The Sixteen Burdens (31 page)

Gray didn’t say much; he didn’t have interesting stories to tell or faraway places to describe. But just listening, just belonging to the conversation—that was enough. It was the most wonderful meal Gray could remember having.

As they cleaned up from dinner, Abuelita made a thick hot chocolate on the stove to go with the churros.

“Are we going to stay up until midnight?” Lulu asked. “I want to see if anyone lights any fireworks!”

Gray had never stayed up to ring in the new year. They needed their sleep for tomorrow, but he wanted to celebrate with his friends while he could. It was the first time that word felt as if it fit:
friends
.

“Let’s do it,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of hours yet before midnight. We’ll take a short nap and then wake in time for New Year’s.”

Chaplin, still feeling weak, opted to turn in. The same went for Abuelita, who always went to bed early. She was staying with the neighbors next door.

Elsie and Lulu shared the couch, and Panchito and Gray each grabbed a blanket and claimed a piece of floor. They turned out the lights so that only the orange glow of street lamps lit the room.

“Do you think it’ll work tomorrow?” Panchito whispered to Gray.

“I honestly don’t know. We just gotta try is all.”

Gray stared at the ceiling for some time, thinking about the variables out of his control. There was a backup plan he hadn’t shared with the others, but it was one he didn’t want to think about just then.

He rolled over to ask Panchito something, but he was already asleep. Gray wanted to nap also, but couldn’t. There were too many thoughts running through his head. As soon as Lulu began to snore, he knew it would be a long night.

He went to the open window by the kitchen table and stared down at Olvera Street. Despite what he might have to do tomorrow, he was content in his decision. It was easier to sacrifice for people you cared about.

Although he couldn’t remember dozing, he became quickly alert at a popping sound in the distance. He looked up and saw the green sparks of a firework a few streets down. Then there was a red one, and a white one.

Midnight
.

Gray looked over and expected his friends to stir at the crackling sounds in the distance, but they didn’t. Despite his promise to wake them, he decided to let them sleep. It was better that way. So he watched the tiny fireworks show on his own, catching bursts of lights here and there. After a while the flashes of light became less frequent, until they finally stopped altogether. The festive sky grew dark again.

It was the first day of 1940, and possibly their last.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-F
IVE

G
RAY
WAS
JOLTED
awake by hard shaking. He sat up immediately, the side of his face sore from having dozed off on the edge of the windowsill.

“We’re late!” Chaplin said. He was already dressed, looking like his old self.

It was still dark out, but the parade started right after sunrise. Elsie threw on the lights and Panchito was already shimmying into his caveman costume.

“How late are we?”

“About twenty minutes,” Chaplin said. “Paulette’s outside, waiting. And she doesn’t like to wait.”

Gray threw on his loincloth and leather sandals. Without thinking he put on his fedora.

“You can’t wear that,” Elsie said.

She was right, of course. He pulled it off. Just a few weeks ago his hat was pristine and unused; he thought it couldn’t get any more perfect. Now it was bent, scuffed and dirty. He loved it even more. Every flaw marked it as his own. Reluctantly, he set it on the coffee table.

Fifteen minutes later they were headed up the Arroyo Parkway in Chaplin’s Pierce-Arrow, going northeast toward Pasadena. Lulu, her hair all pinned up, sat in-between Paulette and Chaplin. The other three sat in the back. Gray rolled down his window.

“It’s freezing!” Elsie said.

“It’s keeping me awake,” Gray said.

But it wasn’t the cold that was keeping him awake; it was the knots in his stomach. Gray watched the city recede behind them, and felt strangely nostalgic as the towering City Hall disappeared behind a curve in the road. There was a sudden change in the air as they passed through one of the Figueroa Street tunnels that cut through the hills between Pasadena and Downtown. The car
whooshed
out the other end, and Gray felt as if he had left all of his courage on the other side.

Someone had the foresight to sew pockets inside Gray’s loincloth. On one side he had the real Eye, and on the other was the fake. The only other object Gray had on him was a small compact mirror he had taken from Abuelita’s medicine cabinet while everyone was sleeping.

Plan B.

Before Gray could walk through the whole plan in his head, they arrived at the parade route, in a lot next to the staging warehouse. Paulette parked the car and turned off the engine. For a moment, no one but her made a move to exit the car.

“Well?” she said. “Are we going or not?”

There followed a reluctant sound of car doors opening. No one spoke as they crossed the asphalt under a quickly brightening sky.

Mayhem hit them the moment they stepped inside the warehouse. Scores of volunteers were prepping the floats with last-minute touches: flowers being spritzed, engines being tested, float riders adjusting their colorful outfits.

Gray saw a float of aquatic animals with blue and white flowers arranged to look like ocean waves. Women in swimsuits were climbing up on top of giant seahorses and riding them like a carousel. Another float was a two-story cornucopia filled with oversized oranges and other fruit, a promotion for the agricultural towns of Orange County.

“Panchito and I need to find the United Artists float,” Gray said. “Mr. Chaplin, you need to get control of the Grand Marshal car somehow. I don’t know how—”

“Don’t worry,” Chaplin said. “I’ll catch a lucky break.”

“Elsie, you go with Mrs. Goddard and Lulu to ease anyone’s fears in case they don’t let you into Shirley Temple’s dressing room.”

“Where is she?” Elsie asked. “This place is huge.”

Paulette stepped into the main aisle of traffic and flagged down a frazzled woman with her face down in a clipboard. The two nearly collided but Paulette didn’t flinch.

“I beg your pardon!” the woman said.

“Good morning,” Paulette said. “Mr. Chaplin wants to wish Shirley Temple congratulations and good luck. Where is she?”

The woman looked from Paulette to Chaplin, who offered a sheepish smile.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “but Miss Temple is on a very tight schedule.”

“As are we,” Paulette said. “So you can either direct us to Miss Temple’s dressing room or show us to the organizer of this silly parade so I can have your badge pulled.”

The woman wilted under the heat of celebrity influence.

“I—I suppose you can try to get in a quick hello. She has a dressing room against the wall at the end of this aisle.”

Chaplin took the woman’s hand and kissed it.

“Thank you, ma’am. And might I say, even with all the flowers around, you are still the prettiest thing here.”

The woman blushed and turned away. Paulette rolled her eyes.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I have things to do today.”

Elsie took in a big breath to steel herself.

“You sure you’re OK doing this?” Gray asked.

“My ethical boundaries are really murky at this point,” Elsie said.

A few rows over Gray could see a volcano poking up among the floats. He pointed at it.

“I think that’s our float, Chito. Let’s go.”

Gray gave Lulu both the real and the fake Newton’s Eye.

“Don’t mix ’em up.”

He looked at Chaplin, then at Elsie.

“We’ll meet back in here if we get split up. Good luck.”

Elsie gently grabbed his wrist, calming him. He was grateful for it.

“Cheer up!” Chaplin said. “We’re going to be in a parade!”

“Thanks, Mr. Chaplin.”

Chaplin gave him a soft punch against the chin.

“From now on, call me Charlie.”

Elsie straightened her back and tipped her chin up, exuding a confidence she wasn’t feeling. She had in her hands a bouquet of flowers she had assembled by pilfering from various floats as they walked down the aisle. She had taken the bow from her hair to tie it into a bouquet. Paulette walked beside her and Lulu held back, waiting for the door to open.

At Shirley Temple’s dressing room door, there was a man stationed outside. He wore a solemn expression but looked comical with his toothbrush mustache and pants buckled high up on his pear-shaped frame.

“Flower delivery for Miss Temple,” Elsie said.

As if she needs more flowers today.

The man seemed to have the same thought.

“No deliveries. No visitors.”

Elsie pulsed him with a calming happiness, but Paulette jumped in with a much different approach.

“Excuse me, but don’t you know who I am? I’m Paulette Goddard!”

The door to the dressing room opened a crack. Shirley Temple poked her little head through.

“Who is it?”

Paulette turned on a big smile and snatched Elsie’s bouquet from her hands.

“It’s me Shirley dear, your friend Paulette. Charlie Chaplin’s wife.”

Shirley returned the smile with a blank stare.

“We want to congratulate you on being Grand Marshal today. What a big job! Might we come in to give you these flowers?”

Shirley shrugged and opened the door. She was as cute as she was on screen, but the poor girl looked exhausted.

They stepped inside and Elsie felt a whoosh of air go by. She didn’t see her sister run in but she knew Lulu was there. The dressing room was a converted storage closet, and a number of tools and supplies Elsie didn’t recognize were all stacked on shelving on one side to make room for a table and mirror. She saw a roll of twine, and she knew Lulu would have seen it too.

“We should put those in water,” Shirley said.

“Sure, whatever,” Paulette said, dumping the flowers on the first surface she encountered.

She was a polite little girl, if not as perky as her on-screen persona. Elsie saw her outfit hanging on a coat rack: it was all white, including a fuzzy hand warmer, white gloves and white beret. Lulu popped her head out from behind the outfit. She gave Elsie a thumbs up.

My sister should be a professional criminal.

Elsie put the flowers in an empty tin can and poured a little water in from a glass on the table.

“Help me arrange them?”

Shirley came over and primped the flowers without really doing anything.

Paulette sat down in the only chair in the room.

“Little girl, how would you like to sleep in this morning?”

An expression of longing passed over Shirley’s face.

“I can’t. The parade.”

“Oh, we’ll take care of that,” Paulette said. “Now you just lie down and nap.”

Shirley Temple wasn’t stupid. She took a small shuffling step away from Paulette.

“I need to get dressed. My parents will be back soon.”

Paulette gave a sympathetic smile.

“We’ll be gone sooner.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Elsie saw Lulu sneaking up behind Shirley with one of Abuelita’s dish rags.

“I want to say that I’m a very big fan,” Elsie said. “That, and I’m very, very sorry.”

Before Shirley could register the comment, Lulu had pulled the cloth gag into the girl’s mouth.

The wide sliding doors of the warehouse opened, and Gray saw the first rays of daylight stream in.

“Places!” someone yelled. “First ten floats, you’re up!”

Gray knew from the program schedule that they were in the second wave; they needed to hurry. The float for
One Million B.C.
was modeled after the set Gray had seen on the studio lot. It was covered with seeds and earth-colored plants that were shaped to look like the craggy rocks of a dry prehistoric landscape. There were some primeval-looking plants that looked large enough to swallow a man whole. The float was long and narrow, sloping upward and ending in a twenty-foot-tall volcano in the back. It was hollow inside and men were packing it with dry ice to make it look as if it were smoking.

In the center of the float was a giant green dinosaur with skin made of the leaves of various plants. Gray and Panchito climbed up on the float. Panchito hopped onto the back of the dinosaur.

“Come on, we’ll have the best view up here.”

“Get off there. You’re on my dinosaur.”

A woman with platinum blond hair stood at the foot of the dinosaur with her arms crossed. She had a caveman outfit that was made of animal skins but with a cut suited for a lounge singer. Her jewelry was made of faux animal teeth and bones.

“I got here first,” Panchito said. “I don’t see your name on it.”

“Hal! Get over here!”

The stocky man Gray had seen on the backlot appeared from around the corner.

“What is it, Carole?” he said, his voice weary. He seemed used to the woman’s tongue-lashings.

“This boy is in my spot,” she said. “I don’t know who he is, but I want him out!”

Hal looked up at Panchito.

“Come down from there, young man. That’s where the star of the film is supposed to be.”

Gray motioned for Panchito to get down. He didn’t want to draw attention. Panchito reluctantly climbed off the dinosaur and glared at Carole.

“The only thing prehistoric about you is your age.”

Carole turned red.

“Get them off the float,” she said. “Get them off now or I’ll scream!”

“OK, now,” Hal said. “Who are you boys, anyway?”

“We’re the extras. We should be on the list.”

They gave their names, and Hal pulled out a sheet of paper with a list. Gray held his breath, hoping that D.W. Griffith had remembered to add them.

“Ah! There you are,” Hal said.

“I don’t care if they are approved,” Carole said. “I want them off!”

“Second wave!”

“Places, everyone!” Hal shouted.

He pointed at Gray and Panchito.

“You two just stay out of her way.”

There was a sudden jolt and the float started to move. Gray and Panchito found a rock to stand on halfway up the volcano. They slowly glided out of the warehouse, into the parking lot outside. There was a brisk rush of early morning air, then warmth as the first rays of sunshine hit them.

The procession momentarily halted. In front of them, members of the Salvation Army marching band breathed in their cupped palms to warm their hands. When the floats started up again, the drum major, a man in a red coat and fuzzy white hat, blew a whistle. The musicians began to march in formation.

Panchito looked around at the long line of floats queuing up behind them.

“How are Chaplin and Elsie going to—”

There were honks and a screeching of tires. A car pulled out of line from inside the warehouse and sped up toward the United Artists float. A man chased after the car, stumbling over himself.

“Hey! Come back! You’re not supposed to go yet!”

But he had no chance of stopping the car. It was a white Buick Phaeton convertible, a car built like a battering ram with the engine to match. It had banners on the sides announcing Grand Marshal Shirley Temple. Chaplin was driving with Elsie in the passenger seat. He had a chauffeur’s hat pulled low on his head. The whole back bench of the car was built out to support a giant throne made of white roses. Sitting high up on this perch was a girl who appeared to be Shirley Temple.