He crossed the room with his long stride and delivered the missive to me. Then he reached for his hat, informing Aunt Buzzy, “I’m going down to Western Union to send a telegram to the War Office. We’ll raise a ruckus ’til we find out what’s going on.”
I was staring at the paper, which was in my father’s handwriting, but all the letters looked wobbly. Aunt Buzzy was talking, perhaps to me, and I could not concentrate with all the chatter.
“Excuse me,” I said and took my leave with the letter clutched in one hand.
“Gosh, Isobel,” Ranger said as I passed him, “I’m really sorry…”
“Let her go,” I heard Mother say, as I climbed the steps to the east wing and passed wraithlike through the doorway.
The letter was short:
Dear Ones,
Well I finally did it—figured out a way to come home. Sorry to get beat up in the process but I’m feeling better now. The old right shoulder still complains but I expect it always will. The left side is almost as good as new, which explains the disgraceful hand. Behold the script of a lefty. They took the bandages off last week and I suppose it could be worse. If everybody will just stay to the left of me from now on I’ll get along famously. I hear through the grapevine that discharges are coming down soon, tho’ not too soon for me. When it happens I’ll fight off all obstacles and limp down to Bristol and camp out on the docks until some U.S.A.-bound vessel lets me aboard. God willing, when I finally see my lambs again, I’ll be the gratefullest, happiest sack of bones in the world…
By then I was blinking constantly and feared making a soppy mess of the letter. There wasn’t much more to it anyway. For the rest of the afternoon, Mother pulled herself together—though she hadn’t fallen that much apart, as far as I could tell. When Titus Bell returned from Western Union, the two of them got busy raising a ruckus. It was the most sedate ruckus I’d ever seen: mostly letter-writing, with calls to the local selective service board for names and addresses. Whenever the telephone was free, Aunt Buzzy used it to cancel engagements for the week, and Ranger kindly undertook to keep Sylvie entertained. That left me with nothing to do but think, and after a quiet evening meal, I tracked down Ranger with the intention of sharing my thoughts.
He was playing croquet with Sylvie, but with only half a mind since she was way ahead of him. An apprehensive look crossed his face at my approach.
“We have something to discuss,” I said.
“Look, Isobel, I expect you want to drop the picture, and if you do, I understand, really. But all the same, if you’d just—”
“You don’t understand, really,” I said. “I don’t want to drop the picture.”
Clearly taken by surprise, he dropped his jaw instead.
“Ranger!” Sylvie called from the far end of the course. “It’s your turn!” He knocked the ball absently and missed the wicket by a foot. “You’re not even trying!” she complained.
“I want to finish it,” I went on, “only with a few changes. We need to reshoot those scenes at the house, with Father’s picture included.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded. “We were going to do that already.”
“And mention him more in the title cards.”
“Sure.”
“And when we shoot the war scenes in the field hospital—”
“We took the war scenes out, remember?”
“Oh.” My brain may have been more disordered than I thought. “Well, of course I remember.”
“Uh-huh.” Ranger shook his head pityingly as he hit the ball again, bypassing the wicket altogether. (“Ranger!” Sylvie hollered in exasperation.) “If we even have a prayer of getting this thing done by the end of next week, one more day of shooting is all we can plan for.”
“Well…” I began, wondering how to suggest he might have to forget his date with Mr. Griffith.
“So,” Ranger went on, “we go back to the studio in Daisy Dell and we reshoot that scene where the Youth comes to call. You—Matchless—can show him your dad’s picture. Sam can get a close-up on it, with flowers and a little flag. Sylvie can do something cute, and Matchless tells the Youth about her father and…uh…he’s inspired then and there to take a vow on the old man’s—I mean, on the noble dad’s—picture to watch out for his girls until he comes home. That’s all we have time to shoot, but I promise we’ll do a bang-up job on it. Then we’ll decide how to put it all together. What do you think?”
I didn’t have to think long. “Get Sam on the phone.”
Two days later we were on the streetcar again, all four of us, headed for Daisy Dell and what we fondly supposed would be our last day of shooting. Besides our usual equipment, we brought a broom, a hammer, and a few extra nails in case something had blown over or fallen down in the two weeks since we’d visited our “studio.” In Ranger’s Boy Scout knapsack I had carefully packed Father’s picture, plus some silk flowers I’d borrowed from an old hat, and a small flag Sylvie had bought last Fourth of July.
The bag also held an old gray uniform coat and a conductor’s cap. Ranger had an extra shot in mind: me standing beside the picket fence in front of the rundown house at the head of the path. The postman approaches (Ranger, wearing the conductor’s cap and a handlebar mustache), tips his cap, and hands me a letter. Upon opening the letter, I first register surprise, then delirious joy. It imparts the news that Father is on his way home.
“But where does that go in the story?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Ranger admitted. “It just might be good to have, as long as we’re there and the film holds out.”
Sam was quiet on the journey after telling me, “I hope your father’s okay.” Being quiet was hardly out of the ordinary for him, but from the way he refused to meet my eyes, he seemed a bit rueful. I had to wonder if cutting his own mother into the picture was one of the things he rued.
Someday, if the talking fit ever seized him again in my presence, I would ask him. For now, we had work to do. Getting off at the Cahuenga Pass stop, we hauled our bulky baggage to the end of the road, where the dilapidated little house stood with its peeling picket fence. It looked as abandoned as ever, and just as well, for Sylvie’s clattering on the porch in her hard-soled boots was enough to raise the most resolute invalid or corpse.
Sam set up quickly, and Ranger outlined the scene for us while attaching his handlebar mustache with a dab of spirit gum. I straightened it for him before taking my place.
With Sam rolling the film, Ranger approached along the path while I swept a walk that wasn’t there. He smiled and touched his cap to me. Then he reached into his pouch and handed over an envelope. As he walked on, I ripped open the envelope and scanned the contents, showing surprise and then delight. I turned to Sylvie. “It’s a letter—from Father!”
Taking her cue like a trooper, Sylvie ran over and joined me in a chorus of “He’s coming home!” As we turned to run toward the house, Ranger yelled, “Cut!”
“That was fine,” Sam said, closing the shutter.
“Wait a minute.” Ranger hesitated. “Let’s do it one more time. As a bad news scene.”
His statement was met by silence. “Why?” I finally asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought we might need one. What do you think, Sam?”
The cameraman merely shrugged. “It’s your film.”
“What do you mean by ‘bad news’?” I pressed him.
“We just do the scene again, everything the same with the postman and all, only when you open the letter, you look sad instead of happy.”
“What if I don’t want to? What if I just refuse?”
“Come on, Iz. It’s just one scene. Probably won’t even use it. You think it’s bad luck, or what?”
That’s exactly what I did think—or feel. It wasn’t rational or reasonable, and I knew he’d make that point if I admitted it, so I didn’t. Lea
ving me no choice but to do the scene again, and upon opening the envelope, my face registered shock and sorrow.
“Good!” Ranger shouted from the side. “Excellent—we’ll leave it at that.”
We gathered up our stuff and pushed on.
Though it hadn’t been that long since we’d visited Daisy Dell, the approach looked different. When we came closer, we saw why: tire tracks. The path had been widened by hacking brush and knocking down trees, and was now so ridgy that we struggled under the weight of our equipment.
“Sun’s getting high,” remarked Sam, who was in the lead. “Better hurry.” We hurried, as sweat began to bead up on my forehead and trickle down my shoulder blades.
“I’m thirsty,” Sylvie piped up.
“Uh-oh,” said Sam.
He’d stopped on the edge of the clearing, and the rest of us pooled around him. What greeted our eyes was—nothing.
All the scrub cedar was cleared, the brush mowed. Most astonishing: the house was gone, erased, like it had been a figment of our fond imaginations. There was nothing left of it except scraps of curtain mashed into the ground. A No Trespassing sign fluttered from a post.
“Criminy!” Sylvie breathed at last. “Where did they put our house?”
Sam carefully set down the camera and tripod and crossed over to the sign. “‘Krotona Arts Alliance,’” he read. “‘Future site of concert venue.’ That’s nice.”
“Did they move it someplace?” Sylvie persisted. “Could we ask them?”
I stood at the edge of the clearing, clutching the knapsack to my chest, while my shaky faith in motion pictures’ ability to change history gave up and burrowed right into the ground.
Ranger picked over the site in a desultory way, but there was nothing salvageable in it, and nothing to do eventually but traipse back downhill and wait for the streetcar, a most forlorn crew. Sylvie was reluctant to give up her notion that the house might still exist somewhere, but once I not-too-gently got it through her head that it was probably in pieces, she burst into despairing tears.
The only time available for a story conference was on the streetcar. Neither Sam nor I could work up much spirit. The project was back in Ranger’s hands, and like a football player with the pigskin, he ran full-out.
“So,” he began, “here’s what we have:
“Opening setup with the girls’ sad plight and scenes of the no-good uncle carousing with his chums.
“Scene of the girls at the hospital visiting their aged grandmother, including close-up with Sylvie.” Sam shifted on his seat but said nothing.
“What about the father?” I asked. “Will he even be in it?”
“I was thinking about that,” Ranger said. “What if Sam gets a close-up of your dad’s picture, and maybe a shot of you and Sylvie looking at it with devotion? We can follow that with the Home Guard marching. Then we’ll cut in one of ocean shots Sam got at Santa Monica Beach to show your father has gone overseas!” Ranger was getting his spirits back, and I acknowledged his latest idea with a wan smile.
Next, the rescue on horseback, followed by Dauntless Youth visiting the girls in their house (making Ranger sigh Alas! for its loss); maybe another shot of Father’s picture, too bad we couldn’t show it in the proper surroundings, but Alas! again.
Then the Youth marching with the Home Guard—
“But I thought we wouldn’t use those, since you’re not going to war,” I objected.
“I can sign up, can’t I? Every young man has to do his duty. Those scenes are too good to leave out.”
“Even,” Sam drawled, “if they don’t add anything.”
“Who says they don’t? They establish my—I mean, the Youth’s—character and show he’s no coward because at the end…” He paused for a whole city block.
“What about the end?” I prompted at last.
“Well, I don’t exactly know how to end it yet with what we’ve got.”
I sighed, Sam rolled his eyes, and Sylvie leaped across the aisle to land on Ranger’s chest, crying, “There has to be an end!”
Which had never bothered her before, but we were all a bit on edge. The problem with life, I decided then and there, is endings.
“Don’t worry,” Ranger insisted. “I’ll think of something.”
Next morning, as breakfast ended, the doorbell rang. Shortly thereafter Solomon entered the sunroom. “It’s the Western Union man for Señora Ransom.”
Aunt Buzzy popped up from the table, cheeks ablaze, and Mother was on her feet directly after. A terrified glance passed between them—didn’t Western Union usually mean something awful?
Mother was the first to make for the entrance hall, but the rest of us were as close as a cattle stampede behind her. As Aunt Buzzy tipped the messenger, Mother opened the telegram and scanned its brief lines, her face a cipher. Sylvie was bursting to ask what it said, but I kept a hand over her mouth.
Finally Mother looked up, her high color unabated. “He’s in New York City. He has his rail ticket and itinerary. He’ll be here on the westbound train, eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning.”
That was just two and a half days away! After a moment of packed-solid silence, everything seemed to break loose. Sylvie screamed, Ranger exclaimed, and Mother and Aunt Buzzy started overlapping each other in listing things that must be done in preparation.
The telephone had not had such a workout since our party of the stars—ringing up florists and tailors, and trying to find extra help at short notice to do the cleaning and cooking. Plans were made for a welcome-home party, then scrapped when someone wondered if the guest of honor might not be in a party mood just yet.
Mother called a doctor instead to ask what to do about shell shock in case Father showed signs of it. Hobbies, the doctor said. Plan activities that interested him before the war. A search for photography equipment turned up only Aunt Buzzy’s Kodak Brownie camera. I set to work making a list of the equipment we would need for a regular darkroom.
After several tries on the telephone, Aunt Buzzy located Titus Bell, who promised to come back from San Francisco as soon as possible so he could take dear Bobby fishing—even though dear Bobby hadn’t fished since before I was born.
And Mother spent well over twenty minutes with my grandparents in Seattle, a conversation that sounded somewhat strained to my listening ear: “No, Father Ransom, we haven’t talked about that. We haven’t talked at all, because… I’m sure Robert feels the same, but he may not be in any condition to travel all the way to Seattle yet. Yes, sir, but his wife and children happen to be here, and he may just believe his first duty is to… Perhaps it’s time to speak to Mother…” To my grandmother she was softer, even weepy toward the end, but the whole conversation wrung Mother out so much that she had to go lie down.
Ranger disappeared for most of the day. He didn’t even show up at dinnertime, but that was all right since we didn’t really have dinner, just sandwiches thrown together in the kitchen.
Sylvie and I were in bed, after Mother had tucked us in with the most perfunctory prayers, when Ranger tapped softly on the door and let himself in. “I’ve got an idea.”
Chapter 17
The Perils of a Life of Crime
If ever I was not in the mood for one of Ranger’s ideas, it was then. Not only did he have to tell me, but he had to drag it out to the utmost level of suspense.
He and Sam had spent most of the day at the downtown railroad station, watching trains. Why? To note where the passenger engines stopped, especially the 217 (which Father was scheduled to arrive on, two days hence). All the trains had arrived on time, and all had stopped at exactly the same spot, with the locomotive directly opposite the telegraph pole ten yards north of the station. And why was this important? The far edge of the platform lined up with the fifth car. All passengers unloaded from the third-to-fifth cars, which were closest to the station.
Meaning what?
“There’s a storage room on the second floor,” Ranger explained, so excited he was twitching all the way to his fingernails. “We talked a clerk into letting us go up there. From the window there’s a perfect view of the platform. Every passenger who gets off the train has to pass beneath its unblinking eye.”
“Whose unblinking eye?” I prodded impatiently.
“The camera’s, of course.” Ranger said this with a quiet but pronounced flourish.
“I know!” Sylvie sprang up on the bed. “You’re getting Daddy in the picture!”
Ranger just smiled modestly while the plan bloomed fat and full as a sunflower in my mind. “But—how—I mean, too many things have to line up exactly right. You have to know what car he’s going to be on and where he’ll get off, and there could be hordes of people in the way—”
“But that’s what I’m telling you,” Ranger said. “It’s all worked out. The train unloads from the three middle cars, so that’s all the space we have to worry about. And that window upstairs looks down on the whole platform—it almost doesn’t matter how many hordes are in the way. So here’s the plan…”
The most important problem was solved already. Jimmy Service was working on a Keystone picture and would be out of the way all week. The boys had made a deal with the baggage clerk (probably involving cigars) to get Sam into the upstairs storage room. Not once but twice: first on the day before Father’s arrival, to shoot long views and establishing shots of passengers from the 217 milling about the platform.
The second time would be on the big day itself. Sam knew where he could borrow a lens that would allow him to shoot a close-up from the window. With it, he could capture the three of us pressing through the crowd, as well as get close on Father once he’d recognized the man. I would persuade Mother to let us girls greet him first. Then with any luck we would have time to introduce Ranger, who would manfully shake Father’s hand, in mutual gratitude and admiration, before the ladies showed up.
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