I Don't Know How the Story Ends

by J. B. Cheaney

  “Well…is there a ladies’ room nearby?” she asked Aunt Buzzy.

  I already knew there was, because Ranger had scouted this part of the plan too. “At the streetcar station a block east.” Aunt Buzzy pointed. “Not far.”

  “All right,” Mother told me. “Look for my wave when you come back—”

  I tried to sound eager. “But if I can find a spot closer to the stage, could I watch the rally from there? I’ll meet you after the parade.”

  “Oh, I don’t…”

  “The seats are filling up, Mattie. We must seize the day,” said my aunt. “She’ll be fine.”

  “All right. I suppose. But don’t talk to strangers—and meet us at the auto immediately after.”

  Sylvie glanced back at me with a look like a cat-swallowing canary as they started up the bleachers. Though she envied my part in this scheme, Ranger had convinced her that her part was every bit as important and dangerous.

  I fought my way through the crush to meet him at the flagpole. “What a mob!” he crowed. “Sam’s here. He got some shots of the Home Guard drill, and he’s in position for the parade now. You’d better hold on to my arm so we don’t get separated.”

  I barely had time to do that before he dove into the crowd. He didn’t hear my anxious, “Where are we going?” as the speakers’ platform loomed large in view.

  The crowd around it was so dense that we had to dribble our way like sand through pebbles. I gripped his arm, suddenly aware that the band had stopped playing and a tall man had stepped forward with a megaphone. The platform was so high that I could only see the top half of him, and the megaphone muffled his voice. Soon he stepped aside for a slight, dark-haired fellow. A solid roar almost flattened me.

  “Who’s that?” I yelled at Ranger, but could not hear the reply he threw over his shoulder. “Who?”

  “Chaplin!”

  The most famous man in the world looked nothing like the Little Tramp I’d seen on posters—though I saw little of him before the edge of the platform cut off my view entirely. A policeman stood at the rear corner, rocking on his heels. A gust of laughter from the crowd made him crane his neck to see what the Little Tramp was up to, and Ranger suddenly pulled me between the sheets of canvas that skirted the platform. Dust motes swirled frantically in a shaft of sunlight slanting in from a crack in the canvas. Mr. Chaplin, directly overhead, had begun to speak, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “Here we are,” Ranger announced, unbuttoning his shirt. “Now let’s get cracking.”

  I turned my shocked gaze to him. “Here? We’re changing clothes here in front of everybody?”

  “Pipe down! Nobody’s going to see you, silly. Come on, we don’t have time to—” As I lunged past him, he grabbed my arm. “You promised!”

  Then I heard a sound that chilled my bones: a man’s voice coming from the back of the platform. “What’s this? Unhand the lady, villain!”

  I turned to see a man in a pearl-gray suit hanging from one of the steel struts that supported the stage. Even though the ground was only an inch or two below him, he remained suspended, swaying gently.

  “Wait—don’t I know you? Are you Titus Bell’s boy?”

  Ranger let go of me, looking somewhat abashed. “Yes, sir.”

  The man strode forward for a better look—that is, he reached for the nearest iron bar, then the next, like a monkey swinging through the jungle. He came on amazingly fast, his suit meanwhile stretching in ways it was never meant to. “So you are. As a friend of your father’s, I must ask if you’re up to mischief, young man.”

  “It’s nothing, Mr. Fairbanks. I mean, nothing important. Just a prank. No harm to anybody. She—my friend here—said she’d go along, but now she’s getting cold feet.”

  I glared at him, and he glared back.

  Mr. Douglas Fairbanks—for it could be none but he, hero of many a screen adventure—dropped to his feet and straightened his jacket and tie. He was trim and slight as a rapier blade.

  “You intrigue me. What sort of prank?”

  “She’s pretending to be me, while I… It’s perfectly harmless, sir. Scout’s honor.”

  “Ha!” Mr. Fairbanks tilted his head toward me. “A failure of nerve, eh?”

  “No, sir,” I stammered. “That is—well, maybe.”

  He smiled with a flash of stunningly white teeth. “Here’s a word of advice. If you’re having second thoughts…ignore them. Just think of the stories you can tell when you’re old and gray.”

  The roar of the crowd almost swallowed his last words. Mr. Fairbanks held up a hand and said, “’Tis my cue. Farewell, fair maid.” Then, to Ranger: “So long, laddie. And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  As the cheers continued, he ran toward the back of the platform, leaped at a horizontal strut, and with a mighty swing he flipped himself right up over the edge. And landed on his feet on the platform. I could tell by the way the cheering intensified. As for me, I was pretty well bedazzled.

  “Let’s get moving,” Ranger said, handing me his shirt.

  “Is he like that in his pictures too?”

  “You bet—I’ll take you to see one, my treat. Step over in that corner there, and I’ll turn my back. And hurry up! The parade starts right after Mary Pickford speaks, and she’s next.”

  “Mary Pickford?” I squeaked. “She’s up there?” America’s sweetheart, right above my head!

  “Don’t stop! Sure she’s up there. Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Pickford—they’re just back from a coast-to-coast tour of Liberty Bond rallies. That’s why there’s such a crowd today.” He bent to stuff a pair of lifts in his shoes.

  “I would have come just to see her. But I won’t see a thing.”

  “’Course you will. You’ll pass right under the reviewing stand. You could spit-polish her shoes. Now pull up your socks.”

  He meant literally. After I pulled them up, he knelt in front of me to re-buckle the knickers, which I didn’t have tight enough. Meanwhile I pinned up my hair and stuffed my dress and shoes in his knapsack and pulled the straps over my shoulders. He plopped his hat on my head and pulled a gunnysack from the corner where he’d stashed it earlier. From it, he donned a tunic and a helmet that made him look very soldierly, even though both were biggish. Finally he slung a wooden parade rifle over one shoulder.

  “Oh—I almost forgot.” From his pocket he took an extra pair of glasses and put them on me. “Somebody might have told them I wear specs. These are reading glasses, but you should be able to see all right.”

  “Somebody might have told them you don’t have a milky complexion either,” I snapped. It may have been small of me, but I was feeling small.

  He tightened his lips. “Not much we can do about that. Good luck, Isobel. And thanks.” He leaned forward and kissed me quickly on the lips. I nearly choked.

  My very first kiss from a boy! Under circumstances I could never imagine, and I had to be dressed in a scout uniform!

  “It’ll be worth it. You’ll see.” He flashed one of his brilliant smiles and saluted.

  Police were clearing the street in front of the platform when I made my way, all fluttery inside, to the parade staging ground. Another of Ranger’s thoughtful provisions was a towel doused with Mentholatum to wrap around my throat, so I wouldn’t have to talk much. But I had to peer assiduously over the rims of the blurry-making glasses before I finally caught sight of the Santa Barbara troop banner in that milling throng of musicians and Home Guard and mounted police.

  “Are you Ranger Bell?” the flustered scoutmaster demanded when I presented myself. Nervously I nodded; it didn’t seem so much a lie if it wasn’t spoken. “About time you got here. Are you sick?”

  I nodded again and coughed for good measure.

  “Well, don’t breathe on any of the boys. Jamie! This is Ranger Bell. Where’s his flag? Fall in, scout
s!”

  A Golden Bear flag was thrust into my hands, and I was shuffled to the right of a row of three. “Pee-ew,” muttered someone behind me. “Who brought the Mentholatum?”

  The boy in the center, whose honor it was to carry the Stars and Stripes, eyed me curiously. “What was your name again?”

  I coughed to make my voice raspier and told him.

  His eyes narrowed. “Really?” he asked, making me wonder if he knew Ranger Bell by face or reputation, even though the latter had promised me he didn’t know a soul in Santa Barbara, and vice versa. The scoutmaster’s whistle shrilled out, and orders started flying too fast for me to keep up with the drill we’d practiced that morning. I tried to watch my neighbor out of the corner of my eye, meanwhile feeling him watch me likewise.

  Suddenly he turned to me and stuck out his hand. “I forgot to introduce myself, Bell. I’m Ted Spoonerman.”

  A trap, I thought. And sure enough, when our hands met, he wrapped the thumb and pinkie around mine. I managed to do the same, mumbling, “Pleased to meetcha,” like a boy would.

  I passed the secret-handshake test, but Ted still eyed me suspiciously as I fumbled through the drill, trying to recall the many flag-etiquette rules Ranger had told me. The scoutmaster seemed to have his doubts too—if only about whether the Hollywood troop had sent one of their better examples of scouting. Desperately wishing the parade to begin, I almost dropped my Golden Bear banner when he blasted my eardrums with his whistle, calling, “Form up!”

  The troop jostled itself like a centipede while a smart-looking unit of new recruits marched by. I peered into their ranks, letting the flag slip until the scoutmaster shouted, “’Tention, Bell!” Ted was glaring at me. Please let’s go, I prayed.

  “You know what I think?” Ted said. “I think you’re not—”

  “Ready, men! Left face! Forward, march! Left, right, left…”

  We forward-marched into the parade ground, then right-faced and stepped out smartly. I was getting the hang of it—or thought so, until Ted hissed at me, “Left, right! Not right, left.” Hurriedly I reversed my steps to match his as he went on, “You march like a girl. I think you are a girl. Waddaya say to that?”

  I would have said it was a good observation but croaked instead, “Eyes forward!”

  He didn’t have any choice, unless he wanted to draw down shame upon the Santa Barbara visiting troop. Eyes forward, I mustered up a pretty good imitation of military style, but I knew once the route was completed I’d have to cut out in a hurry, before the odious Ted had a chance to snatch off my hat and cry, “Behold the imposter!”

  We right-faced again onto Hollywood Boulevard and the cheering started. In the red-white-and-blue flutter I squared my shoulders as the parade master called out “Left…left…left, right, left…” and the drums of the Triangle studio band beat out a heart-stirring rhythm. Maybe Mr. Fairbanks was right, I thought. This would be a tale to tell my posterity, if I lived long enough to have them. Now that the parade was underway and I felt safe from scrutiny—for the moment—it was almost fun. No, it was fun, just as Ranger said. Though I would never tell him that.

  I found myself thinking of Father, hoping he would get to march in a parade when he came back. Preferably one with confetti, like the crowd started showering on us when we right-faced for the final time. In the reviewing stand ahead of us were Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford in a fetching gray suit and a hat with a long, white veil. Red Cross nurses flanked them, waving white streamers that looked like bandages. “Buy bonds!” they called as we passed. “Buy bonds!” echoed Miss Pickford in a silvery treble that carried like a bell.

  I tore my gaze away from her in time to notice the camera just ahead, aimed at me. There had been cameras all along the route, but I recognized the square wooden box with its cherry hue—and who else but Sam would have raised his left arm to wave at me?

  Then a shocking thing happened: he was seized from behind! It happened so suddenly that he seemed to explode backward. I couldn’t see who had done it and could not look back because another peril lay ahead, namely the reviewing stand where my kin sat.

  Sylvie was supposed to distract the ladies as we approached, so they wouldn’t notice that the face under the scouting hat didn’t belong to Ranger. As soon as I was close enough to make her out, waving both hands from the third bench from the top, she threw herself forward into the lower benches, thus distracting the whole upper quarter.

  I barely restrained a girlish gasp. Honestly, she was afraid of nothing. Instead she terrified everyone around her, including me.

  I managed to keep in step all the way back to the parade ground. We hadn’t even received the “Fall out!” order before Ted announced, “All right, now—” and grabbed for my hat. But I was ready for him. I whacked the flagpole down on his arm. Ted yelped in pain, and a whole troop of Boy Scouts cried out in dismay when the Golden Bear dragged on the ground. I tossed it to the boy behind me, as Ted called out, “I knew it!”

  Aunt Buzzy would hear from the scoutmaster tonight, I thought grimly as I dodged various marchers to get to safety. Meanwhile there were other problems to worry about, such as what had Sylvie broken and what had befallen Sam?

  Chapter 9

  Hearts of the World

  Amazingly, we got away with it. At least Aunt Buzzy received no scoutmaster calls the next day. Either the man was deceived by my crude disguise, or Ted Spoonerman was one of those irritating tattletales who had cried wolf too often. I suspected the latter.

  The other good news was that Sylvie suffered no injury in her dive from the bench because she landed on a gentleman with a rather large, cushiony lap. The switching she got from Mother that day must have hurt, but Sylvie stopped yelling soon enough and was eager to hear how many feet of film Sam had cranked into his camera.

  That led to the bad news. The mysterious force I had seen separating Sam from his camera belonged to none other than Mr. Service, a very irate father. I should have known. Sam had no permission to use the Prestwich Model 14, and now that he’d been caught, the precious box was under lock and key. Ranger discovered this later that night, after making a visit to Edendale under cover of darkness and speaking with the culprit through his window.

  Next morning we held a conference on the front porch.

  “Just the rottenest luck.” Ranger savagely kicked at the gravel as he paced back and forth on the drive. “Sam’s old man wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Where was he supposed to be?”

  Ranger paused. “Well…”

  “Did you cook up some kind of scheme to get him out of the way?”

  “It was perfectly harmless! I just sent him a letter on Los Angeles County stationery about money owed to the water company, and he could contest the bill in court on June twenty-ninth. I figured by the time he went all the way down there and found out he didn’t owe anything, he’d be so relieved it wouldn’t matter.”

  “Ranger! He could have lost a whole day’s work. And he has a family to support!”

  He whirled around impatiently, holding up his index finger. “First of all, we can’t take any chances. Half the time he’s not working, because he has this drinking problem everybody knows about. Second of all, the only family he’s got is Sam.”

  “There’s no Mrs. Service?”

  “Not that I know of. When they moved out here from New Jersey a few years ago, the rumor was she stayed behind. Or wait—there was a family tragedy, I think.”

  “A family tragedy?” Sam didn’t seem the tragic sort. “What kind?”

  “How would I know?”

  “He’s your friend, isn’t he? What do you talk about?”

  “He’s my business partner. We talk business.”

  “Where did you two meet anyway?”

  He threw up his hands. “You girls. All you care about is pers
onal stuff!”

  “I don’t care a bit,” Sylvie stoutly affirmed. “How do we make the picture?”

  Ranger kicked up a shower of pebbles. “There’s got to be a way. I might know where I can get hold of a camera at Triangle. Don’t think it’s being used. If we could sneak in one night and—”

  He was beginning to alarm me. “We’re not helping you steal equipment, you hear? And no more feats of derring-do for me. Why don’t you just tell your folks what you’re up to? I’ll bet Aunt Buzzy suspects something already.”

  “Naw… If I told her, she’d think she had to do something about it. Maybe stop me, or maybe help me. And I don’t want anybody’s help. I want them to see I can do this on my own.”

  “‘Them’? Including Mr. Griffith too?”

  “Mr. Griffith too. And then they’ll see that I should drop school and go to work at Fine Arts so I can learn the business.”

  This didn’t seem the kind of thing parents could be made to see, but I didn’t mention it, since the picture looked unlikely to get made anyway. My own feelings surprised me. To a point I felt relieved—who knew what I might be talked into next? But beyond that point, a haze of sadness glowed, as if some of Ranger’s fairy dust had rubbed off on me. Now I could get all nostalgic about hours spent under a hot sun plastered with flour in front of a camera. Nevermore, alas!

  Because what could we do without a camera?

  “There has to be a way,” Ranger vowed again, as though I’d asked the question out loud. “In the meantime, we need inspiration.”

  He knew where to get it too. A new Griffith picture had just opened, and that evening at dinner, after some raised-eyebrow communication with Mother, Aunt Buzzy gave her permission for us to see it. “I hear from Maybelee Thompson that there are no nude dancing girls in it, like that Babylonian bacchanal of D. W.’s. So, because you did your duty in the parade, you may take the girls on Sunday afternoon—that is, if their mother agrees.”

  Mother nodded. “But Isobel only. Sylvie will stay home and consider her naughtiness in frightening us all to death.”