A Contest Of Principles

by Mike Mayak

Dieter Leib walked over and plopped his director’s chair, decorated with the words “Leib’s Seat,” down at the far corner of the room and gestured at the two men in cowboy hats.

“Okay,” Leib said, “This could be the start of a new series. We’re just lucky we got the loan of an authentic Mexican palace to film this. But we only have it for a day. So you guys fake your big fight scene and try to do it in one take.”

Matty Barstow glared at Leib. “Fake?”

“As best you can.” Leib said. “Okay, quiet on the set.”

“Hey, is this the final scene?” Ross Scarman asked.

“Not by a long shot.” Leib said.

“Then which one of us wins the fight?”

“Which one of you is in the black hat?” Leib said.

“I coulda been in that new movie MASH,” Ross grumbled.

“And make sure you take the fight over past that big green window.” Leib said. “But don’t break it; it’s over a hundred years old. Okay, ready? Action!”

Leib nodded at the cameraman and the two actors in their cowboy outfits began fighting, obviously throwing punches, only half-trying to make it look real.

Leib sighed. “At least I’m not making porn anymore,” he thought.

The dusty light shone through the big green window as the two men stared at each other from across the table. One of them an American with piercing eyes, the other a younger Mexican man in an Army uniform.

“Senor, even if you are a reporter, even if you are a famous one, I cannot allow you to speak with Pancho Villa.”

“I came all the way from San Francisco to interview him,” the American said. “I’ll tell his story to everyone back in the U. S.”

“That is politics, Senor,” the man said.

“Politics: a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles,” the American said. “I wrote that. I have plenty of experience and people know my name when it appears in print.”

The other man laughed. “Who are you, Mark Twain?”

“Hardly,” the American said.

“Tell you what,” the man said. “Villa is not here but I will tell you where to find him, if you are that crazy.”

The American nodded.

“Cut!” Leib said, jumping up from his chair. “What kind of a fight is this anyway? Ross, you’re supposed to be underhanded, shifty. You move like a drugged porcupine. And Matty, if you’re going to hit the guy you need to get a little closer. You’re fighting a wild west desperado, one who probably killed the woman you love during a bank holdup. Show some more emotion. Some vitriol!”

“This plot went out with Tom Mix,” Ross said.

“Old-fashioned stuff is coming back,” Leib said. “I can feel it.”

While Leib was griping at his actors, Ernesto, the cameraman glanced around the big room, wondering what sort of things had happened there over the years. Certainly nothing comparing to shooting a not-big Hollywood movie.

“Senor, are you sure you want to do this?” the man asked the American who was sitting in the back of the wagon load of supplies.

“Where Villa goes, I go,” he said. “I’m over seventy. If I get stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, well it beats disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”

The man in the uniform shrugged and waved at the driver who clicked at the horse and the wagon moved onward toward the distant battle that was aborning.

The American smiled. His own horse would be fine back at the palace. They would take good care of it. Besides, he himself probably couldn’t have found Villa, although it wouldn’t be the first battle he’d seen. “To be a gringo in Mexico, that is euthanasia,” he mused.

Leib sat down again and called for action.

Somewhere in the palace, the house echoed with the past.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the May Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Western, set in a Palace involving a Director’s Chair. I threw in the author of the Devil’s Dictionary and his mysterious disappearance for good measure.

—-mike