The Last Projector

by David James Keaton

  Toni standing next to him.

  She’s holding his hand, smiling at the word “Ambulance” reflected in the mirrored sunglasses he’s wearing. She tugs on his arm and uses her tiny hands to angle his head so she can read it clearer. Then she holds her palm up to Derek’s face. Written in the color of every broken crayon in her box, but only legible in the reflection of his glasses, are the words:

  “Daddyunclegrandpabrother.”

  Derek smiles and helps her up into the passenger seat. The dog jumps over her and into the back where it curls up under the shelves. Toni laughs and follows the dog. She seems nervous but not scared, interested in the equipment, the animal, and all the cartoon warning signs surrounding her. Derek reaches for the dashboard, brushing aside all the loose wires, a Frankenstein combination of radio/police scanner/tape player that’s been rigged under the steering column. Derek rewinds a tape, then pushes play. A very official-sounding woman’s voice is heard, sounding every bit like a dispatcher reporting injuries.

  Then, after a long pause, the woman sniffles and the fear is her voice is revealed.

  “Will you let me go now?”

  He rewinds and plays it again.

  “Dispatch? We got a ‘seven eleven’ over.”

  No, it ain’t over, he thinks, looking to the body of the woman in the road.

  He removes the tape, putting in another one. The drums of Peter Gabriel’s “The Rhythm of the Heat” begin to pound. Toni climbs back up front.

  “Why are you driving Jack’s car?” she asks.

  “It’s not his car,” Derek says. “It’s not a car. And it’s more mine than his. Or any of those bastards playing doctor. I played doctor. You played doctor. Who hasn’t done that shit? Who are they kidding…”

  Toni frowns. She hasn’t played doctor.

  “See, they leave the keys in them all the time. For anyone who really needs one,” he adds.

  “Why?”

  “They’re for everybody!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “They leave the keys in any vehicle that has a siren. Even leave ‘em running, too, sometimes. You’d be surprised.”

  The dog is growling at its own tail, and now Toni is looking scared.

  “It’s just like in those videogames. Fire trucks, cop cars, ambulances, all the tools of First Responders are there for the taking! Don’t believe me? Listen to them in an interview. They didn’t ‘ask to be a hero.’ You don’t have to either…”

  The dog’s growling rises with Derek’s voice, and Toni shrinks in her seat. Then the dog is panting and smiling again, and she’s up and playing with the defibrillator paddles. She holds one up to the side of her head and starts messing with the buttons. Derek turns to watch her, ready to warn her to put it down, but interested to see how far things will go. She flips a switch that makes the machine power up with a rising hum, and Derek’s eyes widen in anticipation, both him and the dog now cocking their heads curiously. But before Toni can push another button, Jacki suddenly opens the driver’s side door and pushes her way inside. Surprised, Derek moves to the passenger seat, happy to see what’s going to happen next. He watches, amused, as she puts the ambulance in gear and starts driving. Lines of blood streak her forehead like a ragged American flag. A long canvas bag marked “T.W.A.T.” is draped over her shoulder, and a long, military-style rifle is resting against her leg.

  “Hi,” Derek says, warmly.

  “Don’t talk,” Jacki says. “We’re going to the scene of the crime, the same place you were taking her.”

  “I thought we were already here.”

  “Mommy!” Toni yells, dropping the paddles. “Where are we-”

  “Quiet honey, we’re going for a drive.”

  The ambulance leans hard to the right as it slides around a corner too fast, picking up speed as she straightens it out. Derek looks nervous, his hands scratching at his legs.

  “If we have some time,” he offers. “I’d like to explain-”

  Jacki swerves harder through traffic, tipping him into the aisle.

  “Heard it already. Don’t bother.”

  “How’s your head? I didn’t realize I hit you that hard.”

  She ignores the question but wipes some blood from her brow.

  “Did you see how they left you? And that’s their job. I wouldn’t have left you.”

  “Quiet.”

  “The only thing worse that playing doctor is playing God.”

  “And if a tree falls on a car and no one lives to see it, does it make a sound?” she laughs. Then she honks and dodges more cars.

  “So…”

  “Don’t give a shit,” she says, bringing the rifle up to tap Derek’s chin. “Stop. Fucking. Talking.”

  “We have a connection,” Derek practically whines. “You can’t deny that. One look at your daughter and you must realize this. If you could do anything different, if I could do anything different, would you even want me to? If I didn’t do what I did, she wouldn’t exist. You wouldn’t exist. And her daughter won’t exist. Meaning you.”

  “Your family tree is fucked, whoever you are,” Jacki says, and Derek leans towards her.

  “Why deny these things? Why interfere in something that’s perfect?”

  She stomps the gas, and Derek sits back down. He hits the ghastly siren to warn oncoming traffic out of their path.

  “Please, just relax,” he says. “You’re scaring our daughter.”

  She buries the gas pedal.

  “Where are we going? This isn’t where we were going, Jacki.”

  “You okay back there, honey?” Jacki yells over her shoulder.

  “No!” Toni yells back, defibrillator paddles over her ears in fear.

  “What’s with all the fucked-up sirens?” Jacki says, looking around. “Why the hell does it do that anyway?”

  “Just watch the road,” Derek says, face pinched. Then, “Okay, I made it do that. To keep Jack unbalanced. But to tell you the truth, I don’t understand why it’s doing it now...”

  Jacki takes another hard turn, and the song “The Rhythm of the Heat” is reaching its frantic climax of drums. Derek has a foot on the floorboard between them, ready to attack. Another hard turn, and the sun visor flops, dropping a fluttering piece of paper onto Jacki’s leg. She flips it open with one hand. It’s one of Jack’s crude, crayon drawings of a baby flying headfirst through a windshield, a red circle with a line through it. Apparently it’s something you shouldn’t do.

  Jacki squints as an idea seems to occur to her, and she yells back at Toni again, forcing a smile.

  “Baby! Get up here and sit in our daddy’s lap.”

  Derek looks at her in surprise and smiles back, touched, when Toni does what she’s told.

  “Let our daddy strap you in with him,” Jacki says, trying not to cringe at the sound of all this.

  “But he’s my daddy,” Toni pouts.

  “That’s true. Let your daddy strap you in. There’s a sharp turn coming...”

  Derek welcomes her onto his lap, adjusting his crotch before she sits. Then he carefully pulls the seatbelt over them both and wraps his arms tight around her shoulders. Stone-faced, Jacki stares straight ahead and starts counting to ten.

  “Please. Where are we going?” he begs. “We aren’t going to where she was conceived. We just left there.”

  “No, we are. We’re going to the place where you made us all.”

  Then she turns the ambulance too hard one last time.

  Across the parking lot, Evil finally touched the ground on the other side. All of the cars behind him were still honking, not just from the violation of the dirt-bike jump, but mostly furious they’d been tricked into sneaking their children into a triple-feature so vile. When he hit, Evil’s front wheel caught the last cop, who had still been working the traffic jam, square in the face, plowing his whistle through four incisors, but even worse, breaking his neck and killing him, if not instantly, then very soon after that. Evil’s new dog, the sec
ond-to-last dog in the world, soon to be last dog, finally released its grip on his handlebars and slammed into an El Camino. The weight of the dog broke an elderly man’s shin, and, seeing a dog in distress, dozens of people who knew immediately how movies worked, forgot about everything else, even stepping over the cop’s body to cradle it, weeping and stroking its fur.

  Evil, he went headfirst through a windshield, body twisting so bad that the first paramedics on scene would be confused as to whether or not he’d been driving that Fiero (they weren’t really the best paramedics in town, budget cuts increasing the competition between hospitals, not the best at identifying cars either). Evil’s boombox, however, was thrown free and landed on its feet, pretty much unscathed. It kept playing awhile, continuing to sing of a more lovestruck Billy, a poor imitation of evil.

  “…walks and talks like us without taking classes… all we know for sure is it spits out your glasses… stick a needle in your blood and your blood’s gonna scream… stick a needle in your blood and your blood’s gonna scream… someone in this crib ain’t what he seems…”

  Then there was a moment of silence between the screams and tinkling glass, and the crowd looked to the shadow of the girl on the screen, almost ready to ask her what they should do. But the girl was pinwheeling her arms and kicking her legs in wide circles, seemingly swimming between and free of the huge, projected thighs, big as Redwoods, bent at the knees and spread up and wide. This birth came almost instantly after the hazy giants had stopped fornicating, and the crowd was in awe of the miracle of creation. Then…

  Boom.

  Just as the little girl touched its tail, the bomb on the collar of the second-to-last dog in the world exploded.

  And the drive-in screen came tumbling down. In a cloud of dust, it ruptured and rolled over itself like a closing fist, piling onto the playground, right overtop of hundreds of bouncing babies and balls of every color. Bully had seen enough movie explosions to know what she was supposed to do. She turned from the fire and smoke so that it all filled the sky behind her like a spinning, monstrous blood orange, and she walked as slow and calm and stern-faced as possible across the roof of the bunker, like any action star should. She even tried out a catchphrase:

  “Happy Veterinarian’s Day, motherfuckers!”

  Then a piece of shrapnel caught her in the back of the head, right above the ear, breaking her jaw and upending her into a garbage can full of rotten popcorn.

  Months later, when they plucked out the thirty tiny spiders stitched across her cranium, she cursed through her wired smile the entire time.

  Thirty years ago? Hot, hazy day in Florida near the beach. Peter Gabriel’s song “Intruder” is playing deep in someone’s headphones. There is a young man sitting on a bench near the ocean, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. He turns the cap around and lifts his head. It’s a teenage Derek. Just over his shoulder is a large sign with a grinning cartoon dog. The dog’s eyes seem to be watching everyone. And everyone is leading a dog, of course.

  “All Dogs And Their Owners Welcome!”

  Behind him is the dead screen of a drive-in theater, waiting for the sun to go down.

  Derek cradles a small potted seedling like a baby. After a while, an attractive Chicana girl walks by.

  “Can you please tell me what time it is?” he asks her.

  Fast forward through several dark-skinned girls walking by Derek’s bench and answering his question in Spanish. There is a dismissive, impatient tone to the parade of responses. No one notices how amazing it is that a young, blind man only interacts with pedestrians possessing a certain look. Clearly a preference, or a profiling, is going on. No translation is necessary with a rapid-fire list of rejection:

  “El tiempo para usted comprar un reloj,” says the first girl.

  “Joda Lejos,” says the second.

  “Cogida apagado,” says the third.

  “Vete a la mierda,” says the fourth.

  “Coja eso,” says the fifth.

  “Varfunculo,” says the sixth.

  Derek raises his head sharply at this last response. Certainly some kind of rebuke, but not Spanish. He’s angry not understanding what the girl said, as he’s clearly gotten used to a steady stream of Spanish “fuck offs” and learned to let them roll off his back.

  Finally, a small Mexican girl smiles and stops to answer him. Their connection and the friendly tone of the conversation is obvious. Derek’s apparent blindness also puts her at ease.

  “No puede decir ested por el sol?” says the Mexican girl, number seven.

  “Usted madre no lo dijo para nunca contestar una pregunta con una pregunta?” he asks.

  “Eso no es lo que usted acaba de hacer?”

  “Eso no es lo que usted acaba de hacer?” he asks, smiling.

  The Mexican girl moves closer.

  “Yo no recuerdo a mi madre,” she says.

  “What’s all that noise down there?” Derek whispers in English. “What are they doing by the water?”

  “I’ll show you…” she starts, then stops, embarrassed. “I mean... let’s see.”

  She steps toward him, taking his arm. He’s surprised and almost drops his plant. Gently cradling it, they both walk toward the water where a pier is under construction. Suddenly, a thundering pile of tree trunks rolls out of the back of a truck and crashes onto the sand. The noise startles at least a dozen sunbathers, several of them sitting up on their towels, sliding down their sunglasses and frowning and looking around. The Peter Gabriel song climaxes, the chorus of screams resembling the hollow cries of the ice-bound alien in The Thing:

  “Intruder come... intruder come and leave his mark... leave his mark. Leave his mark.”

  “Feel the sun on your nose?” Jacki Ramirez’s mother asks him. “It’s noon. To answer your question, that is what time it is. See how easy we did that?”

  “Thank you,” Derek says, in love again.

  “You didn’t answer me back there,” Jacki’s mother says. “I asked if your mother ever told you not to answer a question with a question.”

  “No, I asked that. But I guess she didn’t. But one time, my father said that if I threw enough rocks off that pier...” He nods toward the construction. “...I would eventually hit a duck that deserved it!”

  “What were you trying to hit?” Jacki’s mother asks, suspicious. “How could you even see to-”

  Derek holds up a hand to stop her.

  “Don’t you mean to say, ‘There wasn’t a pier here until today?’”

  His voice fades as they walk on together. Smiling wide with his nostrils flaring, Derek turns to the ocean. A dog’s ragged ball rolls in front of his foot. And even though the ball doesn’t bump his shoe, he quickly kicks it away as if he sees it coming. He takes a deep breath, hiding his urge to kick the dog along with it.

  Somewhere in the dark, he carves another heart.

  The small dog quickly skids to a stop and alters its course to run down the ball, and Jacki’s mother doesn’t notice the quick kick. After the dog catches the ball, it trots back towards a boy wearing headphones. Halfway there, the dog stops, then turns to stare at Derek, its head cocked to one side. Just like Derek’s.

  “Was ist los?” the boy with the headphones asks in German. Then, “What’s wrong?”

  The dog ignores its master. It slowly opens its mouth and the sand and saliva streaked ball drops and is stolen by the surf.

  As the concrete screen came down around him, Larry found himself closer to any movie than he’d ever been before. As a boy, he’d put his nose to the crackling TV tube and watched images burst into colorful fireworks like a disease under a microscope, but he’d never gotten his nose up against a drive-in screen before. And now that he was inside of it, he saw the strange green circulatory system within and recoiled. But not too much recoil, really. Sort of the recoil you’d get from a .38 when you stopped the bad guy. In other words, manageable.

  But the recoil was there.

  The movie kept ro
lling, projected onto a storm of rock and debris, projected onto the screaming mob, even projected onto the distant harvest moon when the dust cleared. Larry watched the movie on the lunar surface awhile and thought about how you might not need a helmet up there on the moon after all.

  He heard someone shout, “Those kids did this!” and Larry looked around in vain for the culprits. But he thought these words made all the sense in the world. When he was shooting pornography, there was a well-known rule in the business regarding the number of teenagers you should have in any one particular scene. The rule was never, never two kids together. Four was the magic number for adults, but only one teenager per scene and that was it. Some directors even insisted on a one-teenager-limit per film. Mostly this was because two teenagers couldn’t fuck with any degree of certainty, and for Larry it was sort of like watching paraplegics play basketball. Meaning, they were probably still better at the game than any civilian, and he’d still be rooting for them and all, but someone out there on the court needed their sea legs to keep things professional.

  So, yeah, one teenager per movie is the limit. Two fucks everything up and down. Like tonight.

  When the smoke lifted a bit, Larry was shocked and excited to see the only thing still standing amid the carnage. It was a dirt bike, engine still hiccupping, pinned upright by something horrible and bleeding, a combination of man, dog, and cop.

  Two legs good, eight legs bad, Larry thought.

  He mounted it, smiling, remembering his training across the ocean all those years ago, where paramedics rode on two wheels instead of four. Where he could get to an accident before it even happened.

  As Larry dreamed of when he was Jack and tore off through the new holes in the fence, The Last Projectionist held his wooden goblet up to the flames, watched the cup vanish in his hand and the liquor dance in midair. A week ago, he’d known the concrete screen was on its last days when he saw the weeds and wildlife prying it apart at the seams. Then, a couple nights prior, after the movies had faded and the drive-in slept, he saw the shadows of a young couple, giggling and chasing each other around the support beams. Later, he crept up to the foundation with a flashlight and traced the weeds with his light until he realized these particular weeds were kind of different. These were red and blue weeds mixed in with the green, and some of them were connected to small bricks of a sticky substance that reminded him of that strange, purple bubblegum he used to push into his walls as a kid, the stuff he’d stamp big thumbprints into when he decorated his bedroom with movie posters. Ironically, Duel in the Sun had been his favorite poster. Favorite movie, too, which was weird since sunlight was a drive-in’s worst enemy. As a kid, he never had a chance to see that one on the big screen, or the biggest screen. He’d only been to the drive-in about a dozen times, but he remembered each time like it was the only time. And he remembered always praying for rain so he could roll up the window and lock out all the sounds, the water smearing away any face that come looking for him. But for some reason, he never remembered the movies at all.