He took the Blériot into a long banking turn toward the south. A few rifles continued to bang away, unable to reach him. His nerves unwound. He’d gotten the information he was sent to get, and earned another fifty dollars for the mission. Carl had enlisted in the centuries-old legions of nameless men who would fight—or in his case, fly—for whoever paid them.
As soon as he landed and reported the position of the oncoming train, the commanders issued orders. In the twilight artillery crews hitched up mule teams to move field guns farther south. Platoons of bedraggled conscripts retreated in the same direction in the midst of sunlit dust clouds. Steam was up in their locomotive, the planes and autos loaded and lashed down.
Carl sat polishing his Colt. From the galley came the scrape-scrape of a piece of scrap metal Bert used to clean grease from the black stove. For supper he’d fried some pork to the consistency of leather.
Rene came into the car with a Mexico City newspaper which he tossed in Carl’s lap.
“More about Sarajevo. Things are very bad over there.”
“I don’t really understand it.”
“Who understands the Balkans? It’s trouble, that’s all. Dynamite waiting to explode. This may be the lighted fuse.”
Rene explained that the victim, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was the nephew of Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary, and heir to the throne of something called the dual empire. In the province the archduke had visited, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slavic citizens hated the Austrians who governed them.
“Ferdinand, a noble fool, made his state visit even though there were widespread rumors of plots to kill him. In Sarajevo there wasn’t any security. A bomb went off on the motorcade route. The archduke insisted on proceeding. His driver took a wrong turn. While he backed up, this young madman, Princip, stepped off the curb and fired at close range. His next bullet killed the duchess. The Austrians are enraged. War will come.”
“You really think so?”
“No question. The Germans are allied with Austria, and they have planned it for years. Aviators will be wanted in my country. The French army officially organized an aeronautic corps some time ago. I may consider the opportunity. I fear we are on the losing side in this war.” It was a conviction that had been growing in Carl too.
“How was I to know?” Rene said with a shrug. He pulled out his pocket watch, squinted through smoke from the cigarette dangling from his lip. “The Englishman is nearly an hour behind schedule.” Harvard had gone up the line with the Martin bomber fully loaded.
Ten minutes later, Tom Long shouted through an open window. “He’s coming in.”
They ran outside to watch Harvard’s approach over a stretch of level ground studded with small boulders. In the low-slanting light of evening, large rips in the biplane’s wing fabric were evident. Harvard had been shot at and shot up. But the bomb rack located in a grid of wires below and slightly behind the pilot’s seat was empty. He’d dropped all eight of the eighteen-inch iron pipe bombs loaded with dynamite and rivets. Detonator rods in the nose caps exploded the bombs when they hit.
Harvard came to earth with a succession of kangaroo bounces, then a final bump and roll, narrowly missing two large rocks. Tom Long ran out to meet him. Harvard jumped down from the seat; on most aeroplanes there was no such thing as a safety strap to restrain a pilot. The shoulder harness controlling the ailerons on the Curtiss always broke in a crash.
The mechanic fired questions, but Harvard ignored him. He went straight to Rene who said, “Success, mon ami?”
“Knocked bloody hell out of one of their boxcars. Killed some horses and maybe a couple of greaser sluts fixing stew on the roof.” Harvard blew a gob of spit on the ground. “What bloody difference does it make? A bomb here, a bomb there, it’s like sticking your willie in a dike to stop a flood. Where’s that mucker Ruiz? I hope he passed out the pay envelopes.”
“Not today,” Carl said.
“Shit. Nothing for three weeks now.”
“In any event, where would you spend it?” Rene asked with a philosophic shrug.
“It’s the principle of the thing, Frenchie.” Harvard slapped his hand into his palm. “The principle. You have to do something about these bastards.”
“What can I do? Point a gun at them and order them to print money in the headquarters tent?”
“I don’t give a damn so long as we’re paid. My contract says I get an extra two hundred and fifty dollars for every run with bombs, and I’ve made two this week. I won’t be fucked by ignorant greasers.”
“I’m sure there is ample silver in the national treasury to pay us what we’re owed. It’s just the distribution that’s a trifle slow. Take life as it comes, mon ami.”
“Thanks, I’ll have the wages instead.” Harvard used a dirty handkerchief to wipe his nose. His green eyes gleamed in his dust-caked face like some nocturnal creature’s.
“Let me tell you something. If this side won’t pay me, I’ll wager I know who will. I’ve heard stories.”
So had they all: as much as $15,000 offered for any aircraft flown over to the Villistas. Rene bristled at the remark. “How dare you even think of betraying your comrades in this operation?”
“I take care of myself, Frenchie.”
Carl said, “Major Ruiz hears about it, he’s liable to invite you to see that adobe wall Villa’s made famous.”
Harvard dabbed his nose and stuffed the hanky in his riding breeches. “Fuck him, and fuck you too, chums. Anyone who gets in my way, or speaks to the major, I’ll blow his fucking brains to China.”
He disappeared into the railway car, screaming at Bert to serve him food immediatamente. They heard the sound of Harvard’s hand smacking bare flesh, then a yelp of pain.
Three nights later, at sunset, Tom Long again reported Harvard overdue with the bomber. Carl played solitaire and drank a warm cerveza and watched the shadows of the giant columnar cactus beside the railway grow longer, then fade into darkness. About half past eight Rene snapped his pocket watch open, considered the time, snapped it shut.
“He has made good on his threat. We will not see him again. That is to say, not flying for our side.”
Bert had been lounging by the galley. He grinned and whistled between his teeth. Rene shot him a look and threw his cigarette out a window.
“To me falls the thrilling duty of informing the major,” he muttered as he went out.
64. The Day Things Slipped
Eddie scheduled filming of The Cowgirl and the Flivver for the following Tuesday through Friday. As usual before starting a new picture, Fritzi slept poorly. She jumped out of bed at five o’clock, dressed, and without breakfast caught the first car to the city. By the time she reached Edendale the sun was lighting the eastern mountains and carpenters were carrying their tools onto the lot. Liberty was undergoing a rapid and dramatic expansion.
Yellow pine framing for an addition to the main house was already standing. A new division of the company had been organized after much discussion between B.B., Kelly, and Hayman. Its product would consist exclusively of features—pictures of three to five or six reels.
More of these longer pictures were being produced all the time, despite constant complaint from exhibitors who didn’t like them because they cost more to rent, twenty to twenty-five cents a foot, while split and single reels still cost a dime. Features also slowed down audience turnover, hence reduced profits further. So myopic and stubborn was the resistance, many exchanges still refused to release features in one piece, sending them out instead at the rate of a reel a week.
Studios believed short pictures would never go out of style, but features had a developing audience, created in part by a wave of lavish costume epics from Italy that proved immensely popular. The Fall of Troy and Quo Vadis? had played to packed houses. So did Griffith’s American-made Judith of Bethulia. Major stage personalities such as Mrs. Fiske and Beerbohm Tree had muted their scorn and signed lucrative contracts for films.
At the back of
the lot, workmen were digging the foundation of what would be Liberty’s pride, a new shooting stage, walled and roofed with sliding panels of glass. Vitagraph, Edison, Pathé, Lubin were building similar stages, or had them already.
In a new, smaller building devoted to costumes and makeup, Fritzi found her cowgirl outfit on a rack. She carried it to a dressing room and proceeded to change, finding herself mostly thumbs, and shaky thumbs at that. One of the pins holding her padding inside her one-piece combination brassiere and bloomers was open. She closed it hurriedly, fidgeting and jittering because Eddie had hired Windy and Loy for the picture. He said he couldn’t hold them past Friday:
“They’re working on Griffith’s big Civil War opus out in the Valley. Sounds like he’s hired every horseman from here to Tijuana. He’s cleaned out all the local saloons and flophouses too. Two dollars a day and a box lunch for wearing the blue or the gray. It must be some picture.”
The morning’s first shot took them to a stable a little way up Alessandro Street. Eddie now had an assistant, a beanpole named Morris Isenhour, or Mo. Mo had been smitten with pictures while in high school in Los Angeles. He quit after his junior year to hunt for a job. At twenty he was a two-year veteran, efficient and unflappable.
Mo arrived driving the secondhand Model T bought and repainted for the picture. He parked it by the fenced stable yard. Eddie checked the background with Jock Ferguson. Jock said, “I don’t like those weeds behind the car.” Eddie told Mo to find a scythe and whack down the tallest.
The three extras, Loy, Windy, and a man named Luther, arrived on schedule, dressed exactly like the ranch hands they were to impersonate. Loy strolled over to Fritzi, tipped his tall sugarloaf hat. “How’ve you been, ma’am?”
“Oh, fine, just fine, Loyal,” she exclaimed too enthusiastically; she thought her voice was too high.
“Looking forward to this. Hear it’s a comedy.” With that he walked off. Let down, she watched the way his old holster and highly realistic revolver rode on his right leg. The man excited her beyond belief.
Then don’t dither. Collect yourself and go after him.
The picture involved a modern-minded rancher who gave his daughter a Ford for her twenty-first birthday. (There’s a stretch, Fritzi thought in reference to her own rapidly advancing age.) The daughter resisted the idea of giving up her favorite mount, Old Paint, for the auto, which her father said she must drive to keep track of their large range land while he was laid up with a broken leg.
The girl struggled through various attempts to master the car the same way she’d break a horse, convinced it was a useless contraption until the end of the story. Then she drove it to chase and catch one of the hands who had turned cattle rustler. Loy played that role.
In the first scene Fritzi had to try to mount the Model T like a horse. Throw her leg up, miss the running board, fall on her rear twice, then gain the seat on the third attempt. Eddie called, “Camera.” Mo Isenhour sprang in front of Fritzi with the slate on which he’d chalked the number and title of the picture, and the number of the scene. “Action.”
She approached the car, nervously aware of the three cowboys standing out of the frame, watching. About to raise her left foot as though to a stirrup, she saw a flicker of motion under the Model T. She heard the rattle before she saw the source.
Instinct told her not to move. Eddie said, “What’s wrong? Go ahead and—oh, my God.”
The snake must have crawled out of the disturbed weeds on the other side of the car. It was four feet long, yellow-brown, with irregular yellow cross bands speckled black. The diamond-shaped head was scaly, the eyes glittery as black ice.
“Nobody move,” Eddie said. “Fritzi, can you back away?”
Terrified, she whispered, “I don’t know.” The rattler’s head came up, fangs dripping. Her legs quivered like willow wands. Behind her, Loy said:
“Don’t try it. Stand still.”
She heard the click of a hammer cocking. He raised and extended his gun hand; she saw it at the edge of her vision. He fired one shot, then, rapidly, three more. The snake was blown in half. Loy ran past her and stamped hard on the rattler’s head.
She collapsed in Eddie’s arms. Everyone shouted questions at her. She said, “Yes, I’m all right, just shaky. I’ve never seen a rattler before.”
“He was a real grandpa,” Loy said. “Look at the length of his rattles. Back home we call ’em Texas rattlers, but they’re all over the West.”
He holstered his revolver. Despite her scare, the sight of the long blue barrel sliding into the leather sheath excited her. Jock Ferguson said, “Do you always carry live ammunition?”
Loy tugged his hat lower over his eyes. “Why would I carry any other kind?” He sounded hostile, but his expression gentled as he walked over to Fritzi. “Sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. I do admit to being terrified for a few seconds. I’ve coped with mashers and hooligans, what I call hat-pin situations, but this was a lot worse. You were quick with that pistol. You’re no scissor-bill.” He liked that and laughed.
“I’ll have to think of some way to repay you.”
“Not really necessary, ma’am.”
Go after him.
“Oh, I insist. Let’s talk about it later this week.”
Eddie broke in. “We’ll get this shot, then move up the road and do the scene where the Ford dies and you cover it with a horse blanket to keep it warm, same as you do when Old Paint feels poorly.”
Fritzi rolled her eyes.
In the afternoon they returned to the lot. B.B. brought Sophie out to watch them shoot on the outdoor stage in front of flats simulating a log cabin porch. The scene involved an exchange with Fritzi’s troublesome ranch hand, Loy. When he got fresh, she fended him off with a wrench and a motor oil can filled with chocolate syrup. At the end of the slapstick tussle he churlishly dumped the “motor oil” on her head and walked away chortling.
After they shot the scene, Jock Ferguson moved in for a close-up of Fritzi peering through a mask of syrup, then one of Loy reacting with an evil leer that confirmed his base character. Close-ups had once been damned as faddish and grotesque, but David Griffith’s artful use of them had made them respectable and even commonplace.
During Loy’s close-up Fritzi stood near the Pelzers, wiping syrup off her face with a makeup towel. Sophie elbowed her husband. “That cowboy’s a handsome fella. Very manly, don’t you think so, Benny?”
B.B. looked cross about hearing his name in public. “Didn’t notice.”
“Well, notice, notice. Ought to have a better part, that fella.”
I have one in mind, Fritzi thought with a delicious shiver of anticipation.
Ordinarily Eddie didn’t welcome visitors on his set. He made an exception when Fritzi’s friend Charlie showed up unannounced on Thursday morning. Charlie looked debonair in a smart new suit with a fine Malacca cane hung over his arm. She expressed surprise that he wasn’t working.
“But I am. For a new studio. Essanay.”
“Good heavens, since when?”
“Since Bronco Billy Anderson and his partners offered me a lot more dough than Mr. Cheapskate Sennett. I leave for San Francisco the end of the week. I’m a little worried about accommodations. They won’t be able to match what I have now.” Charlie had lately moved downtown to the Los Angeles Athletic Club, a sign of the success of his tramp comedies.
“What happens here?” he asked with a nod at the set, flats representing the rear and side walls of a ranch house parlor doubling as an office.
“The rustler’s driven my cattle off. He’s robbing the safe before he escapes. The Model T gets me back in time to stop him. I drive it through that wall, jump out, and foil him.”
“Fascinating. Why not something simple, like walking in the door?”
“Because he’s put some kind of cactus paste in the gas tank. It makes the car loco.”
This time Charlie rolled his eyes.
Fritzi was hot and unc
omfortable. The muslin diffusers hung above the stage softened the summer sun a little, but even so the heat was brutal. She tugged the front of her dress. The padding seemed loose. That damned pin again. Did she have time to run behind the stage and fix it? No; Eddie’s voice boomed through his megaphone:
“Everyone ready? Mo, start the car.”
Mo obeyed on the run. A few seconds later she heard the Model T puttering on a ramp behind the flat at stage left. Kelly had appeared from somewhere, folding his arms over his vest and planting himself next to the camera. He scowled like a man eating bad oysters.
“Get it right the first time, Hearn. I’m not rebuilding this set.”
Loy pulled his bandanna high on his nose to conceal his face, crouched down behind a black iron safe that stood open. Fritzi smoothed her faded gingham blouse and climbed into the Model T. Eddie called camera and action. She gritted her teeth and accelerated up the ramp, smashing through painted wall boards rigged to break away easily. She braked in a cloud of plaster dust thrown by a stage hand out of camera range.
On his knees at the safe, Loy reacted as Fritzi jumped out of the car. “Caught you, Roy. This means jail.” Eddie insisted on appropriate dialogue rather than improvisations such as “Stop hamming” or “What time’s lunch?”
She started a dash across the room, but someone had set a footstool in the wrong place, a foot to the right of the tape marking its correct position. Seeing it too late, she fell over it and broke it. She saved herself by shooting her hands out and turning a somersault. Jock Ferguson called, “Cut?”
“No, no, keep rolling, that was funny.”
“Wait a damn minute,” Kelly protested. Eddie outshouted him:
“Jock, keep cranking.”
By now Fritzi had bounded up, only to discover that her gay deceivers had betrayed her—come unpinned on one side and slipped down at a forty-five-degree angle, so that she had one lump more or less in the middle of her chest, the other near her hip. It struck her as hilarious in a macabre way.