Charlie Martz and Other Stories (15 page)

“That's what he said. He said you were up for president.” She glanced at Elaine saying it.

“Roy,” Elaine said. “Your fight's going on.”

“Didn't he say,” Roy went on, still looking at Inez, “‘I threw Roy a bone this afternoon. He looked like a hungry dog, so I threw him a bone.'”

Grady stared at him in astonishment. “Roy, what's the matter with you?”

“Isn't that what you said, Grady? Maybe not in those words, but something like it.” He tried to mimic Grady's voice; he was not close to imitating it, but they knew that's what he was doing, saying, “‘Inez, Roy means well, even if he don't have too much between the ears. So I thought I'd make him feel good and put his name up. Had a hell of a time getting somebody to second it. Had to make a speech. He won't get it, but it'll make the little runt feel good.'”

Grady said, “Roy, you think you're being funny?”

Roy glared at him. “Isn't that how you meant it?”

Grady rose, looking at his wife. “I think we better be going.”

Roy said curtly, “I think so too. We don't need any charity tonight. When we do I'll call either you or the Goodwill.”

Elaine did not move. She watched Roy, even as Grady and Inez went by her to the door, Inez saying something half-whispered which she did not hear clearly. Her eyes rose as Roy passed her following them to the door. She heard the door open, and then slam. Suddenly she was aware of the crowd at the boxing arena screaming and whistling. The camera showed a close-up of the ring and she saw that one of the fighters was down, the referee bending over swinging his arm, counting. Counting to ten. It was all over in the first round.

Roy passed her again. He sat down on the edge of his chair and leaned forward as if engrossed in the ring announcer's description of the judges' scoring the fight. He took a swallow of beer and lit a cigarette, not taking his eyes from the television screen.

Elaine sat still. She felt uncomfortably self-conscious, and now, without reason, she pictured her hair looking almost ridiculous and she wished she had not had it cut. At least not today. There were things she wanted to say to Roy, feeling her anger grow as she looked at him, but they were obvious things and would only make him
madder. She wanted to say something sarcastic, but the right words wouldn't form in her mind.

Roy stood up, switching off the television, and turned to her abruptly. “Now I get the silent act.”

Elaine raised her eyes. “What do you want me to say?”

“You'll think of something.”

Damn him! “Well”—she kept her voice calm—“do you think you behaved like a normal human being?” Oddly, then, she could not help thinking: he must feel silly standing there with
FALCONS
written across his chest.

“When I get a deal like that I act how I feel!”

She felt the anger again and said, unexpectedly, “Roy, why don't you grow up!”

His face colored. “You sit there with that screwball haircut and tell me why don't I grow up!”

“Now why would you take it out on my hair?”

“Where do you get off telling me to grow up—that's what I want to know! You're perfect—never do nothing wrong. I come home after I get a rough deal—I got something important on my mind—and all you talk about is that stupid-lookin' haircut!”

Elaine was standing now, almost stiffly. “Why do you keep bringing up my hair?” she said, not keeping her voice calm any longer. “You know why? I'll tell you why. Because when something goes against you you're not man enough to face the facts. You have to blame something else, like my hair, that doesn't have a damn thing to do with it. You have to hear yourself yell so you'll still think you're a big shot. The great athlete! You've been out of high school for twelve years, but nobody'd ever know it. You're still a hundred-and-thirty-two-pound quarterback. You're still a flashy shortstop because you know how to crease a baseball cap the right way. You're the great bowler—all form and no score! You know how to outfigure the football bookies—but you always lose! You know how to do
everything—but nothing right! You know why they don't want you for a president? Because your lousing everything up wouldn't be bad enough—all season they'd have to listen to you blowing off about being president!”

Roy stood with his hands on his hips, his face drawn and tensed. There was a silence, and then he said, “You through?”

Elaine hesitated. “One last thing,” she said. She leaned forward slightly, as if for emphasis. “Grow up!”

Roy stared at her for a moment. Then he walked past her, picking up his jacket as he went out.

The door slammed. She closed her eyes and seemed to relax then, her breath coming out in a slow sigh. That was that.

Now he'll go out and get plastered,
she thought. T
hat's supposed to solve everything
. Perhaps she shouldn't have said the things she did. Well, it was done now. And strangely enough she felt a little better for it. Let him go out and get drunk. If he thinks he's got something on his mind now, wait till he wakes up tomorrow with a hangover.

She took the beer bottles and glasses to the kitchen, and returning, she caught her reflection in the dinette mirror. She stopped and looked at her hair. There was nothing the least bit ridiculous about it. She saw her eyes then. She leaned closer to study them—as she had been doing for almost two weeks—and it dawned on her that she had not told Roy about the baby.

It was ten when she went to bed.

It was almost two in the morning when she finally heard Roy come in. She could hear him in the living room. Then the light went on in the bathroom and without raising her head from the pillow she saw him momentarily in the bedroom doorway. The water ran in the bathroom for a long time before he came out, switching off the light. He stumbled against the foot of the bed, swearing under his breath. She could feel the mattress sink on his side as he sat down, and a
moment later, she heard his shoes hit the floor. He stood up, taking off his pants, then flopped down again, the bedsprings squeaking. He didn't bother to remove the jersey but lay back with a long moaning sigh, and a moment later, he was breathing evenly, sound asleep.

Elaine was on her right side, her back to him, and her eyes were open in the darkness. She could picture him lying on his back, his mouth slightly open. Now, and until the alarm went off, with nothing to worry him. Lying peacefully, with
FALCONS
written across his chest.

Feeling him close behind her, it went through her mind:
you made your bed, now lie in it.
But she was immediately sorry she thought this, even coming to her mind as it did; because now, picturing Roy, she felt sorry for him. He wants to be somebody, she thought. That's all it is. He wants a little recognition. There's nothing wrong with that. But he doesn't have as much patience as most people. He's not so easily satisfied. My gosh, you can't blame the guy for wanting to win. She started to think: but that's no excuse for being a poor loser—And she put it out of her mind, picturing him again.

He was good-looking—not overly tall and his hair was starting to go back—but better-looking than most men. So what if he did like to flex his muscles. At least he had them to flex.

He brought home over ninety dollars a week, and he liked his work. (“Honey . . . you see the castings come off this automation station and I drop her into load position . . . transfer her down . . . drop her into the tank . . . then I got fifteen seconds to spot a leak and mark it . . .”)

Most men came home, buried their faces in the paper and didn't say anything. Inez was always complaining: “Grady never talks. He sits down with one of these pocket books and I don't hear from him all evening.”

You couldn't say Roy didn't talk.

Still,
she thought,
there was no excuse for the way he acted.
And
she became angry again thinking about it. Let him get his own breakfast tomorrow!

She thought of something else after that, so she would be able to fall asleep.

She was awake before Roy, before the alarm went off, but she remained in bed pretending to be asleep until he dressed and left the apartment, not bothering about breakfast.

Elaine got up thinking:
You can't even force the guy to do penance. He'll get a better cup of coffee at the plant than I make.
And she thought now:
but please, God, at least make him be hungover.

Roy got home that evening at five-thirty. Elaine came out of the kitchen hearing the front door. She stood across the room from him as he took off his jacket and dropped it on the arm of the chair.

Roy looked at her unconcernedly. “Hi.”

“Hi. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good.”

She had decided not to ask about the election, but she didn't know what to say and she felt suddenly uncomfortable in the silence.

“How was it?”

Roy looked up. He was lighting a cigarette. “What?”

“Your election.”

“Oh. I didn't go.

“You didn't go!”

“Naw.” Roy hesitated, and started to grin. “Listen, you might not believe this, but remember last night you said I was all form and no score? Well, I was thinking about it today. I never averaged over one-thirty-six in my life, so I figured why waste all that time trying to bowl if you'll never be any good anyway.”

Elaine's lips parted in surprise.

“So,” Roy went on, “I figured the hell with it. Let the other guy be president. He bowls about one-seventy and gets a big bang out of it.”

Elaine was taken off guard. She was completely unprepared for this. “Roy,” she said hesitantly, “you're not kidding me?”

“Why should I kid you?”

“It just doesn't sound like you.”

“I told you you might not believe me.”

Elaine relaxed, smiling at him. She felt like going to him and putting her arms around his neck and she thought at that moment about the baby and she smiled all the more. But something else occurred to her then.

“Roy, if you didn't go to the meeting, where have you been?”

Roy grinned. “I ran into this guy after work. He asked me if I was interested in playing basketball and I told him maybe, it depended. So we had a couple of beers and he told me about it. A Wednesday-night league at the Y—sounds like a pretty good deal—so I told him OK.”

For a moment Elaine was silent. She stared at him, seeing him smiling at her. “Roy,” she said then, “with your experience they might even make you captain.”

His face brightened. “I never thought about that.”

“Come on,” Elaine said, half turning to the kitchen, “you can tell me about it during dinner.”

T
HAT MORNING HE WAS
trampled to death during the retreat of the Syrian cavalry. Immediately after lunch he was brought down by a Roman lance and now he lay in the sun among the dead and wounded, his eyes open, his head resting on his arm, while thirty yards away the Ultra-Panavision camera moved slowly, left to right, over the scene.

He watched the camera boom lower and the cameraman climb off to stand with the director. They lighted cigarettes and now Howard Keating, the centurion and star of Sidney Aaronson's production of
The Centurion,
his helmet off, his dark hair pressed to his forehead, joined them and accepted a cigarette and light from the director. A girl in tight toreadors and sunglasses handed him a towel, which he pressed to his face and tossed back to her.

Don't think about us,
Allen Garfield, the dead Syrian foot soldier, thought.
Stand around. Smoke cigarettes. Call the script girl over with the camera log and fool around with her awhile. Now the production
manager, get him over. And the casting guy. Everybody act casual. Now laugh at something dumb the director says. Now stand there and shuffle your feet and look up at the sun and step on cigarettes and have a few more laughs while we lie out here in the goddamn sun.

Near him he heard two of the extras who had been stabbed, hacked, lanced, or shot with arrows, talking to each other in Spanish. For three hundred pesetas a day they would lie here as long as the director, the centurion, and the cameraman wanted to smoke cigarettes. For three hundred pesetas they would lie here all day in sun or rain or snow and live very well at night in Madrid. Most of the dead and wounded were Spanish; there was only a handful of English and Americans, perhaps a dozen.

During the two and a half years Allen Garfield had been in Spain,
The Centurion
was the fourth Sidney Aaronson spectacular he had worked in as an extra. Without speaking a word or releasing a scream that had been recorded, he was killed on the average of twice per picture, and had acquired something of a reputation in the casting office as a good dier.

In
Lepanto,
as a Moorish pirate, he had leaped to the Spanish galleon, chopped three times at the Duke of Valencia, then hesitated just long enough on the next down swing to let the Duke run him through. In
The Sack of Rome,
with a black ponytail pinned to his hair and a fur piece over one shoulder, he was dragging a virgin from the temple of Vestus when a javelin fixed him to the temple door. He was killed four times in
The Gods Smiled,
Sidney Aaronson's four-and-a-half-hour entertainment on the futility of war. He was killed as a Persian, a Saracen, a German lance corporal, and a G.I. frozen to his machine gun on the Chosin Reservoir. While in the same picture Howard Keating, tightening his jaw muscle as a Spartan, a Crusader, a Spad fighter pilot, and a Marine Corps combat officer, was wounded twice and wondered aloud, through 2,500 years of war, if it was all worth it.

T
HE GOLDEN SNAKE, TWISTED
into a Syrian armband, cut into Allen Garfield's cheek, and he raised his head a few inches from his arm, his gaze holding on the scene thirty yards beyond the dead and wounded: the camp of the director, who had put on his straw cowboy hat and was still talking to the centurion, who was now wearing sunglasses.

The rest of the crew were small tan figures, some shirtless with handkerchiefs knotted on their heads, some standing among the cables and camera boom and lights and generator equipment, some sitting under the tarp awning and some in the shade of the truck where two legs extended from the open cab and silver square sun reflectors leaned against the paneled side.

They don't know what they're doing,
Allen Garfield thought.
So they stand around until the director has one of his great ideas. You have to have truly great ideas to make a twelve-million-dollar motion picture look like a high school pageant.

Once, during the filming of
The Gods Smiled,
Allen Garfield was standing near the director. They were between takes of the Crusades sequence. At this time he had still believed the director, Ray Heidke, to be a savvy, sensitive, dedicated craftsman; somewhat colorful, a bit eccentric perhaps; but basically one of the good guys.

It was mid July, ninety-five degrees in the sun and they were on the Mohammedan village set. The director wore shorts, sandals, no shirt, and his trademark, the willowroot straw cowboy hat, the crown funneled down over his eyes like a beak.

“Billy,” the director said to the cameraman. “First you get your establishing shot of the square. Then I want you to truck in. You're the eyes. You're what the Crusaders see as they enter the town. Nothing's happened, right? The place's deserted. We get the reverses later, the Crusaders looking up, their reaction, their feeling goosey about the whole thing. I just want you to see this. So you come to the end of your truck. Fifteen feet from that doorway in the wall. You're
aimed at eye level. We cut from a reverse to you.
Bang,
the doors bust open and these mothers come screaming out. I mean they come with those curved swords like
nothing
can stop them. You see it?”

The cameraman nodded thoughtfully and the director turned to Allen Garfield and the group of Saracens, almost all of whom were Spanish.

“Ramon,” the director said to his production manager. “Tell them to come out yelling like Franco just outlawed poon.”

Allen Garfield, leaning on his spear, grinned. “You mean you want us to look sore.”

“Hey, we've got an American Mohammedan,” the director said. “Where are you from, son?”

“Royal Oak, Michigan.”

“You worked for me before?”

“In
Sack
. I was a barbarian, Mr. Heidke.”

“Well, you're coming up, aren't you?”

Allen Garfield grinned. He felt good. “Sir, I was wondering . . . you're shooting everything down in the street . . . what if you went up high for some down shots of the Crusaders? You know, as they'd appear to the Mohammedans waiting to ambush? You don't see the Mohammedans, but you see what they see, you know, and you build suspense.”

The director's gaze stared calmly from the shadow of his hat brim holding on Allen Garfield. “You build suspense, uh?”

“Like in
Gunga Din
. Remember when they came into that village?”

“No,” the director said, “I don't believe I remember that. Did you see this
Gunga Din
in Royal Oak, Michigan?”

Oh, God,
Allen Garfield thought and said, “It's just a suggestion. I don't mean a
suggestion
really. I just mean the scenes are like, similar.”

The director nodded. “Like similar. You know, I'd like to see
this
Gunga Din
.” He said then, “Do you think if I went to Royal Oak, Michigan, they'd show it to me?”

Throughout the rest of the day, the rest of the week, and almost whenever he saw or thought of the director after that, Allen Garfield pictured himself standing in the Saracen costume holding the spear and imagined the replies he could have made.

Very calmly, looking right at him, “I think if you ever went to Royal Oak, Michigan, they'd . . .” Then something right between the eyes.

“They'd string you up in front of the theater.”

“They'd tie you to a front-row seat out of revenge and make you watch all your pictures.”

Or, how about, you just stare at him very calmly and say, “That remark is about as intelligent as the pictures you make.” Or . . .

“Gee, Mr. Heidke, how does it feel to know everything?” Very humbly.

“How does it feel to be as smart as you are?”

“How does it feel to be a smart-ass?”

No, the best thing would be to shake your head like, This is too much. Hand him the goddamn spear and walk off. Walk off right in front of the whole cast and crew, because you don't have to take that jazz from anybody. Not
any
body.

But Allen Garfield had grinned. He had stood before the director in his Saracen robes holding his Saracen spear and had grinned.

W
HAT IS IT? SOMETHING
the better part of valor? Live to fight another day. The trouble was you couldn't fight them. You smile and act nice or you don't work. Or, the dead Syrian foot soldier thought then, you turn the camera around. You shoot them and show what fantastic jerks they are. Exposeville. Only with taste.

Shoot that,
Allen Garfield thought.
Write a script about all the
waiting and standing around smoking cigarettes and the absolute disregard for anybody else. Write about the director who doesn't know what to do next and covers up practicing his golf swing with a sword.

Write about the star leaving the cigarette in his mouth while the makeup girl tries to powder his face and he runs his hand up her side and can't believe it when she clamps her arm down. The next day there's a new makeup girl to powder the small muscle that moves in the jaw of the star who receives 1,500 letters a week, on the average, but who has his secretary read him “only the dirty ones.”

And how he drinks German beer, only German beer in Spain, out of a Roman goblet, all day yelling for his goblet between takes and sometimes stopping in the middle of a take to go off to the bathroom while dead Syrians lie waiting in the sun.

Let's get some contrast in it,
Allen Garfield thought.

Like standing in the rain in the commissary line for forty-five minutes listening to everybody talking Spanish and seeing the station wagon go by with the half dozen or so catered lunches from the Hilton.

Another line late in the afternoon, two thousand extras queued up for the bus ride back to Madrid and the Rolls going by with Keating and the girl in tight pants, just the two of them in the backseat with a thermos of martinis.

Later, Keating and the girl will be in the group at Aaronson's villa. They would watch a newly released film on the wide screen that came down out of the ceiling, no one even whispering during the film because Mr. Aaronson demanded absolute attention. After, they would speculate on whether or not the film would make money. And after that the Rolls would return Keating and his protégée to the Castellana Hilton, passing the bar on the Avenida de José Antonio where Allen Garfield sat with the two English actors, also Syrian foot soldiers, drinking Scotch that had been distilled in North Africa.

That would be a good contrast: the in group talking about box
office and residuals and Aston Martins and Marbella; while he and his friends talked about films: tore them open, probed their content, and quoted inane anachronistic lines (
MARCELLUS
haughtily ignoring his chains:
“That will be the day, when a Roman bows before a Syrian dog”), shaking their heads at the Roman westerns Mr. Sidney Aaronson passed off as motion pictures.

Another one. Keating stopping at the desk to see if there was a letter or call from his wife; the girl waiting by the elevator; Allen Garfield crossing the Plaza Major toward his pension, the street dark, wet, cafés closed, chairs and sidewalk tables stacked, a cab going by with dim yellow lights. Mood stuff.

Now he rested his head on his forearm, closing his eyes and feeling the sun on his face.
Go to sleep. Let them screw around all they want. Take the rotten three hundred pesetas a day, the rotten five whole bucks a day, and be happy. No worries, no problems. Think of all the jerks would trade places with you.

Be a good boy and go to sleep.

Or get up and walk off.

He opened his eyes.

Get up. Walk off right in front of them and don't say a goddamn word or look at anybody and if you have to walk all the way to Madrid then walk all the way to Madrid.

And if you could walk on water,
he thought then, closing his eyes again,
you could walk all the way home.

In a scrapbook under the coffee table in his parents' home was a photographic history of Allen Garfield.

Allen Garfield, five, posing with one hand inside his coat front. Allen Garfield in striped blazer and straw hat for his appearance on
Stars of Tomorrow
. Allen Garfield, fourth from left, Royal Oak High School Players. Allen Garfield in a scene from
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
Allen Garfield's graduation picture; long hair, horn-rimmed glasses, spread collar, Windsor knot. Allen Garfield in a dozen
or more Kwick-Pix dime-store photographs with trench coat collar up, with and without pipe. Allen Garfield in MG with girl in front of Wayne State University. Allen Garfield with cigarette in mouth, tie pulled down, holding script. Allen Garfield in model-agency photograph, his hair combed to the side now so that it curved down over his high forehead, with the caption: Fashion Model . . . Narrator . . . Actor. Born, 1930. Eyes, Brown. Hair, Dark Brown. 5'8-3/4”, 161 lbs. 39 Regular.

The model agency photograph, reduced to a two-column newspaper width, was also in a clipping from the weekly
South Oakland Press
headed “This 'n' That” with the byline Helen Howard. The column read:

Watch for a favorite son to become a celebrity. A '48 R.O. High grad remembered as the class wit. Actor and model before going with JBK as a Disc Jockey. Of course, Allen Garfield!

Only it's Gare Garfield now and he's a MOVIE STAR!

Gare will appear on
The Outriders
Wednesday night, Channel 7. He's one of the bad guys in this one and admits—according to his mother, Mrs. Allen J. Garfield, Sr., of 483 Emily Court—to having only a few lines. But what a start!

Gare was invited to Hollywood three years ago with a whole slew of D.J.s for a motion-picture premiere. Me thinks stars got in Gare's eyes, for he stayed!