Free Tribesmen by Adam Cesare Page B

actor may have lost his mind, but he still knew who was writing the checks.
    Tito put the gun back on Jacque. “Why are you doing this?” the negro asked.
    How could he not see it? Was he not an educated man? Didn’t he see that what they were doing was creating supreme art? They hadn’t set out to do it. They had set out to make money, but now art was happening all the same.
    Tito thought it best not to answer him. A man must come to these kind of realizations on his own.
    After a few minutes away, Denny returned with the camera. “Latest reel safely reloaded, boss. We’re ready to roll.”
    Boss : that was a new development. Maybe Denny had learned some respect after that last sequence. Maybe the call of true art was too strong for even a know-it-all brat like Denny.
    “We can’t go yet. We need the girl.”
    “Well she’ll definitely be back on set in a minute,” Denny said. “Where should I be setting up? Should I be getting pickups and inserts?”
    “Get all the coverage you can,” Tito said. He was no longer annoyed that the boy was trying to call the shots. It was good that Denny was showing such initiative. “I’m going to have a talk with our screenwriter about where the story goes from here.”
    Denny gave him a salute and turned to around to face Daria’s body. He held a hand out and began to take light readings above her mangled corpse.
    Tito tried to look Jacque in the eye, but the writer was trying to avoid his gaze. He spoke anyway.
    “A writer who doesn’t produce isn’t a writer, Jacque,” Tito said to him in French. It was a language that seemed tailor-made for pontification. Tito was happy that he got to use it while talking to Jacque.
    The black man’s eyes were plastered to the barrel of the gun in front of his face. He followed the bouncing ball as Tito waved it around.
    “I know that you understand this, but there is a firm hierarchy on a film set. It’s a delicate chain of symbiosis in which all the links have to be maintained if our work is to reach pure cinema.”
    “Can I at least be allowed to sit down while I listen to this crazy horseshit?” Jacque asked.
    Tito flipped the Korovin around, careful to keep his finger off the trigger. He pointed the butt at Jacque, raised up on his toes and pistol-whipped him over his left eyebrow. The blow sent the black man to the ground. The gun may have been small, but it was heavy.
    “You think I’m joking with you? Do you want to ruin what we can achieve here? If you do, just say so and I’ll put a bullet through your eye. Well, I’ll do it in a moment, once Denny gets the tripod set up.”
    “Don’t,” Jacque said, wavering as he propped himself up with his elbows. Tito looked beyond him now, to the space right behind the fire. He could see them all: the people of the island. They stood in a semi-circle, nodding their approval to Tito, their feet facing behind them. This film would be dedicated to their memory.
    The vision collapsed as Umberto bounded through the tall grass and into camp. He was empty-handed except for the blade.
    “Where is she?” Tito looked at him and the actor just shrugged. Mr. Hitchcock was right: cattle .

Chapter 16
    Cynthia
    What had happened to the men of the crew? Or at least the white men , Cynthia thought, her arm sore from hugging the tree. She remembered something her grandmother (the darker one) had once told her. She laughed at the thought.
    “I love your granddad,” her grandmother had said. “But every single white man I have ever met is either one of two things: hateful or crazy.” Her grandfather had fallen firmly into the ‘crazy’ category, but Cynthia had also noted that after too many drinks he was known to dabble in hatefulness, even though her grandma would never admit to it.
    Not content with folksy life lessons, Cynthia’s grandmother was also fond of telling her stories from her life back in Trinidad. Cynthia remembered parts of those stories now with a frown, wishing she