Nothing But Trouble

by Michael McGarrity

  The man with the eyeglasses wrote down Usher’s instructions on the clipboard. “We’ll have to come to some agreement to lease the premises. But with the smelter shut down, I doubt the cost will be exorbitant.”

  “Good,” Usher said as he closed his three-ring binder and looked at Johnny. “Let’s you and I get together before dinner and sketch out the new scenes for the writers.”

  Glumly, Johnny nodded.

  “That’s it,” Usher said. “Everybody back here at four a.m. for the tech scout. Charlie will give you your housing assignments, and our schedule for the next two days. For now, we’ll all be crashing in the apartment building.”

  Usher left. Charlie, who turned out to be the man wearing the eyeglasses, read off the housing assignments, which had Kerney bunking with Johnny. Charlie told the group that meals would be served by the caterer in the mercantile building, and the tech scout locations would be passed out after dinner.

  As the meeting broke up, Johnny introduced Kerney to the people in attendance. The group included the unit production manager, set decorator, transportation captain, construction coordinator, cinematographer, the assistant director, several other lighting specialists, and Charlie Zwick, the producer.

  Zwick shook Kerney’s hand and thanked him for his good idea.

  “Yeah, thanks a lot,” Johnny said sarcastically, after Zwick left the building.

  “Come on, Johnny,” Kerney said. “It was apparent that the director had already made up his mind to change the ending before I spoke up.”

  “You don’t get it,” Johnny snapped. “I’m trying to build public interest in rodeoing with this movie. Get people excited about the sport, make it a major ticket draw. Now that’s not going to happen. Instead, film-goers are just gonna see what they think are a bunch of neat horseback and cowboy stunts as part of a brawl.”

  Kerney pushed open the door and stepped outside. “I wasn’t trying to thwart you.”

  Johnny took the cell phone off his belt and flipped it open. “It sure felt that way. I’ve got some phone calls to make. I’ll see you later.” Johnny hurried across the parking lot with the cell phone planted in his ear.

  Kerney decided to let Johnny chill out before going to the apartment. He didn’t want to face a contentious evening with Johnny ragging on him about not getting his way. It was a good two hours before dinner. He decided to drive to the smelter to take a look at the place that had inspired Malcolm Usher to change the script. Besides, he wanted to see the Star of the North that Officer Sapian had told him about.

  The paved road from Playas to the copper smelter paralleled a railroad spur that connected with the main trunk line east of Lordsburg, a windblown desert town on Interstate 10 that served as the seat of government for Hidalgo County.

  The valley widened a bit as Kerney headed south, deep into the Bootheel. To the west the Animas Mountains cut a broad, foreboding swath against the sky. To the east the Little Hatchet Mountains, drenched in afternoon sunlight, were buff gold at the peaks.

  Farther southeast the Big Hatchet Mountains rose up, pointing the way to Mexico and the Alamo Hueco Mountains at the border, where, according to what Kerney had read, once a year in the spring buffalo came up from the Chihuahua Desert to forage. He thought it would be great to see that.

  Under the greasewood and mesquite the tall valley grass was a thick pelt that signaled summer rains had arrived at exactly the right time. Otherwise the grass would be yellow and stunted, the sandy soil dried out and cracked.

  The big sky, the mountains, the desert so deceptively serene, the scarcity of anything man-made in the valley, pleased Kerney and gave him hope that maybe ranching could hold on and survive for a few more generations.

  Nine miles south of Playas all those thoughts passed from Kerney’s mind. The smelter sat on the east side of the valley between two dry lakebeds with the Little Hatchets looming over the complex, dwarfing the towering smokestack. The gate was open, and Kerney parked in front of the administration building, where a sign directed him to a side entrance.

  Inside, he found fully equipped offices, conference rooms, and a reception area devoid of people except for a lanky, middle-aged man dressed in a Western shirt, jeans, and boots, who was filling out paperwork at a counter in front of an enlarged, framed photograph of the smelter.

  “Can I help you?” the man said.

  “I’m with the film company,” Kerney told him, extending his hand. “Name’s Kevin Kerney.”

  “Ira Dobson,” the man replied, shaking Kerney’s hand. “I had a whole slew of you movie folks through here a couple hours ago.”

  “I missed the tour,” Kerney replied.

  “You didn’t miss much,” Dobson replied with a laugh. “About all I showed them was where we used to unload the copper concentrate, the building that houses the flash furnace, and the acid plant.”

  “Acid plant?” Kerney asked.

  Dobson nodded. “Yep. We used to produce more sulfuric acid than copper. Time was, we shipped twenty-five tank cars of acid and up to forty semitruck loads a day. Most of it went to make fertilizer.”

  “Where did you get the water to run the acid operation?” Kerney asked.

  Dobson studied Kerney more carefully. “Sounds like you know something about the process.”

  Kerney shook his head. “Not really. But I do know it takes water to make sulfuric acid.”

  “Lots of water,” Dobson agreed. “We used two hundred fifty thousand gallons a day when the plant was running, just on acid production alone. At peak capacity our wells can produce four million gallons a day.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of water to pump out of the ground.”

  Dobson nodded. “The company owns or controls almost a half-million acres of land in the Bootheel, plus about seven thousand acre-feet of annual water rights. The day could come when the water may be worth more than the land.”

  “Do you run the show here?” Kerney asked.

  Dobson chuckled. “Nope, I run the water system for the smelter and the town site. We’ve got wells spread up and down the valley. Some are used by ranchers who lease grazing rights from the company, some are for wildlife habitat. In the more remote areas we use solar power to pump the wells.”

  “The job must keep you jumping,” Kerney said.

  Dobson snorted. “At least I’ve got a job, for now. But once they tear this smelter down, I’ll be looking for work.”

  “Is that going to happen anytime soon?” Kerney asked.

  Dobson shrugged. “That depends. We’ve got some groundwater contamination issues to deal with, along with some other environmental cleanup problems. The lawyers are fighting it out with the federal and state regulators.”

  “Do you live in Playas?” Kerney asked.

  “I sure do. Me and about fifty-some other folks, give or take a few. The deal is that when the town got sold to become an antiterrorism training center, the residents could stay. Some have been hired on as maintenance and upkeep personnel.”

  “Mind if I take a look around the smelter?” Kerney asked.

  “Go ahead,” Dobson said. “But keep out of those areas posted for employees only. That’s most of the plant. But you can walk or drive around the perimeter, if the gates are unlocked. Watch out for rattlesnakes.”

  He opened a counter drawer and handed Kerney a packet of general information about the smelter. “There’s some interesting stuff in there about the valley and the company.”

  Kerney thanked Dobson for his time and went outside. High above him the warning beacon on top of the smokestack flashed brightly in the afternoon sunlight. At nightfall, if Officer Flavio Sapian was right, the Star of the North would guide another group of illegal immigrants across the border. Kerney wondered how many Border Patrol officers were on station, ready to pounce on the coyotes who’d be hauling illegal human cargo into the States. The Border Patrol was stretched tight from lack of funding, and the increase promised after 9/11 had never fully materialized.

/>   Behind the administration building, at the end of a large, virtually empty parking lot, was the main employee entrance to the smelter, festooned with fading painted signs that promoted safety and noted 698 consecutive accident-free days at the plant. Parked near the entrance were several vehicles, including a panel van that looked like the one that had passed Kerney earlier in the day just before he found the dying Mexican lying on the pavement.

  He couldn’t be sure if it was the same vehicle, but it was a close enough match to make Kerney pull out Flavio Sapian’s business card and call him on his cell phone.

  “Have you been able to ID the victim?” Kerney asked, when Sapian answered.

  “Negative, Chief. He had no papers on him at all. The body’s en route to Albuquerque for an autopsy. Maybe his prints will ID him, but I doubt it.”

  “I’m down at the copper smelter south of Playas, looking at a vehicle that’s similar to the one that passed me on the highway,” Kerney said. “Same color, same make. You want the license plate number?”

  “You bet I do. Read it off.”

  Kerney gave him the info and said, “Let me know if anything comes of it.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Sapian disconnected and Kerney continued his walk. He didn’t know the first thing about copper smelting, but the handout Dobson had provided told him a lot. The flash furnace Dobson had mentioned once produced eight hundred tons of cast copper daily. In its heyday the smelter had operated around the clock, processing two thousand tons of copper concentrate every twenty-four hours.

  Kerney eyed the buildings, many of them two or three stories tall. Several were connected by what looked like covered chutes or conveyers. To the north the rail spur ran to what appeared to be a loading dock abutting a storage silo. To the south a series of large steel storage tanks defined an area that Kerney took to be the place where sulfuric acid had been produced. Near the tall smokestack in the center of the complex stood another silo and the largest structure on the grounds, which Kerney figured held the furnace used to mold the copper castings.

  He could see why Malcolm Usher, the director of the film, would want to use the smelter in the movie. The stark, utilitarian industrial complex rose out of the desert on a grand scale, in sharp contrast to the raw, knuckled mountains, the soapweed yucca flats, and the ruddy white soil of the dry lakebed, creating a visually stunning effect.

  Back at the employee entrance the panel truck was gone and the administration building was locked. Near his truck a young diamondback rattlesnake slithered slowly across the pavement, soaking up the heat of the day, and disappeared under a boulder in a landscaped bed of crushed red rock that fronted the entrance to the building.

  In late summer or early fall female diamondbacks laid their eggs, giving birth to upwards of two dozen young. As a precaution Kerney checked around his truck carefully before climbing on board and driving away.

  Over twenty years ago Malcolm Usher had started his career directing country music videos, gradually working his way up the food chain. After a successful stint directing episodes for a number of sitcoms, he’d moved on to made-for-television movies, one of which had been nominated for an Emmy.

  Usher had hoped the Emmy nomination would vault him into a shot at directing a feature film, and after waiting for two years he’d finally gotten the call. With this new movie Usher could advance his career. But after reading the script he’d realized the story line was just a little shy of the necessary ingredients for a successful feature film. He was determined to make it better.

  In his apartment he sat at the dining table and looked at the digital photographs his cinematographer had taken of the smelter. The best location for the new scenes was next to the delivery dock by the rail spur, where ore cars and some heavy equipment were parked at the siding. From that vantage point the smelter and smokestack would form a perfect backdrop against the mountains.

  Besides offering excellent visuals, the site provided easy access, which minimized the logistics of moving the equipment, livestock, and cast and crew to the location.

  He thought about Alfred Hitchcock’s famous crack that actors should be treated like cattle, and snickered. Hitchcock had never made a Western, or he would have had his chance.

  Pleased with his decision, Usher began mapping out the scenes. He was deeply engrossed in the process when Johnny Jordan knocked at the open door and entered, looking piqued.

  “I don’t like this change you’re proposing, Malcolm,” he said.

  Usher glanced at his wristwatch. “You took your time getting here.”

  Johnny turned a chair around and straddled it. “And I’ve been talking to some people who don’t like it either.”

  “Let me guess,” Usher said. “Could that be your rodeo stars?”

  Johnny nodded. “They hired on to do a cattle drive and a rodeo, not to be part of some dumb melee at the damn copper smelter.”

  Usher removed his reading glasses. “No, they signed on as actors, which means they do what the director tells them to do. If they don’t like it, I’ve got stuntmen who can do the job just as well for a lot less money. In fact, Corry McKowen, my stunt coordinator, rode the pro circuit for five years. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind getting a costarring credit on his résumé.”

  “Corry was a lightweight on the circuit.”

  “Maybe so, but he’s no lightweight as a stuntman. Tell me now if you want to pull your cowboys off the film. Believe me, it’s no big deal to replace actors who walk before shooting starts.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Johnny said, his brow creased with worry.

  Usher held back a smile. Jordan might know a lot about rodeoing, but he didn’t know squat about moviemaking. “Then work with me, Johnny. This could be the best damn Western fight scene in a film since John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara brawled with the homesteaders in McLintock! over forty years ago.”

  “That was a good movie,” Johnny said grudgingly.

  “Let’s write the scenes together so that your boys get to show off their stuff in front of the cameras,” Usher said.

  Johnny nodded and edged his chair close to the table.

  The apartment Kerney was to share with Johnny had two small bedrooms separated by a bath, a galley kitchen with an adjacent dining nook, and a living room furnished with a couch, one easy chair, a couple of end tables with lamps, and a wall-mounted television set. The groundskeeper who had been watering the lawn when Kerney arrived had told him the building had originally been used to provide temporary housing for visiting company employees and executives from the home office.

  Johnny wasn’t around, so Kerney dumped his travel bag in one of the bedrooms and went to the mercantile store to grab some dinner. A large motor home parked by the entrance had a sign painted on it that read:

  WESTERN SCENE CATERERS

  PURVEYORS OF FINE FOOD

  TO THE FILM INDUSTRY

  Inside the store, rows of cafeteria tables and chairs had been set up, and a buffet meal was available at a serving table filled with warming trays of food, drink urns, dinnerware, and utensils. Kerney chose the vegetarian entrée and joined two men at one of the tables, who introduced themselves as Buzzy and Gus.

  In their early fifties, both men had an easy style about them that made Kerney feel comfortable and welcome. Over dinner he learned a good bit about the complexities of photographing a motion picture.

  Gus, the key grip, explained that his job was to set up diffusion screens and large shades to modify light for the cameras, operate camera dollies and cranes, and mount cameras on vehicles and airplanes. Buzzy, the gaffer, supervised the lighting for each scene and ran the crew responsible for setting up the lamps and generating the power.

  Kerney asked them if Usher’s decision to change the ending of the screenplay was common practice.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Gus said with chuckle. “Any good director puts his own stamp on a film. There will be dialogue rewrites, camera-angle changes, scenes that get d
ropped, altered, or added—the list goes on and on.”

  “We’ll have most of it sorted out at a final production meeting once we’ve visited all the locations,” Buzzy said. “That’s when we’ll know basically what stays and what goes.”

  “Don’t the producers have a say?” Kerney asked.

  “Not creatively,” Gus replied. “Charlie Zwick will have his hands full dealing with production delays, weather changes, sick or ill-tempered actors, continuity problems, staying within the budget—you name it.”

  “Fortunately, Charlie and Malcolm have worked together before,” Buzzy said, “so it should go smoothly.”

  After dinner with Gus and Buzzy, Kerney took a stroll through the empty, silent streets of Playas, past rows of dark, vacant houses. As daylight faded, streetlights in the dormant town flickered on, casting eerie shadows through an occasional dead tree. It felt almost otherworldly, as though some invisible catastrophe had annihilated the population of the town, leaving behind the houses as a mute testimony to the disaster.

  He turned the corner on a residential street near a shuttered building that had once served as the town library, and caught sight of a roadrunner scooting around the rear end of a Motor Transportation Division patrol car parked in front of an occupied house.

  Part of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, the MTD primarily enforced federal and state safety statutes of commercial motor vehicles, including hazardous-material and drug-interdiction inspections. Although its officers had full police powers, most of the agency’s resources were allocated to traffic safety, commercial vehicle over-the-road compliance, and drug trafficking.

  Farther on Kerney passed another occupied house with a Hidalgo County sheriff’s squad car parked outside. He was on the tail end of his walk, heading down the hill in the direction of the town center, when his cell phone rang.