I follow a ridge of starved, stingy weeds running down the middle of the lane, drive over a rise to confront desolation. A burned-out house, two walls still standing, the rest a tangle of blackened studs and joists collapsed in a cellar, fingers stabbing at the sky. I park the car, walk over. There are tortured lumps of melted window-glass scattered on the ground, heat-twisted nails, wooden shingles gnawed by fire, chunks of broken, ham-sized, smoke-cured cement. Where the floor still holds, it supports a scorched metal lamp, a charred sofa. Tall, rank weeds sprout in the midst of the debris in the cellar, evidence the conflagration was not recent.
Across the neglected brown yard I see the ruins of a barn, destroyed by fire like the house, heaps of ash and tumbled beams. In the singed, wasted crossbeams of a windmill, birds flit from spar to spar, a rusty pipe lugubriously drips water into a trough wearing a green caul of algae. Turning slowly in an intimidating expanse my eyes come to rest on a low-slung bunkhouse I first overlooked. A single window glints in the sun, the rest are masked with tar-paper eyepatches. A man is standing on the stoop of the bunkhouse watching me. Without acknowledging the intruder, he turns and goes into the bunkhouse. A minute later, he steps back out in a black jacket and walks towards me past a stack of rusted irrigation pipe, a hay rake, a ramshackle, derelict buggy. His stroll is unhurried and deliberate. When he reaches the car he stops, props a foot up on the bumper and ties an errant bootlace, straightens himself and says, “What you want?”
Shaved and with his teeth in, he looks less crazed than the man in the roughcut Chance had shown me. Considerably smaller, too -five feet four, one hundred and thirty pounds of stringy muscle, tightly wound sinew, bone. A common trick of the camera, to make a man seem bigger than he is. It had come as a great shock and disappointment to me when I started work at the studio and first encountered stars in the flesh. They seemed diminished, ordinary, piddling creatures.
But distortions of the camera aside, there is no mistaking this is Shorty McAdoo. It’s the eyes. Bits of bituminous black, countersunk in deep sooty sockets, soft coal smouldering. He isn’t wearing wrangler duds, just a pair of drab workman’s trousers, a collarless shirt under a black suit jacket that seems to have been his reason for the visit to the bunkhouse. Window dressing for the visitor.
“Mr. Shorty McAdoo?”
“Who wants to know?”
“The name’s Harry Vincent.” I offer my hand. He doesn’t take it. “No reason for alarm,” I say.
“I don’t feel no alarm,” the old man informs me. He looks like one of those over-the-hill jockeys who hangs around race-tracks, a trim, youthful body surmounted by an implausibly ancient face.
“I’ve been looking for you for more than two weeks,” I say. “I was ready to throw in the towel when I bumped into a young man by the name of Wylie.”
“Wylie, eh?” he says in a guarded voice.
“You came up in conversation.”
“What else come up in conversation?”
I hasten to reassure him. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Fuck worry. What you want, mister?”
“I’m not here about Coster. This has got nothing to do with Coster.”
“If it ain’t got nothing to do with Coster, why mention it?”
My eyes sweep the bleak, ravaged property. “There must be a reason you chose this particular garden spot to hole up in. I thought it might be Coster. This looks like a convenient place to avoid a warrant.”
“Warrant for what?”
“Maybe assault and battery.”
“Ain’t no warrant out on me. I never done nothing to Coster.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I say. “Why you’re here is none of my business.”
He makes a gesture of dismissal. “This ain’t got nothing to do with Coster. I just got sick of all that picture shit.”
“I think I know what you’re talking about,” I say. “Some of your acquaintances have been telling me tales about the bad way you’re treated.”
“I washed my hands of her,” he says with a controlled, wintry vehemence. “Been a five-dollar-a-day fool long enough. Fellers shouting at you out of a blow-horn. Couldn’t take it no more. I’m done with all that. I reckon to get shut of this place entire. Head north.”
“Where north?”
“Canada. Not that that’s any of your business. But I got nothing to hide.” He pauses. “They got some space there. Was a time a man in this country could go anywhere on God’s green earth it pleased him, poor or proud. But the rich men keep putting all us dogs on the leash. Loitering law, vagrancy law. Old man like me can land in county jail for standing on a corner with empty pockets these days.”
“Look,” I prompt him, “is there someplace we can go and talk?”
“Talk what?”
“Business.”
“I don’t recollect no business to talk with you. What business I got to talk with you, Mr. Harry Vincent?”
“Give me ten minutes. It might be your ticket up north.” I issue this like a challenge and that’s how he takes it. He weighs me grimly.
“Come along then,” he says at last, turning on his heel for the bunkhouse.
It is terribly still. The burned barn rides along in the corner of my eye, a black blot. I can feel the destroyed house at my back. The sombre windmill scatters sparrows into the air which wheel, shimmer in the sunlight like the leaves of an aspen, and then, one by one, drop back down solemnly on the struts of the windmill, pegs on a clothesline.
The question presses me. “What in Christ happened here?”
McAdoo points his finger at the house, at the barn, at the windmill. “This?”
“Yes.”
“I knew the man owned this place, Austin Noble. He and his wife moved out here from Nebraska. Noble’d been a cattle-buyer. They was an old couple, Austin and his wife, didn’t have no kids, nothing was holding them in Nebraska; get shut of the winter cold, they figured, eat oranges in California. So they sold up in Nebraska, bought this place; he kept a few horses, she kept a few chickens. Hired a man to farm the rest of the land. They was here about a year and his wife took sick, something about the heart, the lungs.” He shrugs. “Might been both. She died. One morning, he gets up, sets fire to the house. Walks out in the yard, puts a torch to the barn. Next, the windmill. Hired man seen it. He run and hid himself in that clump of trees yonder. Austin was making for the bunkhouse but then he must have recollected he had a man living there. He stops in his tracks, takes a pistol out of his pocket, puts in it his mouth, pulls the trigger.” McAdoo halts, directs me. “Just over there.” He resumes walking. “Property went to a brother of Austin’s in Omaha. He figures to sell it to one of them movie studios – they turn it into another Universal, another Inceville – make him a rich man. Big shit ideas. He don’t know you going to pass property off on them boys you got to sell scenery. Ain’t no fucking scenery to speak of here. But that’s right to my purpose. He can set tight in Omaha waiting for an offer and I can set tight here until he gets one.”
The bunkhouse must once have housed eight or ten men, but now it’s sadly decayed, its footings raggedly fringed with last year’s brown grass and this year’s verdigris weeds. The only sign of life is the swallows ducking in and out of mud nests daubed under the eaves, scrolling the palimpsest of dusk with their pursuit of insects. McAdoo pushes the door open and I follow him in. Because of the tar-papered windows, a kerosene lamp sits on an apple box at the far end of a room long and narrow as a shooting gallery, the light making luminous the sheets of an unmade bed. German expressionism, I think to myself. A lot of cameramen would give their eyeteeth for that shot.
McAdoo waves me down the room. As he does, his suit jacket flaps open and I glimpse a pistol in the waistband of his pants. He put the jacket on to conceal his weapon. With a man carrying a pistol at my back, the short walk down the room lengthens alarmingly.
Signs of the former occupants have not all been erased. Against either wall, to the left and to the right, the skeletons of iron cots stand, skinned of their mattresses, a pile of old magazines stacked at the foot of one of them. Defunct calendars curl on the walls. I slip by a cast-iron stove with a coal-scuttle tipped beside it.
Halting in the pool of lamplight, McAdoo indicates a wooden chair. “Set yourself,” he says, sagging down on his bed. The harsh light shining up from the apple box drills his eyes even deeper into his skull, bathes the bony forehead in a fierce, waxy glow. His face appears on the verge of melting. Putting a hand inside his coat he draws out the revolver and lays it down on the mattress beside his leg. “You armed?” he asks quietly.
“God, no, I’m not armed.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not armed.”
“Stand up and hold out your arms,” he orders. His hands run expertly down my sides, pat my pockets, slide down the inside of my trousers. “All right, set again,” he says. “We don’t have to think about that no more.”
I settle myself gingerly on the chair.
“You got to watch your step in these lonesome parts,” he remarks. “I blame these picture people. Every lazy no-account’s heard how they’ll pay you five dollar a day to stand in a crowd, holler and wave your arms. Easy money, no work, they think. Flame for the wrong kind of moths. A week ago I come in here and some ugly son of a bitch and his head lice is laying in my bed. Drifter. Clear out my bunk, I said. Know what he done? Give me a big smile, fiddled out his cod and asked for a suck. If I didn’t run the bastards off, this place’d be just the same as one of them goddamn downtown missions. I’d be lying awake of a night listening to old men bugger each other. No thanks to that music. This is my home.” He pauses. “And I don’t recall offering you no invitation.”
“Point taken. You didn’t.”
“That’s right. I didn’t.” He waits.
I light a cigarette, my hands are trembling. I pass McAdoo the pack.
“Obliged,” he says. “This is my first in a goodly time.” He wolfs down the smoke, makes to return the package.
“Keep them,” I say.
He presses them into my palm. His fingers feel like they’ve been whittled from something cold and hard, like ivory.
“What I mean is, keep them, you’re a long way from supplies,” I say by way of apology.
“I make out fine. I come here with supplies,” he declares. “Coffee, dried peas, beans. I planted me a truck garden, some of it’s showing now. There’s quail abouts, and rabbit for flesh. I shot a small doe last month. There’s still some deer in this country, not many, but some.”
“You’re living wild then.”
“Hell, a roof ain’t wild. This ain’t living wild.”
“Tobacco doesn’t grow wild for the picking,” I say. “You take it.”
He doesn’t object this time, just tucks the cigarettes away in his shirt pocket. But I guess he feels his need has compromised him. He says angrily, “I tell you this Hollywood is one sour pot of milk, can hardly see it for the flies.” He gets to his feet with a savage jerk of the shoulders and moves to the stove. In a barely audible voice he remarks, “Nothing colder’n a cold stove. Why’s that? I get a bad headache I always lay her on a cold stove.” He stoops over, presses his forehead to the stove, his hands loosely cupped around the swell of the fire-box. A strange, oddly disturbing sight, as if he is resting his head on a woman’s breast, his hands on her hips. Consolation. The old man doesn’t stir. I can hear my watch measuring the stillness. Maybe he’s faint with hunger.
Alarmed, I rise to my feet. “Mr. McAdoo? Mr. McAdoo? Are you all right?”
The head slowly lifts from the cold iron; the head slowly turns. His voice is gentle, bleak. “What you want from me, son? Who are you?”
The voice beckons me, I feel myself fading out of the lamplight, drifting into the tar-papered gloom surrounding the stove. At the far end of the bunkhouse, I catch a stain of light seeping through the one dirty pane of glass, puddling on the board floor. The swallows rustling under the eaves purl like running water. We are face to face now, the black eyes glitter at me. I say, “I’m not the police.”
“Hell, I know that. I weren’t born yesterday. I been christened, son.”
“I’m a writer.”
“Newspaper writer?”
“I used to be. But not any more. I write books now. I want to write a book about the Old West. Everyone tells me you’re the man to talk to. That you have the stories. A writer needs stories. They all said talk to Shorty McAdoo if you want the real dope, the truth.”
Surprisingly, my little encomium angers him. “I ain’t interested in all that old dead shit. I know the truth.”
“It’s history,” I say, lamely. “It’s something we all ought to know.”
“Then go talk to Wyatt Earp. He’s living in the vicinity. He’ll put you up to your ass in history. He’s full of it.”
“I don’t want Earp. I want you.”
“And I don’t want to get mixed up in all that shit.”
“All what shit?” I demand, exasperated. “What shit are we talking about?”
“Lies.”
The two of us stand in the middle of an empty bunkhouse staring at one another. The pool of smudgy light shivers on the floor as, outside, a cloud blows across the face of the sun.
“Lies are the last thing I’m interested in.”
“Go away,” he says.
“So how are you going to get to Canada? Grow wings and fly? You’re broke. I’ll offer you good wages just to sit and talk to me. A stunt man gets paid seven and a half dollars a day to risk his neck. I’ll pay you that much money to sit in a chair and talk to me. What could be fairer?”
“You pay me seven and a half dollars a day? What kind of stunts do I have to do for a stunt man’s wages?”
“No stunts. Just agree to my terms. You’ll have to allow me to take down whatever you say – word for word. In shorthand. So that my publisher can read for himself what you tell me, to judge its potential with the public. If he decides there’s money to be made publishing your stories he’ll negotiate to purchase the rights to them. Any money you receive up until that point will be money paid for your time alone. Do you understand?” McAdoo begins to scrub his face with his hands. I read it as a sign of indecision. “High wages, Mr. McAdoo. Just to tell the story of your life.”
“Ain’t no story to my life.”
“That’s not so, Mr. McAdoo. There’s a story to every life.”
“Tell them yours then.”
“You were there. You can provide the straight goods on how it was.”
“Hot and thirsty and hard was how it was. Like it always is. Copy that down in your goddamn book.”
“Easy money.”
“I don’t favour easy money. Too much easy money flying around this part of the world. I ain’t seen much to recommend it. Nothing so hard as easy money.”
“What is it you mistrust? Me? My motives?” I take Chance’s expense money out of the inside pocket of my jacket, remove ten dollars and place it on the top of the stove. I am careful to let him catch a peek of how much money remains in the envelope. “I said I’d pay for your time. I’ve taken a piece of your time, Mr. McAdoo. I’ve also imposed on your good will and hospitality.” We are both looking at the money as if expecting it to kindle on the stovetop. “If you agree to give me more of your time, you’ll be paid. You want to call it off at any time, call it off. No strings attached.”
“Don’t go telling me that,” he says, a bitter edge to his voice. “I’m an old whore. Just listening to you talk – my pussy’s already sore. I can guess how it’s going to smart you ever manage to haul yourself aboard and commence to fucking me full bore.”
“No one has any intention of fucking you, Mr. McAdoo. You will get every penny you’re owed. In fact, I am prepared to advance you fifty dollars right now. To demonstrate good faith.”
McAdoo hasn’t touched the money yet, but he’s looking. “He’s a rich man then – this man you’re working for?”
“He is a gentleman of ample resources. More important, I have trust in his integrity.”
“My daddy had a saying. We all share and share alike. Rich man has all the ice he wants in summer. Poor man all the ice he wants in winter,” comments McAdoo.
“Maybe it’s time you had a little ice in summer,” I say, flicking several more bills out of the envelope. I put them down beside the ten-spot on the stovetop. “There’s the advance I spoke of – fifty dollars. You could take it and run, but I’m banking you’re a man of your word.”
“And all I do is talk?”
“Seven and a half dollars a day. Payment in full at the end of each and every day. If I feel your stories don’t fulfil expectations, I’ll break it off. You can do the same. No hard feelings, no recriminations.”
“But you going to ask me questions,” says McAdoo. “I know it.” At the prospect he sounds sorrowful.
“That’s right. I’ll ask questions. That’s my job, persuading you to answer them. But if you won’t – there’s nothing much I can do about it, is there?”
McAdoo picks the ten dollars from the stove, leaving the fifty where it lies. He holds the ten-spot out to me. “This money I earned today,” he says, “take it and buy me some crackers, some cheese, a couple cans of sardines. Buy me some tobacco and cigarette papers. And canned peaches. I admire the taste of canned peaches in heavy syrup. You buy me all that and bring it back to me tomorrow.”
I can barely fence the elation I feel out of my voice. “All right.”
As an afterthought, he adds, “You might get me a bottle of whisky. I ain’t had a tot for a month.” He smiles mischievously. “Whisky might loosen me up for my sermon tomorrow. But if I’m short on money after you get the other supplies, forget the whisky.”
“If you are, I’ll advance you on the whisky.”
“The hell you’ll advance me. I’m not going on tick to the company store.” He shoves the fifty dollars at me roughly. “Take that back.”
I fold the money back into the envelope. “Then we’ve got a deal?”
“One-day-at-a-time deal. You bring me my groceries tomorrow and we’ll talk a while. Try it on for size. See how the pig flies.”
“That’s all I ask.”
We shake hands formally, punctiliously. The swallows returning to their nests as night falls whir louder and louder under the eaves.
“I look forward to tomorrow,” I say.
“What I look forward to is them peaches,” says McAdoo. “Don’t you go and forget my heavy-syrup peaches.”
We part at the stove. My hand on the door, I hesitate, meaning to ask, What time should I come? But seeing what I see, I say nothing. McAdoo stands, head worshipfully bowed to the stove iron, in a chill, vertiginous embrace. Behind him, the light in the lamp is flagging, glowing orange in the glass chimney.
I let myself out. It has begun to rain, big cold drops splash down, faster and faster. I hold my coat closed at the throat, hobbling as fast as I can toward the waiting Ford. Despite the burned house, the burned barn, the scorched windmill, I could sing for joy. Besides, the rain is washing it all from sight.