One day, somewhere on the great Western plains, the train came to an unexpected halt. Rosenberg, who’d been napping on one of the bench seats in our car, was awakened by the screech of the brakes. He yawned and said, “It must be a whistle stop. No need to get up.”
But then someone else from Perennial—a teenager who was probably somebody’s son—stuck his head in the door. “Gentlemen, would you mind coming back to the rear platform? There’s a crowd out there waiting to see you.”
We had not been expecting to make a stop that day, and Figgins was still in his nightshirt. Snyder was asleep in his upper bunk, with one boot hanging over the side, snores audible even with the noise of the train. I was dressed, as always, in a jacket and tie, but even I had been looking forward to a day with no public appearances. Elizabeth, David told me after he had spoken to her maid, was getting a massage.
“Can’t we skip it?” asked Figgins. “I’m in the middle of something.” What he was in the middle of was a flask of whiskey; it seemed to be his most treasured possession.
“Better not,” said Rosenberg. “It looks like you’ve got several hundred people out there. The town’s mayor declared a holiday today.”
Figgins groaned and began to arrange his body to stand, which would take him several minutes. David went and shook Snyder’s dangling leg; in a moment the actor, looking sleepy, had jumped down from his bunk and pressed his cowboy hat to his head. Then Elizabeth burst into the car wearing a simple cotton dress, her hair tied up in a bun. “David, I’m just about through with this shit,” she said. But by the time we all marched to the back of the train, she had composed her features into a smile.
The teenager had not been exaggerating. Surrounding the rear car was a large, excited crowd, against the back-drop of land so golden and flat it seemed to go on forever. As soon as we appeared, a high school band in full uniform struck up a cheerful song. The four of us stood against the railing and smiled for the cameras, while hundreds of children waved miniature flags.
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” the young girls squealed. “Let us see your new hairstyle!”
“Buck, did you bring your horse on the train? Show us your gun! Dontcha got your gun?”
“Tuggy, do the shell game!” a large man yelled, referring to one of Figgins’ gags.
And then, directed at me, mostly by the children: “Mr. Jap! Talk Japanese to us! Swing your samurai sword, Mr. Jap!”
None of us fulfilled these specific requests, but we waved and smiled and talked to the crowd. We stayed out on the platform and posed for pictures—Snyder placing his hat on Elizabeth’s head; Figgins imitating a film diva applying her makeup; I pretending to engage Snyder in a duel, our pointed fingers serving as guns—until David Rosenberg gave us a nod and we made our way back inside. As we disappeared we heard the crowd yelling, “Bye!” and, “We love you!” And although none of us had wanted to go outside, we all felt considerably cheered.
During the long nights, when the train made most of its progress, we entertained ourselves as best we could. Elizabeth, Snyder, and I would make our way to the rear cars and play poker with the theater owners and distributors—something that the studio executives enjoyed, because the better these men liked us, the more willing they’d be to buy the new slate of pictures that included our latest titles. Figgins would not join in on these games—he said he didn’t know how to play poker, although the truth was that he was more interested in the company of his flask and that, despite his jocular image, he was rather solitary. But the rest of us had no such problems. Buck Snyder, not surprisingly, had a marvelous poker face, his laconic visage foiling us time after time as he gradually accumulated wins. I did fairly well, although not as well as Snyder, and the distributors seemed amazed that a Japanese man could speak English and hold his own at a game of cards. And Elizabeth. I still see Elizabeth clearly, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, taking swigs of whiskey straight from the bottle as she squinted at her hand, and cursing like a sailor—to the delight of all the men—whenever she had to fold.
Sometimes the four of us would avoid the rear cars altogether and engage in what Figgins called a “bunk crawl.” We would enlist some of the studio men like Rosenberg as well—after they’d sworn not to tell their bosses. In each man’s bunk, and in Elizabeth’s car, there would be a different drink—beer in Buck Snyder’s bunk, martinis in mine, gin and tonics in Elizabeth’s, and so on. All of us—and at its height, the group grew to fourteen—had to fit into the bunk together before we could take a drink, a tangle of arms and legs, heads resting on shoulders, giggles that caught like sneezes in the overstuffed compartments as we all struggled to swig our drinks without spilling. In David’s bunk, which was dominated by his own bulky presence, I was folded into a corner with Elizabeth pressed against me, and the feel of her skin against my arms, the smell of her hair, affected me more strongly than the liquor.
On more than one occasion, the evening ended with Snyder having company in his bunk. There were three young maids on board—Elizabeth’s, and two who were traveling with the studio men—and each of them, at some point, found her way into the cowboy’s bed. Twice, women came on board at one of the whistle stops, traveling with the train and keeping Snyder company until the next stop, when she disembarked and made her
