Page 18 - WTP Vol. VI #4

Jedediah Arkansaugh was by now an old and irascible man no longer in possession of wealth. His grandfathers had been cattle ranchers and bear-hunters, his father a superior-court judge, and his mother a silent woman who’d rarely smiled but one day mustered a smirk when at the age of twenty-four Jedediah announced, trem- bling, that he’d be quitting law school; he would instead seek his fortune and perhaps a touch of glory in the motion picture industry. He would in fact be following his heart.
Jedediah Arkansaugh
Fifty-five years later, he awoke most mornings to the jostle of beer cans and whiskey bottles, his mobile home shaking with the crash of the day’s first big wave. This morning had been no excep- tion. Jedediah sat on his bed, waiting for the pain in his chest to subside and for his breathing to settle down; the old man could smell the sea air and he wanted his morning coffee.
up straight, fussed with the buttons on his denim jacket then put on his favorite hat, a gray, wide- brimmed Stetson. He’d be going out for coffee. The fog had thinned, sunlight burst through the dusty windows. The liquor bottles sparkled and the old man stood up, stretched. That light was good. Bet- ter. He smiled, gazed at random stacks of books, the Remington typewriter, the gun racks and a black 1968 Panavision camera. A belt of bullets was draped about a shot-up, gold-plated statuette awarded to him long ago by some guild of direc- tors for what were, he’d been assured, the achieve- ments of his life. That would now be a previous life, it seemed to Jedediah, and it was the one he’d enjoyed before he’d gotten himself fleeced.
Another wave pounded the white-sand beach outside. He scratched his head, sitting there, tak- ing his time; he’d not squinted through a view- finder in years, yet this perpetual director was unable to resist preparing a set-up in his mind, pondering how he’d film his trailer’s interior on this specific morning and in this particular light.
Old crab cages were arranged about the room, beach-finds he used for storage. Three were stacked vertically to form a makeshift file cabinet. Another find, a rusted harpoon, he’d mounted on a wall beside a pot-bellied stove; that harpoon was more than a century old and he’d set it below a stuffed mountain cougar with glazed black eyes.
The evening before, every evening, he’d folded fresh wool socks and thick blue jeans across the back of a broken wicker chair. And every day he washed a denim shirt and hung it to dry from a rail beside the shower stall. He rose from the bed now, got dressed then sat on the wicker chair to pull on his boots and to set about the laces. The morning’s bank of sea fog had dimmed the light outside. The trailer was gloomy. A mess. He’d have called for klieg lights, he was sure of it. But would a dolly-track fit in here? Perhaps a t-section, a small one. That might have done the job, or maybe they’d have removed the door instead, taken out
About the cougar: Jedediah Arkansaugh’s hunting days were over, yet he’d kept that magnificent animal, also a stuffed prairie falcon, forever swooping, going nowhere, and a polished set of six-point antlers. Jedediah’s father, the judge: once, he killed a man. Just shot him dead. The judge did that. But Jedediah, no. Jedediah had gone into movies, and pretty much everything and everyone he’d come across had paid a price for that decision. Still, while he could be a danger- ous man indeed, he’d not always been convincing. Yes, he’d played the hunter, and even now he cut an imposing figure; he was firmly-built, tall, with an innate military bearing. But he also had a sym- metrical face, eyes of cobalt, a pencil-line mous- tache, features too perfect to play the grizzled man he’d always longed to be.
a piece of the frame, bolted the camera and just shot the scene from there. Laces tied, Jedediah sat
This old director: he was not deluded. The man knew that little in his life had really come togeth-
9
Vincent Mannings