The Brave (23 page)

It was as if they heard him thinking, for, on cue, they started to smirk at him. They were directly in front of him and blocking the sidewalk and showed no intention of making space for him to pass. One of them muttered something and the others laughed and Ray knew he was the object of some snide joke. But he wasn't going to rise to the bait. He nodded at them and stepped aside and three of them pushed past him. The fourth, however, stood his ground.

"Hey, Red," he said sarcastically.

The others had stopped and turned to watch. One of them sniggered. Ray looked steadily at the one who'd spoken to him and nodded.

"Evening," he said.

The kid took a last puff of his cigarette and flicked it away into the street. Looking Ray directly in the eye, he slowly lifted his hand and made the Red McGraw gun except that the barrel consisted of only one finger—the middle one. He blew a lungful of smoke at it and grinned. And Ray felled him with a straight left to the chin.

Then it was mayhem, the other three were on him and one of them had a bottle and would have cracked it over Ray's head if he hadn't seen it coming and gotten in first with a good kick in the balls. The kid groaned and doubled up but the other two kept at him and one of them had some muscle and got him in a kind of bear hug from behind while his shitty little Injun friend got a couple of good punches in. Then Chico and Denny and some of the other construction guys came bursting through the swing doors of the double H and set about the little fucks and gave them a damn good hiding, maybe a little too good because when the dust settled one of them was out cold and the other had a broken jaw.

A police car came and hauled off the two still standing and an ambulance took the other two. They wanted to take Ray as well but he told them he was okay. He looked worse than he was. His new white shirt was covered in blood but his nose had stopped bleeding and didn't seem to be broken, just a little tender. The guys took him inside and Chico gave him a bottle of Jim Beam and a Hungry Horse T-shirt to wear and everybody gathered around to hear what had happened. Leanne, the little honey, fetched a bowl of warm water and a towel and cleaned him up.

Someone must have called Herb Kanter because soon he was there too, clucking around like an old mother hen and asking questions everyone already knew the answer to. Ray made him sit down and have a drink and in no time at all everything was fine and calm and cool again. When Herb had gone, Denny and Ray slipped out the back and smoked a joint and by the time they came back inside Leanne had disappeared but so had Ray's inclination and his nose had begun to throb, so he said goodnight and walked unsteadily to his car and drove home.

He was woken earlier than he would have chosen by Diane screaming like a banshee. He'd bled again in the night all over his pillow and she was standing there with Tommy gawping down at him.

"What on earth happened?"

He made light of it and tried to do so again when the young deputy arrived from the county sheriff's office to interview him, accompanied by Herb Kanter. The deputy was young and earnest and very nervous. He claimed to have evidence that Ray had struck the first blow, which Ray naturally denied. Eventually the poor kid seemed to run out of steam and just sat there looking a little sorry for himself. As he walked him out to his truck, Herb put an arm around the boy's shoulders and said something that seemed to cheer him up. He drove away with a smile and a wave. When Herb came back into the house, Ray asked him what he'd said.

"Just promised him a pair of tickets to the premiere."

Maybe there was something to be said for producers after all.

Cal arrived just twenty minutes before Frank Dawson was due to pick them up and drive them out to the airstrip. Their bags stood ready in the hallway. While she was packing the last few things and tidying the house, Diane had kept looking out the window and wondering whether Cal had forgotten his promise to come say goodbye. Then she saw his truck approaching along the dirt road, a cloud of red dust drifting away behind it.

"Tommy! Cal's here."

They'd said most of their goodbyes last night at the wrap party. It had been a lot of fun. Even Ray had seemed to enjoy it. He'd danced with her and been kind to her, much more like his old self, though what had gone wrong between him and Tommy she still couldn't fathom. Tommy never spoke to him anymore unless he absolutely had to. Ray was as mystified as she was. But every time she asked Tommy what the matter was he just got moody or cross and said it was nothing, everything was fine.

At the party Diane had handed out the gifts she'd bought for the crew and the other members of the cast and she was touched by how many she received in return. They all said how much they'd enjoyed working with her and how they would miss Tommy. He'd become a sort of mascot for the production. Herb Kanter presented him with a clapper board with T. Bedford, Wrangler written on it.

Tommy had stayed up until after midnight with all the women on the movie vying with one another to dance with him. Where the boy had learned to do the twist like that Diane had no idea. It was a revelation. She'd never seen him so uninhibited. The downside was how hard it had been to get him out of bed this morning. Every time she went up to wake him he just groaned and rolled over. Now at last he was up and (she hoped) getting dressed. Ray had just gone into town saying he had to get some cigarettes. There was a full pack on the sideboard where he always kept them. Somehow he must have missed it.

"Tommy! Did you hear me?"

"Coming."

Diane opened the front door and the two of them stood shielding their eyes from the glaring sun and watched Cal pull up and get out of the truck. He waved and started walking up the steep path toward the house. He'd been there at the party, of course, along with everybody else. Diane had kept hoping he might ask her to dance but he hadn't. She was going to ask him but the chance never arose. Tommy was going to miss him badly. And so was she.

"Hi. I'm sorry I'm late."

"We'd almost given up on you."

He was standing in front of them now. He had a brown paper grocery sack under one arm. He took off his hat and smiled and Diane asked him if he'd like a cup of coffee and he followed them into the house, through the hallway and into the kitchen. He put his hat and the package on the table and sat down while Diane made some fresh coffee.

"Well, Tom, did you enjoy the party? Sure looked that way."

"It was okay."

"Okay for you maybe. You were the only guy the gals wanted to dance with."

"Oh, you didn't seem to be doing so badly yourself," Diane said. "Some of us couldn't get a look in."

"Wranglers don't get to dance with the belle of the ball."

"Seemed more like the other way around."

He looked at her and smiled. And for a moment there was a connection between them. In his eyes, a kind of tender sadness that she hadn't before seen. She turned away and busied herself with the coffee.

"So, where's Ray?"

"Gone to get some cigarettes. He'll be back in a minute."

Tommy asked how long it would take to trailer all the horses back to LA and Cal said they were going to take it easy, over a few days, because of the heat.

"How soon can we start riding up at your place again?"

Cal didn't answer right away and when Diane looked at him she could see something was wrong.

"Cal? What is it?"

"I was going to tell you before. But a couple of days ago I had a phone call from Don Maxwell. He's selling up. He had three people bidding for the land and the price went so high he said only a fool would turn it down. So... that's the end of the ranch."

"He can't do that!" Tommy said.

"Unfortunately he can, Tom. He owns the whole thing. It was going to happen sometime, we always knew."

"What will you do?" Diane said. "Can you find some other place? There are other ranches where they shoot movies, aren't there?"

"Oh, sure. Iverson's, Disney. Thing is, Diane, I'm not sure I want to do this kind of work anymore."

"What will you do instead?"

"Go back up to Montana. Give my daddy a hand. He and my mom are getting on a little. They could do with the help. And there's a place for me there and plenty of space for the horses."

Tommy just sat there staring at him. He looked stunned.

"When?"

"When what, son?"

"When will you go away?"

"Oh, I don't know. It'll take a month or so to sort things out. The bulldozers'll be moving in come early fall. I want to be out by then. Not too keen on seeing that happen."

He smiled at Diane.

"Any danger of that coffee?"

As she poured it they heard Ray's car arrive and a few moments later in he came, all bright and loud and chirpy, slapping Cal on the back and ruffling Tommy's hair. Tommy didn't even acknowledge him.

"Hey, what's up?" Ray said, looking at them all. "Somebody die?"

"Did you know about Cal's ranch being sold?" Diane said.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. Terrible, ain't it? Still, there's other places—"

"He's going back to Montana."

Ray looked at Cal.

"Really? You didn't tell me that. You mean you're giving up the stunt work and all?"

Cal nodded.

"Who the hell's going to be my stunt double?"

Before he left, Cal gave them what was in the grocery bag. There was a gift for each of them, wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with red string. Tommy asked if he could open his right there and then and Diane said of course. For Ray he'd bought a belt buckle with Medicine Springs on it and for Tommy a Navajo pipe carved from an antler and decorated with fur and feathers and turquoise beads. They both thanked him. Cal said the pipe had been carved by the old man who'd told him how to find the rock paintings.

"Don't you go smoking it, mind, until your mom says you can."

Diane's gift was a polished red rock with two silhouettes painted on it in a deeper red, exactly like those they had seen on the mountain.

"It's beautiful," she said simply, turning it in her hands.

She felt foolish tears welling so she put it down on the table and swiftly left the room, calling over her shoulder that they had something for him too. She'd left it with the bags in the hallway and she stood there a moment, rubbing her eyes and telling herself sternly to get a grip.

Diane had taken the photograph herself on one of their late-afternoon rides then had it printed in town and found a frame of gnarled pinon that fit perfectly. The picture showed Tommy and Cal sitting side by side on their horses with the mountains behind them and their faces aglow with the evening sun. They were smiling at the camera and Cal had his hand on Tommy's shoulder.

"It's from us all," Ray said.

It wasn't true but Diane didn't bother to say so. Cal knew. He stared at it for a long moment then nodded and looked only at her.

"Thank you."

"No, Cal," she said quietly. "Thank you."

Frank Dawson arrived and they loaded the bags and drove to the airstrip, Cal following in his truck with Tommy. Herb was waiting, the Lodestar all ready to go. Cal helped them with the bags and everybody stood by the plane's steps and said goodbye. Cal shook hands with Ray and Tommy who seemed to have lost his voice.

"See you when we get back," Cal said.

Tommy nodded and stared at the ground. Diane kissed Cal on the cheek. She wished she could store the touch and smell of his skin.

The plane took off to the east and as it banked and circled back toward the west they could see Cal below them walking to his truck. He looked up and stopped and stood there, waving his hat as they flew over. And Tommy at the window gazed down, silent and bereft.

IT WAS the third week in August and hot and not a whisper of wind to stir the tall eucalyptus trees that grew below the terrace. Between them you could see downtown LA sweltering below a blanket of yellow brown haze. It had been like this ever since they came back from Arizona and even though the air up here in the hills was clearer, Tommy sometimes felt he was going to suffocate.

In the evening the clouds would close in until you could count the seconds before the air exploded. The storms were fast and ferocious and Tommy would get out of bed and stand at the open doors looking out over the balcony and watch the lightning silhouette the trees and listen to the thunder rumbling and rolling down the canyons. The rain was so thick and heavy and sudden that the street at the end of the driveway would flood and soon be rushing like a river.

It wasn't just the weather that made him feel listless. The fun he'd had in Arizona had taken the shine off everything there was to do in LA. He'd had one last, sad ride with Cal but now the ranch was being wound up. Most of the horses had already been sold and the ones that belonged to Cal—including Chester—had been trailered up to Montana. Cal had gone with them. He was coming back to clear his house of all his furniture and belongings. But by the end of October, he'd be gone for good. Tommy missed him so badly he sometimes wished they'd never met.

On top of this, Diane and Ray barely spoke to each other anymore. All they ever did was shout. They generally didn't do it when Tommy was around, only after he'd gone to bed. The storms inside the house were sometimes worse than those outside. Screaming and shouting, doors being slammed, and one night just after they got back from Arizona, a terrifying crash of breaking glass. The next morning Tommy found Dolores on her knees, picking up the last few pieces of the big living room mirror. Diane said it had blown down in the storm but he knew this wasn't true.

Twice now he had found her crying. The second time, only last week, Tommy had lain in bed listening to the two of them arguing at the dinner table out on the terrace. Then he heard the front door slam and Ray roaring off in the Cadillac. Tommy got out of bed and went to find her. She was lying on her bed sobbing. And when he asked her what was wrong she just said (as if he might not have noticed) that things between her and Ray weren't so good at the moment. This often happened, she said, when people married and were getting used to each other and at the same time working hard. Once they'd finished making The Forsaken, she said, everything would settle down and be back to normal.

"Do you still love him?"

Tommy hoped she would say no so that he could tell her at last about Leanne, but she just smiled and told him not to be silly and said of course she still loved him. She gave him a long hug and stroked his hair.

"Everything's all right, sweetheart. Honestly. When the movie's finished we'll be happy again, I know we will. All of us. Maybe we can all go away somewhere. Somewhere lovely, by the seaside. Would you like that?"

"I suppose. Couldn't just the two of us go?"

"Tommy, you've got to stop feeling that way about Ray. He loves you. I can't tell you how upset he is that you don't talk or want to be around him anymore. Darling, why are you like that with him?"

"I told you, he's not nice to you. I don't like him shouting at you."

"Please try and be friendly. Please. Let's all be happy."

"Okay."

As if happiness could simply be switched on like a light. In fact, Tommy rarely saw Ray—or even much of Diane. They were at the studio all day long and Tommy just hung around the house on his own or watched TV or lay on his bed and read. When he got bored of doing all these things he would help Dolores in the kitchen or help Miguel clean the cars or mow the grass or scoop the leaves off the pool. Diane kept saying he should have a friend over to play but all his Carl Curtis friends were still away at camp or on vacation.

Then, two days ago, when Tommy was so bored and miserable he thought he might go crazy, Wally Freeman's mother had called to say Wally was back from camp. Tommy asked Diane if they could have a sleepover and it was all arranged.

Wally had arrived yesterday afternoon and the two of them hadn't stopped laughing and talking ever since. He'd slept in the spare bed in Tommy's room, though slept maybe wasn't the right word because they'd talked until two in the morning. Tommy told him all about Arizona and Wally had him in fits with accounts of the mischief he'd made in Oregon, putting frogs in people's beds and stranding the meanest member of staff on an island in a lake where there were known to be bears.

This morning Tommy had been woken by the sound of shouting down in the hallway. It was Dolores yelling at somebody to go away and not come back. Wally slept through it but Tommy got out of bed and when he opened the door of his room he saw Diane in a bathrobe, just out of the shower and plainly as curious as he was. She called down into the hallway and asked Dolores who she'd been shouting at. Dolores answered in her usual unfriendly voice that it was just some kid, a beggar.

Diane and Tommy walked across the landing to the tall window that looked out onto the driveway and saw a teenage girl slouching away toward the gate. She had a frizzy blond ponytail and was wearing a yellow dress that was too big for her and needed a wash. She seemed to sense them staring at her because she turned and briefly glowered back at the house. Her face was pinched and angry and wounded. Diane shrugged and they went back into her room and Tommy sat on the bed and told her all about Wally's adventures at camp while she dried her hair and got dressed.

Shortly after that she left for work and Tommy woke Wally and they had breakfast and went for a swim. They spent the rest of the morning playing Indians, stalking and ambushing each other in the garden. Wally wanted to shoot birds again with the BB gun but Tommy said he didn't do that anymore and that it was wrong to kill any creature unless you needed it for food. Wally said this was a load of horsefeathers.

They went for another swim and dived for nickels then sat on the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in the water and debating which of the Three M's—Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren—had the best tits. Wally said that when school started again he was definitely going to get a kiss from Wendy Carter and Tommy said she'd probably rather kiss a dog's bottom and this led to a bout of wrestling and ducking and splashing which got so out of hand that Dolores came running from the house and told them to stop.

On Wally's last visit, Ray had proudly shown off his collection of guns and while they were changing out of their swimming things, Wally asked if he could see them again. Tommy said they were all locked away in the basement and that Ray had the only key.

"There is one he doesn't lock up though."

"There is?"

"I'm not supposed to know. Want to see it?"

"Do bears shit in the woods?"

Tommy led him back into the house and checked that Dolores was busy in the kitchen so she wouldn't be likely to catch them. Then he led Wally up the stairs and they tiptoed like a pair of thieves across the landing and into Diane's bedroom and over to the nightstand on Ray's side of the bed.

"Promise you won't tell anyone."

"I promise."

"Because he'd be mad as a rattlesnake if he knew I'd shown you."

"I told you, I promise."

"Cross your heart and hope to die."

"Jeez, Tommy. Okay, cross my heart and hope to die."

Tommy opened the drawer and they stood side by side staring down at the revolver. It had a dull and mysterious gleam.

"Wow," Wally said. "A Smith and Wesson."

"It's a thirty-eight. Like Sergeant Friday's in Dragnet."

Wally reached out but Tommy told him not to touch it.

"Why not? Who'll know?"

"It's loaded."

"So what? It's okay. Don't be such a wimp."

He picked it up and held it carefully in both hands.

"Wow. It's a beauty."

"Just be careful."

"Yeah, yeah."

He closed his right hand around the grips and pointed it at Tommy.

"Okay, mister, stick 'em up."

"Wally! Don't do that! It's loaded, you idiot!"

"Okay, okay. Don't pee your pants. Anyhow, the safety's on, moron."

"Put it back. Now!"

Wally sighed but did as he was told.

"Aha! What have we here?"

He picked up the plastic bag that Ray always kept there too.

"It's just tobacco or tea or something."

"Tea? It's pot, you dodo."

"What?"

"It's a drug. You smoke it. You know Scotty Lewis in sixth grade? His big brother smokes it all the time. It makes your eyes go all pink and funny. Man, your dad could go to jail for having this stuff."

"He's not my dad. Wally, just put it back, will you!"

"Okay, keep your hair on."

Hollywood was a place of many illusions and one of these was to do with friendship. Diane had first been alerted to this shortly after she arrived the previous year by Paramount's legendary costume designer Edith Head. She was a woman of startling looks: a helmet of dyed black hair and enormous glasses with round dark blue lenses that she apparently wore to help her know how a costume would look when filmed in black and white. At the age of sixty-four she had seven Oscars to her name and had dressed nearly all the great leading ladies of the century, from Marlene Dietrich and Mae West to Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly. For some reason she had taken an immediate shine to Diane.

"There's not a town in the world where you can make or lose friends faster," she said.

Diane was standing before her in the red satin ball gown, one of several gorgeous Edith Head creations she never got to wear for the aborted Gary Cooper movie.

"What you have to remember is that in Hollywood everything is about business. Including friendship. It's best not to confuse the two."

At the time, Diane hadn't quite understood what she meant by this. But now she did. During the year she'd lived here, she'd met plenty of women she liked well enough and was happy to think of as friends. They were all, in one way or another, involved in the movie business or had husbands or boyfriends who were. They would call each other, meet for coffee or lunch, come with their partners for cocktails or dinner. But there wasn't one among them in whom Diane felt able confide or with whom she could talk candidly about Ray and the problems they were having. It was only in October when her old friends Molly and Helen came to visit that she realized how much she missed their long midnight talks, huddled in their dressing gowns around the gas fire on those freezing London nights.

They were on a two-week trip to California and, because they were trying to cram in as much as possible, could only stay a couple of days. Diane drove them around and showed them the sights, just as Ray had done for her and Tommy a year earlier. They bombarded her with questions about her work and about the people she'd met and Diane did a fine impression of being happy and enthusiastic.

The following day was a Saturday and Tommy persuaded them they couldn't go home without seeing Disneyland. He'd already been there three times but couldn't get enough of it. Ray said he couldn't come, so the four of them drove down to Anaheim and screamed and laughed so much on the rides that by the time they got home they were all aching.

At dinner, Ray was charming and attentive, regaling Helen and Molly with funny, if self-serving, stories about the movie business that Diane had heard a dozen times. She watched her friends getting steadily starstruck. He left the table early, saying he had to go into town to see someone and that he was sure the three of them had a lot of girl talk to catch up on. He was scarcely out of earshot when Molly whispered loudly what a dreamboat he was. She leaned back in her chair and looked around at the pool and the house and the fairy lights glinting in the tree above and she sighed and shook her head.

"Just look at all this. It's simply heaven. You're so lucky, Diane."

"I know."

She smiled and lit another cigarette. And Helen, always the shrewder of the two, must have sensed some wistful reservation.

"But?" she said.

"But nothing."

"Come on, Di. I know you too well."

And little by little they coaxed it out of her.

At first Diane made it sound as if her misgivings were to do with Hollywood, how superficial and insincere life here could sometimes be; how, perhaps, it wasn't the best place in the world to bring up a child. She said they, of all people, knew how passionate she'd always been about her work but that, somehow, since taking over responsibility for Tommy, her heart didn't seem to be in it anymore.

Then, with Helen's canny questioning, she started to talk about how things were with Ray. At first she couched it all in the past, made it sound as if things were better now. And, in a way, this was true. The lowest patch had been the weeks after they came back from Arizona and were shooting the studio scenes. Ray had behaved like a spoiled child and at times much worse. That Terry Redfield and Herb Kanter had managed to put up with his tantrums was a minor miracle. And at home there was no restraint at all. The drunken ranting rages, the storming out of the house, the constant jealous sniping at her for being frigid or for some affair he fatuously imagined she was having. Diane spared her friends—or perhaps herself—the worst. Such as the night he threw a glass at her and shattered the living room mirror or the dark and vengeful way he now made love to her on those rare occasions when either from pity or guilt she acquiesced. She told them enough however to shake the stardust from their eyes. Told them how mean he could be, how he'd disappear and come back in the early hours, drunk or stoned or both.