Small Horses

The big man tugged the brim of his hat and spoke gently to the camera as though a guest had newly arrived at his door.

“Evenin’ folks. I’m here to tell you about my new picture, The Train Robbers, with a little lady you might have heard of by the name of Ann Margaret.” He inclined his head in a manner familiar to audiences who might, in that gesture, recall the earnest frontier wisdom for which his characters were renowned. “I think you’ll like it. It’s an old-fashioned Western with lots of action and—”

“Cut!” the director yelled.

The big man’s eyes narrowed and his throaty voice rose to a tattered yelp.

“Well, what’s the matter now?”

“Sorry, sir,” the director hesitated. “They’d prefer we didn’t use the term ‘old-fashioned’ anymore. They think it’ll drive away the younger audience.”

“Who thinks?”

A pinkish glow glazed the young director’s cheeks.

“The marketing department.” His fingers played nervously by an earlobe. “The studio’s marketing department.”

“Marketing department?” The big man exclaimed, his voice cracking under the incredulity. “Hell, anyone driven away by that nonsense can stay away, far as I’m concerned. I guess they’d rather we dump our regular audience and bring in a bunch of hippies instead. That it?”

“I don’t know, sir, but that’s the direction I was given. I’m just doing my job. How about we take five while Howard works up the changes for you?”

The big man’s eyebrows dwelled over a long cautious stare, then he suddenly released a brittle chuckle and slapped his own thigh.

“Well, hell, you work that in there, Howard,” he cried. “You work it all the way in there while I go parlay with our noble representative of the honorable fourth estate.”

He scurried sideways through a cloud of fussing assistants and technicians and crossed the dusty yard to a pair of canvas chairs which sat in the oblong shadow of a large parasol. The reporter, a young man with a vaguely tormented expression, lounged inattentively over the side of one of the chairs. When he saw the big man approaching, he yanked his legs aboard, drew his fingers from his beatnik beard and lurched upright, composing a large notebook on his lap as his pen made a nervous vigil over a fresh page.

The big man sat heavily into his chair with a long, wayward grunt. He snatched a drink from the small table beside him and the ice cubes tinkled against the glass as he raised it to his lips. He took a long sideways look at the young reporter.

“Where were we?” he said, when he’d taken a messy sup.

“We were talking about your acting method.”

A stern look waved the lines above the man’s brows and an unamused fissure cleaved his mouth into a half-smile.

“You were talking about that,” he said, “not me. There’s no method. I’m myself, on purpose. It’s not much of a trick but it’s all the trick I got.”

“Do you think that’s enough these days with people like Voight, Hoffman—”

“It’s plenty enough,” the man snapped. “I suppose you think all this method-acting hooey is for the benefit of the audience. It’s not, you know. It’s just vanity. These modern actors feel like they gotta show the audience that they’re suffering for their art and I guess the only way they know how to do that is to sob right into the camera. The thing they miss is that heroes were never meant to be like normal folks. The whole point of heroes is to be better than normal folks and, in my book, better means better. Not darker. Or sadder. Or dirtier, either. Not shooting people in the back like you see in all these Spaghetti Westerns. Not doing drugs or whatever else you see these days. We ought to be setting an example for people. Showing them what real courage is. That’s why people come to my pictures. That’s why they been coming to my pictures for thirty years and that’s why they’ll still be coming to my pictures in a hundred years when all these fancy dan tricks is gone the way of the dodo.”

“You seem very confident of your enduring legacy.”

The big man gave a crippled, sorrowful laugh, “Well, I guess I am. Faith don’t cost much this side of life but, even so, it’s in surprisingly short supply.”

The reporter bobbed excitedly and attacked the page with his pen.

“That’s good.”

“People need heroes they can rely on. These anti-heroes, as you guys call them, that’s just a fad the public will get tired of eventually. And, when they do, they’ll come looking for real heroes again.”

“So, I take it you didn’t like The Wild Bunch?”

“No sir, I didn’t. Bad guys pretending to be good guys.”

“But can’t a person be both? Can’t a person be more than just good or evil?”

“No sir, they can’t. They gotta pick a side and stick with it. It’s thinking like yours got the world in the upside-down mess it’s in. Men dressed like women and women dressed like men. Fellas that are supposed to be heroes blubbing about the place like sissies. People with no right to it demanding an audience’s respect. I’m no expert on scripture but I remember somewhere in there a warning against those who would try to put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

“If you want to talk about scripture, what about Saint Paul on the road to Damascus? Wasn’t that a case of darkness turning into light.”

The big man gave a creaking chuckle.

“Well son, you be sure to let me know when we get another case like that one.”

A few shouts came from the set and they both looked up and spent a few moments watching the buildup of activity there.

“You got one more question, kid.”

“You going to the Oscars tonight, sir? Who do you think will win for Best Actor?”

The big man made a distasteful face.

“Well, Olivier is a fine actor. I suppose I wouldn’t be too upset if he won.”

“What about Brando? His performance in The Godfather is surely deserving of an Oscar, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, son, I wouldn’t say. Too showy. Stuffing all that junk in his cheeks. All vanity and, I guess you know now, I can’t abide vanity,” he made a point of looking at the young man’s beard, “in anyone.”

“Can’t you even admit that the movie itself is a modern masterpiece?”

“No, sir, I can’t. If you ask me, that picture is nothing but modern un-American garbage.”

“But surely,” the reporter started but the big man stood up and raised a meaty palm.

“Maybe you should interview Brando. He’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear.”

The young man frowned and the big man leaned over him, tilting his hat up his forehead.

“I guess you’d prefer it I came off my horse like old Saul,” he said with a short chuckle and staggered back to the set, leaving the young reporter chewing his pen silently.

The young man stood up, put away his notes and wandered over to a young lady who was smoking a cigarette in the shade of a long silver trailer.

“Can you spare a cigarette, honey?”

She looked at him and her lips formed a brief pout of distaste but, after a few seconds, she yanked a corner of her lip into a dazed smile and held out a long cigarette.

“Here you go, Daddy-o.”

When he’d lit his cigarette, he leaned against the trailer and nodded his head in the direction of the renewed activity.

“So, what’s he like to work with?”

“The living legend?”

“Yes.”

She looked him up and down.

“Off the record?”

“Sure,” he said, clutching the cigarette between his teeth as he dived into his bag for his notepad and pen.

She pursed her lips carefully and blew a long thin plume of smoke toward the subject of their discourse.

“He’s a royal pain in the ass.”

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

“No, dammit!” the big man said with a hoarse growl, flinging a despairing arm at the apprentice wrangler. “It’s still too tall. We’re shooting a promo here, son. You’re gonna want to get his head in the frame, otherwise people will think someone sawed a foot off me or I’m standing in a trench.”

The apprentice wrangler, a kid no more than nineteen, opened his mouth to say something but the man wasn’t waiting for an answer.

“Take it back and bring me another,” he said and wafted the air between them with the back of his hand.

This was the third horse he’d returned, each with the same fatigued gesture, like an imperfectly cooked steak being waved back to the kitchen.

The young wrangler grimaced and nervously tightened his grip around the reins. Mr. Mitchell, the head wrangler, had told him to keep it simple and to bring him one of the Quarter horses. He stepped apart from the horse, looking up at it and across its felted light brown flanks as though re-evaluating its suitability for himself.

Between horses, the big man had dragged his canvas chair out from beneath the large white parasol and into the light. Now, as he watched the kid conduct his silent inspection, he lay back into the seat and stretched his long limbs into the warming midday sun. The man measured the moment with a throaty chuckle before taking himself slowly out of the chair. He removed his hat and slapped it once against his right thigh before refitting it and taking his famous lopsided stride over to where the kid stood, awaiting his approach with visible concern.

The AD stepped beside the kid, pulled his white baseball cap over his eyes and tugged at his greying beard, offering a physical demonstration of his concern.

“We can work around this,” he said. “A wide shot from further back. Then you’ll have everybody in the frame.”

The big man shook his head and his eyes crinkled in a stern smile.

“Hell, Bob, we’ll look like ants. You want folks to have to guess who the hell is in the picture?” He pointed at the kid. “You telling me we ain’t got one regular sized horse in that whole remuda back there?”

He started walking in the direction the kid had come from.

The director joined the AD and the kid beside the horse.

“Where are you going?” the director called.

“I’m going to pick myself out a normal-sized horse. You stay here and take five or six or whatever you guys call it these days.”

The big man followed the track around past a set of worn outhouses to a series of fresh-boarded corrals. The kid followed at a short distance and watched the man let himself into a large pen with about a dozen horses in two groups, stepping nervously in opposite corners.

The man noticed the kid and gestured to a cream and brown colt in the nearest corner.

“What about that little Paint Horse?”

“Oh, not Bobbin, sir. He’s mighty ornery. We only got him around for a special show that needs a bad-tempered ride. I wouldn’t recommend using him for this type of show, sir”

“Well,” the man said, “I reckon I can handle him.”

He strolled slowly over to the horse and carefully patted its flanks and head, whispering and clucking to the animal as he stepped closer.

The horse turned one side of his head to look at the man. The large eye, wet and brown, studied him.

“You know me, don’t you?” the man said, easing his hand across the thick mane and patting the horse’s neck softly.

He was about to chide the kid for his foolishness, when the horse suddenly bucked hard, slamming him against the fence and he lost consciousness.

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

“What the hell you let him in there for?”

“I’m sorry sir. He said the other horses was too big.”

“Too big? They’re always too big. Is he riding them or are they riding him?”

The boy gestured to the big man.

“He just moved.”

The big man opened his eyes. He was lying on a bed in the silver trailer. The kid was pressing a damp cloth to his head. A dull ache sat just above his eyes.

A grey-haired man with a long black moustache in a dark suit stood over him, looking concerned.

“You okay?”

The big man sat up. He took the damp cloth from the kid and pressed it to the ache above his eyes.

“I’ll live, I guess.”

“You remember anything?”

“I remember a little horse kicking the shit outta me.”

“That’s Bobbin. He’s the devil himself if he don’t know you. Raúl had no business letting you go in there.”

“I’ll live,” the man said and made to stand up.

The grey-haired man put a hand on his chest to keep him gently on the bed.

“You best take it easy sir. You had a sizeable bump. Doctor needs to check you out. Anyways, they told everyone to go home.”

“Go home? You sure?”

“Well, pretty certain. They’re all clearing out for the day.”

He stared at the big man.

“You recognize me?”

“Sure I do. You’re Mitchell, the head wrangler, but,” he gestured at his own outfit—jeans, boots, spurs and all—then at the grey-haired man’s smart suit and tie, “there’s something wrong with this picture, cowboy.”

“I had to attend a funeral,” the grey-haired man said, inspecting himself self-consciously.

“Well,” the big man said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.”

The big man rose to his feet.

“I gotta get myself into one of them suits too, so I can attend the 45th Academy Awards. I got a thing I gotta do there.”

“You sure you’re up for all that, sir?”

The big man loosened a soft chuckle that scraped through the relative quiet of the trailer.

“I guess I’m pretty certain,” he said.

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

The little hippy girl in the Red Indian getup walked slowly to the stage. She looked Apache. Chiricahua or maybe Western Apache. Jet black hair swung at her waist. A tan beaded dress. He’d killed lots of Apaches in his movies. No women, of course, though he’d probably widowed plenty.

For a second, he wondered if he was seeing things.

He was in the wings, getting ready for his bit when he saw the little Indian girl come up—almost float up—to receive the award and it was as though an invisible thread drew him to her. He moved closer to the stage, between a group of heavy-set security men. He was sweating heavy and breathing hard as she commenced her speech about Native Americans and respect, love and generosity, but then she said something about declining the award and booing broke out on the main floor.

She looked so small and scared flanked by those two giant props of the Oscar statuette and she glanced nervously toward the wings, where he stood, and hesitated in her speech. The large sheet containing her speech quivered in her grasp and her sad little mouth saddened further.

He moved toward her and one of the security guards, a dark-haired, squat fellow, placed a thick hand on his shoulder and pinched the flesh there urgently.

The big man was listening to the speech. He absently shrugged the man’s hand away but another security man tugged at his elbow from behind and a taller, blonde haired security man stood beside him and tried for his other elbow.

“Sir, you’d better stay here.”

“And you’d better leave off,” the big man croaked as he yanked his elbows away. He tried to take another step but a fourth, a fifth then a sixth security man barred his path.

“Sorry sir but we can’t let you do that?”

“Do what?” the big man said with a grimace. “I’m just trying to talk to her.”

“I’m sorry sir. We can’t allow that right now.”

“It’s not your business,” the big man said but when he looked back at the stage the little Indian girl had vanished like a heat mirage in the desert.

The band struck up and the audience applauded and, soon after, he found himself being introduced and he made his own speech and the filming wrapped up, but he kept thinking about the little Indian girl mirage he’d seen.

When the ceremony was over, the stars mingled in small careful groups along political and historical and status lines. He kept an eye out for a reoccurrence of the Indian girl mirage. He didn’t see her again but, talking to other guests, he learned she wasn’t a mirage. She’d really been on stage. She’d really spoken those words. She’d really stood there, hands quivering lightly, while the audience heckled and booed her.

He excused himself and waved for his personal driver, a quick, bright-eyed, sharp-faced man in his late twenties with slicked-back hair and a reluctant smile.

“Get me into Brando’s party,” the big man said. “I don’t care how you do it.”

His driver returned twenty minutes later.

“You’re in,” he said.

They drove to Mulholland Drive. He gave a lift to a couple of young up-and-coming actresses whose names he didn’t know and he couldn’t remember when they told him but who giggled and chatted carelessly the whole way to the Santa Monica Mountains. They all entered the large Spanish-style house together and the actresses’ laughter and general gaiety covered his entrance better than any gunpowder keg had in his pictures.

The party was in full swing. People were drinking and shouting and laughing; little dabs of mirthful giggles and loud uncontrolled splashes of laughter as though emptied from a fire bucket. A haze of marijuana smoke clutched his nostrils as he wandered through the different rooms.

A five-piece jazz band occupied a corner of the large open-plan living room and the lead singer, a tall, dark, graceful lady swirled effortlessly around a microphone stand, launching a series of winsome pleas into the warm night. On the other side of the house, by the pool, a keyboardist, guitarist and another singer performed a selection of modern hits. This singer—a pale, willowy fellow—decanted his soul into each song, almost collapsing into the outro before seemingly renewing his vigor for the next number.

As the big man moved through the house the sound of one or other band would dominate and, each time, the conquered song would idle sedately into the background only to re-emerge moments later when he crossed some invisible threshold. As he made his way up the wide circular stairs, the two sounds grappled in the air around him, locked in close combat.

A large dimly lit room of cushions and candelabras opened onto a long veranda. He picked a path through cushions and half-seen bodies which writhed with the apocalyptic fervor of drunken ardor.

A set of thin white curtains floated across the wide doorway and the night air parted them just enough for him to see her standing on the balcony, looking out at the city lights in the distance.

He approached cautiously. She was alone.

“I heard your speech,” he said softly and she weaved back in surprise.

He raised his hands.

“I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to speak to you, if that’s okay.”

She looked at him for a long moment and eventually nodded slowly.

He pointed to a metal table and chairs nearby.

“Do you mind if we sit, miss?”

She glanced about uncertainly then shook her head quickly. He pulled a chair out and gestured her into it before taking the seat opposite her.

“You mind if I smoke,” he said, smiling. “I smoke when I’m nervous.”

“No, it’s fine.”

He smiled as he took out a pack of cigarettes then, smiling again, he offered her one, which she took, and he lit both their cigarettes with a light snap of his lighter.

Out on the veranda, the modern music dominated again. The band were playing a song he’d never heard before called Peaceful Easy Feeling and the people around the pool below and the singer all swayed as if caught in the same mellow current.

“This is nice,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, smiling timidly. Her dark eyes glittered in the light from half-a-dozen ornate lamps which stood at intervals along the balcony.

He pulled his chair closer.

“I heard your speech earlier,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes staring unabashedly into his, “but did you see it?”

“See it?”

Her voice took on a dreamlike quality.

“Did you see the oppression of the weak? The bloody war against nature? The long veil of hypocrisy that hangs over this nation? The thousands of bones lying unburied on the prairies?”

He moved excitedly toward her, their faces inches apart.

“I saw,” he said. “I saw all of it and I felt all of it, as though you were speaking just to me, directly into my brain.”

“In a way, I was. I’ve seen all your pictures. I know you better than any man.”

He frowned sadly.

“You saw only a shadow of me in those movies. The shameful shadow of delusion. I decided today, I’ll never make another of those pictures. I’m done with that life. Do you believe me?”

She smiled tenderly.

“I believe we can be whoever and whatever we want to be, if we want it hard enough.”

“I do want it. Truly, I do. It’s not something I thought about before today but so much has changed in this day. This morning I was an adolescent, knit in kin and afraid of the universe, and tonight I am become a man. The old me skulked in the shadows of that curtain, hiding in the wings, but then, bathed in your radiant candor I was baptized into the world and here I am.”

Her eyes were aflame now. The music rose below them but neither of them heard it anymore.

“I was drawn to you,” he said. “Like I’ve never been drawn to another. Like a celestial body stranded millennia in the cold immensity of space, suddenly feeling an urgent tug from somewhere in the vast emptiness. When those people started booing, I wanted to rush to your side. To be there with you.”

“You did?”

He stubbed out his cigarette and took her hand.

“Yes, I did.”

“And they stopped you?”

“They tried to, but they can’t stop me now. Here I am. I want to be with you now, if I can. I can’t explain but something happened to me when I heard your speech. The scales fell from my eyes, and I suddenly saw the world, cold and hard, through your eyes. All the needless slaughter and butchery. All the lies and deceit. All the self-deceit. A world bereft of love or generosity waiting to be stocked. By us.”

She urgently extinguished her own cigarette and placed her hand on his and their fingers intertwined.

“I want that too,” she said and they stared long and hard into each other’s eyes, cataloguing the thousand mysteries there, counting each glimmer of light like beautiful little fireworks being tracked across the sky.

An apprehensive cough came from behind them. They turned and his driver was there.

“Your wife’s here,” the driver said.

“Oh yeah,” the big man said. “Shit.”