The Englishman’s Boy

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  I wait for Shorty to take the bait. He doesn’t.

  “At first I thought, Shorty needs to get to know me. I have to establish confidence and trust before he’ll open up to me. I told myself, The money you’re paying him now is just seed money. Think of it as seed money. But where’s the crop, Shorty? I can’t wait forever for the crop.”

  Shorty holds a can of beans in his left hand. His eyes avoid me.

  “I think maybe I ought to lay the cards on the table for both of us, Shorty,” I say. “I’ve got a sick mother in the hospital. You want to take this boy to Canada with you.” Wylie glances up from his bullets when I mention him, eyes distrustful. “You and I have people depending on us. We have responsibilities. Responsibilities that require money. But nobody gives money away to get nothing in return. My employer is not getting what he wants, Shorty. Soon he’ll cut our water off.”

  “Let him cut it.”

  I raise my voice, turn McAdoo’s head with it. “That’s not good enough, Shorty. I deserve better from you.” I point to Wylie. “How’re you going to get him to Canada without money? And what the hell are you going to do for money when you get him there?”

  McAdoo doesn’t respond. His face is set, emotionless.

  “I am telling you a fact. There is a chance you can carry a substantial amount of money to Canada with you – if you tell me something I can use. But if you have nothing to tell, we are wasting each other’s time.” I pause. “You know what I am asking.”

  “You asking me to put money in your pocket.”

  “If it was just a case of money, don’t you think I could look out for myself? I’d sit down, make up a story, sign your name to it. I know what he wants and I can give it to him; I’m a writer. But more than money’s involved. There’s respect. I respect the man I work for. He’s trusting me to give him the truth and I’ll give him that or I’ll give him nothing. I respect you, too, so I won’t put your name to a lie. Because I don’t believe you’re a liar, Shorty.”

  “No, I ain’t.” He records this as a fact, in a courtroom voice.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Because if you aren’t, that must mean the things that are said about you are true.”

  “I can’t answer on that. Depends on the things.” It comes out hard, a rebuke.

  “They say you were an Indian-fighter.”

  He smiles stiffly, mouth twisting lopsidedly with effort. “They say all the real Indian-fighters is dead. Like Custer.” He isn’t convincing.

  “But if they aren’t? That makes a survivor damn valuable.”

  He keeps smiling, his grin the rictus of a corpse.

  “You a survivor, Shorty?”

  “I done some surviving.”

  “You ever fight Indians?”

  He stares at me for a considerable interval. “Some,” he admits at last. The smile has vanished.

  My heart is beating fast. I know I am getting close but I’m not sure how to finish. “Now was that so hard?”

  “What you want, Vincent?”

  “Not what I want, what he wants. He wants Indians. Indians plus the truth.”

  “He don’t want no fucking truth. Not your man.”

  “I assure you, he does.”

  Shorty laughs sourly.

  “Claiming he doesn’t want the truth gives you an out, doesn’t it? Because then you don’t have to bother telling it.”

  “I know it. He don’t want my truth. It ain’t to his taste.”

  “That’s what you say. I say different. Let’s see who’s right. Tell it.”

  “For the money.”

  “Money – for whatever reason you want.”

  Shorty puts the can of beans down on the table. “Wylie,” he barks in a no-nonsense voice, “take your blankets, take your gun, go wait outside.”

  Wylie squirms uneasily on the bed; he scoops up the box of cartridges in one hand and a fistful of blanket in the other. “Why I got to go outside, Shorty?”

  “Because you’re the best shot here and I’m giving you the job of looking out for us.”

  “Who’s it I’m a-guarding you from, Shorty?”

  “You’ll know the bastards when you see them. Don’t let nobody close now. I’m counting on you.”

  Wylie gathers pistol, cartridges, and blanket. “I’ll know them when I see them?” he asks doubtfully.

  “They’re Mexicans,” says Shorty. “You see a Mexican, shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “Christ, don’t tell him that.”

  “Mexicans,” says Wylie to himself. “Mexicans.”

  “Build yourself a fire,” Shorty tells him. “You going to be keeping watch a goodly spell.”

  “How do I know if they’re Mexicans?” says Wylie.

  “By the big fucking hats. Mexicans are big-hatted bastards. Sombreros. Look for the hats.” Shorty holds each of his hands out a couple of feet from his head.

  Wylie nods and goes out full of purpose.

  “What’s that about?” I say.

  “He don’t need to see and he don’t need to hear.”

  “See and hear what?”

  “Us fattening on the dead.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That’s what you and me are setting to do. Fatten us up on the dead.” McAdoo’s smile is beyond cold; it is a raw, self-inflicted wound. “What’s a dead Indian bring nowadays? Ten dollars a head? Fifteen?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  Shorty sits down at the table. “Well, I’m just trying to put a price on what you asking for. Calculate the going rate. What’s he going to give me for a story about Indians, this boss of yours? What’s the price of truth?”

  “If he likes your story, wants to use it, he has to buy it from you. You negotiate.”

  “Rough figure? I reckon we need fifteen hundred dollars to set us up handsome in Canada.”

  “I want to make this clear, he hasn’t given me authority to make deals for him,” I qualify. “But I think that if he likes the material a figure of fifteen hundred dollars would not be an unreasonable expectation on your part.”

  “For the truth?”

  “Of course, for the truth. There’s a premium on the truth.”

  McAdoo spreads his hands on the table and gazes down at them, thinking. Scarcely above a whisper, he says, “I been thinking on this business for a long time. Ever before you came. I thought it in Mother Reardon’s boarding house. I thought it making them fool pictures. For a long time, I never thought it at all and then it starts on me. My daddy used to say you think a thing and think a thing, you can’t shed it, that means you going to be called to answer on it. My daddy believed in all kind of second sight.” He looks up at me. “I been thinking on this for a goodly time, but I didn’t want to believe what my daddy told me. I said it weren’t going to happen. Then you came along.” He sits quietly, his chin on his chest. “You got your pencil and paper out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars,” he says. “Now I know the going rate on a dead Indian. Near fifty dollars a head.”

  Shorty McAdoo must have been thinking on it for a considerable time, just as he said. He knew exactly what he wanted to say and would frequently request me to read back to him what I had written in my shorthand notes. He listened very intently and then he might add or omit some detail. Occasionally he would get up and go to check on Wylie; sometimes I would accompany him to the window. We could see the boy beside the big fire he had built, the sparks churning up into the sky like fiery confetti, the flames blowing and seething in the night wind, the light swaying across the figure draped in a blanket, staring out into the darkness, forearm propped across one raised knee, gun hanging ready.

  It was a long, long night. Several times I asked if we couldn’t continue tomorrow but he said no, this was like amputating a leg, you didn’t stop in the middle, pick up the saw in the morning. He never permitted himself a rest; even when he stood at the window watching Wylie his voice went on, growing slightly
frayed and raspy, hoarse from hours of talk. He talked as he made coffee at the stove to keep me awake. He talked as he paced up and down the room.

  We finish about dawn. He asks me to read aloud the part about the girl. I do and he listens closely, his head cocked to catch every word. Then he asks me to read it again and listens as closely as he did the first time. “Put her down for fifteen,” he says, judge rendering a decree. “She mightn’t have been fourteen like I said first. I’m more comfortable going high than low.”

  “All right.” McAdoo gets up and stands at my shoulder, watching me make the change.

  “What did I say?” he asks me.

  “What did you say?” I am tired and don’t grasp what he means.

  “I said the truth wouldn’t pleasure your boss. Am I wrong?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I really don’t.

  “Your man wants it, he takes it all. She’s all of a piece. Nobody’s going to cut it up like an old coat, for patches. The girl stays.”

  I say nothing, collect my notebook and pencils, wiggle my last cigarette out of the package and light it before going out. It is a strange dawn, the overcast sky diffusing a tea-coloured light over everything, like tint in a Griffith picture. Wylie has finally given up his watch and dropped asleep. He lies cocooned in his blanket, the fire subsiding into ashes and tendrils of grey smoke, the gun fallen to the ground beside him. McAdoo picks it up, wipes the dust from it as fastidiously as Wylie would himself.

  “There was a number of us had the second sight,” he says. “We knew what was coming. The only mistake is one of us never shot him in his blankets when he slept.”

  “Jesus, Shorty,” I say, “that’s a little cold-blooded, don’t you think?”

  He aims the pistol at the sleeping Wylie’s head to make his meaning perfectly clear. “We could have shot the snake in his blankets. Before he bit,” he repeats. Then he puts the gun up like a duellist prepared to step off ten fatal paces; his ten paces carry him over the threshold and into the bunkhouse, walking like a somnambulist.

  Mr. Chance’s office at the studio is the very antithesis of his house. It is cluttered. Or rather I should say the walls are cluttered. Hardly an inch of them isn’t covered by black-and-white publicity photos of actors and actresses who have starred in Best Chance productions. I am certain that most of these people have scarcely had more than a handshake from the reclusive Chance, yet that hasn’t stopped them from autographing their pictures to him with the most intimate and saccharine effusions, each signatory striving to outdo his rivals in the fine art of Hollywood ass-kissing. Directly above the door of the office, Webster DeVilliers, a.k.a. Walter Digby of Pass Creek, Indiana, smiles toothily down on me. His mug is inscribed with the words, “To Mr. Chance, ‘Our Star’ from the East! Lead Kindly Light! Yours for Best Pictures, W. DeVilliers.” Anyone who knows Walter Digby of Pass Creek also knows that no. irony was intended by this inscription. There are many, many more testimonials to Mr. Chance’s genius. Perhaps a hundred. “To Dearest Mr. Chance, The Genie in the Bottle of Motion Picture Art, Twyla Twayne.”

  “To Mr. Chance, Good, Better, Best Chance!!! Roger Douglas Braithwaite.” Have the big game mounted in this trophy room volunteered their stuffed heads? Maybe yes, maybe no. But this smells like Fitz’s idea. I can imagine him making the rounds like the grand vizier of some oriental satrap, extorting tributes. “Pitcher for Mr. Chance. Write something nice. Get it back to me by tomorrow.”

  Mr. Chance is seated behind a big teak desk, commanding a corner where two floor-to-ceiling windows meet, Venetian blinds closed to deflect the stares of the curious. His manner smacks of the principal welcoming back to the old school a former pupil who has made good.

  “This is top drawer,” he says, flourishing the transcript. “Absolutely top drawer.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased, sir.”

  “Oh, I’m more than pleased. Much more than pleased. You are to be congratulated, Harry. We have our picture. It’s all here.”

  This strikes me as overstating the case, but if the boss is happy, Harry is happy.

  Chance’s tweed suit and sparse hair are both rumpled with childish excitement. He speaks in short, emphatic bursts. “The story of a great battle. Obscure but nevertheless great. Both are important. Obscurity and greatness. Novelty and awe. You see? Think of Custer – famous in defeat because he fought against overwhelming odds. But this, this is much better. Victory in the face of overwhelming odds. America needs this example, Harry. The strength of isolation. A dozen souls pitted against hundreds. The magic of the number twelve. It’s almost as potent as a seven, don’t you think? Twelve disciples, twelve jurymen, twelve tables of Roman law, twelve months of the year, twelve days of Christmas – can you think of any other significant twelves?”

  “No.”

  “No matter,” says Chance. He is scrawling a lengthy note on a piece of paper now. His face shoots up. “About McAdoo,” he says eagerly, “can he act the part?”

  “Part?”

  “Part, Harry, part,” he urges brusquely. “You’re in the business. You know what I mean. Does the man have presence?”

  I consider a moment. “He’s not very talkative. On the other hand, when he says something… I think people are inclined to listen.”

  Chance nods. “And this quality would be conveyed in interviews?”

  “He won’t do interviews.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’ll be afraid of looking ridiculous. Like Buffalo Bill.”

  “No one thinks Buffalo Bill is ridiculous. Besides, people don’t refuse their moment in the sun.”

  “He will. To him, it’s not the sun.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  Chance writes something on his pad. “That is unfortunate. But if he refuses to conduct himself as a hero, then for our purposes he is better off dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Chance laughs. “Not literally dead, Harry. I was thinking more along the lines of an announcement of the great plainsman’s passing – the timing would have to be nicely calculated. You, as friend and biographer, could represent him to the press. That might do very well indeed. There are heroes more compelling dead than they ever were alive. Custer, for instance. Not a man to survive close scrutiny, Custer. Tied to his wife’s apron strings and very foolish. But he made a heroic corpse.”

  “And what if Shorty McAdoo doesn’t want to play dead?”

  “Well, as I said, it’s a question of timing. You say he has expressed a desire to relocate to Canada. For our purposes, Shorty McAdoo in Canada is as good as dead.”

  “And if he changes his mind about Canada?”

  Chance lays his little gold pencil down on his desk. “Then it must be changed back.”

  “You mean money.”

  “Of course, money. Or other persuasions if necessary.”

  “Such as?”

  “In the past, Mr. Fitzsimmons has proved useful in such situations.”

  “Fitz’s tactics – they wouldn’t work on a man like McAdoo. In fact, they’re likely to produce the opposite effect.”

  Chance smiles. “I will take that under consideration, Harry. But perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse. We don’t own the rights yet, do we? The rights must be secured. Do you have any idea what we might get them for?”

  “He wants fifteen hundred dollars.”

  Chance taps his desk blotter with his pencil. “I don’t see that as a problem.”

  “Who’s buying them might be. To keep your name out of it, I told him I was working for a publisher. McAdoo doesn’t have much love for the movies.”

  “Many people disapprove of the movies. Three-quarters of the authors who sell us rights to their novels claim to despise the pictures. But they swallow their disgust and take the money happily enough. I don’t expect McAdoo will be any different. I don’t intend to have this picture blocked because it costs me a few thousand dollars more.
Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Mr. Chance. But will McAdoo? He may point-blank refuse to have anything to do with a film.”

  “Then,” says Chance, “the contract will need to be framed delicately. My lawyers can draw up the proper phrasing. Something like, ‘for the sum of X number of dollars, all rights to portray Mr. Shorty McAdoo’s life story in any and all forms of artistic expression shall reside in the sole possession of -’ ” He stops in mid-sentence.

  “That’s right,” I say. “If you name Best Chance Pictures, or yourself, the cat is out of the bag.”

  Chance barely skips a beat. “ ‘Shall reside in the sole possession of Harry Vincent, his heirs, assignees and or partners as the aforementioned party so assigns and determines.’ Mr. McAdoo is not a legal sophisticate, I think something such as that should satisfy him.” Chance composes his hands on his desk. “And once the contract is signed, you will sell me the rights for the sum of a dollar. Agreed, Harry?”

  I cross my legs, take my glasses off, pinch the bridge of my nose.

  “Reluctance, Harry?”

  “Not so much reluctance,” I say. “I know it’s not a question of your cheating him…”

  “What then, Harry?”

  “But shouldn’t it be his decision – whether or not his life is made into a movie?”

  “And if he says no?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Harry,” says Chance, “artists don’t compromise. They pay whatever price is required for their work. Tolstoy exploited the most intimate details of daily life with his wife. Do you think that matters when weighed against Anna Karenina? I’ll have McAdoo now – or later. The interviews are my property, I paid for them. If necessary I’ll wait until McAdoo dies and then make my movie. But what good would that do him?” He waits, offering me the opportunity to refute him. “You know how these cowboys end. They live one day at a time and then finally when they’re crippled or sick, the day of reckoning arrives. When it comes, they cannot pay the bill. You know he is certain to spin his last days out in abject penury.”

  “I know,” I say. “But…”

  “What would you do if you were appointed Shorty McAdoo’s guardian angel? See him handsomely paid for his story, or get nothing? Those are the two choices.” Chance sits there, question hanging. The question not only of Shorty’s future, but his, too. He clears his throat. “I am willing to have you fill in a figure on the contract. You can write the number in, Harry. I trust your fairness.”