Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival Read online

  "Tell me something, Jesse. Where you come from, has Man yet stepped foot on the surface of the Moon?"

  "What?" Jesse was taken off guard by this. He didn't know how to respond.

  Scoble snorted, and turned towards the stairs. Only now did Jesse notice how hobbled with age his walk was, how much each step labored on worn-away knees.

  "We'll be arriving in Los Angeles in five minutes," the conductor announced, wiping the sweat at his brow with a pocket-corner.

  Jesse woke from his half-sleep to an arid blast of warm air forcing its way through the open train window. He found the heat welcoming, familiar. At his side, his hand rested on Scoble's brown traveling trunk. Inside it, a projector, and the fruits of his labor, were safely stashed away. Protected from the heat and the elements.

  His efforts had only begun. He would return to Black's camp, where he would edit the film together and prepare its premiere for an audience of Bridgetown residents. They were who the film was made for. They were the only audience he cared about, and with any luck, it would be a film that made them very angry. Angry enough to spur them into action behind a unified cause.

  Jesse was counting on that.

  The train pulled into the station, marked with a sign that read "LA GRANDE STATION." Outside the window, Jesse soaked in the architectural details of the Moorish structure, especially its great green dome with an ornate weather vane that pierced the sky. It was a beautiful building. Jesse wondered what would come of it, and what would one day lead to its inevitable dismantling.

  He stepped off the train into the oppressive late August heat. He did not seek out a drink or the solace of shade. Carrying the case with his film in it was just too nerve-wracking. Even though Scoble had retained the original negatives as a part of their agreement, he dreaded the thought of going all the way back to Chicago to obtain new positives.

  He found a stagecoach taxi to take him back to Bridgetown. The ride was uneventful, and with the driver outside, he could spend the two-hour journey mostly lost in his own mind. He appreciated not being stuck in a cabin with a chatty stranger.

  The cab dropped him off by the Bridgetown livery. Jesse gave him a generous tip, and lugged the trunk down the street towards the saloon.

  Inside, he gave a nod to Clayburn, and to old one-legged Earl McInnis. McInnis never seemed to leave this place, did he? The Irishman gave Jesse a knowing nod, a kind of salute, as Jesse made his way towards the back. He passed the tables full of Lotus Boys and opened the door to the back room. He had been told to do so in Black's last telegram.

  What he found beyond the doorway was a cellar staircase, planks of bare wood leading down into a dark tunnel. He looked for a lightswitch, but there was none.

  "Jesse?"

  Jesse turned, and saw one of the Lotus Boys was talking to him. He was a bit older than most of the gangsters, his eyes a clear azure that contrasted with his copper beard.

  "Eli," the man said, putting out a hand to shake.

  Jesse set the trunk down and shook it. "Nice to meet you."

  Eli nodded. "You're going to want this," he said, producing a kerosene lantern.

  "Thanks." Jesse took the lantern, and turned back towards the open cavity leading down to the depths below the saloon.

  "I'll see you on the other side," Eli said.

  Jesse wasn't sure what that meant. He hoisted up the case with the film in it, and began the walk into the abyss.

  The wooden planks that formed a staircase creaked with each step. The tunnel walls, simply dug out of the earth and reinforced with lengths of rebar, were cold and wet. The lantern gave off just enough light to not trip up and die, but it was difficult to make out much of anything.

  A hollowness came over every sound he made. It was an echoic quality that reminded him of the insides of Devil's Peak. But there were no magical blue stalactites down here, only the cold, wet earth.

  At last he reached the base of the tunnel. He estimated he was thirty or forty feet below street level. The sounds of gaiety back in the saloon had receded and were barely audible now.

  He held up the lantern to make out where he was supposed to go next. The wall ahead of him curved and doubled-back to his right; he proceeded with caution, not wanted to land a foot in a puddle, or worse. There was a scurrying beneath him. Reflexively, he glanced down, and saw a rat dart across. He pressed on.

  At the end of the tunnel, he came to a chamber carved out and walled with plaster. Here, candles were everywhere, wax dripping down their bone-colored sides. The space had the hazy quality of a cathedral, and the walls were mostly bare, save for a few paintings in a style Jesse didn't recognize—and a bookshelf at the rear.

  At the center of the room, Black sat behind a desk. Jesse was equally startled, and unsurprised, to find him here.

  "How did it go?" Black asked.

  "Good."

  "You're confident you'll be able to win over the hearts of Bridgetown?"

  "We just need to start the conversation," Jesse said. "They'll come to see the truth."

  "So when do we get to watch it?"

  "I'll start assembling the footage right away."

  "Good."

  "What is this place?"

  "A convenient way to do business when the outlands won't suffice," Black said, matter-of-fact. "Nothing more. Your brother's convinced himself he's exiled me to the wastes. He has no idea how tenuous his hold over Bridgetown truly is." He took a breath. "Well then, now that you're here, we can go home."

  Black stood up, stretched, and blew out the candles at his desk. Then he turned to the bookshelf. Jesse was only half-surprised when Black pulled at its side and it opened on a hinge, revealing yet another hidden passageway. This one was tiny, though, and Black had to crouch to get through. He signaled for Jesse to follow.

  On the other side there was a ladder. A shaft of daylight rained down on them from a grate at street level. Black began the climb.

  "I'm not gonna be able to go up the ladder and take the trunk," Jesse protested.

  "Oh, right," Black said. "Go up through the saloon and meet us in the back alley. Just make sure no one sees you."

  Jesse did just that, closing the false bookshelf behind him. He made his way up the long flight of stairs, out of the cellar and through the saloon as nonchalant as possible.

  He emerged into the brilliant daylight of Main Street, and squinted as he rounded the corner along the side of the saloon towards the back alley. He hoped no one was watching.

  He felt a wall of stench—garbage—as he neared the alley. Flies buzzed around the dumpster, filled with last night's refuse and slop. There was a wagon parked there, marked with the label of a Los Angeles distillery. Jesse stepped aboard the small passenger cabin underneath the driver, who he realized was Eli. Black was nowhere in sight as he stepped aboard; it wasn't until he noticed the faint outline of a trapdoor beneath his feet that he realized where the outlaw leader must have been.

  With a "Yaah!," Eli got the horses in gear, and the coach began to move.

  Soon, they were beyond the borders of the town, and heading down a dusty highway in the direction of the Lotus camp. Jesse peered out of the window as the sun began to set.

  To his left, Bridgetown, with all its buildings, appeared in miniature. It all reminded Jesse of a model railroad.

  To his right stood Devil's Peak. The ominous mesa harbored the cause of his displacement, that much he knew; but did it also hold the key to his salvation?

  On all sides around him, a vast, sprawling landscape of inhospitable wilderness stretched in all directions. Not a shopping mall or a gas station in sight. How strange that this should be his life now.

  If the man hiding beneath the floorboards at his feet turned out to only be goading him with empty promises, Jesse could very well end up living here permanently, and dying before the advent of television. Living and dying in the shadow of Wayne Cole, and Mrs. Wayne Cole.

  But there was another way. Another path for Jesse. Yes, he wou
ld exhibit his film to the farmers and townspeople of Bridgetown, and yes, they would see that they could rise up against Wayne. But when Scoble brought the film to the rest of the country, people would see Jesse was a visionary. He would be the first person to wield the cinema to tell a story. To say something with the screen. And through that, he could make a name for himself just as big as Wayne's. Hell, he could invent rock and roll.

  No, he couldn't let himself think like that. Too much was at stake outside himself.

  Sleep did not present itself to Jesse that night, and he tossed and turned inside the tent he'd been provided at Black's camp. He was preoccupied with the images that his camera had captured in Chicago. Its photochemical ghosts danced in his head:

  The angry former landowner, who raises a clenched fist high in the air.

  The hand of a dying American revolutionary on the field of battle against the Britons.

  The stately diva, who leads her fellow citizens to the gates of the industrialist who stole their land from them. A blonde-haired, portly, industrialist in round spectacles.

  It was not a subtle analogy, but Jesse hoped it would be an effective one.

  He began splicing celluloid together, holding strips of the silver-laced gelatin up to the flickering candlelight in his tent, and again realized he'd witnessed this moment before, in his vision.

  When the sun finally rose, he stayed in his tent and continued to work. Black's men brought him the kind of spartan breakfast that they themselves partook of. When it became too warm and stuffy with the approaching midday, Jesse opened up the tent's flap just enough to allow fresh air to circulate.

  At eleven that morning, he wheeled the trunk with the projector in it into Black's tent, where a wood-burning generator had been rigged to supply a miserly flow of power, and closed the flap behind him. The space was plunged into darkness, and only a few shimmering fingers of light punctured in from the borders of the tent.

  Jesse removed the top of the trunk, and rotated the middle portion down. Two big reels were exposed. He meticulously threaded the film through the gate. When all was ready, he flicked a switch and the first few frames of film leader began to advance.

  The projector's whirring tick-tick imparted the high school memory of mental hygiene films upon Jesse. He recalled staring sheepishly at the back of Susan Shepard's head, her long auburn hair with the little white ribbon, while an omniscient and strangely perverse narrator warned horny teens against the dangers of parking in cars together.

  Out of the nitrate haze emerged a title card:

  "A ROBBERY IN BRIDGETOWN."

  As the film played out, he watched Black for any telltale sign of emotion, but the mystic was stony.

  Sixteen minutes later, the last few frames ran through the film gate. Jesse flicked the projector off. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the sudden darkness, and he strained to make out the expression on Black's face.

  Black snapped with his right hand, producing a flame that danced in the space between his thumb and forefinger. In the faint glow of fire, Jesse could make out Black's face, contorted in a grimace that held one of his cigars between his teeth. He lit it, and drew a deep, measured blow. After a moment, he purged the smoke from his mouth and let out a satisfied sound. He chuckled.

  "Nicely done," he said. "It's no Citizen Kane, but it'll be unlike anything these people have ever seen."

  Jesse felt his anxiety dissipate. He'd received executive approval. He'd made it one step closer.

  "So what now?" Black asked. "You going to build us a movie theatre?"

  5.

  The wagon was typical. Apart from worn upholstery and a scuffed-up coat of paint, its underpinnings looked solid, and that was all that mattered to Jesse. He knew the Lotus Boys could strip away the passenger cabin. They'd be replacing it with a device that would hoist up a massive screen like the sail of a clipper ship. The coach would then fulfill Jesse's vision for it: to transcend mere people-mover and become a roving picture-box for Jesse's guerrilla campaign against his own brother.

  "This might actually work," Jesse said. The three bandits beside him each nodded their heads. The men was dogged and disheveled-looking, having spent all night out there somewhere on a mission to steal the vehicle and bring it back to the camp before sunrise.

  But wait, what was this? Three small holes—bullet holes, Jesse suspected—shot through the wooden sides of the cabin. He peered inside to investigate, and saw a dark spot on one of the seats. He stuck his hand into the cabin and gently pushed on the spot. A pool of dark blood rose up and out as if from a sponge, and spilled onto the floor.

  Hiis feet went numb, and his skin grew cold. Jesse stepped down from the coach, pale-faced, and turned towards the men.

  "Why?" was all he could muster to ask.

  Eli was the oldest of the three who'd gone out to acquire the coach. He jumped in with a response first, and Jesse sensed in his voice a paternalistic defense of the younger men. "They put up a fight. Sonofabitch pulled a gun on us."

  "Black said to steal a parked coach," Jesse said. "As in, one without any people in it."

  "I know, but this one was far away from the city. And it looked right for the job. They didn't have to be so goddamned stupid about it."

  "Are they...?" Jesse's last word hung silent in the air.

  Eli put his hands on his belt. "They won't be talking to anyone about anything."

  The youngest member of the three, maybe sixteen or seventeen, chimed in with support for Eli. "I know it wasn't the plan and all, but we had to think quick, and we didn't attract too much attention."

  "'Think quick,'" Jesse echoed. How callous this young this boy was. How warped.

  "Johnny's right," Eli said.

  Eli uttering that name made Jesse think of Old Man Scoble and his Johnny-boy. This Johnny-boy was broken, just like Scoble's puppet. All the men Lotus Boys were broken—Eli on down the line.

  Jesse wasn't sure what to say. He had to find Black. "Just—get it cleaned off," he stammered. "And start tearing apart the coach. If White's deputies show up, they can't link this thing back to the owners." He started walking towards Black's tent, cursing to himself.

  When Jesse entered the tent, Black sat in a meditative pose, eyes closed and unmoving. Jesse called out his name.

  The leader didn't respond. Jesse put an arm on his shoulder. Black's eyes opened, and he looked up at Jesse.

  "We have to talk," Jesse said.

  "What is it?"

  "Something went wrong." Jesse kneeled beside Black. "The guys we sent out to get a coach—they killed, I dunno, at least two people. Stole their ride."

  Black seemed characteristically unmoved. "I see."

  Jesse wasn't sure what he'd expected. "What do we do?"

  Black sighed, in a way that suggested this conversation had been inevitable. "Sit down, Jesse."

  So Jesse sat.

  "You've aligned yourself with outlaws," Black began. "They operate outside the laws of state and morality. People like you or me—we work with them not because it's comfortable for us to do so, but because they are willing to do the things that we are not." He raised a finger. "And because they're desperate, and so they're willing to take orders."

  "Do they kill a lot of people?"

  "Not a lot. I try to keep them under control, or the town would truly run us out. But I wouldn't expect much in the way of humanity out of them, Jesse. They are killers, and you would do wise to remember that."

  Something began to boil up inside Jesse that hadn't been there a moment earlier. "You never said this was part of the deal."

  Black went stern. "'Deal?' What 'deal'?" He raised his eyebrows, and something that scared Jesse made itself visible in his eyes. "I'll remind you, we're trying to prevent the death of billions. If a few people have to fall by the wayside, if you and I have to look the other way when some small-time crooks make a mess, so be it."

  Jesse tried to swallow what Black was saying. He willed himself to remember how it had felt
to look upon a million different possible nuclear wars. "You're right, of course."

  But he was no longer so sure about his own motivations.

  Jesse left Black's tent, feeling an ambivalence in his heart, and walked out into the blinding midday sunlight.

  Eli, Johnny, and the third bandit whose name Jesse had never learned stood before him. Eli, arms crossed, looked especially displeased.

  "Went running to Mr. Black, did you?"

  "If there's even a chance the authorities will be looking for us, he should know, that's all," Jesse replied.

  Eli spit, and dug his heel into the dry earth. "You know, I'm beginning to wonder just what it is you contribute to our group. Ever since you showed up, Mr. Black's been having us run around to suit your needs."

  "You won't have to wonder for long," Jesse said, and forced a smile he hoped would come off as intimidating. "I'll see you at the campfire tonight." With that, he turned on his heels and walked the other way, towards his tent.

  He laid down on the cot Black had provided him. He couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the last guy who'd slept in it.

  The world was spinning. Maybe Black was right—what had he expected? If he wanted to get back at Wayne, if he wanted a chance to reclaim his life and his love with Susanna, it wouldn't come cheap. He would have to get his hands dirty. And, after all, if this was about preventing a future war, well, a lot of things were suddenly fair game.

  Feeling that blood between his fingers, though, had made things real for him in a way that nothing had been since he fell from the sky two weeks earlier. There were more people than he could fathom, across time and space, whose lives would be forever affected—defined, even—by what happened next in this dusty town.

  He put his hand over his eyes to block out the light, or maybe the world. He tried to go to sleep, but it was the middle of the day and he was wired.

  So he got up once more and headed to where the stolen coach was being dismantled. A couple of men were taking sledgehammers to it, dismantling what they could without affecting its underlying integrity.