"Lemme take over for a bit," he said to one of the bandits. The man happily obliged, wiping sweat from his brow as he handed Jesse his sledgehammer.
Jesse began to swing the hammer, over and over. He found a rhythm. The act was meditational; simple, repetitive, and its asked something from him. There was a spiritual mindfulness that came with the sweat of labor.
By the time the wagon was fully stripped and ready to be rebuilt into its new form, the sun was beginning to fall, and the sky had turned the color of chardonnay.
That night, as on all other nights, the Lotus Boys ignited a campfire at the center of their tents. In this family of disenfranchised cast-offs, the fire served as a family table, and a communal hearth.
Jesse watched the group come together as the fire began to crackle and burn. He only sensed Black's presence when the shadow of a man was nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with him.
"They're like hungry dogs, waiting for table scraps," Black said.
"What's for dinner?"
"It's not dinner they want."
"What, then?"
"Wait here a moment," Black said. Jesse watched as he went into his tent. Half a minute later, he reemerged with a small lockbox. He opened it, and signaled for Jesse to look inside.
Jesse peered in, but what he saw just resembled dirt, or finely-ground coffee.
"What's that?"
"The lotus," he replied, speaking with reverence. "My trade secret. It's how I opened your mind that day in my tent. How I allowed you to peer into the future of your world."
Black took a small tin measuring cup and scooped a teaspoon's worth of the powdery, earth-colored concoction.
"When given just a taste of the lotus, my men experience a sense of control they so desperately lack in their real lives. When they're under its influence, they can make sense of the universe, and their place in it.
"Off it, they're little more than common bums. The cast-off refuse of society. Desert urchins with blood on their hands that they can never wash off."
Jesse looked up into Black's eyes. "This is why they fight for you, isn't it? Where their loyalty to you comes from?"
Black nodded. "I never give them enough to have the kind of experience you had. They're not ready for it. Too simple-minded. But, every night we gather around the campfire, they receive just enough to feel enlightened for a few moments. And they don't forget that experience."
The leader broke his private aside with Jesse, stepping away from him towards the gathering circle of gangsters. Then he spoke in a booming call that echoed about the circular rock walls of their encampment.
"Gentlemen," he began. "Tonight, as on all other nights, you thoughts will join as one with heaven and earth."
Jesse watched from the sidelines, evaluating the intense focus and sudden calm that washed over the crowd of gathered 'desert urchins.'
"But first," Black said, "we have business to attend to. Gather around the campfire, so we may speak!"
The men moved in, and formed a tighter circle around the fire as it crackled and popped. Black beckoned Jesse to sit to his right. Eli sat to his left opposite Black, and Jesse noticed the gangster eyeing him with resent.
A stack of metal tin cups passed down the row. Jesse took his when it came to him.
Two more Lotus Boys had wheeled the projector out of Black's tent as far as it could go while still hooked up to the generator. They finally got the generator running with a loud, coughing kickstart.
"Now, boys," Black said, "We have a guest in our midst. Jesse, here, is a visitor with a special vision for how we liberate Bridgetown from the yoke of Wayne Cole. See, up until now, the people of Bridgetown have only known us as criminals. Outcasts. Which, looking at the whole lot of you, I can't say I blame them."
Black paused for laughter. He had the easy command of the audience of a late-night TV host. The men followed his lead, issuing chuckles around the circle.
"But Jesse is going to change all that. How many of you have ever seen a motion picture? Flickers, movies? Photographs that seem to move?"
Several hands went up around the crowd.
"How many have seen movies that weren't girlie peepshows at the carnival?"
More laughs. Most of the hands went down. A few stayed up.
Black smiled. "Of those remaining, how many of you have ever been moved by what you saw? Made to laugh? To cry?
"How many of you were compelled to take action because of the story brought to life before your eyes, where there had been no life before?"
The remaining hands went down.
"I see," Black said. "Tonight, I promise you that you will want to take action after you see the film that Jesse here has made for our cause. So too will the rest of Bridgetown."
Black gave a signal to the Lotus Boy running the projector. The screen came to life with a brilliant flash of flickering scratches projected on the side of a tent.
Jesse examined the faces of the audience as the opening title faded up. "THE ROBBERY OF BRIDGETOWN," read the hand-painted title card Scoble had created in his shop.
Jesse watched for the moments they responded to the most, and watched for any moments that fell flat. This was something he had done every time he'd screened anything at UCLA. It was second nature for him.
In particular, he watched Eli. He knew that if his movie could win over the man most irritated with his presence, he could win over anyone.
As the story began to set in—as the first farmer raised his fist in symbolic retaliation—Eli's frown lifted, and his suspicion seemed to dissipate.
When, at the emotional low point two-thirds of the way through the single-reel film, the revolutionary soldiers lay bleeding in the snow, Eli watched with the wide-eyed gaze of a child.
And when The Robbery of Bridgetown was all over, more than one of the Lotus Boys was covertly wiping moisture from his eyes.
This wasn't just the parlor trick of recorded motion they were familiar with. Jesse had brought to their cause a new poetry, an impassioned ideology and an art form rolled into one kinetic solar flare of potent realization.
If there had been any doubts about what Jesse brought to the Lotus Boys, that was all over now.
Black's voice cut through the silence and commanded the attention of the others. "Eli, Buddy, and Johnny did us well today," he said. "They brought us a stagecoach. We now have a vessel by which these images will be delivered to the people of Bridgetown. They will soon know to stand up, to fight for what is rightly theirs.
"But," Black said, "We still lack one thing: A page for those images to live upon. A massive, billowing, white screen upon which we will beam the images of revolution into the minds of the people!"
The bandits were rapt.
Black went on. "We must stage a raid. Tonight, a team will ride into the garment district of Los Angeles. They will return with a spool of cloth large enough that over a thousand men, women, and children will be able to gaze upon it in kind. Who among you is willing to ride?"
Every hand in the crowd went up, even Eli's. Black looked pleased.
"I'm riding with them," Jesse told him.
Black turned, surprised. "You're no bandit, Jesse."
"I need to prove—to myself before anyone else—that I can do this. That I mean it."
"It won't be easy, you know."
"I'm ready," Jesse replied.
Black nodded, solemn, looking like he wanted to say something. But he decided otherwise, and instead retrieved his lockbox. He opened it, and took a deep breath over the powder.
"Okay," Black said, "you showed them your magic. Now, I show them mine."
He skimmed the surface of the lotus powder with his spoon, filling it only a third of the way. Taking great care, he held the serving implement out over Jesse's cup. Black tipped the powder in, tapping the sides of the cup with the spoon. The cocoa-brown powder dissolved in Jesse's cup.
"This won't be like last time," Black said, almost apologetic. "It's just a bit."
Jesse nodded thanks, and took a sip, testing the waters.
The hot liquid traveled down into Jesse's core. He could feel its glow beginning to radiate through his body. His mind's eye began to crackle and buzz to life.
His thoughts took on a concrete logic, no matter how abstract they seemed. He understood his journey up to this point as a narrative arc, consolidated into a few key thoughts and images.
His fall from the sky.
Susanna's sorrowful face.
His brother's sniveling features.
The towering oil derrick, flames licking its frame.
The skyline of Chicago, beyond the warped glass window of the train car.
The blood in the stagecoach, sticky on his hand.
He could sense there was more blood in his future. Much more blood.
But turning back now was hardly an option for him. This was the path that made sense. This was the path he would carve out for himself. And he would help put chaos into order.
He took another, bigger drink of the stuff. He felt himself lifting up above the desert floor, and for a brief moment, he saw the clouds in heaven open up, and witnessed the connective tissue between all realities.
Five hours later, Jesse had long since come down from his brief high and was once again in the cold chill of his current reality.
He was riding in a flatbed wagon with eight of the bandits, including Eli, Johnny, and the other one. What did Black say his name was? Bodie? No, Buddy.
They had a plan. They were to rush the premises, steal the massive ream of fabric they needed for the screen, and return. In theory, it would be a simple task. Jesse would go with the group to help carry the spool of fabric, which would require a half-dozen men to load onto the wagon.
Jesse had told Black he had shooting experience, that he'd shot game in his youth and knew how to handle a rifle.
This was a lie.
The group was quiet now, thoughts of the mission occupying each man's mind. Jesse looked out over the pre-dawn horizon. Grey clouds hung low, even obscuring the flat top of Devil's Peak. The mountain, ominous as ever, was receding into the distance. It would soon be hidden beneath the uneven terrain of the earth. Jesse realized he felt better when it was out of sight, when it couldn't eye him. He clutched the rifle that had been provided to him. He felt like a cartoon cowboy, or a little kid playing Davy Crockett with a Red Rider BB gun. If called upon to use it, he wasn't even sure it would fire.
On the edge of the horizon opposite Devil's Peak, Jesse could spot the city of Los Angeles. It appeared much as it would nearly a century later: Long, flat, and very spread out. Big squarish buildings claimed the lower territories around themselves. This gave the sense, just as it would stil in 1970, that there was no urban core to the city, but rather an array of competing districts.
As the wagon approached the edges of the garment district, Jesse was relieved to realize the part of town they were in was virtually dead this time of night. Labor had long ago gone home, asleep or drinking, and the shops all closed, as they'd hoped. At the same time, though, the absence of other life made Jesse feel they were even more conspicuous. Oh, no, ma'm, we're just nine armed men in a wagon, riding through an abandoned part of town in the middle of the night.
No matter. The wagon approached its target. It was a brick building, taller and wider than the small family shops it presided over. A tiny, hand-painted sign that hung over the front door read, "HUWEI TEXTILES." Next to this was a string of Chinese characters that Jesse guessed read the same.
Seven of the eight bandits hopped off the coach. That left one man, Eli, to keep watch outside and distract anyone who came around with a sudden interest.
As quietly as seven men could, they forced their way into the shop.
One of them broke a side door's knob off with the butt of his shotgun, then they ran inside.
No lights were on, no candles lit; it appeared that no one was home. So far, so good.
Jesse's breath hovered up in his chest. His palms were sweaty as he white-knuckled the grip of his rifle. His left hand was shaking from the adrenaline coursing through his body. He hoped that his sweaty demeanor did not show to the others. They seemed preoccupied enough with the task at hand not to notice.
As a single unit, eyes at the back, sides, and front, they made their way through reams of fabric and cutting tables, and towards the rear of the shop. Acrid smells wafted towards them. The industrial scents of chemicals and dyes.
High above them, on a fifteen-foot metal dowel, hung an enormous expanse of white canvas.
Wordlessly, the men's glances to one another confirmed among themselves that they'd found what they'd came for. Jesse provided lookout, while the others worked to figure out the pulley system that would drop the fabric down towards them, allowing them to unhook the dowel and carry its fabric back to the coach. They struggled for a few minutes, determining the best placement for each person in the lineup. When they had at last unlatched the heavy thing, they lifted on the count of three.
With a metal clang, they unhooked the dowel from its installation. They groaned and gritted their teeth, but began their march back to the coach, working like a drunken centipede in a state of half-coordination. All the while, Jesse stood at the rear and provided a visual sweep of their surroundings.
He set his rifle down for a moment to swing open the barn doors to the front. Naturally, this resulted in a LOUD SCREECH that reverberated throughout the block.
A light came on, in a small standalone booth in the back of the lot. Jesse hadn't noticed the booth before.
"Hurry up," he said. "We've got company."
The bandits made an attempt to hoist the ream up onto the flatbed, but one side slipped back down onto the dirt road. The men tried to pick it up, but the lower end of the dowel was now stuck a good couple inches in the dirt.
"Come on!" Jesse said, louder this time.
Frantic, they tried to lift it up, scrambling over each other with conflicting strategies.
Someone nearby was shouting something indecipherable at them.
The dowel was hardly moving.
Two of them pushed up the end already on the flatbed, so that the others on the ground could lift up the lower end by hand and bring the dowel out of the ground. With a collective push, they hoisted the fabric up onto the coach and climbed aboard.
The voice was getting closer.
Jesse hopped onto the coach as it pulled away. Two of the bandits grabbed his arms and helped him up.
A Chinese man emerged from the open utility gate. Jesse couldn't understand his words, but his message was clear. The man held a shotgun in his hands. He aimed it at the coach.
A shot rang out. Jesse glanced around to see if one of their crew had been hit. No one had been.
Instead, the Chinese man fell back onto the dirt.
As blood seeped from his wounded chest, he continued to scream at the bandits. His voice was getting hoarse, wet.
Soon his words were just the shriek of a dying soul.
Gunsmoke wafted from the business end of Jesse's rifle.
One of the Lotus Boys patted him on the shoulder. "Great shot."
Great shot.
Jesse's mind raced. Try as he might, he couldn't recall pulling the trigger. It had been second nature. Instinct, almost.
The others were elated, excited. Clearly, the adrenaline rushing through their system was enough reward for nearly getting killed.
But Jesse was keeping a tally of those who'd ended up in his warpath and fallen. Two dead from the theft of the stagecoach, and now this man at the garment shop.
How many more would have to die before this war was won?
Jesse was quiet on the return trip. In his introspection, he realized there was something he'd yet to tell any of the others. And given his current popularity, it seemed as good a time as any.
"You want to know something about me, guys?"
The others turned to him, surprised to hear him speak at last.
&
nbsp; "Sure," Eli said.
"Wayne Cole is my brother."
The others were silent. They just stared at him, trying to process this new information. Trying to understand what it meant.
"Well," Eli said at last, "You're a Lotus Boy now, all the same."
The first light of day was beginning to show when their stagecoach made it back to camp.
Jesse saw that Black was already there to greet them. As he stepped down from the wagon, the tower of a man approached him, and put a hand to his back. "Nicely done. I suppose you do have it in you, after all."
Jesse was quiet.
"What's troubling you?" Black asked, the way a parent might ask a child when they already damn well knew the answer.
"I shot a man."
"Is he dead?"
"I don't know. I think so."
Black sighed. "It's difficult to bear the burden of what we do, but would you really feel any better if it had been one of those poor souls?" he asked, indicating towards the other gangsters on the wagon. "If, say, it had been young Johnny who had to pull the trigger, and who had racked up another debt to his society?"
"It would be easier," Jesse replied.
Black made a face that said, I understand. "Now, go on. Finish what you've started with the stagecoach." Black outstretched his hands, as if gesturing towards an as yet-unrealized monument. "When that screen rises high above the heads of Bridgetown's people, we will at last taste the fruits of our labor."
"Okay," Jesse said. "Absolutely," he added, hoping it would sound emphatic.
When he returned to the stagecoach, Eli and the others were still relaying the night's events to one another, as if they hadn't all been there to witness it firsthand. They were like comedians trying out new material on one another, prepping their bits for an eventual audience.
"Hey, guys," Jesse interjected. They turned to face him.
"The man of the hour!" Buddy said.
Jesse didn't show much of a reaction one way or the other. "Would a couple of you mind helping me out with the coach?"
He indicated to the nearest two to come with him to get some tools.
Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival Page 17
