Rudolph Wurlitzer: Slow Fade

The film’s publicity director drove him west into the desert through a crimson evening streaked with purple flares. It was dark when they reached the set, a collection of trailers and trucks parked off to the side of a dirt road winding down near a small river. His father would be shooting all night and was busy at the moment with his first setup. Walker waited in his trailer, pouring himself a large shot of tequila and watching television for the first time in two years. An hour later his father arrived, a tall, wiry man with a white beard and blue, red-rimmed eyes.

At first Wesley Hardin didn’t see his son lying in the rear of the trailer watching TV without the sound, involved as he was in a heated discussion with the producer.

“I don’t care who the fuck he is,” Wesley was saying, turning to face the producer as the man came in the door after him. “He won’t see the rest of the rushes until I’m ready to show them and he won’t pull the plug. He’s in too deep.”

“You didn’t hear him this morning on the phone. I did. He was screaming. The whole studio knew about you urinating on the screen at dailies last night. It will be in the trades tomorrow.”

“The camera was out of focus for the fourth straight day. I had to fire my focus puller and my operator, two men I’ve worked with for ten years.”

“You’re five million over, Wesley,” the producer said evenly. “No one cares about excuses when you’re five million over.”

“Is that why you’re flying to L.A. tonight to sabotage me?”

“I’m keeping the studio off your back, which necessarily involves not telling you everything.”

“That must be why you didn’t tell me about the memo you sent them yesterday on my age, drinking habits, and all-around perversity.”

“You are an obnoxious man,” the producer yelled suddenly. “An unholy cocksucker of the first rank.”

The producer’s impulsive attack was unexpected and left Wesley’s lower lip quivering with rage. As he reached for the tequila bottle, he saw Walker watching him from the rear of the trailer.

“Betrayal, cowardice, deceit,” he muttered, breaking the bottle over the edge of the kitchenette’s Formica counter and advancing toward the producer, who quickly retreated out the door.

As Wesley turned to face his son, Walker was struck by the collapse in his father’s once taut face, how the entire head seemed to hang by an invisible hinge, as if even the weight of gravity was enough to make it sag forward. Otherwise, Wesley Hardin looked the same as he always did, for he never changed his outfit on location: faded jeans, a white shirt, hand-tooled cowboy boots, and a fold-up Panama hat.

“You look terrible,” his father said, advancing toward him and letting the tequila bottle drop to the floor.

“You don’t seem in top shape yourself,” Walker said, tentatively meeting his awkward embrace and smelling the brittle decay and booze on his father’s skin and the cool shadow of something more.

“Are they going to can you?” Walker asked, reaching for something to say.

“They probably should although they don’t have the balls. But the whole rotten project is out of control.”

They sat awkwardly facing each other over the trailer’s kitchen table, Wesley opening up another bottle of tequila and pouring them both drinks.

“You could have come back once or twice,” Wesley said, his mouth twisting into an odd little grin. “That’s a line I had this kid say to Wayne once, in Bitter Creek . You remember? The kid was so nervous to have a line with the Duke he couldn’t say it without stammering, and I had to fire him.”

“ ‘I came back,’ ” Walker said. “That’s more than I thought I’d ever do. That’s what the Duke said. I was an extra on that one.”

Wesley sighed, his hand shaking underneath the table. “I thought you’d be here a few days ago,” he said abruptly.

“I arrived in L.A. last night. One of your production assistants met me.”

“How was the welcome home party?”

“I didn’t appreciate it.”

Wesley poured himself another shot of tequila and downed it before he forced himself to look directly at Walker. “Do you have any news about your sister?”

“No. Not really. Not past a certain point.”

“What do you mean, point? What point?”

“The point where you don’t know what anything means any more and it’s every man for himself. I don’t know. I never saw her over there. I heard plenty about her. But so did you. You read that detective’s report, didn’t you?”

“What else did you hear?” Wesley asked warily.

“Various things.” He looked away from his father, not able to pursue it any more. “There are people around who might know what happened. I might be able to get to one of them.”

Wesley’s tone was raw and impatient. “When?”

“When I get to one of them. Certainly not before.”

“Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Get to one of them?”

“If I get around to it. I guess so.”

“You guess so? That’s not good enough.”

“Good enough?” Walker asked, feeling a curtain come down between them with terrifying swiftness. “What do you know about good enough?”

There was a knock on the door followed by the assistant director’s blond head.

“We’re ready to roll, Boss, any time you are.”

Wesley rose, relieved to be summoned. “Hang around, or I’ll see you at the hotel tomorrow for lunch. We’re shooting all night and we’ll probably try to get a magic-hour shot. They’re after me like a pack of wolves so I won’t have much time. But we’ll talk on the ride back or something. We go to Mexico in a few days for three weeks, and the whole business should be finished in less than two months.”

“I don’t have any plans,” Walker said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Do you have money?”

“Your lawyer gave me a few grand in L.A.”

Wesley paused as he went out the door. “I’m married again. You might like this one. She’s from Labrador. Her grandfather knew your grandfather.”

Walker went back to the rear of the trailer and lay down, falling immediately asleep. He woke before dawn. The trailer was empty and he stepped outside into the cool night air keeping away from the dazzling arc lights and fog machines and walking toward the area that had been staked off for the horses.

A thin woman in tan corduroy pants and red flannel shirt was saddling a horse, one of the wranglers looking on. She moved with relaxed assurance, tightening up the cinch and swinging her long frame into the saddle. Her long black hair hung behind her in two knotted braids, and as she turned her face Walker knew that she was his father’s new wife. She had the same level look to her blue eyes as the girl in the photograph.

“You’re Walker,” she said, gazing down on him. “I’m Evelyn. Do you want to take a ride?”

He nodded. She looked no older than he, somewhere in her early thirties, with the broad cheekbones of the Inuit as well as the blue eyes and thin nose of the Scotch. His father had married a breed. He must have finally gone home and that’s where he must have met her.

The wrangler brought him a saddled horse and he rode after her as she trotted down the dirt road and out along the banks of a slowly moving river. She urged her horse into a gallop as the sun broke over the horizon and it was in trying to keep up with her that Walker lost control, his horse running flat out across the desert until the collision with A.D.

AND THAT was what Walker recalled, not exactly in that narrative form, of course, but in that general sequence, until finally, toward dawn, A.D. woke again.