“It takes money to tear things down. The preservation of poverty, they call it,” Meadow said. “So. Not only the same Fondas, but get this. In 1980, Jane Fonda came up here. On the anniversary of her great-great-great-grandfather’s death by Tory raiders, but also, apparently, to make amends for stealing all the Mohawk land. She may be helping some Mohawks who are trying to reestablish a community here.”
Carrie couldn’t stop herself from tilting her head and raising her eyebrows as she smiled to indicate a cartoonish level of skepticism. “Where did you hear that?” She was used to Meadow making things up, getting them slightly wrong, editing them or exaggerating them in the moment of the telling.
Meadow shrugged. “A Mohawk told me. He described it as a rumor.”
“I thought you said it was the Iroquois?”
“Carrie, come on. Mohawks are Iroquois. The Iroquois Confederacy, or the Five Nations, is made up of the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Onondaga, and the Cayuga.”
“Oh yeah. I guess I should know that.”
“I’ve been filming trains.”
“Trains?”
“All spring. Nothing but trains,” Meadow said. “Do you remember that movie Night Mail? We saw it in Jay Hosney’s class.”
They pulled up in front of a brick warehouse.
“Of course. That tedious documentary about Scottish mail being delivered.”
Meadow got out and Carrie followed, carrying her backpack and duffel of gear. Meadow went through the open exterior door and then unlocked an interior door that led to a stifling, dusty stairwell. After three flights, she pushed open a wood door with an opaque glass panel and a chain-hinged transom window above that. The studio space consisted of an open warehouse floor. The sun shone through the walls of tiny-paned windows, and the high-ceilinged, huge room was hot and airless.
“Not tedious,” Meadow said. “Night Mail devotedly follows the mail train as it speeds across the land and through the night.” Meadow had a slightly condescending habit of telling Carrie about movies even if she had seen them. As if Carrie needed them summarized and paraphrased to make sure she “got” it. As if Carrie watched things but had no relationship to them. But Carrie also understood that this was Meadow’s way of thinking. Meadow was building an idea about something, and she liked to think through talking. Once Carrie understood that, she didn’t feel condescended to. She instead felt a pleasing intimacy with Meadow and her great brain. Carrie knew how to be friends with Meadow.
“The train barely stops and we see all the automatic mechanisms to load and unload and sort the mail. It is a machine-age celebration of speed and technology.”
“I remember. There is a poem.”
“Right. An Auden poem, and music by Benjamin Britten. I have been thinking about it.”
“I can see that.”
“The poem and the music complicate the efficiency. Or counter it. Or maybe it is the long focus on only the train — anything looked at that closely becomes mysterious to us.” Meadow turned on a large fan. Some papers blew around, but it felt great on Carrie’s face.
“That’s better! Thank you.”
“It’s a meditation. Or it starts out celebrating and marveling at this unstoppable train. Trying to meet the power of it. But then — as if the filmmaker himself transformed during the night — the film becomes progressively breathless and dark. After all, that 1930s devotion to efficiency did lead to dark places.”
Carrie let the air cool her face, and then she walked around. “So you have been filming the trains as they come through?”
Meadow nodded. “I’ve shot a lot of footage while lying by the tracks as the train passes, filming at ground level. I’ve boarded the train in Amsterdam and stood on the joints between cars as they moved on the tracks. Filmed down through the spaces.”
“Have you climbed on top?”
“Not yet. But I would love that. I’m too scared, though.”
“I’m glad to hear that scares you.”
“I want to strap myself and my tripod onto the cowcatcher of a locomotive and film a phantom ride across the United States in real time. Just the POV of the locomotive eating track as the world unfurls around it. Sixty hours of pure one-shot cinema.”
“If only it were 1895,” Carrie said.
“If only,” Meadow said.
Carrie laughed. Meadow longed to be a barnstormer, a tightrope walker, an escape artist, an inventor. Or maybe she just liked the idea of film as a record of a filmmaker’s feat. The making of the film as the art, and the film itself as merely an artifact of that artistic act, not the art itself. Meadow wanted her inventiveness noticed, which Carrie considered a “showman” style: the dazzling concept that just points back to the filmmaker no matter where the camera is turned. Carrie would like to make a film of Meadow making films. See the girl strapped to a train!
“You want to watch some of it?” Meadow looked doubtful even as she suggested it.
“Sure.”
“Okay,” Meadow said. “Excellent.” But instead of making a move to one of the two projectors, Meadow walked over to a mini-fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. She banged the bottle caps against the table edge: first one, then the other. She stood there and waited, holding a bottle out. Carrie walked to her and reached for the beer.
“Thanks.”
Meadow took a long swig and smiled. Her hair was cut short, and she looked lean and boyish in her jeans and sleeveless t-shirt. She seemed even more boyish when she pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the table and lit up. She squinted as she took a drag, and her bangs fell in her face. She folded one arm across her chest and braced it under the other arm and hand that held the cigarette, exposing — or showing off — her defined biceps. She looked older and tougher than Carrie did, especially since Carrie had gained weight (12.6 pounds) from eating so much starch in the dorm cafeteria all year.
The door to the hall pushed open, and a young man stepped through. He looked young, maybe sixteen. His chin-length hair was blunt cut and dyed black. His dark-lashed eyes stood out against his pale skin. He was wearing eyeliner, which, perhaps because it was smudged, made him look androgynous rather than girlish. He wore the same outfit as Meadow: sleeveless t-shirt and narrow-cut jeans. And like Meadow, he was skinny but muscular. He smiled at Carrie. He was beautiful, Carrie decided, if odd-looking.
“This is Local Dave,” Meadow said. He shook his head wearily. “Deke! A joke. His name is Deke, really. He’s a son of Gloversville, an outcast, and now he helps me make movies.” At the word outcast, Deke’s eyes widened and he held up his large hands and waved his ringed fingers at Carrie.
“I’m Carrie.”
“Hi,” he said. He stood next to Meadow and their shoulders touched. He leaned slightly against her. Leave it to Meadow to find the one gorgeously odd kid in Gloversville and make him her soundman/boyfriend.
“Meadow and I grew up together in LA.”
“He knows all about you, Carrie,” Meadow said. “I talk about you a lot.”
“You are best friends,” he said.
“Yes,” Carrie said. “We are.” It was nice to hear it. She liked to think Meadow felt that way, even if she never believed that Meadow exactly needed anything from her. That night they ate thickly cheesed delivery pizza, drank wine, and watched a movie projected on a sheet Deke had hung on the warehouse wall. Meadow ran the projector. Meadow used their old teacher, Jay Hosney, to help her rent movies from MoMA and the New Yorker Theater and other film libraries. They watched a 16 mm print of Antonioni’s Red Desert. Meadow rented it for a week, and she had already seen it five times.