I Don't Know How the Story Ends (9 page)

“Are you Ranger Bell?” the flustered scoutmaster demanded when I presented myself. Nervously I nodded; it didn't seem so much a lie if it wasn't spoken. “About time you got here. Are you sick?”

I nodded again and coughed for good measure.

“Well, don't breathe on any of the boys. Jamie! This is Ranger Bell. Where's his flag? Fall in, scouts!”

A Golden Bear flag was thrust into my hands, and I was shuffled to the right of a row of three. “Pee-ew,” muttered someone behind me. “Who brought the Mentholatum?”

The boy in the center, whose honor it was to carry the Stars and Stripes, eyed me curiously. “What was your name again?”

I coughed to make my voice raspier and told him.

His eyes narrowed. “Really?” he asked, making me wonder if he knew Ranger Bell by face or reputation, even though the latter had promised me he didn't know a soul in Santa Barbara, and vice versa. The scoutmaster's whistle shrilled out, and orders started flying too fast for me to keep up with the drill we'd practiced that morning. I tried to watch my neighbor out of the corner of my eye, meanwhile feeling him watch me likewise.

Suddenly he turned to me and stuck out his hand. “I forgot to introduce myself, Bell. I'm Ted Spoonerman.”

A trap
, I thought. And sure enough, when our hands met, he wrapped the thumb and pinkie around mine. I managed to do the same, mumbling, “Pleased to meetcha,” like a boy would.

I passed the secret-handshake test, but Ted still eyed me suspiciously as I fumbled through the drill, trying to recall the many flag-etiquette rules Ranger had told me. The scoutmaster seemed to have his doubts too—if only about whether the Hollywood troop had sent one of their better examples of scouting. Desperately wishing the parade to begin, I almost dropped my Golden Bear banner when he blasted my eardrums with his whistle, calling, “Form up!”

The troop jostled itself like a centipede while a smart-looking unit of new recruits marched by. I peered into their ranks, letting the flag slip until the scoutmaster shouted, “
'Tention, Bell
!
” Ted was glaring at me.
Please let's go
, I prayed.

“You know what I think?” Ted said. “I think you're not—”

“Ready, men! Left face! Forward, march! Left, right, left…”

We forward-marched into the parade ground, then right-faced and stepped out smartly. I was getting the hang of it—or thought so, until Ted hissed at me, “
Left, right!
Not right, left.” Hurriedly I reversed my steps to match his as he went on, “You march like a girl. I think you
are
a girl. Waddaya say to that?”

I would have said it was a good observation but croaked instead, “Eyes forward!”

He didn't have any choice, unless he wanted to draw down shame upon the Santa Barbara visiting troop. Eyes forward, I mustered up a pretty good imitation of military style, but I knew once the route was completed I'd have to cut out in a hurry, before the odious Ted had a chance to snatch off my hat and cry, “Behold the imposter!”

We right-faced again onto Hollywood Boulevard and the cheering started. In the red-white-and-blue flutter I squared my shoulders as the parade master called out “Left…left…left, right, left…” and the drums of the Triangle studio band beat out a heart-stirring rhythm.
Maybe Mr. Fairbanks was right
, I thought. This would be a tale to tell my posterity, if I lived long enough to have them. Now that the parade was underway and I felt safe from scrutiny—for the moment—it was almost fun. No, it
was
fun, just as Ranger said. Though I would never tell him that.

I found myself thinking of Father, hoping he would get to march in a parade when he came back. Preferably one with confetti, like the crowd started showering on us when we right-faced for the final time. In the reviewing stand ahead of us were Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford in a fetching gray suit and a hat with a long, white veil. Red Cross nurses flanked them, waving white streamers that looked like bandages. “
Buy bonds
!
” they called as we passed. “Buy bonds!” echoed Miss Pickford in a silvery treble that carried like a bell.

I tore my gaze away from her in time to notice the camera just ahead, aimed at me. There had been cameras all along the route, but I recognized the square wooden box with its cherry hue—and who else but Sam would have raised his left arm to wave at me?

Then a shocking thing happened: he was seized from behind! It happened so suddenly that he seemed to explode backward. I couldn't see who had done it and could not look back because another peril lay ahead, namely the reviewing stand where my kin sat.

Sylvie was supposed to distract the ladies as we approached, so they wouldn't notice that the face under the scouting hat didn't belong to Ranger. As soon as I was close enough to make her out, waving both hands from the third bench from the top, she threw herself forward into the lower benches, thus distracting the whole upper quarter.

I barely restrained a girlish gasp. Honestly, she was afraid of nothing. Instead she terrified everyone around her, including me.

I managed to keep in step all the way back to the parade ground. We hadn't even received the “Fall out!” order before Ted announced, “All right,
now
—” and grabbed for my hat. But I was ready for him. I whacked the flagpole down on his arm. Ted yelped in pain, and a whole troop of Boy Scouts cried out in dismay when the Golden Bear dragged on the ground. I tossed it to the boy behind me, as Ted called out, “I
knew
it!”

Aunt Buzzy would hear from the scoutmaster tonight, I thought grimly as I dodged various marchers to get to safety. Meanwhile there were other problems to worry about, such as what had Sylvie broken and what had befallen Sam?

Hearts of the World

Amazingly, we got away with it. At least Aunt Buzzy received no scoutmaster calls the next day. Either the man was deceived by my crude disguise, or Ted Spoonerman was one of those irritating tattletales who had cried wolf too often. I suspected the latter.

The other good news was that Sylvie suffered no injury in her dive from the bench because she landed on a gentleman with a rather large, cushiony lap. The switching she got from Mother that day must have hurt, but Sylvie stopped yelling soon enough and was eager to hear how many feet of film Sam had cranked into his camera.

That led to the bad news. The mysterious force I had seen separating Sam from his camera belonged to none other than Mr. Service, a very irate father. I should have known. Sam had no permission to use the Prestwich Model 14, and now that he'd been caught, the precious box was under lock and key. Ranger discovered this later that night, after making a visit to Edendale under cover of darkness and speaking with the culprit through his window.

Next morning we held a conference on the front porch.

“Just the rottenest luck.” Ranger savagely kicked at the gravel as he paced back and forth on the drive. “Sam's old man wasn't even supposed to be there.”

“Why?” I asked. “Where was he supposed to be?”

Ranger paused. “Well…”

“Did you cook up some kind of scheme to get him out of the way?”

“It was perfectly harmless! I just sent him a letter on Los Angeles County stationery about money owed to the water company, and he could contest the bill in court on June twenty-ninth. I figured by the time he went all the way down there and found out he didn't owe anything, he'd be so relieved it wouldn't matter.”

“Ranger! He could have lost a whole day's work. And he has a family to support!”

He whirled around impatiently, holding up his index finger. “First of all, we can't take any chances. Half the time he's not working, because he has this drinking problem everybody knows about. Second of all, the only family he's got is Sam.”

“There's no Mrs. Service?”

“Not that I know of. When they moved out here from New Jersey a few years ago, the rumor was she stayed behind. Or wait—there was a family tragedy, I think.”

“A family tragedy?” Sam didn't seem the tragic sort. “What kind?”

“How would I know?”

“He's your friend, isn't he? What do you talk about?”

“He's my business partner. We talk business.”

“Where did you two meet anyway?”

He threw up his hands. “You girls. All you care about is personal stuff!”

“I don't care a bit,” Sylvie stoutly affirmed. “How do we make the picture?”

Ranger kicked up a shower of pebbles. “There's got to be a way. I might know where I can get hold of a camera at Triangle. Don't think it's being used. If we could sneak in one night and—”

He was beginning to alarm me. “We're not helping you steal equipment, you hear? And no more feats of derring-do for me. Why don't you just tell your folks what you're up to? I'll bet Aunt Buzzy suspects something already.”

“Naw… If I told her, she'd think she had to do something about it. Maybe stop me, or maybe help me. And I don't want anybody's help. I want them to see I can do this on my own.”

“‘Them'? Including Mr. Griffith too?”

“Mr. Griffith too. And then they'll see that I should drop school and go to work at Fine Arts so I can learn the business.”

This didn't seem the kind of thing parents could be made to see, but I didn't mention it, since the picture looked unlikely to get made anyway. My own feelings surprised me. To a point I felt relieved—who knew what I might be talked into next? But beyond that point, a haze of sadness glowed, as if some of Ranger's fairy dust had rubbed off on me. Now I could get all nostalgic about hours spent under a hot sun plastered with flour in front of a camera. Nevermore, alas!

Because what could we do without a camera?

“There
has
to be a way,” Ranger vowed again, as though I'd asked the question out loud. “In the meantime, we need inspiration.”

He knew where to get it too. A new Griffith picture had just opened, and that evening at dinner, after some raised-eyebrow communication with Mother, Aunt Buzzy gave her permission for us to see it. “I hear from Maybelee Thompson that there are no nude dancing girls in it, like that Babylonian bacchanal of D. W.'s. So, because you did your duty in the parade, you may take the girls on Sunday afternoon—that is, if their mother agrees.”

Mother nodded. “But Isobel only. Sylvie will stay home and consider her naughtiness in frightening us all to death.”

Guilt descended on me then, because of course I was the one who had done Ranger's duty. Sylvie looked like she might be winding up to make that very point, but Ranger leaned over and whispered in her ear, and whatever bribe he offered was enough to unwind her.

I hinted rather broadly that he owed me for putting my reputation on the line, and he admitted that the afternoon should be his treat. Until I pressed my luck by asking for an ice cream soda at the world's longest soda fountain in Pin Ton candy store on Broadway. With a woebegone look, he dug in his pockets to count the change.

“I thought you got an allowance,” I said.

“You could call it that. If Pa wasn't such a tightwad.”

“That's no way to talk about your father!”

“It's true. For my own good, of course. But darn it, Isobel, it's not like I want to blow money on candy or the penny arcade. Every spare nickel goes for film. At two cents a foot, it adds up.”

“Sam doesn't contribute?”

“Sam contributes the camera—or he did. And he usually has less money than I do. Anyway, looks like I have a dollar seventy-five and the picture's a dollar a ticket—”

“A whole
dollar
?” I'd paid ten cents to see Fatty Arbuckle at the Variety.

“That's 'cause it's new and they show it with a full orchestra at Grauman's Egyptian. If I can borrow two bits from Solomon, then maybe Buzzy could—”

“Never mind.” I sighed. “I'll give you the quarter and pay for the sodas too.”

He gallantly offered to drink root beer instead, saving me twenty cents. And we decided to go to Clune's Broadway in Los Angeles instead of the Egyptian, because matinees were sixty-five cents there.

As it turned out, the afternoon was worth the expense on my part, because Ranger for once behaved like a normal boy instead of a crank. Although he still insisted on wearing his slouch hat everywhere, in spite of the stares it attracted. I'd come to suspect that the purpose was partly camouflage for his notable darkness, though Buzzy had mentioned to me that Mr. Griffith wore a variety of wide-brimmed hats. He cut the crowns out of some of them to allow sunlight to stimulate his balding scalp, according to her. At least Ranger didn't go that far.

On our way home from church, Aunt Buzzy asked Masaji to let us off in downtown Los Angeles so Ranger could show me the sights, like Central Park and the Sing Fat Oriental Emporium and the Los Angeles Times Building, which had been dynamited by anarchists in 1910. Ranger was too young to remember the incident, even though it changed his life: “That's when Pa decided to move out to Hollywood. Thought it would be more peaceful.”

At the world's longest soda fountain we both sipped root beer while Ranger commented on the characters we saw: Indians and Chinese and Mexicans, and a couple of fellows in spurred boots spooning up ice cream from tulip glasses.

“Are they real cowboys?” I asked. I'd come to expect motion-picture characters on every street corner.

“Sure they're real. They ride in when work is slow on the range. What do you bet those two spent Saturday morning down at the Universal pens, and the casting clerk told 'em to show up for work tomorrow? They're here to celebrate.”

That, amazingly, was as close as he came to shoptalk until he glanced at the clock over the fountain and said, “Let's hoof it—show starts in thirty minutes and there's going to be a line.”

The words on the marquee outside Clune's Broadway read:

D. W. Griffith presents HEARTS OF THE WORLD

with smaller letters below:

Charlie Chaplin in THE BOND

Hearts of the World
was a war picture; I knew no more about it. The line at the box office was mostly ladies out for the afternoon. “One of these days they'll be lining up to see pictures by
me
,” Ranger whispered as we crept forward in the line. He laid out the money for our two tickets with the assurance of one who threw quarters about like confetti, then took my arm and escorted me to the doors, which a uniformed doorman opened for us.

Once inside, I hardly had time to admire the lavish lobby before he grabbed my hand and made a dash for the balcony to get seats in the front row: cushiony, velvety seats into which I sank up to my chin almost.

“It's like a palace!” I whispered.

I had not yet seen enough motion pictures to count on my two hands, and all of them were seen on hard chairs in small, dark rooms with a pounding pianist. Today I was looking down on gilded panels with cut-velvet wallpaper and candelabras that gave off a quivery glow. The curtain over the screen was painted with a Mediterranean-like seacoast.

“Aw, nuts,” Ranger said. “No orchestra for the matinee. Guess we'll have to make do with the Mighty Wurlitzer instead.” We gazed down at an organ that looked as big as my bedroom, with enough bells, whistles, drums, and cymbals to make up an entire band. A gentleman in black tie and tails entered the orchestra pit and eased himself between the bench and the quadruple keyboard. Once he was seated, I could barely make out the shine of his balding head, low as a mushroom in the pit. “But it's almost as good,” Ranger went on. “A Wurlitzer can do almost every sound in the world.”

While the organist arranged sheet music, we killed time rocking back and forth in our seats until the lady behind us said, “Stop that, children. You're making me seasick.” The lights dimmed, and the organ blasted into an overture that included national anthems of England, France, Belgium, and the United States, stitched together with march music. As the organ surged into “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” a company of soldiers (or at least men dressed like soldiers) marched on stage and performed an elaborate drill to hearty applause. The footlights dimmed as they marched off, and the painted curtain parted over a still picture of a woman gazing forward under an enormous hat that looked like a whole flock of ostriches was nesting on her head, while another lady and gentleman peered around behind her.
Madam
, read the screen,
How would you like to sit behind the hat you are
wearing?

The lady behind us tapped Ranger on the shoulder. “A question I might ask you, young man.”

Sighing, Ranger pulled off his dashing headgear as
Charlie Chaplin in “The Bond”
suddenly blazed up in white letters.

This was my introduction to the celebrated Charlie's work, and I was not overwhelmed by it. It wasn't a story, just a brief parable about different kinds of human bonds—friendship, love, and marriage—during which the main character wiggled his eyebrows and mustache. Then came the Liberty Bond, and a pantomime in which Kaiser Wilhelm threatens Lady Liberty. Charlie (representing “the People”) joined forces with a weapons manufacturer (“Industry”) and Uncle Sam (“Bonds”) to fight the Germans. At the end, Charlie hefted a huge Liberty Bonds mallet and brained the Kaiser with it, after which all joined hands in triumph.

“He's not so funny,” I told Ranger in disappointment, just after the Kaiser got his.

“This is just public service claptrap to get people to buy more bonds,” Ranger murmured back. “You should have seen
Shoulder Arms
. It starts out when Charlie's enlisted and he's training and can't get the drill—”

“Young man.” The lady behind us leaned forward. “I came to see
this
picture, not hear all about another.”

Ranger's voice, which had risen to its normal level, dropped back to sotto voce to tell me the rest of the plot. Which I didn't even care about. All the time he was twitching and tapping his feet and no doubt annoying the row behind us even more. But when the curtains pulled back farther and the huge screen glowed with the words
D. W. Griffith Presents
, he turned as still as a rock.

Hearts of the World
began with two American families living side by side in a French village. One family is full of high-spirited youths; the other has only one girl, called the Girl in that idealistic Griffith way. (“Lillian Gish,” Ranger said. “I told you about her.”) She naturally falls in love with the Boy in the other family. (“That's Bobby Harron—he plays the Boy in
The Mother and the
—ouch!” The “ouch” was to a thump on his head, delivered by the lady behind us.)

The Little Disturber, a naughty street entertainer from Paris, makes trouble when she tries to steal the Boy away from the Girl but doesn't succeed, and the lovers are about to be married when war breaks out.

That's when my fingernails, fully recovered from the mauling they took during
The Mother and the Law
, came in for more abuse. Because of course the couple couldn't just get married and live happily ever after, with three more reels of film to run.

When the Germans invade, the Boy nobly enlists in the French army, even though he's an American. The Germans advance; there's a big battle on what was supposed to be the young couple's wedding day; and the Boy is wounded. After the shooting stops, his lover searches the battlefield for him, clutching her wedding dress and convinced that he's dead. She's half mad by the time she finds him in a touching reunion scene. Then she goes to get help—but he's missing when she comes back, which sends her all the way around the bend.