Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (23 page)

"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.