American Dreams (55 page)

He moved his shoulders to get rid of stiffness, descended to five hundred feet again. With a small pair of field glasses he sighted on various natural landmarks, memorizing them for his report. A plume of wood smoke rose behind the approaching engine, mingling with blacker stuff trailing from charcoal pots. On the roofs of boxcars in the slow-moving train, soldiers, women, and children were preparing food. Some were taking a late siesta under umbrellas, or in shelters made of blankets and sections of crates.

Small villages lived on top of these trains. The horses, deemed more valuable, always rode down below.

A sudden blast of the whistle stopped the cooking and roused the sleepers.

The engineer had spotted Carl in the slanting light of late afternoon.

His scalp prickled as it always did in moments of approaching danger.

Men raised their rifles, steadied themselves on the swaying boxcars. A moment later the old wood-burning locomotive shot beneath his wing.

The engineer tooted the whistle, short blasts that smacked of mockery.

Carl banked left and began his climb, away from the train. Dozens of Villistas fired, and he swore at himself for not pulling up sooner. The sight of the long war trains always fascinated him.

The Villistas shook their fists and shouted oaths he couldn't hear. A bullet spanged off one of the wheel mounts. Another pierced the skin of his left wing, but that wasn't serious.

He took the Bleriot 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
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nameless men who would fight -- or in his case, fly -- for whoever paid them.

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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 he had visited, Bosnia-IIerzegovina, 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. The duchess took the next bullet, but she survived. 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.

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'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 344

Nightmare

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; there was no such thing as a safety strap or harness to restrain a pilot. The mechanic fired questions, but Harvard ignored him, went straight to Rene.

'Success, mon amiV

'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 $250 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
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we're owed. It's just the distribution that's a trifle slow. Take life as it comes, mon ami.1

"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?'

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"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

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Eddie scheduled filming of The Cowgirl and the Flivver for the followi ing 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 346

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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, Pathe, 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
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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.

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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 relief.

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.'

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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:

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'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.'