Ma Pettengill

by Harry Leon Wilson

And a lot of folks say women ought to vote!

So we start for Los Angeles, deserting Clyde just as mean as dirt. Sure, I went with her! I didn't trust her to finish the trip. As it was, she wanted to get off the train twice before we got to Chicago—thinking of the shock to her boy's tender heart if he should come back and find himself deserted.

But then, right after we left Chicago, she got interested. In the section across from us was a fifty-five-year-old male grouch with a few gray bristles on his head who had been snarling at everyone that come near him ever since the train left New York. The porters and conductors had got so they'd rush by him like they was afraid of getting bit on the arm. He had a gray face that seemed like it had been gouged out of stone. It was like one of these gargles you see on rare old churches in Europe. He was just hating everyone in the world, not even playing himself a favourite. And Vida had stood his growling as long as she could. Having at last give up the notion of tracking back to New York, she plumped herself down in the seat with this raging wild beast and begged for his troubles. I looked to see her tore limb from limb, instead of which in three minutes he was cooing to her in a rocky bass voice. His trouble was lumbago or pleurisy or some misery that kept him every minute in this pernickety state.

That was all old mother Vida needed to know. She rustled a couple hot-water bags and kept 'em on the ribs of this grouch for about two thousand miles, to say nothing of doping him with asperin and quinine and camphor and menthol and hot tea and soothing words. He was the only son in sight, so he got it good. She simply has to mother something.

The grouch got a little human himself the last day out and begun to ask Vida questions about herself. Being one that will tell any person anything at all, she told him her life history and how her plans was now unsettled, but she hoped to make a home out on this coast. The grouch come right out and asked her how big her roll was, saying he lived out here and it cost something to make a home. Vida told him she had her two years' savings of three hundred and eighty good dollars and that I had promised to loan her a few dollars to piece out with. At this the old boy looked me over carefully and could see no signs of vast wealth because I never wear such in Pullman cars, so he warns her that I'll have to piece out her savings with a few thousand instead of a few dollars if she's to start anything worth keeping, because what they do to you in taxes down there is a-plenty.

After which he goes to sleep.

Vida moves over and asks what I meant by saying I'd only have to put in a few dollars when I must of known it would take a few thousand, and didn't I realize that Clyde would be hurt to the quick if he come back and found she hadn't been independent? She indignantly said she'd have to give up the country place and work till she had enough to start another home for paying guests.

I was so mad at this truthful grouch for butting in on my game that I up and told her flat she could never run a boarding house and make it pay; that no woman could who hadn't learned to say "No!" and she was too much of a mush-head for that. She was quite offended by this and says firmness has always been considered a strong point in her personality. A first-class palmist had told her this only two weeks before. While we are squabbling back and forth the grouch wakes up again and says that he's in the moving-picture business and will give her a good job in the wardrobe department of the company he's with, so she must show up there at eight o'clock the next morning. Just like that! He didn't ask her. He told her.

Vida is kind of took off her feet, but mumbles "Yes, sir!" and puts his card in her bag. Me? I was too mad to talk, seeing the girl get into the mill again when I'd tried so hard to get her out. But I swore to myself I'd stick round and try to get some sense into the cup-custard she called her brain.

So the next morning I took her out to this moving-picture joint that they call a studio—not a bit like Metta Bigler's studio in Red Gap—and sure enough here's the grouch ready to put Vida on a job. The job is in a room about ninety feet long filled with boxes and sewing machines and shelves full of costumes, and Vida is to be assistant wardrobe mistress. Yes, sir; a regular title for the job. And the pay is twenty-five a week, which is thirteen more than she'd ever dreamed of making before. The grouch is very decent to her and tells everybody she's a friend of his, and they all pay polite attention to him because he's someone important in the works. It seems he's a director. He stands round and yells at the actors how to act, which I had always supposed they knew already but it seems not. Anyway, I left Vida there to get on to her new duties.