Tribesmen by Adam Cesare Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t made of mortar and stone, neither did it have a little gazebo on top like all the wells that Denny had ever seen in the movies. This well was just a three foot hole in the ground covered with three slats of wood and a basket on a rope.
    He lowered the basket down and up, his elbows aching from the effort. The water was brown and musty, but cold enough that he was tempted to gulp it right down. Last night, Jacque had made a big show of finding a shallow metal dish in one of the huts and boiling their water. Jacque may have been an intelligent guy, but he was also a pussy.
    “Drink,” a voice said at the back of his mind. If he boiled it, it wouldn’t have felt as nice as it did coursing down his throat.
    After drinking his fill, Denny splashed the rest on his neck and chest, his morning shower probably covering him with more dirt than he’d started with.
    Inside of the hut, he could still hear Tito snoring. That was good. He didn’t need the old man hassling him while he loaded the camera and unpacked the rest of the equipment.
    Tito was a pain, but boy could the man talk. Last night, it had taken the director less than an hour to defuse the situation with the dead bodies. He had convinced the writer and the actress that he sympathized with their point, and was just as disturbed as they were to find a mass grave, but the plane wasn’t coming back for another two days so they might as well make the movie a testament to the islander’s lives.
    Denny didn’t buy that testament bit, and he was sure that the rest of them didn’t either. But they had nowhere to go, and a movie to make.
    It took half an hour of putting everything in order before Denny was stricken with abject panic.
    Where is my meter? A cameraman’s light meter is only slightly less important to him than his pecker. Denny clawed through the excelsior of the big crate, tossing clumps out onto the ground until he was certain that the crate was empty.
    “Look at this mess,” Tito said from behind him. “What are you doing?” The old man stretched in the dawn. Tito wore only his shorts and his suit jacket. He didn’t look at Denny, but instead picked specks of sand from his chest hair.
    “Looking for my light meter,” Denny said.
    “It’s around your neck.”
    Denny’s fear abated, but it didn’t make him feel much better. He clutched at the gadget, slapping it against his chest.
    “I was going to get some coverage of the huts, maybe some inserts of bare feet in the sand,” Denny said.
    “Are you calling the shots now?” Tito gave a blank stare back, if it was possible to rub one’s belly in an intimidating manner, than the old man was doing so.
    “No, I’m sorry. What do you want to start with? Mein director?”
    “Coverage sounds good,” Tito said and let his hands fall slack. “Everyone wake up! You’re all late to set! I’m docking your pay,” he yelled to the huts, his voice sending a flock of birds out of the trees and up into the early morning sky.
    The others began to stumble into the open and Tito got up close to Denny. “I like you, Denny. You’re great at what you do,” Tito said, his voice a whisper. “But don’t you ever fucking shoot a single frame of film without my say-so.”
    Tito slapped him on the shoulder and Denny nodded, feeling like a disciplined preschooler.
    After taking some light readings and messing with the aperture, Denny stood in front of the camera and outstretched both his hands, parting the small crowd Moses-style. Jacque shuttled the girls out of the way of the camera and Tito took a few steps over. Denny ducked out from behind the set-up and then remembered that the Golden Guinea was not among them.
    “Jacque, could you please go back into the hut and wake up Umberto so he doesn’t wander through the shot?”
    “He wasn’t in there with us,” Jacque said, motioning to the tent. It figured that the brainiac would double up with the women. Jacque had all the luck.
    “Well he wasn’t