Suddenly ashen, he threw his hands over his face and sobbed. He swayed like a sapling in a storm. As a sergeant led him away, a lieutenant explained to Paul:
“You must understand about the major. He’s a career man, the army’s his life. Back home he has four children, girls. He adopted Franz like a son; he was bringing him along. This filthy war is destroying all of us. I must ask you to take cover again. This ground is watched by snipers, and the fog is clearing.”
“All right,” Paul grumbled. The winter cold and their uncomfortable surroundings had started his back aching again. Sammy trotted up and offered to take the camera. Paul gladly surrendered it.
“Keep low, please,” the lieutenant said as he went ahead of them. Paul obliged, bending over despite the extra pain. Sammy evidently didn’t hear the lieutenant. Talking around a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he said he’d be thankful to retreat to some place where they could enjoy a bath and a hot meal.
“And women. How can a bloke get on without an occasional bit of—?” A shot rang out, then two more. Paul watched the camera sail from Sammy’s hand. Sammy pitched forward, his nose burying in the mud. The back of his skull was a red pit of gristle and blood.
Paul dropped to his knees, picked up Sammy’s shoulders, shook him. “Sammy. Sammy!” The sight of his friend’s vacant eyes, open mouth, shocked and sickened him as few things ever had before.
“I must ask you to leave him until dark,” the lieutenant said, crouching near Paul. “I order it.”
“Go to hell,” Paul said, feeling tears on his dirty cheeks. “You just go to hell. I’ll bring him back when I’m ready.”
The lieutenant retreated. Paul held Sammy against his overcoat, heedless of the blood and the sudden stench of the body. He cried. Sammy’s death was the emblem of the nightmare that had enveloped Europe’s golden summers of peace and confidence, turning them to winters of despair and ruin.
Under the pale sun, with the coils of wire growing visible again, he dragged Sammy’s body to the fire trench. An hour later, he buried the remains in alien ground.
He examined his camera. It was broken beyond repair. He felt the same way. He held the camera in his arms like a dead child, wondering how long the carnage would last—how many millions more would perish with their dreams.
88. The Boy
They stood in the same finely appointed parlor where they’d visited before he left for France. Sunlight streamed in from Woodward Avenue. Melting icicles on the eaves dripped steadily. Carl looked bedraggled, underfed, in need of a barber. His lifeless left arm still hung in the black sling.
Using his other hand, he unwound the red scarf with its frayed ends and faded patches, its dark stains and clumsy stitching. Gravely, with ceremony, he placed it around Tess’s neck, drew it down over her shoulders, straightened it.
“The dragons and Saracens are all dead, Tess. I’ve come home to stay. With you, if you’ll have me.”
Tess touched the scarf, holding back joyous tears. She smelled of sweet lilac water and yeast from the kitchen.
“I never wanted anything more. But what will you do? Work for your father? I’ll live in Chicago, if that’s what you want.”
He shook his head. “Prohibition’s coming, sure. Pop’s recovering slowly, but the brewery may not exist in a year or two.” He thought a moment. “I’d rather make automobiles than beer. Automobiles and airplanes.”
“The Clymer company’s gone.”
“I know.”
“But other manufacturers in Detroit are thriving. I know the right people. First, though—” She drew him to a horsehair sofa, sat close to him. He reveled in her nearness and her warmth.
With her eye on a sunlit window she said, “You remember my saying when you left the first time that I’d never let making love turn into guilt—or a rope to tie you down? For that reason there’s something I’ve held back, because I thought that telling you would be a kind of blackmail. I didn’t want you here with me, and miserable, all your life.”
He took her hands between his. “What is it, Tess?”
“You haven’t suspected? It’s the boy. I married Wayne so he’d have a name, but his name really isn’t Sykes, it’s Carl Henry Crown. I changed it legally after Wayne died. I’ve told him why.”
“He’s my son?” Carl said. “Oh, my God. All these years and I didn’t—?”
She kissed him quickly, ardently. “If there’s any fault, it’s mine.”
“Does he know about me?”
“Yes, I explained. He’s small but very quick. He didn’t seem hurt, more curious. Principally about you. He asked a great many questions, then admitted he never felt strongly attached to Wayne. He said he always felt bad about it, but not after I explained. I called Hal on the speaking tube when they told me you’d arrived. He’s waiting in the library.”
She took his hand, tugged him toward the hall doors. “He’s a fine boy, you’ll like him.”
They crossed the marble floor to an open doorway. In the library, the tips of his thumbs and index fingers touching in a way that suggested nervousness, the boy peered anxiously toward the sound of the footsteps. Carl saw the resemblance strongly now. He’d noticed it in the eyes before. His own eyes filled with tears.
“Hal, here’s your father,” Tess said with a loving smile. She stepped aside to let Carl pass. With excitement and a sudden strange sense of contentment, he realized he was stepping into a new world where, one of these days, all the broken dreams might be mended.
89. The Unfinished Song
Yes, Mr. Folger, I have it written down. Outdoor rallies in Eureka, Santa Rosa, Napa, Oakland. Then the parade and auditorium program in San Francisco. No, I can’t do any more after that. I’ve sublet my house. I’ve decided to return to New York. I’m tired of pictures, and the studio isn’t using me. No, Mr. Folger, I’m not joking. Because of circumstances I can’t explain; you’d die of boredom if I did. All right, thank you. Goodbye.”
Fritzi hung the earpiece on the hook of the wall telephone. She lingered there, framed by a rectangle of sunlight. At the front of the hall a stack of empty brown cartons nagged her about packing. At the rear, in the kitchen, Schatze slurped water from her bowl.
The house had a still, dead feel. At two in the afternoon the December sun was already low, the light thin and lacking warmth. Fritzi pushed a strand of hair off her forehead and then lethargically moved away from the wall. She was scheduled to travel east in four days. She would visit her parents again, then continue on to New York and start over in the theater, shopworn and faded, and not a little jaded. Hmm, could Harry Poland write a ditty about that? Probably, but who’d care to buy it?
Schatze emerged from the kitchen to follow her. Halfway up the hall, by a wall mirror, something caught her eye. She put her nose near the glass, picked up a strand of hair behind her left ear. Gray. Ye gods—old age. What next?
She stomped into the front room, annoyed by the clutter—little ceramic knickknacks, playbills, scrapbooks of reviews of her films lying about, waiting to be wrapped and boxed. She kicked her way through empty cartons and cranked up the Victrola. She played “A Girl in Central Park” five times, loudly, then put on Caruso’s “Vesti la giubba.” She loved it nearly as much as Harry’s song, though the clown’s anguished tenor destroyed her every time she heard it. She knew why il pagliaccio cried.
Her status as a picture actress would open some doors on Broadway, but she suspected it would also restrict the parts she might be offered—loopy aunts and zany maids in farces, never Ophelia or Medea. She was typed. After a while, as she reached forty and the little roll of fat around her waist grew big as an inner tube and the gray locks multiplied like dandelions, what parts would be offered then? Any?
Leoncavallo’s aria soared through the house. The hell with packing. She fell into the easy chair and lay back, gripped by lassitude. The loud music masked the arrival of a black and white taxi. She saw it through the window, over the Victrola horn. A man in an i
ll-fitting suit ran around to the curb side, opened the door to assist another passenger, feeble and white-haired.
B.B. Pelzer.
He clung to the arm of a man Fritzi recognized as an attendant from Haven Hill. B.B. came up the flagstone walk with short, tentative steps. He blinked like a nestling peeping at the world for the first time. Fritzi ran to the door.
“B.B. How wonderful to see you. How are you?”
“Who knows? My legs feel like toothpicks. You keep me standing here, they’ll be broken toothpicks.” B.B.’s smart chalk-stripe suit hung on him like a gunny sack. His round belly, and the rest of him, had shrunk drastically.
Fritzi helped him into the living room, settled him in the easy chair. “I’ll wait in the cab,” the attendant said, leaving.
B.B. blinked at the knickknacks and scrapbooks, the packing boxes, the rolled-up Navaho rugs. “Eddie came to me. He told me. He said nobody could stop you but me. You ain’t going to do this, are you?”
“Yes. Kelly’s holding me to the contract, but he won’t put me in a picture. He hates my speeches.”
“Eddie told me.” All at once B.B. bristled with energy. “That Irish bastard’s out. He’s out. I still got majority control. From here I’m driving straight to the studio to take care of it. Now, let’s talk about you. You belong in pictures. Liberty Pictures exclusively. You don’t want to work on Broadway again, all those drafty theaters, cold-water dressing rooms, cockroaches—pfui. Eddie has just the picture for you. He told me. Say, you got anything to drink? Some hot tea? I like English Breakfast.”
Dr. Gerstmeyer had said B.B. could leave his mental dungeon if he wanted, but only when he wanted. She was touched that her situation had been the lever Eddie used to pry him out of self-imposed exile.
“I’m afraid all I have is Earl Grey.”
“That’s British, that’ll do.”
She heated a kettle and fixed a tray while Schatze sniffed B.B.’s cuffs. With a fearful look he patted her. “Nice doggy.” Schatze growled and slunk off.
Fritzi brought the tea tray into the darkening parlor and served B.B. on a small lap tray.
“Ah, that’s good.” B.B. smacked his lips. “What I got to propose came from Izzy Sparks, he runs our Nashville exchange. You remember him.”
“Oh, I do. He had two chorus girls with him each time he visited.”
“That’s Mr. Iz. A low-down cheater on his wonderful wife, but it don’t seem to affect his brain power. He sent Eddie a bang-up idea. Iz loved you in the Lone Indian pictures. Never forgot you. So here it is, two in one. Eddie’s writing it now, he’s nuts for it.” B.B. held his breath. You could hear trumpets.
“Two Gun Nell. Knocking them out in the Wild West! I know you had a terrible time, Fritzi. That cowboy vamoosing the way he did. Eddie told me. Work’s good medicine, though. You want to work, we’ve got work.”
Fritzi’s eyes welled with tears. “Oh, B.B., I don’t know if I can anymore.”
“Sure, you can. You’re a strong gel. You’re professional, for heaven’s sake. So what if you got a cold or the vapors? You do it anyway. That’s acting. What do you say?”
Ellen Terry helped her out.
You say yes.
The first thing Fritzi noticed on Monday morning was Al Kelly’s office, padlocked.
Her old friends welcomed her like a lost Queen of Sheba. Jock Ferguson hugged and kissed her lustily. Windy White, fittingly cast as a town drunk, offered her a snort from a flask, which she refused. No, he hadn’t heard a word from Loy—probably never would.
Fritzi walked out of her makeup tent wobbling on high-heeled boots. Floppy sheepskin chaps over dungarees dragged in the dust. A blue and white gingham shirt fitted her new, plumper bustline nicely. She carried the huge sugarloaf sombrero they’d given her because as soon as she put it on, it slipped down over her ears to the tip of her nose.
On the glass stage, flats created a frontier saloon. Five extras from the Waterhole stood about. B.B. sat to one side of the camera in a canvas-backed chair.
Eddie approached with his little megaphone. His riding boots shone, his jodhpurs were spotless, his tan cap was tilted over his forehead. Eddie tended to strut these days, she’d noticed. Well, success entitled everyone to a little excess, didn’t it?
“How do you feel, Fritzi?”
“I feel like an idiot in this getup.” The truth was, she felt low. Little had changed; the same bleak questions persisted. Where was the laughter? There wasn’t any. Just another performance. Oh, well. It was what she did, all she knew. Maybe she’d love it again someday.
Eddie said, “May we have a rehearsal? Time is money.”
“We got another Kelly on our hands,” B.B. said so everyone could hear.
“Fritzi?”
“I’m ready,” she said in a weary voice.
“Jock, stand by. Fritzi, you know the moves. You dash forward, but you don’t see the cuspidor. You trip, you fall on the poker table, the legs break away, the three card players tumble over backward in their chairs. Do you want padding in your shirt in case you land hard?”
Impatiently, she said, “No. Let’s get on.”
Eddie called, “Camera.” Jock’s assistant started cranking. Standing by the flimsy batwing doors mounted in a cutout, Fritzi poised herself for the take. Sunlight falling on the greenhouse stage dazzled her a moment. She saw a tall, broad-shouldered man hurrying toward the stage with a secretary pointing the way. Something about the man’s build, his confident stride, reminded her of—
No, she was wrong. It wasn’t Loy. It was Harry Poland.
“Action!”
Identifying him as she started her run threw her timing off. She missed the cuspidor, banged into an empty table, lost her balance, and reeled into a canvas flat head first. The canvas tore, and her head poked through. Eddie yelled to Jock to stop cranking. Six feet in front of her, on the other side of the glass—yes, it was Harry, waving yellow roses wrapped in green tissue paper.
“What in the name of hell’s fire is going on here?” Eddie demanded. Fritzi pulled her head out of the flat, unhurt except for embarrassment. Harry stepped in through the hinged glass door and tipped his hat. Fritzi said:
“It’s an old friend, Eddie. I saw him and it startled me.”
“Harry Poland, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I remember some of you from my previous visit. I traveled a great distance to see Miss Crown—I sincerely apologize if my presence disrupted your work.”
Rosetta, the girl who kept track of the scenario for Eddie, clasped her notebook to her bosom. “Harry Poland the music maestro? ‘The Elephant Rag’ and all those? Oh, my God, Eddie, he’s famous.”
“Yes, and I have a picture to make,” Eddie said, folding his arms to show how cranky he felt. “All right, Fritzi, speak to your friend.” Eddie waved his megaphone at the others. “Take fifteen minutes. But I’m warning everyone, we’ll have to work late to catch up.”
Fritzi dropped the oversized sombrero on a table and tried to rake tangles out of her frizzy blond hair. She felt a perfect fool in her cowboy regalia, especially with Harry looking so smart, as always. His gold watch with a matching wristband gleamed almost as brightly as the tips of his shoes, where she saw reflections of herself. He tipped his hat a second time, presented the roses.
“Why, thank you, they’re beautiful.” She looked around, as though for a vase, but of course there were no vases in a frontier saloon. Rosetta rushed forward to take the flowers, promising to put them in water right away.
Harry cleared his throat, reached into his coat. She saw folded papers in an inner pocket, but he left them there, turning to meet the inquisitive stares of the extras, the director, the cameramen, the carpenters and stage hands. He said in a stage whisper, “I wonder if we might go somewhere to talk?”
Fritzi pointed at the rear of the lot, still undeveloped and weedy. “There?”
“Fine, lead on.”
They stepped outside. Harry spied an abandoned rusting
wheelbarrow, sat down on one side of the broken wheel while Fritzi sat on the other.
“I’m so happy to see you, Harry. Do you have business in Los Angeles, or is this another vacation?”
“Neither.” He looked at her intently. “A year has gone by.”
“So it has.” She hadn’t forgotten.
“A bit more than a year, actually. I’ve been in London, rehearsing my new show. I brought a song for you. Not perfect, not yet finished, it came to me in a rush, on the crossing. Do you know that John Philip Sousa wrote ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ in similar fashion?”
“No, is that right?”
“He was coming home to America, severely depressed by the death of a friend, and the march wrote itself in a matter of minutes. I was not severely depressed—by no means! But I had the start of the lyric in a flash.”
Out came the folded music paper glimpsed earlier. He cleared his throat and began to sing softly, in a pleasant if untrained baritone.
“I keep insisting,
You keep resisting,
Saying you can’t love
As I love you.
Dearest, until
The day that you do,
I have
Love enough
For two—”
Harry raised his head slowly, still flushed. “You see why it’s imperfect, don’t you? ‘Love enough’—that’s bad, difficult to articulate. Trouble is—” His Adam’s apple bobbed wildly, and his blue eyes fixed on hers in a way that made the nape of her neck tingle.
“—trouble is, the words express the thought precisely.”
“Harry, what are you trying to say?” She almost feared the answer.
“I’m saying I love you, and I’m doing a damn bad job of it.”
She was stunned by his fervor, and flattered. She noticed blurred faces pressed to the glass of the stage. She turned her back on them, clasped her hands between her knees to steady herself.