Scene 11

Ira picked me up at the train depot in his new convertible. I rode home in the back seat with my darling Pierce laughing and talking at my side. He had my old Tewe director’s lens in his hands. He asked for my goggles, put them on, and stuck his head out the window and into the wind. His eight-year-old glow was a complex plaid of orange and green.

“BB…” Ira spoke to me over his shoulder. I admired the steady cream and gold that encircled the back of his head.

“So you’re prepared, you have two new adopted children. Twins.”

I SPENT my first season—winter—poolside with my three children, Hilda, and Ira. My two new children, the twins, were named Jared and Baby Ruth. They were two years younger than Pierce. I spent most of that winter watching the three of them play and converse. The twins lived in Mother’s tall and imposing mansion. Pierce and I continued in the guesthouse. Hilda told me she had asked Mother where Jared and Baby Ruth came from and was met with a wall of silence. One of Mother’s assistants brought me the final adoption documents to sign.

During that period, I stopped taking the prescriptions for my “neurological injury,” and the glows went away. After the holidays, Ira got me shoehorned in at Lion Heart Pictures.

The former Dashing Nash Movies had been resurrected and renamed. Businessmen and executives I rarely saw owned the studio. I was assigned a rewrite of a script titled Chuck’s Big Mistake. Another writer was doing the dialogue, and I was told to focus on settings, scenes, and situations. The memo I received ordered me to “add spice and explosive turns of fate.”

Chuck’s Big Mistake was a hit, especially with the targeted teenage audience. Chuck’s sidekick in that film was elevated to costar in the follow-up, The Misadventures of Chuck & Coots.

As before, I worked on the third installment while the second was produced. We were gifted by a visit to the writing office by the executives. As a team, we were thanked for helping the studio “find and strike the vein.”

After what I had experienced in my short life, working in comedy was foreign to me. What I had a knack for was providing unexpected and dangerous twists to be overcome—like tossing lit dynamite into a dining room scene. I was constantly reminded by memo to add “surprises that throw audiences back in their seats.”

Some of the misadventures were easy for me to come up with. Pierce and the twins provided what I thought were comical situations and material to expand on. Most of their poolside play centered on making adventure and rescue movies. I would write and sketch and take the pages to Lion Heart where the film’s trajectory was predetermined—another rescue story with many pratfalls as the incompetent and, I suppose, humorous Chuck and Coots pursued a lovely actress through a haunted mansion. Most of my odd and dangerous twists were included in the scripts. The fourth C&C film, Chuck & Coots at War, worked the same vein—rescue and slapstick. This time, the film was set in the Army with the primary location in a foreign, tropical war zone.

While number four was in preproduction, the screenplay needing only minor rewrites, I began an independent story and screenplay. The working title was Pain Staking, and I was given the green light to work on it part-time because of the continued success of the C&C films. What I held back from my fellow writers and the executives was the intended return of 3D. I studied and adopted the once-failed camera-as-character approach based on my interest and delight in the film The Lady in the Lake. My script for Pain Staking was largely void of dialogue for the main character, an escaped felon. The script was green-lighted for Coots, whose star had eclipsed Chuck’s.

The escaped felon first crosses wide-open country to an abandoned silver mine high up on a mountain. There’s a ghost town and a narrow row of buildings. The felon searches the buildings assembling clues to a mystery the audience doesn’t yet grasp. He is stressed and worried by the authorities hot on his trail. He can see them far down the mountain, their train of vehicles climbing the winding roads dragging up dust clouds. He devises ways to slow their approach including placing dynamite from the mine on the bridge with the plunger set under a board. The felon begins to search for the elderly, rogue US marshal who has hidden a kidnapped woman somewhere in the camp town. It’s the woman the felon is trying to rescue. The authorities are continuing up the mountain from the east and, as the clock ticks, he searches for the girl, finding clues. The felon attacks the marshal and is injured. He carries on, wounded and pressed for time.

Alongside the incomplete script in my typewriter were the storyboards that showed the trolley paths for the cameras which would be the felon’s eyes through the story.

During that year, three of us were assigned to writing a space-adventure script, C&C five rewrites, and segments of a madman-on-an-airplane film. Pain Staking languished at times. Other days, it was encouraged and supported, the difference in studio attitude being the company’s financial status and my link to the continued success of the C&C movies.

The love for the Chuck and Coots movies turned sour with number five. We were told that the proceeds were disappointing, that the “vein has been played out.”

Pain Staking went into preproduction. I was told that the script and camera format were risky and odd enough to make it either a surprise hit or an expensive crash and burn.

WHEN WORK allowed, I spent my evenings poolside with Pierce, Jared, and Baby Ruth. The three of them were like little birds and had a way of play that kept me grinning. Pierce often directed their activities. Jared was attentive, smiling, and distant. Baby Ruth clearly adored her twin brother and was a constant beside him, the two head-to-head in their private and merry conversations. During the evening pool parties, Hilda would enjoy a respite with her magazines at the umbrella table when Ira wasn’t with her. It pleased me to see the affection that Hilda and Ira had developed. They, like Jared and Baby Ruth, appeared to have their own language and wavelength.

The children’s play was mostly movie making—Pierce with his Tewe director’s lens and his siblings as his cast and crew. The three of them dreamed up plots in between swims, sitting on their beach towels, and crunching and sucking on popsicles. Pierce directed, speaking in his crisp voice under the black circle of the round Tewe lens. Other times, Pierce would wander off with the lens and film the garage, our guest house, or the clouds while the twins talked in soft voices in their smiling, private world. I enjoyed the contrast between Pierce’s red hair and freckles and the tan skin and black hair of Jared and Baby Ruth.

Ira and Hilda and I were sitting on another warm, golden evening when I realized my brain had changed. I was studying Jared’s face. He was focused on what Baby Ruth was whispering, his steady, intelligent expression locked on her. The change had come suddenly.

There were his delicate and lovely eyelashes. It had been years since I had been able to see this way—this completely, this deeply.

There was a crack and splash—my water glass hitting the pool deck.

The clean, white circles around chocolate colored windows revealed Jared’s fine intelligence and personality.

I could see his eyes.

“BB?” Ira tried to stir me.

I waved him away and stared, fearful that my new son’s eyes would dissolve into the usual smooth skin I had seen for so long. I watched humor brighten in them as Baby Ruth rolled back laughing.

Hilda scratched her chair back, standing to help clean up the glass. I didn’t move. Jared’s nose crinkled upward accenting the delight in his gaze, and he turned away from his sister. He looked across the lawn between us and aimed his beautiful, lively eyes to mine. His expression went neutral. Baby Ruth was giggling and pedaling her bare feet to the sky. Hilda was at my knees picking up pieces of glass. Jared and I continued to look deep into one another without so much as a blink.

“BB?” Ira said.

Jared’s face relaxed, and his expression was peaceful and knowing. Baby Ruth bumped his shoulder, and his stare continued. That darling and handsome boy. He raised one of his hands and waved gently. I began to raise mine. Pierce yelled from the pool, and Jared let out a sideways smile. Then something wonderful happened—Jared winked at me.

He turned to Pierce and yelled back as he took Baby Ruth’s chubby hand. Pierce slid the director’s lens aside to bark a direction, and there were his wide, sweet, amused eyes. I studied him while he yelled across the water to Baby Ruth telling her to sit up and scoot away from Jared. Pierce’s eyes were an amazing blue-gray. He stood chest deep in the warm pool water waiting patiently and watching his siblings from the side of his lens. There was relief in his eyes when Baby Ruth did as directed. I followed the aim of the raised lens to Baby Ruth’s lovely, tan face and saw that her eyes were sleepy and cocoa colored—and watching Jared closely.

I heard Hilda say, “BB, please move so I can sweep.”

Ira said, “We have a production meeting at 8:00 a.m.”

I turned in my chair, carefully, and slid it back from Hilda’s broom and dustpan, giving all my focus to the three children, my three young ones.

The sun set, and we all stayed poolside illuminated by the aqua lights from the water and candles glowing on the umbrella table. Ira and Hilda had taken each other’s hands and held on tenderly. The children sat in a triangle on their colorful beach towels sharing a bowl of saltines. Ira talked softly about the progress on Pain Staking.

On a night of such surprise, grace, and wonder, we all stayed within our usual roles and patterns of conversation. Hilda nudged the three children into saying their good nights to one another before she gathered Pierce’s beach towel and his lens. I received a brushing good-night kiss from Pierce and told him I would be back to the guesthouse in a few. Gathering up Jared and Baby Ruth’s damp towels and the saltines bowl, I walked with them from the pool area and along the garden path to Mother’s mansion which was lit from all the second-story windows and balconies. Music and many voices carried from above the garden doors. I stopped at the edge of the brush brick patio. Jared and Baby Ruth headed to the door to the dark first story. Like the nights before, I waited until one of Mother’s assistants appeared from the shadows and took both of my children’s hands. She turned with them, silently. Jared let himself be led a few steps before he locked his knees and turned. Looking over his shoulder, he winked at me again under the falling wave of his jet-black hair.

CASTING CHANGES for Pain Staking occurred as different opinions and money concerns were worked out. The director, Mr. Stephens, had his own ideas and passions. He’d had a string of successes before the big war and during the conflict with his newsreels. Mr. Stephens adjusted the script and storyboards, dialogue, and crew selection. Ira was thankfully kept on as the 3D cinematographer.

When filming began, I wasn’t invited to the set. Those days were spent in the narrow writers’ office in the building across from Soundstage Four. From time to time, I was told to dash over to transcribe revisions, mostly changes to the visual design. I was allowed to stand in the back of the screening room during dailies but was seldom noticed or called upon. Pain Staking was no longer my film as it morphed into Mr. Stephens’s property. He had his own vision and thematic concerns. The movie’s story was lost on me by then, but I delighted in the main character’s movements within the subjective 3D world and view.

With my involvement reduced, I was assigned to other projects and followed the progress of the Pain Staking production through conversations with Ira. My days became short, and my workload lightened, and the chatter among my fellow writers in our skinny office was that if the film hung, so would I.

During those summer weeks, Los Angeles and the Hollywood enclave were encased in a heat wave, a row of days in a hundred-degree swelter under hazy, white skies. I was home one midweek afternoon waiting for Pierce to find his swimsuit, looking forward to another pool party with his brother and sister. I gazed out our guesthouse door to Mother’s mansion higher up on the hill and squinted from the sweat on my brow. Two days prior, I had noted that the pool water had turned and needed chemicals and a leaf net sweeping. Standing there, I saw that the lawn was fading to yellow and needed mowing. Pierce ran past me from the guesthouse dragging his beach towel and grasping his director’s lens close to his chest. The patio doors of Mother’s stately home opened and released Jared and Baby Ruth. The first floor was dark as usual. The balcony doors and windows of the second story were lit.

I turned my attention to the antics of my three kids. Jared entered the pool area carrying his sailboat, a gift from me on the twins’ recent birthday. The three were going to continue their ocean adventure movie. He carried the foot-long wooden sailboat close to his chest, and when his thoughtful eyes looked at it, I saw sadness. The boat was missing its mast and had been nearly broken in half.

“Mother came into my room while I was asleep,” he said, as though that was explanation enough.

Hilda appeared from behind Jared and his sister, with one arm draped in colorful towels and a beach bag over her shoulder. She held a snack bowl in her free hand. Behind her, the patio doors remained open, and I got my first glimpse of the Doc and the Blonde, as Hilda described them, standing half in sunlight with their chests and faces in the shadows. Hilda had explained that the two had taken up residence in the mansion on the same day Jared and Baby Ruth arrived. This couple looked down at us until Hilda followed Jared and Baby Ruth onto the pool deck. When the double glass patio doors closed, I turned my attention to my three.

On the Sunday morning three days later, I was summoned to Mother’s mansion. I answered the telephone in the kitchen in the guesthouse reaching over from the small table where Pierce and Ira were dismantling and studying a 16mm camera.

The voice on the line was a man’s, and I decided it was the Doc, the only male member of the household that I knew of.

“Your wife would like to speak to you,” he said.

Hearing “wife,” I paused. There had never been a marriage. Before I could say anything, the call clicked off.

The grounds were looking worse for wear, wilted from the current heat wave. Past the garden, the planters on the large patio held sun-fried, crisp, dead flowers. A lounge for sunbathing lay on its side and the outdoor dining tables and chairs were pushed this way and that. The brush bricks were littered with dead leaves, dust, and flotsam.

Before me was the back entrance to Mother’s imposing and once well-kept palatial residence. That was no more—the mansion looked tired and neglected. Peeling paint and unwashed windows. An overflowing garbage can was next to a haphazard stack of storage boxes. There were two mounds of castaway clothing, broken sections of wallboard, and worn, abandoned furniture.

I entered the big room for the first time in years. The floors, walls, and ceiling had been repainted, and the furniture had new fabric. The primary color was a green covered with fine, snakelike ribbons of salmon pink. Dirty glasses and plates of dried, wrinkled food lay everywhere. I wove through the couches and low tables of the first room and entered the second, which swept out to the right, to the southern draped windows on the far side of the dining area. The third large room to the left included the foyer and entry hall. There were at least two weeks of mail on the green tiles under the mailbox slot beside the front doors. I walked around to the base of the stairs. The steps were stained from spills and needed vacuuming. The air was stale and unpleasant, and it reeked of burned food and medicinal or, less likely, cleaning supplies.

Halfway up the stairs, a door opened on the landing. I looked up through the banister posts. I stopped. An immense woman in an ill-fitting Hawaiian dress stepped to the rail. She wore a telephone headset, and the cloth cord trailed her very large, bare feet. She held a silver tray in her over-inflated hands and looked at me with mild surprise.

“Who are you? No. What are you doing in the house?” Her soft and playful voice contrasted with the scowl on her fat, creased face.

Before I could reply, another door opened from the left side of the landing, and the blonde walked into view.

“Go plug in and get back to work,” she told the large woman, who nodded her downcast head, her three chins bobbing.

“I’m here to see Mother,” I said to the blonde. She was wearing a white cotton dress that resembled a nurse’s uniform. Her expression was hostile and stern.

“She changed her mind,” she said firmly. She extended a thick, blue folder to me. I climbed the remaining steps between us.

“I wrote out her instructions,” she said, handing me the packet. “Her needs.” She added.

I scanned the other doors wondering which ones belonged to Jared and Baby Ruth. Something nudged my knuckles, and I looked down. The blonde was handing me a pen. All the doors looked the same except the ornate carved double doors at the end of the landing, painted a baby pink—it had to be the entrance to Mother’s room.

The blonde cleared her throat.

I was trying to imagine Jared and Baby Ruth living in this place of stale air, filth, and silence.

“Leave.”

I wanted to ask for a quick look inside the kid’s rooms, but I didn’t. Her tone and posture turned me around, and I went downstairs. I was about to leave the mansion when I was drawn to a side door with a brass kick plate.

It was a large kitchen more like that of a restaurant than a house. There were two of everything—refrigerators, freezers, stoves, and ovens. There was a long worktable under hanging pots and pans and cutlery. Everywhere I looked, the surfaces were distraught with old food and unwashed dinnerware and clutter. Sitting on a tall chair before the left sink, I opened the latticed blinds and sprayed the blue folder in sunlight. I opened it and flipped through the many pages, signing my name beside every red underline. I gave the documents enough attention to see that I was authorizing the sale of the mansion which, like our prior homes, was in my name.

Underneath the sales contract was a common-law marriage agreement. It was already filled in and had a notarized seal from the state of North Carolina. All that was missing was my signature. I paused, pen in hand. I hadn’t seen Mother in several years. A long time ago, I had rescued her. Maybe the marriage would make her feel safe? Perhaps thaw her heart? I didn’t know. I signed the agreement.

Looking out the grimy kitchen window and down the hill, I saw the sparkling, blue wavering water of the swimming pool. I was distracted by the smell of burned and rotted food, so I took the folder with me out into the fresh air.

THE NEXT morning, Hilda collected Pierce to drive him to school, and I went off to put my smoking, blue automobile in the repair shop. After a short day in the writers’ office, mostly working on rewrites to the space-adventure film, I took the bus to pick up my car. The tall, old man in green coveralls had diagnosed the motor. It was terminal. He gave me the price for a replacement, and I took the bus home, not approving the repairs because I didn’t have the money.

Pierce had figured out the lawn mower and had it fueled and running. As he mowed the overgrown, yellow lawn, Jared and I went into the cool shade of the garage. We read the sides of the pool chemical buckets and began our first experiment to remove the mossy green from the pool water.

Pierce finished the lawns and rolled the mower to the garage and returned from the guesthouse with his rebuilt 16mm movie camera. He walked down into the pool with his shoes and clothes on which made Baby Ruth laugh. She was sitting beside Hilda who was reading her magazines. The day before, the three kids had filmed the sinking of the sailboat. Jared climbed into the pool wearing a torn-up white shirt with ash smudges on the sides of his handsome face. He was carrying a broken board. He swam to the deep end and, at Pierce’s direction, treaded water with the board across his chest.

Baby Ruth left the table and kneeled on the pool deck. She watched Jared closely over Pierce’s shoulder and the raised camera.

“Quiet!” Pierce barked.

Jared squinted, and his expression changed to bewildered and determination.

The pool area was silent. Everyone was focused on Jared’s plight. I felt Hilda’s hand on my wrist, but I didn’t turn.

Pierce called over his shoulder, “Baby Ruth. Please.”

As rehearsed, Baby Ruth hefted a section of plywood taken from the garage and pushed it into the water. She entered the pool and placed her hands out wide on the wood.

“Roll on four,” Pierce directed.

Baby Ruth began shoving and pulling on the plywood causing a series of waves that quickly reached Jared.

“Action.”

Jared took a mouthful of water and choked and gagged and turned away. As scripted, he spoke a single word to the view of the vast ocean.

“Sharks.”

He went wide-eyed but kept the resolute set to his jaw as he floundered in the waves, looking back and forth and side to side for the predators. His expression was torn with shock and pain just before he was pulled under. One of his hands remained on the rocking piece of wood.

Pierce called “cut” and leaned around the raised camera.

Baby Ruth stopped making waves.

A voice, angry and familiar, bellowed from the garden up the hill.

“You! Husband!”

I waited until Jared reappeared and winked at his brother before I turned around.

Mother wore a lime, translucent robe that draped down along the sides of her naked body. She had put on weight since I had last seen her. Her belly and her breasts were plump and pale and ghostly white. The hair on her mound and head looked like cotton candy and were dyed a vibrant snow-white. Her lips were painted a glossy pink, and she wore black sunglasses.

I realized that I was staring instead of answering.

Her hands went to her hips, and her breasts bounced when she called down.

“Where are the signed papers?”

The kids were wide-eyed and as stunned as I was to see Mother in daylight. I heard Hilda’s magazines spill and slap the concrete. I got up from the umbrella table and went to our guesthouse where the blue folder lay on the small table within the sprawl of camera parts and 3D reels and viewers.

Carrying the documents up the paths to the landing where she stood, I studied the open lime-colored robe parted like a curtain. I had never seen her naked before. I felt a rare mix of emotions—lust and loss.

“I signed everything,” I stammered, handing over the folder.

Her pale, lovely fingers flipped through the pages, confirming the signatures. Satisfied, she turned for the darkness of the house.

“Maybe you and I and the children could celebrate?” I said to her back.

Her voice carried from the shadows beyond the door.

“Not going to happen. You might’ve saved me, but I’m not part of your collection.”

WHEN PAIN Staking bombed, I was unexpectedly credited with most of the movie, both inside Lion Heart Pictures and in the hastily edited newspaper advertisements. My workdays became shorter. The space-adventure film was in trouble, and I was told to work on sequencing and continuity as filming continued. The movie was bogging down as it tried to carry the airship romance and the trials of space travel. I took red ink to the long, anguished break-up scenes and penned a single shot of a letter the main character finds at the helm. He opens it, reacts, and gets back to repairing the turbo thrusters. Four minutes cut to thirty-seven seconds.

Twelve days into the shoot, Ira entered the writers’ office and sat down beside my desk near the back of the narrow room.

“Don’t murder the mailman,” he told me. He had a sheet of paper in his hand which was covered with columns of numbers. “They chose me, I suppose because we’re buddies. To the quick, you’re fired.”

I SPENT four weeks going through the trades and newspapers and typing up resumes on the typewriter the studio had given me as a parting gift. I began to worry about money each time I opened a packet of cash. Mother’s expenses continued to come my way and, while reduced by her dwindling number of employees, the packets were thinning every week.

Six weeks after my dismissal, I received a telephone call at the guesthouse—an invitation to an interview with Legend Pictures. The caller explained that the company wasn’t a studio but a production house that was using military newsreels and archived footage to build historical shorts for sale to grade schools, community colleges, and collectors.

My screenplay skills were not required. The position was for a member of the editing team. I accepted the offer and planned to take the bus to the office in downtown Hollywood the following Friday.

On one of the days in between, Hilda pulled me aside while the kids shared a bowl of watermelon at the umbrella table. I hadn’t been able to pay her the past two weeks, and she had a solution. Later that same afternoon, Ira and I unlocked the second guesthouse, and while it aired out, we cleaned it and made it nice for Hilda. She liked the idea of living there rent-free in exchange for caring for my three. That same day, Hilda told me that Jared and Baby Ruth would no longer be sleeping in the mansion but with her in her new place. I’m not sure if the twins were more excited or relieved.

That Friday, I was right on time at Legend Pictures. When I arrived, there were already six other applicants sitting in the untidy front office, leaving me to stand. I completed the necessary paperwork and waited forty-five minutes before the secretary read my name and nodded to the adjoining door.

The interview room was dingy and cluttered with old screening equipment, projectors, and splicing machines. There were two metal chairs and a wooden table. Across from me sat Mr. Nash—the director of Mumm’s and my film, Savior, and my previous employer in the delivery business.

He used the intercom on the table to speak to the secretary, “Let those others go.”

He gestured to the chair opposite his and opened a file with my name written on it.

“I saw your name and had to wonder.” His welcoming smile froze. “We’ve got a history, of sorts.”

I agreed.

“No filming here, Danser. Our angle is mining the miles of old newsreel footage for repackaging.” He set my resume down on the table. “Appears you have a knack for speeding up storylines. Are you interested?”

“Yes.”

“Good. In six weeks, we’ll have completed the acquisition of film stocks and be ready to go. You’ll start one week early to learn our edit and splice machines.”

“Five weeks?” I asked. “I was hoping…”

The frosty smile stretched. “Short on cash?”

“Yes.”

He opened the center desk drawer and took out a set of car keys on a black fob. “If you’re interested in returning to the delivery business, I can pay up front. Cash. Starting tonight.”

The keys were dangling from his fingers.

“It comes with a car like before. With the same cleaning and garaging rules. I’ll have the car’s title put in your name. For our own reasons.”

The telephone on the desk rang. He ignored it. It jingled three times before being replaced by a small blinking light.

“Like before, you’ll be given the addresses the night of. You’ll also deliver small bags with the…employees.”

Mr. Nash selected a button on the telephone and spoke to someone without pause or listening. He ended the call and rose from the table.

“For tonight, my secretary has the addresses for you. Starting tomorrow, you’ll get calls at your number. Is your telephone still working?”

“I believe so.”

“Do this. She’s going to pay you for tonight. Go down to Pacific Bell and pay your bill. Pay it forward, too.”

I agreed.

“You’ll like the car.” He walked to the door and opened it. “It’s a ’61 Lincoln.”

I took the keys, and he closed the door at my heels. The secretary gave me a note with the addresses and an envelope half full of cash.

That night, after my three were bunked out in Hilda’s place, I backed the dirty Lincoln from the garage and went to work.

I made deliveries almost every night during the five weeks before reporting to work at Legend Pictures. As before, most of the employees I delivered to the wealthy homes were stylishly dressed and chatty. Later in the wee hours, these same young women were disturbed, unraveled, and drugged. Sometimes they were incoherent as I drove them to their apartments. Occasionally, the employees were young men who also went through the before and after Jekyll and Hyde mutation.

I found my role in this business distasteful. These young women were being drained of all hope and life. Like them, the constant need for money kept me at it.

During those days, regardless of what I did each night, I enjoyed my three. When they were home from their schools, we lived in the pool area with laughter coming from all corners and the open doors of the two guesthouses.

A week before I was supposed to start at Legends, I turned the black Lincoln into the driveway and saw a sandwich board on the south corner sidewalk before the mansion. It didn’t have “For Sale” written on it, which would have been indiscreet for that neighborhood, but the sign—with only a telephone number—made the intention clear. I asked Hilda if she heard anything. She hadn’t, so I filed the question away.

ON MY first day at Legend Pictures, I wore my black suit, white shirt, and green tie and stood out on the street, in the day’s early heat, waiting for the office to open. I was on time, early, in fact, ready to start at 8:00 a.m. I was curious about what genre of film I would be working on and what kind of editing equipment I was going to learn.

The street was busy, so I waited in the alcove before the front door. The cracked tiles were dusty and covered with bits of litter. My black shoes and cuffs were tan by 9:00 a.m. I knocked on the front door again as I’d done four times over the past hour. No reply nor movements or voices.

At 9:15 a.m., I stepped out on the sidewalk and looked in through Legend’s front window. The blinds were drawn. At 10:00 a.m., I gave the front door three strong knocks, waited, and tried the door handles. They were locked.

That night, I drove the Lincoln to the donut shop to get the to-and-from addresses for the night’s employee. I asked the man with the list and the small bag of medical bottles if he knew anything about Legend being closed for the day.

“For the day?” he chuckled. “Try for the decade. No. Better yet, try for like permanent. Crazy Nash and his grab-the-cash schemes.”

So began the days when I only worked nights, and, while glad to have that cash, I worried even more about money.

Mother’s mansion remained on the market for the remainder of 1962 without a single offer. The front of the property became overgrown and brown from lack of care. The boys and I kept up the backside of the property—we watered and mowed the lawn, and Jared and I found the correct mixture of chemicals and treatments to keep the pool clean and clear. The delivery business money was almost enough to cover our living expenses, but I couldn’t stay afloat in the waves of bills from the mansion. As the packets of cash dwindled, I began another search in the industry papers for studio employment, typing resumes on the old Underwood and mailing them off one by one.

Sometimes there were no replies, and other times the resumes came back stamped “Return to Sender.” When the telephone was shut off for nonpayment, I drove the black Lincoln to the telephone company and worked out a deal for a small amount of cash in exchange for restored service. I needed to pay the water company and power bill but couldn’t.

That afternoon, when Hilda brought the children home from school, Pierce had a note stating that he needed testing and eyeglasses. Another expense and an important one. At 5:00 p.m., the power company shut off the electricity. Ira was kind enough to loan me enough to cover the bill, but I passed on turning the power back in favor of covering grocery expenses.

There were three packets of cash remaining in the satchel that I kept in the closet Pierce and I shared. Our meager savings went quickly, the packets thinning even with my delivery job income.

Two weeks later, a single packet was all that was left. I walked to the front of Mother’s mansion and wrote down the telephone number for the realtor and called him. He confirmed that there had been no offers.

“That property needs a proper cleaning and restoration and repairs to make it marketable.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “There’s no money for that. How about we lower the price?”

At that, he laughed and said, “Can’t.”

“Why?”

“With all those loans, the seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths, you have very little wiggle room on the list price. Any chance you can get your wife to agree to a sizable downsize? To a less desirable zip code.”

I didn’t know anything about the loans.

“You want, I’ll make the listing changes, but you’d better talk to your wife about the realities of your…situation. Might also want to take her pen and checkbook away from her if you don’t mind me suggesting.”

“How much house could we afford if we lower the price enough to sell?”

“Well, Mr. Danser, it will be a surprise. And not a pleasant one, especially for your wife. Why don’t you come over to the office?”

I DROVE the Lincoln into town. The realtor set out a blue-lined notebook and a selected a pen.

“If you like, I’ll draw up the price adjustment and get the documents to you by the end of the week. Gives you time to discuss this with your missus.”

I agreed. But I didn’t speak to Mother about this. I felt compelled to act, to protect my three.

The documents arrived, and I signed them.

The mansion sat unwanted for two months without even a walk-through that I knew of.

I drove down to the realtor’s office to discuss the situation.

“An open house would help.” He shook his head. “But she’d have to be out of the residence for those days and times, and we both know that is not even close to being in the cards.”

“I agree. Let’s lower the price again,” I said.

Long ago, I had saved Mother; rescued her. My need to continue to protect her was a question I couldn’t answer.

FEELING THE pressure, a squeeze, for money, I opened the last packet on that chilly winter night before heading off to work in the dirty Lincoln. Kneeling in front of the closet and closing my satchel, I sensed a closing panic that stirred up a possible solution. It would mean being away from the boys and Baby Ruth for several days, but it could solve our current situation and likely make us solvent for quite some time.

I walked over to Hilda’s and knocked on the door. After a minute, I heard movement from inside, and Ira answered rubbing the side of his face.

“BB? What’s wrong? It’s after midnight.”

“Nothing’s wrong. Is Hilda awake?”

“No. She’s sleeping, like all the sane do,” he said with a friendly smile. “What do you need? I can wake her if you like.”

“No, that’s okay. I need to be away for a bit. Probably a week. Maybe two. Not sure. Can she watch over the kids while I’m away?”

“Sure. I’ll brave answering for her. Better that than disturb her dreams.”

“Here.” I handed him half of the money from the last packet. “That should be enough for expenses and the usual unexpected.”

“Sure, BB,” he replied, taking the thin stack of cash. “What are you up to?”

“I’m gonna go get some money. Will you thank Hilda for me?”

“Yes, of course. And your three will be fine. Call them when you can.”

We exchanged a hug, and I went back to my place. I packed a bag of clothes and kissed the brow of my darling, sleeping Pierce. Before I headed off to work, I opened the Lincoln’s trunk and placed a selection of tools inside behind the paper bags of police cash and medicine bottles.

I closed the trunk and stood briefly outside the garage, looking to the two guesthouses with my heart and hopes extended to my children. I hoped that my solution would work out and see us all in better living conditions soon.

I LEFT the donut shop and drove to a bungalow on the east edge of Hollywood. The house was dark and stayed that way as I turned into the short and narrow driveway. A gentle rain was falling, and I waited in the Lincoln for the employee to notice the running headlights beside the small house.

Eventually, the side door opened, and a woman came out leaving the porch light off. It was not my job to question, but I wondered about her immediately. In the headlight beams, the stocky woman staggered to the car in day-labor clothes, no makeup, and a natty cap on her untamed hair. I’d never seen an employee like her before. She found her way in a stupor past the passenger door and opened the rear door. Leaning in on the burgundy upholstery, she nearly toppled over and didn’t climb in. Instead, she looked over the seat and floorboards. Stepping back from the car, she weaved into the headlights and back inside the bungalow. I waited. I was curious about her, but most of my thoughts were on my solution, the steps needed, and the tasks required.

Ten minutes passed before the woman reappeared. A portly, short man in similar laborer clothing followed her. He was as unsteady on his feet as she was. They were both carrying heavy bundles. When they entered the headlights, I saw the blankets that covered their loads.

They placed the bundles in the back seat.

The man slurred, “Wait.”

I did, watching the two of them go back inside. He reappeared and placed a smaller bundle on the back seat between the two blankets. He closed the rear door and disappeared inside the dark house.

I backed the Lincoln out onto the street nearly taking out two curbside garbage cans. I put the address note on the dash and steered under a streetlamp and took out the Thomas Guide. After finding the street and using my fingertip to help memorize the route, I looked into the back seat where the short bundles were washed in the streetlight. It looked like I might be delivering two dwarfs which was not as odd as it might seem. I reached back and took hold of the middle, smaller bundle that was ready to fall off the seat between the larger blanketed bodies. I placed it in my lap and carefully unwrapped the small blanket.

My first thought was of Baby Ruth, who might have owned one, but she was too old for dolls. This one was life-size, and its arms and face were dirty, its red hair was tangled, and it wore a blue-and-white dress.

I climbed out and opened the rear door and gently pulled the blanket away from the first mound on the seat. A sleeping little girl, perhaps five years old. I placed my face to her mouth. She was breathing. Her breath had a chemical smell that was familiar. Circling the Lincoln in the streetlight on that thin, residential street, I pulled the blanket back from the head of a second girl who looked a bit older than the other.

With the doll in my hand, I looked up the road. Houses pressed close together on both sides as far as the headlights reached. Thinking over my years of deliveries, I tried to remember a similar delivery, and I couldn’t, and that pleased me. And helped me make a big, but easy decision.

Back behind the wheel, I placed the doll between the sedated little girls and started the Lincoln.

“You two game for a road trip?” I asked the rearview mirror getting the silent reply I expected.

By dawn, we had crossed the border from California into Nevada.

At noon, I pulled into a highway-side motel and rented a room. When I returned to the automobile with the room key, the girls were sitting up and watching me closely. I opened the rear passenger door and was greeted by the taller of the two.

“I’m Molly. This is April. Mister, I gotta pee.”

I jingled the room key, and she smiled.

Inside the motel room, Molly went straight to the bathroom, and April took the chair by the window.

“Mister,” she asked. “Can you get us something to drink? Maybe something to eat?”

“Of course.”

“And maybe a toothbrush?”

The toilet was flushed, and Molly came into the room looking relieved.

“He’s gonna feed us,” April told her.

“Yeah? Good. No cheese on anything, please. Hate cheese.”

I agreed, and April, the younger of the two, asked, “Is it okay if we shower while you go get food?”

Before I could answer, Molly pointed to my goggles and said, “Those are scary.”

I took them off and pocketed them.

“Yes. Enjoy the shower while I’m gone. Take your time.”

My eyes were closed, and I could feel one of the headaches coming on appearing first as a metallic taste from the back of my mouth. I smiled for their benefit and listened to them cross the room and close and lock the bathroom door.

I RETURNED with a paper box. Three fish burgers—no cheese, three colas, and two toothbrushes and a little tube of paste. The girls were sitting side by side at the foot of the bed and turned in unison as I entered.

“Mister, can we?” April asked, pointing to the television.

“It’s BB, please.”

“What is?”

“My name.”

“Your name is BB?”

Before I could confirm my name to April, Molly said, “Like the name. Didja remember about no cheese?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Thank you, BB.”

The girls ate fast and left no scraps. Not even the errant slices of lettuce in the paper wrapper. Sitting at the window table, I ate as well.

“Mister? Er, BB, can we ask you a favor?”

Before I could reply, Molly added, “Have you seen April’s Baby Knucklehead?”

“The doll in a blue and white dress? Yes. She’s still in the car. I’ll go get it.”

“Thank you, BB,” both girls said with the cola cans at their chins.

Both wore black satin party dresses along with knee-high, black silk stockings and black leather heels. I paused at the door.

“Would you two like a change of clothing? Maybe something more comfortable?”

Their faces tightened, and they squeezed closer together at the foot of the bed.

“Never mind,” I said.

I went out into the hot day and retrieved Baby Knucklehead who had fallen to the floorboard. Back inside the motel room, the girls were head-to-head in hushed conversation which stopped when they saw me and the doll in my hand. I gave Baby Knucklehead to April and sat down at the table. I studied my cola can while the two whispered to each other, eyes forward.

I interrupted them, saying the word, “Yes.”

“Huh?” Molly asked.

“What, BB?” April chimed.

“You can watch the television.”

“Really?”

“Nice!”

I’ve no idea what they watched, but they enjoyed the television the rest of the afternoon. I found myself nodding off, reclining as best as I could, and sleeping in the chair beside the window.

When I awoke, it was with a start. My eyes hurt, and my thoughts were fast and scattered. I scanned the room and saw Molly and April asleep at the foot of the bed in the gray glow of the television. When they awoke an hour later, it was close to 10:00 p.m. I encouraged them to use the restroom before we got back on the road.

JUST BEFORE sunrise, I pulled off to fuel the Lincoln again and found a motel half a mile up the frontage road. We were on the outskirts of a town called Winnemucca on Highway 80. Inside the motel office, I bought a USA map and two little bottles of shampoo. I had clearly woken the night clerk who had me fill out a card after accepting cash for the room. On the “traveling with” line I wrote “my daughters.”

Through most of the night, Molly and April had been quiet, and when rare, oncoming headlights passed, they looked to be sleeping. When the three of us and Baby Knucklehead were in our room, they stayed shoulder to shoulder on the floor before the television with their backs against the foot of the bed.

I told them I was going to shower and went out and got my clothes from the Lincoln. Entering the room, I pointed to the television.

“Saturday morning cartoons.” I smiled.

They watched me closely as I crossed to the bathroom and closed the door. I clicked the lock louder than necessary. I showered and changed in the bathroom. When I came back into the room, the girls looked at me in my clothing and appeared relieved. I had changed into weekend clothes—khaki shorts and a white shirt with my black suit and shoes in my hand.

“You two ready for breakfast?” I asked.

They conversed before Molly said, “Yes. Please. No cheese, okay?”

I agreed. “Just a thought. I think I saw a store up the road. Might have swimsuits and summer clothes.”

Their brows furrowed in unison. Molly pressed up against April.

“There’s a swimming pool here,” I went on, and the girls looked pleased and curious.

After breakfast, we walked to the swimming pool between the motel office and the parking lot. Molly and April swam and played in the pool while I slept on a lounge chair I dragged into the shade of a weathered, brown tree.

BESIDES SWIMSUITS, I had bought four pairs of shorts and shirts for the girls. Back in the room an hour before sundown, the girls locked themselves in the bathroom with the new clothes and their little bottles of shampoo. Entering the front room, April told me they had draped their swimsuits for drying, and Molly was carrying their prior black clothing.

“Can we throw these away?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Use a pillowcase,” April suggested. She started to climb onto the bed to grab a pillow but stepped back and circled and pulled it from the side. She removed the pillowcase and helped Molly push their clothes inside.

“Where?” April asked me.

“Garbage can.” I smiled, and she did too.

“There’s this.” Molly pulled her hand from the pillowcase before pushing it into the wastebasket. She held a small paper bag. “I think this one is April’s. I can get you mine if you like?”

“Let me see,” I replied, already suspecting, but hoping I was wrong. Molly handed me the bag, and I watched her worried expression as I felt inside. My fingers touched a handkerchief wrapped around a little tin bottle.

“Want me to get mine, too?” she asked, looking sad and expecting disappointment.

“No, thank you,” I answered as kindly as I knew how.

Her shoulders relaxed, and she went to April and took her hand and led her to the floor before the television.

“Mister BB? Can we?” Molly asked.

“Of course. Maybe there’re more cartoons?”

“Too late in the day for those,” Molly informed me. The television warmed up with the sounds of manic carnage and canned laughter.

It was the curiosity and a lack of foresight that led me to pull the handkerchief from the crinkled little bag and remove the tin bottle. I remember thinking about how many of these I had seen and delivered. I also recalled similar bottles and rags from my Seabee days. I wish I had reflected on what I had seen in the morning’s after, but I didn’t.

I watched my left hand twist the cap off. I watched my right hand place the handkerchief over the bottle mouth. I watched my left hand tip and spill moisture on the cloth. My right hand raised this to my nose and mouth.

IT WAS perhaps the next day, but I could have easily lost two. I came to, squatting in the shower. The water was crisp and cold, and I wore a swimsuit and my black suit jacket and my green tie, which wasn’t knotted but draped around my neck. I left the shower running and found my feet and walked dripping from the bathroom. The motel room was tidy, save a collection of Coke cans and a half-empty bottle of something called Ten High in the clutter on the table. I stared and blinked and realized after a minute that this was a different motel room. Next, I remembered the existence of Molly and April and saw that they were gone.

I sat on the side of the made-up bed and slowly pulled my damp upper clothes off—the suit jacket and green tie. I sat there in my bare feet and my new pair of swim trunks with flashes of memories, mostly discordant images playing. I felt regret and remorse flushing my entire body with heat.

There was a note written on a napkin on top of the television.

Mr. BB,

Thank you for being nice and letting us go swimming. You have been conked out. April and I got hungry and want to go home and borrowed dollars from you. I will pay you back.

Molly

I walked unsteadily to the bathroom and used a towel to dry my hair and upper body. I retrieved my socks and shoes from the shower pan and went back into the room. The television was glowing but silent, and I went to the door in search of the two little girls.

The Lincoln was parked on the far side of the lot all by itself. I saw it had been in a wreck. The right-side fender was crunched, and the tires were caked with dirt. The motel grounds didn’t look familiar, and I felt a new fear—we had traveled. An eastern wind was blowing warm rain, and I walked the small motel grounds twice looking for Molly and April. I thought they might be at the swimming pool, but the place didn’t have one. Before I started knocking on doors, I decided to ask after them at the office.

“I’m still near Winnemucca?”

“Not even close, guy. You’re in Utah. Near Provo.”

“Provo?”

“Well, yeah. Provo, east of Salt Lake City.”

“I was traveling with…”

“Those two darlings. I know.”

“Have you seen them?”

“Yeah, mister. They left with their mom. That was their mom, right? She had her own room is why I ask. They loaded up on candy and pop and left with her in the station wagon. Going south I think she said. You owe for the second night.”

I paid him for the mysterious second night and started the Lincoln. Across the parking lot, a solo blackbird was perched on a power line. It looked to me like it was eyeing the Lincoln and me. The bird looked capable of flight but undecided. I drove the car in circles in the parking lot to decide if it would run okay. The long, black car felt steady and capable.

The woman who had saved—rescued—Molly and April from me was a mystery. Perhaps a Good Samaritan. That was my hope. I opened the map on the passenger seat and found Provo and saw that I had somehow stayed on course, headed east. Looking up, I saw that, like me, the blackbird had chosen flight.