A Child across the Sky

by Jonathan Carroll

  If they were dressed in black because they were widows, they were the merriest widows I ever saw. The four of them sat there nightly, telling each other stories. I watched as often as I could because they were irresistible.

  Whatever any one of them said, the other three sat with the most attentive expressions and gave the greatest responses I've ever seen from any audience. They gasped, slapped their cheeks, or stuck closed fists in mouths. But in the end their final reactions were usually the same: "No, that's impossible!" or wild, side-splitting laughter. Of course I have no idea what they really said, but that's how it looked from fifty feet away. Those women and their absolute interest in each other haunted me until I put the memory of them at the beginning of my film How to Put On Your Hat.

  And that was the scene Wyatt and Sasha chose to begin with: the four women (now in black bathing suits) sitting in a park overlooking Lake Almanor in upstate California (the town Phil later used for the first Midnight).

  I had a mouthful of food but said around it, "How the hell are they going to follow that up?" But, by God, they did.

  The cut to the next shot was perfect – Bloodstone's small hand picking up a cut crystal paperweight and bringing it to the camera's eye. The movement is slow and theatrical – Phil wanted us to see the strange child's hand and linger on it before we noticed what it was doing.

  Through the prism's different faces we see a bright green object, split into four. The hand moves, and now we see something red split into four. A quick move again, to something black split into four. Since we never know what it is we're actually seeing through the glass, it could just as easily be the four women in the park.

  The sandwich tasted great. The drink tasted great. They were doing it! The prism scene dissolves into one from Sorrow and Son – a black bedspread being shaken once and then used to cover the dead beekeeper. The woman doesn't see the jar of honey in a corner that's fallen over and oozed its muck onto the floor.

  Before it changed, I said, "Bloodstone and the honey!" which was their next scene.

  Besides my growing excitement and relish for what my friends had assembled, a parallel dismay had set in when I realized again how much Strayhorn had taken from my work. Not just favorite images – honey, prisms, the grain in oak wood – but also a very specific way of turning the viewer's head in a certain direction so they'll be sure to catch an angle or fall of color that makes everything come together.

  I was a fan of Phil's razor-sharp Esquire column, but not of his films. I'd liked Midnight very much, when I first saw it, and told him so plenty of times. The fact I didn't like it so much now, or like the other ones, didn't make any difference.

  On the other hand, my films could do no wrong in his mind. Whenever we got together, he would grill me on how I'd done a specific shot or what had influenced me when I was writing a section of dialogue. He always wanted to know what I was reading and what new ideas I had for movies. The day he showed me his video The Circus on Fire, I put my arm around him and hugged him. I'd forgotten his answer in the burst of my enthusiasm but now, thinking hard, I vaguely remembered something like, "Maybe there's hope yet, huh?"

  What embarrassed and annoyed me now was not having noticed this "borrowing" when I'd originally seen the films. There's very little of it in Midnight, but a hell of a lot of it in the others.

  Sure, being copied is great flattery. But not in this case, not with a friend who was so full of his own vision and talent that he didn't need to suck on my straw to get sustenance.

  Sasha and Wyatt's piece was still running, but I hadn't been paying attention. I rewound the tape and fixed my mind on business.

  When it was finished I knew it wouldn't work. Witty, imaginatively conceived, and sinister in many of the right places, the clip was nevertheless too thought out and smooth, if that's the right word. It was horror with style but no honesty. The work of damned good professionals who knew their business, but clearly thought what they were doing here was silly bullshit and not to be taken seriously.

  One of the reasons why The Finky Linky Show was such a big success was the famous tongue-in-cheek humor that was so much a part of the personality of both Finky Linky himself and the weekly half hour. Any age could watch because there were jokes on so many different levels. In-jokes, kid jokes, smart-ass jokes, clever jokes . . . the gamut. Wyatt did it like no one else.

  But some of that double– and triple-entendre approach came over to their Midnight Kills sequences, and in the end it was annoying. If you're going to make a horror film, damn it, go flat out. No winky asides or additions that say, We're all above this, aren't we?

  When Wyatt gave me the Umbo book and said he thought we should give M.K. "that" feeling, I thought he'd meant the sinister, edgy mood of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s: Cabaret, Otto Dix, Bruno Schulz. But the way he intercut my work with Phil's, it appeared what he intended was a contemporary film noir, a thinking man's B movie. It had begun so well, too: quiet and tender. The sight of the nailless child hand was enough to set off small alarms inside. You were waiting for more not-so-nice to come. But it didn't. Only fancy cutting and sliding pieces and scenes around. We easily could have used this to end Strayhorn's work, but I knew it could be much better.

  There were three other cassettes stacked on top of this television. The first one was of the bicycle kids I'd filmed that afternoon, the gambado boy and retarded Walter. I slid it in and watched them wheel around. Gambado had asked me three times to use the camera. "You should only take pictures of us!" Where had he gotten that word? The question wasn't intriguing since I'd seen the Finky Linky tape. There were more important things to think about.

  You know how, when you're nervous sometimes, you pick things up and put them down without really knowing you're doing it? That's what happened to me, only my nervousness manifested itself by sliding tapes in and out of the video machine, watching them for fifteen seconds, then going on to another. It felt stupid but necessary. I was thinking, but I was nervous and wanted my hands and head to be functioning. That worked for a while, but the nervousness grew and I switched on the other two TVs and their respective videos.

  The room was a bombed-out mess. Every day Sasha groaned over what had happened to her once-nice TV room, and I kept promising to clean it but hadn't. Books, notes, videotapes, clothes. Small mountains of "I don't need it now but I might any minute, so leave it there." The other great slob I knew was Max Hampson. He used to joke about how he could get away with it because –

  "Max!"

  Where was that tape? I looked and looked, frenzied, hysterical, finally laughing because I wanted to find it so goddam much.

  "It's on the fucking TV, asshole!"

  One of the three I'd seen up there before; it was even marked with his name. My hands were in such a hurry to get it out of its box that they tried to jiggle and pull it at the same time. I realized I was saying "Oh, yay! Yay! Yay!" while I worked it out and plugged it in.

  The dinner party. Fast forward. Greetings. Fast forward. More. People talking. Eating. Camera on Sasha putting a forkful of brown cake in her mouth. That's it. Question: "What do you think is in Poodle Cake?" She shrugs and goes on eating. Cut to Dominic Scanlan. ". . . and Blow Dry!" Everyone laughs. Camera pans to Max, and it takes only a moment to see something's broken in him and he's collapsing.

  I don't know why I kept the film in the first place, but there it was. I ran it back and watched again, marking the number on the counter to zero at the point where Max appears and we see the metamorphosis.

  How long did I sit there, watching that one– or two-minute sequence, again and again? How many times? When did the quiet, familiar voice inside say, "We want this scene. We need it."

  I don't know the answer to those questions, but the more troubling one was why none of those other inner voices protested. We were unanimous. Use Max Hampson's agony to make this picture better? Okay.

  What shall I give for my reasons? What would be an impressive excuse? Max was still in the hos
pital but getting better every day. If Pinsleepe could be trusted, filming his attack might even result in saving him. She'd said not to feel bad because it had been for the project, and if I could pull that all together in the end, my sick friends would be healed.

  That sounds reasonable and fair, doesn't it? A little utilitarianism never hurt anyone, especially if no one gets hurt in the end.

  We spend our lives learning how to rationalize our imperfect behavior, but let me tell you something: It all boils down to the three sizes of guilt.

  When it's small, we can slip it into our pocket and not think about it the rest of the day. Didn't do your exercises? Write the letter to your mother? Make the call? Fix the nice soup you planned? Screw it – the day was hard enough and you did your bit.

  Medium-size guilt doesn't fit into the pocket and must be carried awkwardly in the hand like an iron barbell or, when it's really bad, a squirming live animal. We know it's there every minute, yet still find ways to lessen or shift our discomfort. Having an affair and aren't so nice to your spouse because you're spending too much energy on this new love? Then buy that old love some obscenely expensive, thoughtful gift and, what time you do spend together, be so passionate and concerned that you glow in the dark.

  Large-size guilt either crushes you or bends you so far to the ground that, either way, you're immobilized. No shifting this weight. No way of getting out from under it.

  Phil had it, I'm sure. Particularly after defying Pinsleepe's advice and making the scene that resulted in the death of Matthew Portland and the others.

  I didn't feel that crushing guilt about including the Max scene because I hadn't defied anyone and my intentions were 90 percent honorable. Yes, I wanted to do this work with originality and vision, but hadn't that always been my goal in anything I did? What was new or changed for the worse? It wasn't like finding treasure and, ignoring the friends who'd helped, deciding to keep it all for myself.

  Besides, doing a good job had been Pinsleepe's mandate. After what happened to Strayhorn, I was pretty wary of defying her!

  I'd thought so much about Pinsleepe. Was she real? Good, bad, an angel? She was powerful magic, that was the only sure thing. The memory of her hands on her swollen stomach and that milky light beginning to emanate from it a moment later was an image I would take to my grave. Then all of her appearing and disappearing, the cryptic adult remarks followed by a childish naivete that was almost beautiful in its innocence – if that's what it was.

  I did conclude that if she were some kind of evil she would have told me specifically how to make this scene, because it was logical she'd want it precisely so, to be right. But there'd never been any directions on what to do, which was why I leaned toward believing she was good, or at least . . . neutral.

  People have often been surprised by the way I work. Usually when I find the idea I'm looking for, I put everything down and leave the desk. Obviously not on a movie set, but when I was writing poetry or scripts, once I'd found the right metaphor or solution to a problem, I'd get up and leave the room instead of putting the answer down and moving on. Maybe it's superstition – don't ask the gods for more than that – or just self-indulgence, I don't know.

  That day too, when I had what I wanted and knew the order, I left the house with an empty head but an excited heart. What would Wyatt and Sasha say when I told them these ideas? Or should I just go ahead and make what I had in mind and show them when it was finished?

  It was early evening. The delicious peach light and calm air said, Come, take a stroll and enjoy us. The white stone sidewalk was still radiating the day's warmth, and for a moment it reminded me of the time I'd worked for the Forest Service in Oregon, fighting forest fires. The first thing they'd told us to do was go buy a pair of very thick natural-rubber boots. Forest floors got so hot during a fire, if you didn't have good protection –

  "Hey, dude."

  I'd been enjoying my dream of hot floors in Oregon and hadn't paid attention to who'd come up in front of me.

  4

  It was the bike riders from the park that afternoon – what looked like all of them, including Gambado in the lead with little Walter again sitting crossways on the other's black-and-yellow BMX.

  "Hey, hello! Do you guys live around here?"

  The kids looked at each other slyly. No, they didn't, but who was going to be the first to volunteer that information?

  Gambado. "No, man, we followed you home before, but you didn't even see us!" That brought on a bunch of snickers and nods; either they were good tails or I was completely out of it.

  "You followed me and've been waiting here since? What for?"

  Gambado had a nice face, friendly and open, but some of the other kids, both black and white, looked sneaky and dishonest. If you made eye contact they either looked away fast or gave you one of those wise-guy "fuck you" smirks kids are so good at.

  "I guess we want you to go with us."

  "You guess? Go where?"

  "Just down a couple of blocks. We want to show you something."

  "What?"

  He had on a black RUN DMC baseball cap, turned backward. "Aw, man, chill out. We ain't gonna rob you. We got something to show you, okay?"

  "I don't think so."

  A car drove by slowly. No one watched it.

  "Walter'll show you something. Maybe that'll make you want to come. Go ahead, Walter."

  The boy with the tragically round, marked face slid off the bike and clumped down the street. Ten feet away, he lifted off the sidewalk and rose into the air. Imagine those Renaissance religious paintings of any of the saints ascending, and that is what it looked like. We could hear Walter ascending through the leaves of the trees until he was a large silhouette against the California sky. A child across the sky.

  Gambado put two fingers together and gave a long, shrieking whistle. Like a pet bird, Walter came right back down, slowing as he got closer to earth. A foot from the pavement, he swung up like birds do and landed with the gentlest touch and hitch on his sneakered feet.

  "Pinsleepe sent you?"

  The kids snickered.

  "Shut up, you guys. No, she didn't send us, but sort of. You want to come with us now." It wasn't a question.

  "All right."

  "Good. It's not far. Come on."

  There were nine of them on bikes – ten, including Walter. They rode slowly but kept spurting forward like young dogs on leashes. I walked along behind them, Gambado always right beside me.

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see in a minute."

  One of the others, a boy with a skinhead haircut and no shirt on, turned and said, "To the movies, man!"

  That set the others off hooting and catcalling, but Gambado got mad and told them to shut up or he'd turn their faces into dog food. More yelling and insults, but none of them said any more to me.

  Eleven-year-old boys on bicycles ranking each other out, right before dinnertime. What else is new? "Walter! Come home, dear. Dinner's on the table!" But Walter had just flown above Third Street.

  "Are you supposed to tell me anything else?"

  "No, just take you over to the place." He said no more, and we continued on our way.

  I was so thrown off by what had been happening that it took me awhile to realize there was no traffic on the street. We were moving along Third, which is always busy and buzzing, but not then. No traffic, no cars, nothin'.

  A moment after that realization struck me, one by one the kids began weaving their way out onto the empty street, where they began performing again. Only now the repertoire included bikes floating in the air, riders lifting off them to fly alone, like Walter had done, and other variations.

  It was a child's dream, a child's drawing. You see them in crayon colors on the walls of any kindergarten class. Me on my bicycle, flying. Everyone's favorite scene in E. T.

  I looked at Gambado. He gestured at his friends. "You don't like it? They're doing it for you. You're the guest of honor tonight."
r />   "At what?"

  The Ruth Theater was flanked by a take-out Mexican restaurant on one side and JUNE AND SID'S EXQUISITE CATERING on the other. In the window of the Mexican restaurant was a wilted, sun-bleached sombrero. For some mysterious reason, in June and Sid's window was a stuffed Pekingese dog. The kids noticed that and crowded around the window talking about it.

  The theater interested me more. It was one of those small, pre-World War Two neighborhood theaters that were built when going to the movies was still a major event. Scalloped walls, brass on the doors, and miniature pillars made you feel like someone special on Saturday night, two tickets in hand and your girlfriend close by in her new high heels, walking across the red plush carpet. The place had seen better days, but it was in decent shape and, like so many smaller houses, was now reviving old films. On the billboard it advertised a 1954 film, New Faces.

  "Go on in."

  "This is it? We're really going to the movies?"

  He nodded. His friends wheeled their bikes up to the door of the lobby and leaned them against whatever wall was nearest. None of them locked or did anything at all to protect the bicycles. Trusting souls.

  "Are we seeing New Faces?"

  "No, you know everyone there."

  We walked through the glass doors together, past a copper stand where the ticket taker usually gave you back your stub. There was no ticket taker, but there were posters up on all the walls: posters of my films, posters of Phil Strayhorn's films.

  Walking by Wonderful, Gambado pointed to the poster and said he liked that one best.

  "What's your name?"

  "Gambado's good. Call me that."

  Two of the others stood at the doors, holding them open. When we passed, they both bent at the waist and beckoned us in with long sweeps of the arm.