BREAKFAST FOR SUPPER WENT PRETTY WELL—SO WELL THE BABY MADE breakfast for breakfast the next morning. Then she settled down to reading about herself. She found her bios interesting, if not very accurate. She would have killed Shulman for the things he had written about her, but he was already dead. She liked the picture painted by David Stein and Eve Golden and wished she could let the authors know of her approval. Yet all in all, she ultimately found her life stories pretty sad. Reading the events reminded her of people who were still very much alive in her mind. Yet now they were all gone.
During the next week, triggered by books, pictures, and old movies, there was at least a down moment for every one that was up, a step back for every step forward, a good cry for every good laugh. It was a rocky road that connected 1937 to this moment, and it seemed that Harlow was having to walk it barefoot.
At first, Boyer had wondered how he could ever tell her about all the events and the people she had missed throughout the years. He wondered how she would take it all in. As she was bright and naturally curious, catching her up on what had happened in history was not that difficult. She easily understood why Elvis and Sinatra had been popular, why JFK had charmed a nation, and how divisive wars like the Vietnam and Gulf Wars had been. But knowing the major events and personalities of the past seven decades didn’t help Harlow in the one area that really mattered the most—to feel a part of them. History had gone on without her, and the more she learned, the more she questioned whether time had left her a role to play. There were no road maps or experts who could even begin to explain how to make a life out of one that had stopped so long ago. While Mickey Rooney, Bette Davis, and even her old rival Joan Crawford had moved along with time, the Baby had been caught away from it. So naturally, every time she considered the day’s date, she shuddered.
Initially, she had been fascinated by clicking through two hundred television channels and surfing on the web, yet that grew old very quickly. Movies and television, when one had no connection with the stars, seemed hollow. It was also going to take time for her to warm up to modern humor and morality. Boyer didn’t know if she would ever fully embrace them. So after trying a few of the more recent movies and television programs, she usually opted to watch documentaries and nature shows. Eventually, she also tired of those. After a week, she spent many of her daytime hours just walking up and down the riverbank, gazing into the sparkling water, and thinking about old times. In the evenings, Boyer answered the few questions she posed, brought her up to speed on how to use new kitchen gadgets, and played cards with her. But what became more apparent each day was that he couldn’t fill the huge hole created by seven decades of not being a part of life. So he helplessly watched as she grew more distant and more alone with each passing moment.
Seemingly unable to help his new friend, Boyer decided to spend the second week in Arkansas doing a little work on the cabin. He found some leftover paint and touched up the trim. As Harlow had gone for another of her walks, he figured he would be alone with his thoughts until at least noon. After an hour of spilling more paint than he actually brushed on the cabin’s trim, it was a frustrated Boyer who loaded up too much paint on his brush, reached up to an overhang, and then watched as a big glob of gray slid down the brush and landed on his forehead.
“You certainly are messy,” Harlow giggled as she walked up on the scene. “You’ve gotten more paint on the grass and yourself than you have on the house.”
“When did you get here?” he asked.
“About thirty minutes ago,” she replied. “I want to tell you, I’ve enjoyed the show. Beats the heck out of The Three Stooges. And just think, there is only one of you.”
Trying to keep the paint from landing in his eye, Boyer ignored Harlow. Yet as he moved his arm upward, he dropped the brush. On its way toward the ground, it slapped him across the face, and then hit the side of the bucket that he had placed on the rickety old ladder’s shelf. As the bucket slid off, the writer made a grab for it. Rather than catch the bucket’s handle, he hit its side, sending the paint can flying straight up toward the sky. His awkward movements caused the ladder to fold, and he and the ladder came crashing toward the ground just ahead of the half-full bucket. Rolling off the ladder, he collided with the bemused blonde, knocking her off balance. As both of them dropped to their knees, the half-full bucket, now turned upside down, landed on top of Boyer’s head, splashing paint all over his and Harlow’s hair, neck, and face.
Grabbing the now-empty container, she heaved it toward the river and good-heartedly growled, “Well, you didn’t have to prove my point! Splashing paint on yourself would’ve been enough! I guess I’m a platinum blonde again, thanks to you!”
Dropping to the ground, Boyer ignored the Baby’s observations and tried to wipe the paint from his eyes. His fingers only made the situation worse. Sensing this tack wasn’t going to work, he blindly felt along the ground for the cloth that had been hanging on the ladder. The woman, whose vision had not been inhibited, watched him with great amusement. Sensing he was about to find the rag, she reached over, picked it up, and tossed it toward the spot down by the river where she had thrown the can.
“Blast!” he roared as he continued his fruitless search.
“You looking for something?” she almost sang.
“I would think that fact would be obvious,” he snapped back.
“What is it? Maybe I can help?” came her teasing reply.
“I think you know!”
“Oh, I don’t, I really don’t! After all, you are a big, smart, modern kind of man, and I don’t have a clue as to what you want. I’m kind of an old-fashioned girl, behind the times, you see. I think they make jokes now about how dim we blondes are. So you’ll have to help me.”
Boyer tried to glare in her direction, but it was useless; he still couldn’t see a thing. He got to his feet, stuck his hands out in front of him, and tried to feel his way back to the cabin. Unfortunately, he was headed in the wrong direction.
“You might want to turn around,” she called out, getting up and following him.
Rather than respond, he stubbornly moved forward.
“Listen, I think you’re going the wrong way,” she warned. “Unless, of course, you need a really cold bath.”
The writer took two more steps, the final one resulting in a journey he had not planned on taking. Stepping off level ground and onto the dramatically sloping bank created by the river during one of its floods, he tripped and rolled down toward the rushing water. He blindly sought something to grab, but all he found were clumps of grass and old leaves. Looking more like a misshapen wheel than a person, he didn’t stop cartwheeling until he had dropped face-first into the rapids. The cold water shocked him, as did the rock that brushed against his temple. Still unable to see, he thrashed wildly in a deep pool of swirling water.
Harlow, whose smile had now disappeared, watched helplessly for a moment. Then as she looked at the twenty-foot waterfall only about fifty feet downstream, she realized she had to do something. Not even considering her own safety, she raced down the embankment and leaped into the stream. She landed in a pool so deep it took her several seconds just to fight her way back to the surface. When she did, she coughed up a couple of gallons’ worth of the river’s water.
While she was making her dramatic entrance, Boyer grabbed a boulder and pulled himself out of the current. Using the water to clear the paint from his eyes, diluted gray streaks now dripping down his face, he looked back toward the spot where Harlow had plunged into the river. She wasn’t there. Turning quickly, he saw her matted blonde head suddenly bob up about twelve feet downstream.
Leaping from the rock and back into the cold river, Boyer forced his way through the rapid. “Hang on,” he shouted above the stream’s roar. Still spitting water, Harlow lifted a hand, but was quickly pulled under by another whirlpool. Boyer swam to the spot where she had disappeared and waited for a moment, hoping she would surface. When she didn’t, he dove into the foamy water. He eventually got hold of her shoulder and jerked her up toward the surface. Their heads cleared the water at the same moment. She frantically reached out and grabbed for his neck; she wrapped her arms around him, sinking her fingernails into his back. For a moment, she felt safe; but then, as she stared at the place where the river dropped, terror consumed her.
“Do something,” she screamed.
Boyer knew the falls were reaching for them. He was doing his best to get them to safety, but a frantic Harlow pushing him down in order to get higher out of the water was taking its toll. “Quit drowning me,” he yelled as the river took them closer to the point of no return.
So now Boyer was fighting the rapids and her as he tried to free his arms from her grip. Pushing off a rock, he thrust them both toward the shore. Even as the current carried them closer to the falls, his strength and determination, along with his two legs and one free arm, moved them ever nearer to safety. But it was too late. Her screams caused him to suddenly turn away from the approaching shoreline and glance to his left. All he saw was air; the river had disappeared.
Harlow screamed all the way down the falls, clutching Boyer as if he was a life preserver. In the two seconds it took to go over the top and land in the deep pool below, the writer threw his arms around her.
Before everything went black, he considered the irony of Gould keeping Harlow alive for almost seventy years only to have her drown a few weeks after she had been brought back to life.