Grit & Glory

Out in the wild, wild West, the men were strong, the women were hard, the horses were fast, and the talk was rough – rougher than the saddle on a rustler’s steed, rougher than a barroom brawl, rougher than the face of a lonesome drifter, rougher than…well, you get the picture. I like the fact that a cur on the rugged frontier could be called out for what he or she was and there were no reprisals because everyone knew the truth was being told. The only place I see that happening now of days is in a western film. In the movie Duel in the Sun, Senator Jackson McCanles, played by Lionel Barrymore, tells his son, Jesse McCanles, played by Joseph Cotton, exactly what’s in store for anyone who harms his family or tries to take over his land. “You mean to shoot down unarmed men?” Jesse asks. “Just like they was rattlesnakes,” the Senator replies. Henry Fonda’s character in Fort Apache doesn’t mince words when telling a corrupt Indian agent just what he thinks about him. “Mr. Meechum,” he says, “You’re a blackguard, a liar, a hypocrite, and a stench in the nostrils of honest men.” I think that line would be applicable when referring to many government officials today. In my estimations it also applies to anyone who would manufacture evidence in order to put someone in prison. Rough talk in the Old West was generally followed by harsh punishment for being a “stench in the nostrils of honest men.” Now of days blackguards go about their everyday life unpunished, like they’ve done nothing wrong. They lack a soul or a conscious. They attended college, fish with friends, get married, have children, all without the weight of their sins pressing on their hearts. In the movie Forty Guns, Barbara Stanwyck’s character, Jessica Drummond points out the consequences for living such a cold life to murderer Griff Bonnell played by Barry Sullivan. “You don’t want the only evidence of your life’s work to be bullet holes in men.” Griff eventually recognizes that Jessica is right and corrects his mistakes. I don’t hold out much hope for that happening with the people who manufactured evidence against my brother. I live for the day the rough truth comes out. I hope I have the presence of mind to say something equally as profound as Robert Mitchum’s character in the western Pursued. “See that rise,” Michum’s character points out to his wife played by Teresa Wright. Both characters were aching to see justice come to the real criminals in the film. “They’ll be coming over that rise. They’ll come killing. But we’ll be ready to stop them this time and put them away for good for what they’ve done.”