you? You in the war?’

  So they spoke about that, joined by an old-timer he’d seen around:

  ‘Say, this is Al. He was in the first war. He’s got some stories.’

  Al talked real slow, but was right on the ball:

  ‘I tell you this, okay: I’m from New York,

  was a private in the 369th American Infantry,

  but I went to battle in a French helmet.

  How about that?

  A lot of the white boys wouldn’t go near us, y’know,

  so we were assigned to the French army.

  Kept our US uniforms, but the guns and the rest, they was French.

  They didn’t mind what we looked like, just glad we could fight!’

  Three hours later they were still there, talking,

  made a plan to meet up over New Year,

  being old soldiers on their own, and neighbors.

  *

  Al didn’t drink, and Red not so much.

  He could always cut out later, he thought, but it was fine –

  and good to talk about things.

  ‘Dr Green says his daughter comes up here sometimes,

  tells him he’s crazy paying these prices:

  double what it costs in the malls at the Crenshaw Center, or whatever.

  But none of us has a car, we walk everywhere, and besides –

  we like it on the Hill: the company, the chat, wisecracks, y’know?

  Anyway, we’ve worked out how to shop around for the bargains!’

  The Italian coffee machine they were there to try

  was hawking up another cup.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Al, ‘It’s like a village in the middle of a big city.

  But City Hall and the CRA don’t want our village here:

  say it’s a “blighted area full of drugs and crime and poverty”.

  They ever been downtown and walked Main Street? The Row?’

  ‘It’s the hills,’ Red looked up. ‘They don’t like ’em.

  Hills are inconvenient.’

  They changed the subject back to war, which cheered them up.

  The stories of near-misses, wild times on furlough,

  the places they’d seen, the things they’d seen – being so young.

  ‘I was only scared much later,’ Walker said,

  and the other two were agreeing, loudly, which was good

  because he was shocked he’d said it, right out like that.

  ‘I tell you what I miss, even now,’ Al was staring at his hands,

  ‘That closeness, that co-operation, y’know?

  In it together, looking out for each other –

  what did the Frenchies call it? – camaraderie.’

  ‘Yeah. Couldn’t sleep for years. No guys with guns in the next bed!’

  Outside: the sky, sudden with rain,

  and it was pelting down.

  They slapped each other’s backs and shook each other’s hands

  and ran.

  *

  Under a glower of trees, a frost-pocket. Under the jetty, some thin gray ice flowered open in places by brittle-stars; on the far bank of Lake Ainslie the brief sun lights the dead weeping willows like snapshots of fireworks. Under them, the lathes of ice.

  *

  He stayed in for New Year’s Eve, as usual, because of the noise.

  Rolling pieces of wet paper into earplugs, he sat at the window,

  nursing a bottle, watching the lights.

  Always reminded him of the tracers – red, blue and yellow –

  our guys firing back from the boats

  at the planes coming over. The explosions.

  He couldn’t even hear the splash of whiskey in the glass.

  *

  He heard the telltale click under his boot: he’d triggered a Schützenmine, and when he lifted his foot a canister of ball bearings would fly up three feet in the air and detonate. You had to drop quick, coorie in under the blast. So he did.

  *

  He felt like one of the pensioners, down in Grand Central:

  moving slow and careful through the elbowing, jostling crowds,

  the calls of the vendors over their cod, lamb brains, cheddar, rutabaga,

  him standing there in oddly ill-matched clothes, getting in the way.

  The impatient clerks move on to faster customers:

  wrapping sausage-meat in waxed paper in a split second,

  popping open paper bags with a finger-snap,

  twirling them closed with a spin of the wrists.

  He’s comparing prices, buying almost nothing

  and asking for that nothing to be weighed again, on different scales.

  He counts out his money slowly from a leather purse.

  Lays the package gingerly into the bottom of a giant carrier bag.

  He gets his hair cut

  down the street at one of the barber colleges.

  Feels like a day out.

  He tries to remember how old he is. Thirty-four.

  *

  What had been a blaze of neon, streetlights, lit windows, becomes a smoldering ruin of blue.

  The city is constantly changing, blocks being bought and sold, de­molished and rebuilt, so it has no memory: it knows only this time­less present.

  What had been a starred canopy becomes squared and defined as a series of cliffs: a city once more, edged by light.

  January, 55

  *

  He met the old lady again, on the landing, with her shoebox.

  ‘Alfredo not well. He very sick boy.’ This animal was new,

  in a different color, and he couldn’t tell what kind of creature it was;

  there was a tail and a couple of feet, and the rest was covered

  by a sheet of lettuce, moving in time

  with the rapid, shallow breathing.

  *

  The Joe Lewis picture was opening, and he was first in the queue.

  The Los Angeles Theater, Broadway, between 6th and 7th:

  the best foyer in town for the best-named movie – The Big Combo.

  Not like his last one, but even better. So great to look at,

  it was easy to see Alton in it, hard to see Joe –

  and harder to see how it got past the Code.

  There was downtown – three blocks from where he was sitting now –

  the scene he’d talked about, outside the Banner,

  and there were the gas-holders.

  Richard Conte perfect as Brown, the syndicate boss.


  ‘I live in a maze,’ said Jean Wallace,

  ‘A strange, blind and backward maze,

  and all the little twisting paths lead back to Mr Brown.’

  He saw its hard lines all the way home through the fog:

  the raking headlamp opening up a wall, the shadows

  tightening in around this spoon of light that’s dragged

  across the metal doors, snapped back to darkness.

  The white verticals tilt and fall,

  till they’re one long spine of light

  through these rainy streets: a needle.

  It stayed with him all week, and he went back twice.

  *

  A month later, the news that Charlie Parker’s died. At thirty-four.

  *

  All the land’s been cleared above the Hill Street Tunnel

  so it’s not even a tunnel, just the double-bore arches:

  an empty doorway.

  *

  The spring trees, somehow, come to bud:

  the magnolia, the yellow acacia,

  the flowering fruits, apricot, peach and plum.

  The children play in the sun on the slopes of the Hill

  and the old folk go to the porch,

  take their first hesitant steps into the warmth of the day.

  *

  A raven’s thick call; the deer emerging carefully to forage in the first green; the flag iris and fern, the horse chestnut flowering into white candles, the wild lupins and blueberries; some heavy bird uncrumpling from the trees.

  *

  The office at the Press is hard to bear.

  It’s all Pike: Pike who can’t stop talking, clicking, talking loudly,

  so people think he’s alert, hungry, ever-curious, endlessly

  moving so we’re always dazzled;

  he has to stay moving all the time, like a shark has to

  keep on swimming or it dies.

  Overholt smiles benignly, remembering himself thirty years ago,

  not seeing what the others see.

  May Wood is blunt about it:

  ‘I hope that kiss-ass chokes on his feed.’

  Sherwood and Rennert are reliable company,

  Rennert with his stories:

  ‘So there I was in Cole’s, with the crowd.

  I was asking, and they’re giving me quotes – $15 for a broken jaw;

  $30 for an arm, a hundred for the whole job – just to see, y’know,

  and I’m getting the fish-eye from the guy in the corner, the boss,

  and his boy gets a call-down, and he stops,

  pats my cheek and says he was only joking, goes back to his seat.

  Close shave, I thought.