The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  "That's all?"

  "That's all."

  "Well, I don't know if we have that much in common," I said, "There is a big difference between you and me."

  "Not that much difference, I expect," he said.

  "See, the thing is, you show up riding a magically appearing horse, and have nowhere to be dropped off at. I'm an actor and a stand up comedian and not a cowboy with fake guns."

  "We're actors, we've both done some commercials we weren't crazy about, though the products we represented were legitimate--"

  "I live here, don't have a magical horse, and I don't wear a mask."

  He ran a finger around the rim of his glass and sighed.

  "Fair enough. That's true," he said.

  I had him there, and he took another sip of tea as he stood up, filling the small living room with unmistakable cowboy.

  "Listen Tom," he said, "I just thought we could be friends. If this is making you too uncomfortable, I'll just be on my way."

  He stood in front of me, a tall man in a powder blue shirt laced with rawhide, a flowing, red neckerchief and a white cowboy hat above the heavy gunbelt and mask.

  And he was dead. Yes, I checked on the computer. Dead. I looked up his biography and squinted at blown up photos of Clayton Moore, the guy standing in my living room, and it was this guy, and it said he was dead.

  "Can I, …uh" I stammered.

  "Hm?"

  "Can I ask you something?"

  "Shoot," he said.

  "Are you …urn…"

  He leaned forward a little. "Am I what? A good friend? I like to think I am."

  "No, are you…"

  Some melting ice clinked in his glass as I stared from his eyes down to the floor.

  "C'mon. Cat got your tongue?"

  Not that I'd thought about it very much before that, but it's very hard to ask a person if they're dead.

  "Are you okay with your drink?" I asked.

  I didn't want him to leave. As insane as it sounds even now, I wanted to be his friend. I wanted him to take off his hat and lean close to me and tell me something good and secret and sublime, something about things bigger than traffic and house payments and casting directors for car battery commercials, something to ease my worries about money and survival and what other actors at useless auditions thought of me. I wanted him to tell me that he had amazing, cosmic information, and that everything was going to be just fine, and that there really is mercy and love pouring out to me and to everyone. I wanted him to tell me that my hopes and dreams are all good, and coming to wonderful fruition in God's own time, and I wanted him to tell me that yes, the people who have been so cruel to me in the past will eventually, in God's precious time, drown in unexpected bathtub accidents.

  He didn't even come close. After a few moments of silence, when he sensed I wasn't about to take back the iced tea and throw him out, he offered his hand, silently extending it toward me. Sitting in my soft chair, I looked up at this western icon and gentlemanly crimefighter, and I shook the black glove of the One Ranger in as manly a covenant of sworn brotherhood as I've ever felt in my life. We shook hands, hard and strong, and I knew in that cosmic and infinite way that I was longing only for a friend, someone to watch my back and talk if he felt like it and shut up if he didn't. The fact is, that was enough. He sat back down on the sofa and took a sip of tea.

  "They say you were in "Back In The Future," he said, popping the balloon of our embryonic friendship with the first sentence out of his mouth.

  "Who said that?" I asked.

  "The fellows I met at your audition. You played Ben?"

  I put my drink down as carefully as if there were a coaster under it and said, "If we're going to be friends, then we should be straight with each other, right?"

  "Yes, sir," he said, "Straight as arrows."

  "Well, then what should I call you?…Clayton?"

  He looked back at me without a hint of irony. "I would like you to call me Ranger," he said.

  "Why is that? It's not your name, right?"

  "It isn't and it is," he said, "If I'm going to be the One Ranger, then that's what I'd like to be called."

  "Even to friends like me?" I asked.

  "Even to friends. If a man can decide who he is and where he's going, he can decide what he wants to be called," he said, tilting back to finish his iced tea in an easy swig.

  "Well," I said, "Ranger, there's one or two things you need to know about me. The movie was called "Back TO The Future," I played a character named Biff, and I don't talk about it."

  "You don't?"

  "Nope."

  "You don't talk about it ever?"

  "Are you my friend?"

  "Yes I am."

  "Well, I don't ever talk about it with my friends."

  "Not at all?"

  "Nope."

  "Why not?" he asked.

  "Why do you want me to call you Ranger?"

  My son walked through the room in his socks, surprising both of us.

  "Hey, buddy, what's going on?"

  "Hey, Dad. Howzigoin?" he mumbled, flopping toward the fridge and swinging open the door with his elbow. His baseball glove covered the left hand, forcing him to open the plastic milk jug with his teeth, before he noticed the Ranger, who'd stood up, waiting to be introduced. He spilled a few drops, then stood there staring at us, sucking liquid from the milk cap in his teeth.

  "Hey, Danny, this is my friend," I said, staring back and forth between them, stammering, "uh… my friend…Ranger."

  "Hello, Danny," the Ranger said, "Very pleased to make your acquaintance!"

  "Ranger?"

  "Yes, Danny," the Ranger said.

  "That's your name?"

  "Yes, that's his name, I guess." I turned to the Ranger and clapped my hands, "So I guess you've got to go, huh?"

  "How's it going, Ranger?" Danny said, never letting his eyes off the new guest while he forgot he wasn't alone and swigged milk out of the jug.

  "Hey! Glass, please? What's that about?" I said.

  "What's that about?" he answered, pointing across the coffee table at the Ranger.

  "Hey, lighten up, Francis, it's 'Who is that,' and that is the Ranger, an actor and a friend of mine."

  "Are you working on a movie?" Danny asked him.

  "No I'm not, Danny," he said, "this is my regular get-up."

  "Okay," Danny said, glancing at me for an explanation.

  "Do you have any brothers, Danny?"

  "Sisters," he said.

  "Two in college," I said, "One on deck."

  "Two sisters, Danny?"

  "Three."

  "Yes, three girls, and then a boy," I said, "but I'm raising him as a girl, 'cause I'm not buying all new stuff! That's not a skirt, buddy, it's a kilt! Ha!"

  Danny rolled his eyes and the Ranger stared at me.

  "From the show?" I said, "It's a joke I do in the show. The show you came to?"

  "Huh, well…How old are you, Danny?" the Ranger said.

  "Fourteen," he answered wiping milk on a sleeve, staring at him.

  "What an age!" he said, "Do you like camping out under a sky full of stars?"

  "Huh?"

  "Camping," I said, "He means camping, buddy. Yes, we camp sometimes."

  "Not since Scouts," Danny said, "No, we don't camp."

  Eight seconds of silence went by, until the Ranger walked toward the kitchen with his empty glass. "Okay. Can I put this somewhere?"

  "Leave it in the sink," I said, "Hey, is anybody else at home, Dan?"

  He shrugged and squinted at the Ranger's belt.

  "Those guns real?"

  "What do you think, Danny?" the Ranger said.

  "They look pretty real."

  "Hello? Anybody here?" I yelled down the hallway, getting something muffled back.

  "Are you real?" Danny said.

  I put my hands on my hips, as any Dad would. "Where did that come from? First the milk and now this?"

  "Are you real?" Danny repeated
to him.

  "Daddy!" my daughter Ellie called out, a free-wheeling and lanky blonde with wisps of hair sprouting from under a tie-dyed headband. She turned the corner to hug me and almost fell backwards when she saw the Ranger in front of her and gasped.

  "Hey, El! How are you honey?"

  "Hi, Daddy. I missed …you…" she said, slowing her words as she took in the guest in front of her, finally saying "Hi."

  "This is my daughter Ellie," I told him.

  "Hello, Miss Ellie!" the Ranger said, removing his hat and bowing grandly.

  Her blue eyes were saucers under splashes of headband color. "Hello, uh--"

  "His name is Ranger," Danny said, "Real guns. I asked."

  "Are you doing a movie?" she asked him.

  "Nope, already asked that, too," Danny shouted over his back, flipping the milk jug back into the refrigerator door, "That's his clothes."

  "Cool," Ellie said, "Can I borrow your shirt sometime?"

  "I think it'd be a bit big for you, little lady!" the Ranger chuckled.

  "It'd be a great skirt. Put a belt on it, you know, like a skirt."

  The Ranger looked at me and smiled. "Beautiful family."

  "Are you real?" Ellie said.

  "That's what I said!" Danny spun in place in the kitchen.

  "What do you think, Ellie?" the Ranger said, smiling.

  "Hey, I got in trouble for saying that! Unfair!" Danny said.

  Ellie stared at him for more than a few seconds, until the Ranger extended his hand and she shook it. "I like you," she said, as honest and true as anything this guy had said to me so far.

  "I like you, too, honey," he said.

  She shook his hand. "I get to borrow the shirt. Deal?"

  "You wear some slacks underneath," he answered. "Deal?"

  My wife walked in from our bedroom, wearing sweatpants and a UCLA T-shirt, with short nubs of newly grown blonde hair sprouting from her bald head.

  "Ahkk!" she squealed.

  "Sorry, honey," I said, "I should have called you. This is Clayton."

  She reached for a bandana to cover her head, and then shrugged and waved it in the air, rubbing her fuzzy scalp.

  "Well, hello there, Clayton!"

  "I thought it was Ranger." Danny called out, eating something secretly behind a kitchen cabinet.

  "Clayton is my real name, Danny. Clayton Moore."

  Ellie started clicking away on her phone, as Caroline looked the Ranger over.

  "Nice to meet you, Clayton."

  "Have you been feeling poorly, Ma'am?"

  Everybody froze for a while, until the air came back into the room.

  "Yes, Clayton, I was feeling poorly for a while. I'm a cancer survivor," she said.

  I clapped my hands and rubbed my palms together. "I'm a cancer survivor-survivor!" I said, joking at the wrong time and in the wrong manner, as is my custom.

  "I could tell," the Ranger said to her, ignoring me.

  "Well, I usually wear a hat," she said, twirling her bandana.

  "Oh, not that, Ma'am," he said, "I mean there's a lot of love here," he said.

  "Yes there is," she said, gleaming and direct, "But what does that have to do with—"

  He lifted a finger for emphasis. "Tough to fit so much love into a place that hasn't been through a rough patch. The fire burns, but it sure does leave something behind." She stared at him through the eye holes in his mask and squinted, then relaxed and took a step toward him. "Yes, it does."

  "Yes sir," I said, breathing air through my teeth, "It leaves love and doctor bills, 'cause I know it sure doesn't leave any money." The Ranger looked at the floor for a moment, and then up at my wife.

  "Glad you're here, Caroline," he said.

  "Me too," she said, placing a trusting hand on his arm. Ellie held out her cel phone, displaying the lit screen.

  "Are you an angel or something?" she asked him, "Because on here it says you died."

  She showed him his obituary from four different news sites, all with an archival photo of Clayton Moore.

  "That's you, right?" she asked.

  "Gimme a break," Danny said, "Look at him! The internet is so bogus. Hey, is anybody on the computer?"

  "Sarah is," Ellie said.

  "Sarah!" I called out, "Come here and meet somebody!"

  "I can't!" a voice cried from the small bedroom we use for boxes, papers, glue sticks, and a computer.

  "For a second! Come on!"

  "If I leave here, Danny will get on the computer!"

  "She lies like a rug," Danny said, lurking in a hallway shadow to storm the room and take over the computer if she changed her mind.

  "Well, that's Sarah anyway," I said, picking up my car keys, "So…listen, I have to go out again… and…uh…you've got to be on your way, I guess…"

  The Ranger looked at me. "I do?"

  "I have another appointment."

  His eyes lit up. "Is it for a big picture?"

  "Six or seven lines on an episode of "She-Hulk."

  He was motionless.

  "It's a T.V. show. Syndicated," I said.

  "Oh," he said, "Well, break a leg."

  I chugged the rest of my tea. "So where do you go?" I asked, "I mean, in the times you're not here."

  "If it doesn't make you too uncomfortable, I thought I might just stay here and wait for you," he said.

  "Can't you just ride off on Trig--"

  "Twister, right?" he corrected.

  "Yeah, Twister. Can't Twister just show up and you ride off for a while?" I asked, "I can show you the way to another airport around here if you want."

  Pride stiffened his spine and he stood straighter than I'd ever seen him. "Unless you don't trust me around your family when you're gone."

  "No, I trust you!" I said, "I thought you might have to do something or report somewhere."

  "Nothing right now, no." he said. I looked at Ellie and she smiled at him. "Can I show you my art?"

  "I would love to see it!" he said.

  I showed him where the iced tea mix and glasses and ice were, but Caroline had already seen his empty glass and was making a new batch.

  "Are you staying for dinner?" she said, as I waved her off the subject from behind his head.

  "My stomach is growling already!" he said, "I would love to, if it's not too much bother."

  "One more piece of chicken," she said.

  I yelled goodbye to Danny, which elicited no response at all because he was fighting over the computer with Sarah, and the Ranger took off his gunbelt and draped it gently over the back of the sofa.

  "I'll be back in a couple hours, depending on traffic," I said.

  "Fair enough, Tom," he called out, biting the fingers of his right hand to pull off a glove, as Ellie ran down the hall to get her bulging art portfolio.

  "Some of the pastels aren't finished yet!" she said.

  "I can't wait to see them!" he said, as Danny screamed something about his private email account through the wall.

  As I approached the front door two hours later, I could hear the crazed raspy cheer of Christopher Lloyd screaming his head off. "YYAAAAHHHH! ! YAAAAAY!!" and I opened the door on him, caught watching Back To The Future on my T.V.

  "No. Oh, come on, man," I said, slamming the door behind me. With his gloves laid neatly on his gunbelt, and boots laying on the floor, he had his socks up on the coffee table and his hat tilted on the back of his head.

  "Excuse me," I said, "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Jiminy Crickets, he just went back in the future!"

  "Turn it off, would you? What is this, is it on cable again?"

  "No, it's a tape," he said.

  "A tape? Where did you get a tape?"

  "Shh," he said, leaning closer and squinting to watch the final scene where Marty goes home and all is well and Biff is waxing Marty's truck.

  "Turn this off," I said.

  "Why? It's your tape. It was in the drawer with tapes and such. Danny set it up for me."
r />   I picked up the ragged VHS box from the table, worn to almost nothing through loans to friends with new VCRs in the eighties.

  "How do you know how to work a VCR?" I asked.

  "I told you Danny showed me," he said.

  "Where are the kids?"

  "They helped me with the tape, but when they heard what it was, they all left. Seems they've seen it," he said, "By the way, Danny went to Rick's house and he might not be home for dinner."

  He watched Doc show up driving the car from the future, pulling into the street and taking off through the clouds, wonder and excitement shining through the mask.

  "Roads?" the tape churned, "Where we're going we don't need roads."

  The Ranger looked at me in triumph.

  "Yes!" he said.

  "You're the heavy then?" he said, after the credits rolled and he gave me a standing ovation in his socks. "I played the heavy in all sorts of pictures. "Frank and Jesse James," and "Jesse James Rides Again." I played Jesse James! How about that!"

  "You did?"

  "Oh, sure," he said, "I was also a mean hombre in a bunch of pictures with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers."

  "You were?" I said, "Roy Rogers?"

  "Yep, we had a ball," he said, stretching and stifling a yawn, "But it was a lot of hard work, too. We shot fifteen episodes in six weeks. That's a lot of riding and punching stuntmen and falling through windows. How long did it take you to make Back To The Future?"

  "A long time," I said, my back slowly tensing.

  "How long is that?" he asked, adding "Hey, would you like an iced tea? I made some."

  "No, thanks," I said, "But it took months and months because a guy got replaced."

  "What happened? Somebody got hurt? I've seen that happen."

  "Yeah, me too. No, he got fired. The guy playing Marty got fired."

  "Who, the guy there now?"

  "No, Eric Stoltz got fired and Michael J. Fox--"

  "Who's which now?"

  I stood up. "Listen, this is stuff that I don't really get into, so--"

  "Why not?" he said "It's just stories. Things that happened."

  "Remember our little talk, Ranger? I call you Ranger and you don't ask me anything about--"

  "The future?"

  "Right."

  He pulled his feet onto the floor and pulled his boots on. "Well, you might not want to talk about it, but--"

  "You're right," I said, staring at him, "I don't want to talk about it."

  He pulled on one glove, and then another, squeezing in little grunts that sounded something like "it's a great picture," and "You're good in it, you know," and more like those when his right glove had a couple of fingers inside out and took longer to put on. I finally stared him down until he stopped.