Free I Don't Know How the Story Ends by J.B. Cheaney Page B

killed.”
    Ranger stared, then smiled, then walked all the way around the pitiful structure, his smile broadening. Finally he burst out, “Look at it!” as though we hadn’t been.
    Sam sounded equally awestruck. “Wonder who owns it.”
    â€œNobody! Or nobody who cares. See how it’s falling in? All we’d have to do is pull down the roof—”
    â€œTake the broken glass out of the windows—”
    â€œReplace a few boards on the floor—”
    â€œClear the brush away—”
    â€œFor what?” I broke in. “Are we going into the real estate business too?”
    Ranger turned to me, his dark eyes fairly crackling. “Don’t you see? It’s perfect for interior shots. We haven’t been able to put any of the story inside because we had no place to shoot it.”
    â€œCan’t you use a room in your house?”
    â€œNo, no, no. Not enough light. Light’s the problem. You remember that Western we watched them shooting last week?” I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t tell Sam how I’d interrupted the scene. “That’s how interiors have to be shot, in a house with no roof and one wall missing—just like that .” He stabbed a finger at the building, giddy with glee.
    â€œUnless you have kliegs,” Sam said. When I looked at him, he added, “Klieg lights.”
    â€œYou can’t ‘borrow’ any of those?” I asked, not really joking.
    â€œLenders have their limits, girlie.”
    Ranger meanwhile had taken another turn around the house with Sylvie clinging to him and asking what we were going to do next. “This is bully . We can use the wood from the roof to build furniture. A bed, a table—”
    â€œPictures on the wall?” Sam suggested.
    â€œI suppose,” I said slowly, “if you could tack up another kind of wall cover, like a sheet or something, you could use this for more than one…um…interior.”
    The boys looked at each other, possibilities multiplying like lice. “A store!” Ranger shouted.
    â€œA saloon?” Sam offered.
    â€œA church—”
    â€œA barn—”
    â€œA railroad station ,” Ranger concluded reverently. “How’s this for a scene? We go down to Culver City station and set up the camera to look down the track. You shoot the train coming in. We see Isobel step off the passenger coach—”
    â€œMe, too!” Sylvie clamored.
    â€œIsobel and Sylvie step off the passenger coach. Then we see them go into the station. Next scene, that door opens”—he pointed to the door in the center back wall of the shack—“and they’re inside!”
    What we would do once inside the station, or why we were on the train in the first place, were sensible questions that it did not occur to me to ask. Because for the first time, I was beginning to catch a ray of Ranger’s shining vision. We could go anywhere on the streetcar route and shoot anything, and by cutting and splicing the film, we could make it look like this little house was part of that same place, even though it was miles away.
    Motorcars and flying machines were supposed to be annihilating time and space, but film could actually do that. Or create the illusion anyway. Like in the well-known fable, I was plodding up to the starting line, a poky tortoise to those eager hares. But if Ranger and Sam had a long start on me, I was at least heading in the same direction.
    When they stopped for breath, I said, “Hadn’t we better get started?”
    â€¢ • •
    When the three of us returned home, much later in the day than we’d said, Aunt Buzzy threw up her hands. “Where on earth have you been ? I was almost ready to call the police.”
    She didn’t look all that disturbed; more like she thought she should be worried but couldn’t quite work up to it. Ranger said, “We’ve been building a