The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (60 page)

Blattsburg cleared his throat. His hand shook as he clutched at the script. “Interior saloon,” he read. “Cover shot of two bad men at bar. Rance McGrew enters. He walks to bar. He glances sideways left and right.”

Rance pushed the makeup man’s arm away and turned slowly to stare at the director. “He glances sideways left and right? Is my head supposed to be built on a swivel?”

He grabbed the script out of the director’s hand. “I’m gonna tell you something, Sy,” he announced. “When a cowboy walks into a bar, he walks to the far end of the room. He takes his drink. He looks at it. Then he looks straight ahead. He doesn’t look left and right.”

With this, Rance McGrew turned back toward the mirror, his face white under the powdered makeup, his lips twitching. His large baby-blue eyes clouded like those of a high-school sophomore cheerleader whose megaphone had just been dented.

Sy Blattsburg closed his eyes again. He knew only too well the tone of Rance McGrew’s voice and he was also familiar with the look on the face. It boded no good—either for that moment or for the day’s schedule.

“All right, Rance,” he said softly. “We’ll shoot it your way. Anyway you want.” He wet his lips. “Now can we begin?”

“In a moment,” Rance said, his eyes half closed in what appeared to be a very special and personal agony. “In just a moment. My stomach’s killing me. These scenes,” he said, as one hand massaged his belly. “These miserable emotional scenes.”

He pointed to a large hide-covered box on the floor near him. There, in hand-stitched elegance, was the name “Rance McGrew.” Two stars were underneath it. A prop boy opened it up and rummaged through its interior. There were bottles of medicine, throat lozenges, sprays, and a large stack of autographed publicity pictures of Rance fanning a six-gun. The prop boy took out one of the bottles of pills and brought it over to the makeup chair.

Rance opened the bottle and popped two of the pills into his mouth, swallowing them whole. Then he sat quietly for a moment—the makeup man waiting motionless. Rance slowly opened his eyes and nodded, whereupon the makeup man continued his ministrations.

Fifty-odd people began quietly setting up the scene. The cameraman checked the position of his camera, nodded his approval to the operator, and everyone turned to look expectantly toward Sy Blattsburg.

Sy checked the angle of the camera, and then called, “Second team out! The star is here!”

Rance McGrew’s stand-in left his place close to the swinging doors and Sy turned toward Rance.

“All set, Rance baby,” he said diffidently. ‘‘And we’ll shoot it just the way you want.”

Rance McGrew rose slowly from his wooden stool and stood looking at himself in the mirror. The makeup man put on the final touches of powder. A wardrobe man puttered around his leather vest.

Rance, still looking at himself, cocked his head, snapped his fingers, and pointed to one shoulder. The wardrobe man hurriedly inserted an inch of additional padding. Again Rance stared into the mirror and then snapped his fingers again. “Holster,” he said tersely.

A property man trotted to his side and began to tie on his holster.

Rance checked it by holding one arm straight down at his side and sighting down at it. “An inch more hang,” he ordered.

The property man quickly obeyed, loosening the belt one notch as Rance checked himself again in the mirror, moving his head around so that he could survey himself from several different angles. He stepped away from the mirror and then advanced on it, arms held away from his body in the manner of every fast gun since the beginning of time,

It might be parenthetically noted here that there was a point in history when there actually were top guns. They were a motley collection of tough mustaches who galloped and gunned their way across the then new West. They left behind them a raft of legends and legerdemains. But heroics or hambone—it can be stated quite definitely that they were a rough and woolly breed of nail-eaters who in matters of the gun were as efficient as they were dedicated. It does seem a reasonable guess, however; that if there were any television sets up in Cowboy Heaven, so that these worthies could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits were being bandied about—not to mention the fact that each week they were killed off afresh by Jaguar-drawn Hollywood tigers who couldn’t distinguish between a holster and hoof and mouth disease—they were very likely turning over in their graves or, more drastically, getting out of them.

None of this, of course, occurred to Rance McGrew as he swaggered across the set to the bat-wing doors, losing his balance only once or twice as his boots gave slightly to the left—much in the manner of a nine-year-old Brownie wearing her mother’s high heels.

When Rance reached the swinging doors he squared his padded shoulders, snapped his fingers again, and ordered tersely: ‘“My gun. “ This, of course, was the final item in the ritual of Rance McGrew’s preparation, and it occurred at the same time each morning. The prop man pitched underhanded an ugly-looking six-shooter which Rance caught deftly, spun around on the trigger finger of his right hand, and then with equal deftness, flipped it to his left hand. He then let it spin over his shoulder, putting his right hand behind him to catch it. The ugly-looking six-shooter didn’t know about the plan. It sailed swiftly over Rance, over the cameraman, over the bartender, and slammed against the bar mirror, smashing it into a million pieces.

Sy Blattsburg shut his eyes tightly and wiped the sweat from his face. With a heroic effort, he kept his voice low and untroubled. “Dress it up,” he ordered. “We’ll wait for the new glass.” He pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the cameraman.

He had now lost four hundred and thirty-five dollars over the three-year span of Rance McGrew’s television show. In one hundred and eighteen films, this was the eighty-fourth time that Rance had broken the bar mirror.

Twenty minutes later the set had been dressed and a new mirror put up. Blattsburg stood alongside the cameraman. ‘‘All right,” he said, “ready...action!”

The camera began its quiet hum. Outside a horse whinnied, and through the swinging doors swaggered Rance McGrew in simple, powdered elegance, a noncommittal sneer on his face. The two “bad guys” stood at the bar and watched fearfully as he approached them. Rance went up to the bar and slammed the palm of his hand down on top of it.

“Rotgut whisky,” he said in a deep voice, perhaps one octave lower than Johnny Weissmuller’s. And while he may have walked like a Brownie, Rance’s ordinary speaking voice was that of a grocery boy in the middle of a voice change.

The bartender yanked a bottle from the shelf and slid it down the length of the bar. Rance nonchalantly held out his hand for it and looked mildly surprised as the bottle sped past him to break against the wall where the bar ended.

Sy Blattsburg jammed both his thumbs into his eyes and stood shaking for a moment. “Cut,” he said finally.

There was a murmur of reaction from the crew. It was traditional that Rance missed at least one bottle that was slid toward him, but this usually occurred toward the end of the day when he was tired.

The sneer on his face turned a shade petulant as he waggled a finger toward the bartender. “All right, buddy boy,” he said warningly. “You try to gag it up one more time and you’ll wind up plucking chickens at a market!”

He turned toward the director. “He put an English on that, Sy. He deliberately made it curve.”

The bartender gaped at the two “bad guys.”

“English on a bottle?” he whispered incredulously. “That guy needs a catcher’s mitt!”

With masterful control, Blattsburg said quietly, “All right. Let’s try it again. From the bottle. Positions, please.”

“Scene seventy-three-take two,” a voice called out.

Again the bartender pulled down a bottle and very carefully nudged it so that it slid along the bar slowly and stopped dead, a hand’s length away.

Rance’s lips curled in one of his best sneers. He reached for the bottle, picked it up, slammed it against the edge of the bar, and then raised the jagged neck to his mouth, drinking thirstily. He threw the bottle over his shoulder, probed at one of his back teeth with his tongue, and finally, rather showily, removed a large fragment of fake glass from his mouth. This he flipped toward the bartender and his mail-order sneer returned to his face.

He leaned against the bar, Wiggling his shoulders, and surveyed the two “bad guys,” At the same time, he carefully checked his reflection in the mirror and tilted his Stetson an inch or so to the right.

“I guess you boys know I’m the marshal here,” he announced in his best Boot Hill voice.

The two “bad guys” were visibly shaken.

“We heard tell,” the first one said, not daring to meet Marshal McGrew’s gaze.

“We heard tell,” the other cowboy chimed in.

Rance lifted one eyebrow and stared from one to the other. “And I guess you know that I know that Jesse James is due here, aimin’ to call on me.”

The first cowboy nodded and his voice shook.

“I knew that, too,” he said fearfully.

“Likewise,” his companion added.

Rance stood there for a quiet moment, moving his head left and right, the sneer coming and going.

“Somethin’ else I know that you two don’t know,” he said, “is that I know that both of you know Jesse James. And I’m waitin’—I’m jus’ gonna stand here waitin’.”

The two “desperadoes” exchanged horrified stares, and with all the subtlety of a grade C wrestler they looked worriedly toward the swinging doors. This was Rance’s cue to move away from the bar, hands held down and ready at his sides.

The sneer now came with a smile. “I figgered I’d bluff ya,” he said triumphantly. “Jesse’s here all right, ain’t he?”

“Marshal...” the bartender pleaded. “Marshal McGrew...please...no killin’ in here!”

Rance held up his hand for quiet. “I ain’t aimin’ to kill ‘im,” he announced gently. “I’m jus’ gonna maim ‘im a bit. I’m jus’ gonna pick off his pinky!”

The first “desperado” swallowed and gulped. “J-J-Jesse ain’t gonna take kindly to that,” he stuttered.

Out on the street there was the sound of hoofs, the creak of leather, and then boot-steps across the wooden floor of the saloon porch.

The swinging doors opened, and there stood Jesse James—evil incarnate. Black mustache, black pants and shirt, black gloves, black scarf, and black hat. His particular sneer was closely related to Rance’s, though not worn with the aplomb of the marshal.

He walked across the saloon with catlike grace, hands held down and away from his body.

“It’s Marshal McGrew, ain’t it?” he asked, planting his legs far apart, his hands still out, elbows bent.

Rance McGrew sneered, sniggered, clucked, and breathed heavily, and finally said, “Yup.”

“You’re about to breathe your last, Marshal.”

Then Jesse went for his gun. Halfway out of the holster a simulated bullet drew simulated blood from his hand, which he clutched in agony as his gun flew off to one side.

The prop man blew smoke out of the chamber of the blank-cartridge pistol.

Sy Blattsburg nodded approvingly.

The two cowboys at the bar reacted with proper horror.

The extras sitting at the tables jumped to their feet and moved slowly backwards toward the wall.

Meanwhile, back at the bar, Rance McGrew was still tugging at the gun in his holster. It finally came out, left his hand, and kept going over his shoulder, over the cameraman, over the bartender, smack dab into the mirror, breaking it into a million pieces.

Sy Blattsburg looked as if someone had told him that he had just become engaged to a lizard, he opened his mouth and a noise akin to a sob—a protest, a throttled roar—came out. When he got control of himself, he said quite clearly, “Cut!”