I Don't Know How the Story Ends

by J. B. Cheaney

  Guilt descended on me then, because of course I was the one who had done Ranger’s duty. Sylvie looked like she might be winding up to make that very point, but Ranger leaned over and whispered in her ear, and whatever bribe he offered was enough to unwind her.

  I hinted rather broadly that he owed me for putting my reputation on the line, and he admitted that the afternoon should be his treat. Until I pressed my luck by asking for an ice cream soda at the world’s longest soda fountain in Pin Ton candy store on Broadway. With a woebegone look, he dug in his pockets to count the change.

  “I thought you got an allowance,” I said.

  “You could call it that. If Pa wasn’t such a tightwad.”

  “That’s no way to talk about your father!”

  “It’s true. For my own good, of course. But darn it, Isobel, it’s not like I want to blow money on candy or the penny arcade. Every spare nickel goes for film. At two cents a foot, it adds up.”

  “Sam doesn’t contribute?”

  “Sam contributes the camera—or he did. And he usually has less money than I do. Anyway, looks like I have a dollar seventy-five and the picture’s a dollar a ticket—”

  “A whole dollar?” I’d paid ten cents to see Fatty Arbuckle at the Variety.

  “That’s ’cause it’s new and they show it with a full orchestra at Grauman’s Egyptian. If I can borrow two bits from Solomon, then maybe Buzzy could—”

  “Never mind.” I sighed. “I’ll give you the quarter and pay for the sodas too.”

  He gallantly offered to drink root beer instead, saving me twenty cents. And we decided to go to Clune’s Broadway in Los Angeles instead of the Egyptian, because matinees were sixty-five cents there.

  As it turned out, the afternoon was worth the expense on my part, because Ranger for once behaved like a normal boy instead of a crank. Although he still insisted on wearing his slouch hat everywhere, in spite of the stares it attracted. I’d come to suspect that the purpose was partly camouflage for his notable darkness, though Buzzy had mentioned to me that Mr. Griffith wore a variety of wide-brimmed hats. He cut the crowns out of some of them to allow sunlight to stimulate his balding scalp, according to her. At least Ranger didn’t go that far.

  On our way home from church, Aunt Buzzy asked Masaji to let us off in downtown Los Angeles so Ranger could show me the sights, like Central Park and the Sing Fat Oriental Emporium and the Los Angeles Times Building, which had been dynamited by anarchists in 1910. Ranger was too young to remember the incident, even though it changed his life: “That’s when Pa decided to move out to Hollywood. Thought it would be more peaceful.”

  At the world’s longest soda fountain we both sipped root beer while Ranger commented on the characters we saw: Indians and Chinese and Mexicans, and a couple of fellows in spurred boots spooning up ice cream from tulip glasses.

  “Are they real cowboys?” I asked. I’d come to expect motion-picture characters on every street corner.

  “Sure they’re real. They ride in when work is slow on the range. What do you bet those two spent Saturday morning down at the Universal pens, and the casting clerk told ’em to show up for work tomorrow? They’re here to celebrate.”

  That, amazingly, was as close as he came to shoptalk until he glanced at the clock over the fountain and said, “Let’s hoof it—show starts in thirty minutes and there’s going to be a line.”

  The words on the marquee outside Clune’s Broadway read:

  D. W. Griffith presents HEARTS OF THE WORLD

  with smaller letters below:

  Charlie Chaplin in THE BOND

  Hearts of the World was a war picture; I knew no more about it. The line at the box office was mostly ladies out for the afternoon. “One of these days they’ll be lining up to see pictures by me,” Ranger whispered as we crept forward in the line. He laid out the money for our two tickets with the assurance of one who threw quarters about like confetti, then took my arm and escorted me to the doors, which a uniformed doorman opened for us.

  Once inside, I hardly had time to admire the lavish lobby before he grabbed my hand and made a dash for the balcony to get seats in the front row: cushiony, velvety seats into which I sank up to my chin almost.

  “It’s like a palace!” I whispered.

  I had not yet seen enough motion pictures to count on my two hands, and all of them were seen on hard chairs in small, dark rooms with a pounding pianist. Today I was looking down on gilded panels with cut-velvet wallpaper and candelabras that gave off a quivery glow. The curtain over the screen was painted with a Mediterranean-like seacoast.

  “Aw, nuts,” Ranger said. “No orchestra for the matinee. Guess we’ll have to make do with the Mighty Wurlitzer instead.” We gazed down at an organ that looked as big as my bedroom, with enough bells, whistles, drums, and cymbals to make up an entire band. A gentleman in black tie and tails entered the orchestra pit and eased himself between the bench and the quadruple keyboard. Once he was seated, I could barely make out the shine of his balding head, low as a mushroom in the pit. “But it’s almost as good,” Ranger went on. “A Wurlitzer can do almost every sound in the world.”

  While the organist arranged sheet music, we killed time rocking back and forth in our seats until the lady behind us said, “Stop that, children. You’re making me seasick.” The lights dimmed, and the organ blasted into an overture that included national anthems of England, France, Belgium, and the United States, stitched together with march music. As the organ surged into “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” a company of soldiers (or at least men dressed like soldiers) marched on stage and performed an elaborate drill to hearty applause. The footlights dimmed as they marched off, and the painted curtain parted over a still picture of a woman gazing forward under an enormous hat that looked like a whole flock of ostriches was nesting on her head, while another lady and gentleman peered around behind her. Madam, read the screen, How would you like to sit behind the hat you are wearing?

  The lady behind us tapped Ranger on the shoulder. “A question I might ask you, young man.”

  Sighing, Ranger pulled off his dashing headgear as Charlie Chaplin in “The Bond” suddenly blazed up in white letters.

  This was my introduction to the celebrated Charlie’s work, and I was not overwhelmed by it. It wasn’t a story, just a brief parable about different kinds of human bonds—friendship, love, and marriage—during which the main character wiggled his eyebrows and mustache. Then came the Liberty Bond, and a pantomime in which Kaiser Wilhelm threatens Lady Liberty. Charlie (representing “the People”) joined forces with a weapons manufacturer (“Industry”) and Uncle Sam (“Bonds”) to fight the Germans. At the end, Charlie hefted a huge Liberty Bonds mallet and brained the Kaiser with it, after which all joined hands in triumph.

  “He’s not so funny,” I told Ranger in disappointment, just after the Kaiser got his.

  “This is just public service claptrap to get people to buy more bonds,” Ranger murmured back. “You should have seen Shoulder Arms. It starts out when Charlie’s enlisted and he’s training and can’t get the drill—”

  “Young man.” The lady behind us leaned forward. “I came to see this picture, not hear all about another.”

  Ranger’s voice, which had risen to its normal level, dropped back to sotto voce to tell me the rest of the plot. Which I didn’t even care about. All the time he was twitching and tapping his feet and no doubt annoying the row behind us even more. But when the curtains pulled back farther and the huge screen glowed with the words D. W. Griffith Presents, he turned as still as a rock.

  Hearts of the World began with two American families living side by side in a French village. One family is full of high-spirited youths; the other has only one girl, called the Girl in that idealistic Griffith way. (“Lillian Gish,” Ranger said. “I told you about her.”) She naturally falls in love with the Boy in the other family. (“
That’s Bobby Harron—he plays the Boy in The Mother and the—ouch!” The “ouch” was to a thump on his head, delivered by the lady behind us.)

  The Little Disturber, a naughty street entertainer from Paris, makes trouble when she tries to steal the Boy away from the Girl but doesn’t succeed, and the lovers are about to be married when war breaks out.

  That’s when my fingernails, fully recovered from the mauling they took during The Mother and the Law, came in for more abuse. Because of course the couple couldn’t just get married and live happily ever after, with three more reels of film to run.

  When the Germans invade, the Boy nobly enlists in the French army, even though he’s an American. The Germans advance; there’s a big battle on what was supposed to be the young couple’s wedding day; and the Boy is wounded. After the shooting stops, his lover searches the battlefield for him, clutching her wedding dress and convinced that he’s dead. She’s half mad by the time she finds him in a touching reunion scene. Then she goes to get help—but he’s missing when she comes back, which sends her all the way around the bend.

  (By this point, I was clutching Ranger’s hand as determinedly as he was mine.)

  The Boy isn’t dead; he was picked up by a Red Cross ambulance and taken to a field hospital. At the appearance of the “field hospital,” I sat up and stared. “Just like Father!” I whispered excitedly to Ranger. “Do you think the real field hospital looks like—ow!”

  I got the thump from behind this time, but Ranger’s attention was riveted to the screen, where things had gone from bad to worse. The Germans had captured the little village and began half starving its people while forcing them to work like slaves in the fields.

  Meanwhile the Boy, fully recovered, slips behind enemy lines to spy for the Allies and brushes against death’s door yet again before making his way back to the village to be reunited with his intended. But of course the Germans are still there, and at least one of them has lewd designs on the Girl. The French army is advancing, but it appears they may not make it back in time to save the Boy’s life and the Girl’s honor. The scene cut from the frightened lovers huddled in an attic to the German officer breaking down the door, then to the oncoming army, and I was nearly wringing poor Ranger’s fingers off.

  Finally the Little Disturber throws a hand grenade at the lustful German. The French army arrives and beats back the foe. A ripple of applause began in the audience, but Ranger sat up sharply and grabbed my arm to keep me from joining in. “Listen!”

  In the quick fading of applause, I picked up the rhythm of marching feet, distant yet steadily advancing: tramp, tramp, tramp. The music had ceased, and for a moment all we could hear was tramp, tramp, TRAMP, TRAMP, as real as if the rescuing army were about to burst open the doors of the theater. On screen the Boy and Girl clutched each other in their attic, scarcely believing they were to be saved. The organist began playing again, very softly, that jaunty tune everyone started singing last year:

  Over there, over there;

  Send the word, send the word over there

  That the Yanks are coming,

  The Yanks are coming…

  The scene had shifted, and the lower part of the screen seemed to fade out. Vague moving shapes came slowly into focus and became marching men, row upon row.

  I gasped out, “Americans!” and jumped to my feet. People were rising all around me, some singing “Over There,” others silent like me, hands gripped over my heart as I scanned the faces. Our boys, our brave, hearty boys, were throwing themselves into the fray, laughing at hardship and scorning trouble, resolving to stay until the job was done.

  And my father was “over there,” patching up the wounded and cheering the fainthearted. The picture showed what his letters couldn’t: what a noble enterprise and honorable mission looked like.

  “And we won’t come back until it’s over over there!”

  Ranger took my hand and pressed a clean handkerchief into it. “Always bring two to a Griffith picture.”

  Chapter 10

  The Night the Stars Came Out

  “That’s realism for you,” Ranger gushed as we took the streetcar home. “I hear the crew shot some of those scenes in France, even while real battles were going on. That’s picture making. That’s what I want to do…”

  Now that my heartbeat had slowed down and my hankie was mostly dry, I was feeling a tiny bit foolish about getting so caught up. While the picture was running I’d felt bigger and better, like I was part of the effort to chase the barbarians from France. But when the dark recesses of Clune’s had spilled its audience onto the glaring streets of Los Angeles, the world seemed to be going on just the same as before, no matter how thoroughly my feelings had been worked over.

  Ranger didn’t notice, but raved about Mr. Griffith and his own humble film project all the way home. By the time we got off the streetcar in Hollywood, he was so warm to the topic that he was popping like corn.

  “And another thing—you can’t say we don’t need a villain after that. If you took that sinister Hun out of Hearts of the World, you’d have a hole the size of Rhode Island.”

  “Holes can be filled,” I said cryptically.

  “With what? Stories have to have a balance, you know—a yin and a yang.”

  “Mostly they need a beginning and an end, and you keep changing both.”

  “Now you sound like Sam.”

  “Ask Sylvie if I know how to tell a story.” Even if I didn’t know how to end them.

  “All right, Miss…Miss Scheherazade. How do you tell a story?”

  “For one thing,” I said as we started up the drive, “if there has to be a villain in the picture, it should not be the father. My father is the kindest man in the world, and it would be very difficult for me to perform in a photoplay where he’s a brute.”

  “For the luvva Pete, Isobel! It’s acting. It’s nothing personal. You seem to think—” He stopped abruptly and stared toward the hacienda as though it had grown two stone towers and a moat.

  What I saw was a long, low touring car in an icy shade of blue, parked in front of the hacienda. Next, a man with very long legs, in a black suit with a string tie, who was slapping a white Stetson hat against his knee as he strode toward us.

  “Ranger!” he called out. “How’s my boy?”

  With a start, I recognized the high cheekbones and wide mouth of Titus Bell.

  • • •

  I don’t know what I expected. The way Ranger talked, his father never paid much attention to him or was especially interested in anything he did or said. So I was rather taken aback when Mr. Bell threw an arm around Ranger’s shoulders and crushed him to his chest in a great bear hug.

  “You’re growing like a weed, boy!”

  The boy, weedy or not, only came up to the clasp of his father’s string tie. What I could see of Ranger’s expression was curiously mixed. Briefly he clasped his arms around the man, then muttered, “Lemme go, Pa. I have to breathe once in a while.”

  Titus Bell let go with a laugh and a whack on the back that sent Ranger’s breath the wrong way. Then he turned to me. “Is this the Isobel I’ve been hearing so much about?”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” I stepped forward, extending my hand.

  “Likewise, young lady.” Instead of merely squeezing or shaking my hand, he bestowed a gallant kiss on it in the same courtly manner adopted by his son on the day we met. What Ranger had said about resembling his father from the scalp up was only half true. They were startlingly alike in manner, down to the long, flourishing fingers. Even the flash in Mr. Bell’s eyes was much the same, though the eyes were sky-blue instead of dark brown. “I’ve already met your charming sister. Got the bruise on my shin to prove it.”

  I jerked my hand out of his. “Oh, sir! I’m so sorry! She’s—”

  “Settle down, Isobel,” he said, laughing. “Not all her faul
t. She heard the grown-ups talking about my arrival and thought it was her own papa under discussion. When I turned out not to be him, she kicked me. High-spirited little girl. I like that.”

  Good, I almost said, for you will be getting more of that.

  “So what have you been up to, old man?” he asked Ranger, who shrugged in reply.

  “Nothing much. Showing Isobel around.”

  “Lucky girl.” Mr. Bell drew us into a happy triangle, one arm around Ranger and the other around me. “Nobody knows this town like my boy. Say, you kids arrived just in time. We’ve decided to throw a shindig tonight. Spur-of-the-moment thing. I got on the horn to Doug an hour ago, and by golly, he’ll be here with bells on at eight. Bringing as much of the gang as he can rustle up.”

  Ranger caught his breath and looked at me. “Who…who’s coming, sir?” I asked hesitantly.

  Mr. Bell threw back his head in a powerful laugh. “Why, royalty, miss. King Doug and Queen Mary. Prince Charles too, if they talk him into it. Threw your aunt and mama into quite a tizzy. You young’uns better come pitch in.”

  With a warm clasp on our opposite shoulders, he left us, long legs disappearing under the porch roof. “Royalty?” I asked Ranger.

  “Fairbanks. Pickford. And maybe—” His head snapped up, like a hound’s catching a scent. “Pa! Pa, wait up!”

  Then he was gone, and I was reeling with visions: Mary Pickford herself and that handsome, overwhelming Mr. Fairbanks in this house. Tonight!

  For all Mr. Bell had said about a casual “shindig,” the atmosphere inside the hacienda was like Buckingham Palace being polished up for a visit from the czar. Mother was arranging fresh flowers on the sideboard while Aunt Buzzy was giving Masaji a shopping list, and by his quietly frazzled demeanor, it wasn’t the first time today he’d been sent out on a desperate errand.

  “…and stop by Wingates’ for three bottles of champagne. And see if the farmers’ market is still open and if they still have strawberries—but don’t get them if they’re green on the ends, or they’re starting to get that purplish color. Oh, Mattie, there’s something else. Can you remember?”