Closed Gates-My First Days in LA

When I first arrived in LA, seventeen years ago this month, I noticed everywhere I went that there were gates, locked gates. Gates on parking lots, gates on driveways, gates on everywhere. There wasn't one of them I had access to. I had moved to a city I was locked out of. Because of the height of the moving van I arrived in, I couldn't even get into the parking garage of the hotel we checked into.

We had descended from the Cajon pass from high desert in the late afternoon after days of driving a truck from Rochester, NY. In the back of the truck was a Tetris of mattresses, guitars, dressers, cardboard boxes and couches. Packed into the cab, was my wife at the time, Susan, myself and two cats.  We were greeted by a sprawling valley of un-ending urban development that never stopped for the last seventy miles of our journey. The traffic was also un-ending, We inched towards the goal we been driving days for and planning for over a year, Hollywood.

What we didn't have were jobs, a place to live, or any contacts except for the phone number of a friend of a friend. I had just turned up in Hollywood with a dream. Classic or cliche, you decide.

It was eight O'clock when when pulled up to a Motel 6 just off Hollywood Boulevard.
the desk clerk chatted about how hot it was. After the plains of the Midwest and the deserts of the West in summer, I hadn't really noticed. I was happy to hear a local regard the heat as unusual.

Because the van was too tall for the parking garage. I would have to find a place on the streets of Hollywood to leave everything I owned, all night long!

After a lot of a driving back and forth and some unfriendly horn honks, I found a spot to park on Las Palmas just south of Hollywood Boulevard. I locked the doors, double checked the padlock on the back, said a quick prayer and walked away.

When I got back to the hotel I was beginning to feel the weight of what we had just done. I was beginning to panic. I said to my wife Susan, "Maybe we could still go back. We have just enough money to make it back home."

Susan had always been less adventurous of the two of us. It was not her idea to uproot and move the way we did, but she went along and worked hard to help make it happen this far. I though she might jump at the chance to chuck it all and return home. Instead she said what may have been the most important thing she'd ever say to me.

I got the 'buddy boy' speech. Even though she didn't say those words she might as well have. As I recall it went like this:

"Listen, I came out here with you and we sold our house, quit our jobs and left our families. We're not going back now until we've given it a chance, okay?"

That's what I needed to hear, a loving but firm slap on the face. My panic subsided and I haven't looked back since.

The next morning I got up early to move the truck before I got a ticket. I was more worried whether I would see the truck at all, or maybe just an empty shell with all our stuff in the hands of unknown strangers and gone forever. Dramatic I know, but a country boy hears stories about LA. Even if I didn't believe them, I could help but think about it.

To my great relief it was all right where I'd left it. Later that day we put everything in storage, turned in the truck and rented a car. It hadn't occurred to me when our friends and family helped us load the truck in Rochester that it would just be the two of us in LA. Actually, Susan was feeling sick, so it was pretty much just me.

I made a phone call to the friend of a friend. He said he'd ask around. I wasn't expecting much.
A couple days later I got a call from a guy at Gameshow Network. At first I thought maybe he was looking for audience members or contestants. I was still living in a hotel room, maybe places like that cold-called tourists. I had no idea. Instead he wanted to offer me a job, a gig really. two weekends a month for a few months. It wasn't much, but it was something. It paid twenty dollars and hour, more than I'd even made by almost double. But I was in LA now, I'd need every penny.

I followed the directions to Gameshow Network. Down Fairfax Avenue,  right on Venice, left on Clarington. I pulled up to the gate of Gameshow Network, a modest modern building across from Sony Pictures Studios.

A voice on the intercom said "Can I help you?"

"I'm Joel Johnson, here to work on the show... 'Inquizition'," I said after looking at the little piece of paper I had jotted the information down on.

The intercom was silent, but after a moment then the gate shuttered and began to move aside on its tracks. I drove inside.

Well, that's one gate unlocked, I thought.

Many would follow. The garage to the apartment we rented a few weeks later, the gates of the University of Southern California, and the American Film Institute where I learned film production in the trenches of crewing large student films. Later the gates to movie studio lots, Universal, Sony, CBS Radford in Studio City, CBS Studio City in Hollywood, as well as hundreds of little back-alley studios and locations.

As a rough estimate I would say I have worked on 50 films, mostly shorts, but a few notable features like "The Bucket List" and "The Lords of Dogtown". I've worked on easily five hundred TV shows and thousands of live broadcasts. I have supported probably the same number of YouTube videos.

I'm not sure if I'll stay here forever. There's a gate I've been wanting to get through for many years, the gate of the Atlantic, the gate to Virgin Atlantic flight the formidable gate of United Kingdom immigration so I can live and work in that "green and pleasant land".

I'm not sure when or how, but it will happen, one little gate at a time.

Dear Grandma...

Dear Grandma,

This past week was your 117^th birthday. Of course you weren't here to blow out any candles, you died of Alzheimer’s when I was in junior high school.

My mom reminded us of your birthday and suggested that we pay a tribute to you in some form.

Wanda Godfrey circa 1930
-hand colorized by Wanda Godfrey
~Any of these pictures can be viewed full-size with a click~

This is my tribute, an open letter to you. I hope, I trust, that somehow, wherever, or however you are that you enjoy it.

I should begin with the bad news. Though I am very happily married we have no children, no great grand children to tell you about. Sorry. Matthew has two beautiful boys that you would just love though.

I live in Los Angeles as I have for the past 14 years and work in television as a technician. Hollywood to be exact. I like it here though, I miss my family and I'm looking for ways to spend more extended time back East.

Stylized sketch of Jane Fonda by Wanda Godfrey

I know you'd be proud of me. I am a part time musician and even spent some time on the road as a performer full time a few years ago. I play bass and sing and play some other instruments. I composed recorded my own album and I'm getting ready to do another. I played your old parlor guitar on one ballad about a couple living in the wilds of Alaska during the gold rush.

Sketches of dogs by Wanda Godfrey

I have your paints and brushes though I haven't done very much with them. A couple of my paintings hang in my parent's house and they're not too bad actually. I would like one day to do more.

My Grandma's oils, pallet and brushes -I love the way they smell

 I remember once, while meeting you and grandpa at the airport, you looked back at the jet that had just flown you from Tampa and exclaimed how astounded you were that something so large could “get off the ground”. I thought you might be interested in some of the other things that have gotten off the ground in the last 30 years.

It is currently the year 2012. Much is the same. People still drive cars, go to work, come home to there houses and raise families. There are parts of the world in peace and parts at war, but none as large and devastating as the two world wars you lived through.

A lot has changed too.

Watercolor landscape by Wanda Godfrey

Like telephones in the 1920s and televisions in the 1950s, computers are now in every home. You don't have to wear a lab coat to operate one. In fact, grade school children seem to have a better knack for them than adults.

Home computers are like a typewriter and a small television together. Just like telephones, computers are all connected all around the world. When I write a mail message to my mom from where I live in California, at the push of a button it will be delivered to her computer in New York in a few seconds. Pictures, like your paintings I have shown here, can be sent this way. This letter itself is posted on a sort-of virtual bulletin board where anyone in the world can read it. It is in this I have the crazy hope you'll somehow be able to see it too.

Watercolors of flowers by Wanda Godfrey

Computers have become our photo albums, HiFi's, encyclopedias, bookshelves, art canvases, an arcade, a movie theater, a travel agent. My wife and I do much of our shopping and banking using our computer without leaving our home.

People do a lot of socializing using computers too. My wife and I even met through our computers; this is not uncommon. Some people say that doing so much of our socialization “on-line” as we say is a bad thing, that we don't communicate face-to-face enough much anymore. They may be right, but in truth, I have more social this way than I ever was before.

Still life watercolor by Wanda Godfrey -I remember this vase

If that wasn't enough, telephones themselves have completely changed. Nearly everyone carries portable radio phones in their pockets and purses. Those tiny little devices can do many of the things our computers plus they are cameras and even video recorders.

Most cameras don't need film anymore by-the-way. Yes, good old Kodak, though they have their own 'digital' cameras, is in pretty big trouble.

Watercolor of the Genesee River (I think) by Wanda Godfrey

There are certainly things I want to talk to you about besides the changes in technology, things not as easy to talk about.

I miss you. I miss knowing you as an adult. Even growing up I thought my parents were wonderful, but I appreciate and enjoy their company even more as an adult. I know that would be the case with you too and I feel robbed of the opportunity to know you that way. 

Grandma, my Mom and my Great Grandma

I miss your enthusiasm for even the smallest things, I miss your sitting and doing your crosswords and telling me that I “make a better door than I do a window,” if I stood in front of the TV.

I am sorry about a thing or too as well.

I am sorry for being such a brat when you had some of my chocolate Easter bunny one year. I am sorry I squirmed when you kissed and hugged me. I am sorry that when you were in a coma, your last few days of life, that I couldn't talk to you. They told me that you would be able to hear me, that I should talk to you, but I just stood there. I didn't know what to say, or how to say it. I just wanted to go back to the waiting room where I didn't have to confront tubes and wires and a grandma that can't wake up. I am a person of little regret, but my silence when I should have simply told you that I loved you one last time, is one of them.

Acrylic with pallet knives of rocky seashore (unfinished) by Wanda Godfrey

While were on the subject, I love you!

I love that you always called me your “number one grandson” when we arrived for a visit. I loved that you showed your enthusiasm for things by saying “Oh boys!” To this day I make it a point to say that myself in your honor, and my wife and I pluralize many words in the same vain.

I love that I inherited your thick head of hair, less thick in some spots than others these days I'm afraid, but I am almost fifty years old.

Can you believe it? Your grandson is coming up on fifty!

"Joel at 2" by Wanda Godfrey

Even more, I appreciate the artistic creativity I got in great part from you. I make use of it every day but I want to do more with it, much more.

I love that your favorite color was unabashedly purple. It wasn't enough that your bedroom in Florida had lilac walls and bed clothes, the lampshades were purple too giving the whole place a lavender glow.

I love that you played violin and basketball, two things I hadn't known until this week.

I love your sense of humor and have learned to appreciate it more through my mom's stories. There are things I say to this day, if someone drops something large and noisy, I say what you would have: “drop your watch?” If their arms are full with an awkward load: “Got a match?”

I wish that you could meet my wife, you'd love each other, I just know it. 

Oil painting of beach at sunset by Wanda Godfrey

As I write this letter to you I realize there are many things about you that I've forgotten and many more things I don't know at all. I am going to talk with my mom and try to fill in some of those blanks.

I will not forget.

Love,

"Your Number One Grandson,"

Joel

The Jewels of Nebraska, 18 -The Baby's name

Ruby's throat felt as if some had poured a bucket of sand and dirt down it. She swallowed involuntarily which made her grimace. She held a seat cushion from the truck over her head for a scant amount of shade from the Utah sun. Her feet began to scuff on the ground, it was getting harder to raise them up over, and over, and over.

The stolen truck with the mis-wired sparkplugs had made it an hour or so from the burning “Heaven” compound, but, with some terrible banging from the engine, it quit and wouldn't even turn over again. By sunrise the truck was just a speck on the horizon.

Ruby tried to ignore the calculations that kept popping up in her head, the numbers of hours the truck had taken to get from the main road to the compound the day they arrived, multiplied by how many times slower  her stumbling along on foot was.

How long can one go without water? How long before a car will come along on the main road, even if she made it. She thought about the truck sitting in the road with it's gasoline tank nearly full. 

If only she'd thought to steal as much water as she did fuel.

She was reminded of a picture she seen where the hero and heroine were stranded in the desert. They walked miles over endless dunes and finally collapsed in the sand. A man on a camel came and gave them water and they went on to defeat the evil sheik.

Ruby didn't think anyone was going to turn up on a camel with water, but the idea that she might die like she was in a movie had a nice romantic sound to it.

I was silent for a long time as we made our way to my folks house in the dark streets of Omaha. Charlotte held the babe close. She was speaking softly to her child almost without cease. I couldn't hear the words, but, like the baby, the tone I could understand perfectly.

After a while Charlotte seemed to be slowing and hiking the baby up more often.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Yes I'm... No... No, I'm afraid not. I don't think I've ever walked so far in my life.”

I knew what I had to do, but I was nearly petrified with fear. “Um... Perhaps I should. Rather... well, um, take the baby, you know, just for a while. You could hang on my arm for support then.”

“Yes, perhaps that would be best.” She prepared to hand me the bundle. “You've held a baby before?”

“Ah, in truth, no ma’am, never once.”

I could see from the concern on her face was not from my words but the fear I had allowed to show on my face.

“It's not hard,” she said kindly. “You just have to support her fontanel.”

"What?"

"Her head darling."

“Why?”

“You just have to.”

I looked down at the baby in Charlotte's arms, her sleeping face peered out from the blankets framing it. So pure and delicate, and I was to hold her, a helpless life in my arms.What if it cried, what if it wet on me? What if I dropped it?!

I was never so want of a baby carriage in all my days. Perhaps my new life of crime had taken hold, for I looked around for one to steal.

“It's okay, really, you'll do fine.” She passed the baby to my reluctant arms.

It began to fuss and cry. I tried to adjust the thing somehow, maintaining a safe and presumably upright position that supported it's rubbery head. Eventually she was against my chest and left shoulder, her head resting on the curve of my neck. She stopped crying. I started breathing again.

“You see, she's fine, you're doing just fine.”

Charlotte hung on my arm as we made our way through the quiet streets. I felt the warmth of both of them. The baby would once in a while kick, or move it's arms. My fear had not gone away, not completely but it was accompanied by something new, something I'd never felt before. Surely it was love, but not like any I had felt before. We had only a few miles to go, but I could have walked fifty.

William looked at the wooden bowl before him. He was hungry, that was for sure, but the root mash was one of the worst things he had ever tasted. He looked around at the others in the circle. The Indians were digging from their bowls barely pausing to speak. Later in the day there were often dried strips of meat, of what animal William had no idea. They too were bland with no salt shaker, not to mention a table to put it on, but a whole lot tastier than the roots.

It had been weeks since he had even slept in a proper bed but he liked when he could see the stars. He felt  like a cowboy in the pictures.

Ben and Kohn and their guides had been gone for two days. William was mostly bored. He wanted to pull his weight, but it was plain only women did the day-to-day work. He was too young to hunt with the men and he couldn't communicate with anyone.

William spent most of his time taking walks and taking pictures with his camera. Of course there was no film, but he put his eye to the view finder and clicked the shutter all the same. He tried hard to ingrain the images he found interesting in his mind. A large rock formation, a hawk perched on a dead tree, a network of canyons that stretched to the horizon.

After the meal of root mash he was on one of his photo safaris. He saw a group of hunters on horseback across a canyon. He framed a picture to 'take'. 

The image in the view finder looked just like a movie. Instead of clicking the shutter he followed them like a picture show. He noticed that unlike a picture show, his view bounced and jiggled with his movement no matter how hard he tried to keep it steady.

He lied on the ground and found a rock that had a rounded point on top. He rested the camera on the rock and found the men and horses in his view finder again. The camera rocked a bit, but once he got the hang of it he could follow the distant movement with a smooth and steady flow. It really looked like a movie. He imagined the scene in sepia tones and the sound of the piano playing Indian sorts of music.

“Much better.” he said.

“You are a strange one, lovely boy.” said a voice directly over him.

William rolled over with a start. The figure was just a silhouette against the afternoon sun. A dress with hands on it's hips and legs astride.

“You scared me!” William yelled.

“It is not my fault that whites can barely hear or see.”

He laughed. “You must think I'm deaf, maybe blind too.”

William sat up and picked his camera up from where it had toppled off the rock. Little Wind sat beside him.

“Cam-er-a.” He said.

“Camera yes,” she said in English. “I have seen your picture boxes before, a white man came once. His picture box was much bigger than yours. He put it on a tree with three trunks.” she motioned with her hands.

“I think I understand. One day I will have a camera like that and I will take pictures of you.” He made a frame around her face and smiled.”

“I think that you are being sweet... husband.”

“I wish I could understand you. I could teach you English ya know. Do you want to learn English? English?”

Little wind made a motion William took to be a sort-of shrug.

“You... learn... talk... English.” He motioned to her, then his lips several times.

She looked coyly at him for a moment, then leaned over and quickly kissed his lips.

William's eyes went wide. “Why'd you go and do that?”

He was further confused by the scolding sounds she started making.

“You are a snake Will-ee-am. A snake, but I am your wife. I can only obey.”

William scratched his head.

“Well aren't you going to en-glush Little Wind now. I have seen whites. Woman en-glush man, then man en-glush woman.”

“What? I don't... You said 'English'... Oh, I get it! You thought...” William laughed out loud.

Little Wind frowned.

“Kiss! That was a kiss. Kiss... Kiss.” William motioned to his lips repeatedly.”

“Great Father, you are a snake. Must I do it again? Very well husband. I am obedient to you.” She leaned forward and kissed him again, not as quickly this time.

“No, no...” William said, “I..”

Her face was still close. Her lips slightly parted. Her eyes were so dark and large, he see could the desert landscape in them. He closed the distance and kissed her, his heart pounded and he wanted to pull away but her hand rested on his shoulder and she made a sound like penny candy on a Saturday night. Their lips warmed together, unmoving, unsure what to do. 

William's hand raised to her cheek. It was so soft. She cooed at his touch then suddenly pushed him away. She got up and walked away rapidly.

“A snake Will-ee-am you are a snake!” She turned and walked backward that she could address him. “I obey you like a wife, but you cannot have me as a wife, I not yet a woman, and the chief has not yet bound us.” She took a few more steps and spun around on the gravely ground. “A Snake!.”

William sat on the ground. He watched the Indian girl stomp away. He shook his head. “I hate girls,” he said.

He rolled back over and tried to make pretend movie shots with his camera again, but he found even on the rock he could no longer keep it steady. He rolled on his back and felt the pounding still in his chest.

“Hate 'em.”

William closed his eyes and smiled.

My father's small house was dark when we arrived, but Bill and my parents all emerged from their rooms The moment the baby cried. Charlotte nearly collapsed in a chair.

“You poor dear, William, fetch some water.” my mother said, My mother automatically outstretched her arms towards the baby I was carrying. I glanced at Charlotte who gave a weak smile of approval. My mother took the baby naturally and adjusted the blankets around it easily as if it hadn't been eighteen years since holding me. It stopped crying almost immediately. Bill came back a moment later with a a glass of water for Charlotte, who drank it daintily, but non-stop.

“Mother, Father, Bill, this is Charlotte.”

"This fella hasn't been able to shut his yap about you since you arrived at the station last year." Bill said elbowing me."

"Hush William! Mind your manners." my mother scolded.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Charlotte said in almost a gasp as she put the glass on a lace doily by the chair and tried to rise. Mother placed her free hand on her shoulder. “That's alright dear, you rest.

“And who do have here?” My mother said in baby tones.

I froze in embarrassment. “My goodness, I don't even know the child's name.”

All eyes turned to Charlotte.

“Henrietta is what's on her birth certificate, but I do detest that name.”Charlotte said.

“Then why?...” My mother rocked the baby.

“I knew they would take her from me. I was planning ahead. I knew if I ever got her back that I would have to hide her, that I would have to change her name. Why not save her real name for that time. A time like right now.”

Charlotte held out her arms, my mother handed back her baby.

“Little girl, beautiful little girl," Charlotte said, "your name is, as it always truly has been: Ruby.”

____________________________________

A personal side story that helped me understand the horrors of handling a baby for the first time (for a guy):

I spent several years working as an ICU technician at a Hospital in Rochester, NY in the early '90s.


Because it was a small hospital there weren't always enough patients in the unit to require my 'tech' help so I sometimes got floated to other areas of the hospital like the regular patient floors, or often the emergency room. On rare occasions I was even sent to the OB nursery which, as a childless dude, I found a bit scary.

They were merciful though, and had me spend my time doing non-baby sorts of things like stocking Infamile and diapers.

Merciful, except for one occasion.


To my horror, I was asked to change a newborn into those little tops they wear while in the hospital. Surely, an effortless, mindless occupation not to be at all feared.


Lo, nay I say!


Okay, no problem, I've handled any number of critical care emergencies, I'm an ICU/ER tech for cryin' out loud...


I got this!

• Problem 1: The top in question itself was an issue. These are not articles of clothing that have any logic to them. They wrap around the torso of an infant one-and-a-half times and have, count'em, three sleeves. Okay, not rocket science, I'll grant you but which two sides are the front? Which two sides are the rear? Does one lift the newborn to apply this mini pastel straightjacket or does one roll the critter back and forth, like rolling out terrycloth cookie dough?
  No instruction was available.
  
  
• Problem 2: The limbs of infants are like soggy noodles. Getting them to poke through a sleeve is much like the proverbial 'pushing a rope up a road'. This limpness of course applies double to the oh-so vulnerable head and neck, which seems to require a third hand to protect and support it while wrangling all the other rubbery bits.
  
  
• Problem 3: Just as I was getting started, Who else but the family showed up at the window just in front of me. A pinnacle moment in their lives, viewing this new precious life just a few inches away, a life that is the clutches of a complete amateur.
  -No pressure.
  

All was well though. I somehow faked some level of competence and the family was cleverly fooled into thinking their baby was in-fact not on the verge of being inadvertently tied into a sheepshank by a guy who had never so much as touched a hours-old human before, or, as I'm happy to report...

Since!

The Jewels of Nebraska Episode #17

The girl was right, releasing the stays all at once was a bad idea.

Ruby had rubbed her wrists raw in the ropes but managed to free them from the bed frame and undo the laces on the correction corset she had been forced to wear. She thought it would be pure relief to breath free again and not have her middle cinched down to a spindle, but the pain of that freedom was extraordinary. Her skin burned, her ribs ached and her insides complained severely, having been rearranged then dumped back in place. Even the ability to take full breaths had it's peril, the sudden rush of oxygen from her deep breaths made her even more dizzy and lightheaded than when they first laced her into the thing.

She bit her lip to keep from crying out and waking the girls around her, and gripped the bed rail to keep from falling over. Ruby looked at the old corset lying on the floor.

It had tortured it's last girl she decided.

“Brother Tobias, Brother Tobias!”

The large man rolled over slowly like a mountain of rising dough. The girl next to him scrambled to wrap her night dress around her and scurried from the room.

“Brother Tobias, there's a fire.”

“You woke me up for that?” Brother Tobias said standing in front of his residence. He saw the small fire in the center of the compound. “It looks like... that's a corset.”

“No brother, I woke you for that.” Brother Schecter pointed behind the row of buildings to a glow and a column of smoke rising from it.

“Oh crap! The God damn generator! Well... sound the bell you halfwit!”

An explosion just then, made the bell superfluous.

Ruby jumped in the Hewette's truck after having refueled it using the same hand pump they had used to empty their gasoline into the generator's tank. She had also ripped the rubber fuel lines from the generator letting the gasoline spill on the dusty ground. She smashed the lantern she'd taken from the hallway. She felt the wave of heat that made her jump back. The flames around the generator rose a lot higher and faster than she had imagined they would. Maybe she shouldn't have taken the time to set the corset ablaze in the center of the compound but she simply couldn't resist.

The truck whined and turned over and over when she pushed the starter. It wouldn't start. She wanted to run away from the flames, but the truck was her only hope of escape. She lifted the engine cover hoping to see something obvious. There it was, a handful of wires resting unconnected on what looked like a miniature version of those fancy milking machines she'd seen at the County Fair. She plugged the wires in, in no particular order.

Nothing.

She tried moving the wires onto different plugs.

Still nothing. 

The Generator tank had flames licking it's sides. It began creaking like an old ship. The fuel spilling on the ground crept towards the truck. Ruby saw it approach in her rear view mirror.

One more time she went to the engine and quickly rearranged the wires, like some puzzle, one wire seemed to come from a different direction, she plugged it into the center plug which was higher than the rest.

She pushed the started with a prayer. The truck began to sputter. She pumped the gas pedal and cursed at the thing, just like I, her old Pa, used to do. The truck began to rumble in a horrible rhythm of misfires, backfires, and quaking like a broken wheat thresher, but it was running!

She heard voices. She hoped they were more interested in the fire than her.

Ruby pressed the brake and tried to jam the gear shift where she'd seen me do it. The gears moaned and complained as she ground them together.

“Must be the other pedal.”

Some of the brothers and a couple women had come outside and approached the burning generator. One of them ran up to the truck.

“You get out of that automobile!” he said placing his hand on the door handle. Ruby pressed in the clutch. The gear shift easily engaged. She let out the pedal and the truck jerked suddenly forward knocking the man backwards and sending the truck off on a bumpy spin around the compound.The man jumped up and gave chase.

"Come back here you!"

Once out of the light of the blaze, Ruby realized she couldn't see a thing without the headlamps. She fumbled for a lever but could feel nothing. With the truck still lumbering forward, she ducked under the dash to have a look in the dim light. She found a likely candidate and pulled it. The engine began to die. She quickly pushed it back in and pulled another.

“Maybe that was it.”

Ruby looked up from under the dash just in time to see the headlamps light up what she was about to run into. She screamed and covered her eyes with both hands. There was an explosion of old wood as the outhouse was reduced to splinters and dust. A book flew up and plastered it's cover against the windshield.

“Godliness of the Submissive Female, By J. G. Tobias,” it read.

Behind her, was a scream and splash as the brother chasing her fell into the outhouse pit. The generator gas tank finally exploded. People ran screaming. Ruby tried to stay calm during her first driving lesson, but the truck was jumping over rocks and lumber. The steering wheel, as it turned out, was harder to turn than a pig in a chute. She worked hard with both hands just to avoid hitting houses and the people that would occasionally find themselves haplessly in her path.

One man was able to catch up to her and grab onto the side of the truck. He was trying to get his feet up on the bed when he was dispatched by stalks of corn Ruby suddenly found herself in.

“I need to go faster,” Ruby said, “let's try another gear.

She had seen me shift a thousand times. Where was that next gear? Another man was chasing the truck and about to grab on. Like reading a book, Ruby went to the next gear to the right: third, caused the truck to leap forward. The engine strained and almost died. The truck moved through it's obstacle course at twice the speed, but ironically, Ruby observed, it was a little easier to steer.

Eventually she found the path and the road that lead out of the compound. She was nearly out when a large man stepped in front of the truck and put a hand up. it was Brother Tobias. She hit the brakes and the truck sputtered stalled. 

"Oh dear." she said trying to start the thing again.

Brother Tobias approached. The truck lurched when she hit the starter button. she pushed the clutch in and tried again.

"Step out child." he said with sinister calmness.

Ruby looked straight ahead and  frantically worked to start the engine, pumping the gas and cursing at it.

"Such sinful language! What's the use, you're in the middle of desert, you can't even drive my child."

The truck suddenly started.

"Oh yeah," said Ruby"

She reved the engin to it's maximum, popped the clutch and the truck shot ahead. The rear tire rolled over the fat man's foot. She could hear him howling in pain as she drove out of so-called “Heaven”.

After a couple of miles up hill, she looked back at the the view. Flames and bedlam; people running every which way, the generator exploding every once in a while, nearby structures were beginning to ignite. The whole valley was lit up with the yellow glow of flames.

"Can't drive. I can drive just fine you tub of lard!"

Ruby smiled for the first time in weeks.

The woman held the baby and paced back and forth nervously looking at us. Charlotte and I had been tied back-to-back sitting on the floor, rags tied in our mouths kept us from calling for help. The woman's husband, after securing us, had left, presumably to fetch the man with the thimbles on his fingers.

Kohn had told me the child's location because of my considerable scrap in the one-sided bar fight, but he made it clear, with just a flash of his eye, that that was the end of his favor and if I was caught I was a stranger to him, or worse.

Charlotte's bound hands were against my own. I worried about taking a liberty, but something caused me to take her fingers in mine. She entwined my fingers and held them firmly. We turned and looked at one another.

Charlotte started speaking into her gag “Water,” it sounded like.

The woman tried to ignore it but Charlotte persisted. The woman put the baby in the crib and returned to Charlotted. She pulled the gag over her chin.

“Surely,” Charlotte gasped. “You would not deny me a sip of water.” She spoke with the desperation of a condemned man giving his last request at the stake.

The woman said nothing but returned with a ladle of water.

“Thank you, thank you most kindly good lady.”

“I ain't no lady.”

“It must be hard to be barren.” Charlotte just as the woman was about to replace her gag.

A tear came to the woman's eye. She brushed it away, ashamed of betraying her feelings.

“I got sick. I got sick with a social disease cause I'm...”

“You must love this little girl like it was your own.”

“Yes, yes I surely do.”

She stood up and began pacing again. The tears flowed freely. The eyes went to the crib again and again.

“It would break your heart if someone came and stole away her from you, wouldn't it. You'd stay up at nights, always vexed whether she was safe, whether she was happy.”

“Yes, yes I would.”

The woman sat in a chair and covered her eyes. Her back convulsed.

“Then you know exactly how it is that I feel.”

The woman got up from the chair. "Stop it, just stop." 

She quickly replaced Charlotte's gag. Charlotte did not protest.

“Just stop,” She yelled.

The baby started crying. Both sets of eyes shot towards the crib. Both hearts ached. The woman picked up the baby and calmed it's wails rocking and speaking softly. Charlotte fingers squeezed my own with more strength that I knew she had.

“I knowed it. You're her, aren't you? That rich woman,” she said in a low voice. “They said... they said you didn't want it, that it was all alone in the world, that it needed a momma.

“But you don't look rich, not no more. You don't look like someone who gave up their baby. And here you are came across town and stole in my windah to grab your...” She began pacing again. “You changed you mind, that's it. You gave her up, and then you felt emptiness in your heart and changed you mind.”

“Well you cain't.” She stood in front of Charlotte and bent low. “You cain't change your mind. She's mine now and she loves ME.”

Charlotte eyes looked into the woman's. She made no sound. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Oh curse be.” She stood and went to the window. “No, no, no! Curse it all to hell!”

The baby began to cry again.

“Shhhh shh shh.” She said sweetly. She put her back in the crib and kissed her forehead. “I want you to know somethin.” she said so softly I could barely hear. “I love you, and I will always, always love you. You hear me little one? You hear?” she took off a cross she wore on her neck and placed it in the crib.

She wiped her eyes and hurried back to Charlotte and I. She began untying the ropes.

“He'll be back any time now.”

When we were free Charlotte hugged the woman's shoulders.

“Thank you, thank you, a thousand times... tha...”

“Jus git would ya?” she said wiping her eyes and standing tall. “Do one thing for me first.”

“Yes, anything dear lady.” Charlotte said.

“Hit me.” Her eyes turned to me.

“What!”

“Hard.”

“I could never...”

“Mister, I won't be the first time, and at your worst you'll be kinder than he.”

I stammered.

“If he don't come home to a shiner, he'll know... and then, well I don't even want to think.”

“But, I... I just can't give a woman a shiner! I just can't!”

“Blood would be better actually, if you can manage.”

“It's okay mister, I been hit plenty before, you ain't gunna hurt me.”

Charlotte took my arm. I looked at her. She gave a small nod.

“And hurry, there ain't no time.”

“Forgive me.” I said to both God and all present. I took a deep breath and I did the unthinkable.

Charlotte helped her up. The woman touched her face and looked at her hand.

“No blood, but I think it'll do.”

“What's your name sweet woman?”

“It's Betty, Betty Kramer.”

“Betty, I will pray for you. I will pray for a miracle.” Charlotte went to the crib and lifted her child to her breast. She picked up the the cross on the chain. “I'll tell her. I'll tell her about you.”

“I'm glad you know.” She dabbed at her tears and tossed the hanky as if discarding an rotten tomato. “That thing kept me up at nights, she's a screamer ya know, took all my time. I'm glad to be rid of her the more i think about it!”

Betty watched us until we were swallowed by the darkness of the street. Then she fell to her knees and wept.

Continued in episode 18

The Jewels of Nebraska, 16 -A Lovely Imbecile

Sleep came to Ruby with surprising ease. Though she was still trussed in the old-fashioned correction corset and her hands tied to the top of the bed frame to prevent her from loosening the stays, the mere dizzy effort of breathing had exhausted her more than a day of harvest back on the farm. She was asleep minutes after they tied the last knot.

She was walking in a forest. She came to a clearing and recognized the house at the other end. When she got closer she heard the sound of an ax hitting logs. She rounded the corner of the house to see a man splitting wood. His shirt was drapped over a fence post and his broad back was bare but for his suspenders. It glistened with sweat. She stepped closer. The man kept on putting logs on the block and raising the ax to them. He hit them with such force the halves flew in different directions. She was close now. She could smell the sweat of his labor.

Then he turned. It was Ben, the kind young man who had taken them in in Colorado. He stopped his log splitting and turned to the girl. She noticed then she was only wearing her night dress. She cross her arms over her chest and felt her cheeks burn with his gaze.

“Where you been Ruby? He said with a gentle voice that felt like silk in her ears. “I been lookin' for you.”

She felt like running to him and throwing her arms around him. She looked down to see a huge snake coiled between them. No sooner had she seen it when it shot towards her and wrapped itself around her and pulled her to the ground. It squeezed her tightly, crushing her.

“Ben, help me!” she gasped.

Ben approached. He looked concerned, but only looked on her predicament.

“I been lookin' for you Ruby,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Ben, Ben, help me, please help me Ben.”

The snake's head came round close to Ruby. It's tongue starting lapping her face.

Gentle slaps on the cheek awoke her.

“Who's Ben?” whispered the girl sitting by Ruby's cot?

“What?... nobody.”

The corset still squeezed Ruby, her hands still bound overhead. She fought to catch her breath from the dream. Her head was light and spinning.

“You gotta keep quiet or we all gunna be in trouble.”

“I didn't...”

“Ssssh! Ben, you were callin' for Ben. What's he, yer boyfriend?”

“He's not my...”

Ruby looked up at her hands and gave them a fruitless tug.

“The first time they put me in that thing I had some sinful dreams too.” The girl said. She looked off at nothing.

“I didn't do no sinnin' there was this snake see...”

“Hey there, You don't gotta tell me, mine had bunch a growin' vines,” the girl paused and smiled. “Mmm, that was a good one.”

“Why are you here?” Ruby said.

“Me and some of the other girls thought it was pretty okay how you gave salt to old Brother Rickenbacher today.”

“Then untie me.”

“You're new, you still don't quite get it.”

“Get what?”

“This, this whole thing is about us and those dirty pictures they make us pose for.” The girl casually stroked Ruby's arm. “We're slaves see, just slaves. Every couple of weeks that pervert from California comes and makes some movies.”

“Movies? California”

“Yeah, sometimes he takes a girl or two back with him.”

“Really? To California.”

“I ain't never been, but from what I heard, you really don't want to be one of those he takes.”

Helen gave Ruby a pat on the head. “Listen, I can't get you free, but I'll loosen that corset a mite. Roll up on your side.”

Ruby fell back to the cot and took in the closest thing to a full breath in hours. “That's a lot better. Thank you...”

“Shallana. But my real name is Helen.”

“I'm Ruby.”

“Well Ruby, don't thank me too much. They're going to lace you up tighter in the morning. The cotton gives a bit after a spell, so they say.”

“Thanks all the same,”

“Don't mention it,” Helen said as she slipped back to her cot. “Really, don't!”

The house was small and ramshackle, just two rooms it looked like. It was at the end of a dead-end street on the southern side of the Omaha, I could smell the banks of the river. A fence around the overgrown property was made from bits of shipping crates and discarded chicken wire. A lantern glowed inside.

“What do you see?”

“Sssh!” I tried to say as urgently as I could without sounding unkind.

Though I was still in a euphoric bliss over being with Charlotte, having her cling to my arm everywhere we went, there were a few things I hadn't counted on. Before now she had existed only in a silk cocoon. Servants took care of every trivial detail rendering her, well, to be right plain, somewhat of an imbecile in the the regular world I lived in.

It was quite novel to her to walk down the street in the plain clothes we had borrow from my mother, who had to dress her essentially. Her head was on a swivel, like a child. Had she not been on my arm, I believe she would have walked right in front of a moving automobile or carriage on more than one occasion.

Sneaking around in the dark next to house where we hoped to find her stolen baby, she seemed oblivious to the fact that it was important to move quietly. No amount of pleading would get her to wait at the fence for me though. It may have been best that she was close at hand actually, where I could keep an eye on her.

“I am going to look in the window first, you stay low and don't move or speak, understand?”

“Ye...” she cut her word short and nodded fervently.

I raised my head up slow to see in the room. A man sat in a chair with a pipe in his mouth and half a glass of a whiskey ready to fall from his hand. No smoke came from the pipe. He was asleep or close to it. Not far away, sat a woman darning a sock that had once been somewhat white. The infant was nowhere in to be seen.

“I don't see the baby.” I said.

“Oh no! This isn't the house.”

“No, I reckon it is, the baby's just asleep in the other room.”

“I suppose you are correct.”

“What I don't reckon is how we're going to get the baby out of there with out them upon us.”

“One of us will distract them, at the door for some reason.”

“Good idea, then I can sneak in and get the baby.”

“No my darling, it must be me.”

“I know how you feel about your baby, but...”

She put a finger softly to my lips.

“First, my feelings for you I hope you realize, but my dear, dear man, you will never truly know how I feel about my baby...”

“Of course, of course, but...”

“On a more practical level, a woman alone at this time of night? They'd be suspicious of any woman of my age to begin with. They may even recognize my resemblance to my child. It is remarkable, you will agree when you see her. It has to be you. I'll get the baby.”

“You're right, I know you are, but... breaking into a window and climbing inside, moving quietly in a strange dark room then climbing out with a babe in arms? Forgive me my dear, but you had trouble crossing the street earlier.”

“You will fix the window so it will open then go and cause your distraction. As for climbing in and out and sneaking about, I am a mother, and this is my baby. I assure you, there is no task...”

I put my hands around hers and held them firmly.

“Yes, I never should have doubted you Charlotte. I forgot that the second time I ever saw you you were charging off into a blizzard to find her.”

“Until you saved my life at the expense of your job.”

I gingerly lifted the catch on the bedroom window with my knife and swung it open for her.

“Wait till you hear me sneeze, I'll do it real loud. That's how you'll know I have their attention at the front door.” I told her.

My heart was pounding after I knocked on the door. I heard foot steps, then, from inside, a rather loud sneeze! Charlotte would think it mine and begin her action too soon!

“Yeah,” said the said man at the door.

He held a shotgun in one hand. I tried not to look at it.

“Kohn sent me, there's trouble. He wants you to meet him.”

“Who?” he said with narrowed eyes. I felt panic but I managed to keep my demeanor.

“Big guy, thimbles on his, you know.” I motioned to my fingertips feigning annoyance at having to educate him.

“Him? What's he want?”

'He wants you, and I think you know better than to keep him waiting.”

“Yeah, okay.” the man reached for his jacket on a nail near the door and propped the shotgun just below it.

He was about to shut the door and follow me, when a noise came from the bedroom. He stopped. I could see that the woman had looked up from her darning and had turned towards the bedroom door. The man reached out and grabbed for my collar with one hand and the shotgun with the other. He dragged me into the house and opened the bedroom door. Charlotte and the baby were no where to be seen. With me still in tow the man grabbed one of the lanterns and ran outside. He was looking up and down the dark street.

“I got your partner here,” shouted the man. "Just bring back the baby and he won't get hurt.”

Silence, except for a few barking dogs.

Good! I knew Charlotte wouldn't give up her child. Then, the sound of a baby crying back inside the house.

“Under the crib,” the woman said when we passed her in the bedroom. The man dragged Charlotte out by her ankle. The woman pried the baby from her. I was shoved me across the room towards Charlotte and he raised the shotgun. I took Charlotte in my arms, our first embrace. Charlotte held me back but extended one arm towards the crying baby back in the crib.

“Get you away from there,” the man said waving the shotgun. “Go fetch some rope,” he said to the woman.

Continued in Episode 17 here

The Jewels of Nebraska, 15 -Engaging Their Ire

“You, girl, you're next. Sit down on the divan.”

She remained on the bench defiant, between several other girls, some around her age, some older.

“Hey there! What's your name? What's this girl's name?”

“The new one? That's Kallah.”

“Kallah, get your fanny on that couch.”

“My name's not Kallah, it's Ruby, and I'll do with my fanny what I please.”

“I don't care if it's Annie Oakley, and your fanny belongs to Brother Tobias, so get up here.” Said Brother Rickenbacher from behind the camera.

“No!” said Ruby.

The man looked exasperated and put his hands on his hips. “Girls.” he said.

The girls on either side of Ruby grabbed her arms and dragged her forward, pulled her dress over her head leaving her in the lacy underthings they had made her put on that morning. She was too surprised to fight back. They dumped her on the dusty couch, a fancy piece that had seen better days in some big house back East.

It was Ruby's first day in the work house. She'd heard it called that since she arrived, but Ruby could tell at the first, from the way the girls wore old lingerie under their dresses and the fact that they came back each day nearly as clean and fresh as they left in the morning, that it was something else entirely. 

Ruby had been left in the upstairs room each day for a week or so until she had gained some weight on her hips and in her chest. That was another clue that the girls weren't sewing dresses or making Teddy bears for poor children in India, as everyone was told.

Finally the tape measure showed some results from the lard and rice mixture they forced her to choke down four times a day and she was sent off with the others on their daily march over the hillside.

The single barn sized building seemed normal enough from a distance, but inside there was no roof, just a floor and four walls. One end of the building was made to look like the inside of a sitting room with oriental rugs on the floor, tapestry on the walls and finer furniture than anywhere else in the the whole compound even if it was old and a bit worn. White bedsheets had been sewn together and draped over boards overhead to keep the light in the 'sitting room' in between a state of sunlight and shade.

“Kallah, get a smile on that face, you look like a sour puss.”

“I'm wearing ridiculous underwear in front of everyone and being held here against my will. Why should I smile? This place is horrible. You people are all crazy. You girls are all like zombies, what the heck is wrong with you.”

“Smile dammit! Do it now! We don't have all day, we just need a simple shot of you for now. Just get it over with.”

“Then take a picture, but I refuse to smile.”

Brother Rickenbacher looked over his shoulder to a dark corner where there at a seated figure leaning on a cane.

“Corrective lacing, two days. That'll squeeze a smile out of her.” Said Brother Tobias with a grin that could be heard from the shadows.

“Two days? But Mr Hagstrom is coming in two days.”

“Then maybe he can get her to smile; two days. I know this girl's type,” he said as if Ruby and the others weren't right there, “You'd better break her now and do it right or she'll infect the others. Lace her up.”

The girls on the benches seemed to get excited. This more than anything made Ruby nervous. Brother Rickenbacher pointed at two of the older girls, which caused the rest to start chanting.

“Lace her, lace her, lace her...”

The girls took something off the wall that looked like some sort of orthopedic device with a mile of string laced through one side and a series of metal buttons on the other. They pulled Ruby up off the couch into a standing position. One girl stood in front of her and grabbed her wrists while the other wrapped the thing around her middle and closed the metal buttons in front. It went from low on her hips to up over her bust.

This isn't so bad Ruby thought. Mama used to talk about wearing these things when she was younger, how she hated them but...

The girl behind Ruby began pulling on the laces. The corset closed around her and began squeezing her waist in.

I can see what Mama was talking about now... “Ooph.” said Ruby quite involuntarily. The girl pulled the laces a second time making the thing even tighter.

“Hey, what's the idea? Stop, it I can't hardly...oomph!”

It tightened again. Ruby's eyes went wide. She realized it was going to get worse.

“Lace her, lace her...”

Between each cinching of her middle, Ruby could feel the girl behind her working the laces on the upper and lower portions of her torso, squeezing her ribcage and her hips before a crescendo with a big pull at the center drawing her further and further into hourglass like rich old ladies still did.

Ruby kept thinking the thing couldn't get any tighter but then the girl would yank on the laces and Ruby would feel the thing close around her. The final pull had the girl place her boot on Ruby's back for leverage and pulled hard with a grunt.

Ruby felt like she would split in two.

The girls all cheered and jeered. Ruby could barely make a squeak.

The laces were brought in front of her and tied in a large bow. The girl in front of her let go of her wrists. Ruby nearly toppled over. She was lightheaded and weak. Each shallow breath she could take was an effort. The two girls guided Ruby back to the wall. She knew she would not be sitting down. Bending at the middle was not possible. She looked down at the lace ends tied before her. She promised herself would loosen them at the first opportunity, when no one was looking.

They dashed her plans by binding her hands behind her. They looped a rope around her spindled waist and attached it to a nail high on the wall like a dog on a leash, not tight, but only allowing her a few inches of travel.

The other girls took turns on the couch having their pictures taken in their underwear, sometimes less, sometimes apart, sometimes together. Ruby could hardly believe the depravity she was seeing, but mostly all she could think about trying to breathe.

It was all clear now. This was no cult, maybe the folks like Caleb and Esther still thought it was, but their religious fever and Caleb's greedy dream of having multiple wives was just bait to bring young women to this place for dirty pictures. Now they were slaves, all three of them. Ruby thought she had it better, not toiling in the hot sun all day, but now she wasn't sure.

“You can't leave!” She grabbed my habit covered arm when I tried to stand up.

“But the nurse just said I have to, visiting hours are over.”

“You can't leave without me.”

Charlotte clung to my arm in desperation.

“Wait a minute, you're sick, I can't take you from your hospital bed.”

“I'm not sick, I was never ill, I was stricken with sadness but you just cured me of that when you said you'd found my baby. The doctors say my womb is making me hysterical, they want to take it out."

“Dear lord! that's horrible", I said, "but remember, I can't be completely sure about your baby till you see it, till you have her in your arms.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said, “you have to take me with you. Tomorrow they will operate on me and as soon as i recover my father is having me sent back to Philadelphia.” Charlotte laughed. “It used to be all I dreamed of, going back, but now... Now, there's my child, now there's... you.”

I was stunned. It was all I had dreamed of; for the beautiful Charlotte to ask me to take her away. To chosen over her wealthy family. I felt fear cloud my joy, though. It was one thing to climb to a rooftop and to dress like a nun and sneak into a hospital, but this was kidnapping, willing though she was, that's how her family would see it and therefore how a judge would.

“I... I'll come back tomorrow. I need time to plan this out.”

“No, it's no good my darling, it has to be now.”

“But...”

“Don't you see? I don't think the nuns loaned you that get-up. They may know it's missing, even now. If we wait...”

I did see. It was all happening so fast. Then I looked at her face, and felt her hands close around my own. I would do anything for her. Nothing was impossible and I was fearless... mostly.

“Sister, sorry, I'm afraid you really have to leave now.” said the nurse as she passed by the room.

“Um yes child... um.” I converted to my ridiculous nun's voice. Charlotte bit her lip to suppress her laughter. I myself heard my voice break and I choked back a chortle. “I just need a moment.”

I closed my eyes, seeing Charlotte's face trying not to laugh would have made it impossible not to laugh myself. Then I had a thought.

“Nurse.” I said.

The nurse came back in. “Yes sister?”

This lady has decided to take confession before her surgery tomorrow. I know that visiting hours are over but certainly I could take her to the chapel and try to catch the Chaplin before he leaves... on a safari.”

"Father Vecci, is going on a safari?"

“Uh why yes of course, they need chaplins too, all those elephants and tigers.”

Charlotte and I made faces at each other.

“Well I supposed they wouldn't blame me for allowing a confession. I'll get a wheel chair.”

It was difficult not to break into a run when we passed the doors of the hospital and headed towards the street. I managed to keep my countenance about me. Charlotte herself had to keep herself from looking around and keep her head hung low like someone ill and forlorn. Once or twice, footfalls in the corridors behind us made us worry the gig was up. It was not much better out on the sidewalk. A nun walking a wheel chair is not nearly as easy to explain away on the street as it is in a hospital.

Our hearts both nearly stopped as we saw a superfluity of nuns headed straight for us. Charlotte gripped the suitcase she held in her lap with white knuckles. They parted for us and nodded as I did. I was about to breath again when I heard it. First a flutter of conversation between them, then it happened.

“Sister? Oh Sister.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned just enough to turn, but stopped short of showing my face through the wings of the habit.

“What is your name?”

“Sister Catherine... Jones of... Cleveland... I'm, uh... new.”

“What's wrong with your voice sister? Let us have a look at you?” Said one of the older nuns in a haughty tone.

I looked down at Charlotte. She angled back up at me carefully. I was ready to make a run for it, wheelchair and all. I could already see how it would end though with a policeman twirling his nightstick at the the end of the block.

I heard someone running behind us. My heart stopped. I turned to see Olaf, the milk boy, running up to the nuns.

“Damn, damn, hell... liquor... pool... Holy crap!” he said dancing around trying to engage their ire.

He was remarkably successful given the chase that followed. He was saved by his ability to dodge carriages and the fact the nuns were only armed with harsh scolding, not rulers or yardsticks.

“I didn't know nuns could run so swiftly.” Charlotte said after we past the policeman calmly with a friendly nod.

“I know, without our young milk boy coming to our aid, they would have caught us for sure. I couldn't run like that in this habit even without the wheelchair.”

“I'm glad poor Olaf got away. It was good of you to bring him.”

“I didn't. He must have followed me.”

I took off my nun's habit as gracefully as possible, which was to say not very graceful at all.

There we stood at the corner of Leavenworth and 24^th Street like two children that had just run away from home and just realized it was real. We were two people who barely knew the other now bound by our crimes, the one we had just committed, and the one we were about to.

“What now darling?” Charlotte said.

“First, we get rid of this wheel chair then we go and get your baby back.”

She took my hand and squeezed it gently.

Continued in Episode 16 here