“Shit!” the orderly exclaimed explosively. “I can’t do it!” He sat up sharply. “I can’t do these lines, man! I can’t identify with this part.”
“Cut!” howled a new voice. The distant rumble of background explosions ceased. Fans began to chide smoke from the shed. “I said cut, dammit!”
A new figure joined the trio. The man was short, dark-eyed, swarthy, more than a tad apoplectic. “What do you mean,” he inquired through clenched teeth, “you can’t do these lines?”
“I’m sorry, man.” Showing no effects from what had transpired earlier, the orderly stood and wiped dirt from his face. The stain on his chest had stopped spreading. “I just can’t do this anymore. I mean, this dude was born a slave, right? So he gets freed, goes North, finds a decent job, joins the Union Army where he meets this white bread over here”—he gestured at the captain, who was now standing and listening quietly—”and they’re the same age, right?
“This corporal, he’s gone through all that hell to make it out of the South, so what does he do? He decides to play servant again to this captain so he can come all the way back to where he was a slave and throw himself in front of a bullet to save the fox whose daddy once owned him. Why? Because she had an attack of conscience and freed him? She didn’t free nobody else. It just doesn’t jibe, man. I can’t buy it.
“I mean, this character’s got a wife and kids back in New York. Sure, maybe he feels grateful to this chick.” He indicated the woman in the shredded crinolines, who by now was looking thoroughly disgusted. “But he ain’t gonna give his life for her. It just ain’t real.”
The shorter man was staring hard at him. “So now you’re a writer.” He glanced at the captain. “What about you, Jason? You a writer too?”
The captain raised both hands, palms outward. He’d left his sword lying on the ground. A man in his early twenties was cleaning it with a white cloth.
“Don’t look at me, Nahfoud. I read my lines.”
“I’m asking your opinion. You think he’s right?”
Jason Carter looked past the director, to the crew bustling behind him. Men adjusted scrims and shades. Gaffers checked wires. The Steadycam team was helping the tired cameraman slip free of his harness.
“Look, I’m doing my job. Don’t put me in the middle of something, okay?”
“I am so putting you.”
Carter saw that Melrose was staring at him. He sighed. “Well, since you ask, no I don’t think this guy would sacrifice himself under those circumstances. Not if he had a family. If he didn’t have a—”
“There, you see?” said his fellow actor, not letting him finish. He was more angry than grateful. “It’s like I’ve been saying all along. How come I gotta die? How come it’s always the black guy who’s gotta sacrifice himself? Shit, man, let him throw himself in front of the damn bullet! He’s the one with the thing for the chick. Me, I’m supposed to have a wife and two kids back in Brooklyn. Why can’t the white guy do the noble death number for a change?”
It required a visible effort for the director to control himself. “Because—that’s—not—the—way—it—is—written,” he said very slowly. “That is not what it says in the script.” He smiled humorlessly. “You remember the script, don’t you? The big wad of colored paper everyone is carrying around? The script you read months ago and agreed to follow?”
“Look, jack,” said the actor, “my agent read the script, see? He’s the one told me I should do it. I don’t want to be difficult. Soon as I heard it was a Civil War pic I knew I wasn’t bein’ hired to be the lead. Like, unless Spike Lee or one of the Hudlin brothers is the director, no black actor is gonna get the lead in no Civil War flick. I passed on four weeks in Vegas to do this little epic.
“But I still don’t see why I gotta die, especially under these circumstances.” He shook his head. “I just can’t do it, man. I’m an actor, but there’s times and lines a man’s just gotta deal with, and this is one of ’em. Ever since I saw The Dirty Dozen as a kid, saw Jim Brown sacrifice himself to save all his white buddies … I mean, I just can’t do it.” He brushed past Carter and the director.
“I got some heavy thinking to do, man.”
“Listen, you guys make up your minds what you wanna do, but I can’t take this anymore.” The woman was gathering her soiled costume around her. “All this yelling and shouting has wounded my karma enough as it is.” She looked around desperately. “Where’s Siddarthee? Where’s my Guide?”
“Here, little one.” A black-bearded scarecrow clad in a long beige robe shuffled forward to place a reassuring arm around the actress’s bare shoulders. With his free hand he took one of hers.
“Everything will be all right. Just close your eyes and breathe deeply. Have good thoughts. Think of the wind in the trees, making music with the leaves.”
The director muttered a curse in Arabic. “Somebody get that fake holy man off my set. We’re trying to make a movie here.”
“Siddarthee is no fake,” said the actress with wounded dignity. “He is my Guide. If he goes, I go.”
The scarecrow raised an arm heavenward, imploring in Hindi. “I do not ask for anything for myself,” he added in English. To the actress he murmured, “Come, little one. We must allow time for the discordant vibrations to settle.”
As he led her off the set she turned to the director and concluded sweetly, “And you tell the jerk with the revolver, the ugly little fart with the brown eyes, that if he doesn’t keep his hands off my ass during shooting I’m going to kick his nuts out through his nose.”
“Amanda. Dear, sweet Amanda.” The director trailed his leading lady and her mentor off the set. “These Union deserters are attempting to rape you. If you will kindly enlighten me as to how to stage such a sequence while completely avoiding physical contact I will be most happy to do so.”
“That’s your problem,” she snapped. “You’re the director. I’m just telling you that if that creep puts his hands under my costume one more time he’s the one the captain and corporal are gonna have to rescue. You hear me good, Nahfoud?”
“That’s in your contract too, I suppose.” The director’s voice faded as the trio marched in lockstep toward the actress’s trailer. “That you’re not supposed to be touched?”
“I can’t take this, man.” Melrose Fleet was leaning against a fake boulder, incinerating a cigarette. “This was supposed to be a quick shoot. They told me Nahfoud was fast. I mean, I know there’s a lot of action.” He saw Carter standing nearby, gestured to him.
“Those lines, man; nobody can say lines like those with a straight face today. On top of that we gotta deal with that crazy bitch and her fruitcake guru mumbling mantras while the rest of us are trying to rehearse.” He flicked the cigarette butt aside, reached into his pocket, and extracted a vial.
“You want some Seconal, man?”
Carter shook his head, smiled noncommittally. Fleet nodded, popped a couple of the pills, and slipped the bottle back in his pants.
“I don’t have to take this. Contract or no contract. I got a Tony, man. I’ve done Shakespeare.”
Carter came over to put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “This isn’t Othello, Mel. It’s just a job.”
“Yeah, I know, I know.” Fleet removed his Union cap. “I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. I know there’s times everyone’s got to be the professional regardless of personal feelings. But dammit, sometimes you gotta take a stand.”
“It’s just one scene,” said Carter soothingly.
“It’s always ‘just one scene,’ man,” his colleague muttered. “Always just one more scene. I know it seems like I’m making a lot of noise over nothing. But you walk into a theater full of brothers and sisters and that’s your face up there twenty feet wide in the dark and those words are coming out of your mouth, you’re the one who’s gotta listen to the comments afterward.” He stared at Carter.
“You don’t have to go through that, man. You’ll never have to go through that. Look at you: big, blond, good-looking. You got a great voice, muscles, the women are fallin’ all over themselves to get next to you. You can say anything you want and you’ll never come off stupid.”
“Maybe not,” Carter replied, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of times when I don’t feel stupid.”
