Shooting Fresno, Chapter One

The first chapter of Shooting Fresno. I could never quite settle on the point of view or prose style to take with this story. *le sigh* Racial themes are going to run pretty strongly in this novel, too...I can tell...and I'm finding it difficult to navigate the best way to present the character of Rob, especially since this takes place 40 years before the Civil Rights Movement, but he's a character who appeared to me, who just is himself and too wonderful to ignore. 

The front tires of the 1923 Buick bounce off one of the thousands of potholes scattered across the endless asphalt expanse of California’s Highway 99. A metal fender squeals in protest as the driver of the speeding car fights with the wheel. The vehice wobbles violently through the aftershock. 

“Could you try NOT hitting every hole in road?” trills the irritated young woman who sits beside the quiet man in the back seat.  “I really don’t think I can take much more of this abuse!” She readjusts her folded legs. “I don’t know why we didn’t take the train.” The driver mutters something under his breath and the woman lifts her chin primly. (She shouldn’t worry though; her passenger is sure the driver is more upset with him as a passenger, even though he’s been silent the entire trip.) Her dark hair, shiny and curled in elegant waves, lays pinned beneath her woolen hat. He supposes she is the kind of woman who dislikes feeling unglamorous and can see she is choosing to ignore the existence of the small beads of sweat collecting against the back of her neck.  Obviously unpinning her Coco Chanel designed headwear is out of the question.

“It’s not just me I’m concerned about,” she says. “If we stop one more time to patch those worthless tires, I think I’ll spit!”

Her gaze slides sideways and he feels her eyes on him. His knees, bent at an angle he is sure an oriental acrobat would be jealous of, dig into the back of the seat in front of him. He, smartly, has dressed in slacks and a comfortable cotton collared shirt, with the sleeves of which he’s pushed up around his elbows in a futile attempt to make the warm, sticky atmosphere of the car’s interior a bit more bearable. A notebook is open across his inclined thighs and he sits hunched over the pages. He hopes she doesn’t realize he is writing about her and her sweaty neck.

“Writing?” she drawls and stifles a yawn.

“Trying,” he answers curtly. His hand shakes jerkily—an echo of the car’s jarring movements as it rattles along the highway. 

Another loud bang nearly knocks them from the black leather seats.

“Ah,” he groans and carefully repositions himself in his seat again.  He tears out a page from the notebook; his neat printing has been interrupted by an angry, crooked line which squiggles darkly across the page. He crumples the paper and throws it to the floor of the vehicle before begrudgingly turning to a fresh page to begin again. 

His name is Robert Wells. There’s nothing particularly interesting about him. He’s a writer. In a perfect world, he might be a celebrated one. He’s never had anything officially published, but he still considers himself a writer. That’s not expected from a black man; most people seem shocked to find out he can read and write. He can write better than most white folks, and that makes him feel pretty good. He’s different from other men in the way he views the world in a sort of romantic, or poetic, way. But he does not get along well with women, either. In fact, most are so eager to let him pass by that he’s succeeded in only a handful of half-hearted, sex-crazed flings, none of which lasted for more than, well, let’s just say they lasted long enough for him to completely forget about them. 

He is a guest (i.e. anonymous) writer for the Los Angeles Times, and while the pay is next to nothing, it is somehow just barely enough to support him. Granted, his options are limited to begin with, but life for a man like him is decent in Los Angeles; everyone likes a black man who can play the piano like nobody’s business. Correction: a black man who could play the piano like nobody’s business. He spent a year in France fighting the Germans in 1918; his left arm is messed up pretty bad, so he doesn’t play much anymore. Sometimes he feels he should write about his time there…but he finds his mind blank.

A gloved hand (seriously, in this heat?) covers her mouth primly as she yawns. The woman turns away from him and he catches her glancing out the narrow, ovule window at the convoy of touring cars and roadsters which follow behind them. Phillip Chauncey, the so-called leader of the little group, has bought a brand new, bright yellow Studebaker convertible especially for the journey from Los Angeles to Fresno. Phil and Rob had met in Hollywood around ten years before; Phil always had more motivation than Robert when it came to making money, evidenced now by his fame and apparent abundance of wealth. He is a big time movie producer now and Rob had jumped at the invitation to join him on an ‘on location’ shoot. Phil says the script is floundering; of course, the actors can’t know it’s a black man who is writing their lines. Robert hopes his involvement will not scratch out his non-existent career. His mother always said he needed to get to get his head out of the clouds; no one in their right mind would give "a colored man" credit in a film. At the very least, for him…seeing his name on a silver screen might make him believe his talent is just that. At 27, he already feels 50 (if he’s even qualified to say something like that) and the fear his life is going nowhere is beginning to haunt him. Of course, he can’t expect to become like Phil. His life has limits. 

He mentally curses Phil. What he wouldn’t give to feel some fresh air across his face! Driving the two and a half day journey from Hollywood to Fresno would give them a ‘taste’ for the land, Phil had told them.  He’s been spitting dust out of his mouth the entire trip and he has a feeling that sort of ‘taste’ wasn’t what Phil had meant. They aren’t even to Fresno yet, and Rob is already set on returning to Los Angeles. Damn Phil. The woman’s pout deepens as she turns around in her seat again; this makes Rob assume she is of the same opinion. She sinks down deeper into the leather with her arms crossed over her chest.

“I still don’t know how I managed to get stuck riding with you,” she complains. Quite frankly, he doesn’t know how he got stuck riding with her, either. As the only black man in the entourage, he’s surprised Phil didn’t saddle him along with the camera and props men. 

“Phil doesn’t want you looking windswept when we get into Fresno,” he remarks dryly. His voice is deep in tenor, but youthful. He tears out yet another page and crumples it. Her frown grows in severity. If she isn’t careful, those lines will remain and crease her skin, and this really would be her last movie. 

“My God, it’s Fresno,” she says and rolls her dark eyes. “There’s nothing there but cows and hicks. It’s no place for an actress like Dorianne Lark.” She purses her lips at him and straightens a little in her seat.  

“Now, now, Miss Lark,” he says with a playful grin. He points his pencil in her direction. “We don’t want to accentuate those frown lines, do we?” Perfect rouge lips fall open and he chuckles.  Then she punches him in the arm. Another dark line scratches across his notebook. 

“Rob Wells!” she shrieks. “How dare you say that in front of me?” He only shrugs and smiles. 

“And your hat’s crooked,” he adds for good measure.

“It’s supposed to be crooked, you idiot!” she protests, but her hands immediately rise to inspect her hat’s current position atop her head anyway. 

“Well, I don’t know who made that fashionable. Honestly, looks pretty ridiculous.”   

She shoots him an icy glare and continues to fuss with her hat. “I’m not going to even try to explain the fashion concept to someone like you,” she says. He shrugs again and shuts his notebook. Needling someone as insecure as Dorianne Lark is too good an opportunity to pass. 

“So I’m unstylish, then?” he concludes. He leans back in the seat in an attempt to stretch his legs. Her eyes roll again and she turns to face him; her fingers still exploring the flamboyant hat and re-checking that her curls are in their proper place.

“Not so much unstylish as slovenly,” she admits. He smiles lopsidedly, brings his arms up and laces his fingers together behind his neck. The collar of his shirt is wet.

“Why the hell should I care? It’s Fresno, right? I’ll fit right in with the slobs, and cows and hicks.”

“Have you ever been to Fresno?” she asks as the car hits another pothole and they bounce. He shrugs again; there is no expression as expressive as the movement of hunching shoulders.

“Passed through it once,” he says. “I stopped to take a leak on the side of the street and some crazy Mexican popped out of nowhere brandishing a rake, screaming at me to get off his land.”

She laughs.

“It wasn’t so funny at the time,” he mutters pointedly.  

“Well, I’d be pretty mad if you were…doing that on my property,” she says. “Some people have no manners at all…”

Dorianne turns and studies the man seated beside her.  Even though her passenger is black, she cannot deny he is handsome. He looks honest, and after a life of bright lights and transparency, she is drawn to his solidity. He offers her a disconcerted smile in return, and then turns to gaze out the window at the passing scenery. His mother had been of the opinion he is handsome and sometimes he agrees with her, but honestly, he thinks Dorianne Lark must be pretty desperate to take interest in him.  Despite the scorching heat, the valley is actually beautiful in its dried, sun-baked, dead and brown grassy way. The gnarled trunks of the twisted oaks that dot the horizon and cluster in odd congregations on the foothills we drove through remind me of cringing wretches, arms curling, ridged and protective. The sun is a cruel master.

He and she are not exactly cynics when it comes to love and such, seeing as they do believe (ideally) in true love. Not the storybook kind, but the real, passionate, soul-stirring compassion, devotion and love. He’s just of the opinion only a few lucky people find it. The rest of us, like her, try to catch glimpses of it, taste it, to feed our craving for it through mediocre attempts at shallow love. Humans really are pitiful creatures. And what’s worse is he recognizes his own foils. Does he think too much about depressing things? Probably. Does he give answers to his own questions? Frequently. He holds the same opinion of religion; only a few lucky people find the kind of faith that brings undying devotion. He was brought up in a home that breathed the Holy Spirit, with Mother dragging her eight children off to Sunday school every week and Rob kicking his feet all the way. 

“So what’s your story about?” asks Dorianne. He hears a crinkling sound and turns to see her smoothing one of his crumpled pages across her knee.

“Do you mind?” he snaps, reaching out to grab the paper from her. She relinquishes the paper without a fight and he crumples it in his fist again. 

“Ah, that bad is it, Rob?” she teases. 

“I’m not the only one sensitive about their writing,” he retorts, trying not to sound too defensive. There’s something so intensely personal about writing; his soul is on those papers, and he’s not about ready to have someone make a hasty judgment on them.

“Is it a romance?” she asks. He looks at her.

“Do I look like the type of man who’d write something like that?”

“I, for one, think a romance written by a man would be refreshing.”

“Says you.”

“What’s so wrong with romances?”

“They’re unrealistic. Good fiction should show how life is, not how it’s supposed to be.”

“Pride and Prejudice didn’t end badly,” she quips pointedly. He grimaces. That book, written by a spinster author who fancied herself better than everyone around her, was concerned only with the ‘ideal’ man, which subsequently caused every woman who read it to fall in love with him. And normal, mortal men (like himself) just didn’t stand a chance when pitted against their fictional enemies. Darcy doesn’t exist and he is damn sick of women holding him up as the epitome of…

“Mr. Darcy was so perfect.”

She took the word right out of his thoughts.

“So was Frankenstein’s monster…at the beginning.”

“You’re a pretty sad and depressing man, Rob,” she trills with a patronizing laugh. 

“Then let me be sad and depressed in peace.” Suddenly the interior of the car seems even hotter. 

“Why? People like romances. I’m sure you could write a good one.”

“I doubt it,” he says. “I like tragic endings.” His head falls back and he make a choking sound. It isn’t until a few minutes later he until he realizes how inappropriate his gesture had been.

“It sounds awful when you say it like that,” she says in disappointment. The car shudders and he turns to look out the window again. “And besides,” she sniffs, “I was made famous by playing out that exact scenario on screen. People like love stories.”

“People are shallow.”

His fellow passenger presses her lips together and sinks back in her seat. He exhales heavily and watches as their destination materializes out of the desert. The town of Fresno, California isn’t high on anyone’s vacation list.  Big enough to be on the map, but still small enough that no one knew it was there.

They pull off the 99 and into town by Fulton Street. The streets of Fresno aren’t any kinder that those of the highway. The narrow wheels of the car bounce in and out of the trolley tracks; the space overhead is crisscrossed with thick cable car wire and loose hanging telephone lines. Brick seems to be the building material of choice, and the plain buildings are decorated with dusty electric marquees and wall murals. Dust coated automobiles line the streets like debris along the river banks; the arriving cavalcade cause the locals to pause in their window shopping to gape. He wonders what stores in Fresno sold, or if the people about actually had the money or time to shop frivolously. Their cars, dirty from the trip, still glint with bright yellow, red and black paint in the noonday sun. He can’t help but lift his head a little higher and he feel like a benevolent god descending from the high mountain to the masses below. 

They take Fulton to H Street and their hotel comes into view. The Hughes Hotel looks nice enough. Maybe if they are lucky they’ll enjoy a hot bath. The car lurches to a stop and Rob is out stretching his legs a moment later. Dorianne is yammering at him to help her with her hundreds of crates of luggage, and he pointedly ignores her. He winces inwardly at the driver as he heaves her coffer off the roof of the car—Rob makes a mental note to buy him a drink later, though the man probably won’t accept it. He arches his back and stretches his arms above his head. A dry, warm breeze caresses the back of his neck. 

A woman on a bike is coming their way, pedaling fast. The handlebars jerk angrily as she swerves to avoid a pothole.  Seeing them, she backpedals and cruises past slowly. She captures Rob’s gaze and for a moment and they share a sense of pleasant surprise and incredulity. Her face, round and soft, is flushed in the afternoon heat. Her hat, probably blown off as a result of her daredevil pedaling, bounces up and down against her back; her gauzy scarf trails along behind her in the breeze and stray wisps of tawny hair frame her face. She looks at him strangely and her round, gray eyes do not leave him until she has gone a fair distance past the hotel. He watches her pedal away until she rounds the next street corner, disappearing from his sight. 

Perhaps Fresno isn’t going to be as boring as he expected.

“Rob!”

His mood suddenly turns sour. Something about that girl has kidnapped something from him he thought he’d hidden well away. 

“Rob!” 

An arm bent at the elbow rests against his shoulder. A manly sniffle and spit.

“Eh, Rob! Nice drive, eh?” 

“Sure,” he says, still trying to decipher the affronting feeling that is making his collar uncomfortable. He turns to look at Phil, who stands beside him with a grin spread widely across his boyish features. His shiny, blond hair is windswept and new sunburns stretch across his fair cheekbones, forehead and nose. He takes a deep breath and laughs.

“Just look at this place! Smell that valley air!” He thumps his chest once with his fists and Rob grins. “This place is perfect; even better than I anticipated!”

“It does have a certain charm,” he admits with a half-shrug. Phil claps him heartily on the back and the next moment is springing back to the cars. He turns and watches him; Phil has always been an energetic person. He makes Rob tired just looking at him. The various personnel are stepping from the cars, gathering their things, stretching, chatting. Leo Harper, the head camera man, is walking into the hotel with his beloved camera hitched up on his wide shoulder. 

In a few moments, Rob finds himself alone in the street. He leans against the side of the car and slips his hands into his trouser pockets. The shoddy looking Commercial Hotel is on the opposite side of the street, flanked by small restaurants and shops. A listing telephone pole stands a tired sentinel on the opposite corner. The Hughes Hotel sits on the corner of Fulton and H; some old, charming looking buildings are lined along down the street, right of the hotel. Whether they are small business or tenements, he can’t tell. He takes a deep breath and is surprised the air lacks the smoky taste he is used to. The air is hot, but it smells clean...aside from the lingering aroma of cow.

He studies the hotel from the street; it is large and impressive next to the shoddy buildings clustered around it. A large tower sprouts from the roof and rises imperiously over the street. He stands in its shadow. His dark eyes narrow. He walks around the front of the car and enters the hotel. 

The temperature is nicer and a welcome gust of cooled air hits his face as he enters. The lobby is tastefully decorated, but odd. The design is, for lack of a better description, stuffily Victorian. A far, far cry from his favorite jazz haunts in Anaheim. Down to the fringed lamp shades, curved wooden clawed feet and floral fabrics, the place has a comical, ostentatious quality about it. The old ledger keeper behind the oak desk looks down hastily as Rob passes him. Even though things aren’t segregated here like they are in the South, Rob Wells no friend or stranger to disapproving stares or racial prejudice. He tries not to let it bother him.

Leo Martin sits on one of the divans, idly poking at his camera. Leo doesn’t talk much, but his talent with the camera is unequalled.  Rob walks past him and Martin sticks out his hand towards Rob. He looks down and takes the key offered. Swell. Rob offers him a weak grin of presumed friendship and pockets the little metal object. He can only pray Martin doesn’t snore; he’s a light sleeper.

Copyright : Elise Aydelotte