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Blackthorne
Cinemagenic 107
Brotherhood
“We have never preached violence, except the
violence of love, of brotherhood, which left Christ
nailed to the cross.”--Oscar A. Romero.
1(two-shot) Johnny: Yes, it hurts to talk, but without
the talking, there is only the pain.”
Buck: Do you have a woman somewhere?
Johnny: Am I not a man?
Buck: Muy bueno.
Johnny: Mucho senora, and sons--but none like you.
Buck: I am honored.
2(sound cue) harmonica and Indian branch flute.
Johnny: The pain dulls, but I tremble with chills
and sweat. I do not want to close my eyes.
Buck: I will hold you and share my light.
Johnny: Yes, yes, for the darkness closes in, and
it is full of red eyes and white fangs.
Buck: I am here.
Johnny: You know I love you.
Buck: And I love you, brother.
3(steadi-cam shot during the conversation,
slowly circling the pair)
Johnny: I waited for you. I promised your father,
with the freight wheel tracks across his chest,
with his dying breath.
Buck: Voices on the wind compelled me to
return, to pick up the pieces of the past, to
rebuild this rancho.
Johnny: He knew you would come, and I knew
it too; besides, I had nowhere to go. Waiting for
you became my sunshine.
Buck: You had never met me, how could you wait?
Johnny: I had met you in my heart, through your
father’s stories. But you are wrong--I did see you
once.
Buck: When?
4(sound cue) piano and guitar.
Johnny: It was after the death of your father. I was
camped near here when you showed up. I watched
you visit the graves, and I followed you into town--
but I never approached you. If you were to
stay, you would have, but you didn’t. You drank
and then rode like hell into the night on a black
horse. I had already been where you were
going, so I waited for you to come back.
Buck: Thank-you.
5(medium close-ups) lantern light flickering in
their faces, shadows dancing in their eyes.
6(sound cue) coyotes yipping and howling.
Johnny: Some men are together for ten minutes,
and things are in balance, blue sky in an eternity
of blow sand.
Buck: So true for us, and you are a poet.
Johnny: We see the same buffalo, we share the
same pain.
Buck: You may close your eyes, old one...rest.
I will let nothing pull you from my arms.
Johnny: Never, I will not even close my eyes at
death. I will see past death. I will watch the
vultures pick at my body on my scaffold.
Buck: You talk much of death
Johnny: Because it is near.
Buck: It comes for these scum we have killed.
They lie all about us like slaughtered sheep.
Johnny: Put me with your family.
Buck: I tell you that you will live to put me with my
father. Do not befriend death; not yet.
Johnny: For you, I cannot die. I need to take your
sons fishing.
They laughed, but it sounded like a whimper. He
relaxed, and put his own head on the saddle next
to Johnny. Suddenly he was very tired. He could
hear a chorus of coyotes over the faint crackle of
hot embers. The smell of charred flesh was in the
air. Buck closed his eyes.
7(medium close-up) Johnny stared unblinkingly,
as he lie cuddled in Buck’s arms. He slowly let
his heavy lids flutter, then close. He had a small
smile on his lips.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at
dVerse Poets Pub OLN
