I Don't Know How the Story Ends (16 page)

“What about the end?” I prompted at last.

“Well, I don't exactly know how to end it yet with what we've got.”

I sighed, Sam rolled his eyes, and Sylvie leaped across the aisle to land on Ranger's chest, crying, “There has to be an end!”

Which had never bothered her before, but we were all a bit on edge. The problem with life, I decided then and there, is endings.

“Don't worry,” Ranger insisted. “I'll think of something.”

Next morning, as breakfast ended, the doorbell rang. Shortly thereafter Solomon entered the sunroom. “It's the Western Union man for Señora Ransom.”

Aunt Buzzy popped up from the table, cheeks ablaze, and Mother was on her feet directly after. A terrified glance passed between them—didn't Western Union usually mean something awful?

Mother was the first to make for the entrance hall, but the rest of us were as close as a cattle stampede behind her. As Aunt Buzzy tipped the messenger, Mother opened the telegram and scanned its brief lines, her face a cipher. Sylvie was bursting to ask what it said, but I kept a hand over her mouth.

Finally Mother looked up, her high color unabated. “He's in New York City. He has his rail ticket and itinerary. He'll be here on the westbound train, eleven o'clock on Wednesday morning.”

That was just two and a half days away! After a moment of packed-solid silence, everything seemed to break loose. Sylvie screamed, Ranger exclaimed, and Mother and Aunt Buzzy started overlapping each other in listing things that must be done in preparation.

The telephone had not had such a workout since our party of the stars—ringing up florists and tailors, and trying to find extra help at short notice to do the cleaning and cooking. Plans were made for a welcome-home party, then scrapped when someone wondered if the guest of honor might not be in a party mood just yet.

Mother called a doctor instead to ask what to do about shell shock in case Father showed signs of it. Hobbies, the doctor said. Plan activities that interested him before the war. A search for photography equipment turned up only Aunt Buzzy's Kodak Brownie camera. I set to work making a list of the equipment we would need for a regular darkroom.

After several tries on the telephone, Aunt Buzzy located Titus Bell, who promised to come back from San Francisco as soon as possible so he could take dear Bobby fishing—even though dear Bobby hadn't fished since before I was born.

And Mother spent well over twenty minutes with my grandparents in Seattle, a conversation that sounded somewhat strained to my listening ear: “No, Father Ransom, we haven't talked about that. We haven't talked at all, because… I'm sure Robert feels the same, but he may not be in any condition to travel all the way to Seattle yet. Yes, sir, but his wife and children happen to be here, and he may just believe his first duty is to… Perhaps it's time to speak to Mother…” To my grandmother she was softer, even weepy toward the end, but the whole conversation wrung Mother out so much that she had to go lie down.

Ranger disappeared for most of the day. He didn't even show up at dinnertime, but that was all right since we didn't really have dinner, just sandwiches thrown together in the kitchen.

Sylvie and I were in bed, after Mother had tucked us in with the most perfunctory prayers, when Ranger tapped softly on the door and let himself in. “I've got an idea.”

The Perils of a Life of Crime

If ever I was not in the mood for one of Ranger's ideas, it was then. Not only did he have to tell me, but he had to drag it out to the utmost level of suspense.

He and Sam had spent most of the day at the downtown railroad station, watching trains. Why? To note where the passenger engines stopped, especially the 217 (which Father was scheduled to arrive on, two days hence). All the trains had arrived on time, and all had stopped at exactly the same spot, with the locomotive directly opposite the telegraph pole ten yards north of the station. And why was this important? The far edge of the platform lined up with the fifth car. All passengers unloaded from the third-to-fifth cars, which were closest to the station.
Meaning
what?

“There's a storage room on the second floor,” Ranger explained, so excited he was twitching all the way to his fingernails. “We talked a clerk into letting us go up there. From the window there's a perfect view of the platform. Every passenger who gets off the train has to pass beneath its unblinking eye.”

“Whose unblinking eye?” I prodded impatiently.

“The camera's, of course.” Ranger said this with a quiet but pronounced flourish.

“I know!” Sylvie sprang up on the bed. “You're getting Daddy in the picture!”

Ranger just smiled modestly while the plan bloomed fat and full as a sunflower in my mind. “But—how—I mean, too many things have to line up exactly right. You have to know what car he's going to be on and where he'll get off, and there could be hordes of people in the way—”

“But that's what I'm telling you,” Ranger said. “It's all worked out. The train unloads from the three middle cars, so that's all the space we have to worry about. And that window upstairs looks down on the whole platform—it almost doesn't matter how many hordes are in the way. So here's the plan…”

The most important problem was solved already. Jimmy Service was working on a Keystone picture and would be out of the way all week. The boys had made a deal with the baggage clerk (probably involving cigars) to get Sam into the upstairs storage room. Not once but twice: first on the day before Father's arrival, to shoot long views and establishing shots of passengers from the 217 milling about the platform.

The second time would be on the big day itself. Sam knew where he could borrow a lens that would allow him to shoot a close-up from the window. With it, he could capture the three of us pressing through the crowd, as well as get close on Father once he'd recognized the man. I would persuade Mother to let us girls greet him first. Then with any luck we would have time to introduce Ranger, who would manfully shake Father's hand, in mutual gratitude and admiration, before the ladies showed up.

“And how do we explain them?” I asked.

“A welcoming committee,” Ranger answered.

“Even if Mother throws her arms around him and waters his collar with her tears?”

Ranger frowned. “You think she will?”

My mother wasn't given to flamboyant behavior, but she had surprised me rather often lately. “Probably not. But—”

“Sam can cut it, if she does.”

“Can I throw my arms around him, and water his collar and all that?” asked Sylvie, bouncing up and down on the mattress as she'd been told many times not to.

“Absolutely!” Ranger grinned. “Tears and cheers, thrills and chills, the more the better. Dauntless Youth clasps Father's hand. The girls clutch him to their bosoms, and all's well at last. The End.”

By then I was sold. Whatever it took, this was a scene that must be shot.

• • •

By the next day most preparations had been made, but Mother and Aunt Buzzy were as tense and fidgety as though a hundred things remained to do. Sylvie made such a nuisance of herself asking about shell shock (which to her impervious mind had something to do with seashells) that Mother finally threw up her hands and exclaimed, “Children! Please go out to play!” That, of course, is exactly what we were hoping for, and as a bonus she didn't even notice when all three of us left the house in our second-best clothes—that is, the clothes we intended to wear when welcoming Father's train on the morrow.

We met Sam at the station and got our establishing shots: the three of us waiting on the platform, the train's arrival in a veil of smoke and sparks, and Ranger and Sylvie and I plunging into the crowd, eager to greet the returning hero. Sam said he got it all and seemed anxious to be on his way.

When Ranger asked about the close-up lens, he said it was in the bag, just before hefting the tripod to his shoulder and setting off for home.

“What bag?” I asked as we walked back to our streetcar stop.

“That's just a figure of speech,” Ranger said. “It means—”

“I know what it means. I'm also using a figure of speech to ask who this lens belongs to and how Sam intends to borrow it.”

A little crease appeared between Ranger's eyebrows. “Sam was pretty dodgy about that. Must belong to somebody he knows. Or somebody who promised to borrow it for him.”

One thing our endeavor did not need was the element of surprise. I was keyed up enough already, and the merest suggestion of something awry with our best-laid plan made me even jumpier. Still, my keyed-upness was nothing compared to Mother's. She came to tuck us in as usual that night but ended up reading the same Bobbsey Twins paragraph twice. I didn't notice; Sylvie did.

“Oh well.” Mother sighed and closed the book. “That's enough for tonight anyway.”

“Aren't you excited?” Sylvie asked in her demanding way.

“Of course, darling,” Mother replied.

“But you're worried too, aren't you?” I asked. Mother was not uncomplicatedly happy, for sure.

“Worried?” I thought she was going to flat-out deny it, but to my surprise she said, “Well, perhaps a little.”

“About what?” Sylvie asked, catching worry like a cold. “We prayed for his safety every night and he didn't get killed. So God listened.”

“Yes, dear.” Mother stood up, hands clutched together. “It's just that…your father's letter was not entirely reassuring. It appears some men come home more damaged than they let on—”

“
Damaged
?
” Sylvie and I exclaimed together.

“Inside, I mean… Oh, never mind. I'm sure he's fine, or will be, but we may have to give him time. Now good night, sleep tight, and all that.”

Give him time for what? I suspect Mother slept no better than I did.

• • •

Next morning the household was already in a tizzy when the telephone rang, and Solomon came to fetch Ranger. Ten minutes later, Ranger searched me out in our room as I was braiding Sylvie's hair. “Sam.”

“Saying what?”

“He doesn't have the lens.” I yanked a little too hard, and Sylvie yelped. “He had a deal with a guy at Vitagraph who was going to let him borrow it. Supposed to meet him this morning. But the guy didn't show. Sam thinks the lens might have been needed, or else the guy forgot.”

“Can't he get one somewhere else?” I asked in a desperate tone. “What about at Keystone? He works there, after all—”

“That's just the problem. Everybody knows him there, and if he borrows anything like that, it's bound to get back to his dad.” He shrugged sorrowfully. It was the most defeated I'd ever seen him.

But my mind was rolling like a Model T without brakes on a hill. “Is the supply room at Keystone locked?”

“Not usually. But there's a requisition man—nobody can just walk in and take stuff.”

“What if the requisition man was distracted for a few minutes by one or two of us, and the other of us slipped in to secure the item. Is that possible?”

“It's possible, but… What's gotten into you, Iz? It wasn't but a month ago that you were crabbing at me about maybe kidnapping a camera. Now you're all game for whatever it takes.”

“Nothing got into me,” Sylvie offered. “I was always game.”

“It doesn't matter what got into who—or whom,” I said. “We
must
have that lens.” We were down to the final shot, my last chance to make the story come out right.

“Must?” Ranger looked perplexed. “I thought this was
my
picture.”

“It's
our
picture,” I said. “And I have an idea.”

• • •

My idea was not nearly as fleshed out as one of Ranger's, as he saw fit to mention. But soon the old gleam was back in his eye, and after thrashing out some details, he rang up Sam while we stood watch, ready to distract any passersby.

“I know… Yeah, but we'll take the blame. Cross my heart and hope to… Sure it's tricky, so what? Look, it's the
last shot
. Once it's in the can we'll clean up the mess… Of
course
it'll all be worth it.”

He signed off with, “Meet you at the station.”

Then we had to come up with a story for Mother and Aunt Buzzy as to why we wouldn't accompany them to that destination. “We'll meet you there at ten 'til,” Ranger improvised. “We have to get flowers.”

“Flowers? The house is full of them.” Aunt Buzzy waved a hand to indicate the bounteous blooms.

“But these are special,” I insisted. “Just from us.”

“Let them go, Bea,” Mother said in the abrupt way she was wont to lately.

And so we went—straight for the Keystone Studios in Edendale.

With so much ground to cover in less than three hours, I was never so grateful for the punctuality of the Los Angeles public transportation system. On the way we discussed how to go about our heist, and I was only fleetingly surprised at how easy it was to slide into a life of crime with the proper motivation. Though we were only
borrowing
the lens, not
stealing
, the powers that be were not likely to grasp that fine distinction if they caught us. To make sure they didn't, the distraction we created had better be good.

“I could throw myself off something, like I did at the parade,” Sylvie suggested.

“No,” I said firmly. “We only want to distract one person, not the whole studio.” That limited our possibilities, and we arrived at Keystone in an uncertain state.

The gates on Glendale Avenue were closed. On the other side of the street, a small crowd gathered about the fabulous panorama. Ranger grinned. “Looks like they won't be shooting anywhere close to the buildings today. All the attention will be over here. In fact—” His eyes lingered on the panorama. “I wish we could have used that in the picture somehow.”

Several of the streetcar passengers joined the sightseers near the film crew, while we went in the opposite direction. A guard stood watch over the gate, but Ranger simply nodded to him and led us down the sidewalk to a loose plank in the fence where we could slip in. He still had the instincts of a lot lizard.

“Look like extras,” he told us, after we had turned two corners and ended up on a narrow street lined with small adobe structures. We certainly looked “extra”—the street was almost deserted except for we three sore thumbs sticking out in the middle. Most of the buildings were labeled—
Prop 1, Prop 2, Prop 3, Wardrobe, Developing, Projection
, and finally
Technical
.

“This is it,” Ranger announced.

“Now what?”

“I'll scope it out. You can pretend to tie your shoes”—he looked down at our tie-less Mary Janes—“or something.”

He slipped away, and I pretended Sylvie had a rock in her shoe: kneeling to unbuckle it, shaking elaborately to discharge the imaginary rock, and carefully re-buckling. Ranger reappeared before I had to do it all with the other shoe.

“We're in luck,” he said, panting. “The window's wide open and there's only one guy in there, Merle Ritter. He's a regular fellow. Move a little closer and try to get him to step outside. Tell him you're supposed to be extras in a picture directed by…um… Hampton Del Ruth, and you don't know where to report. String it out as long as you can—I don't know how long it'll take me to find the lens. Once I've got it, I'll give you a high sign behind his back and scoot out through the window. Meetcha at the streetcar stop—got it?”

I barely had time to nod before he squeezed my shoulder and ducked around the corner of the building. I took a deep breath and marched to the door with Sylvie in hand, ready for the scene of my career. “Mister? Oh, mister?”

He was tilted back in a desk chair, reading the
Police Gazette
. At my voice, the chair creaked mightily as he leaned forward. “Who's there?”

I launched into a long explanation of how we were reporting in as extras but couldn't find the lot, and I was afraid we were going to be late and we needed the work, and so on. Finally he got up and came to the little porch outside the door.

“Who's the director?”

“Mr.…ah… I forgot—no, just a minute. Mr.…” The requisition man was beginning to look a wee bit doubtful. Behind his back, Ranger slipped by like a shadow. “Mr. Ruth?”

“Hampton Del Ruth?”

“That's it! Can you tell us where he's shooting?”

“Nowhere today that I know of. No Del Ruth pictures on the docket this week.”

“Oh no!” I turned a look of dismay on Sylvie, which she reflected admirably. “Did we get the date wrong?”

Sylvie whimpered, “But I saw you write it down!”

“Sorry, kids.” Mr. Ritter did indeed look sympathetic. “Check with the shooting schedule on your way out. It's in the main office, right next to—”

“Our way
out
?” Sylvie cried. “But we can't go now! If we don't get work today, there won't be anything to eat tonight!”

She had learned her acting lessons well. Mr. Ritter was almost convinced, looking to me for collaboration. With the slightest of nods, I said, “Mother doesn't like us to talk about it, but times are pretty hard for us right now. Are you sure Mr. Del Ruth isn't shooting today?” He was shaking his head, while I desperately wished Ranger would pop in view with the much-anticipated high sign. “Is there any other director shooting today? Maybe we could still get a little work in. Just enough for a few potatoes?”