Where Eagles Fly...Chapter 1

 

Just so you know...to all my friends, relatives, classmates, and followers.

At my age, I turn 80 on July 2, 2025, and I'll probably not finish this fiction book about my thoughts while I was in Colorado during the winter of 2021. So what the heck?! My stuff is all free now, anyway. So, read on regarding what was supposed to be my next masterpiece, 'Where Eagles Fly.' It was to be a gift to my family...and still might if the good Lord is willing and the creek doesn't run dry. Besides, it's time for a name change for the byline.

On second thought. Where Eagles Fly could be a short story, and I'll leave it to my readers to decide...Chapter 1 below...

 

       Where Eagles Fly

By

D. H. Price

Jimmy Trumbo waited until all the boys were asleep. He loved the quietness after dark, the glow of the moon, and the brightness that filtered through the window.

Tomorrow would be another humid St Louis mid-summer day; only a late afternoon stickball game near the Wilson Building would break up yet another boring day. The playing area on the north side of the structure allowed for more wide open spaces bordered by a grassy knoll that extended some 250 yards to the east. There was plenty of room for the young men to play their brand of baseball.

Jimmy’s classroom studies in the morning kept him busy, and his late-in-the-day duties included taking care of the grounds and a weekly mowing of the lawn with Betsy, a state-of-the-art, fine-tuned John Deere riding tractor. A two-hour ride with Betsy would result in a perfect cut and leave a sparkling emerald green surface — the envy of all the neighbors and businesses north and south of Willow Lane.

Jimmy pulled the warm quilt Sister Anne had made for him over his shoulders. His eyes followed the light beyond his bedroom window. He eyed the man on the moon.

His thoughts were suddenly one thousand miles away...

A bald eagle suddenly appeared, then hovered over the red rock terrain below, and then sailed effortlessly...fading away and disappearing into an endless blue sky.

Jimmy finished his silent prayer and went to sleep. He was promised first at-bats tomorrow. At least he’d be able to meet up with the other kids and play the game of stickball.

The late spring of ’61…

At 72 years of age, Max Fried had just finished his final film. With thirty-five years in Hollywood as a producer, writer, gaffer, and a go-fetch-some-coffee for John Wayne, well, he had practically done it all — except for the real crazy stuff like acting or filling in for a stuntman.

Not happening. Max knew his limitations, and working behind the scenes was his forte.

What happened to him during the spring of 1961 went from exhilarating to prolonged sadness, all in a matter of twenty-four hours.

The movie The Comancheros was in the books. John Wayne had another winner — another great Western completed. The cast and crew had scattered, leaving the LaSal Mountains and the southern edge of Utah behind.

It was a final celebration for some of the crew, the party animals, who had decided to head east toward the Western Slope of Colorado. A final toast was scheduled for a job well done, with an overnight stop in Glenwood Springs, followed by a trip to Denver the next morning and a midday flight out of Stapleton Airport.

An early spring snowstorm had blanketed the Western Slope, and the Trumbos allowed their son to ride ahead with the Springfield family and their 16-year-old twin daughters.

John Springfield was a gifted set designer, but more importantly, a family-oriented and likable human being. The Trumbos felt their son was safe and in good hands.

Jimmy was safe, but his mother and father were not.

A trucker lost control of his oil rig and slammed head-on into the Trumbos’ leased BMW.

The oil rigger was the only survivor.

Mary and Johnny Trumbo owned a summer home in Glenwood Springs. They died within five miles of their home. They loved the area and the hot springs. Both of them were young writers, still babies in the film industry, and the parents of a soon-to-be teenager who seemed to have the world by the tail.

Jimmy had just spent three months witnessing, alive and in person: The Duke, Stuart Whitman, Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, and Ina Balin perform — all of them taking their cuts, awaiting the sound of ‘that’s a wrap’ and all the applause that followed, signaling yet another scene completed. His young eyes took it all in. Jimmy was in awe of it all. He was hooked.

Suddenly, Jimmy’s world ended. His parents were buried in downtown Glenwood. Many movie stars from Hollywood had traveled to the beautiful town of Glenwood Springs to pay their respects to the Trumbos and to Jimmy, who had looked up at the dreary sky as his parents were lowered to their final resting place.

Jimmy didn’t see any eagles flying overhead on that day.

A young couple’s life cut short...gone in the blink of an eye.

Mary loved the mountains. She grew up in New Castle, and by the time she reached her junior year in high school, she had become the editor of the school paper. The following year, she graduated at the top of her class. She was barely five feet tall but a little dynamo.

An academic scholarship to Colorado State followed, and she would spend the next four years in Ft Collins.

Mary met Johnny in her junior year. Johnny, who grew up in Fort Collins, was on a football scholarship but injured his knees during his sophomore season and decided to leave the sport behind to focus on a degree in Mass Communication.

They both graduated, and with their degrees safely tucked away in a safe place, Mary and Johnny exchanged vows at the First Baptist Church in downtown Ft Collins.

Six months later, the Trumbos headed for the West Coast. Mary had landed a job with the East Valley News in Los Angeles, and Johnny had latched on to a position as a sports reporter for the LA Times.

For the next few years, the Trumbos followed every lead and explored every avenue, searching for that dream job…the step in the door that would launch them inside the world of the film industry.

One summer afternoon, on the day Mary found out she was pregnant with Jimmy, a call came in from Randall K. Williamson, a Vice President of Operations at 20th Century Fox. Williamson was responsible for identifying and recruiting talented young journalists for the majority of the company’s projects.

The next morning, the Trumbos arrived at Williamson’s office, and both writers signed on the dotted line for internships with the company. Their careers in the film industry had begun — just like they had envisioned all along.

Mary and Johnny spent the next twelve years refining their craft, making all the right moves, and they quickly rose to the top of their profession.

And then, one day, the call came in. The Trumbos’ next stop was somewhere in southern Utah. The film: A Western. The star: John Wayne.

The Trumbos packed their 1959 Willys Jeep Station Wagon and headed for Utah to join the rest of the film crew and all the behind-the-scenes workers. The Hollywood clan from Los Angeles made the journey by ground or air from Los Angeles to Arizona, then into Monument Valley, and finally to a site near Moab, Utah, where they would set up shop for the next two months.

By November 1961, the daily grind and all the efforts of those involved would finally come to life on the silver screen, in living color, for the world to see.

Not for Jimmy. A storm cloud moved in. It was not a string of lightning bolts, not a hard pounding summer rain, nor a wicked roll of thunder, here today and gone tomorrow.

Instead, it was a gut-wrenching twist of fate that spelled the end of the young man’s fantasy world...and the beginning of a sad and painful existence.

Darkness had set in on Jimmy Trumbo.

Max would be there for Jimmy. None of Jimmy’s relatives were living, except for Grandma and Grandpa Trumbo, who were in their late 90s and both resided in a long-term care center in nearby New Castle. Mary’s parents had passed away long ago, back in 1958. It was as if a tornado had finally emerged and devoured the entire Trumbo family, except for Jimmy T, now a lost young man searching for answers to a troubled past.

Fried had a small house in St Louis and a condo in east LA. So, Max stepped in and had his lawyer handle all the funeral expenses and all of the Trumbos’ final business affairs. Max had good intentions, but even the process of adopting Jimmy was foiled.

The following summer, Max passed away from pancreatic cancer and died on Jimmy’s thirteenth birthday. Once again, Jimmy was alone. Max had one sister in St. Louis, Anne Fried, and she resided on Willow Lane, just north of the city.

Sister Anne was the head nurse at the St Mary’s Hall for Boys, now the next stop for Jimmy.

Sister Anne welcomed Jimmy with open arms, along with a woven quilt she handmade, especially for him.

Jimmy would remain at St Mary’s for the next five years.

Sister Anne and Jimmy T grew close. The years went by slowly for Jimmy. He struggled with mathematics. Forget Algebra and Geometry. No way. General math was hard enough, but with Sister Anne’s help, Jimmy improved every year.

He loved to read, especially Zane Grey books and stories about the Wild West; he was a fan of just about everything. Jimmy read and read.

If Sister Anne lost track of him, chances are he’d be out mowing the grounds or inside the St Mary’s library with his nose stuck inside another book.

By the winter of ’66, Jimmy could finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. He could feel a change coming. His anger at life had subsided.

His grades improved drastically. He was becoming a man. A peacefulness he had never felt before suddenly existed.

Graduation Day…1967

Father Harry rarely walked the quarter of a mile from his office to the maintenance yard where Betsy was housed. On an unusually warm Monday morning, Father Harry knew Jimmy Trumbo would be there. It was eight o’clock, and the sun was wasting no time climbing over the Olive trees along the east side of the property at St Mary’s.

It was graduation day.

Jimmy Trumbo was to graduate alongside fifty of his classmates later in the day. The ceremony is to be held inside Clevenger Hall. The hall was named in honor of Thomas Clevenger, a former St Louis Superior Court Judge and a philanthropist who had no children of his own but saw the need to build a landing area for wayward boys, disadvantaged youth, and, in some isolated cases, just the place for a boy like Jimmy.

Clevenger died in 1947, and he would have been very proud of the fifty-one graduates who had survived their shattered backgrounds, struggled through all their studies, and emerged from their difficult past. They would step on stage today and receive their diplomas.

“Father Harry! What brings you out here this morning?”

Before Jimmy completed his question, he already knew there was trouble in the halls of St. Mary’s.

“It’s Sister Anne. Jimmy, she passed away during the night. I’m so sorry.”

“Jimmy!”

The young man turned his back to Father Harry, grabbed both his knees with his trembling hands, and ran as fast as he could to his dormitory.

A week later…

Sister Josephine rushed through the lobby of the administration building and into Father Harry’s office.

“Come quick, Father Harry. Please hurry!”

“Where are we going?”

“The north gate. Please hurry.”

Father Harry and Sister Josephine climbed into the old 1955 Ford work truck. Father Harry started the engine and waited for instructions from his passenger. A few minutes later, he could see for himself that no more directions were necessary.

A long, freshly cut path…mowed in a straight line and heading due north, down the hill toward an open gate below.

Betsy was left alone. Her engine was still sputtering.

Jimmy Trumbo had left the premises for good.

*****

Jimmy was lost. Every single person he had latched onto in his life...his parents, his grandparents...Max...and now Sister Anne — all of them gone. Everyone close to him vanished. His life and his fantasy world had all disappeared into thin air. Gone!

The man on the moon was all he had left to talk to, and he never returned a conversation, anyway. And where was God? His prayers were never answered. Instead, he was left in total darkness.

He was angry with everyone. He should have said goodbye to Father Harry, but his mind was too cluttered. He was out of control.

Jimmy had packed an overnight bag with a few clothes, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush…, and a photo of a happy family of three — taken somewhere near Dead Horse Point in 1961. He tossed his birth certificate in the satchel and three rolls of bills, all the money he had saved while at St Mary’s.

He grabbed the bag, ran full speed to the maintenance yard, and climbed aboard Betsy. With tears in his eyes, Jimmy released the lever and mowed his way to the north gate.

Jimmy hitchhiked through Missouri, Kansas, into New Mexico and found a ride north to the Four Corners. He boarded a bus to Cortez, Colorado, and then on to Monticello, Utah. He transferred buses, found a window seat in the back of the bus, grabbed a pillow from the overhead rack, and gazed out the window as the bus headed north.

An hour later, Jimmy could see the LaSal Mountains. He caught a glimpse of an eagle gliding west against the backdrop of a clear blue sky.

Ahead, he saw a familiar sight, the white lettering glowing in the sunlight. The Hole N" The Rock, just ahead. The eagle appeared once again.

Jimmy had witnessed such a scene many times in his dreams — those recurring dreams that allowed him to fall asleep night after night.

Jimmy’s eyes followed the eagle south over the red rock terrain. The beautiful creature disappeared. Jimmy arrived in Moab, Utah, on a warm, almost hot, Sunday afternoon. He grabbed his satchel and stepped off the bus.

He walked west three hundred yards to the city park. A softball game was in the final inning. The stands behind the backstop were full of people cheering on every pitch.

Jimmy squeezed into a spot on the edge of the front row and listened to the crowd directly behind him.

He listened to the chatter. Hollywood was in town making a movie, a Western called Blue.

The town softball team up pitted against the Hollywood stars, which included English actor Terence Stamp, Ricardo Montalban, Karl Malden, Johanna Pettit, and an actor Jimmy recognized right off — Joe De Santis.

His parents had discussed the actor for an hour at the dinner table back when Jimmy was just nine years old. Jimmy recalled DeSantis shook hands with him once on the set of Cheyenne. Johnny Trumbo explained to his young son that De Santis was more than an actor; he was also a sculptor and studied at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School.

His dad had said at the time: “Jimmy, you have seen his face a hundred times on shows like Gunsmoke.”

A man brushed against Jimmy.

“Excuse me, are you one of the extras?”

“No, just passing through town.”

The grizzly, somewhat elderly man said, “You are traveling kinda light, aren’t you?”

“No, just graduated from school. Thought I’d do some traveling and see the country.”

“These movie people are hiring extras for a Western flick, and they have some heavy-duty actors like Karl Malden and Ricardo Montalban. They have a movie set just northwest of town.”

Jimmy said, “I heard that.”

”Jimmy went on to explain to the friendly and likable gentleman about his experience in the movie-making business.

“My parents used to be in the movies. I mean, they were writers and producers and worked on my favorite Western, The Comancheros, back in ’61, right here around Dead Horse Point. I was here with them.”

“Wow! The man said as he continued to size up the young fella.

“Oh, yeah! I was an extra in that one, too. Something to do with my pretty face, I guess. I’m a rough-looking cowpoke. They always hire me on the spot. They think I’ll fit in.”

The man was ready to quiz the youngster. “I have a little ranch house about fifteen miles from here, along with about 100 acres of nothing. I have a bunkhouse, a few horses, and a couple of broken-down buildings. If you need a place to stay, you are certainly welcome. We’ll get some food in ya, and I’ll take you out to the movie set tomorrow. I know the gal who does the hiring. Might find yourself on the paint crew or something.”

“I could sure use the money. I might take you up on that.”

“Well, come on, young fella. My old pickup truck is down the street. By the way, my name is Arnold Johnson, A.J.for short. I’m pleased to meet you.”

“I’m Jimmy T for short. Jimmy Trumbo.”

The two strangers shook hands.

The old man said, “You can call me A.J.”

A.J. revved up the engine. “We have dinner on the stove. I’ll explain on the way.”

Jimmy watched the flow of the Colorado River, bending and twisting north and then east as A.J. continued to head west. The red rock glowed in the sunlight as Jimmy stared out the window, searching for those elusive eagles that might be heading in his direction. At least, he hoped, anyway.

A.J. came to a turnoff, and the pickup suddenly no longer had the luxury of the smooth asphalt to deal with.

“The road gets a bit rough from here on out,” A.J. said as the old man’s beard swayed through the driver’s side window, the slight breeze bringing a little comfort to the inhabitants as they bounced around like pinballs.

“Once we make the next turn, it’s only about five miles from there to my domicile,” said A.J., as he continued to dominate the conversation. “I inherited the ranch back in ’57. My grandfather willed it to my sister and me. Sis…she passed away three years ago… she wanted no part of it back then. She had a nice little place in town with a little garden in her backyard, and that was enough for her.”

“I was off working the oil rigs at the time, over along the Western Slope of Colorado. I jumped at the chance to come home and take over this place.”

A.J. shifted gears and maneuvered over a bad patch of the road.

“It’s quiet out here except for a few coyotes now and then. Once or twice a day, a twin-engine aircraft will buzz over the rooftop of my ranch house. I’m only five miles from the Moab Airport as the crow flies and Frontier Airlines lands, makes a quick stop, unloads and loads a few passengers…carries the mail and freight, too… and then heads west to Salt Lake or east to Grand Junction and Denver. The cups and saucers rattle for a few seconds, and that’s about it. Pretty quiet out here, otherwise.”

A. J. slowed the pickup down and came to a complete stop, slipped out of his seat, and opened the gate. Above the gate, Jimmy noticed the words, The Lazy J, the J twisting in the breeze.

“Pretty clever, don’t you think,” A.J. added, proud of himself for such a down-to-earth title for such an establishment. “I’m a lazy old man. I take plenty of siestas under the stars. The name kinda fits the place. There’s plenty of work to be done out here, but how do they say it? I’m a pro-cras-tin-ator. I can’t spell it, but that’s me in a nutshell.”

“You tend to put things off, A.J.?” Jimmy said, finally getting into the conversation.

“Exactly. I have a lot of ideas and some money in the bank. One of these days, this area is gonna explode. You can explore to your heart’s content out here, mostly down by the river. I need someone to lend me a hand...someday.”

The older man’s voice was interrupted by a coughing spell.

“I’ll explain it all to you in due time.”

A.J. pulled into the entrance of the Lazy J.

“There’s Maria’s Volkswagen bug in the driveway. I bet dinner is almost done.”

Jimmy noticed smoke coming from the chimney of the main house, and on the driver’s side of Maria’s vehicle, he saw the words: Maria Lopez, A-1 Cleaning Service.

Maria took off her apron and greeted A.J. and Jimmy.

A.J. hugged Maria and was first to speak, as usual. “I brought a friend home for dinner. We met in town, and he’s looking a little lean and could use some of your homemade biscuits.”

“Maria, this is Jimmy Trumbo.”

“Please to meet you, Jimmy,” as she offered her right hand and squeezed the young man’s right hand gently. “Come on in, you two. It’s time to eat.”

Jimmy felt comfortable as he selected the chair nearest to him and sat down. A.J. was still talking away. Maria shook her head. “He’s hard to shut up once he gets rolling.” She smiled and added, “Eat up, boys!”

The young man from St Louis hadn’t had a full-course meal in almost a week. Jimmy took a deep breath and realized he had left Missouri just three days ago. He dug in.

A.J. and Maria watched him. A.J. acknowledged the young man’s exuberance as he cleaned his plate in no time and uttered, “Well, all right then,” as his new friend continued to chow down. Maria just smiled. She knew she had done well. Another happy customer at the dinner table.

The grandfather clock near the fireplace chimed. Maria jumped up and took off her apron. “Boys, I’ll leave you to clean up. I must be on my way.”

“There’s a pot of coffee on the stove, and on the counter is a dish of my chocolate cookies. Enjoy. I need to get to the airport and have the lobby cleaned by eight o’clock. It’s my best contract, and I don’t want to be late.”

“Thanks, Maria. See you next Sunday,” A.J. said as he handed her an envelope with enough money inside to cover her time and trouble for the week.

“I’ll be here. It was a pleasure meeting you, Jimmy.”

She started up the bug and was gone in a cloud of dust.

Jimmy devoured the cookies, leaving a couple for A.J. He remembered a time not so long ago when Sister Anne would show up with cookies and milk for the gang at St. Mary’s.

“Maria is a hard-working woman,” A.J. said as he cleared the table and put the dishes in the sink. She raises a teenager and runs that cleaning business six days a week. When she takes Sundays off, she checks on me. I was a long-time friend of her father, Manny Lopez. He passed away a few years ago. Great guy, worked on the oil fields with me.”

Jimmy eyed the photo on the mantel above the fireplace of two cowboys roping a calf.

“Manny was the heeler, and I was the header. We entered our share of rodeos back in the day.”Jimmy turned to A.J. “Can you teach me some calf roping?”

“Sure, if you stay around for a while. It takes some time. It’s not an easy thing to learn.”

“When I was down in Castle Valley in ’61, the stuntmen gave me a few pointers on how to lasso a post. That’s about all I did. Of course, I was a little guy, and my hands weren’t big enough to handle the rope.”

“Well, alright then,” A.J. said as he grabbed two cowboy hats off the rack. “Let me give you a tour of the ranch. Try this baby on for size.”

A.J. hurled a mid-sized, dark leather Stetson his way. Jimmy wrapped both hands around his new headgear and offered a rare smile...his first smile in a long while.

Jimmy stepped on the porch. The sun was dropping fast, but there was just enough time for A.J. to show his new cowhand the corral, the barn, and the bunkhouse. “The bunkhouse has all the comforts of home. Old Charlie Sands and his dog Hazel spent the last two winters in the bunkhouse, and Charlie helped me with all the fencing I needed to get done on the south range.”

"Charlie was a good wrangler, but he had to get back to Oregon last January. His daughter was having a tough go raising three young children on her own, and she lived outside of Portland. So, he loaded up his two horses in his trailer, cleared out his belongings, and hightailed it out of Dodge with Hazel by his side.”

Jimmy entered the bunkhouse, and A.J. followed him in. The first thing Jimmy saw was a bookshelf stacked to the roof with paperback books. “Yep, I can’t believe he left those all behind. I’d drop by at night, and he’d be sitting by the fireplace with Hazel, reading a Zane Grey book, and he wouldn’t stop until the fire was down to smoldering ashes.”

Jimmy was in shock. “I’m a Zane Grey fan, too. I’ve read many of his books. My goodness, I see a few on the shelf that I couldn’t find back in St. Louis.”

“Well, there you go,” A.J. said. “Enjoy. There’s plenty of firewood out here. It does cool off at night. The bad news is there’s no air conditioning in the bunkhouse, but I do have air conditioning up at the main house.”

A.J. showed him the bathroom. “See all the comforts of home. We do have an outside shower out back. It’s enclosed.” “Plenty of privacy. Of course, I have my well over there by the corral as well. There is also plenty of bedding, linens, and blankets in the closet. There is a sink and a refrigerator here in the kitchen. We’ll have to go into town and get you some groceries tomorrow after we run out to the movie site and get you squared away.”

“I can’t thank you enough, A.J.”

“ I hope it all works out in the morning. For some reason, I think it will. I’ll show you the rest of the spread may be late tomorrow. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be up at the house if you need me.”

Jimmy watched A.J. saunter back to the ranch house. Jimmy closed the door and surveyed his new surroundings. He moved quickly to the bookshelf. There were at least one hundred books — over half were Zane Grey or Luis L’Amour novels…or other books about the Old West.

It was like old Charlie had left him a goldmine.

Jimmy shook his head. It was just a few hours ago, and he had no idea where he was going to sleep for the night. He raised both hands to the air; tears were streaming out of his eyes. And now this, he muttered to himself.

He started up a fire just for the heck of it — throwing on a small log for practice, if for no other reason. He sat in the rocker and eyed the small flame that suddenly appeared.

What was he doing here? Just a few days ago, he had lost his closest friend, Sister Anne, someone he had latched on to five years ago...someone who gave him comfort and instilled in him the will to keep going with what had been a miserable, lonely existence.

Now, she was gone from his life, just like everyone else. He suddenly thought of Father Harry. The man didn’t deserve what he had done to him…. He left him and the school…and Jimmy said out loud, “I didn’t even bother to pick up my diploma.”

He had fallen off the face of the earth...or so he thought. He wiped away more tears and thought out loud. “I didn’t say bother to say goodbye to his St Louis stickball buddies and his fifty classmates, all of whom had life-long struggles of their own.

Jimmy looked around the bunkhouse and then stared out the window at the darkness. A different moon suddenly appeared in the night sky — not a Missouri moon, but a southern Utah moon. Why are they so different?

He thought. Where is the man on the moon?

He wiped away a final tear. He climbed into bed and passed out. He dreamed of the eagle in flight.

*****

The next morning, Jimmy climbed out of his bunk. The paperback novel Riders of the Purple Sage — one of many of Grey’s books that he couldn’t get his hands on back in St. Louis — slipped off the edge of the bed and fell on the hard floor.

A photo fell out of the back of the book. Jimmy picked up the photo. A picture of Charlie and Hazel sitting on the front porch of the bunkhouse, eyeing the Utah setting sun.

Jimmy shook his head and said out loud, “I owe you, Charlie.”

For a moment during the night, Jimmy had felt like he was back at St Mary’s, passing the evenings away reading about the Old West — reading Grey’s beautiful, tangled words, stories of life on the plains, the hot unforgiving days on the desert floor…the shootouts, the outlaws...the good guys and the bad. It was John Wayne on horseback, some thirty years before the Duke had even stepped onto the set of his first movie.

Jimmy could smell the coffee brewing at the main house.

A.J. was up and practically ready to start up the engine of the old pickup — time for Jimmy’s first journey to a Western movie set since he was eleven years old, the day he had left Castle Rock and was sitting in the back seat of the Springfield’s vehicle, waving out the back window to his parents—a gesture: a final goodbye.

Jimmy slipped into an old pair of Charlie's wrong-sized boots. The old Wrangler had left the boots in the closet of the bunkhouse, where they had been stored for two years. ‘Those babies were just too big. Not sure what I was thinking when I purchased those clodhoppers,’ Charlie had told A.J.

Surprisingly, the boots fit the Trumbo Kid.

A thicker pair of socks would make the new footwear more comfortable. The boots also needed a good cleaning. The odor coming from the bottom of the soles made Jimmy’s nose twitch. But, coupled with the Stetson A.J. had thrown at him the day before, Jimmy certainly looked the part of a wrangler...and he was more than ready for the trip to the set of Blue.

“Good morning, young man,” A.J. said, handing Jimmy a small dish of scrambled eggs and bacon, along with a cup of strong, hot coffee. “Eat up, we’re ready to roll.”

*****

It took a good forty minutes for the old pickup to sputter north to the highway and then another twenty minutes to reach the set. Jimmy noticed a cowboy on horseback, a film crew in hot pursuit as the sun rose over the LaSal Mountains to the east — the rays of sunlight suddenly bursting through the lens of the camera — the rider was on the move.

“Who is that?” Jimmy said as he took off his new cowboy hat, rolled down the window, and questioned the old man in the driver’s seat.

“Don’t you recognize him? That’s Quint— Quint from Gunsmoke.”

“What is Burt Reynolds doing out here?”

“I guess I failed to mention,” A.J. explained. “There’s also a movie within a movie going on. It’s called Fade In and Quint…I mean, Reynolds is the star, and his love interest in the movie is a young actress by the name of Barbara Loden, who happens to be married to a famous director.”

“Who would that be?”

“Elia Kazan. He directed On the Waterfront, Splendor in the Grass…A Street Car Named Desire...well, the list goes on.”

“Unbelievable. Sister Anne took a few of us kids to see On the Waterfront back in St Louis. Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. What a great movie!”

“Yeah… and Malden is here,” A.J. added, wondering about Sister Anne but continuing to fill Jimmy in. “ It’s crazy out here. You’ll see faces you have seen on TV and in the movies. Maria said when she cleaned the lobby at the airport two Sundays ago, she was dusting away, and in came Kazan. She sees her share of Hollywood stars. She’s always coming to the ranch, smiling from ear to ear and yelling: ‘Guess who I saw today?’

A.J. pulled in next to a trailer hidden on the outskirts of the movie set and quickly got out of the truck. Jimmy followed him inside.

“Patricia, I have a young cowboy here looking for work. Anything available?”

“I hear tell Springfield needs some workers,” she said. “These on-again-off-again thunderstorms are playing havoc with some of the structures.

The roofs are not exactly up to snuff. If you know what I mean.”

“Did you say Springfield?”Jimmy asked.

“Yes. John Springfield.”

Startled, Jimmy shook his head. “I know him!”

“Well, it just might be your lucky day, son,” the young blond, maybe in her early 30s, said, with her face down and her nose stuck in a file on her desk.

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Jimmy Trumbo.”

End of Chapter 1