Heartland

by Davis Bunn

  “That don’t change a thing, Clara.” Slowly but forcefully JayJay drew his hand away. “I got six hours of riding in each direction. There ain’t no way I can get back tonight.”

  Clara pouted and looked at the man from beneath her long lashes. “I don’t like being here on my own, JayJay. The nights just go on forever.”

  “I’ll leave you the rifle.”

  “No, I couldn’t sleep thinking about you out there in wolf country with nothing but your six-shooter and your knife.”

  Martin’s shivers only strengthened. The man was wooden, sure. And his gaze tracked the words. JayJay read the lines without inflection. But this was television. Hits had been launched with worse. A certain household name had become a star playing a cowhand on a cattle drive. Nobody thought the public would have any interest in week after week of marauding Indians and panicked steers. But the thing worked. And the fact that thirty years later the actor was still known around town as the Wooden Nickel did not matter at all.

  JayJay said, “Them wolves are taking our calves, Clara. You know how I feel about them little ones. I got to round them up and bring them back.”

  Clara did not look like any sister Martin had ever known, not as she drew one fingernail slowly down the front of JayJay’s shirt. The nail’s passage left a dark imprint where the man’s sweat stained through. She asked, “How long will you be gone?”

  “That depends on how you act when I get back, woman. Now keep your paws to yourself.”

  “Cut! Okay, JayJay, just read the lines.”

  “You tell this conniving woman she ain’t to touch me like she was working the back room of Baker’s Taproom.”

  “What’s the matter, JayJay?” Clara pouted. “Don’t you want to give your sister a good-bye kiss?”

  “That’s enough, both of you.” Britt stepped into camera range. He slipped the headphones from around his neck and tossed them off-camera. “Look, JayJay. What say we just take a little walk out back. I’d like to shoot you in the natural light.”

  “Long as she don’t come along. Else I’ll be shooting her with something besides that camera.”

  “Bye-bye, brother,” Clara sang. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “You just chill, okay? Come on, JayJay. She’s pulling your leg.”

  The portable followed them through the mammoth soundstage. JayJay gave everything they passed a nervous glance, then turned away. Like he’d be burned if he looked at anything too long.

  Britt took him through the double doors marked “Corral.” The camera adjusted with digital swiftness to the change in light. Britt said, “Give us another close-up here.”

  While JayJay was still getting his bearings, the camera swooped in so tight Martin could see where the makeup lay uneven on JayJay’s neck.

  Britt obviously noticed it as well, for he turned in his seat and said, “JayJay basically melted his first makeup. Peggy must have missed that bit there.”

  Martin waved it aside. On the screen, JayJay was staring ahead like a drowning man spying dry land. The camera shifted around so that Martin could see what JayJay was looking at.

  “Hey, girl,” JayJay said. “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.”

  The mare flicked its ears and whinnied.

  JayJay vaulted the corral fence and whistled once. The horse came trotting over.

  Martin said, “I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  JayJay let the horse nestle against his chest as he stroked its forehead. He bent down and touched the right foreleg. “Let me see that hoof, girl.”

  The horse obligingly lifted its leg. The same leg that had threatened to separate Townsend’s head from his shoulders. The horse sniffed JayJay’s back as he bent over and inspected the foreleg. Martin heard the horse whinny again.

  JayJay straightened. “Why, you’re as good as new, aren’t you? I guess them docs were right after all. Rest was the only thing that’d cure you.”

  Britt turned in his chair so he could watch the studio chief’s response. “At least he’s seen the show.”

  Martin nodded agreement. They had written out the horse after it bit Townsend’s shoulder so bad he needed forty stitches and a skin graft. Martin had resisted months of attorneys and agents yelling for the horse to be destroyed. For one thing, Skye had cost upward of a quarter million dollars. For another, the horse had only done what almost everybody on the set had wanted to do for months.

  The mare was a dappled gray with the most astonishing silver mane and tail. Skye shook her mane and whinnied louder still.

  JayJay responded by leaping onto the horse bareback. “Giddap there!”

  The horse bolted. Or so it seemed to Martin. The view jerked as the cameraman tried hard to follow the unexpected action. Horse and rider did a loping run around the corral’s perimeter.

  JayJay then guided the horse toward the derelict exercise ramp in the middle of the sawdust-covered circle. The horse accelerated and leaped over both hurdles together. JayJay laughed as he rocked down hard on the horse’s neck. He recovered swiftly and guided the horse twice more around the perimeter, before leading the mare back to where a crowd had gathered. The horse pulled up sharply, then rose up tall as a dappled mountain on its rear legs. JayJay Parsons kept his legs tight to the mare’s ribs and gripped the mane with one fist while his other hand came up in a traditional salute over his head. A salute they had dropped after the second season, when Townsend’s rising-star status meant he could begin indulging his bad habits.

  But Townsend had never ridden bareback. Not in a zillion seasons.

  JayJay dropped to the sawdust-covered earth. He stroked the horse’s neck. And he smiled.

  The camera did not need to zoom in to catch that smile’s power. Martin felt it in his gut. It was not just a good smile. It captured the sunlight and drew it down with pinpoint accuracy.

  The screen went blank. The lights came up too fast, catching Martin before he was ready.

  Britt grinned. “We’re back in business, aren’t we.”

  Martin punched the speakerphone. “Run the tape again. Put it on the small screen.”

  The camera operator asked, “You want spots or the whole deal?”

  “Show me everything.”

  The lights dimmed once more. Early in his reign, Martin Allerby had positioned a television to the right of the main screen. Too often the big screen did not reveal what the folks at home saw. But this was not the real reason why Martin wanted to watch JayJay a second time.

  He needed a chance to recover.

  As the scene ran on the smaller screen, Martin had to struggle not to shout out his rage.

  Martin Allerby was not just looking at a star.

  There on the tiny box was a man who had just become his enemy. Martin Allerby needed a moment to mask his frustrated fury. And decide which knife to use. And how.

  Chapter 6

  JayJay Parsons had never reeled anywhere in his entire life. He had seen enough of the wrong sort of folks staggering out of Baker’s Taproom. He had even fought a couple that threatened the peace of Simmons Gulch. But JayJay did not reel. Especially not in broad daylight, leaving someplace called Centurion Studios. But that is exactly what he did.

  He staggered down the cracked sidewalk, around the corner, and almost wound up planted on a sixteen-wheeler’s front bumper. That woke him up a trifle. He leaned against a lamppost and took stock. Or tried to.

  He was surrounded by ugly. The traffic was constant, the street an asphalt river six lanes wide. When the light went red again, he stared at the oddest vehicle he had ever laid eyes on. The sparkling rims kept spinning even when the car was still. Music loud as a jackhammer thumped through the open window, shouting an angry tirade. The passenger wore bulbous insect-eye sunglasses and a shirt with every button open. Three gold chains thumped against his tattooed chest as he rocked back and forth to the beat. He noticed JayJay and grinned. “What’s the haps, Pops? Where’s your horse?”r />
  “Back at the corral,” JayJay replied.

  The stranger laughed and spoke to the driver in Spanish. Everybody leaned over to stare at JayJay. The stranger made a gun from his forefinger and thumb and took aim at JayJay. The driver shouted over, “Vaya con Dios, vajero,” then gunned the motor. The car roared away.

  The buildings were all stained yellow with the dry desert dust. Scrubby weeds and scraggly trees dotted the otherwise lifeless street. The only people he saw were in cars. The only crops that thrived were billboards and telephone poles.

  He walked because it gave his body something to do while his mind struggled to make sense of everything he had seen. The day just didn’t add up.

  “Hey, guys! Take a look, will you!”

  JayJay winced and shied like a nervous filly as somebody rushed toward him. A voice yelled, “I don’t believe this.”

  “Hold fire there, stranger.”

  “Sorry, sorry, yeah, sure, you must get a lot of this. It’s just . . .” The newcomer had too large a grin for his young face. “You’re him, right?”

  A young woman raced up so fast she bounced off the young man. “It’s you.”

  Another man bounded up. And two more women. “It can’t be.”

  “The studio’s only a couple of blocks from here,” the first guy pointed out. “You’re him. You’ve got to be.”

  JayJay did what any man who’d been brought up proper should do. He offered his hand. “JayJay Parsons.”

  “Oh, man, this is just too much.” The girl was tiny and Oriental. She jumped up and down, turning a circle in the process. “I was raised on you.”

  He stood in the center of a growing crowd. All of them shone with the enthusiasm of youth and good health. The first guy to have approached was slender and Oriental, with high cheekbones and jet-black eyes. “Can I just say one thing, sir? My family came over here on the boats after Nam. Not me, I was born here. But my grandmother and my parents.”

  He spoke in such a rush he had to stop and breathe, then, “I know you hear this all the time. But I’ve got to tell you anyway. My grandma doesn’t speak much English and my Vietnamese is lousy. But every week, man, I wish you could see what it’s like. Eight o’clock Tuesdays, we are there. Planted in front of the tube. It’s the only time our house is quiet. Tuesday nights and church, that’s our time together, all of us.” Excitement squeezed tears into the kid’s eyes. “And every night when the show goes off, my grandmother, she says the same thing to me. ‘Go and be like him. That’s why we came to America. For you to become a man like him.’”

  JayJay allowed the kid to take his hand. “I don’t rightly understand what you’ve said, mister. But I’m much obliged just the same.”

  The young woman who looked like his sister asked, “Can I have your autograph?”

  “Don’t bother him with that, silly. He gets that all the time.”

  “I don’t have pen nor paper, miss.” He looked out over the throng. There had to be a couple of dozen now. All of them in their teens and twenties. “What’s going on here? Y’all are the first people I’ve seen out in the daylight.”

  They all laughed like he had just told a joke. “Yeah, that’s LA for you.”

  “We’re headed for the fires.”

  “Fires?”

  “You haven’t heard?” A dozen voices all started talking together.

  The Vietnamese kid shouted, “Quiet!” When the chatter subsided, he went on, “Wildfires, JayJay.”

  A kid with a serious dose of freckles said, “That’s not his name.”

  “It is as far as I’m concerned. What is your name?”

  “John Junior was what I was called as a kid. Nowadays JayJay fits well enough.”

  “There, see?” The kid pointed at the bus and explained, “Our church is sending out volunteers to try and put a fire line between the closest blaze and some homes.”

  Suddenly he did not want to be alone, or separated from these people with their honest gazes and easy talk about things that mattered—church and homes and a very real danger. “Y’all need another set of hands?”

  Eyes grew round. “Are you serious? You want to come? With us?”

  “Sounds like you’re off to do the right thing.” He couldn’t say why they were so thrilled to hear him volunteer. But it made him feel as good as he had that entire strange day. “Can’t see myself doin’ anything less.”

  “There he is. With the kids.”

  “I see him.”

  Peter sat in the car of his best pal from the studio, Derek Steen. Derek was African American with skin the color of sourwood honey and hair cropped to a black knit helmet. Derek was the number two cameraman on the Heartland series. Like a lot of people working behind the camera, Derek was a quiet guy, and very strong for his slender build. Derek played guard on Peter’s church basketball team. Peter had seen Derek lay out a forward twice his size when the opponent thought he could just run Derek over, and instead discovered he had struck a concrete barrier.

  Derek asked, “Who are these people?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re dressed for hiking or something.”

  “No. Wait. See the gear? Sure. I heard of them. They’re going—”

  “To fight the fires. Right. I heard them make the announcement at church, same as you.”

  “Look. He’s helping them load the bus.”

  “He can’t be.” But he was. This new JayJay Parsons was now part of the conga line, humping a huge pile of protective clothing and water and axes and sleeping bags and ropes into the baggage compartment of the church bus.

  “Stars don’t do that,” Peter protested.

  “This one apparently does.” Derek spun around and leaned over the rear of his seat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Probably wasting some perfectly good film.” Derek had rescued a broken last-generation camera, jerry-rigged a 35mm lens so that it fit the tighter digital nozzle, and spent his spare time running down stories for several local news stations. Derek had three children, a fourth on the way, and needed the extra income.

  When Peter started shifting in his seat, Derek said, “Don’t open your door. I don’t want them to see us.”

  “I’m just reaching for my phone.”

  “You won’t get a signal.” Derek focused through the front windscreen and clicked the trigger. The camera gave a gentle whirring. “Apparently the cell-phone companies think the valley doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say.”

  Peter shut the phone and stowed it away. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “What, the new JayJay?”

  “Of course the new JayJay. Just look at the guy. He’s . . .”

  “Incredible, I know.” Derek stopped filming and settled the camera into his lap.

  “You don’t sound worried about it.”

  “How long have we been praying for a miracle to rescue the show?”

  “Since the beginning of last season.”

  “Exactly. Then what happens but our pastor suggests we get the word out, since there are so many others who love the guy JayJay is supposed to be. Now we’ve got prayer groups all over the country praying for rain.” Derek pointed with his chin through the front windshield. “You know what I see out there sweating in the desert heat? A future. Want to guess how many starving cameramen there are in LA?”

  “Not as many as there are starving writers.”

  “Exactly. So this guy comes out of nowhere and walks into the role like he was made for it. So what?”

  “No. Like he actually is JayJay Parsons.”

  “Whatever. The facts stay the same. The studio powers have bought into this guy. Which means you’re not just another guy with a laptop and a legend of once having written for a hit series.” Derek picked at a bit of loose tape binding the camera’s cover. “Personally, when I say my prayers tonight, I’m going to give a lot of thanks that this guy popped in from wherever.”

  Peter sat up straighter. “What’s he doing no
w?”

  Derek squinted through the windscreen. “This isn’t happening.”

  JayJay Parsons accepted a meal bag and a bottled water from a smiling young woman and followed an Asian guy onto the bus. The motor fired up.

  “Can we follow him?”

  “You kidding me?” Derek started his car. “When you get a signal, call my agent. Tell him I’ve got some footage he can take national.”

  When he found a signal Peter called his wife and left a message that he would be late. He then called Derek’s agent and gave her secretary the requested message. The PA heard him out, then told him to hold. The agent came on, totally LA, all brusque energy and hustle. “Who is this?”

  “Peter Caffrey.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend of Derek’s. He asked me to call.”

  “He won’t talk to me himself?”

  “We’re on a mountain road and Derek drives a stick shift.”

  “So what you said to my PA, it’s true?”

  “JayJay Parsons is going off to fight the wildfires with a team from a Riverside church.”

  “You mean Neil Townsend.”

  “No. Townsend is off the show. His replacement.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Peter stumbled on that, and decided, “JayJay Parsons.”

  “Sure. I get it. You’re stressing continuity. But it still won’t wash. A replacement who hasn’t been tested on-screen could fly to the moon and it wouldn’t be news.”

  “Hold on a second.” Peter cupped the phone. “Your agent says it won’t wash.”

  “Plant the phone to my ear.”

  “This is silly.”

  “Just do it, okay?” When the phone was within range, Derek said, “Have I ever steered you wrong?” He listened a moment, then, “And I’m telling you this guy is more JayJay Parsons than Townsend ever was. No. You’ve just got to take my word, is what. I’m about to hand you a major exclusive. All I’m saying is, you should make the calls.”

  Derek motioned with his head for Peter to retrieve the phone. “Agents.”

  “You can have mine anytime you like.”

  “No thanks. They’re like bottled water. The only thing that changes is the packaging. Inside it’s all the same and tasteless.”