The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  The doors were finally opened and we all began moving inside. I was impressed by the orderliness of the crowd, the fortitude with which the people waited, despite the heat. The line moved slowly. There were maybe one hundred people ahead of us. “Hope they don’t close up shop ’fore we get there,” said the tall black man ahead of us.

  Mother had withdrawn a fan from her sleeve and was batting away at the air in front of her face. It was terribly hot.

  We were nearly inside the auditorium. I watched the tall black man in front of me, his big arms straining within the confines of his too tight coat. The sleeves were frayed a little, but I imagined it was his best suit, not worn very often, only on special occasions such as this.

  “Step lively, folks,” said a man in a bright blue uniform—one of the expo’s security guards, ushering us into the Temple of Music. “No time to stop and talk with the President. Just shake his hand and move along in line.”

  Ladies in front of us were now wiping their brows and necks with handkerchiefs. Gentlemen were loosening their collars. I spotted the President far down in the front of the auditorium, flanked by men in dark suits, receiving each passing visitor in the single-file procession.

  “It must be ninety degrees in here,” Mother said, flustered. “How does he stand it?”

  The line continued to move closer to the President. He was bending over, shaking hands with an old woman. Then he straightened up, turning to kiss a baby proffered to him by a proud father.

  And I recognized his face.

  “Mother!” I whispered, tugging on her sleeve. “I saw him today! This morning! Walking past my school!”

  “Oh, hush, Flo. It couldn’t have been him.”

  “Oh, but it was. I recognize him. He was all by himself. Just out for a walk, early this morning.”

  “Flo, they wouldn’t let the President of the United States go out for a walk all by himself.”

  No, I supposed they wouldn’t. Still, it had looked so much like him—the same coat, the same gray trousers, the same white waistcoat. As we got closer, I saw his eyes: How deep they were, how gentle. Yes, it was him. It had to be him.

  And suddenly I was struck by the sight of him, standing there, with all these people filing by, barely speaking, just looking, just pointing, all of them craving a single, simple touch from him. As if he were Jesus, healing the sick. As if he were one of Colonel Bostock’s animals, paraded around on display for everyone to look upon in awe.

  I suddenly felt very sorry for President McKinley. To have to stand there. To have to shake all these hands. Not to be able to walk outside under the brilliant sun without the crowd surging in. They wouldn’t let the President of the United States go out for a walk all by himself.

  No, they wouldn’t.

  I couldn’t fathom the attraction. He was just a man, a kindly old man with warm eyes. I thought about the applause—how proud I had felt as the little children crushed around the stage door to get a glimpse of me. “Look at her!” Ducks had called, holding me up so the crowd could see. “Doesn’t she have lovely hair?”

  But Ducks’s arms were encircling me. Ducks protected me from the crowd. When we made our way through the throng of little girls crying out to touch my hair, Ducks had shielded me. What if he hadn’t been there? What would that crowd have been like then?

  “Poor President,” I whispered, just as we reached him.

  I think he recognized me, too. There was a glance in my direction, the small shading of a smile. Then he turned to greet the man in front of him—a slender man with a handkerchief draped over his hand. In those seconds—seared onto my memory—I remember the tall black man ahead of us standing even taller, straightening his tie as he prepared to meet McKinley. I remember the President noticing the slender fellow’s outstretched hand, wrapped in his handkerchief. He must have thought him injured, for he reached out to shake his left hand.

  And then he was shot.

  I remember Mother’s scream in my ear. I remember blood splattering suddenly on the front of my dress. I remember the tall black man lunging at the slender fellow who had shot the President, smashing him to the floor. I remember thinking—strange how one can think so much in so short a time—how quickly gentleness can be turned to rage.

  “Don’t hurt him,” the President said, his face white, his hands clutching his gut as blood seeped between his fingers. He was kept from falling to the floor by two guards on either side of him. “He must be some poor, misguided fellow,” the President managed to say.

  And yet the crowd descended upon the assassin. I saw the tall black man’s enormous fist rise up and down several times; I heard the thud of the man’s head against the wooden floor. I saw other men—some in waistcoats and ties, others in security uniforms—fall in on top of him, adding their own fists to the job. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the horror.

  Mr. Griffith once asked me if I’d ever really been terrified. If I’d ever been confronted with a horror so profound that my own reaction surprised me. I told him yes. I told him I laughed. I told him I was so terrified that I stood there like some mad little creature escaped from the asylum, laughing with a sound that was alien to my ears.

  Around me the crowd had erupted into cries and panic. Mother grabbed my hand and pulled me. We ran toward the door. Somewhere an alarm had gone off, a horrible whine. I would hear that sound in my dreams for months.

  The President died about a week later. All of the colorful trappings came down from the stores, replaced by drapes of solemn black. Mother and Grandmama and Norman stood on the side of the road to watch the hearse carry the body from the hospital to the train, where it would be borne back to Washington.

  I didn’t watch the funeral procession. Instead, I went horseback riding. I didn’t cry for my country. It was my adopted country, after all. We were still Canadian citizens by law. Instead, I cried for the man with the gentle eyes, who, I was convinced, had eluded his guards the morning of his death for one last walk by himself—breathing in the crisp clear air along Delaware Avenue and taking the time to smile at a little schoolgirl through a window.

  Just a few weeks later, they electrocuted the slender fellow who’d killed him. Norman took delight in reading the account from the paper to me. With a sadistic grin, he read:

  Electrician Davis turned the switch that threw twenty-seven hundred volts of electricity into the living body. The rush of immense current threw the body so hard against the straps that they creaked perceptibly. The hands clinched up suddenly. For forty-five seconds the full current was kept on and then slowly the electrician threw the switch back. The body, which had collapsed as the current reduced, stiffened up again against the straps. When it was turned off, Dr. McCauley stepped up to the chair and put his hand over the heart. He said he felt no pulsation, but suggested that the current be turned on for a few seconds again.

  Norman looked up at me and widened his grin. “Just to be safe,” he added in his own words.

  “You don’t scare me, Norman,” I told him.

  That day we got word of another electrocution to take place. Jumbo the elephant had turned savagely on Colonel Bostock, prompting his owner to decide to execute the animal. Many people complained that it was simply a gimmick, sacrificing Jumbo to bring back attendance to the fair, which had declined sharply following the President’s death. Norman called me chicken for not wanting to go see Jumbo electrocuted, and for some reason, I gave in to his taunts. I went along, taking my seat next to him with a heavy heart.

  The crowd, which days earlier had thrilled to Jumbo’s exploits and applauded his tricks, now called for his blood. I couldn’t understand their fury. Bostock made a short speech extolling Jumbo’s military career. He asked the crowd to remember Jumbo for who he had been, not the mad creature he’d become. He told us about Jumbo’s long voyage from Africa to England and then here to Buffalo, how it had been too hard for the tired old elephant to adjust, how the ordeal had stripped him of his sanity. “He has become a killer,”
Bostock intoned. “Death by electrocution is the only way.”

  “Throw the switch!” cried one man down near the front.

  Poor Jumbo was led out—seeming quite tame and serene—and chained between two large wooden blocks. His eyes looked as sad as before. His great trunk hung lifelessly, awaiting his owner’s command. He probably thought they were just setting up another trick. I began to cry.

  Bostock gave a signal to throw the lever and a loud humming sound was heard. Eleven thousand volts of electricity pulsed through the animal. I stood suddenly, hardly aware of what I was doing. “Don’t kill him!” I shrieked. “Let him live!”

  But the crowd’s shouts of outrage drowned out my voice. Their taunts turned to laughter, however, as Jumbo barely moved, hardly seemed to even notice the electricity. The humming stopped and the animal simply raised his trunk—as he’d done so many times before for approval of the audience. The crowd gasped, some laughing out loud, some demanding a refund.

  Jumbo had survived.

  Of course he had. His thick hide had acted like rubber, proving impossible for the electricity to penetrate. A few of us mustered cheers. But most roared their disapproval, saying they’d been gypped. Colonel Bostock tried to calm them, assuring them they’d get their money back.

  The mob had its revenge. People began smashing electric signs, tearing bulbs from their posts. Tables and walls were crushed under the fury of the crowd as if they were so much pasteboard. Windows were shattered; statues overturned; doors knocked down. Cleopatra’s Needle was uprooted. I turned and ran before the crowd had a chance to move on to the Electric Tower.

  Norman stopped me.

  “There’s something I never told you,” he said, and I could smell foul beer on his breath. He gripped my upper arm hard with his hand. “Something you oughta know.”

  “Let me go,” I spit at him.

  “He killed himself, Flo. Our father.”

  “Let me go,” I snarled. All around me came the sounds of destruction: glass breaking, wood snapping, electricity zapping out. I struggled but couldn’t break free from Norman’s grip.

  “They said it was an accident, Flo. But he killed himself, I tell you. They held an inquest and everything, but I knew the truth. He killed himself. He fired up that old coal stove and closed all the windows and sat right in front of it. He killed himself because his wife was a whore and his daughter a tramp on the stage!”

  I broke free and hit him. Curled up my fist and pulled it way back, the way I’d seen the tall black man do. Some sixty years before our uneasy peace, before I cooked him his meals and made him laugh riding in my car, I smashed my fist into Norman’s face and saw blood spurt from his nose. His hands flew up to cover his face; his eyes just held me in a startled gaze. As if he were suddenly terrified of me.

  “Don’t ever try to scare me again, Norman,” I told him. “Because I won’t be scared!”

  I ran all the way home.

  Mother was sitting on the front porch. She was rocking in Grandmama’s chair, and she looked terribly old to me in the moonlight. Behind me the lights of the fair went off in random patterns. I huffed up the steps and sat at Mother’s feet.

  “Florence,” she said, continuing to rock. “What on earth has gotten into you?”

  “Let’s leave, Mother,” I said, catching my breath. “Let’s go. We don’t belong here.”

  She didn’t say anything for quite some time. She just continued to rock. Then she reached down and began to stroke my hair. It’s the only time in my life that I can ever remember my mother touching me.

  “All right, Florence,” she said softly. “Maybe it’s time to go at that.”

  We sat there until all the lights had gone out at the fair.

  The Present

  Ben stands looking down the sheer side of the cliff into the Pacific Ocean. It’s three thousand feet to the white surf below, which roils the rocky coast in a brilliant spray.

  He takes in a deep gulp of air. So clean, so crisp. It nearly causes him to lose his balance. He steps back away from the cliff.

  Ben feels engulfed by his surroundings: the vast turquoise sky, the iridescent sea, the majesty of the cliffs. This is hero’s country, he thinks. Not for the faint of heart.

  So what are you doing here, Ben?

  He closes his eyes, then opens them again. As far as he can see, the shaky, sinuous line of Route 1 is cut into the side of the cliff, following nature’s random and precarious path. Driving up the coast yesterday, he’d gripped the wheel of his rented Mercedes with sweaty, tight fists. He’d needed to get away, to put some distance between him and all that had happened. He just got behind the wheel and drove. He had no idea where he was going, just that he needed to go, and the coast highway north of the city seemed as good a route as any. He’d been unprepared for the deep valleys Route 1 descended into, for the sharp, breathless, hairpin turns, the crumbling pavement at the very rim of sun-cracked crags thousands of feet in the air.

  But he’d made it through. He spent the night in a little town called Stinson Beach, tucked within a fertile green triangle between two mountains. The only restaurant in town was closed when he pulled into the village, the generic gas station also dark for the night. The sun hadn’t even fully set, but already the deep purple shadows of the mountains had nearly obliterated the center of town. He knocked on the door of a run-down guest house of redwood and slate, only to be peered at by an old Indian woman with missing teeth through the lace curtains of the door. With great coaxing he finally convinced her to let him inside, and then it cost $79.95 on Xerxes’s Visa card for one night’s stay.

  He hadn’t been able to sleep. The room smelled musty and old, and even the sound of the surf a half mile away couldn’t lull him. His stomach rumbled from hunger, and he sat up at one A.M. to dig through his backpack for a bag of M&M’s. He’d opened the bag earlier on his drive up the coast, and now he discovered the candies had spilled deep into the linty and cluttered bottom of his pack. Annoyed, he threw the whole thing across the room.

  I believed in you, Ben.

  He rubs his temples now standing in the dust of the pull-off area, looking over the side of the cliff. Out a hundred yards, he thinks he sees a whale, but he can’t be sure.

  Florence Lawrence—107-year-old motion picture star riding the crest back to an unorthodox new fame—collapsed last night at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.…

  The newshounds had jumped all over it. Flo’s vacant blue eyes, her slumped stance were all shown repeatedly on the nightly news, the morning shows, and Inside Edition. Xerxes called him to say 60 Minutes wanted to talk with Flo. Ed Bradley had already interviewed the Cherry Sisters and their mother.

  “Hey, mister, is that the Pacific Ocean?”

  He looks around. It’s a little Japanese girl with a heavy accent, her parents standing behind her with cameras and eager looks on their faces.

  “Of course it is,” he says with some annoyance. The girl scampers back to her family, talking in Japanese, everybody nodding their heads a million times.

  “Of course it is,” he says again, looking back out onto the sea.

  He finds an easy-listening station on the radio as he starts the drive again. He expects he’ll be back in the city in about an hour. And then what?

  There was nothing to keep him here anymore. He had talked with Glick yesterday; things were rolling. “What do you think about Julia Roberts as Flo?” Glick asked. “I’m going to approach her people. Then again, she may be too old. How about Kate Winslet?”

  Ben didn’t even quibble that Flo was a blonde. Hey, that’s what wigs and dye jobs were for.

  A VW Beetle gets on his ass and then passes him out. “Christ,” Ben says. “What an idiot.” These roads are treacherous. What an asshole.

  Ben looks out over the shiny blue sea, reflecting a thousand shards of sunlight. How easy it would be for someone to drive off this cliff. To just keep going instead of turning and drive right off, plunging nearly a mile to the
rocks below. That would be it. End of story.

  How many people have done just that, chosen to end their lives here, in that way?

  He laughs at himself. His life wasn’t going to end here. His life was just beginning. He’d make it back to San Francisco, and tomorrow he’d fly back to New York.

  What he’d find there, of course, he couldn’t be sure. Anita had left a message for him on his voice mail saying she’d moved out of their apartment. His social life was in tatters. Richard and Rex had been his most frequent dinner and movie companions, and he couldn’t very well expect to see them now. And of course, his job at the advertising agency was kaput.

  He supposed he could live off the money he was getting for the screenplay—for a while. Xerxes was still negotiating the terms—whether he’d get it all in one lump sum, how much a royalty cut he’d get, all the stuff that seemed to addle Ben’s brains when he thought about it too long. He’d given up any hope of directing the film himself; Glick wanted some hotshot, not an unknown. “Lots of directors start as screenwriters,” he said. “You’ll get your chance.”

  Ben would have to come up with another idea. The old search for inspiration would have to begin anew. The thought terrified him.

  But, hey, this time he was in—this time it would be different. He’d sold a script to fucking Universal, for God’s sake. He was moving into a whole new world now. He’d make new friends, hang out with a whole new crowd. Xerxes would certainly invite him to his fabulous parties now, finally introduce Ben to his other, more prestigious clients. Ben imagined his little apartment in Hell’s Kitchen would no longer suffice. Even without Anita there, it was too small. And he was tired of living like a penniless student—milk crates for bookshelves and a futon on the floor.

  But it had been home for an awfully long time.

  “Well,” Anita had chirped, their first day moving in, “aren’t you going to carry me over the threshold?”