by Patti Abbott
“I’m not the careful type—in case you don’t know that yet. You’ll just have to believe I can take care of myself with this. I doubt Buck’ll be back anyway. It’s over,” she repeated. There was still some hesitation in her voice.
“Don’t you get it? Only Buck gets to say when it’s over.”
“I gotta go,” she said, walking back toward the house. “Put it out of your head. It’ll just make things worse if he comes around and sees you here. I know what to do.” But he knew she didn’t.
He tried to take Wendy’s advice, to go about his business and keep his eyes and ears where they belonged. But two nights later, Georgie began barking in the same hysterical way after the radio suddenly came on. Some sort of hip-hop station, blaring music. It sounded like music you might play to muffle other noises, music that would blend in with the traffic on his street.
Pacing the floor until he couldn’t stand it, Bob picked up the phone. He’d looked up her phone number a few days before when the new telephone book arrived. Since then he’d glanced at the yellow post-it so many times he had it memorized. He dialed it now and let it ring till the machine came on. Her voice sounded chirpy, inviting—he hadn’t heard her sound like that in a long time. There’d be no point in leaving a message. What would he say? Tell me you’re safe, Wendy. Tell me Buck isn’t around. He tried three more times, getting the same useless message before slamming the receiver down.
He had to know what was going on in that house. Creeping outside, he circled it. Wendy’s car was in the driveway, but there was no sign of Buck’s truck. Buck could’ve parked down the street, of course, not wanting anyone, especially that old turd, Bob Mason, to see it. That’s what Bob would’ve done. Bob/Buck would have burst in unexpectedly, taking Wendy by surprise, catching her off-guard. He could almost remember such an event. Remember what it felt like, how scared Edna had been. Or perhaps he’d dreamed it during one of the thousands of nights since she left.
There were very few lights on in the house: the kitchen’s overhead fluorescent and a low-wattage bulb upstairs in Wendy’s bedroom. He threw a stone or two at her window from the grass, hitting the siding with two loud clinks. Nothing. As he watched, the white curtains in her bedroom window turned themselves inside out, caught in some strong gusts of wind. Inside, Georgie was quiet, but the music played on, wailing tunes about women who’d done their men wrong. Why was that music playing? Wendy usually played country or soft rock.
Bob waited as long as he could. Then knowing a woman like Wendy wouldn’t have bothered to change the lock on her door, he went home and got the key Lillian had given him years ago. Hurrying, he looked around the living room for some sort of protection to take with him, finally grabbing a shovel from rack of fireplace tools. Minutes later he was stealthily opening her front door.
Georgie came trotting over at once, looking relieved to see him if such a thing was possible. The radio continued to blare its gloomy, percussive tunes. He peeked into the kitchen and saw a lightweight radio lying on its side on the floor. Had Buck knocked it there climbing in through the window? Or was it a casualty of the strong winds. Nothing else seemed amiss.
As he stumbled through the dark of the unfamiliar living room, the shovel clutched in his hand, the dog followed at his heels. After bumping his knee on a piece of low furniture and overturning a wastepaper basket, he ended up crawling up the stairs on his hands and knees, trying to avoid creaks, nearly impossible on an old wooden stairway he’d never climbed before.
Reaching the upstairs hallway, he looked into the spare bedroom. It was dark and appeared vacant except for some sealed boxes and a spare chair. The bathroom was empty, too. Only a nightlight lit it.
A thin ray of light shone from under the closed third door. Wendy’s room. A sort of keening sound seemed to seep out for a few seconds. But then it stopped. Had he imagined it? What could she being doing in there? As he put his ear to the wood, leaning into it to hear better, the door was suddenly yanked open, and Wendy, standing in the doorway, fired a gun straight into Bob’s chest.
“I told you to keep away from me, Buck,” she screamed. “You damned liar. I knew you made a key….”
And then she saw it was Bob sliding to the floor.
She knelt on the floor beside him. “Now, just look what I’ve done.” She moaned like a woman in labor, sobbing, her tears falling on him like a sudden shower. “I thought it was Buck. Calling me over and over, playing that crazy music, making Georgie bark like that. I was sure it was Buck creeping up the stairs. I told you I could take care of myself, Bob. Why d’ya have to come after me?”
Come after her? Is that what she thought? Bob looked at the gun on the floor beside him, looked at the woman leaning over him, now hysterical. He wanted to tell Wendy he hadn’t come after her—he’d had come to save her. Explain how he couldn’t let it go—knowing what he did about men. But decided instead to concentrate on staying alive. If he could.
BIT PLAYERS
Who’s Jack Elam?
Miles spotted me at the drinks table and began winding his way across the crowded room. Most of tonight’s players were costumed as Nazis, and one after the other of the uniformed men reached around me to grab paper cups of the watery punch. Having no experience with Nazis, or with most of the twentieth century, for that matter, I was surprised the uniforms still raised the hair on my neck. Funny how motifs like that one caught on at Dreams, although tomorrow night it might be gladiators or librarians. Carl Jung has his ideas about dreams, but I had my own. Mine said there was a sale on German uniforms somewhere.
“Look, I know what you’re gonna say, Miles,” I told him, pushing a brushed-cut soldier out of the way. “Give it up or drive yourself nuts. Your contract spelled it out, same as mine.”
“Know what parts they gave me tonight, Frankie?” he said in his high-pitched squeak.
His voice worked against him achieving star status or even getting steady work as a B actor at Dreams. He was background material, same as me.
“How long you been here, Miles? Fifteen-twenty years? Well, I’ve been here twice as long. See me playing something better than bits?” I picked up an iced tea and held it to my cheek. “Hot in here, isn’t it? If you wanna complain, complain about that.”
“Like we’re going form a union with these head-knockers around.” Rolling his eyes, Miles continued. “Played a busboy in the first bit. My only line was, ‘Can I take your plate?’”
“Least you got a line.” What had I played? It was always like that at And you know how to do that?vietnam
Dreams. Did they put something in the punch?
“Second bit, I played a math teacher. Old chestnut where the subject thinks he skipped math class but shows up for the final.”
I nodded, happy to have my memory jogged. “Played a student in that one just last week. Different dreamer probably.
“Got you pegged as background material, old boy. You’ll never climb out of that hole.” Miles patted my shoulder. “In the last one, the only part of me the dreamer saw was my arm reaching through a car window. Handing out a flyer about some rally. Sixties, I think. Be glad when these sixties’ dreams come to an end. Remember when it was all about being gassed in trenches?”
“Was it the one-legged geezer who always dreams about the war? I’ve dug a manhole with him—is that what they called it—more than once. Out in the rice paddies. Korea?”
“Vietnam and it’s called a foxhole,” Miles said. “Your memory stinks, Frankie. How long you been at Dreams?”
“You don’t want to know.” Truth was, I couldn’t remember.
“So you gonna go to the bosses and whine again?” I asked, moving toward the dessert cart. A woman had just put out a dozen plates of banana cream pie. I watched her waddle back inside before grabbing one. She didn’t like it when the bit players moved in first. Stars got treated better, even by the likes of her.
GET ME JACK ELAM
“Nope, I’m done with that pussy stuff.” Miles
tossed his paper cup in the trashcan. “I got some ideas percolating, don’t worry. Guys with half my looks are playing leads.”
I wondered if he saw the same face I did. “Last time you caused trouble, you got a two-week suspension,” I said, helping myself to a second piece of pie. An arm reached out to grab it before I took a bite.
“Just you wait,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll get my just desserts.”
I gave him a half-hearted grin.
I had Monday nights off and settled into the darker recesses of the set to see what Miles would do. The company could mount hundreds of dreams at a time in this studio and Miles usually put on a good show, hopping from one set to another. He was a comic at heart but few dreams took that turn. So the directors employed him for the remnants of his swarthy good looks and his ability to convey a lot of feeling with his eyes.
Few actors got speaking parts at Dreams. Westerns and war stories were cast here and we were the kind of men used in barroom scenes, or as posse members, in lynch mobs and combat zones. Miles was underused given his talent, but it was hard to move up in this racket. The roles were cast in stone since no one was going anywhere.
In Miles’ first piece, the dreamer was being chased through a series of caves. Jack Elam played the villain. See what Miles was up against? Dressed like a cowboy, Jack was whooping it up as he bore down on the subject, gun in hand. Miles would never play better parts with Elam and Elisha Cook around. And he died too late to play leads. Car crash victims were the future stars at Dreams. Not men who died toothless, wrinkled and bald.
Suddenly a foot came out of the shadows and tripped Elam. The veteran actor went flying, and Miles stepped out of the darkness and took his place, barely missing a beat. In fact, he was too quick and ran the subject down, screwing up the light bars and knocking over a prop or two. More disastrously, he woke the subject.
Had anyone seen the foot beside me? I nearly swallowed my tongue.
GET ME SOMEONE LIKE JACK ELAM
“Great save,” the director yelled, “but if you’re gonna jump in, Miles, you gotta match your pace to his. You okay, Jack?”
Jack stood up and brushed himself off. “Nobody trips for no reason, Maestro.” He looked around suspiciously. “You boys keeping the set clear?”
The prop guys nodded.
“Wanna try it again, Maestro?” Elam asked.
Everyone snickered. Some of the newer guys on the lot forgot it wasn’t a regular set; there were no second takes. Elam had only been around five or six years. He was still playing in reel time.
“Subject’s up and taking a shower, Jack,” the director said, his voice soothing. “No retakes at Dreams.”
The set was wheeled into the hangar and another wheeled out. Elam was swigging a root beer off to the side, doing that thing with his eye. Nobody liked to look at him head on. Never knew when he’d throw a punch.
“Jack, why don’t you take a minute? Rest up. Miles can spell you in the next one.”
“You want me to rest, you say. Sure, I can rest.” He trained his eye on Miles and stepped out of the light.
GET ME A YOUNGER JACK ELAM.
“So do I get to play his part?” Miles asked.
The director looked Miles over. “Give ‘im the costume. He earned it.”
The set was a dark alley.
“Am I going to play a cowboy?” Miles asked, walking like the Duke.
“Does this look like a western set?”
“What’s it gonna be then?”
“Dreams don’t always proceed in predictable ways,” the Maestro said. “I have a script, but…” He shrugged. “There’s just no telling with dreamers like this one.”
WHO IS JACK ELAM?
Miles swaggered out minutes later wearing the garb of a middle-eastern prince.
“What the heck is this dream about?” he asked Maestro, fabric swirling around him. “What kind of a guy wears purple bunting.”
“Jack doesn’t always play cowboys. I told you that.”
“Thought you meant I’d play a thug. Or a lovable uncle. Something like that.”
I could see Maestro was getting angry.
“Look at the dreamer, Miles. Does he look like he dreams of any of those things?” The dreamer was projected on a screen above the set and we all looked up. An embroidered kufi sat on the table next to the bed; a jubba hung from a padded hanger.
Miles picked up the script. “You mean I gotta climb into the jar and make like a genie.” The jar was barely big enough to contain him.
“Dreamer’s gonna find the jar in the alley.”
Miles scrambled in and waited, but the dreamer didn’t rub the jar. Instead he rolled it down the alley, finally smashing it with a sledgehammer. I could imagine what Miles was feeling inside—and then outside. We all could, having been in this guy’s dreams once or twice ourselves.
I heard Elam laughing from somewhere.
“It’s KISMET,” he yelled.
Jack Elam died in 2003. The five lines in bold were attributed to him. Jack played in the film KISMET in 1955.
THE INSTRUMENT OF THEIR DESIRE
In 1931, my brother raised the money to hold on to our house by hiring out our older sister. Ronnie lay down with twelve men that winter, saving us from the soup line, the poor house, the end of the line.
When the last man left her bed, Jim took the crumpled five and added it to the money in the Typhoo tea tin. Bills worn to velvet from the callused hands of those men. He placed the seventy-odd dollars in the same envelope our father put his goodbye letter in a few months earlier, resealing the envelope and placing it in the mailbox. He hoped Mother would think that Daddy, wherever he was, had found a way to pass along some money. Which was what happened the next day when Mother waved the bills triumphantly in our faces. She made the back payments on the house, cleared up an outstanding bill or two and filled the icebox.
Later that year, Mother got a real job in a hospital, and we took a step back from the precipice where we had teetered. I doubt it ever occurred to Mother that Daddy hadn’t sent us the money. She’d often speculate aloud about the circumstances of his…gift, wondering what he had gone without to raise it. Jim had to swallow down the truth, telling himself it was better she didn’t know. How could he tell her that poor Ronnie had saved us?
I wasn’t supposed to know either. Eleven-year old girls in 1931 weren’t allowed to know about sex. But the booted feet of men tramping up the wooden steps was difficult to disguise in a house the size of ours, as were the noises associated with sexual intercourse. I fought to remain awake, acting like a sentry. I counted twelve visitors on the staircase that February. In the morning, the tin with its growing booty told the truth when I reached inside Jim’s nightstand to check it.
Jim and I never discussed that winter, which put both a bond and a wedge between us. Whenever I thought kindly about Jim’s accomplishments over the years, I would unconsciously harken back to 1931 and what he had done to Ronnie. But conversely, whenever I felt adrift from him, which happened often since our separations were so lengthy, I would rediscover the bond that sharing such a secret created, or I’d realize just what our fate would have been without the scheme he set in motion.
My memories were a child’s though, and each passing year deepened the veneer, blurring the truth. Seventy years later, I’m hard pressed to separate what I remember from what I have invented or imagined. A particular scent, a scuffling noise, the color of the sky on a winter’s day and I am back in my mother’s bed listening with the sharp ears and faulty reasoning of childhood.
None of Jim’s actions would have been possible if our mother hadn’t taken a job sitting up nights with a dying woman across town.
“Don’t forget to put the plates away, Rose,” she’d say to me each night when she left the house. “Dry them and put them in the cupboard.”
“And don’t forget to lock up,” she’d remind Jim. “Desperate men pass this way after dark.”
Before sh
e could get out the door, Ronnie would chime in with her oddly formal, high-pitched voice saying, “And what should I do, Mother?”
“Keep an eye on the children,” Mother told her every night. “You’re the oldest, Veronica.”
Ronnie would nod her head solemnly. She was seventeen that year, but couldn’t read or write or tie her shoes. There were few programs for dirt-poor, retarded children anywhere in 1931, fewer still in a rural community. Children like Ronnie ended up in institutions for the feeble-minded, the term used then. Ronnie attended school for as long as the teachers tolerated her disruptions in their classrooms. Then, in about third grade, I guess, Mother and Daddy held a mock graduation one June, telling Ronnie she was now grownup. After that, she stayed home, Mother fearing the stinging words and careless hands of other children.
Ronnie didn’t seem that different from the rest of us. She could hold a conversation if the subject was simple and the questions direct, and she knew everything there was to know about flowers. Oddest was her ability to play the piano by ear, which she did every Sunday at church. My sister looked like an angel sitting on the raised platform, hands poised over the piano, and that was where the men in town grew a bit obsessed with her most amazing characteristic: her beauty. She was simply the prettiest girl any of us had ever seen. Neither Jim nor I were attractive at all. The tradeoff seemed fair considering her deficits.
As long as Daddy was around, no men came near our place. Our father wasn’t particularly big, but he was unpredictable, and that gave him an edge in protecting both himself, and later, us. Men in town remembered peculiar skirmishes in his youth, times he had keep punching someone long after the fight was won, times he ambushed boys who thought he’d taken their quips with good humor. Myths surfaced that he wouldn’t hesitate to bite off a nose or ear should the need arise. I remember him as remote, uneasy with hugs and kisses. And he was a drinker, of course.
