The Long Take Page 6

  ‘My friend from New York!’ he says, walking over. ‘You made it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We’re on a break. Let’s go to my trailer.’

  Throwing his hat down, he turns on the gramophone:

  ‘This lovely day will lengthen into evening We’ll sigh goodbye to all we ever had . . .’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Whatever you’re having.’

  ‘Lemonade. But I’ve whiskey if you want it.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Worked out okay, that last one. Cry of the City.

  It’s opening soon, couple months.

  This one, though – this one’s special.

  Lancaster and Duryea. Amazing. And De Carlo:

  seems she can really act. We’re shooting her now.

  And so what brings you over to California? The sun?’

  Walker had forgotten the clotted German accent.

  ‘Just got a job, eh. Reporter at the Press.

  Y’know, it seems there’s a movie made every day in this town.

  It’s like one big open-air film-set.’

  ‘Great diagonals. These old houses – all the hills!

  And perfect at night – the angles you can get.

  I remember we talked about that in New York, no?

  There was a guy working here last month:

  cinematographer, name of Alton. He’s the best.

  He calls it “painting with light”. How about that?’

  ‘I like it. Say, didn’t he do T-Men? And that new one

  that’s just opened . . . Raw Deal?’

  ‘That’s him. That’s him – works with Tony Mann.

  They were shooting this chase scene down in the storm-drains.

  I saw the rushes. Unbelievable sequence –

  one light on a dolly and the rest

  just police torches. This cube of light, y’know,

  moving through the tunnel like an elevator car.’

  He went silent. Walker sipped his drink. That tune again,

  ‘. . . Alone where we have walked together

  I’ll remember April and be glad.’

  ‘I might be doing something on your old waterfront.

  Corruption, you know, like we talked about.

  There’s a guy writing on it now,

  doing pieces in the New York Sun. Interesting.

  Anyway. I got to get back to work. Stay and watch.’

  On a chair was a jacket with something written on the back:

  PRONOUNCED

  SEE-ODD-MACK

  And there she was, parked up on the slope

  in her Ford convertible, sunglasses, spotted dress.

  Children playing in the background, old ladies

  strolling down to Temple; then this creepy blond guy

  dressed like a kid, running, throwing a ball

  to a terrier that chases, barking, after him. Over and over.

  Stands outside the steps to the house

  watching her, again, over his shoulder,

  as she walks up the stair slowly;

  it’s a scene that never ends:

  he’s tossing the ball in the air, again and again,

  as if he’s been here on this street

  doing this since he was a boy.

  *

  Heat on the island made those weeks of summer frantic, desperate with life, but nothing to do but get away, walk to Lake Ainslie – fish for trout if the flies and clegs would let me – or climb that red oak, up over Loch Ban, and hang in my tree like the sun.

  *

  It’s getting hotter every day, but after work

  up on the Hill, there’s a breeze,

  and he buys a paper from the one-armed man

  who’s always there in his suit, with one sleeve

  pinned up, at his news-stand in the shade

  of the pharmacy on 3rd and Grand.

  Getting a Coke from the cooler outside the Nugent

  he goes to sit on the benches, their green paint flaking in the sun.

  Old men were out, on corners, watching the world,

  stroking cats and dogs, chatting, picking up scraps of litter

  and looking at them, directing trucks as they reversed.

  Making themselves useful. Part of this city, still.

  People nodded to him now in the neighborhood, knew his name

  in Budget Basket, in the drugstore or the bars:

  the Angels Flight Café where he’d go to read,

  or the night place, Los Amigos, across the street.

  The old man going past is half-folded. Right-angled

  as a wall-bracket, he walks south every day

  down Bunker Hill Avenue to the Public Library,

  staring at the ground.

  He can look both sides, but not ahead, and never up.

  The pleasure of sitting must be immeasurable.

  The only thing that moves, all day, is the sun,

  and you tell the time by its slow shadows.

  Dogs are stretched out in the heat, breathing loosely.

  He reads, sometimes, out on the porch of the Sunshine Apartments,

  the open wooden framework of verandas and breezeways,

  gazing through the palms across the rails of Angels Flight

  to the walls and windows of the Hulbert, another SRO.

  The paper was full of weather, the hottest summer in twenty years,

  its pages, turned in his hands, going sun-dried and brittle.

  Robert Mitchum getting busted

  over there in the Hollywood Hills.

  And up behind, in the San Gabriels, they’re saying

  it’s so dry and still

  you can hear the mountains hum. ‘Fire-weather’, they call it.

  *

  At the Press, Pike is everywhere,

  nodding his head on its neck

  like one of those balsa-wood dragons with strings

  you see down in Chinatown,

  nodding hard,

  harder when Overholt looked in his direction,

  nodding in that dismissive way that said:

  Yes, yes, I know. I knew that long ago.

  When he’s particularly pleased with himself

  he splays out on his chair

  till he’s almost lying on it, legs and arms out

  like the world’s too small for him.

  *

  They found Captain Stewart next day, propped up against a tree and thought he was sleeping, till they saw that most of the other side of him was gone. A plump arm lay next to him, the stuffing coming out of one end.

  *

  ‘Make it a beer.’

  In this heat, Craby Joe’s was a small steambath inside a bigger one.

  The guy next to him was staring, blankly,

  riddling his ear with a pipe-cleaner.

  He’d had some kind of a stroke

  and his face dragged down on one side, like it had

  missed a button.

  He said, ‘Mighty hot,’ to no one in particular,

  then ducked to lip at the straw in his bottle of Star.

  Lifting his head carefully, he looked around,

  tongue flitting out like a lizard’s, tasting the new air:

  ‘Santa Ana’s coming. The fire-wind!’

  ‘Hey, fella – buy a lady a drink?’

  Walker nodded without turning.

  ‘That’s swell of you.’

  She pulled a pack of Parliaments out of her purse

  and he saw the tag-ends of dinner at her mouth, thoughts

  passing over her face

  like a drift of cloud-shadow
s over the land.

  He switched back to his empty bottles, the whiskey in his hand.

  ‘You look lonely, soldier. How about my place?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  The smell of greasy cosmetics. Refried beans.

  ‘What’s eating you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘C’mon, sweetheart, just a little fun . . .’

  ‘Take a powder, would you?’

  ‘Hey, don’t get sore. You a fruit or something?’

  She turned to the pipe-cleaner man.

  ‘Howdya like that? This fairy should be in the Waldorf

  or the Crown Jewel, not a decent place like this!’

  ‘That’ll do, sister,’ said the bartender: ‘Scram.’

  Walker got up, slapped down some change,

  bending over her

  and whispering something as he picked up his hat and left.

  Her mouth went square, and she started to howl.

  *

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched.

  The sign said:

  Palm-Reading.Chinese Medicine.Happy Massage.

  There were jars of leaves, grains, twisted roots,

  the sweet smell of almonds, sesame oil and candles.

  She wasn’t young, or pretty, but had a smile at least.

  She worked his back like a washboard, quick and hard –

  ‘You ver’ tired, da’lin’, ver’ tired,’

  releasing the braided muscles before slowing, going

  farther down. ‘Scuse me, mistah. Turn over, please.

  You want more, da’lin’?

  You like hand, or whole way?’

  *

  Letting the night loosen around him

  he wandered slow down 6th, past Cole’s,

  past the Greyhound station,

  till he reached the East Side,

  turning off down Maple, Winston, Pedro, Crocker.

  In each dark corner, the whites of their eyes;

  every hand stretched out.

  The nickels and dimes he spilled

  into their open palms

  were soundless, thin as

  water in this heat,

  evaporating

  as he walked away.

  Men sitting round bottles, shifting in their rags, eyes

  watching the lights of planes drift overhead.

  Men lined up, with their kit, sprawled out on the sidewalk

  in rows, wearing too many clothes,

  wearing all their clothes,

  trying to get some shut-eye before it all starts over.

  Trying all they could.

  No sign of Billy anywhere.

  Only a prowl car, slewed in

  to the corner of 4th and Los Angeles,

  revolving lights like some carousel, and two cops running,

  yelling, ‘Stop – police!’ at this guy

  who’s already through 3rd

  and halfway down the block to St Vibiana’s.

  He pulls up,

  steps away from the dark, spreading

  his hands: taking the shape

  of a standing star.

  He might have been shouting,

  but he was too far off to make any sense.

  Then suddenly he reaches for his top pocket

  and seems to pull out a red handkerchief,

  steps backward,

  faltering,

  then rips another one

  right out of his face.

  It was only then that Walker heard them,

  the sound of the shots.

  After that, he kept going north,

  past the beacon of hope, the flood-lit stone

  towering above,

  over all the human debris, poor as dust – all these winos, con-men,

  crooks and cops, pimps and streetwalkers –

  the raised hand of the law:

  the whited sepulcher of City Hall.

  And on to Alameda and Chinatown

  till he found the path that climbed to the Stone Quarry Hills

  up through fields and houses of the new pueblo to the high ravines,

  Chavez, Sulphur and Cemetery, Solano and Reservoir,

  to Mount Lookout in between.

  And he stood there, far over City Hall –

  over the lights of Los Angeles –

  as if the whole sky and all the stars had fallen:

  displayed, spread out below

  in a flickering maze,

  this bed of moving embers.

  *

  The ledged raven cries out, cricks open the pages of his black book, twice, and is off: already reading the sky, the land that runs under him.

  *

  Christmas and New Year had been and gone,

  and there was his friend, on San Julian, still wearing a Santa Claus hat,

  helping an old lady with her home of pallet and tarp.

  ‘Billy?’

  He looked up, ‘O . . .’ his hand to his chest, ‘. . . Can-a-da!

  With glowing hearts we see thee rise! How’s tricks?’

  ‘Time for a coffee?’

  ‘Sure . . . Just let me get Velma fixed up here.’

  Velma gave a little wave, then stood smiling,

  in her suit of flies,

  holding tight to her pocketbook,

  both hands rashed with raised red dots,

  the nails cracked white and open.

  ‘See, it’s all about functionality now,

  which is speed, efficiency and profit.

  They call it a clean sweep

  to eradicate crime – which means blacks – to fumigate

  and disinfect the city against disease

  – which means the black and the poor –

  to demolish slums and blighted areas – which means

  the homes and communities of the black and poor and old.’

  Billy took another mouthful of coffee, looked up at Walker:

  ‘They call this progress, when it’s really only greed.’

  A cop car careened past, siren going.

  ‘At least in the war there was some common purpose –

  in the same boat, all in it together, y’know?

  Now here we are, in our own country,

  scrambling over each other, just

  trying to stay afloat.’

  He scrutinized the table for a while,

  started picking at the label of a ketchup bottle.

  ‘You got a girl – here, I mean? Young guy like you . . .

  You’ve been away a long time, it’s only natural, y’know?’

  He went back to working on the label.

  ‘I know what the war does to men, but you can’t let it win.

  You can’t let it kill all the good things inside you.

  After all these years. It’s over now. It’s really over.’

  He tipped his hat back and looked out the window:

  ‘Nearly morning. Gotta get some sleep.’

  *

  Her body clambered mine, climbed me like a flame; Christ, I loved her: all through the night, helping her over the edge: Oh God, she’s calling, I’m going over, I’m going over now, and I’m falling falling falling

  *

  He woke to the cats coming home, and there was a pinkness

  in the dawn light he recognized, a cleanness in the air.

  He parted the blind, and there was snow on Angels Flight,

  and when he got out in it, snow

  from Bunker Hill all through downtown. Los Angeles was white,

  white as City Hall.

  And he felt it again, that
heat inside him: the road.

  Burning like a coal seam underground.

  *

  When I went to war, they gave me a travel Bible with a zip, with my name inscribed on the flyleaf: from his loving Father and Mother.

  Like deer, you’ll never see me, I thought to myself: just a glimpse, perhaps, on the way to being gone.

  February, 49

  *

  Saturday night bled into morning and he walked west,

  and he’d keep walking till he reached the sea.

  Staying clear of the freeway, 10th became Olympic Boulevard

  and in a couple of hours he could make out, up on the right,

  what he knew was Mount Lee,

  and the big, beat-up, white sign

  hanging in the darkness:

  what lights that were left on it, flashing up in segments –

  OLLY WOOD LAND

  – then all together as OLLYWOODLAND.

  He was passed by an A-frame on wheels, heading west

  towed by a truck.

  The smell of orange blossom on a Sunday morning

  in the dead streets of Los Angeles –

  the Spanish-style courtyard apartment complexes,

  Mediterranean villas with arrow-loops, Mexican ranch houses

  with minarets, Swiss chalets with fire-pits and pools,

  Medieval-style, Prairie-style, Beaux-Arts-style –

  stretching in its long straight lines down to the gray Pacific Ocean.

  Beyond Hollywood and Beverly Hills

  they’re still building: identical new bungalows, thin

  as stage-sets or show homes,

  landscaped in spilt paint, spreading west.

  Wet streets: red splashes of light, then green –

  and then green all the way to the sea.

  *

  The green lights through the dawn, guiding our way through the mines, across the Channel to France. The lines of our boats, as far as you could see.

  *

  The Pacific. Light rain pitting the sand at Santa Monica

  as he kept walking, over the long empty beach, to the water’s edge,

  left his clothes in a pile

  and walked on, into the sea.

  Warmer, in February, than the Atlantic ever is. The smell of it.

  It was funny: none of his people could swim.

  He learnt in England

  those years before the landings, and loved it now.

  Rocked by the sea’s currents. The freedom.

  They’d never believe he was here,

  swimming in the ocean in winter.

  Underwater, you hear the current moving,

  redistributing the pebbles:

  the sound of fat on a hot skillet.