Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories Page 15

  She had decided not to ask about the election, but she didn’t know what to say and she felt suddenly uncomfortable in the silence.

  “How was it?”

  Roy looked up. He was lighting a cigarette. “What?”

  “Your election.”

  “Oh. I didn’t go.

  “You didn’t go!”

  “Naw.” Roy hesitated, and started to grin. “Listen, you might not believe this, but remember last night you said I was all form and no score? Well, I was thinking about it today. I never averaged over one-thirty-six in my life, so I figured why waste all that time trying to bowl if you’ll never be any good anyway.”

  Elaine’s lips parted in surprise.

  “So,” Roy went on, “I figured the hell with it. Let the other guy be president. He bowls about one-seventy and gets a big bang out of it.”

  Elaine was taken off guard. She was completely unprepared for this. “Roy,” she said hesitantly, “you’re not kidding me?”

  “Why should I kid you?”

  “It just doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I told you you might not believe me.”

  Elaine relaxed, smiling at him. She felt like going to him and putting her arms around his neck and she thought at that moment about the baby and she smiled all the more. But something else occurred to her then.

  “Roy, if you didn’t go to the meeting, where have you been?”

  Roy grinned. “I ran into this guy after work. He asked me if I was interested in playing basketball and I told him maybe, it depended. So we had a couple of beers and he told me about it. A Wednesday-night league at the Y—sounds like a pretty good deal—so I told him OK.”

  For a moment Elaine was silent. She stared at him, seeing him smiling at her. “Roy,” she said then, “with your experience they might even make you captain.”

  His face brightened. “I never thought about that.”

  “Come on,” Elaine said, half turning to the kitchen, “you can tell me about it during dinner.”

  The Only Good Syrian Foot Soldier Is a Dead One

  THAT MORNING HE WAS trampled to death during the retreat of the Syrian cavalry. Immediately after lunch he was brought down by a Roman lance and now he lay in the sun among the dead and wounded, his eyes open, his head resting on his arm, while thirty yards away the Ultra-Panavision camera moved slowly, left to right, over the scene.

  He watched the camera boom lower and the cameraman climb off to stand with the director. They lighted cigarettes and now Howard Keating, the centurion and star of Sidney Aaronson’s production of The Centurion, his helmet off, his dark hair pressed to his forehead, joined them and accepted a cigarette and light from the director. A girl in tight toreadors and sunglasses handed him a towel, which he pressed to his face and tossed back to her.

  Don’t think about us, Allen Garfield, the dead Syrian foot soldier, thought. Stand around. Smoke cigarettes. Call the script girl over with the camera log and fool around with her awhile. Now the production manager, get him over. And the casting guy. Everybody act casual. Now laugh at something dumb the director says. Now stand there and shuffle your feet and look up at the sun and step on cigarettes and have a few more laughs while we lie out here in the goddamn sun.

  Near him he heard two of the extras who had been stabbed, hacked, lanced, or shot with arrows, talking to each other in Spanish. For three hundred pesetas a day they would lie here as long as the director, the centurion, and the cameraman wanted to smoke cigarettes. For three hundred pesetas they would lie here all day in sun or rain or snow and live very well at night in Madrid. Most of the dead and wounded were Spanish; there was only a handful of English and Americans, perhaps a dozen.

  During the two and a half years Allen Garfield had been in Spain, The Centurion was the fourth Sidney Aaronson spectacular he had worked in as an extra. Without speaking a word or releasing a scream that had been recorded, he was killed on the average of twice per picture, and had acquired something of a reputation in the casting office as a good dier.

  In Lepanto, as a Moorish pirate, he had leaped to the Spanish galleon, chopped three times at the Duke of Valencia, then hesitated just long enough on the next down swing to let the Duke run him through. In The Sack of Rome, with a black ponytail pinned to his hair and a fur piece over one shoulder, he was dragging a virgin from the temple of Vestus when a javelin fixed him to the temple door. He was killed four times in The Gods Smiled, Sidney Aaronson’s four-and-a-half-hour entertainment on the futility of war. He was killed as a Persian, a Saracen, a German lance corporal, and a G.I. frozen to his machine gun on the Chosin Reservoir. While in the same picture Howard Keating, tightening his jaw muscle as a Spartan, a Crusader, a Spad fighter pilot, and a Marine Corps combat officer, was wounded twice and wondered aloud, through 2,500 years of war, if it was all worth it.

  THE GOLDEN SNAKE, TWISTED into a Syrian armband, cut into Allen Garfield’s cheek, and he raised his head a few inches from his arm, his gaze holding on the scene thirty yards beyond the dead and wounded: the camp of the director, who had put on his straw cowboy hat and was still talking to the centurion, who was now wearing sunglasses.

  The rest of the crew were small tan figures, some shirtless with handkerchiefs knotted on their heads, some standing among the cables and camera boom and lights and generator equipment, some sitting under the tarp awning and some in the shade of the truck where two legs extended from the open cab and silver square sun reflectors leaned against the paneled side.

  They don’t know what they’re doing, Allen Garfield thought. So they stand around until the director has one of his great ideas. You have to have truly great ideas to make a twelve-million-dollar motion picture look like a high school pageant.

  Once, during the filming of The Gods Smiled, Allen Garfield was standing near the director. They were between takes of the Crusades sequence. At this time he had still believed the director, Ray Heidke, to be a savvy, sensitive, dedicated craftsman; somewhat colorful, a bit eccentric perhaps; but basically one of the good guys.

  It was mid July, ninety-five degrees in the sun and they were on the Mohammedan village set. The director wore shorts, sandals, no shirt, and his trademark, the willowroot straw cowboy hat, the crown funneled down over his eyes like a beak.

  “Billy,” the director said to the cameraman. “First you get your establishing shot of the square. Then I want you to truck in. You’re the eyes. You’re what the Crusaders see as they enter the town. Nothing’s happened, right? The place’s deserted. We get the reverses later, the Crusaders looking up, their reaction, their feeling goosey about the whole thing. I just want you to see this. So you come to the end of your truck. Fifteen feet from that doorway in the wall. You’re aimed at eye level. We cut from a reverse to you. Bang, the doors bust open and these mothers come screaming out. I mean they come with those curved swords like nothing can stop them. You see it?”

  The cameraman nodded thoughtfully and the director turned to Allen Garfield and the group of Saracens, almost all of whom were Spanish.

  “Ramon,” the director said to his production manager. “Tell them to come out yelling like Franco just outlawed poon.”

  Allen Garfield, leaning on his spear, grinned. “You mean you want us to look sore.”

  “Hey, we’ve got an American Mohammedan,” the director said. “Where are you from, son?”

  “Royal Oak, Michigan.”

  “You worked for me before?”

  “In Sack. I was a barbarian, Mr. Heidke.”

  “Well, you’re coming up, aren’t you?”

  Allen Garfield grinned. He felt good. “Sir, I was wondering . . . you’re shooting everything down in the street . . . what if you went up high for some down shots of the Crusaders? You know, as they’d appear to the Mohammedans waiting to ambush? You don’t see the Mohammedans, but you see what they see, you know, and you build suspense.”

  The director’s gaze stared calmly from the shadow of his hat brim holding on Allen Garf
ield. “You build suspense, uh?”

  “Like in Gunga Din. Remember when they came into that village?”

  “No,” the director said, “I don’t believe I remember that. Did you see this Gunga Din in Royal Oak, Michigan?”

  Oh, God, Allen Garfield thought and said, “It’s just a suggestion. I don’t mean a suggestion really. I just mean the scenes are like, similar.”

  The director nodded. “Like similar. You know, I’d like to see this Gunga Din.” He said then, “Do you think if I went to Royal Oak, Michigan, they’d show it to me?”

  Throughout the rest of the day, the rest of the week, and almost whenever he saw or thought of the director after that, Allen Garfield pictured himself standing in the Saracen costume holding the spear and imagined the replies he could have made.

  Very calmly, looking right at him, “I think if you ever went to Royal Oak, Michigan, they’d . . .” Then something right between the eyes.

  “They’d string you up in front of the theater.”

  “They’d tie you to a front-row seat out of revenge and make you watch all your pictures.”

  Or, how about, you just stare at him very calmly and say, “That remark is about as intelligent as the pictures you make.” Or . . .

  “Gee, Mr. Heidke, how does it feel to know everything?” Very humbly.

  “How does it feel to be as smart as you are?”

  “How does it feel to be a smart-ass?”

  No, the best thing would be to shake your head like, This is too much. Hand him the goddamn spear and walk off. Walk off right in front of the whole cast and crew, because you don’t have to take that jazz from anybody. Not anybody.

  But Allen Garfield had grinned. He had stood before the director in his Saracen robes holding his Saracen spear and had grinned.

  WHAT IS IT? SOMETHING the better part of valor? Live to fight another day. The trouble was you couldn’t fight them. You smile and act nice or you don’t work. Or, the dead Syrian foot soldier thought then, you turn the camera around. You shoot them and show what fantastic jerks they are. Exposeville. Only with taste.

  Shoot that, Allen Garfield thought. Write a script about all the waiting and standing around smoking cigarettes and the absolute disregard for anybody else. Write about the director who doesn’t know what to do next and covers up practicing his golf swing with a sword.

  Write about the star leaving the cigarette in his mouth while the makeup girl tries to powder his face and he runs his hand up her side and can’t believe it when she clamps her arm down. The next day there’s a new makeup girl to powder the small muscle that moves in the jaw of the star who receives 1,500 letters a week, on the average, but who has his secretary read him “only the dirty ones.”

  And how he drinks German beer, only German beer in Spain, out of a Roman goblet, all day yelling for his goblet between takes and sometimes stopping in the middle of a take to go off to the bathroom while dead Syrians lie waiting in the sun.

  Let’s get some contrast in it, Allen Garfield thought.

  Like standing in the rain in the commissary line for forty-five minutes listening to everybody talking Spanish and seeing the station wagon go by with the half dozen or so catered lunches from the Hilton.

  Another line late in the afternoon, two thousand extras queued up for the bus ride back to Madrid and the Rolls going by with Keating and the girl in tight pants, just the two of them in the backseat with a thermos of martinis.

  Later, Keating and the girl will be in the group at Aaronson’s villa. They would watch a newly released film on the wide screen that came down out of the ceiling, no one even whispering during the film because Mr. Aaronson demanded absolute attention. After, they would speculate on whether or not the film would make money. And after that the Rolls would return Keating and his protégée to the Castellana Hilton, passing the bar on the Avenida de José Antonio where Allen Garfield sat with the two English actors, also Syrian foot soldiers, drinking Scotch that had been distilled in North Africa.

  That would be a good contrast: the in group talking about box office and residuals and Aston Martins and Marbella; while he and his friends talked about films: tore them open, probed their content, and quoted inane anachronistic lines (MARCELLUS haughtily ignoring his chains: “That will be the day, when a Roman bows before a Syrian dog”), shaking their heads at the Roman westerns Mr. Sidney Aaronson passed off as motion pictures.

  Another one. Keating stopping at the desk to see if there was a letter or call from his wife; the girl waiting by the elevator; Allen Garfield crossing the Plaza Major toward his pension, the street dark, wet, cafés closed, chairs and sidewalk tables stacked, a cab going by with dim yellow lights. Mood stuff.

  Now he rested his head on his forearm, closing his eyes and feeling the sun on his face. Go to sleep. Let them screw around all they want. Take the rotten three hundred pesetas a day, the rotten five whole bucks a day, and be happy. No worries, no problems. Think of all the jerks would trade places with you.

  Be a good boy and go to sleep.

  Or get up and walk off.

  He opened his eyes.

  Get up. Walk off right in front of them and don’t say a goddamn word or look at anybody and if you have to walk all the way to Madrid then walk all the way to Madrid.

  And if you could walk on water, he thought then, closing his eyes again, you could walk all the way home.

  In a scrapbook under the coffee table in his parents’ home was a photographic history of Allen Garfield.

  Allen Garfield, five, posing with one hand inside his coat front. Allen Garfield in striped blazer and straw hat for his appearance on Stars of Tomorrow. Allen Garfield, fourth from left, Royal Oak High School Players. Allen Garfield in a scene from The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Allen Garfield’s graduation picture; long hair, horn-rimmed glasses, spread collar, Windsor knot. Allen Garfield in a dozen or more Kwick-Pix dime-store photographs with trench coat collar up, with and without pipe. Allen Garfield in MG with girl in front of Wayne State University. Allen Garfield with cigarette in mouth, tie pulled down, holding script. Allen Garfield in model-agency photograph, his hair combed to the side now so that it curved down over his high forehead, with the caption: Fashion Model . . . Narrator . . . Actor. Born, 1930. Eyes, Brown. Hair, Dark Brown. 5’8-3/4”, 161 lbs. 39 Regular.

  The model agency photograph, reduced to a two-column newspaper width, was also in a clipping from the weekly South Oakland Press headed “This ’n’ That” with the byline Helen Howard. The column read:

  Watch for a favorite son to become a celebrity. A ’48 R.O. High grad remembered as the class wit. Actor and model before going with JBK as a Disc Jockey. Of course, Allen Garfield!

  Only it’s Gare Garfield now and he’s a MOVIE STAR!

  Gare will appear on The Outriders Wednesday night, Channel 7. He’s one of the bad guys in this one and admits—according to his mother, Mrs. Allen J. Garfield, Sr., of 483 Emily Court—to having only a few lines. But what a start!

  Gare was invited to Hollywood three years ago with a whole slew of D.J.s for a motion-picture premiere. Me thinks stars got in Gare’s eyes, for he stayed!

  Breaking into pictures hasn’t been easy. Between calls from the casting office Gare has kept busy as a lifeguard, dance instructor, and director of a Little Theater group. But from here on it looks like an open field to stardom for Gare Garfield, one of the nicest people we know.

  In Hollywood he had changed his name from Allen to Gare and thought of himself as lean, silent, sensitive, and intelligent. His break would come. He would get a small part with good lines and he would make it look easy. A little methody, but not too much. From then on the roles would be better. He would be sought after as a seasoned feature player; a pro who, if he felt like it, could upstage the socks off the star just by scratching himself.

  There would be picture spreads in movie magazines and Sunday supplements. But he would insist, no phony stuff. No three hundred sweaters and all that crap. If they wanted
shots the shots would have to be real: Gare Garfield wearing glasses, reading. Gare Garfield in coveralls working on his Mercedes. Gare Garfield in New York going into P. J. Clarke’s, suit coat open, thin tie, nice thin build. He would be with a fairly well-known fashion model and there would be stories that they lived together when he was in New York.

  That, he decided, was the image he wanted; and so there would be no hint of phoniness, he changed his name back to Allen.

  He was in another episode of The Outriders; appeared several times in Bourbon Street Beat and Surfside 6. Once, in a feature film he was the man coming out of the revolving door as Doris Day hurried in. Nine times, in street scenes, he walked in front of, behind, or stood in the immediate vicinity of the star of the picture. But in six years, on and off, as a professional actor in Hollywood, he spoke only one line: “Let me stomp him, Frank.” A line eventually cut when the scene was shortened to allow for commercial time.

  All right, he had told himself. That’s the way it is. They don’t want talent. They line up these vacant-faced, stoop-shouldered clowns and say you, you, and you, give them Flash Gordon names, put them in tight pants, show them how to twitch their jaw muscles and throw them into scenes with perky little fanny swingers who have been taught to stick out their chest, cock their head, and act surprised.

  All right, if that’s all Hollywood was, if all they wanted was the same old ap-cray, he’d go somewhere else.

  A friend in properties at Fox told him about the big one Zanuck was planning in France. Allen Garfield had roughly one hundred and fifty dollars. It would take about four-fifty to get to Paris. So he wrote to his mother asking her if she would bet six hundred dollars on the greatest opportunity of his career. His mother spoke to his father, who was used-car sales manager at Woodward Chevrolet; they withdrew a third of their savings and sent it to their son.

  Allen Garfield reached France in time for the filming of The Longest Day. As a German artilleryman defending Utah Beach he was killed coming out of a bunker by Paul Anka.