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Passing Judgment
By Keith Ferrell Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 1996 Keith Ferrell
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8125-5537-0
CHAPTER 1
I am not the only member of my high school class to have become rich and famous, but I was the first and that, along with the profession I pursued for several years, has earned for me a certain notoriety among those with whom I shared adolescence. They send me cards and letters. They ask for help, they ask for money, they ask for encouragement, they ask for autographs. More than one of them asked me to get them started in Hollywood. They know they have what it takes — they are positive — and would I please nudge the door open for them just a little bit? They can take it from there. I still receive such requests from time to time, although each of them must know by now that I have been through with the Industry for several years.
Roy Duncan never once asked for help. He did not need it. Roy became wealthy and well-known in his own way, moving up quickly as an attorney and even more rapidly as a member of the state legislature. A lot of people think he will be governor one day soon and that could well be the case. His career was as much a rocket as my own, and his was still climbing. Roy Duncan was practicing law at twenty-three, a legislator two years later. Last year this boy wonder made national headlines as coordinator of a special task force that broke up several drug conduits in our state. The governor appointed Roy to the position and he made the most of it. Roy stumbled onto some good information and the dealers tumbled like dominoes. It was a ripple which grew into a wave whose crest was ridden by federal officials and lawmen in other states. The wave did not recede until a dozen major arrests were made on the West Coast. Roy arranged to be present for some of those arrests. He looked very good in the papers and he handled himself well on television. You could see the fire in his eyes. He had started something from North Carolina which they had failed to do from Washington. It did not take long before the demand for Roy Duncan as an after-dinner speaker began to exceed even his energy. He must have given a speech a night. His reputation as a decent and honest young man was established. A crusader, a homegrown hero. A young man of virtue.
This young man of virtue had aligned himself very solidly with the New Spirit for American Morality movement, that group of nonpolitical politicians proclaiming moral rebirth as the only and necessary cure for all the nation's ills. When the newspapers weren't running pictures of Roy Duncan drug-buster, they were running pictures of Roy with New Spirit's leader and founder, the Reverend Frederick Prescott. Roy had been with Prescott a long time, since barely after we left high school, and Prescott never missed an opportunity to praise Roy and enhance his celebrity. When Time did its cover story on Prescott and New Spirit, there was decent Roy Duncan getting a healthy column-inch of coverage at the head of a sidebar.
I suppose I thought of Roy Duncan once or twice a month, more often if he was making headlines. But I was not thinking of him the day he arrived at my home, and certainly I was not expecting him. I was not even there.
I was down at the lowest of my three ponds, going after bass. I had been there since early morning. I'd landed nothing, but was enjoying a duel with a large one. I would drag a lure and he would reject it. From his occasional tug I could tell he was large enough to be smart enough to be beyond easy temptation. He would be hooked only if I could fool him with a good trick, but I had no good tricks.
The sun climbed quickly, the air was still and dry. I shucked off my shirt and let the heat raise a film of perspiration on my back. I was not going to catch this fish, and as the heat of the morning arrived I called it quits. I carried my rod and tackle box back through the tall itchy grass, a slow stroll back to my home. The sky was bright blue, high, without a hint of rain. It had not rained in weeks, but that bothered me less than most of my neighbors. I owned a farm but was no farmer. My crop of weeds flourished in drought or downpour.
When I turned onto the long, unpaved and dusty driveway that led to my front porch, I saw an unfamiliar car parked beside my little truck. There was a sudden sour taste in my mouth and I stopped short. I didn't care for visitors; I always wondered what bad news they brought.
I stepped closer. He was sitting on my porch and as I approached he stood up. It had been years but of course I recognized Roy Duncan, and would have if he had never appeared on the news. I would have known him anywhere. After high school we'd gone on to the same university. He married Ellen Jennings, a girl I once dated, the first love of my life.
Roy always told people he was my friend. He was wrong.
CHAPTER 2
Roy bounded down my steps, hand outstretched, big smile creasing his adorable babyfat face. "Baird Lowen! How are you? It's been too long." His handshake was politician firm, his nails recently manicured.
"Hello, Roy," I said. "What brings you down this way?"
He walked close beside me back up the steps. For a moment I thought he was going to throw an old chum arm around my shoulders. "A little business, Baird. I took a chance on stopping by. I've got a few things I want to talk over with you." He gave his trousers a quick tug before seating himself. Roy wore an expensive-looking three-piece suit, beige with dark buttons. I wondered if he'd picked the color to complement his thinning, sandy hair. He looked completely at ease, even in a vest on a hot morning, all dressed up as though for the campaign trail. The heat did not seem to affect him. His hairline had receded a bit since I'd last seen him in person, and he'd gained a few pounds, but Roy looked fine nonetheless, a prosperous Jaycee, gubernatorial material all the way.
"Some ice water?" I said, and gave him no time to decline. "Be just a minute." I unlocked the door and went inside.
There was a pain behind my eyes. I did not want Roy Duncan in my home. I did not want anyone there. Since leaving Hollywood I'd accepted my circumstances — the circumstances that caused me to leave — and I understood that because of them I would spend my time in company with paranoia. The situation was not an ideal one but I had brought it on myself, and would live with it. I became a hermit, or styled myself as one. Visitors fed the terror in me.
I pulled off my fishing clothes and wondered how quickly I would be able to get rid of Roy. A few things to talk over. It did not seem likely that he had come to solicit a campaign contribution. I might have begun to hide when I returned east, but I had not grown mute. From time to time I fumbled a few lazy steps toward becoming a writer of prose rather than film. I had managed to sell a few pieces, and, hermit or not, submitted them above my name. Evidently that name still possessed some marquee value, for my pieces found homes in print, first in film journals, then in magazines of larger substance and reputation. Some of my articles possessed substance of their own, but I doubted they would make me much of a reputation as a writer. I had a few things to say, that was all, some of them about film, others about the ways in which film had come to rule America in the nineties.
The most recent of my pieces, published in the New Yorker a month before Roy's visit, offered a possible clue to his presence at my house. "Lights! Cameras! Prescott!" was an article about New Spirit's television productions. Prescott owned and operated his own cable network and offered hours of sermons and song every Sunday, along with occasional evening-long evangelical entertainment extravaganzas. He produced records that ranged from traditional gospel to righteous rap to comforting country and made Christian music videos to promote them. New Spirit had established an early and ambitious site on the Internet and its traffic there grew larger every day. There was a line of New Spirit software and CD-ROMs, a publishing division that had pushed several of Betty Prescott's books onto national bestseller lists, Betty Prescott greeting cards and party decorations, a college, real estate developments for Christian families, even a clothing label.
But it was television, and television's love of Frederick Prescott, that had made New Spirit's first national bones. What caught my eye, and what I tried to catch in my article, was the degree to which Prescott and his line producers, directors, camera operators, and on-screen talent made subtle use of sophisticated film techniques in their programs. They knew what they were doing and were technically the best crew of all the electronic evangelical shows, and the heart of their effectiveness — beyond Frederick Prescott's vast and admitted gifts as a preacher and on-screen presence — was their knowledge of contemporary cinema. Prescott's team was good: There were Spielberg swoops in the sermons, Tarantino crosscutting behind the credits, even a perfect moment of Kubrick coldness when the camera tracked toward the facade of an abortion clinic. I nailed them all.
Technique is one thing, and on technique I had them cold. I was on shakier ground in the latter section of the piece, where my spleen took over for my brain. I suggested that the tools of fiction on film were the perfect tools for the fiction that was faith, and it may have been that my words were too harsh. My editor thought so, but stood by what I had written, although my suspicion was that her support stemmed from my name's publicity value more than any insights my words carried. Certainly I had no illusions: My reputation as a director sold the article as much as my prose or my arguments, even though it was four years since I'd last been on a set. My ego was gratified by the attention, and when I wrote the piece I was not too troubled by my slaps at the faithful. I was not by a long shot religious, and had never really owned any faith to lose. Indeed, I'd taken an earlier slap — twenty years ago in our high school newspaper — at the Prescotts' presence on our campus. That piece had angered Roy, and I was sure the new one had not pleased him, although neither Roy nor Ellen's name was on any of the hate mail I received after the New Yorker came out. Some of those letters were not signed, but I doubted the Duncans would send anonymous mail to their old friend Baird, for what it was worth.
None of which did much to explain what Roy Duncan was doing here, on my front porch, waiting for me to bring him a glass of water. I could not imagine that my New Yorker piece had prompted his visit. It wasn't that good an article, finally, different from dozens of others only in that it carried my name and a hint here and there of reminiscence, for I had grown up in Samson, North Carolina, home of Frederick Prescott and New Spirit. My article caught some attention in my hometown.
Prescott himself devoted a few minutes of airtime to me. He claimed he remembered me from high school, and he was not a man to lie. He talked of my film career and the sordidness of my films, in particular Moonstalk, the movie that ended my career even while it did substantial business. Then the reverend grinned at the camera and turned his attention to larger targets, and as he did so, his crew set to work. For the rest of the program every technique I had mentioned in the article was exaggerated, repeated, satirized, mocked. I chuckled even as I watched myself being one-upped on Sunday evening television.
I was not chuckling now. I pulled on jeans and a faded workshirt. I did not really want to know why Roy was here. I heard from him once or twice each year. He and Ellen always sent a Christmas card. It arrived well in advance of the holiday, specially designed and printed for the Duncan Family. Sometimes there was a photograph mounted within, their names in red ink beneath it. Every other year or so there was a campaign flyer or charity solicitation which I allowed, like the cards, to pass without reply. Twice the Duncans had sent out printed newsletters, chatty sheets filled with talk of Roy's career and Ellen's volunteer work, New Spirit, their three tikes. Their word.
I took a breath. I would know soon enough what Roy wanted from me, and then he would be gone. I walked back through the kitchen, got Roy's water and returned to the porch.
He sat with hands folded together, head bowed.
"Praying?" I said. Roy looked up quickly. He seemed startled and that made me feel a little better.
"You caught me," he said with a grin that revealed perfect teeth. He glanced out over my wide lawn and waved a hand. "It's so beautiful here. Tranquil. I can see why you came back. A man can think here, find peace. Puts you close to God."
"It does that," I said. I hooked my right leg over a straight-backed chair and sat facing him.
Roy turned his attention to me. "You know, you're looking very good, Baird." He pursed his lips, an unfortunate tic that transformed his face from babyfat to pudgy. "Bear," Roy said. His laugh was hearty, a constituent-pleaser.
"Anyone call you Bear anymore?"
"Hardly anyone, Roy Rogers."
"You remembered."
"It was an effort."
"Nicknames," he said softly, and shifted to look outward again. He sipped some water.
"What sort of business, Roy?"
"Legislative. Just looking over some things."
"This isn't your district. We have our own representative."
"A good man, too. But I'm here on committee work, Baird. Oiling some wheels, greasing some levers, finding out what'll fly, what won't. You know."
"Sure."
"And to be frank, I wanted to see you. It's been a while."
"See me about what?"
"Oh ... personal things. Old times. Just a talk, Bear."
"Why me?" I decided I would let Roy call me Bear five more times. I would keep careful count.
"Because of how far back we go, Bear. You know us both. Myself and Ellen. I need to talk to somebody who knows us both, who has known us a long time."
"Lots of people know both of you. Talk to Freddy Prescott."
"It's you, Baird. Just accept it. Try, anyway." His voice rose a little and then dropped. "It has to be you, Baird."
"Then get on with it."
"It's just that —" He took some water. "It's hard to start."
"Trouble in the marriage," I said, an easy divination.
"Nothing like that! Oh, no." He laughed again. "I didn't give that impression, did I? No, not at all. In fact —" He leaned close to pat my knee. "In fact, old chip, Ellen is expecting again."
"Another tike."
"You do read the newsletters," he said with a happy nod. "I can't tell you how much that will please Ellen. We have such great fun putting those things together."
He was coasting, an old buddy visiting an old buddy. I put my palms on my knees and wished he would call me Bear four times, fast. "Roy, you're not here to chat. Get on with it."
Roy put down his glass and eased back in the chair. The seat creaked beneath him. For a moment he said nothing. His breathing made a rhythmic nasal whistle, surprisingly loud. He kept his mouth tightly closed, his lips pressed together until at last he began to talk. "It is Ellen, but there is nothing wrong with our marriage. We have the best marriage of anyone I know. Everyone agrees. Ellen loves the kids, she's a great mom, she keeps a fine house." He patted the bulge beneath his vest. "She's a terrific cook, absolutely sensational, as I guess you can tell. I'm headed for a diet before the campaign heats up. But that gal can even make low-cal dishes a treat."
I thought of Ellen. We'd been a steady item throughout our junior year in high school, and it was the first real romance for either of us. Ellen had a killer smile and startling jade eyes. She was a popular girl, cheerful and intelligent. I loved her more than I could say, and after we stopped dating we tried to remain friends. It didn't work out. I watched as she and Roy found each other, and I felt some pain as their relationship deepened and defined itself. But not too much, I convinced myself, for she was not the same girl. With Roy, with the after-school church group that Roy led her to, she became someone else. It may have been inevitable.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Passing Judgment by Keith Ferrell. Copyright © 1996 Keith Ferrell. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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