The Return of Henry Starr, page 14
In his distraction, Esterhazy took to thinking of the Famous Outlaw as one of the stage properties, a slightly more flexible cigar store Indian. It surprised him when he noticed that between takes the Famous Bandit was observing not Miss Woodly but Esterhazy himself, closely and calculatingly. Though it made him feel uncomfortably like a coquette, Esterhazy now “ignored” the Scourge of the Southwest, waiting to see what the outlaw had in his mind.
“All right!” yelped Foley, clapping his hands like a machine gun. “Let’s get ready for the Starr Gang. Everybody in front of the bank, horses …”
They were filming the last part of a bank robbery sequence, the Starr Gang to come bursting out of the bank, mount the horses they had neatly ranged along the hitching rail in front and ride out of town shooting. Simple enough you would think, but no, they couldn’t seem to get it right. One two three takes and something wrong every time. “No! No! No! Cut! Stop! Get back here and let’s try it again!”
Henry Starr spoke to Foley hardly at all, but spent the long spells between takes tending his gear or his horse, or talking business with the extras on the lot—the “Starr Gang,” most of them young out-of-work cowboys from ranches around Oklahoma City and the western part of the state.
“Bottom fell plumb out of beef when the Germans quit, I bet the whole spread on one more Hun offensive and lost her.”
“Drought’s bad. Bank int’rest’s worse. This job gets done I’m thinking about Montana or California somewheres.”
“I tried me some oil drillin’ a while? Man, that’s some stinkin’ work. They had a bunch of us in there riding shotgun on these Hunkies they hauled in to bust the Wobbly strike.”
“Let the Hunkies have it, they won’t notice the stink.”
“If they’d got them in some niggers you’d have seen some trouble.”
“Hell, they had niggers down in there with the Wobblies and …”
Even to an Englishman, these men would seem to speak a foreign language:
“You always use a dally, ropin’? Got you a goodnuff cow horse it’s a waste a time and cost you a thumb you ain’t careful.”
“You ever throw the long rope, Mr. Starr, you don’t mind me askin’?”
“Never did,” said Henry Starr. “You get you a goodnuff bank, buy all the beef they’ll sell you, let some other fella do the ropin’.”
They laughed, but the first cowboy added, “Bank got my spread, anyway. Maybe I ought to go get me that bank?”
“Why don’t you just take a dally round your own neck and save yourself trouble,” said another one.
Foley called for the next take, and Henry Starr said, “Save your pennies and buy you a bank. Let’s get this done.”
They mounted and rode in, horses jostling and upstaging one another; paused and looked foolish sitting there, the horses switching tails and dropping shit in the street, the men trying to remember that their more ghostly selves were supposed in this interval to be inside robbing the bank—which was difficult to keep in mind because the false-front bank in front of them had no insides, and they might not go to the “studio” to shoot the bank interior for days and days, by which time some of them might have quit or been fired or broken legs and gone to hospital or died and gone to heaven. Yet there they would seem to be, waiting outside while Henry Starr went in to rob the bank, then whirling their horses to escape in real time again—losing a couple of hats, and one going off the wrong way so that Foley yelled, “Cut! Stop! Cut! Goddamn it … let’s break for lunch, I can’t stand any more on an empty stomach!”
It was just as Esterhazy had concluded that Henry Starr and his gang were entirely too foreign for his comprehension that the Scourge of the Southwest ambushed him.
As he came back from the break, Esterhazy saw him up on the stool peering through the viewfinder looking for the empty set, which was covered in black because the lens cap still plugged the eye of the camera. Esterhazy stepped up and plucked it off.
“Aha!” said Esterhazy with a grin.
“Aha!” echoed Henry Starr, looking down. “So that’s where they hid it.”
“First lesson of photography is take off lens cap,” said Esterhazy—feeling very smug and sure of himself because the outlaw had come to him at last—and as Starr started to climb down he pushed at him with two hands, stay, and climbed up to stand on a rung of the stool with one hand on the outlaw’s shoulder to steady himself. “I show you. Look into viewfinder, so. Sharpen image turning this …”
“I’ve been watching you,” Henry Starr said slowly, and Esterhazy blurted “I know!” but Starr just nodded (he had noticed him noticing) and went on, now with a small, slightly conspiratorial smile, “I been trying to put together in my mind just how it is you do all of this.” His wave took in camera, set, warehouse studio and cutting room.
“Oh well,” said Esterhazy, “isn’t just me—Foley is directing and editing, and laboratory …”
Starr shook his head, having none of it. “You’re the man puts it into the camera, aren’t you? There used to be lots of folks around when I was conducting business, too: but you could always tell who the banker was, because he had the money; and you could always tell who I was, because I was the man with the gun.”
Esterhazy grinned. “Well, maybe movies is more complicated than robbing banks.”
Henry Starr nodded agreement. “That’s why I come to you.”
“Yes,” said Esterhazy, as if Starr had done the right and proper thing, “all right—ask.”
“You made it look like I was places I wasn’t.” He gave a sad smile. “In my old line of work, they used to call that hanging a frame on someone.”
“That’s cutting,” Esterhazy said offhandedly—Henry Starr was so damned sure of himself, he would tell the Famous Bandit a thing or two, let him see what it was to be Esterhazy, what his skill and his knowledge were. “They take set of pictures, let’s say is Slick McClain sitting in bar playing cards. This is Tuesday. Wednesday you arrive, they take few frames of you standing at bar, Slick McClain himself is off somewhere Wednesday drunk. Then cut piece of pictures of Slick”—he made a scissor snip with two fingers—“cut piece of your pictures and splice in. You see? Then another few frames Slick, snip, piece of you, snip, and splice in. When it runs audience sees first you, then Slick, then you, as if was their own eyes jumping around—Tuesday, Wednesday, all looks same, they are in barroom watching Slick play cards and you get drunk.”
“You take the picture,” said Henry Starr, “then you cut it up and put it together that way. All right.” He nodded a grudging acceptance.
“Good,” said Esterhazy, softly ironic. “I’m glad you don’t mind.”
Henry Starr cleared his throat and a little color came into his cheeks. “I thought they just picked up the camera and moved it around, back and forth.”
“You can move camera sometimes. But is best from fixed position, with light just so, everything placed for shot.”
Henry Starr smiled. “Like hunting buffalo. You take your stand downwind, with the light so it will help you pick your animal out of the brown—though I guess for buffalo it’s the wind more’n the light you worry about. Take your stand. Get set. When you’ve got him in your sights pull the trigger and blam!”
“Blam!” said Esterhazy sarcastically. “Look, is not just like reporters popping flashpowders, pop! blam! boom! Not like shooting gun, blam, and something is lying dead and don’t move no more. Maybe is how it looks when Foley shoots you, but not if was mine to do. Film is moving in camera, light is moving outside on people and every thing, all moving too. Only camera is still.”
“What about when Bill rode out of town chasing…?” asked Henry Starr, softly and shyly, looking at Esterhazy with an intensity that spoke his respect.
“Panning shot,” said Esterhazy, throwing it away, a little thing. “Camera is fixed, but makes pivot, you must turn slowly to follow action, so …”
Henry Starr seemed satisfied: “Like a running deer then, not a buffalo stand. You got to lead your buck …”
“Ach,” said Esterhazy, but he wasn’t annoyed now, the conversation delighted him, “still shooting ’em dead, eh? But look, camera don’t stop him, it follows as it can, trying to keep rider in frame till it can’t no more, he slip out and gets away. Panning,” he said decisively.
Henry Starr peered down the lens, then swiveled the camera carefully, panning. “It’s different,” he said. “You cut things off and put them in the box here, and it’s different. Then you suck the colors out of it, and it becomes something else. This place looks like shit in daylight, but it ain’t half bad in your movies.”
Your movies made Esterhazy blush. “Art,” he said in a tight voice. “Is nature of my art. Reality, I make better than itself.” Esterhazy hesitated, but the urge to tell was finally too much, the attentiveness of the outlaw’s brown eyes an appeal to the loneliest part of Esterhazy’s being. “All right,” he said. “There are two things for me. Could be more if I worked with someone who is not Foley; but with Foley”—he shrugged—“story gives nothing. Also acting, nothing. So what is left? To make picture, to set frame around it so light comes onto it to show what happens; and also, what is feeling you can have about, it. Do you know what I mean? Tell me any picture you remember from that movie. I mean, forgetting your own face, which is all any actor ever want to see. Any picture?”
Henry Starr sat there a moment, gathering his thoughts. “All right,” he said, “let’s see how I do. The one I remember is that picture of the man riding in, the girl over his pommel, and the sky behind him looked like it had caught fire. It was the damnedest sunset I ever saw, not a color in it, but it felt like color. For a minute there I thought he and that gal was something … something more than you could say. They never lived up to the sunset, though.”
Esterhazy nodded, pleased, blushing. “You got good eyes.” Then he heard the echo of Miss Woodly’s words in his own voice, and that made him blush more profoundly. To cover himself he spoke didactically: “That’s first thing. But secret in movies is, it moves. Not just how light falls on things that are still, dead things—but things, people, moving talking running around, flowing even … you see? And for this …” He reached across Henry Starr and put his hand on the crank. “This. To use it you must have right feeling from your eyes into your hands. What I’m watching gets me excited, I’m cranking film faster and faster and what happens? Picture comes out moving slow, slow, slow. Just as slow as I was cranking fast.”
Henry Starr shook his head.
Esterhazy waved him off. “Don’t worry, all you have to know, it works by opposite, yes? Crank fast, what you see after comes out slow; crank slow and pace is fast, hip-hap-hoop! like that. Is very funny to see sometimes, that way. Is my talent to know how to play with speed, with time of things happening. Sometimes I let you see things just like they happen. Sometimes I crank just so, give them little speed or slow them little bit—like music, if time and people you could play like music, and this … it gives an effect, a feeling in what you see. You see?”
“I got to go over it some,” said Henry Starr.
“Why?” said Esterhazy. “You want my job?”
“No,” said Henry Starr. “It’s just something I need to know if I’m going to do this kind of work.”
Esterhazy looked at him seriously. “You could make better living robbing banks, my friend. If I told you what they pay me, maybe you’d think I was not any good at this.”
“Show me,” said Henry Starr seriously, “and I’ll see how good you are.”
Esterhazy pulled his head back: Henry Starr was so charming, and then there was that little edge, as if behind the smile a cool mind really sat in judgment of each new person, each new experience that approached the Famous Outlaw. “Better you should teach me how to rob that bank,” he said, looking away.
Henry Starr grinned. “If I were to teach you, you’d know how.”
“Would you teach him how it was done in the old days?” she said, and they looked down and saw Miss Woodly, and felt a touch sheepish at being so snuck-up on. Esterhazy blushed and hastily climbed down, and Henry Starr cleared his throat, and Miss Woodly said, “Hello.”
“I was just showing Henry how to use camera.”
“Fair trade, ma’am. I’m supposed to show him how to rob a bank.”
“Show me too,” she said, her chin tilted up so she could look at Henry Starr’s eyes. It wasn’t a question. He didn’t know how to answer. She smiled, and something in the line of her body seemed to ease. “I think Mr. Wilberforce worries that you have your eye on our bank.”
“Your bank?” said Henry Starr, with a little half-smile, and she blushed, and Esterhazy winced at her slip of the tongue. Henry Starr went on, gently, “No law against a banker worrying, ma’am. But I only rob banks in the pictures now, and Mr. Wilberforce pays for the pictures. I’m satisfied with that arrangement if you-all are.” His eyes crinkled just the least bit. “But now, if I was to give some thought to it … well, I’d give it lots of thought. Take my time. Not something I’d just jump at.”
“What are you doing out here?” asked Esterhazy, cutting in sharply.
She cleared her throat uneasily, but then as she started to speak her shape itself seemed to change, what she said straightened the set of her spine and sharpened the blue light of her eyes. “I suggested to Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Poole that since their affairs would keep them away from the production here, I ought to be on hand to inform them of any difficulties Mr. Foley might have with the scripts, and to convey their … advice to Mr. Foley when necessary.”
“Aha!” said Esterhazy, delighted, wonderful! wonderful! What a girl this one was to have made those three march to her tune, what a … And then he stopped, stunned at this revelation of what she was capable of, what politics she had—and what was it, I ask you, that she had for political capital with those two? What indeed! Esterhazy is romantic idiot who thinks this girl has a crown between her legs when is simply a tool, a kind of wrench perhaps for wringing concessions out of …
“Here’s something to tell them,” said Henry Starr, “if you don’t mind,” and they both looked at him because his bantering tone had suddenly changed. “Why don’t me and Esterhazy go out and look at some country around here? Mr. Poole wants us to shoot some real old-time stuff. I know where it is. It’s places I used to live in. What about it?”
“Yes!” said Esterhazy. He wanted to get away from all of them, all of this, Foley Wilberforce Poole, and especially Miss Woodly, yes. “We finish shooting in two-three days. I leave editing to Foley and he is just as happy I am not looking over his shoulder making him get it right. Very good idea, very practical, very economic!”
“Yes,” said Miss Woodly, setting her round strong chin, “all right. But I’m coming along.”
Esterhazy’s heart sank; it just confirmed every worst thing he thought about her, his Miss Woodly. Evidently Starr’s thoughts ran the same way because he said:
“Well, ma’am, camping out and all …”
“I am twenty-seven years old,” she said, “I’ve camped out. I go my own way. People think a lot of things about a woman that goes her own way, but what they think is none of my business.” She had lifted her face toward Henry Starr again, the round jaw stubborn, sticking it out on a dare, but her light eyes were focused intently.
“No ma’am,” said Henry Starr, “I guess not.”
All the words sound like “No,” thought Esterhazy but they come out meaning yes, she comes with us. Everything goes by opposite. Even Famous Outlaw cannot say no to her.
Henry Starr studied her, his eyes serious, his mouth curled the least bit. “You handle these folks pretty well,” he said. “Near as well as you handle that team.”
So, thought Esterhazy, he has been watching her too.
Miss Woodly blinked. Then she narrowed her eyes and said, “It’s my team, bought and paid for with my own money.”
Esterhazy realized with a shock that the outlaw’s remark had broken her poise and made her defend herself—awkwardly, and the awkwardness made it somehow more shameful. So he thinks of her that way too, thought Esterhazy, and though he felt sympathy for her shame he was also spitefully satisfied.
“Time!” yelled Foley, his megaphone pointed at Esterhazy. The cameraman nudged Henry Starr to dismount from the camera stool and he mounted in the outlaw’s place, turning away to concentrate on the image in his viewfinder.
But she was not letting it rest there. “We are all of us in the business of making movies.” Esterhazy looked back at her and saw she was poised again and had a dangerous tilt to her head as she talked to Henry Starr. “Mr. Poole and
Mr. Wilberforce don’t do things just on a dare.” She grinned, reminding Esterhazy of a small predatory cat. “Why do you think I am so sure they will pay for our excursion?”
Esterhazy had to eat his answer to that one, and he suspected Henry Starr did too.
“I wrote something for them,” she said, “a plan for our next script.” She paused for effect, the catlike smile broadening slightly. “It is to be the story of The Life and Adventures of Henry Starr.”
Now it was the Famous Outlaw who looked embarrassed, shamed as if at the exposure of a kind of nakedness—a look of strange intensity made him squint and his mouth draw back, then his eyes seemed to empty suddenly, leaving him looking hungry and slightly sad. Then his mouth set, and his eyes focused and narrowed. “My life?” he said with soft emphasis. “Well: what do you know about that.”
She was quick enough to hear the irony and sharp enough to answer it literally. “When you were in prison the last time you wrote that autobiography for that Denver newspaper,” she said, smiling in a way that was both fierce and slightly arch. “I’ve been looking you up.” Then she let the smile slip, and her look was suddenly straight and serious. “Oh listen,” she said, “let’s not be clever and sneaky about this. I have an idea, and I think it could make a good movie. I’m asking the two of you if you want to work with me. It’s not going to happen if you don’t. I don’t know how to make the pictures. I don’t really know anything about you but what the papers say, Henry Starr. I want to do this right, and if either of you would rather not work with me there’s no point in even starting.” She stood very still and straight; whether they said yes or no she would not let the least alteration of line or shadow in her face or the set of her back show them that it hurt.
