“This concept remained with me until it finally shone through my writer’s lens as ‘The Patter of Tiny Feet’.”
AGAINST HIS BETTER judgement Sam stopped the car and allowed his smart phone to connect with Andrea’s. The ear-piece purled enough times to allow him to envision Andrea sitting smugly cross-armed, eyeing her vibrating phone, ignoring his extension of the olive branch. Choking back the indignation he still believed was truly righteous, Sam obeyed the recorded instructions and waited for the tone.
“Hi, it’s me,” he began, trying not to be distracted by the escarpment’s belittling sprawl of glacial rock and ancient forests. “Look, I’m sorry I stormed out like that. It was childish of me, I admit. I’m happy about your promotion, I truly am, it’s just…well…I suppose I was a little shocked by how much your new position alters our plans.” He was lecturing again. Andrea had accused him of it often enough. Was he also being high-handed, as she liked to claim?
“Anyhow, I really do have some scouting to do, that wasn’t a lie. But I wanted to call you before I got too far out and lost the signal. I’ve got my equipment in the car with me. I’m going to snap a few locations just to get Dennis off my back. I should be back in a few hours, so hopefully we can talk more then. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and get you to change your mind about anything. I…I guess I just need to know that a family’s not completely off the table for us. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow, but at some point in the not too distant future I’d…”
He could feel himself babbling. Already his first few statements had grown hazy; he winced at their possible fawning stupidity.
“I’ll see you when I get home. Love you lots.”
The jeep that was scaling the mountain behind him gave Sam an unpleasant start when he spotted its swelling reflection in his rear-view mirror. The deafening beat of its stereo, no doubt worth more than the vehicle itself, caused the poorly folded maps on Sam’s dashboard to hum and vibrate as though they were maimed birds attempting to flap their crumpled wings. The jeep rumbled past and the girl in its passenger seat was whooping and laughing a shrill musical laugh that Sam half believed was directed at him. He started his engine and cautiously veered back onto Appleby Line to resume his half-hearted search for a paragon of terror.
He’d not been lying about the mounting pressure from Dennis, a director who possessed the eccentricities and ego of many legendary cineastes, but completely lacked their genius. After helming two disastrous made-for-television teen comedies Dennis broke off to form his own minuscule film production company, Startling Image. Freak luck had furnished his operation with a grant from the Ontario Film Board, which Dennis said he planned to stretch as far as it could go. His scheme was to produce shoestring-budget horror films that would be released directly to DVD. Dennis believed this plot was not only foolproof but, in fact, an expressway to wealth and industry prestige.
Although Sam’s experience in movie-making allowed him to see the idiocy of Dennis’s delusions, being a freelancer required Sam to accept any jobs that came his way during leaner times. Location Manager was an impressive title on paper, but with anorexic productions such as Gnawers, Startling Image’s inaugural zombie infestation film, Sam found himself working twice as hard for a third of his usual compensation. He was contracted for a major Hollywood studio film that was going into production in Toronto next spring and had only accepted Dennis’ offer in order to bring in some extra money. The draconian hours, the director’s tantrums, and the risible script for Gnawers would have all been worth it had Andrea kept her word.
But now it seemed there would be no need to furnish their guest bedroom with a crib and rocking chair and a chiming mobile on the ceiling. Instead there would only be Andrea’s customary seven-day workweeks, her quarterly bonuses spent on ever-sleeker gadgets and more luxurious clothing. Sam’s wants were simple: to know the pleasures of progeny, fatherhood, to watch someone born of love and blessed with love growing up and sequentially awakening to all the wonders of life. His grandfather had advised Sam years ago that there comes a time in every man’s life when all he wants is to hear the patter of tiny feet.
Now thirty-eight, Sam had come to appreciate the wisdom of the cliché, and also the cold sorrow of realising that this natural desire might shrivel up unfulfilled. What then? Sunday afternoon cocktails with Andrea’s fellow brokers, with him chasing an endless string of movie gigs until, perhaps, he could found a company of his own?
Only when the car began to chug and lurch in an attempt to scale the road’s sudden incline did Sam realise he’d allowed his foot to ease off the gas pedal. He stomped down on it, and the asthmatic sounds the engine released made him wince. This far up the escarpment, well past the Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area, the road hosted surprise hairpin turns that required a driver’s full alertness. Sam shook the cobwebs from his head and willed his focus on the narrow road before him.
Had he not been so determined to exceed Dennis’ expectations, Sam might have let the peripheral image pass by unexplored. But his determination to prove his worth, now not only to Dennis but also to Andrea (maybe even to himself as well), inspired Sam to edge his car onto the nearest thing the narrow lane had to a shoulder. He gathered his hip-bag and exited the vehicle. With eyes fixated on the alluring quirk in the landscape, he began to climb the rocky wall that fed off the laneway.
The stiff pitch of a shingled roof was what had commanded his attention after a rather long and uneventful drive around the escarpment. It jutted up, all tar shingles and snugly carpentered beams, amidst the leafless knotty tree-line. As he climbed upward and then began to wriggle across the inhospitable terrain, Sam questioned the housetop’s reality. Had his anxious state conspired with his imagination to impress a structure where one could not be?
A few more cautious footsteps were all that was required to confirm the substance of his glimpse.
It was a wooden-frame house whose two storeys might have sprouted stiffly from the overgrown rockery that ringed its base. Blatantly abandoned, Sam couldn’t help but note how the house’s battered walls, punctured roof, and boarded windows did not convey the usual faint melancholy or eeriness that most neglected homes do. Instead, there was an air of what might be called power. Sam wondered if the house had drawn strength from its solitude, become self-perpetuating, self-sufficient, like the mythical serpent that sustains itself by devouring its own tail.
The site was so tailored to his wishes that for a moment Sam almost believed in providence. Lugging the film crew’s equipment up and along this incline would be arduous, but he was confident that it would be worth the extra effort. Given the anorexic budget for Gnawers, even Dennis could not balk at the richness of this location.
The place was almost fiendishly apt. They would have to bring generators here to power the equipment, and a survey of the house would be required to gauge its safety hazards, but it could work. More than work; it could shine.
As he entered the clearing where the farmhouse stood, Sam lifted his hands to frame his view in a crude approximation of a camera lens. Yet this simple gesture was enough to transform his roaming of the derelict grounds into a long and elaborate establishing shot. One by one he took in the set-pieces that may well have been left there just for him: the crumbling stone steps that led up to the empty doorframe, the rust-mangled shell of a tractor that slumped uselessly at the head of the gravel clearing, the wind-plucked barn whose arches resembled the fossilised wings of a prehistoric bird of prey. It was glorious, perfect.