I Don't Know How the Story Ends (2 page)

In my dream, the earth turned, rotating to a field of splintered trees and plowed-up ridges. As cannons rumbled and bombs flashed, the ridges became bodies, tossed like grain sacks. And lying apart, a body in a uniform, the captain's bars still smartly gleaming. I knew who it was even while knowing it couldn't be:
Bullets won't get me, bullets won't get me, bullets
won't—

His cap was knocked aside and his face turned away, but as I came nearer, the gleam of wire drew my attention to an object on the ground by his head: a pair of glasses, both lenses shattered in the light that flashed behind them.

Sorry, miss.
Sorry—

I jerked upright in the berth, clutching my throat. Just a dream—Father never got that close to the fighting—but my fear felt as real as if he were leading every charge. Sylvie moaned and turned to one side. The wheels rolled on, inexorably:
ch-click
,
ch-click
…

• • •

The soldier got off at his stop sometime in the early-morning hours. Later, I awoke with sunlight bursting through the blind and Sylvie taking up most of the berth. My body felt like it had been wadded up and pushed in the corner. Later still, rumpled and blinking, we three stepped down from the coach at Los Angeles Central Station.

No one rushed up shouting our names. We walked down the platform, away from the chuffing locomotive with its shroud of steam and coal smoke that smells the same wherever you are. At the end of the platform, the midmorning sun leaped upon us.

It wasn't just strong—it was
muscular
, like a burly masseuse at a Turkish bath, kneading our arms and faces and backs with such energy that Mother arched her back and almost purred, “Ah, California…”

When I tried arching my back and breathing deeply, the sweet, dusty air just made me sneeze. Meanwhile, the sun was poking fingers (in a manner of speaking) into my very bones.

“Mattie!” came a cry from the other end of the platform, and we turned in that direction. Aunt Buzzy was flying at us, followed by an Oriental fellow in a blue uniform, who managed to not look like he was rushing, though of course he was.

Aunt Buzzy's real name is Beatrice, but the story is her brother started calling her “Buzzy” when she was born because he was only three at the time and couldn't manage three syllables. Now that same brother, my uncle Moss, is a banker in Santa Barbara and can manage any number of syllables, but Buzzy's nickname stuck. Everyone calls her that except Mother. Buzzy doesn't buzz, but she is busy as a bee, so the name is not too amiss. Also, she's honey-colored from her ankles to her golden hair, with a clover field of freckles (whence Sylvie gets them) scattered across her nose.

She sped toward us with such determination that I felt a breeze. “Little Sylvie, how you've grown!” Our aunt squeezed my sister's arms until she peeped like a baby chick. “Belladonna!” This was her pet name for me, after Mother put her foot down on
Izzy
. “I declare, you look more like your mother every time I see you!” I got my face squeezed instead of my arms, which mangled my smile but didn't hurt.

“Dear Mattie.” This is short for Matilda, which Mother doesn't like but puts up with. The sisters—who don't look like sisters because one is fair and flyaway, while the other is dark and reserved—embraced while Aunt Buzzy whispered a few words in Mother's ear. Probably regarding Father, for both looked solemn for a moment.

“But
now
,” said my aunt, as if one solemn moment was quite enough, “we're going to have
such
high times. I can't wait to show you the house and introduce you to my new family, and,
oh!
to begin with, this is Masaji, our chauffeur.”

Still catching his breath, the denizen of the exotic East bowed to us, and Sylvie and I bowed back. Mother tipped her head, but I could see she was much impressed. We knew Buzzy had
married well
, but didn't know it was well enough to employ a chauffeur—and where there was a chauffeur, there was bound to be a large, shiny automobile.

There was—and what an auto! My father owned a Model T, black and plain as his medical bag, to get around to patients in Seattle. But Aunt Buzzy's vehicle was a long, pearl-gray Packard Town Car with morocco leather seats and a fold-down top, now open to the dazzling sunshine. Mr. Masaji tucked Sylvie and me into the rumble seat, snug as birdies in a nest. Then he handed the ladies into the backseat, clucked around to the front, and sped away as Sylvie shrieked in delight.

“Well!” Mother remarked, adjusting her veil against the wind, “I must say, Bea, you've done well for yourself.”

Mr. Titus Bell had hired my aunt some years back to tutor his only child and finally ended up asking for her hand in marriage. It was just like Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre, although we were pretty sure Titus Bell kept no mad wives in his attic to complicate matters. Thus with an “I do,” my aunt became Buzzy Bell, a name I thought I would never want to be saddled with—although, on second thought, if it came with a vehicle like this, it might be worth considering.

Bare brownish hills rolled along both sides of the highway. “Look!” Sylvie squealed, pointing. “Palm trees, just like in the Bible!”

Her christening Bible has a picture labeled “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” in which gigantic palm trees tower over houses that look like building blocks. Aunt Buzzy turned sideways in the backseat, reached around, and squeezed Sylvie's knee with an affectionate smile. “It will be so lovely to have little ones in the house again. It's too quiet with Titus gone half the time and Ranger acting so serious and grown up. I miss the madcap he used to be.”

(She meant Mr. Titus Bell's son, her former pupil. I had never met him, but soon would, and “serious and grown-up” were not the first words that would come to mind.)

“What's that smell, Bea?” my mother asked. “Not the orange blossoms. Something spicier I don't recall.”

“Pepper trees. Ten years ago they were all the rage. When Titus built his house out here the scent was overpowering, but they're starting to go now. The new people don't care for them.”

“New people?” Mother asked.

Aunt Buzzy nodded. “From back east. Titus has become quite thick with some of them for business reasons. Very interesting…people.”

Mother, sitting directly in front of me, raised her eyebrows—that is, I only saw one eyebrow, but I know her looks, and this one indicated that “interesting” meant something you didn't talk about in front of the children. “So I hear.”

“Look!” Sylvie shrieked again. “Cowboys!”

In the direction she pointed, four horsemen were galloping along the crest of a barren hill. “Where are the cows?” I asked.

“They're chasing
him
.” Our auto was pulling even with a lone rider, galloping desperately. As the other four gained on him, they drew pistols and began firing!

“Oh!” I bolted upright in the rumble seat. But Aunt Buzzy just glanced in that direction before assuring me, “It's nothing, dear—I'll explain later.” Then, turning back to Mother: “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the queerest look came over his face, and
then
he said…”

Our touring car passed the lead rider, who was now hanging over the saddle as though wounded. I noticed an open auto on the ridge, keeping an even distance while another man stood behind the driver's seat. His face was obscured by some kind of box on a tripod. Sylvie and I stared at each other—my eyes, I am certain, as big and round as hers.
What kind of place
is
this?
I wondered.

Abruptly Mr. Masaji turned onto a narrow unpaved road, bumping over railroad tracks. Our shining chariot crested a small, round hill and looked down on a valley of orchards and meadows, crisscrossed by straight roads. Inside each square or rectangle was a house, surrounded by outbuildings and gardens, all very picturesque.

Aunt Buzzy turned to us again, beaming. “Welcome to our little paradise, loves. Welcome to Hollywood!”

The Boy with the Hat

After the grandeur of the auto, I expected no less of the house. But when Mr. Masaji bumped the car down a long, sandy drive and stopped, my first thought was,
Is this the house or the garden shed?
Columns and towers were what I expected—what I saw was a low, rambling structure that seemed to be mostly roof. The peak began somewhere out of sight and sloped forward so far it might have forgotten there was a house underneath. Bright-red chili peppers festooned the rafters and grapevines twisted up the wooden posts of a wide porch. From its deep shade, double glass doors stared out flatly.

“Here we are!” Aunt Buzzy chirped. “Our hacienda!”

Disembarking from the auto, Mother, Sylvie, and I followed her across the porch and through a rustic entrance hall. When we stepped into the front room, our jaws dropped as one.

Mr. Titus Bell, my new uncle whom I'd never met, was an importer of exotic goods. I didn't know exactly what that meant until now: his house was like an Oriental/Near Eastern/Mediterranean/Polynesian/Eskimo bazaar. Taken all in a gasp, as we did, it assaulted both sense and imagination.

The room was big enough to play red rover in. It ran the width of the house, with a high, sloped ceiling and a huge stone fireplace. Indian silks shimmered in the windows, and Persian carpets rioted on the polished floor. Bronze lanterns beaten with Fiji hammers glared fiercely from the rafters, and Chinese statuary crouched in every nook. And then there was the furniture, to which every creature on earth might have given a horn, hide, bone, or feather. At first sight, it stunned me like a whack to the head. I took a step back, only to be poked in the ribs by the tip of a large, wooden palm leaf—a mail tray, mounted on a real elephant's leg.

“I know,” Aunt Buzzy said, laughing. “It's like a museum. Or like a museum
warehouse
.”

“Very…impressive” was the word my mother chose.

“The trouble with Titus is he can't say no to any little pretty that catches his eye. And I can't either. I just adore everything he brings home. We were hoping you could help us decorate, Mattie. You're the only one of us with any taste.” Aunt Buzzy raised her voice to call, “Solomon! Esperanza! We're home!”

Dropping her voice again, she added, “Now where could Ranger be? I told him to stay nearby to welcome you. Though it's hard to keep him close these days, he's always wandering… Esperanza! I'm afraid they step a lot more lively when Titus is the one calling. But he's back east until the end of June.
Solomon!
Oh, thank you, Masaji.”

The chauffeur had dragged in our trunk and was just now setting our two suitcases beside it. He touched his cap to Aunt Buzzy, who was darting from one doorway to the next, peering, calling, taking off her hat, and pulling off her gloves one finger at a time. The doorway on the left side of the fireplace stood open, and from it drifted a jaunty tune played on the gramophone. I wondered if there was a dance going on in the servants' quarters.

“I may have to go to the kitchen myself and… Oh, Solomon. There you are.”

A dark-featured man with straight, black hair like an Indian's had appeared in the open doorway, no expression on his face whatsoever. “Señora,” was all he said.

“These are our guests: my sister, Mrs. Ransom, and her daughters, Miss Isobel and Miss Sylvia. Please ask Esperanza to bring some lemonade and tea cakes and…do we have any melon?”

Instead of answering the question, he just said “Señora” again and departed with scarcely a glance at us. My mother would have settled his hash in a hurry—and wanted to, I could tell. But Aunt Buzzy just kept flitting, unfazed by surly housemen. “Where
is
that boy? I told him to… There he is. RANGER!” she hollered out one of the open windows on the west side. “We're home. Please come in and say hello!”

Then she turned to us with a radiant smile, as though her main problem had just solved itself. “He's a good boy. Just a little preoccupied these days. Goodness, what am I thinking? Let me take those jackets and hats, and we'll act like you're here to stay.”

While shrugging off my coat, I noticed a youth framed by the doorway on the right of the gigantic fireplace. This door had to be reached by three flagstone steps, enough to give him a commanding height from which to survey us.

He stood quite still, his wire-rimmed glasses flickering as he sized us up. His right arm was in a sling. When Aunt Buzzy said, “Come and join us, dear,” he sauntered down the three steps.

“Sauntered” is a show-offy word, but it suited him. He wore corduroy pants stuffed into Western boots, a herdsman's jacket with deep pockets, and a hat just big enough to give his game away: he was dressing up. And, with the sling and all, I must say he was the picture of rugged Westernness until Aunt Buzzy asked him, “What do I always say about wearing hats indoors?” He tugged it off with an irritated sigh, just as the heel of his boot snagged on the bottom step and he barely saved himself from landing on his face.

While Aunt Buzzy was making introductions, he recovered his dignity, bowing in a downright courtly manner to Mother and smiling indulgently at Sylvie. Coming around to me, he took my hand and bent his head, then looked me square in the eye. Without the hat he wasn't so tall, and with that crinkly, gingery hair going every which way, he wasn't so old either. But his eyes behind the glasses were so dark and keen that they startled me, and they were set in a face of exotic hue. I had thought him to be merely tan, but the color was deep-dyed, a smoky bronze that whispered of foreign shores.

Then he bugged his eyes at me.

Which seemed very fresh, but I had it coming, staring at him like that.

“Oh, thank you, Esperanza,” said my aunt as a partridge-plump woman with long, black braids brought in a tray of tea cakes and icy-green melon balls. Solomon followed with a frosty pitcher of lemonade. Suddenly I was ravenous, but we had to go another round of introductions for Esperanza's sake, after which she made a little bob and smilingly excused herself.

We tucked into the refreshments and conversation languished, save for small talk about the weather. After two tea cakes and a half-dozen melon balls, I asked Ranger, “Have you been out riding?” That getup made him look as horsy as Buffalo Bill.

He opened his mouth to reply, but Aunt Buzzy intercepted: “His father's declared the saddle off-limits until September, since Ranger took that tumble and broke his collarbone.”

“Very sensible,” Mother commented as Ranger shifted awkwardly in his chair and draped one leg over the arm—which seemed to be made from the horn of a yak.

“That explains the sling,” Aunt Buzzy went on. “If you're wondering about the outfit, he's adopted the style of his latest hero, Mr. D—”

“
Please
, Buzzy,” Ranger interrupted.

Mother's eyebrows, which were certainly being worked today, jumped again. I wondered if, when my aunt was tutoring him, Ranger had at least addressed her as
Miss
Buzzy.

But the lady herself didn't seem to mind. “Oh, all right. I'll admit you're much less trouble since school let out for the summer.” She smiled at him with affection and he managed a weak grimace in return.

Talk then turned to Mr. Titus Bell and what he was doing back east—something to do with investors and a new company. It went over my head but I was further distracted by the boy's behavior. For one thing, the foot on the floor couldn't hold still, but hammered out a restless tattoo with the heel of his boot. For another, he kept looking at me. Glances at first, then more intently, and finally through a circle made by the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Like he fancied himself as Leonardo framing the
Mona Lisa
, for heaven's sake.

“Ranger,
please
,” said Aunt Buzzy, noticing at last. “You'll absolutely spook poor Isobel. Put your lens away.”

Lens? I wondered. Meanwhile Sylvie had finished her lemonade and gone looking for mischief. She found it by pulling a rose from a vase on the table, which upset the whole arrangement in a thump of pottery and a splash of petals. Mother sent an imploring look to her sister.

“Children,” Aunt Buzzy said, “wouldn't you like to explore our quaint little town? Ranger is a wonderful guide—he knows all the interesting places.” Ranger sprang up from his seat like a jack-in-the-box.

“Remember you're responsible for your sister, Isobel,” was Mother's parting words to me.

Once we three were in the great outdoors, that California light was what Granny would call a tonic—like you could take it from a spoon for a jolt of well-being. The air was warm but not sultry, and the breeze caressed with a scent of orange blossoms. Sylvie whooped and raced ahead of us down the long drive.

“What did Aunt Buzzy mean about you being less trouble since school let out?” I asked Ranger. It sounded abrupt, but I needed to know if he was a fit guide for two young girls in a strange town.

He shrugged. “Just that I'm not trying to get myself expelled anymore.”

“
Expelled
?
” I squeaked. “How?”

“Oh, burning down the gym, things like that. School is stupid.”

“But…” Did he mean for me to take him seriously? “What about when you have to go back in the fall?”

He looked at me with a peculiar glint in his eye. “Who says I'm going back in the fall?”

“Well…your father, for one. You're only thirteen—you have to go.”

“My father and I will have a day of reckoning,” he said rather grandly.

“Oh.” I was trying to decide what to make of that, when Sylvie called out:

“More haciendas!”

We had come to the end of the long drive, where Ranger turned east onto Eighth Street. The houses here were either one-story bungalows or Spanish-style ranch houses with red tile roofs. In Seattle, the tall, stately houses reared over you with glassy, watchful stares, but these dwellings seemed to lay back and regard us lazily. Ranger raced to catch up with Sylvie, calling over his shoulder, “Come on!”

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

He crammed the hat back on his head. The swooping brim cast a shadow that made him look older and wiser—not like a wild-haired, piercing-eyed boy. Catching up with him, I panted, “Is it a decent place for girls?”

His laugh jumped out like a frog from a pocket and startled me just as much. “Heck
no
—come on!”

He took off running again with a whoop and a holler, dropping a good seven years from his attitude. His broken collarbone did not appear to slow him down at all, and Sylvie was only too glad to keep up. I held myself to a ladylike trot and wondered if we were trespassing on the sunny fields he led us across. Soon we were back on the street, past spurting lawn sprinklers and a long, white building with a circular drive (“Hollywood Hotel!” Ranger called over his shoulder).

He turned at the corner and turned again at the next, and soon was loping along beside a long plank fence. When he picked up a stick and trailed it along the boards with a musical clatter, Sylvie did the same. They paused at the next corner for me to catch up. “Took your time, didnya?” Ranger said and immediately sprinted away too fast to see the tongue I stuck out at him.

We had come to the edge of town, where citrus groves stretched as far as the eye could see on the other side of the street. On our side, the fence ended at the corner of a salvage yard. Or that's what it appeared to be, with stacks of lumber, piles of door and window frames, and sawhorses scattered like a grazing herd. Farther in, carpenters were putting up a house—at least one side of a house: a flat front with painted bricks and columns, propped up from the back with wooden trusses. Is that how they build houses in California, I wondered: one side at a time?

“We're here,” said our guide. “Follow me and keep quiet.”

“Where're we going, Ranger?” Sylvie cried, her voice sticky with adoration.

He just put a finger to his lips, with a half smile to show he accepted her worship. Then he turned and led us into the wreckage.

I couldn't see the need for silence; the place was as noisy as Pike Street Market on Saturday morning. The lot itself looked like a cyclone had passed through. Two crews were building things, but another crew was just as busily tearing things down. We picked our way past floors without walls and walls without floors, whole sections of buildings standing or leaning or flat on the ground. Hammers thudded, saws rasped, voices called, and over it all I thought I heard the tinkly tones of a piano.

“What
is
this place?” I finally burst out.

Ranger had stopped at a high wooden fence and tapped his lips again in that secretive way that was beginning to aggravate me. On the other side of the fence, a blast of jaunty piano music began, silenced abruptly when a sharp voice shouted, “
Cut
!
” A murmur of voices, then a pause. The piano changed its tune to ominous rippling chords.

Ranger motioned us closer and pointed to a crack between the planks where I could peep through. He chose his own peephole, and Sylvie squeezed herself in front of him. While squinting through the crack, I noticed him watching me again, lips moving as though he were describing me to companions unseen.

“
What
are you—” I whispered as he whirled back around and peered through the crack. Sighing, I turned my attention to whatever was behind the fence. The sight unfolded in pieces as I shifted my position.

There was a platform built up about a foot from the ground. It was shaded by a roof made of bleached muslin. Soft light fell on two men in buckskin and Stetson hats who were shouting at each other. The music grew in intensity. From their clothes and makeup and the way they stood, it looked like a play. That would make the platform a stage, but where was the audience? The fence cut off my view, but the area it surrounded seemed much too small to hold an audience of any size. And voices chattered continually in the background—theater patrons wouldn't be so rude. I began to notice a sound that had been going on for some time, a whir and a click, and I was wondering what it was when one of the cowboys punched the other—
smack!