All for a Song

by Allison Pittman

  “And he can’t be with you here?”

  At that moment the curtain covering the window on the office side slid open, startling both of them with the appearance of a lean, tired-looking man with a cigar the width of a lumberjack’s thumb wedged into the corner of his mouth.

  “Ah,” Dorothy Lynn said. “Now that’s inspiring.”

  “That’s Freddy,” Roland said. “Wait right here.”

  Left alone, she wandered over to the piano and, feeling bold, took a seat on the well-worn wooden bench. Sheets of music stood on the upraised rack. She ran her fingers across the pages. Mozart, then something called “Oh, How He Done Me Wrong,” then something else that was nothing more than a few notes scribbled on the staffs in pencil, titled “Blooms in the Spring.” More music graced the stand beside her, large sheets with covers featuring droopy women or couples engaged in desperate embrace. She browsed through lyrics, finding some that wrapped her up in longing for home and all it offered—her mother, soft forest floors, Brent’s strong embrace and all that it promised. Others were silly or tragic, but all of them once had been a tune in somebody’s head, notes scribbled down. They’d all been brought here and committed to a recording. They could last forever, while hers would disappear.

  Looking through the window in the wall, she saw the men engaged in conversation. Good-natured, it seemed, with a few glances thrown her way. Roland’s eyes wrapped her in affection, while Freddy seemed unimpressed. Finally, Roland took his wallet from his pocket and extracted a few bills, which Freddy pocketed without counting. Apparently, she’d been bought.

  Roland walked back in, rubbing his hands together. “What do you think, sweetheart?”

  She tapped her finger on the piano key, making a tiny, unintentional sound. “Looks like you’ve already decided.”

  “I need to pay for the time, no matter what we do. If you don’t want to record your songs, maybe I’ll just recite ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ for an hour. Send it to my kids.”

  “I’m sure they miss your voice.”

  He held up a warning finger. “I don’t talk about them, remember?”

  “You brought them up.”

  “I forget sometimes.” He blinked, twice. “Now, what do you say?”

  She twisted on the bench. “I owe you so much, Roland.”

  He took her hands in his and lifted her to her feet. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Really? All the clothes? And the hotel? And finding Donny?”

  “And to think. All for a song.”

  He still held her hands, and her gaze, and her brother, and though his eyes and smile were warm, she had the sense that none would be released without ransom.

  “What do I have to do?” She could tell he was pleased, though he offered only the slightest squeeze of her hands to show it.

  “Just what I told you.” He released her to reposition the stool, scooting it here and there according to Freddy’s silent direction from the other side of the window. “Sit here—” he patted the seat—“take up your guitar, and sing for me.”

  The next sound was the click of the latches on her guitar case. She took the instrument out and put the new hat in its place. Because the seat was higher than she anticipated, Roland offered his shoulder to steady her ascent, leaving her feeling a bit marooned when he stepped away.

  “No hurry,” he said. “One hour, one song. Take your time.”

  Freddy seemed engaged in whatever role he played in this process, and with minimal jostling, Roland turned the chair to take him out of her line of sight.

  New, unfamiliar fears gathered within her. Perhaps not entirely unfamiliar. She’d felt the same way when she sang for Roland in the Strawn Brothers Music Store. And when she sang for Sister Aimee in her dressing room. And when she first faced an audience in that darkness beyond the light. Every time, at every turn, there was Roland. The last voice she heard before her own, the first face she saw upon opening her eyes. Why, then, should this be any different?

  She hummed a few bars of the song she’d sung hundreds of times since that first afternoon when it was nothing more than a rattling nuisance, then brought her guitar in tune. “How does that sound?” She trusted his ear more than her own.

  For an answer, Roland looked past her to Freddy and nodded.

  She stared into the mouth of the horn, thinking it looked somewhat like a big telephone. She could imagine she was singing to Brent, though he’d refused to talk to her, or to her mother, despite how strongly she would disapprove of the whole process.

  But when she thought about who she was at this moment, what she’d become—and what Christ had forgiven—she knew what she’d said to Roland moments before was true. She’d sing for Jesus, recording on wax the message he’d given her the way so many men had recorded such in books and paper and scrolls. “When do I start?”

  Another silent consultation through the window, and then a simple, short nod of Roland’s head.

  She closed her eyes as her fingers found the opening chords, filling the biggest silence she’d ever known. The room was big enough to be a forest and a stage all at once.

  Jesus is coming!

  Are you ready

  to meet your Savior in the sky?

  As she sang, the lyrics grew in meaning. She was ready. She’d seen what the world had to offer, had a taste of sin and redemption. There was nothing here that she couldn’t leave behind. Brent and her mother, even. She’d left them both once before, after all, and they’d be joining her. Purified, cleansed, and only nineteen, she could list accomplishments she’d never known to dream about in her childhood. Were Jesus to take her this very minute, she could stand before him unashamed.

  Tears stung the back of her throat, but she’d never finish the song if she gave in, so she closed her mouth and strummed until she knew she had control, then launched into the next verse.

  When she opened her eyes at the final note, she found Roland standing closer than she imagined, with one finger to his lips and his other hand poised in a gesture meant to hold her still and silent. His eyes darted between hers and over her shoulder to Freddy, who must have been satisfied.

  “Sweetheart,” Roland said, breaking the silence, “that was perfect.”

  “I’m never going to sing it again.” The revelation came to her as she spoke it.

  “Nonsense. You have a church back home waiting for you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s yours. Do what you want with it.”

  Dorothy Lynn held her guitar as Roland helped her down from the seat. “We have time,” he said. “You don’t want to record any others?”

  “You said I could have it all for a song.” She traded the guitar for the hat, settling one inside the velvet lining and tugging the other down to her ears. “I gave you a song. Fair?”

  “Fair.”

  The gates were massive works of scrolled iron with the words Silverlight Studios fashioned across the top.

  “You seem nervous,” Dorothy Lynn said as Roland began to slow the car.

  “Not going to fool you, kid. I’m a little out of my element here.”

  “Ma always says the only person you can ever really fool is yourself.”

  “I need to meet this ma of yours someday.”

  Dorothy Lynn laughed, envisioning Roland Lundi with his linen suits, pinkie ring, and pre-rolled cigarettes strolling the twisted paths of Heron’s Nest. “I don’t think you’d quite fit in.”

  He clutched at his chest as if she’d shot an arrow through his heart, and she laughed some more.

  A narrow shack stood at the gate’s entrance, and as they approached, a man in a blue broadcloth uniform stepped out of it, signaling for them to stop. “Business here?” he said, placing two meaty hands on top of the car door.

  “Yes.” All traces of insecurity erased, Roland reached into his breast pocket and took out a sheet of paper. From her seat, she could see it was high quality, and both the watermark and the heading at the top looked quite official
and impressive. What was actually typed in its center, however, was lost, though the message was as short as the signature.

  The guard knit his brows and moved his lips in silent reading before he looked at Roland with a new respect. “Lot seven, sir. You’re going to go through these gates and take a left. Three studios down on the right.”

  “Thank you, Sarge.” Roland tipped his hat before taking back the letter.

  Neither spoke before they’d driven through the gates, at which point Dorothy Lynn asked just what the paper said.

  “Long story there,” Roland said, taking the first left turn. “But when you get back home and people ask if you got to meet Rudy Valentino while you were in Hollywood, you tell them no, but you did get a chance to take a drive with his far more attractive cousin.”

  She gave his arm a playful slap. “You didn’t.”

  He laughed. “The letter simply says that I am escorting the singer Dorothy Lynn Dunbar to film stage seven at H. C. Bendemann’s request.”

  “Well, that’s closer to the truth, anyway. Although I’m hardly famous.”

  “No, but you are a singer, and most of the people in this town aren’t half as famous as they claim to be.”

  The property was a maze of plain square buildings, each with a number displayed in bold black paint. If the buildings themselves were plain, however, the people walking in and out of them were not. Dorothy Lynn tried not to gawk, for fear of alerting everyone around that she and Roland were impostors, but she could not take her eyes away from the array of costumed men and women roaming around. Some, naturally, were dressed in everyday clothing, and others in formal attire that put to shame the finest she’d seen at the Alexandria Hotel. But then, ambling alongside a man in a tuxedo was another dressed as a Roman centurion. Women, too, were in ball gowns and furs or long calico dresses and sunbonnets. At one point Roland let out a low, slow whistle and said, “What would Ma say about that?” calling her attention to a group of six young women dressed in what appeared to be nothing but clear balloons held together by some miracle of stitchery.

  He brought the car to a roped-off area where automobiles were parked in short, neat rows.

  “This looks nothing like the postcard,” Dorothy Lynn said, recalling it with a niggling fear that one of the links in Roland’s chain of information had been deceptive.

  “Nothing here looks like what it is.”

  Dorothy Lynn found herself shaking long after the car’s engine went still. For the first time Roland didn’t seem to have a plan. Always before, he’d be telling her to get in, get out, follow him, stay there, wait, hurry. Now she sat beside him, quiet, until the knotting of nerves worked its way loose enough for her to ask, “What do I do?”

  “I’ll go in with you, if you like. Make the introduction—well, not an introduction exactly. But you know, smooth things over.”

  She made no attempt to hide her relief. “I’d like that.”

  He came around to open her door and handed her out, where she straightened her hat and smoothed her skirt, silently grateful that he’d forced her to change out of her old, shapeless dress. “Should I take my guitar?”

  “Why would you?”

  She hesitated, looking at the case lying in the backseat. “It’s his.”

  “You’ll see him again.”

  While Dorothy Lynn had only seen a few films in her lifetime, she always imagined the making of them to be glamorous—silks and temples and gold brocade. Instead, she saw shoddy buildings, some nothing more than a facade supported by beams along the back side, and then the enormous box they were about to enter. The door was massive, more like a barn than anything else, and the unknown behind it loomed, suddenly terrifying. She grabbed Roland’s sleeve. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what, sweetheart?”

  “I can’t go in there. What if this is all a lie, or a joke? Or what if Donny got wind that I was coming and didn’t show up? What if he’s stayed away all these years because of some terrible secret, or because he was horribly wounded in the war? What if he’s burned, or missing a leg, or—”

  Roland took her by the shoulders and gave her enough of a shake to knock the hat nearly over her eyes. “What if any of it? Or all of it? What is staying out here going to change?”

  “Nothing, I suppose.”

  “How about a compromise? You stay here, and I’ll go get him. Bring him right out to you.”

  “But how will you even know who he is?”

  He spread his arms wide. “Baby, when have I ever let you down?”

  She granted him that point with a smile.

  “You don’t talk to anybody, understand?”

  “Understand.”

  “And I’ll go get what you came here for.”

  He disappeared behind the door with the air of somebody who deserved such an entrance, and Dorothy Lynn leaned up against the wall beside it. A man in a Civil War uniform led a team of horses, followed by a group of women in flowing white robes.

  Imagine working in such a place, seeing such things every day. Her mind stirred with the strangeness of it all, unable to form any single coherent opinion. What series of paths led Donny here? In a way, she supposed, it wasn’t much different from Heron’s Nest—goodness knew there were more than a few eccentrics living back home, but they all mostly looked the same on the outside. But this? How strange to see Napoleon Bonaparte from her history textbook walking alongside a man in some sort of velvet cape, both of them smoking cigarettes and arguing about President Harding’s return to normalcy.

  “Dorothy?” Roland’s voice pulled her immediately out of her reverie. She twisted her head to find it—to finally find him.

  Donny.

  Not so very changed from the day he left for war. His hair on the sides was shorn as it had been then, but that on top had been allowed to grow long, and it hung over his forehead—curlier than she’d ever known it to be. The jaw was stronger and shaded with a day’s beard, but the eyes were the same dark-rimmed gray. Same as her own.

  He said nothing, simply stared at her with his mouth open slightly—just enough to confirm his identity with the one jagged bottom tooth he’d chipped when he’d tried to entertain her by impersonating a squirrel with an acorn.

  “Donny.” So long since she’d seen him, so long since the name had been anything more than a part of wistful conversation. Here he was, in the flesh, and without giving a thought to waiting for an invitation, she threw her arms around him.

  When she’d last hugged him before he boarded the bus, her arms—scrawny as she was—wrapped clean around. But he’d grown broader over the years, his chest and shoulders expanded nearly twofold, though his waist was nearly as trim.

  “Dottie.” His voice was deeper too, bringing with it the intervening years during which he’d grown from the older brother of her memories to the man of her mythology. It was a hero’s voice, an adventurer’s voice, yet every moment of their childhood rang clear in his utterance of her name.

  She held him tighter, for fear he’d turn and walk away the minute she let go, as he made no move to return her embrace. Theirs might be a bond of blood, but they seemed joined only by her relentless grip.

  “How did you find me?” It was the same question he’d ask when they were children playing hide-’n’-hunt in the woods around their home. Then, as now, Darlene had been the key, scouting him out and sending Dorothy Lynn in to make the kill.

  She stepped away, feeling self-conscious and shy and silly. “You sent that postcard to Darlene, and I . . . God gave me a chance to come find you.”

  “This is where I bow out,” Roland said, though his eyes were questioning, asking Dorothy Lynn’s permission.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lundi,” she said, not knowing if her gratitude was either warranted or sufficient.

  “You two catch up. Take as long as you need. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  He kissed her cheek, and she almost ran after him. Instead, she took a deep breath and faced the fear she hadn’t
thought possible. “Are you not happy at all to see me, Donny?”

  He scratched at his beard. “No one’s called me Donny in years. I go by Don. And I guess I’m just in shock. How’ve you been?”

  “Fine,” she said, as if chatting with a church friend on a Sunday afternoon. “But I have so much to tell you. Is there someplace where we can go and talk?”

  “I’m working, Dottie.” He’d buried his hands in his pockets, so he used his shoulders to gesture toward the door behind him. That’s when she noticed that every inch of him seemed jittery.

  “Later, then. Tonight? We can have dinner at the hotel, or Roland—Mr. Lundi—would take me just about anywhere to meet you.”

  “Come inside,” he said, as if whisking her away secretively. “I get a dinner break at noon. We can go to the canteen together and talk there.”

  “That sounds fun.” The words came out too quickly to sound convincing, but she hoped her bright smile would fill the deficit.

  Donny—Don—led her into an echoing, cavernous space with a comforting smell of lumber and dust. Dozens of people milled around, each seemingly with his own purpose. Enormous lights hung from beams crisscrossing high on the wall. At the front, a complete, perfect miniature house was in midconstruction. Not a house, exactly, but a series of rooms, as if the fourth wall of a family home had been carefully shorn away, exposing the family’s secrets. It was suspended at least four feet off the ground, and after a deafening metallic squeal that brought Dorothy Lynn’s hands to her ears, the entire structure began to tilt to one side.

  “Fella’s making a movie about a boy who dreams a giant picks up his house and carries it away,” Don explained once the sound mercifully stopped. “So the house has to move. When we put the furniture in, it’ll scoot around—pictures falling, kids rolling out of bed . . .”

  “And you built this?”

  “Not the machine, but I studied how the guy did it. I worked on the house. Whole layout was my idea.”

  She bubbled with pride. “What’s the name of the picture?”

  “Don’t know yet. The kid’s the real star, I guess. I don’t keep up much with all of that stuff. I just build what they tell me.”