Charlie Martz and Other Stories (11 page)

“Life,” the priest said, “has its anxious moments, eh?”

“Get the horses,” Calder said.

“Get the horses,” the priest repeated. “That's an order, boy. It's also a sign your friend's had enough. Standing there not knowing who might come out next. A roomful of people behind him.” Father Schwinn paused, his gaze shifting to Frank Calder and holding there. “He has to do something, eh? But what?”

“I told you once,” Calder said, “to drop the bags.”

“Now you've told me twice.”

Calder's head jerked to the side. “I SAID GET THE HORSES!”

Father Schwinn's smile was in his beard and he let his gaze linger on Calder as he said, “He told you that time. But,” he said carefully, “if you leave now you might miss the main lesson.” He saw the boy staring at him; confused or uncertain or afraid. Or fascinated?
Don't flatter yourself,
the priest thought; but he felt the boy closer to him now, not out somewhere in the middle, and he said, “Your friend has to do something sooner or later. But what? Shoot me? Threaten me again. Or”—the priest shrugged—“what, just take the money? We go through the same things, over and over, until—”

“Until,” Calder said tonelessly, “I get sick to my stomach hearing
you talk.” He came down the steps carefully, his hands sliding away from his gun belt, his eyes not leaving the priest as he walked directly up to him.

“All that talk for nothing,” Calder said. He seemed calm again, sure of himself. “You didn't truly expect I'd back down, did you?”

“My friend,” Father Schwinn said, just as carefully, “you don't have it yet.”

Frank Calder hesitated. In that moment, standing close to the black cassock, close to the distracting movement of the priest's right hand going to the strap of the saddlebags, sensing that he should do something—yell or draw or push or fall back—it was too late. Father Schwinn's left hand hooked into Calder's face. The saddlebags were off the priest's shoulder and his right fist followed through, taking Calder in the stomach, doubling him as he fell back. Instinctively Calder's hand was on his revolver and it was free of the holster, barely free of it, as Father Schwinn's left fist slammed into him again. He went down, still holding the Colt, and the priest's boot came down on Calder's wrist, pinning it to the ground.

“The lesson,” Father Schwinn said, looking up at the boy, who was staring at him and hadn't moved. “If you can't convert them, confuse them. Now get out of here.” He heard steps on the wood floor inside and saw shapes at the screen door, pushing it open. “But we'll talk some other time, uh?”

T
HEY WERE IN RINDO'S
office with the door closed, Rindo standing, facing the priest who sat holding a brandy and a fresh cigar.

“I was curious,” Rindo said guardedly, “if you thought your prayer had anything to do with it.” He saw Father Schwinn frown. “You said something about, I think, St. Anthony?”

“Oh—” Father Schwinn nodded, remembering. “To tell you the truth I forgot to say it.” He took a sip of the brandy. “You don't
want to call on him too often. Only when the situation seems impossible—eh?”

“Uh-huh.” Rindo watched him suspiciously. “There are still a few things I haven't got clear in my mind.”

“Like how much reward to give me?”

“Well, you're not too proud to admit what you want.”

“Mr. Rindo, if I refuse your offer it would be a gentlemanly gesture. It would have nothing to do with my pride.”

Rindo watched him closely. “The more I see of you the more I believe you're even more of a realist than I am.”

Father Schwinn blew a thin, slow stream of smoke toward the ceiling. He watched it thoughtfully. “Yes, a church shaped like a cross is real. Even made out of adobe. And vestments are real.” He looked at Rindo again, holding him with his gaze. “Mr. Rindo, let me tell you about a few real things, eh? Like these Aravaipa people up near Galiuro . . .”

L
EAVING A DISMAL MARCH
afternoon in Detroit and landing that evening among Arizona palm trees and illuminated swimming pools will tend to mellow anyone's outlook. The fact that it's a business trip makes little difference. The fact that you've brought along a miserable sinus-aching Detroit-type cold is an impediment only so long.

I'm not saying this to excuse what happened. A guy with a wife and three children is obliged to keep his moral fiber in one piece even when he's two thousand miles away from home and even when a girl like Terry McLean is involved.

But I am saying that moral fiber tends to lose some of its stuff by the time you've checked into the Desert Sands, noticed the candle-lit dining room serving midnight supper, heard the cool combo music coming from the cocktail lounge, and walked out past the swimming pool set among palms and flowering shrubs to C-unit and up to room 36 on the balcony level—getting a picture window view of the
whole scene before taking nose drops, aspirin, and going to bed. Boy.

Then (I'm not finished) learning the next morning that along with its atmosphere the Desert Sands was also resting and suntanning headquarters for all the Westway Airlines stewardesses who didn't have homes of their own. What a coincidence, uh? No, I didn't plan it that way. Don Franklyn did.

Don Franklyn, Los Angeles freelance sometime fashion photographer: like two girls out in the middle of a wheat field modeling strapless formals; or up in an apple tree with polka-dot flannel nightgowns on. Next time in
Life
maybe with a picture story of Sebring or some European Grand Prix, catching the color of all the people and the cars, especially the girls in slacks and sunglasses around the red Ferraris.

The ad agency I worked for had used Franklyn before. But I was fairly new then on the Sirocco account and this was the first time he and I did anything together. It may seem strange that a thousand-a-day photographer would be taking cues from a thousand-a-month art director (me), but that's the way it is. The art director designs the ads, in this case a magazine campaign to sell $6,000 Sirocco sports cars, and if picture-taking is involved he's responsible for that too. In case anyone is wondering why I was there in the first place.

Franklyn arrived the same evening I did. But evidently while I was taking nose drops he was listening to the cool combo and downing stingers.

I might as well tell you now, Don Franklyn liked to play any time before or after work, and when Franklyn played he put all of his heart, soul, and credit cards into it. I guess you would classify him as a free thinker; he said and did just about whatever he wanted. Still, he was nice about it.

That first morning in the Desert Sands coffee shop, for example, we had just met and were talking over the job and what we expected to get, Franklyn fortifying himself with a large tomato juice and
black coffee while I tried not to blow my nose. He nodded to a table where four girls were sitting, brown and poised and very Westway Airlines-looking, and said, “What do you think of that one?”

He didn't say which one; you just knew he meant the dark-haired girl in the white jersey turtleneck who was facing our way.

“How would you like her?” Franklyn said.

“Man.”

Franklyn went over to their table. He stood talking to the dark-haired girl and to her only, one hand on the table, the other on the back of her chair, the girl staring up at him, nodding carefully, studying and judging this big, calm, confident guy with the gray crew cut.

An hour and a half later Terry McLean was out on location with us. Franklyn had rented a station wagon for his equipment. I drove the white top-down Sirocco we borrowed from the local dealer. Terry McLean took one look at it and rode with me.

Nothing happened on the way out; I would just like everyone to realize that driving ten miles out into the desert with a girl like Terry McLean—now in a straw sailor, tan-and-blue-striped Italian sweater and white shorts—a guy is not likely to be thinking about home fires or car payments or even the mortgage. All that is off somewhere beyond a distant shore. The here and now is an ultraresponsive motorcar doing seventy through high-desert country and an extremely handsome dark-haired girl in the next bucket seat, no more than the width of a gearbox away.

For ten minutes the guy can be an international something or other streaking across southern Spain with the “papers” and the girl. That is, if the guy doesn't have a runny nose. I'll tell you it is very hard to play Cary Grant when you're blowing your nose.

Our location was an empty one-street movie set that was used by a number of television westerns. There we shot Terry McLean in, on, and around the white Sirocco against a backdrop of crumbling adobe.

We had all day to get what we wanted. Franklyn wandered around
setting up likely shots, asking me what I thought, and eventually getting around to taking pictures. He photographed Terry sitting cross-legged on the car's rear deck, her head lowered, but her eyes looking right at you over the top of her sunglasses, the straw sailor straight on her head.

He took pictures of Terry taking pictures, Terry standing in the Sirocco and aiming at the saloon and sheriff's office, Franklyn shooting the car from all angles, but almost always getting an interesting profile of Terry McLean's white shorts.

He would shoot with his eight-by-ten view camera on a tripod and then click some with the 35 mm that hung from his neck, getting black and white as well as color, then ambling over to the station wagon and taking his time to load the cameras again.

I felt obliged to keep Miss McLean company when Franklyn wasn't shooting. Really—I mean it about feeling obliged. We'd walk over to the ramada shade and stand in front of one of the stores while I—the great conversationalist—blew my nose and tried to keep things humming with questions like Where are you from? How long have you been with Westway? And how do you like it?

Dallas. Two years. And just fine. While she watched Franklyn across the street at the station wagon.

“Maybe you should be a model,” I said, which sounded at the time like “How would you like to be in the movies?”

She looked at me, taking off her sunglasses. “Do you think I'm all right?”

“Like a pro.”

“There's not much to it, is there?”

“Not when you have what's needed to start with.”

“Thank you.” She put her sunglasses back on. “You should do something for that cold.”

“I'm taking nose drops.”

She was watching Franklyn again. “Is he satisfied? I told him I'd never modeled before or anything.”

“I think he'd tell you if he wasn't.”

“I've been trying to decide if he's married, but I can't tell.” Terry McLean had a way of changing conversation courses abruptly.

“Can you ordinarily tell?” I asked.

“Most of the time.”

“Am I?”

“Definitely. With kiddies.”

“Oh . . .”

“You don't have to wear a ring,” Terry McLean said. “It's just a look.”

“Good or bad?”

She shrugged. “Not bad . . . just a look.”

“Definitely for me,” I said, “but you don't know about him.”

“He may have been married once,” she said, watching Franklyn. “But that doesn't mean still.”

“I think he is.” I said it and I was glad.

That brought her around again. “You
think
he is.”

“I'm pretty sure then.”

It was her turn to say, “Oh . . .”

We had lunch on the board sidewalk at the edge of the shade. Franklyn, the arranger, had brought Desert Sands field rations: chicken sandwiches, celery, olives and stuff, apples, cheese, and a bottle of Johannesburger Riesling in a scotch cooler. He did forget wineglasses, but it didn't bother anyone but me. Because of my cold I felt obliged to use a thermos cup, while Franklyn and Terry McLean passed the bottle back and forth taking swigs.

She loved it. “Who'd ever have thought,” she said, “that I would someday be a girl model seen in millions of magazines.”

“If the client buys the ad,” I said.

She ignored this. “Suddenly the most sought-after girl-model in New York.”

“Rocketed to fame,” Franklyn said, “in a three-liter flat-six Sirocco. Why not?”

She looked at him. “This is kind of fun, isn't it?”

Franklyn took the wine bottle from her. “We call it our champagne flight.”

“Westway doesn't have one,” Terry McLean murmured. “We serve coffee to Salt Lake City. Coffee and sandwiches to Seattle.”

“A job can be its own reward,” Franklyn said. “If you remember to bring the booze.”

By that time I think she was more than ready to chuck her two years with Westway and go full-time into modeling. She asked Franklyn a lot of leading questions about the business, getting around to the kind of jobs he did and the places they took him.

Franklyn never once really encouraged her; he let Terry draw her own pictures and conclusions, carefully playing out line, and never giving a hint about his marital status.

We worked some more that afternoon, getting the gimmicky along with the straight, and finally knocked off about five.

Back at the Desert Sands, Franklyn and I had a couple of bourbons together in his room with our shoes off and I learned a little more about him. He lived in Pallas Verdes with a view of Catalina on a clear day, bought a new station wagon every year, owned a forty-two-foot cruiser, was married to a girl who had once been a movie extra, the father of a seven-year-old daughter called Pammy and was not forty-five as I had suspected. Don Franklyn was thirty-four. Three years older than I was.

He liked his work. He liked staying at the Desert Sands (this was his fourth time). He liked working for my agency because their art directors knew what they were doing. He liked bourbon before a shower. He liked four-to-one martinis and stingers and some classical music, two or three of the TV westerns, San Francisco, Cal Tjader, Julie Harris,
Shane,
Key Clubs, credit cards, and evenings away from home after a full day of shooting.

By then it was about that time. We got cleaned up and met Terry McLean, in a yellow sunback and earrings and pumps and looking
even better than she did in the sweater and shorts, for dinner. Candlelight, martinis, turtle soup, rare filets, a very good salad and Stingers after.

And through all the courses and all the bright conversation, I kept hoping I wouldn't have to blow my nose, tried to sniffle without anyone hearing, but blew regularly, resignedly, as gentlemanly as I could about every five minutes. Which even done softly is not sweet music at the table.

As we were getting ready to leave, Franklyn said, “You ought to do something for that cold.”

“I'm taking nose drops,” I said.

“Rest is the best thing. Remember you're flying home.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

He looked at Terry. “I've heard flying can do something to a cold. Produce complications.”

She nodded doubtfully, then seemed to catch on and said, “It's the altitude.”

“Not the coffee and sandwiches, uh?”

She kept her expression neutral. “I think the pressure and all.”

“So,” I said to Franklyn, “you think I should go to bed.”

“Buddy—” Like I'd wounded him. “You're coming with us. I in
sist
.”

He insisted for all of fifteen seconds. I told him I was going to bed anyway—bought a paperback, went up to C-36 overlooking the lit-up pool and the palms and layin bed wide awake for the next three hours wondering all the things you wonder in a situation like that.

Can a guy with a wife and three children back home be jealous of another guy who runs off in a $6,000 sports car with a slick babe and unlimited credit?

Yes.

Yes. Whether it makes sense or he has a right to or what. Yes.

Especially with Don Franklyn doing the running off. He made
it look so effortless, and at the same time made you feel so square.

I remember wondering how I would feel being with the two of them again the next day. Would they have private jokes? Words with secret meanings?

That turned out to be a waste of anguish. Don Franklyn appeared the next morning in the coffee shop with a ponytailed ash blonde by the name of Nancy Hayes. Also a Westway girl. Also a dish. Also everything you would expect Franklyn to pick. She was to be our model.

But what about Terry? I asked him that the first chance I had.

“Terry McLean?” Franklyn said, as if he and I knew all kinds of Terrys. “Oh, she had a hop to Salt Lake City today. Didn't I tell you?” Like who needs her?

Well, out we went into the desert again, this time with Nancy Hayes in pale blue Capri pants and a black sweater, eager to please and with a special smile that said she too, already, would rather be a girl-model than anything else in the world.