The Englishman's Boy (10 page)

“He ain’t working because of that deal with Coster,” says a fellow wearing a black hat with a silver-dollar hatband.

None of the others seem to know what the deal with Coster is.

“Look at this goddamn place. Not a stamp’s worth of shade. Not a dipper of water to be had. Old Shorty had something to say to these high-handed bastards,” he mutters. “Said her with a hammer.” He taps his front teeth with a finger. “Knocked a few spokes out of Coster’s wheel with a shoeing hammer, is what I heard.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” says a fellow in a Canadian stetson, “Coster’ll be able to suck dick all the better for it.”

They all laugh.

“Story is it had something to do with simple Wylie’s brother,” says the silver-dollar hatband, tilting his head in a meaningful way toward a solitary kid sitting on a saddle.

“Wylie’s twin, you mean,” a tall, lanky man corrects him.

“Go on, they don’t look no way similar.”

“They ain’t identical. But maybe they split a brain between the two of them because one’s every bit as identical dumb as the other,” asserts the tall man.

Everybody turns to look at the kid.

He has been riding that saddle since I arrived, scrunched down on it with his knees up around his ears, secluded in a lonesome corner of the coop. The stray-dog air of him, the wistful, sad-assed, clinging-vine look of him had kept me clear. He looks like the sort of kid that a kind word will stick to you like flypaper.

“Yes,” concedes the tall man, “could be it had something to do with Wylie’s brother. Because Wylie’s setting on Shorty’s saddle over there. I recognized it right away. Shorty hung a pair of army stirrups on his rig. Steel stirrups. I recognized a weld on the off-stirrup. Shorty had his off-stirrup mended once.”

Before he finishes, I am crossing the tank, hasty and awkward, stiff leg swinging like a gate on rusty hinges. When Wylie spots me coming,
he pulls off his hat and crushes it to his chest just the way cowboys do in the movies when the time rolls around to propose to their sweethearts. His jug-handle ears, horse-clipper haircut with haystack top and white-wall temples cut a sorry sight.

“Morning,” I greet him.

When he cranes back his neck to peer up at me, his mouth falls open like a nestling begging for the worm. Everything about him is a plea, the timid eyes, the bottom lip chapped raw from hours of anxious sucking. He clamps down on it now, begins to nurse, the corners of his mouth collapsing in little tugs.

“Morning,” I repeat. Just a little louder.

He leaves off sucking; the eyes scoot from side to side, avoiding mine. “Yessir,” he says.

I poke the saddle with my toe. “I understand the owner of this saddle is Shorty McAdoo.”

His panicked eyes cut back and forth between the saddle and my face. He talks very quickly, as if what he’s saying is a recitation committed to memory. “He borrowed me this saddle. Them picture men’ll hire you sooner you got a saddle your own self. And Miles he got busted up and that was bad and I had to hock my own saddle and so old Shorty he says to me, ‘Wylie, you ride this rig of mine for a while. Might turn your luck. It always done right by me,’ that’s what Shorty said and I been riding her. Rub that luck off her. That’s what I been doing, riding her –” He breaks off, looks up to check if I understand, if all is clear.

“But it was only a loan,” I say.

He disregards me, plunges on. “Shorty said to me, he said, ‘Wylie, you look after this here saddle of mine.’ That’s what he said, Shorty said.” He commences to rock back and forth on the saddle-seat. “Shorty said that. I’m a-watching it for him. I’m a-watching it like a son of a bitch.”

“Until he wants it back.”

“He borrowed me his own saddle, so’s I could get work,” Wylie repeats stubbornly. “I found twenty dollar in the saddlebags. I know who put it there. Twenty dollars.” The skittish eyes zoom off; he’s
thought of something else. “Miles,” he says, “Miles. That’s right. I put breakfast out for Miles. On that table. By his bed. I didn’t forget.”

“Shorty wants his saddle back. He asked me to collect it for him.”

The kid resumes scooting his ass back and forth on the saddle-seat, quicker and quicker, he’s riding away. Then suddenly he freezes, both hands lock tight on the horn, knuckles white. It has caught up to him. “He don’t,” he says.

“Yes, he does.”

“He don’t want this here old saddle.”

“Right now, Wylie. He wants it now. Today.”

Wylie blinks so hard his eyelids blur.

“I’ve got a car parked outside. I’ll deliver you. You can hand it over to Shorty personally.”

“I ain’t even had a horse under it yet,” says the kid, jumping to his feet, pulling at the crotch of his trousers. “But if Shorty wants her back –”

“He does.”

When we get to the car I inquire of Wylie whether he drives. He nods solemnly.

“All right,” I say, “take the wheel. Working the clutch is hard on this bum leg of mine. I don’t drive unless I have to.”

Wylie takes it at face value. Behind the wheel he doesn’t head the car back to Los Angeles as I expect him to, but bucks it out into the wilderness which still clings to the skirts of Hollywood like a burr, racketing us down dirt roads which unfurl lazy pennants of dust under our tires. Most of the countryside we are crossing is unoccupied, state lease land and tracts in the hands of speculators hoping to cash in on the next boom in real estate. But it isn’t entirely deserted. Here and there I manage to spot some small frame farmhouse; occasionally we encounter a flivver or farm wagon creaking along the road. Whenever Wylie spies another vehicle, even a couple of hundred yards up the road, he immediately slows to a turtle’s crawl and surrenders so much of the thoroughfare he nearly has us in the ditch. When the approaching vehicle has gone safely by he turns a sly look of pride on me. And I smile back my approval of his
skilful, life-preserving manoeuvre and wonder how much further we have to go to find McAdoo and whether Wylie has any notion whatsoever of where he is taking us.

Then, all at once, he is talking again, rattling away very fast, something about Running W’s and his twin brother, Miles. A Running W is how horses were thrown in movie action scenes before the SPCA got a stop put to it. A Running W worked like this. A post called a deadman was driven solidly into the ground, out of camera view. Two lines of piano wire were run from the horse’s fetlocks up its front legs and back underneath the girth of the saddle; the remaining several hundred feet of piano wire were coiled beside the deadman and the ends of the coils snubbed tight to the post buried in the ground. The stunt man’s job was to ride a horse at a hard gallop until it ran out of line and the wire yanked its legs out from under it, crashing them to the ground. The Running W killed a lot of horses, hurt and crippled a lot of men. It was not popular with cowhands.

“Miles and me and Shorty we were working for Mr. Coster in the Valley. It’s how it happened. The Running W done it. He was bad, Mr. Coster.”

“Whoa,” I say, feigning ignorance. “Who’s Coster?” Any more information I can collect may prove useful.

“The director, the director!” he exclaims excitedly. “All day long he wants this shot. ‘Spectacular!’ he keeps hollering. ‘I want spectacular! Give me some goddamn spectacular!’ But it ain’t the stunt men’s fault. They tried, didn’t they? It’s the horses, that’s what Shorty said. It’s the horses. Because they all been throwed lots of times. And they know what’s coming soon as them pianer wires get put on their legs. They know. Shorty says they won’t run flat out because them horses know they going to get took down hard at the end. So they don’t gallop terrible hard. They’re smart horses. They been hurt before, them horses. They don’t want to get hurt again, do they?”

“Makes sense to me.”

“So Mr. Coster keeps trying. One horse and then he tries another horse and another horse and another horse. But Mr. Coster ain’t satisfied. He wants spectacular! And the stunt fellers keep going down
with the horses and rattling off the hard pan like peas on the bottom of the bucket.

“So Mr. Coster gets the horse wrangler to bring out this big old black gelding – they call him Locomotive – and Locomotive he’s never been throwed with pianer wires before so he don’t know it and he’s a terrible big old horse, a croppy Shorty called him. Know what’s a croppy?”

I don’t.

“Because somebody cut his ears to warn everybody he’s a mean horse, a bad horse, fellers do that, Shorty says, crop their ears. And the stunt fellers they don’t want to ride no horse never been throwed – on top of he’s mean. And Mr. Coster takes to cursing them all for cowards, gutless wonders he calls them, and all that he calls them, and so they all quit on Mr. Coster.

“So he says to the rest of us fellers, extras and all, he says, ‘Who’s going to show he’s a man? Who’s going to ride old Locomotive double the wages?’ and I was going to, but Shorty says to me, ‘Don’t you ride that crop-eared cunt, he’s a killer. Stay off him, Wylie.’ And I done it, I stayed off that Locomotive but my brother didn’t. He rode him.”

“Why did he ride him, Wylie?”

“Because Mr. Coster says if he does, next picture he’ll give him a part, Miles. And Shorty, he warned Miles, too. But Miles ain’t too smart, Miles ain’t, and he believed Mr. Coster and disbelieved Shorty. But Shorty knows how Miles is so he helped him anyways, see? Shorty, he thought her all out. He paced off just as far as the pianer wire was going to run out on Locomotive and he marked the spot with a hankerchief, pegged it on the ground and he says to Miles, he says to Miles, he says, ‘Miles, when you see that there white hankerchief coming up on you, you kick your feet out of them stirrups because when that fucking widow-maker runs out of wire he’ll go ass over tea-kettle and when he does you ain’t going to want to get hung up in them stirrups – you going to want to get throwed clear. Throwed clear, understand? Otherwise, you going to smash up bad,
like an apple crate. You understand me, Miles? You get your boots out of them stirrups the minute you see that white hankerchief.’ ”

“Let me guess,” I say. “Miles didn’t.”

Wylie drops his voice to a whisper. “No, he didn’t. Miles was a-spurring Locomotive flat out, they was both going full chisel, and Miles was a-watching for that hankerchief and a-watching for that hankerchief and a-watching for that hankerchief, and then Locomotive wrecked, done a somersault and Miles was planted in them stirrups and Locomotive landed on him flush. He hurt him deep down inside, and Miles he been shitting bloody stool ever since and he don’t walk too good.”

“So why did he miss the handkerchief?”

“Mr. Coster sent the cameraman to go pick up that hankerchief when nobody was looking. So’s he’d get spectacular. Wasn’t no hankerchief to see. That’s how it was done. I was going to go at him right then and there. I wanted to, but Shorty said no. Shorty said, ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’ That’s what Shorty said.”

“And I hear Shorty did get even. With a shoeing hammer.”

“Croppy,” says Wylie, twisting nervously in his seat. “ ‘Mark a bad horse,’ says Shorty. ‘So’s everybody knows him.’ ” Suddenly, Wylie hits the brakes. I grab the dash and brace myself. The scenery jolts, the sky slants as the car slithers and shimmies on locked wheels through the soft dirt, slides to a stop. A breath of dust sighs into the car, chalks my teeth. A few yards behind and to the right of us a lane runs off the road past a dilapidated mailbox on a drunken post, crosses a skimpy brown pasture scribbled with sage and greasewood, edges up a low knoll and disappears out of sight behind it.

“Almost missed Shorty’s turn-off,” he announces.

I hold Wylie by the arm, follow the lane with my eyes. At the end of it there must be a house.

“Wylie,” I say, “I’ve got something to confess to you.”

I begin by telling him how proud I am of him, how proud Shorty is of him. I say that I hadn’t been able to believe anybody in his circumstances would be so incorruptible. I tell him I had argued with
Shorty that he would never see his saddle again, that Wylie would sell or pawn it before you could say Mother Mabel. But Shorty had believed in him. Shorty had said that Wylie was a true-blue man to ride the river with. And Wylie had proved it was true. He had kept good care of Shorty’s property, hadn’t hesitated for a second when asked to return it, no matter how badly he needed it for his work.

“Let me shake your hand.” I shake it. Then I take twenty dollars out of the expense-money envelope. “For your time, Wylie. I was going to prove a point to Shorty, but the point got proved to me. I got to eat humble pie.”

“Shorty don’t want his saddle?”

“No,” I say, “not just at present.” I pause. “Your luck seems to be changing, Wylie. You keep rubbing luck off of McAdoo’s rig, you may end up the next William S. Hart. Now let me drive. Let me chauffeur one fine man wherever he wants to go.”

“We ain’t going to see Shorty?”

“Not today. He’s busy.”

“Shorty don’t borrow his saddle to just anybody!” Wylie crows triumphantly, as I turn the car around in the middle of the road. “Not everybody gets to ride Shorty’s saddle!”

I offer to take him home but he prefers to be dropped off outside of Universal. It doesn’t make any sense because most of the day’s shooting will be well under way and none starting. But perhaps he believes me, believes his luck has turned. I drop him off outside the pen, deserted at this hour, a wind scrubbing dust into the air off the beaten earth, scurrying bits of candy wrapper along and sticking them to the wire fence. I watch as he stumps toward it, Shorty’s magic humped clumsily on his shoulder, stirrup leathers flapping, stirrups bouncing, his stupid faith that the old man’s luck has the power to work a miracle in his own life intact.

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