Which Lie Did I Tell? (13 page)

Okay. Old, alone, return for more goodies.

For reasons of greed, the British decided to build a railroad across East Africa. This was simply a giant undertaking, rating not far below the Pyramids. Thousands of men were employed. Brutal brutal labor.

In 1898, John Henry Patterson, the hero of the story, a thirty-year-old Scottish engineer, was given the job of building a bridge across the River Tsavo—thorn tree
heaven
—approximately 130 miles inland from the coast town of Mombasa.

Patterson faced problems, varied and serious: a shortage of material; surly natives who threatened to rebel (and on at least one occasion, tried to kill him); malaria; lack of food; insufficient medical supplies. Not a whole lot of fun, but he was stubborn and it was going well enough.

Until March of that year and the first lion attack.

No big deal at first; a lion jumped out at a coolie on a donkey, then ran away.

Yawn.

Patterson spent all night in the trees waiting for the lion to come back to the spot, and when it did, he nailed the sucker.

Back to the bridge.

Then, slowly, like acid dripping, bad things happened. A lion attacked a coolie, dragged him into the bush, you could hear the coolie’s scream and his bones breaking. More of that. Then the awful realization that there were
two
lions. And they were young and they were fearless and they began attacking large groups of men in broad daylight. They also began leaping nine-foot thorn fences and dragging coolies out of their tents, and the coolies began sleeping in the trees, which was fine except there were so many of them sometimes the trees bent and the coolies fell to the ground, where the lions were waiting for them. During all these
days, Patterson was working on the bridge when it was light, spending his nights alone in the trees.

Now the natives began to think the lions were not normal. Natives always do that in Tarzan pictures: “Bwana, these beasts are not of our earth,” and Tarzan always proves them wrong. Well, Tarzan wasn’t around in Tsavo, and as the months went by, some militia were sent from Mombasa—not many, there weren’t many, and they couldn’t be spared long, and they saw nothing. And when they departed, back came the lions. And now professional hunters came, and they killed a lot of baby lions and stayed until the big two began eating them, and now Patterson was dying from fatigue but he came up with a plan. He stuck three of his best shots in a railroad car, protected them with metal bars across the middle, put some meat on the far side from them—a ridiculous plan really—the killers were to enter on the far end and when they did they would trip a wire and the door would close behind them and they would be helpless as the three shooters blew them away—

—ever hear anything so moronic?

Well, it
worked.

Kind of.

One of the lions came, and it was trapped, and these three great shooters blasted the shit out of it at close range—

—and missed—

—yes, missed; they couldn’t but they did—

—and they blasted a hole in the car and the lion got away.

The workers began to leave, going back to other parts of Africa, back to India; and Patterson was killing himself, days on the bridge, where work was slowing, nights trying to stay awake in the trees.

Then another plan, this time a great one: move the hospital in a day, leave the old one smelling of blood and sheets and take the sick and the wounded to a clean, odorless one, while Patterson waited for them to attack in the blood-smeared hospital. He even spread cattle blood all around to make it irresistible—

The attack came, he could hear them outside—

—then silence—

—then horrible death screams in the night as the lions savaged the new clean perfect hospital, killing on and on. The natives took off after that, the railroad came to a dead halt.

Back in London, Parliament was having these screaming matches because they ruled the world, the sun never set, etc., etc., and here in Africa this great railroad had been stopped—

—dead—

—no work was being done—

—by two
lions.

—and why can’t somebody do something?

Patterson finally did.

It took him nine months, but he got the first. Then, Christmas week of ’98, he was in a tree when the second came by, and he shot him, but the lion came up after him and he jumped down, broke his leg landing, and when the lion got back to earth Patterson shot him again—

—but it would not stop—

—Patterson could only watch, no bullets left—

—the lion took a huge hunk out of a tree limb, died six inches from Patterson’s body.

I still think an amazing and great piece of narrative material.

Plus this: lions have never behaved like that again. Never have two young males joined to savage the countryside. No accounting for it. How can you explain nine months of miraculous escapes, of knowing what the enemy will do before the enemy did it? Patterson later found a cave where they took their victims. Bones forever. They didn’t eat their victims a lot of the time. Sometimes they licked the skin off, drank the blood.

One hundred thirty-five men dead, the most of any lions in history.

I still hold with evil …

Patterson’s life was never quite the same. He wrote a book about his experiences that sold extremely well. He fought in many battles as his life went on, a strong figure in the battle to found Israel. But wherever he went, he was the man who killed the lions.

I don’t think anyone can doubt his bravery.

I have seen the trees he spent his nights in—fifteen or eighteen feet up, sometimes less—trying to stay awake, while out there somewhere he knew they were watching him, waiting for him.

I have seen lions kill, seen them shred slaughtered and dying animals, been shocked not just at the blood, but at their speed. When they are moving in for a meal, they are not the bewhiskered cuddly things the Disney Organization would have us believe them to be.

I have been to Tsavo, though not for long—it is not a place for your dream house. Looked at where Patterson went. Night after week after
long bloody month. As the total of dead mounted. As the sense of the enemy’s power mounted. As the bridge slowed, stalled, stopped. As his fatigue began to drive him toward Lord only knows what madness.

And I don’t know how the man did it. For me, that is genuinely heroic behavior.

And I hope you agree. I need that from you now.

I once had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with a wonderful old New York City fireman. Retired. Irish, of course. Father had been a fireman, both his sons were too.

When I meet someone out of the ordinary for me, someone I am not likely to come across again, I ask a lot of questions. Pester them if they don’t mind. I guess looking for material. Because all I know is my ordinary life, college, army, grad school, wife, kids, writing.

“I worry for my sons,” I remember him saying.

Why?

“The life.”

I waited.

“Well, when I went in, there was no choice. Not just because my father had been one but because, well, yes, you knew every day you went off to work you might not come home, yes, you remember all the funerals, but you also remember the sense of doing something glorious, you remember the people on the streets cheering the wagon as the siren screamed and traffic got out of the way. People knew you were risking your life and there was a sense of appreciation. I always worked in slum areas, always wanted to work in slum areas, more action there, I loved that.” Now he was silent, I suppose in reverie, back where the action was.

“And your sons?” I prompted.

“People throw shit at wagons now. Bricks, garbage—my boys are going out on the job, looking to save a building, save a life, and what do they get? Shit.
They get shit.
They’re both taking early retirement and I’m glad of it.”

Back to his reveries for a while.

Then I asked it: “Did you ever know a great fireman?”

He looked at me. “I don’t know what ‘great’ means here.”

“Somebody better than anybody else. More talented than anybody.”

No reply.

“Okay. Willie Mays was the greatest and most talented baseball player I ever saw. Was there anybody like that?”

Now this great Irish smile. “The Willie Mays of firemen? Know what you mean—know what you mean.” Thinking. “The Willie Mays. Never been asked that. Never been asked it but I know what you mean.” Still the smile, still the thinking. “Better than anybody, did I ever know somebody who was—” And then he looked at me. Said this: “Yes. One.”

“What made him better?”

“He’s still alive, y’know. We used to bet about that. I knew the flames would get him.”

“What did he do that was so special?”

Now the old man looks at me. “Bravest thing I ever saw. We’re getting out of a building, old tenement, about to explode, we’re on the second floor, one more to go and we’ve got no time, y’see, and he’s the same as me, wife, boys—and then he stops dead.”

“What?” I say.

“ ‘Heard a baby,’ he says. He points to this apartment door that’s closed, of course, and flames are all around us, you must believe that, it was so loud and so hot and so horrible.

“And I say, ‘Get out, Johnny,’ and he doesn’t answer, just turns and kicks the door off the hinges, then shouts ‘Go’ but of course I couldn’t do that to the man. He grabs the door by the handle and uses it as a shield as he makes his way through this blazing apartment in this terrible old place that’s about to die, and on he goes till he gets to another closed door, and of course he kicks that open too and, my God, there
is
a baby inside, screaming to wake the dead. He tucks her away under one arm, uses the first door as a shield again and comes back running through the flames, and then we all get the hell out of the place just before it goes.”

I remember thinking in that quiet moment: How does someone know he can do that? Or I guess more important, where does it come from that he
must
? I knew one thing for sure—that baby was lucky I was not the guy outside the door that terrible day.

“Bravest thing I ever saw,” the old man said finally.

I hope you agree with that too.

Because now I am going to tell you among the saddest and most important things I have in my arsenal. That incredible act of heroism the Willie Mays of firemen did?

That is what Sylvester Stallone does in an
action picture before the
opening credits start to roll. That is what Arnold Schwarzenegger does in an action picture before breakfast. That is what Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson do in their action pictures before they’ve brushed their teeth!

Stars do not—repeat—
do not play heroes
—

—stars play
gods.

And your job as a screenwriter is to genuflect, if you are lucky enough to have them glance in your direction. Because they may destroy your work,
will
destroy it more often than not
—

—but you will have a career.

Plus one more thing to remember: what is genuinely heroic in life may not work for film. It simply, as they say,
won’t shoot.

In
Adventures in the Screen Trade
I wrote about trying to translate to film what many military experts feel was the single most heroic action of the entire war. It involved a river crossing.

My problem, Doctor, was that what the experts were talking about as incredibly brave was not the soldiers who made the first crossing—the normal group glorified in a movie—it was the
next
wave of soldiers, the ones who saw the first group get slaughtered, who knew they were mostly going to die, and who made the second crossing anyway.

I saved someone from drowning once. I was in a pool here in New York, no one else in the water, an Indian kid, maybe five years old, on the diving board, his parents chatting off to one side. The kid dove in, came up, went down, came up, whispered “Help,” and I got him before he died.

Sorry, folks, that doesn’t raise the hackles. It won’t shoot. In real life, it’s extraordinary. On film, nothing.

(It got even worse when I took the kid back to his parents, told them what had happened. They thanked me, went back to their chatting and when I left the pool, the kid was playing alone, getting close to deep water again. This was
so
fucking surrealistic I have doubted since that day if anything happened at all.)

Why am I telling you all this?

Because Patterson, wonderful heroic John Henry Patterson, famous throughout his lifetime as the man who killed the lions?

Sorry folks,
it doesn’t shoot.

For nine months he sits in a tree?

Wow.

For nine months his plans mostly suck?

Whoopee.

For nine months he
fails
?

What are you smoking, this is a Hollywood movie.

Look, when I wrote that Butch and the Lions were the only two great pieces of narrative I ever came across? Absolutely true. Which is not to say they were
perfect.

Everything needs helping along.

To help the move to South America, I invented the half-hour Superposse chase. (In real life, as soon as Butch heard about who was arraying against him, he fled to South America. That was of less than no use to me at all.)

Remember that—it was to help the story.

And I realized that Patterson, my hero’s story, needed help too. So, with a pure heart, I invented Redbeard.

Redbeard was always and forever only this: a
plot point. I needed, for today’s audience, to make Patterson, my hero, more heroic. So I came up with what I thought would be a suitable device.

Redbeard would be a professional who came, did his job, moved on when the job was over. There were, in point of fact, people who lived that way. Hunting was popular among the very rich, and there were men for hire if you were a Russian prince and wanted to shoot in America. Or Africa. Or the mountains of India. You hired them for weeks or months, and they saw you got the best chance at game. Protected you in the bargain.