There was more of Phil's graveside statement to read. I was about to go on when the first shots were fired.

Unlike the "eyewitness" accounts you hear on television from bewildered or distraught people who "thought the shots were just cars backfiring or firecrackers going off," these sounded like gunshots. – pows very fast. In the instant it took to turn in their direction, I noticed almost everyone had turned that way too. As if we all knew exactly where to look, exactly where the trouble came from.

"There he is!"

"It's fucking Bloodstone!"

He came straight at us in a slow gliding jog, black pants and shirt, silver Bloodstone face. The gun in his hand looked big as a block of wood. He was laughing and shooting at us. A woman across the grave went down, then a man. Hit? People were running everywhere. Finky Linky pushed Sasha into the grave and went in after her. I ran at Bloodstone without thinking. His high keening laugh. Pow!

2

We beat the shit out of him. Somewhere a woman's voice kept yelling, "Stop it, stop it! You'll kill him!" But that's what we wanted. All of us punching and kicking this son of a bitch till he died and never got up again. I love to fight but had never done anything like this – twenty (or so) to one, him on the ground, us standing over and whacking away at his unmoving form whenever we saw an opening.

"Kill the sick fuck!"

"Break his head!"

I kicked him and felt something hard go soft.

Scuffling and pushing, we were a pack of crazy starved dogs on a small prey. Each wanted a bite, our own bloody fresh piece. My dark funeral suit was dirt brown and scuffle-dust gray. Someone bent down and tore the silver mask off.

The man beneath looked like a teenager. No more than twenty. In less than a minute, his young face was a mess of ripe fruit color: shiny apple and grape, white where it shouldn't have been. Bone.

It was a blank gun. He had got off one more shot – straight at me – before I ran into him and kicked his balls. He was laughing when he shot at me, laughing on the ground being beaten down into wet rags by a lot of traumatized mourners.

I don't think I've ever been so angry in my life. When he was laughing I would have happily killed him. Pull a person's true anger out and it's impossible to put it right back in. Scare us enough and we'll do anything.

The police came fast, but there was a near riot as they tried to pull us off and get him out of there.

Who was he? I forget the name. Sasha wanted me to read an article on him in the newspaper the next day, but just hearing he was a "Midnight fan who wanted his hero Philip Strayhorn to go out 'as good as his movies'" was enough.

My anger scared me. My fear too. Riding back from the cemetery with Sasha and Mr. and Mrs. Strayhorn, I didn't say anything when the old man started piping off.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not surprised. He was my son but I'm not surprised this happened. You cannot make films like Philip's and expect your audience to be sane. They were depraved, both the films and the people who paid to go see them. What happened was a result of that depravity."

"What do you think is a good movie, Mr. Strayhorn?"

He wasn't used to being questioned, especially by a woman, so he looked Sasha over carefully before answering her.

"A good movie? Citizen Kane. The Seventh Seal. Even North by Northwest is a good film, maybe even a great film."

Facing him in the limousine seat, Sasha sat far forward so they were very close. "Tell me some good books."

He didn't like her closeness but wasn't about to be topped. "Oh, I don't know. Kipling's good; I've just been rereading him. Evelyn Waugh. Why do you ask?"

"What about good paintings?"

Mrs. Strayhorn touched Sasha's knee. "Why are you asking, dear?"

"Your son was trying to make something strange and new and vital with his films, but all you have to say about his life's work was it was depraved?"

Mr. Strayhorn crossed his arms and smiled scornfully. "You've been reading too many reviews, Sasha. Philip became a very rich man pandering to the twelve– and thirteen-year-olds in this sad country with about an ounce of imagination and a year's supply of chicken blood.

"There was nothing 'vital' about Midnight. Who do you think you're kidding? Yes, throwing a child off a balcony is strange, but not strange in the wonderful way of Fellini's 8 1/2.

"I respected Philip's success. He did what he chose to do well. But those of you who mistake his 'achievement' for something real and artistic, even worthwhile, are either blackly cynical or stupid.

"Good films? Weber made good films. Watch Wonderful carefully, and you see love and originality spread across the whole two hours, like good chocolate icing on a cake. The Midnight movies are cleverly filmed, and they scare the bejeesus out of you, but they stink."

"Why, because they 'pander' to our animal instincts?"

"No, because they don't love those animal instincts, which are so much a part of us. At best, they make fun of them. Ever think about that, Sasha? I'm sure not.

"Knowing my son, I'm sure he astutely explained their complete etiology and 'semiotic importance' to you: all the intellectually swank and blah-blah terms that are spread over society's opinions like expensive jam nowadays. But when you bite into it, it's still a shit sandwich, jam or not. People like Philip invent those terms to spread over their work so we don't realize. . . .

"Listen, I know he hated me –"

Mrs. Strayhorn put a hand on his arm and cooed to calm him down. He ignored her and kept spitting bullets at Sasha.

"– but that was his right. Maybe we raised him and his sister wrong. That could be. I'll tell you something, though – I feel sad he killed himself, but not guilty. He believed perfection was possible. All his life he said that. But that was his trouble. I'm sure he made those movies as a 'strange and vital' way of telling people they were dangerous and in trouble, so they'd better start looking inside to find out why they liked films like Midnight I understand that. It's one way of doing it. But he made the money and success knowing his work was popular for all the wrong reasons. He continued to show us again and again how utterly evil and disgusting we can be to each other. That's what people came to see, not preposterous, tacked-on moral endings with smiling faces and false sunrises. The slime and the crackpots like that man in the cemetery ended up buying all the tickets.

"I noticed Pauline Kael didn't say anything about the last film, did she? You know who did? Fangoria magazine. Their review ran next to a full-color photo of someone in a pig mask covered with blood, carrying a chain saw. You know what they called my son's greatest creation, the being he wanted to instruct the people with? Pus Puss."

"Puke Puss." His wife corrected him.

"Excuse me. Puke Puss."

Sasha sat at her kitchen table while I made lunch. She'd changed into a bathrobe and bedroom slippers.

"Do you think his father was right?"

I began peeling an apple. "Yes, I think to a degree. But it's damned hard not to get comfortable inside success. It's like falling into a soft chair at the end of a hard day. Especially when you're someone like Phil who went through years of trouble before making it. He hit on a successful formula with Midnight and more or less stuck with it. Nothing wrong with that."

"You didn't do it. Every one of your films is different."

"Sash, don't compare us. I stopped making films. I threw in the towel."

"Why? Not because of that earthquake."

"That was part of it. Phil once gave his sister a line that stuck in my head. The world doesn't need me for anything, but I need to tell the world some things.' After the quake I didn't feel I had anymore to 'tell' in films.