Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

A picture about a lunatic lost on the plains is not what I had in mind. Press him about Indian wars.

Sincerely,

Damon Ira Chance

Chance’s curtly dismissive note about the McAdoo interview recounting the thunderstorm on the prairie and his playing pig for the Indians leaves me feeling idiotic and abashed. It worries me even more when the next week’s worth of transcripts is passed over unacknowledged and uncommented upon. I am not pleasing Mr. Chance.

I berate myself for my stupid assumption that words on the page can convey what I have learned about McAdoo. Which is that he has something he needs to tell. What this is I can’t say, but I sense the weight, the pressure of it behind everything he said that night. Words on the page are not capable of communicating this. It had been the burial, the drawing in of night, the incessant wind, the way McAdoo held himself in the chair, the flick of the boot slamming closed the stove door, the sudden darkness, the voice playing scales in the darkness, beginning flat as dictation, then growing troubled, self-questioning. All this I suddenly see as more important than what he said; the feel of the night was its meaning.

That’s why what I’ve given him seems to Chance inadequate, pedestrian, a labour of diligence rather than imagination. But I am not just an unimaginative stenographer. I am not. To use Chance’s favourite word, I have intuited whatever is to be got from McAdoo will not be got for the asking, simply, easily. It will have to be won.

Shorty McAdoo is no braggart. Chance could find a hundred cowboys here in Hollywood who, in a few hours, could tell enough colourful lies to fill any number of movie screens. But Chance’s ambition is to go beyond entertaining lies, to make a great film, a truthful film. That is what he has set his heart on. And I want to tell him only delicacy and patience will extract the truth from Shorty McAdoo.

I have my pride. It galls me that Chance might have written me off, that I might be underestimated, unappreciated, misunderstood. I need to meet with him face to face and explain all this, or at least talk to him on the telephone.

The problem is I can’t reach him. When I phone his office, his receptionist says he is busy and can’t speak to me. I’m beginning to suspect Fitzsimmons has given her orders not to let me talk to Chance.

I need some kind of breakthrough with McAdoo. So I buy the pistol.

“What’s this?” demands McAdoo.

“What does it look like?” He refers to the revolver I bought in a pawnshop in L.A., hoping it would be useful in coaxing a revelation out of him.

“That ain’t what I mean. What I mean is, why you showing it to me?”

“I want you to teach me to shoot.”

“Put that away before somebody gets hurt.”

“Come on, Shorty. You know about guns. That first day I came here, the day you went back to the bunkhouse and put your jacket on – I saw the pistol in the waistband of your pants.”

“You wouldn’t have, I didn’t intend you to. And in case you didn’t I showed it to you. Remember?”

“So it was a warning?”

“I’m a careful man.”

“Teach me to shoot.”

“I ain’t a shootist. Never was.”

“You said you intended to knock those Indians off their ponies. What did that mean?”

“Means I was in fear of my life.”

“Sounds like fancy shooting. Sounds like a shootist to me.”

“That close, you just point and squeeze. It’s much of a muchness to pointing your finger.” He points his finger at me by way of illustration.

I proffer the revolver to him. “Show me.” For a moment, I’m sure he is going to refuse point-blank, but he takes it, weighs it in his hand. Then he sweeps the muzzle up and down in broad strokes, like a painter running a brush up and down a picket fence, smooth and calculated. Repeating this action several times he says, “Wait here,” and strides off. It is obvious from the length, the deliberation of each step that he is pacing off a distance. I begin to count to myself, seven, eight, nine. McAdoo halts, swings back to me. “Don’t you move now, Harry,” he warns me.

The sharp, flat crack, the spray of dirt pattering on my right pant leg seem simultaneous with the movement of the pistol barrel. Again, the glint of the barrel travelling through the hot sunshine, the loud pistol report, the eruption of dirt by my left boot.

I stand locked to the spot, a weightless sensation in my bowels, my head dizzily adrift. His voice snaps me back into focus. “Just point and squeeze,” he says mildly. “Point and squeeze.”

“For the love of Christ, Shorty!”

McAdoo casually ambles back to me, the pistol dangling loosely by his side. My eyes don’t leave the revolver until we are face to face again. “There’s your lesson,” he says, holding up the gun innocent in the palm of his hand. “Take it.”

I take it because the weapon seems safer in my hands than in his. My tongue is cracked leather in a dry wool sock.

“I ain’t no shootist,” he says quietly, “but here’s a fact. A carrying piece has got but one business. That business is man-killing.”

I am having trouble with my tongue, it feels numb.

“This gun ain’t about fancy shooting, it’s about stomach. This gun ain’t got but one earthly use but dropping a man. A man who can see your face and whose face you can see. It ain’t no play toy. I knew boys could shoot the pips off a playing card with one of these, boys could dance a tin can around a yard like it was on a string. Hotter than slick shit in July as long as nobody put the wind up their ass.” He takes me by the shoulder and points to the scarecrow Wylie has planted in the garden. Ragged overalls and a pillowslip stuffed with straw on which a lopsided face has been scratched with a piece of coal. “I just put a little wind up your ass. Now point and squeeze,” he says.

I shake my head. I don’t trust my trembling hand.

“You wanted this fucking lesson. Learn it, Vincent.”

I raise the gun. Immensely heavy, a great weight dragging on my arm, it is as if I am trying to lift the scarecrow staked in the garden on the tip of the gun barrel, uproot it from the earth. I fire, the pistol springs in my hand, a small captive animal struggling in my fist.

“High and to the right,” says Shorty drily. “Point and squeeze.”

The quaking in my hand has spread, run up the length of my arm to vibrate in my shoulder. I try to fix the bead in the centre of the overalls but it twitches with every beat of my heart. Clenched muscles cannot overrule it. Another shot. A puff of dust dances in the field beyond the garden.

“Squeeze,” says McAdoo, “squeeze.”

I snap off two more shots as quickly as I can; I want to be done with it, the gun kicks in rapid recoil, the smell of expended powder worms up my nostrils. Then I am pulling the trigger of a gun dead in my hand, the hammer clicking repeatedly on empty chambers, the scarecrow leering at me untouched. Shorty’s hand closes on the barrel and pushes it down to my side.

“Learn anything?” he asks.

Over Shorty’s shoulder I spot Wylie running hard and awkward in his riding boots, knees pumping high, shoulders thrown back. Passing the burned house, he snatches a piece of lumber from the ground and hurtles on toward us.

“Lose the gun, Harry,” Shorty is saying. “It ain’t for you.” Then he senses something, breaks off, turns and catches sight of Wylie. “Christ,” he says, “here comes the cavalry.”

The cavalry is upon us now. “I heard them shots, Shorty! I come to see!” he cries, breathless. “You okay, Shorty?” He holds the two-by-four wrapped in a two-fisted grip. A large rusted spike protrudes from it.