“Oh, sister, what will become of us!” Mary said, her eyes welling up with tears. I had to admit—way down in a secret part of myself—it was pretty impressive, the way she could cry on cue. We practiced three times and she welled up like clockwork on every one. By the time we were ready to film the scene, Mary almost had me believing we were two poor little orphan sisters.
It was the strangest thing. Before Flying Q sailed into town, I hadn’t given Mary much thought. Before this summer I couldn’t have said whether I liked her or not; I barely knew her.
But then Mr. Corrigan happened, and Mary spent the whole summer glaring daggers at me. You don’t exactly develop affectionate feelings about a person who looks at you like she wishes a piano would fall on your head.
The more she didn’t like me, the more I didn’t like her. That’s basic arithmetic.
So I expected that performing in a picture with her would be worse than having her watch me—that those daggers would shoot right out of her eyes and make me flub my part.
But instead, there she was crying real tears, looking so scared and pitiful I couldn’t help but put my arm around her shoulders and assure her everything would be okay. The scareder and sadder she was, the fiercer I felt. She wasn’t an ostrich at all. She was a lamb, and it was up to me to look after her.
For just a moment I forgot all about the camera and Gordy and the other crew members and gawkers watching. I forgot to wonder whether Mr. Corrigan was yanking his hair clean out (sign of a bad scene) or smoothing his mustache, his eyes gleaming (sign of a good one). I even forgot myself. I wasn’t Pearl, tender of ostriches and sneaker of manzanita jam. I was a brave orphan child with a little sister to look after.
I shook out the empty purse, hoping against hope. No miracle coins tumbled out from the lining. I glanced at my sister and saw the tears spill down her cheeks. I felt my lips bunch sideways the way they do when you’re thinking hard. I was thinking hard. There had to be a way out of this fix. I jumped to my feet and paced around a little, and then the poster tacked to the side of the barn caught my eye: HOT-AIR BALLOON DEMONSTRATION, to be held in the town square—why, this very day!
My sister’s eyes filled with hope as I laid out my plan. I didn’t use many words (somewhere way underneath the orphan girl was Pearl, who knew nobody watching would hear what she said), but I pointed to the poster and gestured to Mary, and she clasped her hands and looked hopeful. In fact, she radiated hope and trust in me, and I knew she was counting on me to find us work at the balloon exhibition. She clutched my hands and I squeezed a message of confidence into hers. We’d been through so much together, and we’d get through this, too—hunger and poverty and worry. She was my sister, and together we would find a way to save ourselves.
When Mr. Corrigan called “Cut!” I just about jumped out of my skin. I’d forgotten we were filming. My sweet little sister flashed back into prickly Mary Mason. We were still clutching each other’s hands, and now we dropped them, a little embarrassed. But something was different. The tears were gone from Mary’s eyes—but so were the daggers. In their place was—I hardly know how to describe it—a kind of crackling electricity, like lightning. I couldn’t explain it, but I recognized it. I felt it, too.
Like lightning, it was gone two seconds later. Mary’s cool, appraising look was back and I felt flustered and foolish. She was still Mary Mason, armed with an endless supply of eye daggers. She sauntered off to get a drink of water, looking pleased as punch with herself. She’d given a great performance, and she knew it.
Fine. We weren’t any likelier to suddenly become fast friends than a golden doubloon was likely to fall out of the empty prop coin-purse.
But something had changed. I didn’t like Mary Mason, but I…respected her. And I had liked acting with her. Loved it, in fact. The little flashes of this-feels-real that I’d experienced once or twice filming other scenes—this time had been more than a flash. For a few minutes, I really was that girl. She had a whole different life from me, a different history. For a few minutes, I walked in someone else’s skin, and it was magical.
At home that evening I was feeding the ostriches when an odd shadow rolled across the yard: a shape too perfectly round to be a cloud. I looked up and felt my stomach jump. It was a hot-air balloon! My hot-air balloon! I felt almost dizzy. It was really happening. Mr. Corrigan had made it happen.
The balloon gleamed in stripes of red and orange against the deepening blue sky. A basket dangled beneath it, looking about the size of a basket you’d grab to go berry picking. But then I spotted a man looking out over the side and realized how big the basket must be, really.
To my astonishment the man saw me watching and waved. The balloon was sailing toward Lemon Springs. It hadn’t occurred to me the balloonist would fly in, but of course it made sense. What was he supposed to do, put the balloon on a train?
I hastily dumped the rest of the ostrich feed in a heap on the ground, too excited to spread it in the trough. Then I lit out for the house before Jezebel had time to scold me.
Mama and Grandma were already outside staring up at the balloon. Mama’s hands were covered in flour and Grandma had an apron full of chicken feed. The hens clucked around her feet, tilting their befuddled heads, but Grandma was too enchanted by the sight of the balloon to notice. I couldn’t help but laugh—seemed I wasn’t the only one skimping on chores this morning.
“What on earth is a thing like that doing here?” Mama wondered.
“What in the sky, you mean,” said Grandma dryly.
“It’s Mr. Corrigan,” I blurted. Two pairs of eyes looked at me in confusion. “I mean, not in the balloon. He hired it. For a picture.”
I hadn’t had the guts to tell them yet. And now it seemed like the information was on the tardy side, with the balloon sailing through the sky halfway to heaven. I felt a wave of nervousness. I hadn’t been any too sure in the first place whether my parents would let me film the balloon scene Mr. C. had in mind. Now, seeing how impossibly high it was, I felt all too sure I knew what they’d say.
I gulped. “I was going to tell you at supper,” I said. “I mean, ask you. See, Mr. Corrigan wrote a story—it’s a corker, honest!—about…”
Both Mama’s and Grandma’s eyebrows were raising, slowly, in perfectly matched expressions.
“About?” asked Mama.
“Well, about a girl who goes up in a—”
“I told you that man was out of his mind,” snapped Grandma, glaring at Mama. Mama was crackling the same look at me.
“A girl,” she said. “And I suppose we can guess just exactly which girl he has in mind.”
“It’ll be quite safe, Mama!” I assured her. “He promised. The balloon won’t go up as high as that….” I looked up to point, but the red-and-orange globe had drifted to the west, headed toward town. It must have been close, because it seemed to be sitting lower in the sky than a minute before. I was itching to jump on my horse and go see it. All the town kids—and grown-ups, too, most likely—would be clustering around to watch it set itself down in the square. How maddening that I would be one of the last people in town to see it up close!
But I roped my wits back in and turned to the daunting task of persuading my family to let me shoot this picture.
“Mr. Corrigan said it’ll just go up a little way, not real high,” I explained. “And the balloon man will be there, running everything. All I have to do is look over the side of the basket. And then…” I swallowed, but I knew I might as well get it all out in the open right away. “And then I’ll climb down a rope to the ground, easy as pie.”
“YOU’LL WHAT?” screeched my mother and grandmother in unison.
“It’ll be just like swinging on a rope from the barn loft,” I gabbled. I’d been thinking about it all afternoon and had hit upon this as my best chance of getting a yes. “Or at the swimming hole!”
My heart sank. This wasn’t going well.
And then, to my surprise, my grandmother came to my rescue.
“How high is ‘not real high’?” she asked.
“Mother!” gasped Mama. “You can’t be serious—”
“I’m just asking questions, Anna,” Grandma said, her tone a trifle reproving. I had to squeeze back a smile; it was always funny when Grandma got stern with Mama like she was still her little girl.
Mama blinked at her and then her eyes narrowed. She began brushing the flour off her hands. “Tell you what. Mother, if you’ll finish my biscuits, I’ll take Dinah and go have a chat with Mr. Corrigan. I’d like to hear about this ridiculous scheme from the horse’s mouth.”
It about killed me that Mama didn’t take me with her. She told me to help Grandma with supper, since she had to interrupt her work for this nonsense. I wanted to plead to go along, but I knew I’d better be as cooperative as possible. I mustered my syrupiest Mary Mason voice and said, “Yes, ma’am. Happy to.”
Mama’s eyebrows quirked at me suspiciously but she didn’t say anything. And I barely made a peep myself all the rest of the day. It’s hard to talk when your heart is in your throat.
After several eternities she came home—laughing.
“That man,” she said. “I believe he could sell water to a pond.”
Somehow, miraculously, he had talked her into saying yes. He’d also convinced her to consider having a telephone put in. This was a staggering development.
“Mr. Corrigan made a fair point. If Pearl is going to keep making pictures, I need a faster way to give him a piece of my mind. I can’t be traipsing into town all the time.”
She delivered this news over supper, and the ensuing hullabaloo over the telephone, which Frank and Ike had been clamoring after for months, crowded out any further discussion of my balloon stunt. That suited me fine. I didn’t want anyone rustling up new doubts and worries. Truth was, I had more than a few of my own.
Ike and Frank fixed me a practice rope tied from the branch of a tree, a good way up. We took turns climbing up and shinnying down. Bill stood below, ready to catch me if I slipped. The rope swayed in a rather unnerving way as you inched downward, as if it were a live thing—a snake, maybe. But I wasn’t about to let my brothers outdo me. I could hang on and scooch down just as well as they could. The trick, I discovered, was not letting yourself slide, not if you wanted to keep the skin on your hands.
When it came time to go to town the next morning, Mama and Grandma joined me and my brothers at the stable.
“You’re coming!”
“Of course we are,” said Grandma, reaching into her skirt pocket and taking out a set of rosary beads—her best one, made of shiny black onyx. “Someone’s got to be there to pray for you if you fall and break your head.”
“Mother!” gasped Mama.
“Oh hush,” chuckled Grandma. “I’m only teasing. Pearl’s like a cat. Lands on her feet.”
“Where’s Papa?” I asked.
Mama made a wry face. “Not coming. Too scared, the poor man.”
“Papa, scared?” I was incredulous.
“Just don’t fall, Pearl,” said Mama softly. “Your father would never forgive himself.”
* * *
The balloon field was abuzz with people, with the big striped globe in the center like a hive. Seemed like half the town was hanging around to gawk at the spectacle, conveniently saving Mr. Corrigan the trouble of rustling up people to play visitors at the balloon exhibition in the picture. He wanted to get the up-in-the-air part filmed first thing, in case the weather turned. (This brought some knowing smiles from Lemon Springs natives. Summer weather seldom turns anything but more hot. But you couldn’t expect a Chicago man to know that.)
So we skipped over the part of the story where the sisters mill around asking townspeople for work. Since the film was going to be cut up anyway to splice the title cards in, we’d have no problem coming back to that later. Mr. Corrigan had us set up for the bit where the mean boy tosses the Mary-sister’s doll into the balloon. It took a lot more practice—and a lot more hollering from Mr. Corrigan—than usual before we were ready to do it on camera. I began to worry he was going to yank himself bald. I’d never been in a scene with such a crowd before, and most of them were first-timers who didn’t know how to behave. It was the strangest thing to realize I knew more about making moving pictures than most of the grown-ups in Lemon Springs!
“Action!”
Snatch—Walter grabbed Mary’s doll and tossed it into the balloon basket. Just as we’d practiced, I scrambled in after the doll. The balloonist (Bart in a top hat, not the real balloon man) shouted at me and pushed his way through the mob of kids to order me out of the basket. Walter stumbled backward against the balloon’s tether rope.
That was all for that scene. Mr. Corrigan ordered all the Lemon Springs folks except my family out of the field for the next shot. It was time for me to fly.
The balloon man (the real one) was, as promised, crouching out of camera view in the bottom of the basket. He’d introduced himself, Mr. Jedediah P. Irving, to me with great solemnity before we started rehearsing the crowd scene. When I clambered into the basket, he had to scooch back hastily so I didn’t land on top of his head. I wanted to apologize but that would be out of character for the role I was playing. I wasn’t Pearl; I was an orphan girl climbing into an empty basket.
Mr. Irving had rigged his controls so he could adjust the flame that made the balloon fly without standing up in his usual position. He’d also shown me how to avoid getting scorched. As long as I stayed at the rim of the basket, I’d be in no danger, he assured me.
Of course, the trouble was I wouldn’t be staying at the rim of the basket. I’d be climbing over it to scoot down the rope.
But before I could come down, we had to go up. And after some instructions from Mr. Corrigan and a good-luck wave from Gordy, it was time. I waved at Mama and Papa. Wait! Papa? He’d come after all. He was scrunching his hat between his hands so fiercely I worried it would never get its shape back. He looked so worried I wanted to jump out of the basket and throw my arms around him.
But it was too late for jumping out, and there was no more time to think about my folks. At Mr. Irving’s command, helpers loosed the tether ropes (for real, this time). Mr. Irving fiddled with a valve and the basket gave a sudden lurch. My stomach, deciding at the last second that it would prefer to stay as close to the ground as possible, plummeted to my toes. The trees and buildings across the square began to sink. No, of course that wasn’t it; they were safe on the ground like always. We were the ones rising into the air. Me, Mr. Irving, and the sunset-colored balloon.
Now that we were rising, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. Mr. Corrigan had run me through my movements before we left the ground. It wasn’t practical to send the balloon up and down for rehearsals, so this take was the real thing. I had to get it right.
I clutched the edge of the basket where Mr. Corrigan had marked it. My job was to crane my head over and look down. Gordy had the camera set where it would catch my face as we went into the air, as long as I leaned out far enough.
Mary’s doll was still in my hand, and when I looked down to see the ground zooming away from us, I almost dropped the doll right on the camera. The town square was turning into a patchwork quilt below me, and Mama and Papa and Grandma were dolls on the quilt. I could see all of Straight Street sprawling beneath us, and my school, and our church, and in the distance, good old Mount Caracol, solidly hunkered to the ground.
We sailed pretty high. The plan was to get a shot of the balloon way up, and then we’d drop lower to where I could scramble down the rope without breaking my neck if I fell. Just
a leg or two, probably.
It was pretty hard to be the orphan girl in that basket. I half wished Mary were here with me—it was so much easier to make the scene feel real when she was in it. But nope, this one was up to me.
I don’t know exactly how high we went. Two or three miles, it felt like. The air was bracingly cool up here. A crow flew past—beneath us. The world was spread out below in soft ripples, with here and there the dark scratch of a canyon. I could see all the way to the sea, a dark-blue stripe on the patchwork quilt, spangled with flecks of light.
And then, just when I was forgetting to be scared—dazzled by the beautiful world below us—Mr. Irving twitched his controls and we began to sink. Slowly, gently, like an ostrich feather drifting to the ground.
Oh, but not all the way down. The ground was still far below us when Mr. Irving did some more lever-twitching and said, “All right, kid. I can hold her steady for a few minutes. Sure you want to get down by the rope? Seems mighty chancy to me.”
“It’ll be duck soup,” I said breezily, acting my face off.
Now I had to put Orphan Girl back on. Mr. Corrigan had told me just what he wanted:
Lean over the side and look terrified. Easy.
Wave my arms around and look up, then down, and shriek a little, like you’d expect a kid to do if she found herself going up in a balloon by accident. Easy.
Wring my hands; reach out plaintively for Mary. Easy.
(Later, Mr. Corrigan would film Mary plaintively reaching up toward the sky for me.)
Now I was supposed to discover the anchor rope coiled in the basket and get a bold, scrappy look on my face. Easy.
Fling the rope over the side of the basket and watch it fall. Easy.
The Nerviest Girl in the World Page 9