Full Metal Jhacket
Matthew Derby
Dear Mr. Bonavita,
We at Warner Bros. Pictures wish to extend our heartfelt appreciation for your recent letter to us. The Motion Picture industry thrives because of the dedication of film enthusiasts such as yourself. We cannot thank you enough for your continued support of the films of Stanley Kubrick. We’re proud to represent his work on screen for millions of viewers worldwide, and letters from fans like you ensure that we will continue to bring high quality entertainment to your community theater from directors like Mr. Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Ritchie, director of the recent box office hit Wildcats, two complimentary adult passes for which are included in this letter as a gift to you.
We regret to inform you that Mr. Kubrick is unable to respond personally to your request that he change the title of his upcoming release. We’re sorry to say that Full Metal Jacket has been reserved and is no longer available. We’re confident that you will come up with an exciting and provocative alternate title for your film.
Best wishes and good luck with your production,
Gail Sheehan, Warner Bros. Pictures
Fingers whipped the letter onto the floor like it was a throwing star and picked up the metal folding chair that had the space heater on it and tossed it through the barn window. The glass shattered in a fierce hailstorm of diamonds. A hunk of the window frame went crashing down to the driveway with the chair, which made Fingers madder so he grabbed the space heater and hurled it out the window as well, which worked except that Fingers’ desk lamp was plugged into the same extension cord as the space heater, and the shade knocked into the splicer and a pile of film reels, which hit the floor and went rolling, unraveling the raw footage he’d just picked up from the drug store. The desk lamp got caught in the busted frame on its way out the window and the space heater just slammed against the outside wall of the barn, cracking the slats.
"Hey," Apple said from the pile of old mattresses he and Fingers had found at the dump and dragged, one by one, back to the barn to use as studio furniture.
"Don’t ‘hey’ me," Fingers shouted. "That was my title, my fucking title. That fat fuck." He jumped up and did a sort of sideways kick at the smashed window frame, and the force of his own kick knocked him back into the tripod which luckily didn’t have the camera on it. He rolled over onto his stomach and started punching the floor, hard, like his fist was an orange he was trying to juice. The envelope from Gail Sheehan was near him on the floor so he crammed it in his mouth with his free hand and chewed it up, growling as he did so, the paper making a fluttering sound as it broke down to pulp.
"Take it easy," Apple said. He was backed up as far as he could go on the mattresses, gripping the canvas straps with white knuckles, as if the whole pile was about to fly away like a massive bird.
Fingers got up on all fours, breathing hard. He mashed the envelope in his mouth, making a gravelly sort of white noise deep in his throat.
"What in hell is happening up there?" It was Fingers’ dad, calling up from the back yard. He worked at the university as a professor of some kind, probably the kind with a degree in busting Fingers’ ass because that’s what he spent most of his time doing, it seemed like. Always coming tear-assing out the back door whenever Fingers and Apple were trying to burn something or light off M-80s or shoot arrows into the convenience store parking lot.
"Get away from me and you smell," Fingers shouted down at his dad, spitting the gobbed envelope out the window. His face was past red, into a sort of whitish ghost look.
"I’ll smell you in about a minute," his dad yelped, his voice straining with tightly capped aggression.
"That doesn’t even make sense," Fingers screamed. He got up and started searching the room for something to huck at his dad. He went for the table where he and Apple had painstakingly recreated a vast rice paddy in 1/144th scale.
"Don’t," said Apple.
"Who’s up there," Fingers’ dad yelled. "Do you have Franklin up there?"
"Wouldn’t you like to know," Fingers screamed. He gave a roundhouse kick to the window frame and the whole sill came loose. He grabbed the splintered wood and pried it from the studs.
"You were warned!" his dad shouted. "Send him down right now." Apple was the Franklin that Fingers’ dad was shouting about. He didn’t like the name "Apple" any more than "Franklin" but he knew that Fingers meant it in a good-ish way when he called him Apple, so he tolerated it. The reason Apple had to get out of the barn was that he was only twelve and Fingers was older, past high school in age, and Apple’s parents didn’t want him to be there.
"I will not do that," Fingers screamed, his voice breaking up with every syllable. He chucked the broken window sill at his dad. Apple got down from the mattresses and made for the door.
"Hey," Fingers said. Apple turned around and looked at Fingers’ feet. He did not want to see Fingers’ reddened, blotched face. "This isn’t over," he said, almost whispering, his vocal cords blown.
Apple nodded.
"Mark my words. This hasn’t even begun, is how far from over it is. We’re getting that title. It’s ours. I’ll come over and get you when I figure out a plan, okay?"
Apple nodded again and slipped through the door, which was really just a sheet of plywood hanging from the ceiling by a tangled length of telephone wire. The barn was on Fingers’ property, but it wasn’t used as a barn since the olden times when the town where they lived was a farm town and not a college town. Now the barn was the location of Fingers’ film studio. It was the place where Fingers was making an epic film about the Vietnam War that was called Full Metal Jacket until he found out in Rolling Stone that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was also making a film called Full Metal Jacket. It was a problem, but not the hardest problem Fingers had ever confronted, and he would come up with a solution soon enough.
Apple leapt down the stairs and ran out the side door of the barn so he wouldn’t run into Fingers’ dad, who was standing at the front, his arms crossed, watching the space heater slowly rotating where it hung out the window. Apple saw just a flash of the man as he booked toward the bushes separating Fingers’ house from the Ellisons’.
"Do me a favor, Franklin, and don’t come back here," Fingers’ dad called out to him without looking away from the window. "I don’t want another visit from your parents."
Apple did not look back. He cut through the Ellisons’ back yard and the convenience store parking lot. The sun was still out, and the air was packed with fragrant pollen and wet soil. His heart swelled in his chest as he sprinted home. It was Holy Thursday and he was going to be late for church.
He dashed up the porch steps just as Hugh was coming out. Hugh already had his shirt and tie and brown shoes on so Apple knew he was in trouble.
"The fuck were you, twat?" Hugh called out to him as he ran past. Hugh took a swipe at the back of Apple’s head, smacking him hard. Apple slammed into the aluminum siding, which marked the side of his face with the white powder that coated each fake clapboard.
"Dipstick," Apple shouted, cupping his face with his hands. He shot up the stairs to the boys’ room and grabbed a shirt and a tie. He would have to take his chances with the shoes.
Outside all the kids were already getting into the station wagon. The girls got the back seat and the boys got the wayback. Apple’s father was standing by the driver’s side door, jingling the change in his pockets with irritation. His mother shook her head as she watched him run toward the car, and the look she gave him was enough to make something hard and cold rise up in Apple’s throat.
