The Nerviest Girl in the World

by Melissa Wiley

  My first impulse was to beg my brothers not to tell. But I knew Mama would be ten times angrier if she found out from someone else and I’d kept it secret. And I had no doubt she’d hear about it sooner or later. News traveled like wildfire in Lemon Springs.

  I took a breath and marched into the kitchen.

  I probably don’t need to tell you what happened when I broke the news. Let’s just say I’m pretty sure I know, now, what ostriches singing opera would sound like.

  I thought for sure that was the end of my watching my brothers make pictures. But I hadn’t reckoned on Mr. Corrigan—none of us had.

  “That man,” my grandmother declared, “could sell saltwater to a sailor.”

  What happened is: He came home with my brothers after a day’s filming. He brought a box of candy for my mother, the biggest one you can buy at the drugstore in Lemon Springs. She eyed it suspiciously and Mr. Corrigan even more so.

  “I expect you’ve heard,” he said coolly, “about your Pearl’s little adventure the other day.” He winked at me.

  I thanked my lucky stars I’d spilled the beans to Mama right away.

  “Indeed I have,” said Mama, unbending not one inch. She hadn’t so much as glanced at the box of chocolates he had thrust into her hands.

  “She’s quite a rider,” said Mr. Corrigan.

  Mama’s chin tilted and her hands tightened on the chocolate box, like she was squaring up for a fight.

  “Good thing,” she said.

  Mr. Corrigan nodded companionably.

  “I need a girl like Pearl for my next picture,” he said. “It’s just a little part. She runs out of a house, sees her mama in danger, and rides a horse to get help.”

  “You don’t have any girls in your troupe?” Mama asked suspiciously.

  “Nope. There was a vaudeville family—ma, pa, three kids—who made a couple of pictures with us in Chicago before we came west. But they missed the singing. Had some real fine singing voices, they did. They felt like they were wasting their talents in moving pictures. Nobody to hear them sing, you know.”

  Mama’s nails tapped on the box of candy. “Hmm.”

  Now, this was surprising. The second Mr. Corrigan had said he needed a “girl like Pearl” for a picture, I had fully expected Mama to shoo him away like a stray dog. But hmm wasn’t her shooing noise. It was her thinking-something-over noise.

  “We pay handsomely,” Mr. Corrigan added.

  “Hmm,” said Mama.

  “How handsomely?” said Grandma, making us all jump. She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen with a mixing bowl propped on her hip. She must have been listening the whole time.

  “Half what I’m paying your sons,” said Mr. Corrigan. “That’s the usual rate for a child. It’ll be two days’ work and I’d see to it she’s home in time for chores.”

  He shot me a glance that was like a wink without the wink. A twinkly kind of look. I found I was holding my breath.

  “Hmm,” said Mama. “I’ll need to speak to my husband.”

  My breath rushed out hard. I knew what that meant. I was going to make a picture.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized how clever Mr. Corrigan had been. Instead of telling my mother his man had filmed me on the runaway horse, which would probably have made her see red, he had (apparently) thought up a whole new story that would use that other piece of film. Hadn’t he said something about needing me to ride a horse to get help?

  “What we need,” said Mr. Corrigan, running his hands through his hair, “is a shot of the horse running away while you cling with all your might. Just like the other day, only you’ll have a good seat instead of hanging on by your fingertips. It has to feel dangerous, like any second you might fall and be trampled to bits. Do you think you could manage it? I don’t want to put you in real danger.”

  “I don’t see where the danger is,” I said, puzzled. “You just want me to ride at a gallop and pretend I’m scared?” I knew it wouldn’t be like the other time, because I’d be in control of my horse. And like he said, sitting properly in the saddle.

  “Er, I guess that’s right,” said Mr. Corrigan, breaking into a grin. “I know you can manage the riding part. But I’ll need your face toward the camera, and you’ve got to look utterly petrified. It’s a lot to think about, and that’s going to pull your attention away from managing the horse, you know.”

  I chewed my lip, thinking it over. The acting part did make me nervous. What if I did it wrong? Looked silly? There was more anxiety in that notion than in the idea of riding a runaway horse. What if I looked ridiculous and everyone laughed, and Mr. Corrigan was disappointed in me?

  “That’s it!” cried Mr. Corrigan. “That’s just what I’m looking for. Absolute terror. You’re a natural, kid. Think you can do that at racing speed?”

  * * *

  It turns out acting is harder than it looks. For weeks I’d been watching my brothers and the Flying Q acting company strut around making big faces and mouthing things at the camera. But Mr. Corrigan seemed dissatisfied with my big faces. His voice sounded calm but his hands buried themselves in his hair, ruffling it up in spikes.

  “Honey, you look like you ate a peck of green apples. Can you show me scared instead of stomachache-y?”

  We were practicing without the camera, since film was so costly and Mr. Corrigan couldn’t afford to waste it on stomachache faces. He kept having me ride the horse along a path with my head turned to the side, staring at the blank black face of the camera box as we galloped past, over and over. But Gordy hadn’t put the gizmo in motion yet.

  “Tell you what. Don’t try to look scared. Just open your eyes real big and stare hard like you see a twister coming in the distance.”

  I trotted the horse back to the starting point and turned her around to try again. Gordy gave me an encouraging wave. It felt ridiculous to turn my head sideways instead of looking at our path ahead. Who rode looking sideways?

  Then I noticed the small crowd gathered in the watching places back behind the camera and to the sides. It was kids from town mostly. Walter Murray, the James brothers—and Mary Mason. And she looked furious. She was glaring right at me like I’d just kicked her in the shins or something. My eyes widened.

  “That’s it!” yelled Mr. Corrigan. “Now ride!”

  I kicked Dinah’s flanks and she leapt forward in her usual urgent way. But I barely paid attention this time to where she was going because I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the force of Mary Mason’s livid stare. If her eyes had been hornets, they’d have stung me.

  “Perfect!” cried Mr. Corrigan. We were at the far end of the path now, and Dinah turned around and trotted back toward the starting mark without my asking. Mr. Corrigan came up alongside us, chuckling.

  “That horse is better trained than half my company,” he said. “Say, kid, that was swell. Just what we want. Think you can do it again with the camera rolling?”

  I shrugged. I really had no idea. I glanced back at Mary Mason and she was still watching me like a very hungry hawk eyeing a nice fat mouse. I noticed her hair was curled today in long ringlets cascading over her shoulders, like Nell’s.

  I couldn’t help it—I stuck my tongue out at her. Now her eyes went wide and her hands flew to her hips. Then she wheeled around and turned her back to me.

  “Friend of yours?” said Mr. Corrigan wryly. He was looking from Mary to me with a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “Cute kid.”

  My breath came out hard through my nostrils like I was an irritated horse. Dinah answered with a chummy whicker.

  “Ready?” said Mr. Corrigan. “Let’s go, then. This one counts.”

  He barked some instructions through his megaphone—taking care to aim it well away from Dinah’s sensitive ears—and the crew sprang into motion. Gordy lowered his eye to the camera’s ey
epiece, and Mr. Corrigan’s spectacled assistant scolded everyone to keep back out of view.

  I gave Dinah an absent pat on the neck, scanning the huddle of onlookers for Mary Mason’s angry face. She still had her back to me but I swear she could tell I was looking at her, because she glanced over her shoulder, and mouthed, with her snooty chin high in the air, Pooh. At least, I don’t think she said it out loud. But I could read it just as clear as if she’d spoken the word—like she was starring in a moving picture of her own.

  Then she stalked away down the street without a backward glance.

  “What’s eating her?” I murmured to Dinah, but Dinah didn’t know either. And suddenly I realized that even though Mary had marched her evil glare away, everyone else’s eyes were on me. A jolt of panic struck me like lightning.

  “Camera!”

  Gordy starting cranking. I tried to put Mary out of my mind.

  “Action!” cried Mr. Corrigan. Dinah didn’t even wait for my kick this time; she just took off like a wolf was at her heels. Or maybe Mary Mason.

  I didn’t have time to think about anything. I just hung on tight, kept my face aimed at the top of Gordy’s head above the camera box, and prayed I wouldn’t make a fool of myself in front of all those people.

  “Cut!” hollered Mr. Corrigan as Dinah reached the far mark. “Get it?” he called to Gordy.

  “Got it,” said Gordy.

  “Good.”

  And that was how I made my first on-purpose scene in a moving picture.

  Ike was happiest when Mr. Corrigan asked him to do some crazy stunt like fall off his horse or pretend to get dragged along behind it with one foot in the stirrup. (Personally, I couldn’t see how pretending to get dragged was any different from actually getting dragged, except that the path had been swept smooth and soft, with all the bigger rocks carted away so Ike wouldn’t clonk his head.)

  But Frank seemed to think Mr. Corrigan had the more exciting job. He peppered him with questions about how the camera film would get turned into a moving picture, and who came up with the story ideas. Mr. Corrigan said that when the studio started back east, his bosses at Flying Q would buy stories from any old writer at twenty-five dollars each, which struck me (and Frank) as a pretty impressive wage. But once they sent him out west—“because of the patents men, you know,” Frank told me—he got tired of waiting for scripts to show up in the mail, so he started thinking up his own.

  “I don’t know,” I told Frank.

  “Don’t know what?”

  “About the patents men. Who are they?”

  Frank rolled his eyes at my ignorance, but he always liked a chance to lecture. It seemed there was a man back east, a very rich, important man named Thomas Edison. He was an extremely clever man with many useful inventions to his credit, such as the phonograph and the electric lightbulb. And he was one of the people who figured out how to build motion picture cameras.

  “Is he a magician?” I said wonderingly.

  “No. But as smart as one. And he’s a shrewd businessman, too—maybe a little too shrewd, is the problem. He buys up patents to things and then he owns the ideas behind the things, and people have to pay him to use the ideas.”

  “Patents? Like patent leather shoes?”

  Frank chuckled. “Naw. A patent is a piece of paper you get from the government that says you own the idea behind an invention and you’re the only person who gets to use the idea. Edison has a heap of patents from his own inventions, but he’s so rich he also buys ’em from other inventors and then he just gets richer.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood, but I didn’t want Frank to think I was a baby, so I nodded as wisely as I could. It’s maddening when the person who knows a thing you want to know treats you like you’re a ninny for not knowing it already. Somehow, it seemed like Frank was always that person.

  “Well, anyway, he bought the patent to an important component of motion picture cameras. It’s called the Latham Loop and it keeps the film from getting tangled up inside. And now Mr. Edison says anytime someone uses a camera with a Latham Loop, they owe him money. And if you won’t pay up, he sends his men to make you.”

  That sounded unnerving. “Like…henchmen? Are they mean?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes they shoot your camera to bits so you can’t use it at all!”

  “But that’s awful!” I cried.

  Frank shrugged. “That’s why Flying Q came to Lemon Springs, you know,” he said. “To—”

  “To escape from the henchmen!”

  Frank laughed. “Something like that. California is too far away for Edison to bother about. At least, that’s what the film company is hoping!”

  “But couldn’t the henchmen take a train?”

  Frank hooted scornfully. “Don’t be a worrywart, Pearl. No one’s coming to shoot Mr. Corrigan’s camera. Besides, how would they even know where to look? I bet those Easterners have never even heard of Lemon Springs. It’s not exactly a bustling metropolis.”

  I started to ask what a metropolis was but I couldn’t stand to sound ignorant about one more thing. I wished Frank would explain things without being so lordly about it. It seemed like there was a lot more to making a picture than riding a horse or waving your arms around.

  Mr. Corrigan hadn’t mentioned I would have to act in other parts of the movie. I thought it was just the runaway-horse bit. But of course you couldn’t make a whole picture out of a girl on a horse. Mr. Corrigan said we had to show how the girl wound up on the horse.

  “But that part would come first,” I said, confused.

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’re going to cut up the film and stitch it back together in the right order.”

  “Why not just film it in the right order in the first place?” I asked.

  “Gotta cut it up anyway to put in the title cards,” he explained. Those were cards with words printed on them so the audience could read what the characters were saying.

  So the next day I came back with my brothers, wearing the same plaid dress as the day before. We were back at the Cooper farm, because Mr. Corrigan liked the big front porch with its three steps down to the ground.

  “Pearl, you’re going to stand in the house where no one can see you, just beside the door. You’ll hear a squabble on the porch and you’re going to walk out right in the middle of it. I’ll let you know when to come. Stop in the doorway for a minute, forward so you aren’t in shadow, and you’re going to see Nell—she’s your ma—in an argument with Bart. He’s the villain.”

  “He’s always the villain,” I said.

  “I reckon he’s just got that kind of face,” said Mr. Corrigan.

  Bart winked at me. It didn’t look a bit villainous at the moment, but I remembered how scary he had looked that time he was holding Nell captive on his horse.

  “You just stand there for a second and watch them squabble,” Mr. Corrigan went on. “Bart won’t notice you’re there, see, but Nell will. She’ll tell you to go for help, and then I want you to nod yes ma’am at her and run off the porch in that direction.” He pointed toward the barnyard. “Then you just stay put. Don’t let Bart see you go. Got it?”

  “I think so,” I said, feeling jittery as a grasshopper. I wished I could stick to riding horses.

  Mr. Corrigan made us practice it a couple of times. The first time, he burst out laughing when I stopped on my mark to watch the argument between Nell and Bart. It was a good fight, with lots of screaming, and I didn’t mind watching it at all.

  “You’re supposed to look scared, honey!” laughed Mr. Corrigan. “Not excited, like you’re at the races.”

  “Oh!” I said, surprised. “But it is exciting.” I heard Gordy chuckle from his spot behind the camera.

  “To you—Pearl,” he said. “But you’re not Pearl in this story. You’re a scared little girl whose mama ne
eds help. Look worried, like you did yesterday. Got it?”

  I shrugged uncertainly. The story didn’t make much sense to me. If it were my real mother needing help, I’d run up and kick the villain. But Mr. Corrigan was boss, so I tried it his way in the next practice run.

  “Scareder,” he called. “No, don’t look at me; look at Nell. Clasp your hands or something.”

  I grabbed one hand with the other and wiggled my fists around.

  Bart and Nell laughed. “You got a frog in there, kid?” Bart teased.

  “Like this, honey,” said Nell in her soft, kind voice. She clasped her hands together and held them in front of her heart. Her face crinkled up into an expression of terror. Then in a flash the scared look was gone and she was smiling at me again. “See?”

  “How did you do that?” I breathed in wonder.

  “Do what?”

  “For a second there I thought you saw a ghost! It almost gave me the willies!”

  Nell’s pretty laugh rippled out. “Why, Pearl, honey, that’s acting. You just think what it feels like to be in a moment—a scary one, a happy one, a brokenhearted one—and you let the feeling show on your face.”

  I hadn’t had to rustle up a pretend-scared yesterday on the horse. I’d been plenty scared for real because of all the people watching me. And they were watching me today, but not as many—not Mary Mason, for example. I’d have died before I admitted it to anyone else, but that mean look she gave me had really rattled me. And I guess it was the right kind of rattled to show on my face.

  I wasn’t rattled today. But I tried to make myself feel scared. I thought of the scariest thing I could come up with. A caterpillar. No, an army of caterpillars. Millions of them, falling out of trees into my hair and down the back of my dress.

  “That’s it!” cried Nell. “You’ve got it!”