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Farmer in the Dell
by Phil Stong
Part 1
Chapter 1
Pa Boyer, white-haired, sturdy, striding with the long, determined steps of a plowman, came down Vine Street from Hollywood Boulevard, filled by the vague delight and excitement with which the night city, the neon signs, the Terrapin Racing Bowl, the ragged, gutty-looking palm stems, the two-by-four processional of second-raters into the Brown Derby, always stirred him. He was walking more rapidly than usual, for he had not only to bring Anthony Adverse -- recommended by the salesman as a nice clean book -- back from the circulating library to Ma, but he had to tell Rudy that he was pretty sure he had seen Charlie Chaplin going into Henry's.
Down the street he could see the last bright activities of the Drive-in Market -- the First and Original Rousseau's -- and the purple flicker of the Genuine Texas Barbecue. Everything in Hollywood was either First, Original, Quality, or Genuine, as the city blustered in its conscious factitiousness; but Ernie Boyer liked it. It was full of promised excitement, as yet unfulfilled; anyway, it was pretty different from the peepers and the cicadas of an Iowa night -- lots better. Yes, darn it, lots better. Oranges six dozen for a quarter.
He could see Rudy's pavilion, a round structure of green and red, completely surrounded, on its corner, by graveled automobile approaches. Over the top a redly outlined hog winked on and off, giving place to the invitation: "Pig Sandwich -- 10 cents -- Biggest in Town." He could see the board, placed at the proper angle for the automobile headlights, which said, not too loquaciously, Honk. He could even see Rudy, whose feet got tired, in his red and green uniform, fixing, likely, a pig sandwich with pickle, with pepper sauce, with onion, with a little bit of mustard, right hot off the joint. A presentiment of good came upon Pa Boyer; he anticipated a patriotic orgy on the national animal of Iowa, but he anticipated more his evening conference with Rudy, the conversation which gave a purposeful and worldly flavor to his restless, laboredly pleasant days.
He glanced at the shiny Rolls-Royce in the Used Cars for Sale park and read the sign on it: For Cash -- $200.
"Hm," he meditated; "couldn't be in first-class shape."
He felt very much a native of the city when Rudy, glimpsing his face under the corner light, began preparing his sandwich before he arrived, and even more so when Rudy gave him his usual evening greeting, "Hoddy, Ioway!"
"Iowuh," Pa Boyer corrected, as usual. "Hoddy, Rudy."
"You know," he added in the quiet, commanding voice he had acquired by managing fractious horses and cattle, "I'm pretty sure I seen Miriam Hopkins goin' into the Broadway-Plaza, an' I'm sure I seen Charlie Chaplin in Henry's."
The stranger down the counter, a pleasant-looking, grizzled fellow, was staring at Pa, but Pa courteously refrained from noticing.
"Well," said Rudy quietly, "Al Boasberg and Bud Barsky has sat right where you're sittin' now -- makin' wisecracks." He wiped up the counter and set down Ernie Boyer's pig sandwich. "Pretty lousy ones," he added.
"Say," said the man down the counter. His face was remarkably creased and tanned. He looked very much like Pa Boyer -- a farmy look, a clean, patient look. "Say, you from Iowuh?"
"That's right," Pa said gratefully. "Iowuh -- that's right. You must be from there too."
The stranger shook his head. "I just heard the director tellin' Maude Elverill how to pronounce it. You know we're makin' an Iowa picture up at Colossal."
Ernie swallowed pig, with bun, with pickle, with onion. It was good.
"You -- " he said to the stranger, "you must be an actor."
The stranger bent his head modestly. "I do a bit in the Fourth o' July parade. It's Pittsville, Iowa, an' the Queen of Beauty comes by on her float -- that's Elverill; the Queen, I mean -- and she throws off flowers and I catch some and my wife takes 'em off me and throws 'em down."
"It's a laugh," Rudy said, with the firmness of an expert.
"Then what?" Pa asked with interest.
"Then she sees the leadin' man -- he's stopped off in Pittsville from Des Moines because the train doesn't run on holidays -- and then all of that stuff."
"Sure," said Rudy. "Sounds like a good picture."
"Knockout," the stranger conceded. He finished his sandwich and looked fixedly at Pa. "You -- if you happened to want some change -- I bet the director would use you. They're shy of farm types for the parade crowd."
Ernie Boyer was flattered. "I'm not any actor. Besides, I'm retired. Still got a farm in Iowa pays me a few hundred a year." His silvery brows lifted and the eyes beneath them were troubled. "Don't know what's going to happen in this cussed drought."
The stranger wiped his mouth properly, first on the paper napkin and then on the right forearm of his coat sleeve. "If you happened to need the cash, I bet they'd hire you -- even just to stand on."
Rudy nodded with conviction. "Local color."
The stranger rose and introduced himself. "My name's Cole -- Wes Cole. Maybe you'd remember when I ate in the harvesters' dinner in Stranger's Return -- I was the one grabbed the beets. Had a farm myself once, up around Sonora, when I had a contract with Keith. Folks were all farm people, but I couldn't make it go."
"Gee," said Ernie Boyer sympathetically. "My name's Boyer -- Ernie Boyer. It's nice to know somebody in the movies. Maybe you could stop around 47 Afton Place some evening and meet Ma. I mean I wish you could. She'd be tickled to death to know somebody in the movies. The chickens out here ain't much, but what they are she can cook 'em as good as anybody."
Rudy said, "Who'd he ought to see at Colossal?"
"Mike Scarpino, the casting director. If they ask you have you got any experience tell 'em sure, you was in Cavalcade. Everybody was in Cavalcade. Our call's for ten o'clock, so I'd get there before then a good while. An' I won't forget about that chicken." Mr. Cole went on his way.
"You get there about eight o'clock," Rudy advised, sliding the mustard down the counter. "It's an opportunity."
"Gee, Rudy, I ain't an actor!"
"How do you know? You ain't ever acted." Rudy wiped the crumbs from Mr. Cole's recent location and said thoughtfully, "I bet you're as good as Janet Gaynor."
"I think Janet Gaynor's swell."
Rudy made a crude sound with his lips. "You just look kind of happy and naweeve like she does and they'll hire you."
"That's not right, Rudy," Ernie said reprovingly. "People get the money they do got some kind of talent, even if it might take quite a while to find out what it is."
"Oh, yeah?" said Rudy. "You stand around here fixin' up ham for hams as long as I have and you'd know some things. Now don't let them scare you; you ain't Lionel Barrymore, but for all you know, you might be. It's worth tryin'." He wiped a splash of mustard off a cellophane-covered placard which blathered on about "a generous slice of piping-hot pig from old Smithfield -- pickle prepared by our special process in fine cider vinegar -- finest condiments -- selected Spanish onion," and so on.
"It's an opportunity," he reiterated.
"I -- I guess I might just drop around. Could use a couple extra dollars, what with the drought in Iowa." Pa was quite sure that he would get scared out the last minute.
"Sure you could," said Rudy. "Any of us could, these times. It ain't going to hurt you a bit to find out."
Ernie ate the last bite of pig sandwich regretfully. He was quite certain that he would not do anything so fantastic as to go out to Colossal and try to be an actor, but he liked to play with the idea.
"What do you suppose they pay, Rudy?"
Rudy, who had no idea, turned the ham on the warming-coils. "It would be anyhow five bucks a day."
There were a few problems at the pink-stuccoed home of the Boyers'. Six hundred dollars a year, the splendid sum on which Ernie Boyer had planned to live the rest of his days, didn't stretch out generously over the months. A house that had a skimpy garage -- not even a barn or a barnyard -- cost almost half of this amount in rent. There was a lemon tree and an apricot tree, but other articles of food seemed desirable from time to time.
"I'll take a crack at it," Ernie said, still rather doubting that he would. "By Jeeze, I will take a crack at it."
He slid off the stool and waved at Rudy. For a moment the severe and impenetrable sophistication of the attendant's face relaxed.
"G'night, Ioway. G'night, Franchot."
Ernie smiled. "More the Stu Erwin type, maybe."
"Well, maybe." Rudy almost smiled himself.
Ernie walked down by the great net of the driving-green and watched with languid interest the early evening patrons industriously littering a city block with golf balls. As usual, he saluted the garage man on the next corner and studied the posters of the little independent studio just beyond. It was quite late, eight o'clock, when he turned in at the palms before his home.
Adrienne -- he and Lou had called her Ada when she was born eighteen years before in Brunswick -- was sitting in the parlor with her young man, a species which was not called "boy friend".
"Don't get up," Ernie said. He liked the boy friend, who was named Davenport -- which is the name of a town in Iowa -- and didn't drink and was working for the Rousseau Drive-In Market and hated Japanese truck-garden salesmen. He was also a Republican, like every honest man.
"G'evening," said Davenport, with evident respect and regard.
"Hi, Davenport! What you kids up to? Where's Ma?"
Adrienne laughed. "She went down to Angelus Temple to get mad at Aimee McPherson again. Davenport took her. We're going after her by and by." Adrienne wore beach pajamas and a sweater which did not conceal the fact that her limbs were round and her body strong and supple. Davenport tried not to look at her, but he did not succeed. Her face was as cheerful as her father's and almost as honest.
"Well, that's all right; she likes it. Got any more grape-juice lemonade, Adie?"
"I put it in the ice-box." Adrienne rose with the swift accuracy of motion that is grace, since it means good nerves and good muscles, and went to the kitchen.
Ernie sat down. "How things coming?"
"Oh, good enough. They made me assistant manager." Davenport looked about the floor as though he were hunting cockroaches. "Say, Mr. Boyer, what do you think about girls goin' into the movies?"
Pa Boyer puzzled a little at this. "Hadn't thought about it. They don't seem like a very nice respectable bunch, do they? I wouldn't criticize, but it does seem to me that they get married, or don't get married, oftener than usual."
Davenport leaned his chin upon his hand and now concentrated his mournful search upon small ants or even bacteria. "That's what it seems to me, too."
"You thinking about anyone particular?"
"Yeh," said Davenport. "Adrienne."
"Huh!" said Ernie, startled. Then he added mildly: "Naw, I wouldn't want her to get in any movies. She's just an Iowa youngster. I wouldn't want her having truck with them people." His voice faded and disappeared as Adrienne returned with grape-juice lemonade and some of Loudellia Good-enough Boyer's angel-food hickory-nut cake. The young man gave him a don't-tell-I-told look. Pa Boyer nodded.
