The Nerviest Girl in the World

by Melissa Wiley

  I’m glad we didn’t know.

  “Ike got shot off his horse yesterday,” said my brother Bill through a mouthful of egg, about a week after the boys started working for Mr. Corrigan.

  “Good heavens!” cried my grandmother, her fork clattering to her plate.

  “Just pretend-shot, Grandma,” Ike assured her. I don’t know why she was so worried in the first place. If you’ve been really shot, I don’t think you sit down at the dinner table nice and casual and snatch the biggest piece of ham off the platter.

  “For the picture,” Bill added superfluously.

  “That was a splendid tumble you took, Ikey,” said my brother Frank admiringly. “I thought you’d broken your neck for sure.”

  “GOOD HEAVENS!” shouted my mother and grandmother in unison. My father slowly set down his mug, eyeing Ike appraisingly. Mama rose hastily to her feet, her chair scraping on the floor, snatched up the coffeepot, and stormed into the kitchen. Frank stared after her with an anxious gaze, but Ike went on shoveling scrambled eggs and fried ham into his face.

  “Why’s everyone in such a stew?” asked Bill.

  “Suppose,” said my father slowly, “you tell us exactly what it is this fella Corrigan has you boys doing out there.” In the kitchen a pot clanged hard on the iron stove.

  “Aw, it’s swell, Papa,” said Ike eagerly. “Mostly, we ride hard in a pack of other cowboys and wave shotguns around—don’t worry, they ain’t loaded—but whenever the picture calls for a fancy stunt, Corrigan has me or Frank or Bill do it. We can outdo those other fellas by a mile.”

  “Don’t boast, Isaac,” snapped Grandma. Her mouth was pressed into a tight thin line.

  “It ain’t boasting, Grandma,” said Ike, brushing a brown curl off his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s the plain truth. The rest of ’em can ride all right if the terrain’s level, but if you need someone to take a spill or switch horses in the middle of a hard gallop—”

  “Ike,” muttered Frank in a warning tone, but Ike ignored him.

  “—then you want a Donnelly on the spot.”

  “What the blazes kind of picture is this?” demanded Papa. “Sounds more like a circus act.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” interjected my grandmother, making the sign of the cross.

  “They’re Westerns, Papa,” said Frank. “That’s why these picture people came looking for rodeo champions. It’s a display of horsemanship.”

  In the kitchen my mother snorted. I couldn’t help but let out a snicker. Ike shot me a glare. I quickly blanked my face and busied myself spreading manzanita jelly on a biscuit.

  “Mm-hmm,” murmured my father. I could see he was skeptical.

  I spooned another dollop of jelly on my biscuit, figuring everyone was too distracted to notice.

  “Shucks, Papa, you’re the one who taught us how to take a spill without breaking a bone,” Ike pointed out.

  “That was a safety precaution,” Papa snapped. “Everyone takes a tumble now and then. Best to know how not to get yourself killed. I sure as heck didn’t expect you’d be going out of your way to fall on purpose, though.”

  “Jacob, language!” said my grandmother. My brothers all burst out laughing—it was always so funny when Grandma scolded Papa like a naughty child, especially since she was Mama’s mama, not his—and I took advantage of the distraction to sneak another spoonful of jelly. I didn’t have much biscuit left at this point, and the jelly slid down around the edges onto my fingers.

  “That’s too much jelly, Pearl,” said my mother sternly. I always forget she has the eyes of a hawk and can see through walls. She stalked to the table with a fresh pot of coffee and slammed it down in front of Ike.

  “Piggy Pearl,” teased Ike. Frank made an oinking sound, earning a glare from me. Frank’s teasing always had a different flavor, somehow, from Ike’s. With Ike, you felt like you were in on the joke. With Frank, you weren’t quite sure he was teasing. Maybe he really did think I was a pig.

  “Don’t you try to change the subject,” Papa told Ike. “I need assurance that this work isn’t putting my sons in danger.”

  “We’re careful, Papa,” said Frank. “The whole point is he brought us in because we can do tricks without breaking a sweat. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for us, but I guess it looks tip-top on camera.”

  “Plus, the pay’s fine,” said Bill placidly.

  My mother rolled her eyes. “The pay’ll do you no good if you’re dead of a broken neck.”

  “Just wait’ll you see the picture, Mama,” said Ike. “You’ll be bursting with pride.”

  “Hmph,” my mother said, unconvinced. “Pearl, go wash the jam off your face. You look like you took a bath in it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I sighed. Ike gave me a wink. He’s my teasingest brother, but also my most sympathetic one. Whenever I get into a scrape, he’s the best person to ask for help getting out. I do blame him, though, for my lifelong horror of caterpillars because of the time he climbed a tree and dropped a nasty spiky one on my head as I walked underneath his branch. Of course, that was a long time ago and I was just a little kid—but some things you never forget, and the feeling of a million scrabbly little legs on your head is one of them. The oozy splat after you clap a panicked hand to your head is another.

  But as long as there were no caterpillars in sight, Ike was a swell brother. Anyway, he was practically grown up now, almost eighteen, and not likely to terrorize me with creepy-crawlies anymore.

  I don’t think.

  “I believe I’ll ride to town this morning and take a gander at this ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ with my own eyes,” said Papa. My brothers exchanged uneasy glances but said nothing.

  “You just watch out that smooth-talking Corrigan man doesn’t rope you in too, Jacob,” said my grandmother. “That man’s so slick he’ll have you dancing a tarantella on horseback if you don’t keep your wits about you.”

  The image was so comical I couldn’t help but burst out with a hoot of laughter. Ike met my eyes, grinning.

  “I said go wash up, Pearl,” roared my mother. I hastily scooted out of my chair and went out to the pump to wash. But not until I’d licked up every smidgen of jelly I could reach with my tongue. It’s a sin to waste good manzanita jelly.

  As I was drying my face on my shirt—which in hindsight maybe wasn’t the best plan, because I wound up smearing some jam from my shirt onto my face—Papa and the boys strode through the courtyard on their way to saddle their horses. The boys were heading to Lemon Springs straightaway, but Papa said he’d follow later, after he saw to a few chores. I hurried through my own chores and then pelted to the sheepfold, where Papa was mending a gate while the ewes and lambs were out to pasture.

  “Can I come along when you go to town?” I asked, trying for just the right note between pleading and nonchalant.

  “What’s the matter with your face, Pearl?” Papa asked.

  I quit trying for any kind of facial expression at all.

  “Ostriches set?” Papa queried.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Two this morning—Cleopatra and Bathsheba.”

  Papa considered a moment. “Well, I suppose Apple could use a stretch. If your mother doesn’t need you.”

  I broke into a grin. Apple was my favorite horse. She never cared where we went, so long as we were going somewhere. Unlike Dinah, who always had strong opinions about which direction to travel—usually the opposite of the direction you needed to go.

  “I’ll be finished here directly,” Papa continued. “Why don’t you go saddle up and meet me by the bell.”

  I scurried to the stable, taking the long way around the house instead of cutting through the courtyard, where Mama was watering the grapevine. Papa’s yes was no guarantee you wouldn’t bump into Mama�
�s no. It was exasperating, sometimes, to have so many opinionated grown-ups (almost as opinionated as Dinah) weighing in on every little thing. Between my parents, my grandmother, and my three grown-up brothers—at least Frank considered himself grown-up even though he was only sixteen, because he could ride cattle as well as Ike, who was seventeen, and Bill, who was almost twenty—I could hardly take three steps without someone bossing me or scolding me or both. I’d have given my left arm for a little sister or brother I could boss around myself. Well, maybe a couple of fingers off my left hand. Not the thumb; I needed it for holding reins.

  Jasper, the stable hand, helped me get Apple saddled and ready. I hitched myself up onto her back (I could boost myself up from a stirrup if I needed to, but it was more fun to climb the rail fence and scramble into the saddle from the top rail) and trotted to meet Papa at the bell.

  Our bell is famous in San Diego County. At least, the post it’s mounted on is famous. It’s a big weathered timber salvaged by my grandfather from a shipwreck in San Diego Harbor way back in 1856, before my papa was born. My grandfather used other wood from the ship to frame parts of our house, which has whitewashed adobe walls and long, low windows. When I was little, Frank told me you could hear the ocean if you put your ear to a knothole in the bell post, but when I tried it, all I heard were my own yowls when I got a splinter in my earlobe. Frank laughed and said I ought to try it with the other ear, too, and then I could wear dangly earbobs in the splinter holes. Sometimes I think Frank is like having an ostrich for a brother.

  * * *

  Papa beat me to the bell. He gave me a nod—he was never much for talking on horseback—and led the way along the dirt path rolling out of our ranch across the chaparral. The morning air smelled of sagebrush and honeysuckle, fresh and sweet. A lizard skittered out of the path away from the horses.

  The path curved along the shoulders of a low hill. As we crested the hill, I turned to see our ranch spread out below. I always loved to see it from this spot because you could look down at the gleaming white walls of our house, which has three long, straight wings wrapped around a big open courtyard, with a high garden wall making the fourth side of the square. Our bell stands in the trampled, bare-earth space between our front wall and the stable. From the hill you can see the tops of the fig and orange trees in the courtyard, a rustling roof of green leaves surrounded by the curved red roof tiles of the house.

  The boys had said they were filming in town that day. Our place was four miles from Lemon Springs, an easy canter in dry weather. The road that curved out of our ranch ran for a time along the edge of the plateau with a view of wide, flat plain below. Beyond the valley with its scattered ranches and scrubby pastures, a border of low hills melted into the bright sky.

  Our path skirted a canyon lined with sagebrush and scrub oaks, then wound between hills toward town. Small birds flitted in and out of the manzanita bushes on either side of the path. My heart felt jumpy with excitement. I hardly ever got to town when school was out. Town meant a soda at the fountain on Straight Street, and the thrill of the train sliding into the depot, and maybe, if I was lucky, a good close-up look at an automobile.

  We found my brothers on Straight Street, in front of the Methodist church. Straight Street runs straight through Lemon Springs, which is how it got its name. Most of the other streets in the village coil around hills or snake along the edges of canyons. All the most important buildings in town live on Straight Street: the post office, three churches (including St. Francis, where my family goes to Sunday Mass), a soda fountain, a bank, and (best of all) a livery stable. The streets and lanes crisscrossing Straight Street are scattered with houses and gardens and a few buildings not interesting enough to live on the main road, like school.

  The Methodist church is a plain board building with a gray spire. In my opinion it’s not half as pretty as St. Francis, which is made of thick white stucco like our house. The fat walls of our church collect sunshine on sunny afternoons and save it up for the gray mornings of May and June, when clouds roll in from the sea. Grandma calls it May Gray and June Gloom—the heavy, dark sky of a spring morning that burns off to a dazzling blue in the afternoon sun. My favorite time to go to Mass is on a June Gloom morning because the stucco seems to glow with a soft light. Also, you can almost always find an alligator lizard running along a wall or perched on a fence rail, watching the world sideways with its little round eyes on either side of its head.

  I don’t know how many lizards loaf around the Methodist church on a regular day, but I guessed today they’d be hiding under the bushes, scared out of their little lizard minds. The street in front of the church was swarming with horses and people. It looked like Papa and I weren’t the only folks who’d come to watch this moving picture business in the making.

  My brothers were decked out in fringed jackets and gleaming white hats, sitting tall on their horses alongside some other fellows. Their eyes looked strange, like someone had smeared thick black paint around the lashes. A man with heaps of wavy hair beneath the gleamingest, whitest hat of them all sat on his horse a little in front of Bill and the rest of the cowboys. Mr. Corrigan was jabbering at him a mile a minute.

  “At first you don’t see Nell behind Bart, you just see him sneering at you, and you’re going to raise your gun and aim right between his eyes. The audience will worry you’re going to shoot clean through him and get the girl as well. The rest of you, don’t draw your weapons; just keep your hands ready over the holsters. You know Jack can handle Bart by himself; you’re just on the lookout for tricks. Nell, turn your head toward the camera. You’re terrified; you’re sure you’re done for. Everyone got it? All right now…”

  Mr. Corrigan moved to the side and I got my first look at a real moving picture camera. It was a big black box set on tall, spindly legs.

  “I’d like me a closer look at that,” Papa murmured. He loved contraptions and machines of all kinds.

  “Can I help you folks?” asked a young man in spectacles, appearing at Father’s elbow. Hickory shied a bit and Papa had to pull hard to settle her down. Didn’t this fellow know not to sneak up on a horse?

  “Those are my boys,” said Papa, nodding toward the cowboy gang. “I wanted a look at what’s been eating up their time. Had to hire me a couple of hands since my best horsemen are trotting off to make pictures every day.”

  “They are fine horsemen indeed,” said the young man eagerly. “Mr. Corrigan is happy to have them. Now we must hush—they’re about to roll film. You may stand back here and watch, but take care to stay still. Don’t let your horses move forward where they might nudge into the shot.”

  A man wearing his cap backward so that the beak covered his neck was peering into a hole in the box. Mr. Corrigan stood beside him, holding a long cone-shaped gadget.

  “What’s that, Papa?” I asked.

  “A megaphone,” Papa whispered. “You talk into the small hole and it makes your voice carry so you can be heard by people some distance away.”

  Just then Mr. Corrigan lifted the megaphone to his mouth and shouted, “Camera!” At least, it sounded like shouting. The man with the backward cap began turning a crank on the side of the long-legged box. My brothers sat up even taller on their horses, squinting their darkened eyes into the sun.

  “Action!” yelled Mr. Corrigan.

  The fellow he’d called Bart gave his horse a light kick to start it walking. He rode forward slowly toward my brothers and the wavy-haired man. A youngish woman sat behind Bart sidesaddle, with her legs and head turned toward the camera. She had masses of long ringlets cascading over her shoulders, and her eyes, too, were outlined with black. She held them open very wide, which made her look a bit like a startled ostrich—but a pretty one. Her brows drew together and her mouth made a kind of O shape. She did look terrified, like a train was barreling down on her. Bart glowered at the wavy-haired man, Jack, and Jack and the other
riders glowered back. Ike glowered so hard I thought his eyebrows might pop off. I had to bite my lip hard to stifle a laugh.

  Jack raised his pistol and aimed it right at Bart. Bart gave a contemptuous laugh and said, “I’d think twice before shooting if I were you.”

  Jack cocked the pistol. He was aiming right at Bart’s chest, and from where I stood I could see the bullet was going to go straight through him to Nell’s head. She was clutching Bart around the middle, and you’d think Jack would have noticed she was sitting right behind Bart, but I guess not.

  “I warned you,” Jack said. Nell squinched her eyes shut tight.

  Jack’s finger began to move on the trigger.

  “Don’t shoot!” I hollered. “She’s right behind him!”

  Bart whipped his head to look at me, and in a flash I realized what a ninny I’d been.

  “CUT!” roared Mr. Corrigan. He wheeled around to face me and there was thunder in his expression. Every single person there turned to look at me. It didn’t help that I was perched high up on horseback in plain view. I had an urge to slide off and hide on Apple’s far side.

  Some of the cowboys burst out laughing, but my brothers looked confused (Bill), sympathetic (Ike), or disgusted (Frank). Nell rolled her eyes heavenward. Jack, the handsome hero, looked like he’d like to tar and feather me, but the evil Bart was grinning ear to ear.

  “What in tarnation!” demanded Mr. Corrigan. “What were you thinking, kiddie? You wrecked the shot.”

  “I’m sorry,” I croaked. I realized I was staring at my feet, wishing the earth would swallow me whole. “It just seemed so real for a second. I was afraid he’d shoot her.”

  Mr. Corrigan’s bristle-brush mustache twitched. The corners of his eyes went crinkly.