Страница 29 из 79
Amedea nodded. “It’s the hardest thing to be a widow, I would think. I’ve thought about coming to visit your pensione sometime. How is it?”
“Good. I’m building a beach. I was going to build a te
“From the cinema?”
“Yes. She is making the film Cleopatra.”
“Not Liz Taylor?”
“No, another one.”
She took the tone she used to have when she was advising him about other girls. “And is she beautiful?”
Pasquale acted as if he hadn’t thought about it until now. “Not much.”
Amedea held out her hands like she was holding cantaloupes. “But big breasts, no? Giant balloons? Pumpkins?” Her hands moved away from her body. “Zeppelins?”
“Amedea,” he said simply.
She laughed at him. “I always knew you’d be a big success, Pasquale.” Was that mocking, her tone? She tried to hand his cigarette back but he waved it over to her and pulled out a new one for himself. And they stood there smoking their separate cigarettes, not talking, until Amedea’s was all ash, and she said she had to get back inside. Pasquale said he had to catch his train anyway.
“Good luck with your actress,” Amedea said, and she smiled as if she meant it. Then she darted in her light way across the street, glanced back at him once, and walked off. Pasquale felt an itch in his throat—the urge to yell something after her—but he kept his mouth shut, because he had no idea what those words might be.
7
Eating Human Flesh
1846
Truckee, California
S o there’s this guy . . . a carriage-maker named William Eddy, good family man, handsome, honest, but uneducated. It’s 1846 and William is married, with two little kids. But he’s dirt-poor, so when the opportunity comes to go to California to make his fortune, Eddy jumps at it. It’s the driving ambition of his time, his people, to go west. So Eddy signs on with a wagon train leaving Missouri for California. Over credits, this William Eddy and his pretty young wife are getting ready for the journey, packing up their meager belongings from their sod-and-log cabin.
The camera makesits way down a long line of wagons, filled with all of their belongings, herds of cattle moving with them, strung out for a half-mile leading out of town, kids and dogs ru
The trains were always named for the prominent families, but William Eddy’s the closest thing to a decent frontiersman on this particular train, good hunter and tracker, humble to a fault. The first night out, the men from the wealthy families meet to discuss the trip and William steps to the fire to say that he’s worried: they’ve gotten a late start and he’s not sure about this route they’re taking. But he’s hushed by the wealthier guys and he just goes back to his ragtag wagon in the back of the train.
The first act is all action, descent—trouble. Right away the pioneers hit bad weather and wagon wheels breaking. There’s a villain in the party, a sturdy German immigrant named Keseberg, who’s scammed an old couple into joining his wagon, but when they’re out past civilization, Keseberg steals everything from the old people and turns them out, forcing them to walk. Only William Eddy takes the couple in.
The wagon train arrives in Utah, at the halfway point, strung out, weeks behind schedule. At night, the party’s cattle are scavenged by Indians. William Eddy is the best hunter, so he kills game along the way. But bad luck and bad weather continue to plague them, and they have to pay for taking this questionable route when everything breaks down on the great salt flats. We pan over this cracked, hard soil, the trail of wagons strung out for miles, cattle starting to fall dead, the settlers forced to stagger across a desert, family by family, horses walking blindly—the foreshadowing of the dissolution of society, everyone turning slightly feral except William Eddy, who retains his human dignity to help the rest of the party get across.
Finally, they make it to Nevada—but it’s October, weeks later than any group of pioneers has ever tried to make it through. The snows usually come in mid-November, so they’ve still got a few weeks to cross the Sierra Nevada Range, at the Wasatch Mountain pass, and they’ll be in California. But they must hurry. They walk and ride all night, hoping to make it.
Now we’re up in the clouds. But these aren’t fluffy clouds. They are dark and ominous, black masses of foreboding. This is our Jaws and these clouds are our shark. We’re tight on a single snowflake. We follow it down through the sky and see it joined by other flakes. Big. Heavy. We watch that first flake fall, finally coming to rest on the arm of William Eddy, dirty and unshaven. And he knows. His eyes go slowly to the sky.
They are too late. The snows have come a month early. The Do
The ninety people split into two groups. Eddy’s larger group is closer to the pass, along a lake, while the second group, with the Do
William Eddy. Weakened by hunger, he still goes out every day and manages to shoot some rabbits and even a deer. Earlier, the wealthy families wouldn’t share their cattle with him, but Eddy shares his meager game with everyone. But even that food is ru