The shoot-em-up was silent, except for Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow Waltz,
but I could tell by my older brother’s face exactly when Dad gave him the off-stage
order to shoot me. There stood the boy on
Christmas afternoon dressed in his new cowboy suit, pistol pointed at his
little brother, when Dad said, “OK, Shoot him.”
As the film rolled on Paul looked up at his father with real doubt in
his eyes. He knew it was a movie and the gun was a fake. But with much more
sense than even the adults of that period in our social history, he was
reluctant to fire upon the little guy he normally took great care to
protect. After a few seconds, he brought
his hand up as if to salute me, but instead covered his eyes. With his other hand holding the gun, he shot
me dead on, succumbing to a spirit of cinematic excess he was evidently unable
to watch. After one more change of
costume, I enthusiastically fell dead on top of
Grandma’s hassock.
Watching
the films of me and my big brother when we were so young spoke of a time I
can’t find anywhere in my memory, probably because I was too young to remember. Mostly I recall the two of us not getting
along. But that was when we were older, maybe beginning around ten years of age. The gift from the film was a set of memories
I’d forgotten or in any case could never recover.
In
many of the clips and photos of Paul and me before we reached the age of 7 or
8, he is often a guardian angel, always making
sure I’m safe. I have to admit discovering his care of me in the films at that
early age caused me to wonder if he might assume that role again, now that he’s once
more an angel.
In one film clip he ran after me down a snow covered hill when my
sleigh flipped over and I went flying off into the brambles by the side of the path. Dad kept filming and the camera lens rose and
followed the action down the slope. I wasn’t hurt, but one could see the look
of real concern on Paul’s face as he pulled me from the bushes and brushed the
snow off me.
And
there’s a clip of us where he’s probably four years and I’m 18 months. I sat in his lap and he was smiling. We played on the floor in our living room and
he pulled me up and away from interfering with the mechanical train as it
traveled around a circle of track. Not
annoyed with me, he was instead protective as he saved me from getting hit in
the face with a tin locomotive. Dad’s film was testimony to our brotherhood, shown anew three quarters of a century later.
Paul
took care of his little brother. There’s no question he was an angel to
me. I wonder if he is now.
copyright 2015, David Griffin
The Windswept
Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
dave@windsweptpress.com
